@Debbie451
Last seen: Mon 17 May, 2021
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: How to "inform" the reader of changes in narrator? Writing low-quality novels on my spare time is my hobby and I'm currently "working" on one where the story about a country with an
Writing low-quality novels on my spare time is my hobby and I'm currently "working" on one where the story about a country with an ongoing civil war. I'd like to alternate between different narrators (a teacher, a farmer whose village was burned to the ground, a soldier and a high-ranking officer) to show a variety of perspectives (always in first-person).
My idea is to change narrators after each chapter without warning. As one chapter ends, a new one starts with a different narrator. This method would be ideal but I'm not sure if this would confuse potential readers. I've also considered writing in four different fonts, one for each narrator, but what about dialogue then?
So my question for you is: do you know of any sound technique for handling narrator changes?
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: Influence of conflicting parental motives I'm writing a story where a charater is the landlord to the protagonist. The situation develops into a shared house. The problem here is that the parents
I'm writing a story where a charater is the landlord to the protagonist. The situation develops into a shared house. The problem here is that the parents of said landlord have contradicting motives - specifically a ruthless business against a humane understanding of society. How could this conflict influence the character in general and in the specific situation of being a landlord?
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: Re: How can I avoid spoiling the reveal in a fictional diary entry? I'm currently writing a story in a fictional diary format. This is proving challenging in several ways, but right now, my focus
One approach would be to use information the diary author knows, but the reader doesn't:
Yes!! Oh my gosh it's YES!!
and then just carry on with the reaction or whatever but omitting all the details of what exactly this person has won/earned/been awarded or whatever until you feel like revealing it.
Another would be to start with a lede that reveals only that something has happened:
I will never forget this day. This is the date to remember.
And then "backs up" and goes through everything until reaching the information you want to reveal.
Both of these work well when this is the first diary entry in your story. If you have already had days of entries about how nervous the author is about an exam or a job interview or a visa application, then anything positive or happy as the first sentence of an entry is going to feel like it's about that thing they are so pre-occupied with. For that case, you could start several days with big excitements that turn out to be "I sliced an avocado when it was perfectly ripe" or "I have never made the trip from home to campus in just 17 minutes, all the schedules meshed perfectly" or whatnot. That will let you slide in a truly lifechanging one as a bit of a surprise.
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: Is it okay to touch type with several different finger placements? I typed using a QWERTY keyboard for years since my childhood, but I never learned how to type properly and I just type the
I typed using a QWERTY keyboard for years since my childhood, but I never learned how to type properly and I just type the way I type instead. I use all of my fingers (I had the feelings of that), but I can't describe which fingers press which keyboard button.
Until recently, I just knew that I have been doing it wrong. Then, I tried to learn touch typing instead of the messed up typing skill that I got, and it was better. I went from 50-70 WPM to 60-80 WPM in just a day learning it.
But even though I learned to touch type properly, I still couldn't move away from some of my 'finger misplacements' to optimize my typing skills. The mistakes that I still made were:
Pressing ZXCV using left thumb
Pressing space using right point finger
Pressing U with right middle finger (and maybe other fingers beside U)
Not using right shift when capitalizing left keystrokes
And (maybe) many more that I didn't recognize
I tried to change my habits, but it's already stuck in my brain. I keep forgetting which finger should press which keystroke and so on. I wanted to raise my WPM by touch typing, but I'm just comfortable with the way I type, even though I don't know if that is a good thing or not.
Will keeping those habits make me type slower? If it does, then what should I do?
By the way, I know that 60-80 WPM is good enough for me for literature, but I'd prefer to upgrade it just for fun and to improve my typing accuracy.
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: Is an audience really required to develop writing? I like writing, particularly on topics of realism and general self-help. Some of my posts are opinion-based, and some are emotive pieces. My
I like writing, particularly on topics of realism and general self-help. Some of my posts are opinion-based, and some are emotive pieces. My attempt at sharing my work in Quora and Medium has failed miserably. My posts do not get appreciated (most of the times, they are simply ignored). I understand that getting attention is not supposed to be a goal, but it has negatively impacted me, hence I came here for advice: Should I quit these sites and just write privately, or should I mould my writing to suit what people want to read?
