: In APA, how do I cite two sources in a sentence? Where one mentions another and I want to retain the reference of that mention For instance, the author that is commentating on the primary

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Apa

For instance, the author that is commentating on the primary source is named Foster.
The primary source is Dante's Inferno. I want to make reference to the primary source that Foster is addressing in the in-text citation but I also want to reference Foster.
In APA format, should the sentence look like this:
Foster (1964) notes that Dante makes use of x, y and z (p. 101, Inf. XVI, 23).
p. 101 is for Foster, while Inf. XVI, 23 is for Dante.

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: Re: Is it okay to use "It was all just a virtual world / dream" for a plot twist? I am currently writing a novel where I use "It was all just a dream" (IWAJAD) plot twist, just because

@Ogunnowo420

Now, there are many great answers to this question, I'm quite surprised that you haven't selected an answer yet.
The main problems with the IWAJAD include:

It can add nothing. Think of Chekovs gun - if a plot device adds nothing it is not needed.
It nullifies everything that has happened before
It is completely incompatible with most scenes
The reader honestly does not care if it's a dream or not, they already know that it's a book their reading
Most people know the whole of reality could be fake. Does that stop people (who do not already suffer from mental illnesses/conditions) from living?
Do you expect me to believe a human can dream a whole vivid story in their dreams? So is it a supernatural beings's dream? In that case you need to talk about it throughout the initial story; foreshadow and make it a theme.

However there are exceptions:

If it compensates for a small part of the narrative. However, when this is used it is almost obviously recognizable e.g. in Jekyll and Hyde, Utterson's dream shows us his mental state.
If the idea of Cartesian skepticism and supernatural-ness is your theme

This is very hard. Can you even turn Des Cartes' meditations into a story! Most themes that are even close to philosophy are about: psychology (again Jekyll and Hyde), poliical science (Julius Caesar), sociology (some book), how we should like our lives or be happy, etc.
Actually in philosophy, things like:

solipsism
Cartesian skeptism
naive realism, indirect realism and idealism

can be hard to add upon and things like morality and aesthetics usually assume the world exist so you can't pursue these as well when existence is brought into question. And to turn these concepts into novels, you usually have to abandon:

character development
character relations

as the actual universe around them is the topic of discussion not themselves.
Of course, you could try metafiction but that normally introduces the artificial-ness or IWAJAD earlier on.
I'm forgot this horror writer's name but he usually created monster-like Gods to show the minor-ness of human knowledge and capability.

It is foreshadowed. This is extremely hard to do and does not resolve Problem 1.
This is just an idea, it's what happens when you ask questions like this an activate my creative brain- obviously I'm not going to actually be putting pen to paper :D

Plot:

Mini Story:
no long detailed plot. Maybe just the events of one person in one day made interesting
IWAJAD- type thing. I was thinking that a group of beings were discussing novel ideas. And the mini-story before was just one of the beings ideas.
Now another being says that the previous story was rubbish and tells his own.
Cycle repeats until either all of the stories are joined into one story where (for example) the characters meet and solves each other's problems. Or when the beings themselves turn out to be stories by other beings!
From here you could make the beings be god's making a part of their divine plan or just humans that believe they are real and are making a world they know is fake, which could be compared to the author believing s/he is real and the worlds (stories) s/he has made is fake which in turn could mean there is a God who made the author (and the world the author belongs in) and his worlds/stories.

This allows:

multiple themes: the stories the beings tell can be about anything.
these themes can be presented as serious but in the grand scheme of things seem ridiculous and insignificant since they don' exist.
IWAJAD - type thing

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: Re: Sending manuscript to multiple publishers As an addendum to this question, I have written a children's picturebook, and as I understand it, the process of sending off a manuscript and getting

@Ogunnowo420

Some publishers have a policy that they will only contact you if you are successful. Therefore, if you take the very bad advice of people here telling you only to submit to one then you will be waiting around forever for nothing if the first one rejects it. The only difference would be if their guidelines state they expect as such. But these companies will inform if it's been rejected.
Otherwise, submit to multiple then if someone accepts it you write a letter to the others stating that you retract your submission. If they have any interest in publishing your work as someone suggested, they will tell you anyway, they aren't going to go further with anything without informing you they are interested first. You still need their approval to get it published even if they do accept it because there are contracts to sign.

