@LarsenBagley300
Last seen: Mon 17 May, 2021
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: Re: How to write a storyteller well? I have seen in many books a storyteller, usually, a knowledgeable "mentor" character, tell a story to the MC, for a variety of reasons, with a variety
Given the response in your comments, I would recomend breaking the scene into three chapters (A, B, and C. The names are to lessens the confusion of numbering the chapters). The storyteller's story is called a "Story within a Story" (SWS for ease of writing).
Chapter A and C will serve as prolog and epilog to the SWS setting up the scene of the characters discussing the story. It's important that Chapter A ends with dialog from the Storyteller and Chapter C begins with the same dialog. While it's not a chapter book, the set up for the Lorax is done in this style, with the young boy who wants to hear the Onceler's story. At the start of the book, the boy is trying to get the Onceler to tell the story of what took place. He begins with something along the lines of "A Long, Long Time ago" the page is turned and his dialog is now the narration (it even takes on first person from the second or third person of the narrative up to this point). At the end of the Onceler's story, we are brought back to the present (bold added for emphasis):
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks, with one word... UNLESS. Whatever that meant, well, I just couldn't guess. That was long, long ago.
At this point, the story's third person narrator resumes and the coda or epilog of the Onceler's story is given (here the Onceler shares the meaning of the tale with the boy listening to him and it's intended lesson).
The middle part where the SWS is told is the core of the book, however, and needs to be transitioned into properly for the framing device of a kid listening to a story from an old hermit to have true meaning. For a chapter book, this would be your B Chapter, which tells the story in a narrative voice fitting of the storyteller character (if he's having a flash back, switch from third to first person. If it's a fable like he's telling the "Tortise and the Hare" keep it third person. When the SWS is ready to end, bring our audience back to the main story verse by transitioning back to the Moral of the story being told by the narrator (If the "Tortise and the Hare" then the Chapter B ends with a line about the Tortise crossing the finish line first. Chapter C opens with the storyteller saying in dialog "The moral of the story is..." and bring the scene back to the setting we left him in.
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: Re: 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
I'd recomend giving a read to the Animorphs Series, specifically the Megamorphs line and a few of the Chronicles series. Either way, the main-line series features six main characters who swap first person narrative duties during the main line books (originally in a rotation of five books, the four human characters get one book a piece, while the non-humans, a human permanently turned into a hawk and an alien, would take the final book every other rotation. Or to better explain, each of the four humans would books numbers with the same two digits (1s and 6s, 2s and 7s, 4s and 9s, and 5s and 0s) and the non-humans would get one book (Hawk got 3s and Alien got 8s). This changed towards the end of the series so that each character would get 1 book in a rotation of six (In the first rotation to use the change over, the Hawk got the 3 book in rotation and the alien got the 6th book in rotation).
The Megamorphs line were a series of five books in which all six main characters took turns narrating the story, a chapter at a time, with each chapter naming the narrator as well as showing their picture from that book's cover art. There were occasional mainline books that did this two and the default narrator would let the audience know this was happening well in advanced (Book 19 was the first to do this). The Chronicles line were a series of prequels told almost always by non-main charaters (though one begins with a main character meeting some side characters who tell him a story from thier culture so he narrates the first and last chapter) and could either be a lone narrator or a mix of shared narrators. In the later case, the same chapter marking format would take place.
As a general rule, all narrators should be consistent within chapters, and if you plan to do this frequently, you should denote who is your storyteller. If the characters all only narrate one story contained to one chapter, you might consider titling each chapter in a way that signifies it's this persons tale (I.e. The Farmer's tale, the Teacher's tale) or in a way that alludes to the profession and possible story (I.E. The Great Harvest, The Lesson Plan, Rank and File, Chains of Command).
These aren't hard rules as the Harry Potter series was 90% told from Harry's POV but there were a handful of chapters that weren't (Chapter 1 Book One was told from Uncle Vernon's with a switch to Third Person Objective, Chapter 1, Book 4 was told from a muggle's point of view, and Chapters 1 and 2 were told from an unnamed UK Prime Minister (who is remarkably similar to Jim Hacker from "Yes, Minister") and Malfoy's mother's Perspective respectively. None of these are overtly annouced in the chapter title, but they serve more as prolog to the main narrative.
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: Re: Any tips for young writers? I am a 15 years old boy who likes to read/watch/play anything that has a good story in it - especially fantasy. Everytime I finished one, I always feel like that
So I'm alot older than a lot of the commenters who posted in response at the time of my own posting, I probably got bit by the writing bug much earlier than you are now (I know I have characters that I still revisit in my stories that I created in the 7th Grade when I was 12-13 years old). And I work as a programmer to boot (though I can say it's not a job for the creative... at least my career experience. I write code for programs that are boring adult programs that are very niche to my customers very specific needs. I'm not making anything remotely close to a blockbuster video game by any stretch of the imagination).
That all said, there's no wrong time to write and no wrong topic. Don't even be discouraged that you can't make films or animation: My drawing skills are terrible... stick figures are difficult. And I can't shoot a goregeous film because I lack the technical budget to make all the things I want happen (and to be fair, there's a reason why it's several minutes of names going into a film's credit sequence before you get to the final scene at the end of the trailer: Even Speilberg doesn't make a film on his own. It's a lot of work from everyone involved. I once listened to a guy in a behind the scenes feature who's entire contribution to one block buster film was making digitally added water effects in one shot look and behave correctly).
Writing is a fine outlet for creative talents and I've known some pretty amazing artists who could draw some amazing things... but couldn't tell me about the story of the scene they drew, which baffled me. How could you just draw a thing without knowing the build up to that scene?
Even in comic books, it's rare to find someone who can write and draw and some of the most famous superheroes (alot of the ones attributed to Stan Lee especially) weren't drawn by him. In fact, his artist co-worker Jack Kirby would usually draw the scenes first and give them to Stan who wrote the story and dialog from the art. Focus on story enough, and you'll have artists who want to bring it to life.
One thing that I did a lot of at your age was Play By Post Roleplay. Essentially it was playing a co-operative setting, usually based on a popular fictional franchise, where we would invent our own characters within the rules of the setting and use them to tell stories. For me, a lot of these settings were "X-Men", "Star Wars", and "Harry Potter". The ones that worked best were series where there was room for other characters on the roster and that the stories being releases at the time only followed some people in that universe (i.e. X-Men was always about people who dealt with how their powers made them different and how they reacted to biases associated with their differences, Star Wars was always about how one person from humble origins could change the outcome of galactic politics, and Harry Potter always had more depth than what just Harry and the gang were up to.). I don't know what's the big series these days, but these types of role play communities still exist if your willing to do some leg work with google.