For me, writing is a fun way of putting my thoughts on a paper, and I enjoy it, but writing what people in these sites want to read is tiring, boring and difficult. I do not want to have a career in writing, I just want it to remain a hobby- So, to develop it, is an audience really required?
(I am not sure if this question is off-topic here. If so, a comment on where to ask this would be appreciated.)
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: Indirect reference following brackets in scientific literature I've got a bracketed reference in a scientific manuscript I'm writing, that immediately follows bracketed text like so: ...rather than
I've got a bracketed reference in a scientific manuscript I'm writing, that immediately follows bracketed text like so:
...rather than visiting flowers that were in ‘same scent’ group (same scent and different colour to the rewarding flower group) (Figure 1).
Is this considered grammatically incorrect?
It doesn't look right to me, but I'm not sure how I could correct it, if I need to. I could directly reference the figure earlier on in the sentence, but it would be more convenient for my writing if I could fix the issue at the end of the sentence.
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: Re: As a young author, how do you make people listen? I am an extremely young author. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but I think I am very good. They say the best readers are
How likely are you to see this through?
Some authors have churned out huge numbers of books - look up the output of some pulp authors (sci-fi, cowboy, romance, etc.) and be amazed!
But you're young. Right now this is the hottest thing in your life. Is it always going to be that way? You can't say, and your publisher certainly can't. And an 11-book series is long! And even if you do keep going, you're also reliant on keeping up the quality.
Think George R R Martin. We're still waiting for the end of Game of Thrones. Patrick Rothfuss? Same. Scott Lynch? Same. Robert Jordan? Died before he finished his series. Stephen King? Took years to finish The Dark Tower, and many people don't think the remaining books were as good.
As Neil Gaiman rightly said, no author owes us anything. But publishers need to make money, and if there's a risk they won't, they won't invest in you. As things stand, you absolutely are a risk that way.
But on the upside, you may be as good as you think you are, and you may stick at it
In that case, keep going. Write all 11. And rewrite them, and rewrite them. And see how it goes.
Kate Bush started writing songs when she was still in single-digit years. She got spotted at 14. Paul Gilbert was famous as one of the fastest guitarists in the world in his teens. The Kanneh-Mason kids perform internationally. They started on stuff they really liked doing, and they worked like hell to get good at it.
Those 11 books are your portfolio. Your demo reel. Get good, and keep going. Good luck.
And by the way, if you do post your first book online for review, do let us know. As other answers have said, you're going to want feedback on what works and what you could do better. I can't promise good reviews, but I can promise honest ones.
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: Protagonist knows things which the reader doesn't know/story starts in the middle. How do I tell them? when I say "reader", in the context of my particular scenario, I actually mean
when I say "reader", in the context of my particular scenario, I actually mean the "player" as this story is for a videogame.
I start the game off with the player/main character (first person POV in the game) falling in a malfunctioning elevator which comes to a safety stop station within some unknown part of the massive facility in which this game takes place. Shortly after they leave the elevator, they meet a character named David who is a basketball-sized robotic sphere- David and the protagonist, Kate, are already familiar with each other at the time that this happens, but it is the player's first encounter with this guy. David quickly "searches his schematics" and finds that this part of the facility is oddly absent from them. Then he argues with the emergency stop station and mentions he is an administrator-level construct and that the elevator should listen to him so they can "get back up where we were a while ago" (implying that they've been adventuring for longer than 5 minutes.) This is also a universe where all technology in the facility is likely sentient in some form, even if invisibly so.
The issue is, I am not sure if having David casually mention things like his admin rights and "where we were previously" is the best way to tell the player/reader about said things without causing confusion, especially right at the start. but I want the character this is from the perspective of, Kate, to already know that David has admin-level access to things in the facility, and also knows that he's friendly...etc.