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: Re: Should my main character make a ginormous mistake? I'm rereading my draft, and there is a part in the book where when the main character is helping others escape prison, she accidentally reveals

@Ogunnowo420

I have a slightly different take from other people on this. I don't think it is true protagonists should never be perfect; it might depend on what we mean by "perfect" but I think interesting and compelling stories can be written with characters that don't have deep flaws (or not flaws the author or reader sees as such or cares about). I think giving flaws to a character just for the sake of them having flaws is misguided. We talk about "humanizing" characters but that doesn't have to take only one shape. You can engage with a character's internality, show them having relatable doubts and fears and struggles and joys and internal contradictions without giving them a trait you feel is a "flaw" (for example here is someone arguing that good stories can be written about a character that is as perfect as they get). You can also have a character who you don't explore particularly well, but you know they "should have a flaw" so you make them clumsy in a way that has little impact on the story, or conversely have them run over someone in their car and not actually explore how awful this event is, but yay your character is flawed it's fine. I think we should not ignore the potential issues with a character being flawed in a way that is unacceptable to the reader, I have absolutely rejected stories because the protagonist was flawed in ways that did not make me want to read about them. Or more precisely I should say: their flaws were written in ways that did not make me want to read about them.
I think the important thing to consider is, why is a flaw a flaw? What makes a perfect protagonist perfect? The answer I think is the moral convictions of the author and reader. An author with well-thought out and consistent moral convictions will present a perfect protagonist in ways that highlight and defend these convictions. They will present a flawed or even villainous protagonist in ways that also highlight those convictions, by presenting a coherent view of why those flaws are bad, how they impact the protagonist and those around them, and so on. This will in turn make a story that is coherent and well-constructed in terms of themes, plot consequences, emotional resonance, what have you, and readers will respond to that.
I think the danger with writing "perfect protagonists" or the kind of flawed protagonist that makes you nope out of the book, is when the author does not have a coherent moral philosophy or has one that is so abhorrent to the reader that they cannot stand reading it. A reader can forgive a flawed protagonist; it is much harder to forgive a protagonist who acts terribly (or in ways the reader thinks are terrible) but who the author clearly thinks is perfect, where the consequences of the terrible actions are not explored in their terribleness and who faces no negative repercussions for their behavior. It is similarly hard to forgive a protagonist who is presented as flawed, but where the author seems to have little concept of how flawed they've really made their protagonist, or treats as flaws things the reader thinks are fine while treating as fine things the reader thinks are awful.
The issue IMO isn't just that we want to be morally validated by what we read, but that insofar as a plot has moral elements (and any story that worries about its protagonist being perfect or flawed has a moral element to it), like every other aspect of the work they need to have a realism or at least internal coherence to them to avoid pushing the reader out of the story. I see it as a form of suspension of disbelief. In a fantasy or science-fiction work you can accept some foundational premises and then enjoy the story insofar as everything derives from those premises, but you start getting in trouble when more and more inconsistent elements are thrown at you such that you spend more time making the effort to suspend your disbelief than enjoying the story, or find the story drained of tension because you cannot anticipate what will happen next given all the inconsistencies. Similarly you can temporarily adopt an alternate moral framework (within limits) to enjoy a story, but if it is badly thought-out then one has to constantly update the "moral suspension of disbelief" as actions get presented as good or bad with little in-universe consistency, and it becomes hard to root for an outcome if you aren't given a stable value system to judge outcomes by.
Here is an example of what I mean with how someone can enjoy a work of art they morally disagree with, because they think it presents its own moral universe well (and how it contrasts with one that doesn't) :

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: Am I telling or showing? I'm having some trouble with "Show, don't tell" when come to writing, so I'd like some advice. I'm trying to highlight the relationship and personality between

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #ShowingTelling

I'm having some trouble with "Show, don't tell" when come to writing, so I'd like some advice.
I'm trying to highlight the relationship and personality between these characters, but I'm unsure if this is considered telling because of the amount of dialogue involved, or if it would still be considered showing.

“What’s this master?” a soft feminine voice asked, “You’ll see”, he glanced toward the voice. The girl is in her birthday suit while drying her dual color hairs with a piece of cloth. “Uraag! “It’s improper to walk around like that “It’s not the first time I told you that”, “But..”, “No buts”, he cut her off with a raised voice. The girl’s head hangs low while frozen in place.
His crimson eyes closed and took a deep breath, he put both of his hands on her shoulder, “Uraag, you are 16 this year” he speaks softly. “You are of age”. He lifted her face up, her crimson eyes glistening but no flowing tears. “You are going to get hurt if you make this a habit “I’m not angry “I just want you to be safe” Understand?”, she nods in response. He puts his hand on her head, “Good girl, go change”, she walks back into the room while wiping her face with the clothes she uses to dry her hairs.