Other than that, write and let others read. For me, the feedback is always better than I expect it to be (I'm my own worst critic) and even negative feedback is helpful. I don't read a lot of fiction books (hell, half the reason I wanted to write was to put out books I would have liked to read if they existed). Be ready to do this in reverse. Watch a bad film... one everyone says is terrible... and try to identify what you would do differently to make it a good film. So many writers play it safe... good writing is all about being daring in your exploration of ideas. Let your characters be flawed... no one wants a perfect character and don't fight it when people say it's not perfect.
And don't be discouraged from not speaking English as a first language. If you hadn't said that in your first post, I wouldn't have guessed (you made a lot of the mistake I made when I was your age... and still make when I'm more than twice your age.).
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: Re: I accidentally added a character, and then forgot to write them in for the rest of the series I am a young author writing a fantasy series. When I was looking over my manuscript, I realized
Maybe you can call out her exits rather than ignore her? This is often used, especially if a character is comic relief, to show that the scene is serious. Consider in Avatar The Last Airbender the scenes where Momo the flying Lemur is not among the gang, and the general tone of those scenes (generally, when there's a lot of serious fighting, Momo is no where to be seen, but as soon as the tension winds down, he returns. This is especially notable in the finale when Momo leaves Aang for the dual with Ozai, but returns once the comet passes and the danger is over). Silent characters rely on over emoting in their performance. When Walt Disney was working on Peter Pan, he actually hired an actress to interact with props that were scaled to the Tinkerbell scene (on of our earliest introductions to Tinkerbell, her standing on the mirror and noticing how wide her hips were, was adlibbed by the actress and Walt later included the gag in animation. The scene also helps define her personality as being fiery, very quick to temper, and easily angered by people who are critical of her.). If the character is important, have her emote reactions to what's going on. In the case of Momo, often he was with Aang when Aang was alone, allowing Aang to "talk" to someone and voice his own thoughts and internal conflicts.
In a similar vein (and at time of writing, totally justifiable in watching) Muppets Christmas Carol is surprisingly considered one of the best addaptations of the Charles Dickens work, in part because Gonzo plays "Charles Dickens" in the film, which allows him to give voice to the story's narative voice, making the film a largely straight adapatation. Paired with Rizzo as himself, it allows for them to also work in Muppet humor. Not only does this help with making the liturature more apporachable to kids (especially the fact that Rizzo doesn't believe Gonzo as Dickens is in fact Dickens, thus helping kids grasp that Kermit the Frog isn't really suffering the very serious troubles of Bob Cratchet, but merely pretending to) it also helps the kids get through some very child unfriendly concepts by telling them it'll be okay (Rizzo openly points out that the first line of the narrative as delivered by Gonzo "The Marleys were dead to begin with" was really not the best way to open up a children's Christmas movie prompting a small discussion on the matter of fact that the book needs this fact to be understood in order for the story to happen.) and even at times tell the Children this is the scary part, we'll see you when it's over, to let the kids know that it's okay to be afraid now, and there is a happy ending to all of this (notably during the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come sequence, which is where the narrator is largely taken over by Skrooge's onesided dialog with the Ghost. As the scene was meant to scare Skrooge's redemption into him, it does have very dark moments). And they return almost as easily as the Redemption act of the story comes into play and tell the kids it's okay from here on out.
Essentially, it's okay to have a minor character out of frame for a large chunk of the story (maybe she realizes before the hero that the situation is grave and goes for the Calvery aka the fairy army or maybe she's there and provides colorful emotive responses that are funny in to the reader and keep them interested in the sequence that is dialog and exposition heavy. Perhaps she is the personification of the mood of the hero and his compainons and her actions "say" what everyone is thinking (she's not afraid to tell you what she thinks, she just can't speak to you... she's bratty when they're under stress and very moody and tempermental when everyone's down, and she's energetic and vibrant when there is cause for celebration. Her ambassatorial role is important, since you hinge the good will of the fairies in your battle, so I would say she's to important to cut, as it seems like that she does have to make a compeling argument to her queen to get them to take arms against the villains. It also helps to show while she can be a very abbrasive person, she still cares for the protaganists and is willing to go to the matt for them.). Maybe include a moment of personal loss for her, that makes her especially bitchy to our heroes... and when they try to cheer her up, it only seems to make things worse and she flies off and leaves the group... when she returns to the story with the army, you can explain that the attempt to cheer her up made her realize that they still cared for her even when she was a pain in the ass to them and that's what got her to defend them and argue to mobilize the army.
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: Re: How can I make the story less predictable? I'm working on my first novel. As I was going through the initial chapters, I felt that the story is quite simple and predictable (in the initial
Give your characters meaningful choices. Have their decisions matter.
To make a story interesting and unpredictable, there have to be questions which are not already answered, which have a bearing on the outcome of the plot and on the evolution of the characters.
In The Lord of the Rings, various characters make choices. Boromir faces the decision of whether to support the (to his mind) suicidal plan to take the Ring to Mt. Doom to be destroyed, or whether to try to take the ring by force, or whether to persuade Frodo (if he can!) to bring the ring to Minas Tirith and save everything. All kinds of things hang on what decision Boromir makes. And the decision he makes hangs on all kinds of things.
As long as the Fellowship are traveling in roughly the right direction to go to Minas Tirith, Boromir can procrastinate his decision, and he does. But he's a wild card sitting in the middle of things, sowing uncertainty in the story, and ultimately galvanizing Frodo to (try to) set out on his own. And Sam, observant patient Samwise, anticipated Frodo - and chose to follow after his mater alone, instead of warning the whole Fellowship of Frodo's intentions.
Every major character in that story (and some minor ones) are likewise faced with decisions which matter to the progress and outcome of the tale. Which path should Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli take, after Boromir has been killed by Orcs, and the hobbits have all vanished or been carried away? Choice after choice.
Trials, goals, conflict, are all important to a story. But what makes a story unpredictable is the uncertainty of what choices each character will make - and what insights this will give us into their character.
Even if you know where your story is ultimately going, the most powerful, interesting, and seemingly unpredictable stories lean heavily on the choices of the characters.
Your story is a tale of revenge? Is your main character married? Does he have to abandon his wife (her husband, significant other, etc...) to pursue vengeance? Is he forced to choose between moving on and having a life, or with destroying his own reputation by bringing death to someone who wronged him? That's a choice. And your character can waver before crossing some Rubicon, making some decision from which there will be no turning back.