The story intentionally starts right in the middle because I am inspired by how the TV show, "LOST", did things and want a similar feel. However, I don't have the luxury that "LOST" did with its flashbacks. Flashbacks are technically possible, but not something I want to do because of the incredibly cliche nature of it (and, being in first-person, this would seem jarring due to the fact It would be difficult to communicate, "this is a flashback")
this "game", if it helps to know, Is actually a community-based modification for the game "Portal 2". I mention this on the off-chance there are any portal 2 fans who may have a better insight on how best to write the character based on knowledge of the game's general storytelling style.
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: Re: Using real names in fiction I'm thinking of writing a fiction novel. The plot I've outlined so far centers largely around one possible path the future of our world could take over the next
Read Tom Clancy.
Not particularly for the quality of writing, but for how he handles exactly this problem. He generally steers away from naming individual politicians except in the broadest and uncontroversial terms.
He does use actual countries, of course, but he puts fictional politicians in place as leaders of those countries. Similarly for organisations such as WHO or CDC, he puts fictional people in charge of those organisations. As far as possible though, the way in which those countries' and organisations' leaderships work is portrayed in a way which holds fairly true to evidence of how they are run, because this makes the plot more credible.
For liability, it fundamentally is not possible to libel a country or organisation, only an individual. Of course you could find that unflattering portrayal of a country's citizens hits your sales there, but if that country is China or Iran then your sales are probably not going to be significant anyway.
For libel of individuals, it is not sufficient to simply change names if other characteristics make it clear who they are modelled on. If your ex-President is called John W Shrub and is nicknamed "Dubya", and in your book takes grossly incompetent or ignorant actions, then clearly you have problems. If your ex-President simply claims victory in some military campaign which later turns out not to have been fully successful or complete, you can perfectly well name him GWB and use his exact quoted words, because truth is always a complete defence against libel.
Libel in general is something where your editor and publishing house will have strong opinions. If you sell your book to a publisher, they will take care of checking all this.
And in practise, libel as a civil case is only worthwhile against someone who can pay. Any damages are also proportional to the damage to reputation, which depends on sales. If you sell your book to a publisher and it hits the bestseller lists, anyone who takes offense will sue the publisher, and the publisher as a company has deeper pockets. If you self-publish on Amazon and sell in the tens or hundreds, anyone who takes offense has to sue you personally, which means practically they can't get more than your savings; and damage to reputation from a tiny number of sales makes it pretty insignificant; so generally the game isn't worth the candle for anyone to fight you over this.
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: Is there a phrase that means "a character suddenly gets a lot of development right before they die"? If I remember correctly, there is a phrase meaning "a character suddenly gets a lot
If I remember correctly, there is a phrase meaning "a character suddenly gets a lot of development right before they die". However I have forgotten the name and can't find it. Perhaps I am just imagining that it has a name. Is there a phrase meaning this specific thing?
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: Re: How can I handle a powerful mentor character without killing them off? I'm writing a book series that involves people with various superpowers. One of these characters and is more or less the
Have you read Worm yet? Seriously, don't even attempt to write superheroes until you have. Wildbow does have his flaws (a tendency to throw in action sequences without much purpose) but how his characters use their powers is very interesting.
The dynamics between the superheroes in particular is what you're looking for. Many of the characters are seriously OP and their arrival can completely change the outcome of a fight. But that said, they need to be both ready and willing to deploy for the fight. If they're busy elsewhere, or can't get there in time, or simply having some down time, they may not be. One part of Wildbow's "Protectorate" is that like any military, paramilitary or policing structure it has a recognition that there will always be something going wrong somewhere. Teams will rotate in and out with an "on-duty" time, and off-duty people only get called in when things go seriously wrong.
Teams also have some geographic responsibility, for the same reason. In a national or global emergency, teams from elsewhere can certainly be called on. But otherwise, teams tend to police their own city. Similarly, villains maintain their own "turf".