Is this showing or telling?

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: This man—nay, this monster—hurt my children.

@Ogunnowo420

This man—nay, this monster—hurt my children.

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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;

@Ogunnowo420

The other answers cover the general idea of something being "too much", but don't really talk about the distinction between DEM and coincidence; this answer addresses that.
One way to think about it is that DEM requires the plot to be resolved through means not within the characters' control. This resolution may occur through random chance or happenstance, in which case it is also coincidence, but it could also be a logical extension of things that have already been established in the plot, in which case it's just DEM. You can also have coincidence which is not a DEM, where luck happens to be in the characters' favor, but it's what the characters do with that lucky break that resolves the plot.
An example of each:

Aliens are invading, everyone is dying, there is no hope, when all of a sudden the mortal enemies of the invading aliens show up and drive them off.

This is DEM but not necessarily coincidence. The resolution is dictated by something outside any of the characters' control, but could be made consistent with logic and additional storytelling: the invaders were trying to capture Earth so they could use its resources in their ongoing war, but the mortal enemies were tracking them and came to stop them as soon as they figured out what was happening.

Aliens are invading, everyone is dying, there is no hope, when all of a sudden the MC just happens to find an ancient relic that no one knew about, and it kills all the invaders.

This is DEM and coincidence because the resolution is abrupt and not really based on anything the characters did, and there isn't any particular reason the MC found the relic other than lucky chance.

Aliens are invading, everyone is dying, there is no hope. The MC is an expert in xenobiology, and has been working on understanding the aliens' DNA for years (they weren't always hostile). As luck would have it, during the invasion, an alien mothership crashes near MC's lab, which leads to the discovery of new information, that leads to a breakthrough, which leads to the development of a virus that kills off the invaders.

This is coincidence, but not DEM: the mothership crashing close by, and having the information that leads to the breakthrough are coincidence, but the ability to capitalize on those happenings and use them to resolve the plot is in the hands of the MC.

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: First, can you even believe why these two particularly powerful characters would remain hidden? If if you can't convince yourself, you won't convince a reader. Second, does it have to be in

@Ogunnowo420

First, can you even believe why these two particularly powerful characters would remain hidden? If if you can't convince yourself, you won't convince a reader.
Second, does it have to be in the same setting? Your antagonists clearly do not. How about your protagonist and support characters? Can you separate them from your world and plop them down in a different story. You may need a new stand alone novel or trilogy to contain this story.

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: Re: Will I ever be able to write like a native writer? So a little while ago someone said that I'll never be able to write on a native level because I wasn't born in the UK or America. I

@Ogunnowo420

First, you certainly have a level of competency that exceeds most native English speakers.
If you want more training, consider copywriting. www.artofmanliness.com/articles/want-to-become-a-better-writer-copy-the-work-of-others/ Mine the writing of decades for the gems of prose. Chew on style and tone, digest it, make it part of you.

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: Re: When you can't even draw a stick man...? (concept art) Good day all. Hope the writing muses are with you all. I was wondering what helps you to imagine details in a scene? I can't say

@Ogunnowo420

You are not "overthinking," though perhaps you are in need of encouragement to keep writing. Many others have had these self-same questions. In my research and reading to learn "how to write" I came across the idea of writing a "character Bible."

Character Bible and Wardrobe Charts

A character Bible is a set of files in which one writes up all the details about each character such as gender, age, height, interests, place in family, and all the important milestones in that person's life. This may include items that don't enter the story but help make the character who they are. For characters in serials, this is especially important so that the author can go check if Tom had glasses in Book 2 or if that only happened in Book 4. Or maybe it was Harry who had the glasses and Tom who wore a baseball hat everywhere he went, even to church if his wife--or was it his mother--let him.

You mention "forgetting details." This means you had them in your head and/or imagination at one point. Write them down right away. No need to draw; write them down in all their tedious detail. Make a list or chart if that is helpful. People divide their wardrobes into headgear, tops (e.g. shirts, blouses, jackets), bottoms (e.g. slacks, pants, jeans), footwear (different kinds of footwear for different purposes), accessories (e.g. ties, scarves).