Does your character have to decide whether to pursue private revenge or public justice - wanting to bring public shame to the one he has a grudge against, but fearing that a trial may go awry, and the guilty party may walk free? More immediate choices, too - will he hazard trying to disarm a foe or surrender; to lie to a potential ally or tell the whole truth; to settle for punishing a henchman or to promise immunity to the one who pulled the trigger in the inciting crime in exchange for cooperation with getting at the mastermind behind everything? And maybe the henchman then has to decide whether to betray the protagonist, or support him, and so on...
Every alternative faced, every willful sacrifice (or cowardly compromise) your character makes, gives new and deeper texture to the tale.
Or have them be blindly stumbling, or compelled along, from one plot set piece to the next, saying "Gee, maybe I'll go this way now" whenever a fork in the road happens to come up (if there's ever even a fork in the road at all). And then have laser unicorns fly down from the sky and kill all the enemies. But I wouldn't recommend that.
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: Re: Can I write a story with the same variations of another? I am writing a story that has clans, apprentices, warriors and stuff like that from Warriors by Erin Hunter, but it has different plot,
Depends on what you mean by the word "publish" but for these purposes, I'll assume as a book for the purposes of profit to yourself.
For your first question, Yes you can, so long as the Clans, Apprentices, and Warriors are not similar to the the ones featured in Warriors by Erin Hunter. Avoid similar names, similar customs, cultural values, and other identifying features where-ever possible.
For your second question, I'm assuming this is an original character who lives and/or works in the fictional setting of the 2016 film Zootopia. You cannot publish this per the assumed definition above.
Broadly speaking, Publish means releasing your story for the public to read and review. This is fine for both ventures. Fan fiction is not illegal to make/distribute under fair use guidelines. Since Disney owns all intellectual property rights to Zootopia, unless they specifically gives you permission, you may not use anything related to Zootopia (be it the titular city, that the characters you created are taking rookie training courses from Judy Hopps, or that your OC has a massive crush on Flash from the DMV) and make a profit off of it (and Mickey has powerful lawyers). If you aren't writing this to make money, but because you like telling a story, fear not, fan fiction generally falls in the catagory of fair use when it isn't making profit off of the copyright/trademark holder's own works and is transformitive in nature (adding new characters or building on the story premise are transformative).
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: Re: Is it confusing for the reader to encounter in a novel the same language written with two different letters? Tamazight language as an example I'm writing a fictional novel in English and I
I think this is pretty decent as you have the letters available in your word processor. I would block quote the words written in Tamazight so they stand out from the main text when used and this can be a nice way to foreshadow some stuff (if a Tamazight word comes up, but isn't translated, you can use it so that the people who read the script are given a heads up but not those who don't).
I'd recommend that if there is a conversation in Tamazight almost exclusively, that the double up of the dialog in the language and the translation not happen, but rather you write the translation with some punctuation use to denote that while the reader is reading the dialog in English, in universe it is being spoken in Tamazight and translates to the same English Language idea.
For example:
"(What time is it?)," He asked in German.
This is important because different languages have different turns of phrases that mean the same thing when translated. The above example, if written in German, would be rendered as follows:
"Wie viel Uhr ist es?" He asked in German.
Where this is a problem is that while it is asking for the time, the question literally translates too:
"How many clocks is it?" He asked in German.
Which is a rather non-sense statement that an English speaker wouldn't understand right away to mean "what time is it" without prompting (This exact example is used for comedic effect in Casablanca where German refugees fleeing to America practice their English with Rick Blaine and ask in English "How many clocks is it?" much to Rick's confusion. In real life, both German and English speaking spies in both World wars would often deliberately ask questions with the wrong words specifically because many German and English question words sound similar but ask different questions. The English "Where" and German "Wer" are pronounced similarly, but in a rapid fire of questions a English speaker asking "Where is your name?" could easily catch a native German speaking spy, who is tricked into answering with "John Smith" as "Wer" is the German equivalent of "Who". A native English speaker would either be baffled or if a sporting chance to prove he parsed it correctly, would point to "John Smith" in a list of names (sorry so many examples are German... it's what I know.).
I would also recommend somewhere in the book (like an appendex) perhaps showing the Tamazight Letter to the sound with an additional "sounds like a letter in an example word" as English doesn't use accented letters for it's sounds and thus reading your Latin letters in your question does me little good for pronunciation (I have no idea what the accent mark over the c in your example word does to transform the c sound, and I'm pretty sure my pronunciation of the word as "Neck-nin" is not correct). Since you want people to appreciate the sound, it may be best to modify the word's spelling to a correct pronunciation. This is a common in transliteration (translating one alphabet's sounds to another). For example, the Cyrillic Alphabet has 33 letters to the Latin's 26, but that doesn't mean it has more sounds... a transliteration of Russian cyrillic to English Latin alphabet will result in a word that is a faithful Latin alphabet render of the word's pronunciation in Russian, though the letter count might be different (For example, Cyrillic has two different letters for a short I sound and a long I sound (could be a different vowel, it's been a while since I looked at their alphabet) but when those are transliterated into English, they would use the "I" or "Ie" sound. Even among languages that use the same alphabet will have different sounds for the letters (the German pronunciations for the letters "U" and "V" are "Oo" (as in boot) and "Vey" while English pronounces them as "Oh" (as in doe) and "Vee") and sometimes even the same language has regional pronuciations of letters, such as English, where the letters "H" and "Z" are pronounced "Ayche" and "Zee" in the U.S. but "Hayche" and "Zed" by British speakers (the latter is probably due to the ABC song sounding better rhyming Z with V and Me).