And one reason this works is teamwork. An individual superpowered person may be OP, sure - but can they beat a team of less powerful people working together? Some powers may naturally be more powerful in partnership than individually. For instance, a hero who can throw an object long distances accurately and a hero who produces a forcefield/fire/whatever can combine, the former throwing the latter at a target as a kind of human grenade. Or if there's a hero who can distort space, how they work with a "flying brick" to get them to the target (or to minimise risks from incoming fire) is very relevant. Teams who practise together will naturally learn how to maximise each other's strengths and cover for each other's weaknesses.
Bringing this back to the OP's question about mentors, the team dynamics may make the mentor pretty much irrelevant after a point, because the mentor doesn't know what the team knows.
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: Re: How do I write "fantasy counterpart cultures" without being accused of cultural appropriation? In my book series, the various planets of the galaxy are inhabited by different cultures, most of
Admit nothing
Not to be disrespectful, but it's unlikely you're writing the next Harry Potter or Game of Thrones, or even the next Honor Harrington. I say that because unless you're staggeringly more successful than one has a right to expect, nobody is going to be interviewing you about the hows and why-fores of why culture X does Y. With that being so, and your setting being the Far Galactic Future, just keep it mysterious. If you're keeping it all human, don't say where your "Kangaroo Island" culture got ALL it's cultural baggage. Invent a future society and reference THAT culture.
For example, say I have a planet called New Ireland. It's full of faux-Irish and I reference a lot of Irish traditions. But I don't attribute ALL those traditions to modern-day/historical Irish. Instead, I say that my culture is a mix of, say, Irish colonists and Vandalian (not a real place) colonists. Or Irish and refugees from the moon colonies. Then if you do make a cultural faux-pas and someone tries to call you out on it, just say that's brought by the made-up culture, not the real one.
Or even better, have a planet called Klendathu, have it be full of things like "the grynx, a traditional Klendathu instrument that sounds like a skinned cat to anyone not from Klendathu." (no offense intended, I do love me the bagpipes) and say NOTHING of the original colonists ethnic origins at all.
Now I'm not saying "You can be super racist if you have a made-up name to hide behind." You can't. You still need to do a hellacious amount of research to make your cultural melds believable and as close to unoffensive as you can get. My point is that once you've done THAT the last bit of work is to add in a make-believe culture so that when you decide New Ireland will declare War against every nation that doesn't mandate one-child-maximum families because your plot demands it, your Irish reader can go "t'was the damned Selenites who usurped me bonnie fair world!" rather than call you a racist for "taking a Modest Proposal Seriously."
Personally though unless it's near-future I would never expressly say where any given civilization comes from historically. This is how the subtler sci-fi authors operate. You might occasionally be able to point to names or a specific piece of art/architecture and go "a-ha! That's a reference to X!" but never enough of any one culture to get specific enough for anyone to be offended that the random Human From Planet X does some horrible thing. From a cultural level anyway. As has been said, you can't please everyone all the time.
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: Should a fantasy book only have fictional names? My book is totally fantasy, full of made up countries and places, all with fictional names I created, but most of my characters have real names.
My book is totally fantasy, full of made up countries and places, all with fictional names I created, but most of my characters have real names. Some are English, others are Asian, and some are even African, since the world is pretty big and I didn't want all of the names to have the same nationality. I don't know if this is actually a problem, since none of the people that have read my drafts ever said anything about names, not even about the harder ones, but I think it's worth asking.
Should my book have only invented names, or is it okay to have a mix of both? And should I avoid Asian/African names, since they are harder to pronounce?