I am not into clothes for my characters--they just wear the same drab stuff all the time with a focus on what's going on, but some authors dress their characters in different clothes every day. If you want to do that, I can visualize a chart for each character. Across the top, write the different categories of the wardrobe and down the side write the names of items, leaving room to list a variety of jeans, shorts, slacks, etc. Then, when it comes time to dress Tom for the government meeting or Therese for the party, all you have to do is go into the "closet" aka chart and pick from what's there.

Using Pictures

I use pictures, too, for clothing. Since I'm writing about people in earlier decades, I'll ask Google for "girl's dress 1960s" or "men's clothes 1940s." That tends to bring up Sears catalogue pages from the years requested. For the centuries before photographs, it tends to be paintings. I have not gone back far enough to need pottery or cave engravings but I think that's where information of the very ancient styles come from. To not infringe on copyright of contemporary photographs, one can pick and choose elements of the garments to describe. You are not reproducing the photograph.

How Much Description

This brings us to another of your questions: How much description is required?

I personally don't like reading long detailed descriptions of clothing when I'm dying to know who killed the corpse we met in Chapter 1. A friend suggested to use just enough detail to get the reader thinking in the right direction. Let readers fill it in with their own imagination.

For example, Tom with the baseball cap in church was probably wearing some kind of pants and footwear though we are never told. I'm making this up as I go. All we know is that he was in a t-shirt with a tie and baseball cap when his mother caught him going out the door. Given that description of his dress from the waist up (I'd add colour and design in a real story), reader imagination will dress him from the waist down. We want to know what happens when this guy gets to church, especially if it's a traditional suit-and-tie congregation.

Describing A Large Group

Don't try to describe every person in a crowd of a hundred people. Describing the six key men in your group is enough. Authors use various techniques to describe groups. Often they start with a characteristic everyone had in common, then add a bit more to give the reader a general idea. Include enough detail to carry the plot. Maybe all six men carried a briefcase or wore a tie. Maybe in your large crowd everyone is wearing a uniform or religious symbol or is "prepared to take a stand." You can use clothing and body postures to set the atmosphere of the scene (calm, tense, angry, joyful, etc.). For example, a scene with a priest who boldly displays his cross and a lawyer who pushes out the chest of his expensive suit as he struts up to him with a briefcase both describes people and suggests conflict.

How I Get The Details Down

You ask how I get the details down. Often the details are the last thing I add to the scene. I'll visualize in my head the exact location (room, lawn, etc.) where the characters are, what else is in their immediate environment, what tools they are using, what clothing they are wearing. Then I'll add enough to make the scene come alive as described above.

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: Re: How do I define smells I have never experienced? I am a lifelong writer, who was also born without an ability to smell. I have been trained to engage the reader by applying the five senses,

@Ogunnowo420

A couple of answers above have alluded to the nostalgia or emotion factors. Personally, I would recommend you focus on this more than trying to come up with lots of description.

A lot of the time - to me at least - smell is inconsequential, unless it’s particularly strong or unpleasant, but every so often, I do find a smell has a very specific association and I instantly make the connection. This might be just me, but I suspect it’s more because we don’t have ways of easily categorising / describing smells and our brains find other ways to recall them.

To give you an example, I’ve smelled the fragrance of an obscure cleaning product that I didn’t even know existed and could immediately say, with absolute certainty, that I smelled it in my grandmother’s house as a toddler decades ago.

Slightly more commonplace experiences would be familiar smells that you recognise and encounter more frequently, say a perfume someone often wears, where you know they’ve entered the room without looking, or a familiar cooking smell on entering a kitchen means you already know what you’ll be eating.

My advice would be not to overdo the smell references. If you do it in every description, I think it will appear forced and overdone, but the occasional reference with an association could be quite effective.

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: Re: Questions with flat tone in dialogue I'm sure we have all heard people say questions without putting the tone inflection on the end. I am writing a novel and I have a piece of dialogue

@Ogunnowo420

I am not a writer, but an avid reader.
Contrary to the other answers, I find it quite ok, and it would come over right as you wanted for me. I'm also sure I have seen it being used that way in many books.

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: Re: In academic writing why do some recommend to avoid "announcing" the topic? In academic writing, several articles on the topic of writing papers denounce the practice of "announcing" the topic.

@Ogunnowo420

There are reasons to repeat yourself, but they differ to what you imply.