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: Keep in mind that "Antagonist" and "Villain" are not the same thing. Antagonist elements are those that the hero must fight in order to achieve his/her goals in the plot
Keep in mind that "Antagonist" and "Villain" are not the same thing. Antagonist elements are those that the hero must fight in order to achieve his/her goals in the plot and must directly oppose the hero. A villain is an evil character who's actions motivate the plot of the story. I like to use this example, because it demonstrates so well the difference, but in Disney's animated film "Mulan" the villain is clearly the Hun leader Shan Yu. His actions motivate the plot. However, he is not Mulan's antagonist. Rather, the thing that keeps her from goal of defeating Shan Yu, isn't Shan Yu himself (he's unaware of her existance and takes only one action in the climax directly targeting her). Rather, Mulan's antagonists is her own society's gender norms and customs, which stop Mulan from being who she is (Her "I want Song" is "Reflections" where she wants the person in the mirror to reflect who she feels she is in her heart. Contrast with the closest we get to a "villain song" which was the opening number of "Please Bring Honor to Us All" which explains the rules society imposes on Mulan that are opposing her goals voiced in Reflection. She wants to bring honor to her family, symbolized by serving the Emperor in exchange for protection from the Huns, but the only way society will accept her service is if she starts a family and has a son, who can bear arms). Shan Yu expects no such conformity from Mulan and when he finally learns of her and what she's done to stop him, his first response is telling: "The Soldier from the Mountain". In effect, he turns to attack her because she dropped a mountain on his men. He's not upset for being beaten by a woman... he's recognizing the real threat right in front of him. While Shan Yu is probably notable for how forgettable he is for a 90s era Disney Villain and following on the heels of Hades and Frollo who were both big show stealers in their respective movies. But Mulan is still an amazing film because Shan Yu is not the Antagonist.
For me, a good Villain Antagonist (and yes, you can have Heroic Antagonists. Walter White's most enduring Antagonist is Hank Schrader, who, despite his flaws, is still a heroic figure to Walt's villiany) is someone who acts and behaves in such a way that he believes himself to be the Hero. Consider Frollo (Disney), who believes he is following the path of a rightous and holy God-fearing man, and sees corruption everywhere, compared with Quasimodo, who was raised by Frollo and yet is able to see Beauty and Joy in almost all things. It's also why the resolution of his relationship with Esmerelda is important. It's not that she chose to go with the traditionally handsome man... it's that Quasimodo was man enough to let her choose someone else compared to Frollo handling her romantic rejections of him.
A good antagonist, when personofied, will always justify his actions for a greater good. They may even admit that they know what they are doing is wrong, but it's more wrong to not do it. This is why I loved Thanos in Infinity War... here's a man who sees a problem with overpopulation and realizes that the only solution... mass depopulation... is never taken because it is so horredous. Yet he watched his people go extinct because they couldn't stomach killing 1/2 of themselves randomly and equally... so he vows that so no one will ever have to suffer that choice, he'll suffer it for everyone... no matter the costs and they are high (he is one of two survivors of his adopted family through the direct actions in achieving this goal). He will bear this pain so no one esle will have to ever again. It counters Tony Stark who has always struggled with Liberty vs. Security as it's the ultimate form of that question and Captain America, who could have solved the film's issue, but for the fact that "we do not trade lives." The resolution also shows Cap that what he says was not entirely true... He does trade in lives... but only when it is his own life to give, something he thinks Stark would never do... but does to finally stop Thanos. A good antagonist will philosophically challenge your heroes resolve to commit to the actions that will make them a hero. Often they will give the Hero a last temptation: Abandon what you believe in... and you will be safe. Ultimately the hero has to see the one way out that will defeat the villain and refuse his principles. In Star Wars, Luke defeats the Emperor not by killing him, but by refusing to continue the cycle of hate by killing his own father (and in turn showing Vader that all his conflict was for the safety of his family, turning him against the Emperor). In Mulan, she could have stopped when she was discovered to be a woman... but she would know she never truly served the Emperor. And in Infinity War, they could have killed Vision to stop Thanos... but they would be no better than he was.
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: Re: How long can a prologue be, and what should you not do? A while back I wrote a prologue about the beginning of time and space and all that. One thing I noticed later is that between the
So if there's 18000k words that's slightly under 2/5ths of a novel (50,000+ words). I'll say right now that by 1/5th in, I'm ususally getting into some meat and potatoes. (Hell, my novels are broken into short stories with the same principal characters and several events acting in a serial fashion from chapter to chapter. 10,000 words is easily decently sized story, but I've gone higher than that).
I would approach this like "Star Wars" in that the first six films started as the plot for 1 film, but Lucas rightly realized there was too much going on and decided to put out a snippet of the story to get the idea across. In a modern setting, there are three schools of thought as to how to properly watch these films for the first time to get the best of the story (Name in quotes is by me): Chronological Release Order (Watch in order IV, V, VI, I, II, III), The "Tradgedy of Anikan Skywalker" order (Watch in order I, II, III, IV, V, VI), and the "Epic of Luke Skywalker" order (Watch in Order, IV, V, I*, II, III, VI).
In the Chronilogical order, the two trilogies are taken seperate stories in the same verse with the original version where Luke is the Protaganist and the prequel where Anikan is the Protaganist. This preserves how audiences were first introduced to Star Wars in real life and allows a first time watcher to have the same questions and answers.
In "Tradgedy" order, it fixes Anikan as a protaganist going through a fall and redemption arc and follows him from a wide-eyed idealist with romantic notions about life outside of Tatooine, to the hubris of wishing to saving people who are important to him causing his descent into Darkness, until he is at war with his own son. It means that Vader's actions in VI in siding with Luke show that he now understands what he did wrong in III and counters his selfish acts in the latter with selfless acts in the former.
In "Epic" order, Luke is the Protaganist, Anikan the Antagonist, both are human and both are very much a like in that the ultimate moment of their final two chapters shows that they are facing a similar thematic choice: Loyalty to Family vs. Loyalty to a cause they believe in. Love is contrasted with desire for power, as Anikan's desire to control that which he could not is shown in counterpoint by Luke's rejection of selfish desires for a greater good.
I bring these points up to show that it's not a bad thing to show that the setting of your story is a lot more than just what is intended to be seen in the book. Star Wars is almost 40 years old and runs on the notion that every extra has a story to tell giving the whole setting a very grand and lived in feeling. It's not a bad thing to give your readers more... but you need to ask "what is the story I want to tell first." And then look for what is the most thematically important aspect to that story (and maybe tease the rest in subtle mysteries).
When I was originally was introduced to Epic Luke order, Episode I was omitted or told to append to the end if your new watcher wanted more Star Wars. However, David Filoni's (One of the producers on Mandolorian) comments in the making of series have caused me to greatly re-evaluate the importance of Episode I in Star Wars, and has largely given me a critical lens that redeems it out right (I still make Jar Jar jokes, but half the fun of Jar Jar is laughing at/with him. He a lovable loser to me.).
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: Re: How can a newbie writer secure a self-written story for him/herself using copyright? I have an idea to write a story. How can I apply copyright to it after it gets written?