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: Re: What's the difference between Deus Ex Machina and coincidence? I've read 1, 2, 3 and of course, 4. Then I read 5 and 6 and even 7. I was blissfully ignorant about coincidence, DEM and plot-convenience;
There is no clear line. If everything else is going well, people won't notice that your coincidence is far fetched. The same plot resolution in another story might be considered "too much" to believe. But, let's try this:
A single action by one person (say, tripping and falling and hitting a lever that wasn't marked and that the person had no way of knowing about) completely eliminates all the problems (the multiple antagonists all fall into the open trapdoor, or all weapons stop working, etc) - too much
A series of actions, all in line with the character's, well, character, and all logical things for a person to do in that situation, leading to a success against strong odds - ok, even if the reader couldn't predict some of those actions.
A certain amount of unreliable narrator, where a character "steps out to chat with some locals" and then at the climax of the story the locals come riding over the hill with 50 of their friends and save our hero, as we're told that the chat was to plan this exact rescue -- it can work, especially if you've shown this character forming strong relationships and understanding the relevant group dynamics of the village or whatever
I think the key is the work you put in. If you get to the end and decide you want someone to push a Big Red Button and fix it, fine, but then go back and put the clues in. Have someone sit up late at night reading old notebooks and manuals. Or learning the ancient language -- and when they get to the room have them grin and say all that study time was worth it. Build up the parts of that character that make it believable they would be in a position to save everything just like that. Don't just say "Oh, did I not mention I was fluent in Ancient and studied all these control rooms for the last 20 years before you met me?" If there's magic in your world, give somebody a lucky talisman that makes even their trip-and-falls work for them, and show it working on a small scale long before the Big Moment.
You don't need to invent all that stuff before your DEM is written. You can go back and add it after you write the DEM. to turn the DEM back into a coincidence or even the only possible way this could have played out, which is what you want it to feel like.
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: Re: Mixing humour with horror in fiction I got into trouble last year for submitting an assignment (Masters in Creative Writing) that included a story that sprinkled elements of humour (think Despicable
The problem, psychologically speaking, is that horror is intrinsically alienating while humor is intrinsically identifying. Humor brings us closer to characters, where horror drives us away to the position of hapless onlookers. If the two are mixed badly, it can end up implicitly asking the reader to identify with the horror, as though the horror were something good and right and normal. At best that effect is distasteful and disquieting; at worst it comes across as downright psychopathic. This isn't to say the two genres can't be mixed, but it would be a delicate task.
We can't underestimate the moral dimension. Readers always read from an implicit moral worldview. Horror violates that moral worldview (in any of a number of ways) but makes the violation seem overwhelming, an oncoming juggernaut that looms larger as the story progresses. Humor is a moral judgement: an ability to express a moral compass even (or especially) in contexts that have gone morally haywire. Finding a balance between those two moral imperatives is a challenge.
If I'm remembering the novel correctly, you might want to look at "The Dwarf", by Pär Lagerkvist. As I recall, it had a lot of dark humor and a truly evil main character. Perhaps not truly horror, but Lagerkvist is worth studying.
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: What is the relationship between legend and epic? My superficial understandings of these terms are quite distinct: a legend is told and retold, exists independently of a particular telling, is
My superficial understandings of these terms are quite distinct: a legend is told and retold, exists independently of a particular telling, is often held by some to have some grounding in historical events, and is not particularly constrained in scope. In contrast, an epic is told in a particular form, may be wholly fictional, and is otherwise mainly defined by its scope.
Yet there seems to be some connection here: the intersection between legends and epics is more extensive than you would expect if the terms were wholly unrelated. I feel there are some hard-to-pin-down connections, whether in subject matter, theme, or perspective. I have only a minimal, amateur familiarity with both folklore and literature, and I am interested in understanding this subject better. I only hope my question is not too vague.
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: Re: If you're writing a story where the location is based in the USA, should you adapt your spelling to the American way, rather than British? If an Australian writer writes a story based in America
I think you should write in your voice. If you write/speak Australian, the spelling should reflect that. (Of course, if it is based in the US, you would not use Australian terminology foreign to the US.)