Academic readers are usually skimming through hundreds of papers to find the results relevant to their current work, so


Try to tell them everything they need to know in the title
If that fails, try to tell them everything they need to know in the abstract, including results and conclusions. (Some journals discourage this, IMO wrongly).
If that fails, still be careful not to withhold information early on. i.e. in the introduction don't say "We test to see whether X predicts Y", say "We demonstrate that X predicts Y (R2=0.8, p=0.001 - or indeed better stats if your audience will understand them).

In a large paper on a complex topic it's easy to get lost, so do include signposting to help the reader remember their context. E.g. "The link between X and Z is a relevant consideration for our study of X and Y, therefore in the following section we discuss existing literature discussing links between X and Z."


But don't use the rhetorical device of "tell someone what you're going to tell them, tell them the thing, tell them what you told them" for the sake of driving a point home, as you would in rhetoric, or delivering spoken material as a teacher, etc. (Excepting the first sentence of the discussion/conclusions section where it is usual to summarize what you already told them, in shorter form). You repeat to make it easy for readers to find the appropriate part and remember context.

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: Re: What are the different types of characters in a fictional story? I want to be able to correctly categorise and identify different characters in a story, predominantly fiction. I have read a

@Ogunnowo420

No one says you have to classify your characters, your characters are there to support the plot and overall story, how they do so is pedantic. Let's take Game of Thrones as an example, here we have a very large cast of characters.

We couldn't possibly have the same show without Daenyris, so she's absolutely a main character. At the same time, we couldn't possibly have the same show without John Snow, Sansa, Bran or even Rob, so they are all main characters as well. Jamie, Cersei, Tyrion, all integral to the story and all for sure main characters.

So how can we have such a large cast of main characters? The story isn't about any one of them, it's a story about Westeros. Because the scope of the story is really about the land and the iron throne we can have all these characters come in at various times throughout the show and all of their goals revolve around the land and the iron throne, everything is coherent. Some characters like say Podric have smaller roles to play but they are still important to the plot, let the pedants debate whether he is a main character, a supporting character or otherwise.

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: Text Appearing Between the Lines in Scrivener I have been editing scrivener across devices, and when I edit text across multiple devices, the text appears midway between the lines. I can find

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #CreativeWriting #Editing #Scrivener

I have been editing scrivener across devices, and when I edit text across multiple devices, the text appears midway between the lines. I can find no way to prevent this from happening in the first place, nor any way to fix it in documents I have already edited.

Here is a picture:



Any help appreciated. Thanks

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: Re: Is it possible to write a short story in 500 words? There is a short story contest where the limit is five hundred (500) words and I want to know if that is a possible limit for a short

@Ogunnowo420

Yes. .

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: Re: Should the average length of a chapter depend on the length of the novel? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count#In_fiction This Wikipedia page tells you under which classification a fictional work

@Ogunnowo420

yes i agree it doesn't matter how many chapters you have it only matters if your happy with it and you put a lot of hard work into the pages


"writing a book is not easy and it is a lot of hard work but it is one of life's satisfying achievements"


Thanks Myah Mitchell

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: Writing a novel that is set (semi-)inside an established universe How free are we to write a story that is set inside another universe, that doesn’t necessarily mention anyone or anything specifically

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Novel

How free are we to write a story that is set inside another universe, that doesn’t necessarily mention anyone or anything specifically about said universe?

For example, let’s say that I want to write a story set inside the Harry Potter universe where I won’t actually mention anyone or anything, just simply allude to things:

“Oh, yeah,” Steven replied. “I remember that guy. Weird dude. Black hair, glasses. Didn’t he—?” Steven gestured to his forehead.

“Yup,” Bobby said nodding. “Big scar on his forehead. Pretty sure it was a lightning bolt.”

“That’s right!” Steven exclaimed.

OR

For a story set in the Star Wars universe (again, without any actual reference to characters or names). Instead of the “Imperials”, using nouns like “Rulers” or “Overlords.”

“Don’t do that, Steven,” Bobby said, furrowing his brow. “Them damn, dirty Overlords will be on our ass in no time.”

Steven looked down at the strange blueish milk, and decided Bobby was right.

Would anything like this simply be considered a “parody” or a “derivative” and publishers would be okay pursuing? Or is alluding to characters, things or places to help drive a story, the copyright/trademark territory we must steer clear of?