Legally speaking, there is a difference between "copyright" and "trademark" that I think you are confusing. Copyrights attach at the moment of creation/publication of a work and need not be applied for, where as a trademark must be applied for. Copyright typically protects intellectual property and ideas and the work must exist in tangible form (so the moment you write it down, boom, it's copyrighted). Trademarks are more of a brand protection. For example, the word "Nike" is not copyright protected and beyond the shoe company, it has meaning (a greek goddess of Victory, hence why a sports apperalle company took the name). The font of the lettering, the distinctive "Swoosh" symbol and the logo of "Just Do It" however are Trademark protected. You cannot slap them onto any shoe and sell them, you have to get permission from Nike to do that and good luck with that.
In the context of a written work, the cover art of a book and the words used in the book are seperately copyrighted to their owners however, the combination of both the words and the cover art are Trademarks. I can sell copies of the book "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" but I cannot go to my bookstore, buy a copy, copy it cover to cover and sell it because the company that published that particular book holds the Trademark.
Edit: It's also helpful to know which jurisdiction you're in as different nations afford different protections. For example, the U.S. has a very unique "Fair Use" standard of copyright protection that allows for use of copyrighted works by people who don't hold the copyright protection of a work under certain circumstances.
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: Re: Im wondering if for a unique writing tactic, could i shift from first to third person? As a way to show exposition of my characters background,In a dream sequence could I use third person
Many comic books already do this where the picture and spoken dialog is third person but the text box (typically for the story narrator) are often in first person. Notable examples would be the "Ultimate Spider-man" line where Spidey's internal monolog is contained in Text Boxes, "Superman/Batman" where two different colored text boxes contain the thoughts of the two titualar heros (normally a golden yellow for Superman and a cool Blue for Batman) and would often be counterpoints to one another. In a final nod, Deadpool, aware that he's in a comic, openly acknowledges his text boxes in his inner monologs.
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: Re: In modern Sci-Fi/Fantasy, does real world racism need to be addressed? I have read through a lot of questions regarding questions of a similar nature, but all of the questions I looked at involved
You only have to bring up racism if it is one of the themes in your story. If it isn't a theme, then your better off not including it. People read fiction to escape into a dream world (not necessarily a picture-perfect world) a world that does not exist, but could exist. I know if I wanted to read about being treated bad I'd just go outside and walk down the street.
Now if your book has a clear dramatic question about racism, then you may incorporate it. This is because from the onset the reader will know, ok this book clearly has something to say about racism. So no, I would suggest not putting it into a fantasy book, it is a glaring distraction from characters who are trying to do things important to the story.
It would be like me writing:
In the land of fire and sand, where mages and warlocks shoot lightning from hand, except the Asian ones, there was once a man, whose name was Al'Lakalan, feared by all, even the damned.
As you can see, the racism part has disrupted the flow, become a glaring statement, and most importantly, broken the spell of immersion for the reader.
Hope this sheds a bit of light.
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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
Your protagonist is not the only iron the mentor has in the fire
In Avatar, the Last Airbender, Uncle Iroh is a powerful and interesting mentor character (with his own complex arc). He has his role of providing advice for Toph, and maybe a little for Aang - but he's primarily the mentor for the show's first antagonist. He's interested in seeing the Avatar be successful, but he's more interested in seeing success and happiness for his nephew, who thinks he needs to capture the Avatar.
And at the great cataclysmic end, Iroh has a role which completes his own arc, but which takes him in a different direction than either Aang, or his nephew.
In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is the wise mentor character, but besides shepherding hobbits or dwarfs here and there, he's got to manage the affairs of wizards and kingdoms, and is commonly called away for other issues, or temporarily put out of commission by balrogs.
If your world is bigger than your story, your mentor can easily be too busy to always step in and solve your protagonist's problems
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: Re: Screenplay Writing Software for Apple OS X I'm looking for Screen Play Creation Software for Mac OS X that doesn't require internet access. What options exist?
The most popular are Ulysses which is subscription based and Scrivener which is a one time purchase.
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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;
Deus Ex Machina is when a chance event serves the purposes of the plot, leading to some outcome that is intended by the author or even sometimes desired by the audience or at any rate increases the dramatic effect of the whole story to the audience. Coincidence is when an event simply adds to the story-telling without significantly altering the plot.
As a result, coincidence is very rarely employed. In older story-telling, there was almost never any coincidence, only Deus Ex Machina. In modern story-telling, you do some times see coincidence, usually employed in order to add realism to the story.
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: Re: When does a partially random event go from reasonably possible to contrived "deus ex machina"? There will always be some amount of luck, some amount of chance and randomness in any story. This
When we talk about what is plausible or implausible in a story, we tend to approach causality front-to-back:
What are the chances you'd survive falling out of an airplane in flight?
Obviously, they are not good at all. If you're faced with the choice to jump from an airplane in flight, you expect it to be suicide - because the chances of survival are that low. On the other hand...
What are the chances that someone telling you about the time he jumped from an airplane survived?
Setting aside cases where he is still falling while talking to you, or stories about an afterlife (or dishonesty about having jumped on the part of the teller), the chances of surviving the fall go from effectively nil to 100%.
What does this have to do with the implausibility of events in a story? Simple; if interesting and unusual things didn't happen in your story, you wouldn't be telling it. That is, looking at probability from back-to-front, you're not (closely) telling the story of the Native Americans who had trouble with the gold miners and DIDN'T meet someone else who was having problems with them. You're not telling the story of white frontiersmen who were killed by Native Americans, and never inspired mercy or realized they had a common cause.
As long as your story takes place in a universe where not every convenient coincidence that could happen does happen, most readers will have some patience that a few coincidences come up in your story. Something interesting must have happened - because you're telling it.
Obviously you're making it all up, but "These are unusual things that don't happen all the time, but are worth telling about," is a principle on which most stories are modeled.
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: I love the world and characters I've created for my story, but I dislike the plot. How can I proceed? I've spent several years periodically writing and developing a high fantasy story I mean
I've spent several years periodically writing and developing a high fantasy story I mean to turn into a book, or even a series depending on how much material I write. However, lately, I've realized I do not like the plot I was planning at all, and I'm wondering if my work is at all salvageable. I started with creating a completely new and unique world with new races, politics, dynamics, fauna, physics, and a lot of characters I plan to use for my story. I love what I have created, and I think this world has a lot of potential.
I then started to write the story and defining/developing its characters. This took a long time, as I wasn't entirely sure where I wanted the plot to go yet. I had some vague ideas, which slowly fleshed out over time, and I steered my plot in that direction. Some live events did not allow me to continue for a while, so I was forced into a hiatus. When I returned to continue working on my story, I noticed I had fallen for pretty much every trope imaginable.