By sticking to your native spelling you, a) identify yourself as having a specific origin. The reader will register this, but it will not detract from the story. And, b) you will avoid any mistakes that will definitely seem 'off' to the reader, thus exposing yourself as a fraud.
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: Re: Listing names with titles Normally when listing a group of people you would simply separate each with a comma. Please send the memo to Jason, Sarah, and Courtney. However if you want
The semicolon properly separates items in a list that themselves contain commas: "Please send the memo to Jason, Chief Information Officer; Sarah, President; and Courtney, an investor." [1, 2]
[1] style.mla.org/serial-commas-and-semicolons/ [2] www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/semicolons_in_lists.htm
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: Citation placement when it respects only the second part of a sentence Where should I put a citation mark when the cited information is only the second part of a sentence? This was my first
Where should I put a citation mark when the cited information is only the second part of a sentence? This was my first attempt,
Thus, fuel mass is more sensitive to payload mass changes for faster trajectories due to higher Δv values [1].
but as I re-read it I thought it may give the impression that the citation regards the whole sentence. In this case, the piece of information that is cited is "faster trajectories have higher Δv values".
Is there a better way of re-writing this, or is it not that misleading?
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: Citing things that you draw inspiration from If you draw inspiration from a picture, music, place, and other things like that, do you have to cite it or reference it? Such as (this is a random
If you draw inspiration from a picture, music, place, and other things like that, do you have to cite it or reference it? Such as (this is a random one): if you want to see what hair styles a fictional character should have, you look up hairstyles and then use one of them. I mean if you draw inspiration from sources to create a character such as from pictures or hairstyles. I know this is dumb, but I get really paranoid about this XD.
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: Similar Character So, I had a dream about this demon character named Sin (I physically saw his name in my dream) that goes to church. I wanted to make this into a story, but I feel like
So, I had a dream about this demon character named Sin (I physically saw his name in my dream) that goes to church. I wanted to make this into a story, but I feel like it's too similar to Rin Okumura from Blue Exorcist. I decided to change my characters name to Sihn, but I feel like it's still too similar. Any tips on copyright and the like? Thanks!
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: What software do they use to create textbooks or board game manuals? I'm wondering if there is some free software in which I could quite easily compose a book with a lot of images, something
I'm wondering if there is some free software in which I could quite easily compose a book with a lot of images, something like textbooks for children for learning foreign languages (an example: thumbs.img-sprzedajemy.pl/1000x901c/33/3f/6b/english-file-beginner-students-book-and-workbook-527649125.jpg ) or board game manuals. I tried doing it in MS Word and I found it terrible (aligning, putting images and text with correct spaces...). I saw recommendations of LaTeX and Scrivener here: Good tools for writing (game) manuals and sourcebooks . But I think it's easier to create such a book in Word than in LaTeX; Scrivener is not free. What do people who do it on daily basis use?
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: Re: Writing mumbled speech I've got a character that mumbles, and I'd like good advice on how to write his dialogue. He isn't a POV character, and I won't give him too much dialogue that would
I would do a little eye dialect when the character first speaks:
Thash nuyor biznush!
(Maybe not quite that dramatic, but maybe.)
Then have your other characters react to it, asking the character "sorry? I didn't quite get that?" or echoing what they think they heard. Then, because all of this is tiring for the reader, switch from dialog to narration:
Eventually Perry was able to establish that Chris had seen the rider yesterday, and heard his voice this morning.
You could also try not specifying the precise words:
Chris mumbled a quick denial, almost unintelligible but definitely angry.
You can also summarize with dialog amongst others:
Any luck talking to that old drunk up there?
Chris isn't drunk, it's some sort of speech impediment. Anyway, she told me …
If the character re-appears after many chapters, again go with the eye dialect to remind everyone that Chris mumbles, and then again switch to just summarizing. You have lots of ways to avoid literal dialog from this character.
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: Re: Should an emoji come before or after a full-stop? When I make a hilarious joke on social media it's easy to put an emoji/emoticon/smiley on the end. But sometimes I want to set the context
I have an insight that might or not help you :
I once had the very same question, but for my native language: French. I sent a mail to the "Académie française", which is the french official language institute.