Ps. Obviously it is hard for completely official legal advice for every situation, but I’d still like to know what your thoughts are

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: Why are one-word titles so dominant in books, film, and games? Something I talk about with friends when planning and sharing our projects & media we like is titles - and specifically my

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Titles #WordChoice

Something I talk about with friends when planning and sharing our projects & media we like is titles - and specifically my disdain for one-word titles. They seem to be more than dominant in multiple entertainment industries. Twilight, Injustice, Negation, Absolver, Bastion, Braid, Dishonored, Destiny, Anthem, Fallout, Inside, Crawl, Us, Psycho, Memento, Inception, Jaws, and a thousand others I can't remember.

Those are all good or notable ones, though, but i meet a lot of students writing stories and games who seem very excited to share that their new jumping game will be called "Jump" and their new climbing game will be called "Climb" and their new coming-of-age-novella will be called "Park".

This is obviously not an objective truth and I wouldn't assert as such, but in my opinion, one word titles are incredibly non-expressive. With the exception of made-up or very unusual words, like SUPERHOT or Westworld.

A one-word title with a vague word that encompasses your stories themes, like "Want" or "Stream" or "Condemned" might be apt, but isn't expressive. The people to whom the front cover of your book matters don't know why "Want" is relevant or interesting, and they're unlikely to feel anything at all out of the ordinary when they see the title. Sure, a title can just be a handle. It doesn't have to be interesting.. but why wouldn't you make it interesting, if you can?

Especially when writing games, choosing a title that doesn't stand out can make all the difference in whether or you game gets noticed or doesn't. Names I love and that people readily click on sound more like:
What We Lost In The Flood,
o_AbyssalSomewhere,
There Will Be Blood,
Things Fall Apart,
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being,
Please, Don't Touch Anything,
Telling Lies,
Hypnospace Outlaw,
etc.

A good enough title can be interesting enough to express the whole or the essential parts of a work's tone and setting, and encapsulate its themes far more than a single, vague word can.

Having said all that, I appear to be at least partially wrong - high budget projects keep choosing one-word titles over and over again, and I'd be shocked if those decisions were not well-researched. One explanation might be that a project with a great deal of marketing can gain more from the ease of saying one word, or how well the one word fits in headlines, how catchy or punchy that one word might be, without suffering the consequences of choosing a name that doesn't stand out on its own. Or maybe a large project whose goal is having the largest audience possible is better off with a vague title that excludes as few people as possible.

So, what is the reasoning? Are there known studies about the appeal of one-word titles compared to longer ones? Is there a pattern you can see among successful works with and without one-word names?

P.S. I know I have a strong bias towards/interest in games in this post, but I think this trend applies to all kinds of media. I hope you find game writing to be relevant to Writing Stack Exchange and that you find this question interesting. Thanks! ^ ^

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: Correct use of "Call for Proposals" in plural context I'm trying to correctly refer to several calls. Meaning, in a singular call, we invite several proposals. Therefore, it's a call for proposals.

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Websites

I'm trying to correctly refer to several calls. Meaning, in a singular call, we invite several proposals. Therefore, it's a call for proposals.

In the case I need assistance with, my gut tells me when referring to past calls that have gone out, I should refer to these as, calls for proposals. At them moment, my colleague has stated several calls as call for proposals. For example, "View Our Past Call for Proposals."

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: Re: "Dear Stack Exchange, I am very disappointed in you" - How to construct a strong opening line in a letter? In light of recent events, I intended to write a simple letter of complaint to StackExchange.

@Ogunnowo420

Never I would have believed to consider StackExchange but the mask before the monstrous face of intolerance.


That's not stronger than your first attempt. It's so archaic even experienced writers (e.g. me) have trouble parsing it. It took me several tries to see it's not full of errors, and several hours later I'm still not sure about "believed to consider".


How to construct a resonating opening line in a letter when stating a fact?


By stating the fact without excess verbiage. The trouble is, you're not stating a fact but voicing your opinion, to a group of people (StackExchange) who have done something contrary to that opinion.

There are 2 possible goals for your letter:


to inform StackExchange of your opinion.
to try and change StackExchange's opinion.


goal 1 can be cathartic, but is usually pointless.
goal 2 is much harder to achieve: you're attempting to change someone's mind. This tends to be a lost cause, especially in cases where there's already an emotional investment in the decision. You won't be the only one complaining to StackExchange, and people tend to dig in when they're under fire.

If your goal is to change minds, don't start by calling them 'monstrous'. In my opinion, a dispassionate account will get you further towards your goal than an attack.