A brief overview of my current plot:
My main character is a no-name teen who turns out to have an exceptionally strong magical power within. He joins a rag-tag team of adventurers who help him travel the world fighting generic evil. They collect parts of a strong ancient magic weapon said to be able to defeat anyone. Then a strong before unknown enemy arises to wreak havoc on the earth, and it falls to my protagonist and his party to defeat it with the reforged weapon he collected during his travels. The protagonist's childhood friend turns out to be evil and helping the enemy due to being jealous of not having the magical power, and the protagonist's long-lost dad returning is an important sub-plot to help unlocking his powers.
As soon as I realized this was the plot I was going for, I decided I hated my story. I don't want to fall into the same pitfall as James Cameron's Avatar movie, with a beautiful and unique world which everyone loves, and a story as cliche as it gets as it's basically just Disney's Pocahontas with aliens. Everything I could think of at the time has been done in a large number of narratives, and I seem to be ticking boxes rather than creating something unique.
Given I've written about a quarter of my story so far, which defines my characters and world and sets them up for their journey, what is the best way to proceed? Should I cannibalize my current story as much as possible and use bits of it in a plot, risking that some setups might fall flat or create plot holes? Should I start over entirely, discarding my hard work towards the narrative, and start from scratch with my new plot? Should I continue with my current plot, and try to steer it away from the tropes and redesign it to be unique as possible regardless?
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: How to properly put asterisk around a term? How do I properly put asterisk around this title? Do I put it at the end of the title of after the term, KonMari Method? Which one is correct?
How do I properly put asterisk around this title? Do I put it at the end of the title of after the term, KonMari Method?
Which one is correct?
How the KonMari Method Changed My Daily Routine*
or
How the KonMari Method* Changed My Daily Routine
At the end of the project, I put:
*Source: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo
Please help,
thank you!!! =)
-L
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: Re: Tense change when referring to how protagonist currently is while he is describing events I have written a novel that I want to send out to agents, but am now having doubts if it is polished
Using present tense in quotation or dialogue is correct. Using past tense in narration is correct.
Thus, your example is correct:
"Wow, that guy's hair is so white!" a passerby said.
I was the only one he could have been talking about. There was no one
else here it could have been. My hair is a pure white, alongside my
also white eyes. My other features are tired and weary.
I would suggest the following:
1) Delete your prologue. Prologues are unnecessary nine times out of ten.
2) Revise as follows: "I was the one he was talking about. There was no one else it could have been. My hair, my eyes—pure white..." You could also revise the sentence to exclude the expletive, but that is your choice.
3) Revise the following sentence, for it is telling, and not showing:
My other features are tired and weary.
Don't tell me the character's features are tired and weary! Show me!
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: Is "and" or "or" better in this sentence? When I was writing a manual, I wrote a sentence like example no.1 below. Is it natural to use an "or" like the bolded ones in the sentence? Or
When I was writing a manual, I wrote a sentence like example no.1 below. Is it natural to use an "or" like the bolded ones in the sentence? Or it is better to use "and" like example no.2?
1
You can create or edit user profiles by filling in information in the blanks on the user-creating page or editing page.
2
You can create and edit user profiles by filling in information in the blanks on the user-creating page and editing page.
To clarify my question, I am asking how I can avoid the meaning of and that implies "doing something together" in my example sentence. My solution was to use "or" like example no.1, but that doesn't sound right to me, so I am asking for help.
Maybe I want my "and" to have the same function in this sentence: at this beautiful tourist spot, you can swim, play basketball, and have a sunbath, which clearly doesn't meaning doing them together, rather than this: an artistic swimmer can dance and swim in the water, which indicates doing swimming and dancing together.
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: Re: Is it a bad idea to publish individual chapters of my book idea online for feedback? I have already typed at least 6-7 chapters of this book I've been focused on, but what I want to ask
This one is old, but I personally believe that posting your book chapter-by-chapter is the new modern age writing.
A lot of authors are switching to this approach, it lets you stay in touch with your audience on a weekly basis (If you are posting one chapter per week).
When the book is finished you can start working on the next book, and you can transition all your fans from one novel to another.
The main concern was: Reader's reviews will affect your writing. It may be a good thing and a bad thing, but it's only on the writer to decide, which advises to take and which to ignore.
Reader's reviews also are a great support and a driver. The knowledge that there are other people waiting for your creations is the best reason to keep writing.
About money, there are plenty of platforms that let you monetize your books, while you are writing them. And this approach is getting more and more attention from young authors.
I could advise several well-known platforms:
fictionate.me https://webnovel.com wattpad.com https://royalroad.com
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: Re: How is Novel different from Novella, other than Word Count How is a Novel different from Novella, other than word count? Is Novel supposed to provide description of background, i.e. background
There are no strict differences between a novel and a novella besides word count.
As a matter of necessity, because a novella has fewer words than a novel, there will be less of something, but it is only fewer words that makes something not a novel. Some novellas will have less dialogue, some will have sparser descriptions or fewer side-characters; some just fewer plot points before the finale. The difference between a novel and novella could even be that the novella is simply less unnecessarily wordy.
Besides length, there are no hard and fast technical differences.
For that matter, there are no set rules on how much description or dialogue or how many plot points are required to "correctly" write a novel. If you have told your story in a way that best serves the story and your writing style and your intended audience, it is correct. If, say, you have too little description or too many side-characters, fix it in the second draft. Then, when you're finished polishing, if your story is long enough, it's a novel; if it's short enough, it's a short story. If it's in that awkward middle place, it's a novella.
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: Can MS Word perform single-source help authoring? My company is using Microsoft Word to manage thousands of documents that ultimately end up publishing only to a couple outputs: primarily PDF
My company is using Microsoft Word to manage thousands of documents that ultimately end up publishing only to a couple outputs: primarily PDF but also some web and we're moving toward an app. We need a single source solution equivalent to Flare - except we probably can't afford Flare. Aside from simple single source authoring, we want to separate content and style. For 8000 separate documents, changing the template right now is a nightmare. Could we theoretically use objects in Word to build out larger documents from small chunks of text as a shoddy attempt at single-source authoring (and making the style a bit more manageable?)? The chunks of text are up to 30 pages. I'm not sure if it would work.
If that's undoable, does anyone know of any open-source single-source authoring tools that allow for separation of content and style? I've thought of using Django or WordPress but they're too radically different from what the company is currently doing. I wouldn't be able to pitch it easily.