After some days I got a very pedantic response telling me that I should not use emojis in any sentence as they were a display of my lack of ability to convey my emotions using my poor vocabulary.
I was not pleased. But this is an official answer for French.
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: Re: mentioning verbatim sentence of another research Is it possible to use a verbatim sentence of another research in our own studies? I, as an undergraduate psychology student who doesn't have
If you are going to use someone else's words verbatim, block-quote and cite the original work.
If you are going to paraphrase someone else's words in your own work, to make a more streamlined presentation, credit them and cite their work. E.g. "John Smith suggested in his "cited work" that (paraphrase...)"
As a general rule, if you know that something you are writing is influenced by someone else's research and work, you should make the effort to acknowledge that the information and ideas come from that person, and are not your own creation. Implying that someone else's work is your own — even if you do it innocently or by accident — will impact your reputation as a scholar. Most academics will view it as (at best) lazy and irresponsible or (at worst) outright theft, and that is not how you want to be viewed in the small universe of an academic discipline.
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: Re: Do academic papers have to be necessarily grammatically correct? I notice that a lot of beautiful literature contains sentences that are not grammatically correct. Here are some examples:
While this belongs on academica.SE, I'd like to say this: most thesis writers are not linguistics, and don't have dedicated editors to revise their texts. You can't expect a computer engineer, or a chemist to speak perfect English.
As mentioned above, as long as they communicate their message, with the appropriate structure and coherent arguments, they have done their job.
Some additional notes
And while you are strictly asking about grammar, I would also like to mention jokes and unprofessionalism is also welcome, to a certain degree. You are allowed to make your readers enjoy your thesis, too. Some people might not like this, though, and you might get critique for it.
I can't find the source, but I remember reading that thesis papers strictly did not include images/graphs/illustrations back in the day, but this changed some decades ago, and was very well welcomed. Innovation won!
Who makes the rules, anyway? It's your thesis, and as long as you get people to read it, and your university to publish it, you've won!
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: Re: Past or present tense when describing a well-known method in the description of an experiment? I am describing an experiment for a scientific paper. In this experiment, I use a very well-known
The first sentence refers to the experiment in the past tense ("measured"). For the sake of consistency, the second sentence should be past tense as well.
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: Should you explain where the level of detail comes from in a first person story that is in past tense? Sometimes I read a first person story in past tense and I'm amazed at how much the
Sometimes I read a first person story in past tense and I'm amazed at how much the main character is able to remember in such detail about events that happen decades ago. I know some books uses tools to explain the level of accuracy in the narration like a diary, letters, documents, video or audio recordings.
But some fiction books in first person never tells you anything about this, why is that? Am I meant to assume something or leave it a mystery?
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: Past or present tense when describing a well-known method in the description of an experiment? I am describing an experiment for a scientific paper. In this experiment, I use a very well-known
I am describing an experiment for a scientific paper. In this experiment, I use a very well-known technique which I briefly describe, similar to the following variant (#1):
In this experiment, we measured the performance of our machine using the well-known method B.
B took the machine, turned it around three times, did some weird things with it, and then came up with a performance number.
Should the second sentence be in the past or present tense?
Since it should be a general description of how method B works and not what it actually did, it sounds strange to me that it is in past tense but a native speaker (but not a technical writer) told me to do so.
I would prefer this variant (#2):
In this experiment, we measured the performance of our machine using the well-known method B.
B takes the machine, turns it around three times, does some weird things with it, and then comes up with a performance number.
What variant makes more sense?
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: How do you copyright a book if you’re both the author and illustrator? I'm making a book and want to illustrate it too. So do I have to copyright them seperatly or can I copyright them
I'm making a book and want to illustrate it too. So do I have to copyright them seperatly or can I copyright them all together? And if I make them into a series do I need to copyright each book separately?
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