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: Re: Are My Novels Middle-Grade or Young Adult? Having Trouble Figuring It Out I have written and thoroughly reviewed/edited three novels that I don't know if they would be marketed as Middle Grade
Book 1: Young Adult, as your protaganist would be too old to relate to kids in middle or early high school (or even early middle school).
2 is probably Young Adult but could borderline be MR if you play your cards right... age wise it's probably on the cusp.
Book 3 is going to be reliant on what you classify book 2 as, and how close it is tonally, and alternatively. Since it's set in the same universe, it's dependent alot on how much it references the plot in Book 2 and characters and how closely the tone reflects (It's possible to have Book 2 be tonally darker than this one and thus one is for older teens while the other is for younger teens/pre-teens. Consider Harry Potter 1 vs. Harry Potter IV which the later is notably more mature than the former... when it was still in releases, it actually aged with the original target audience of Book 1 through the sequels).
Book 4 is plagiarism on the highest order. You know what you did wrong, and you shouldn't market it to anyone.
Keep in mind that books tend to get away with more graphic descriptions for kids than other media aimed at them (largely because to "see" the content you have to imagine it, so if a kid sees something really dark while reading, it's more on the kids imagination than the actual printed words... essentially, they are already "handling" the violence to a level they can handle, where a violent cartoon or movie locks the scale of violence in and leaves nothing to the imagination.).
To point, Compare Harry Potter, a highly successful book series that scaled with it's first readers age and maturity in content to the next most successful book series marketed to Middle Reader boys, Animorphs, which by all measures was a much more graphically violent book than even some of the worst violence in Harry Potter (Harry Potter was much more prone to villains killing named characters, but deaths were quick, clean, and painless while Animorphs killed very few named characters, but did not shy away from inflicting graphic and painfully described injuries that while they survived, clearly caused some PTSD as the books wore on. Many of the main characters were maimed, mutilated, eviscerated, or otherwise inflicted with injuries that made death more desirable (luckily, their ability to morph animals allowed them to heal any non-genetic injury so long as they lived through the process and within a 2 hour window... not that the morphing process was a pleasently described experience... and one character who knew about how it worked mechanically does say that the tech that pulls it off used to be painful, until a work around was found.) and it probably more realistically dealt with what happens to kids who are forced to fight in a hopeless guerilla war without any psychological support against an enemy that will given them some really sick trust issues. And while most on screen deaths are of the main villain's unnamed minions, they are often graphic and pretty much cannibalistic on most counts and most minions follow his orders out of rightfully stressed fear of the villain than any kind of respect or ideological common ground (Voldemort at least had some minions respecting him and agreeing with his cause.) and for much of the series, the main villain is at least tempered by his direct superior, who is much more pragmatic with her power... but he becomes nastier once he's freed from her authority.
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: Re: Is it bad for the narrative to lie? What I want to know is if it is bad for the narrative to lie to the reader. I get that using it in first person can be a good use for misdirection
As Alexander stated in comments, the classic Kurasawa film Roshomon's plot centers around a disturbing court case where three separate people confess to the same crime and each one's confession is impossible to reconcile with each other and all three are not trust worthy. The trial portions of the film are shot so that the audience is in the position of a judge and the actors answer the questions as if they were asked by a participating audience (it's possible to even script questions to ask to recieve the actor's next response... and it's shot like Dora the Explorer where the actors pause to listen to the question and respond... a very very dark Dora the Explorer).
As stated, the disturbing nature of the case is that unlike a typical mystery, it's not to honest people and a liar claiming innocence, but 2 dishonest people and a honest person claiming guilt in the crime. And all three are given very plausible reasons to not be trusted (the highway robber is clearly trying to up his reputation as a dangerous criminal and his story casts him as a heroic rogue, the Samurai's wife is clearly playing to the period's sterotypes of women and was often depicted manipulating the robber and the samurai's emotions and maybe trying this in courtroom testimony, and the medium is channeling the spirit of the Samurai for his own story and can't be trusted before you even get to the Samurai's story where his time line of events is conflicts with the other two. Even the murder weapon is in dispute, with the thief using his sword, while the wife used the missing daggar and later tossed it into the ocean and the Samurai/Medium claiming he used it to kill himself, but it was removed after he had died and the spirit claims he felt it being removed, but did not know who removed as he was too far gone.
And then it turns out that even the facts of the case are in dispute as a witness that established the accepted portions of the timeline had been lying about what he saw because he committed a separate crime to the Samurai's murder. Kurosawa himself refused to confirm which of the four stories was true to fact and leaves it up to the audience to figure out for themselves. The whole film discusses the rational for why people lie, and deliberitly points out that lying to implicate one's self as the only guilty party in a murder makes no logical sense.
In literature in general, the plot device of a Red Herring is an element of the plot that is set up to shift suspicions from the real perpetrator of the mystery of the plot by showing the Red Herring acting in a mannor that superficially appears suspicious and is a well known plot device in mystery novels.
On Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one episode deals with why the exiled Cardassian Garrak was exiled from Cardassia. During the episode, Garrak gives three stories about his war buddy Elim where Garrak's actions ended his career (something along the lines of Garrak took sympathy on some war orphans and tried to stop Elim from killing them and was exiled for disobeying an order OR Garrak commited the war crime (though the circumstances were different) and Elim outted him, then Garrak was homesick and neglected his duties, and the "war orphans" were really terrorist he could have stopped from an attack that killed Elim). At the end, the person who heard the stories learns that not only were all three false, but Elim never existed (it's really Garrack's first name) and when the character calls Garrak out on the lie and demands to know which of the three stories was true, Garrak responds with "My dear doctor, they're all true... especially the lies." A later episode even plays with this where Garrak is asked about the circumstances surrounding his exile, which he says it was all for Tax Evasion, which no one buys for a second... nor does Garrak expect them too.
Of course, if we want to get really Meta in our answer than the answer must be that story writers are expected to lie as a matter of course. After all, what is fiction but a series of events that definitely did not happen? You're always lying to the reader... it's just a very consistent lie.
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: Re: What Drives a Broken man? There is this story that I was working on, for an extended period of time. I have scrapped many ideas and drafts but I just could not seem to let go. The idea
The most natural story about a broken man is story of how he becomes less broken
Normally, someone has a (relatively) unified sense of self, and a hierarchy of priorities. A "broken man" has lost whatever central motivation he possessed. The man who wanted raise good children, and see them live better lives than he did? His children are dead. The man who was working late, taking night classes and sacrificing weekends to get the promotion and the corner office? His reputation was ruined, and he's now stuck in a dead-end job and knows he will never be promoted. Your "broken man" has faced a critical disappointment (or a critical mass of disappointments), and has given up.
So what's left, after you've lost your reason for living? A person still gets hungry, and eats. A person still gets bored, and drinks and/or watches TV. A person might still in the habit of going to work, and maybe doing enough to not get fired. He might still hold doors open for strangers, because it was conditioned into him by his mother when he was a child. Even with no unified sense of self or driving priority, the fragmentary pieces that once made up a whole man still linger on.
If some remaining fragment of habit to help when asked lingers, and help is asked for, your broken man can eventually be moved to go through the motions. That's perfectly reasonable. But a good story will not stop there.
A very typical part of a story is to take someone to their lowest point, where disappointment appears to be overwhelming them and they have given up - and then quickly or gradually stitch them back together. A broken leg won't hold your weight - but broken legs typically heal. Even a poorly healed leg, and a limp, is more functional than a fresh break and the inability to even stand. Even if your character does not fully heal and become as great as he ever was, once some kind of attachment develops between your character and whatever convenient plot device has begun to move him, he becomes definitionally less broken, because he has a sense of purpose and direction again.
The old man whose children all died starts out by yelling at kids to get off his lawn. But when one of the kids falls down while fleeing, and he give the kid first aid, then finds out the kid doesn't have much of a home to go to and begins to take an interest in helping the kid... The formerly ambitious worker, now disgraced and just marking time, meets a younger worker, not sufficiently motivated, and decides to light a fire under him / or meets a fiery and ambitious worker cruising to make the same mistakes and face the same humiliation, sees himself, and decides to take a hand in heading off someone else's catastrophe...
A character arc is about change. The renewed and growing interest in life implied by a budding attachment to some kind of cause is change.
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: Re: Word Count Historical Fiction for Adults I am writing Historical Fiction for Adults. What is the acceptable word limit. Some places say 80K to 100K Others say 150K If it matters, I plan to
Typically novels are 50,000 words at minimum (per National Novel Writing Month's rules for the contest) though most publishers will look for more length than that to go with. There is no hard rule on the minimum thought and as always, you should be focusing on telling the story you want to tell, not the length of the story or how much you should pad it to reach novel status.
Novellas are typically 10K to 50K and Short stories are under 10K. Flash Fiction is anything under 1,000 words and Drabble is anything under 100 words. The last two are more contest challenges to maximize story with minimum words.
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: Re: I may have unintentionally copied a TV series As some of you might know from my other question, I'm writing a middle-grade book (hopefully the first in a series). In the setting of the series,
I would watch the series just to be sure as the use of the Eclipse in Heroes was never really explained how it mechanically syncs with empowerment as most of the characters with powers have them prior to the first in series eclipse (late in episode one, which by then a few characters exhibited powers on screen and more would be linked to powers previous to the episode). It's use was more symbolic of the shows general theme of inter-connectivity of people from all over the world (at least in season one. From season two onwards, the show's mythology was less fleshed out and the writers were just trying to recapture the season one magic.).
That said, it should be noted Eclipses being associated with supernatural powers is not something Heroes invented and is a memes myth dating back to early human mythology around the world. In fact, Heroes was evoking the Eclipse in part because comic book superheroes often have ties to similar cosmic phenomena (i.e. they were delibertly homaging comic book origins with it.). I would recommend making sure your characters powers and personalities don't line up with Heroes characters all that much and make sure that the eclipse doesn't work mechanically (one oddity is that in Heroes, the entire world experiences a total eclipse at the same time that is observable from Tokyo, Las Vegas, Texas, and New York City. Eclipses do not work that way(!) which indicates that something special with this specific event... or writers who don't know jack about astronomy... and a later episode repeats the problem despite the internet mocking this... and goes for broke and makes the total eclipse last for nearly two hours.). Suffice to say, sticking with real mechanics of eclipses can easily avert this, as can not making your characters have the same powers as the show's characters (at least, not universally) and of course making a plot where the fate of the world doesn't hinge on the life of one cheerleader.
One other exception is that Heroes characters had no age limit on when they could develop powers, with several not having them until well into adulthood (most in fact, were not aware of any powers until their 20s, 30s, or 40s. As indicated by some of the character's jobs (one character is a U.S. senator, meaning he's at least 30 years old, and is depicted as likely being President in five years... in all reality he's probably closer to 40s as the youngest President was either 42 or 43 depending on how you count the matter (Kennedy was youngest elected, at 43, but Teddy Roosevelt was youngest inaugurated, having been a 42 year old Vice President when he had to do the only job the office is legally required to do).). This contrasts with your story, which explicitly says you need to see an eclipse after 3 years but no later than 18 years.
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: Re: How to avoid or mitigate heavy science lingo and "technobabble" in a science fiction story? Background I am currently working on a small science fiction story (as referenced in a previous question
If you watch enough Star Trek (at least the good series... the bad ones tend to do groan worthy stuff that makes no sense) you'll find that the "Royal Smart Person" will rattle off a string of technobabble and immediately follow it up with the "For the dummies in the back" analogy to something that's a bit more common for the people to understand. In the 24th Century of TNG, the audience would be lost when Geordie says that they could find the Romulan ships with a beam of charged tachyons transmitted between multiple ship's deflector arrays. Calling this a "web" or "net" helps the view understand what this is going to do as it will basically detect a cloaked ship crossing the beams and allow them to "see" the invisible ship. The original TOS episode that Introduced the Romulans basically explained cloaked ships as akin to "submarine warfare" which the viewers would instantly get.
The trick then isn't to explain what is going "under the engine" of the Ion Thruster, but rather that it will "spin the wheels of the space ship" in a mannner of speaking to help them visualize the concept. I have to admit, I'm a NASA fanboy and probably could tell you a lot of boring technical specs for the shuttle as a sixth grader, and I'm having a hard time with understanding what's going on with an Ion engine.
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: Re: Does receiving donations to give earlier access to chapters in a fan fiction count as copyright infringement? Well long story short I have been writing a fan fiction for a while (The fan fiction
I would avoid directly tying it to any financial transaction with a net profit for you as that may open you up to litigation and would be a big check against you if there is any litigation and you assert "Fair Use" as financial gain is a big red flag.
If you want to monetize your writing, you should probably look into creating your own original fiction instead of fan fiction.
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