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: Production/edition focus order Good morning, This morning I have found an ad about a new TV serie, "See", which plot is quite similar (blind civilization with sighted-rare members, although environment

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #FirstTimeAuthor #Publishing #SelfPublishing #TimeManagement

Good morning,

This morning I have found an ad about a new TV serie, "See", which plot is quite similar (blind civilization with sighted-rare members, although environment and background is different) to a three books (~400.000 words each one) saga I have been writing for two years.

I left the first of the books approximately at a 50%, when I got recommended to focus on shorter novels (90.000 words) to my first times to be published.

I don't care to selfpublish these shorter books but I would like to try the 3-books saga getting published by an editorial.

I know that this requires not only time and effort to get your first works noticed, but also a lot of luck.

I also thought about the option to publish little stories on IG, Twitter, etc. to get recognised and make easier to be attractive to editorial in future. But this requires more time.

My job (full time, broken turn, from 8:00 am to 5:30 pm) leaves me only 1 or 2 hours of writing, after housekeeping and a usual family dedication. Believe me I am pulling this as far as I can without lost all contact to my relatives. I am enthusiastic enough to write, at least, the main novel and other three shorter ones more. No matter when I could finish.

But when I find that any of the basis I present on my novels is published by anyone else, which is logical and expectable, I cann't avoid feeling guilty to make my efforts in the wrong direction...

So that is problem. I don't know what to focus my time on: finishing my main story, getting some shorter works first or dedicating some time to get recognition on social networks with "choose option-stories", threads, etc...

Sorry for the long question/circunstance about it. I feel a little (a lot actually) worried today after the recent news and I need to vent, and also to get some help/advice about this using your experience in this fields.

TLDR; I don't know what's better?


a) Ending the first book of my main novel (three books, 400.000 words
each one).
b) Writing some short books and selfpublishing them
before the saga.
c) Share options a) or b) with a time invest on
social network to get some recognition.


Thank you for your time.

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: Re: Should you only use colons and full stops in dialogues? Should you only use colons and full stops in dialogues? I thought about using a semi-colon in one of my dialogues, but I had second

@Ogunnowo420

This may not be a popular view, but as I see it, punctuation is about meaning, and only indirectly about sound.

Speech includes a range of subtle variations in pitch, speed, volume, and pronunciation which all help to convey the intended meaning.  Writing doesn't have those — and no punctuation can represent them accurately.  So instead, punctuation has over time evolved to convey that meaning more directly.

(We see this in e.g. programming languages, where symbols have very precise meanings; but written language has been moving that way for centuries.)

That's why the various items of punctuation have specific uses, each expressing a different meaning.  Roughly speaking:


Full stops (‘periods’ in US English) separate sentences.
Commas separate related clauses, list items, and parenthetical phrases.
Colons introduce lists, examples, and explanations.
Semicolons separate independent clauses, and also list items where one or more items themselves contain commas.
An ellipsis (‘…’) indicates a trailing-off or unfinished sentence, or an omitted section of a quote.
Dashes can introduce parenthetical phrases, and more general pauses and breaks.


So the choice of punctuation isn't random, nor based on how long a speaker would pause (though there's likely to be an indirect relationship).  Instead, it depends on the exact meaning you want to convey.

And that applies whether the writing is representing someone's direct thoughts, or speech as reported in a newspaper or a novel or a script or whatever.

See for example this question.  And see this page and the bottom of this page for examples of how the choice of a colon or semicolon can affect the meaning in an unfortunate way!

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: Re: Doubt about the concept of "true (or complex) character" Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like

@Ogunnowo420

Your fully realized character has an entire life story, not just what you plan to write about them in your book. They have a childhood, adolescence and adulthood. They've had relationships and passions, they endured pain and they've been shaped from it all.

If all you imagine for your character is a short time line which will be covered in your book you haven't imagined all the factors that have shaped how they think, how they interpret others. Without having thought about how all of this works together, your character is a stranger that you recognize but you don't know how they think so you can imagine them either helping or ignoring the chance to help in your example equally.

You would not expect a character who has had a lifetime of being abused and cheated to help the person when their suffering has led them to the conclusion that the only way to protect themselves is to withdraw completely and become willfully blind to everyone else.

tl dr;
A character isn't just a set of loosely connected actions and words exchanged. They are shaped by their actions so that as they choose one action the result of that action is carried forward to weigh in on their future actions.

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: Should one invest in a professional editor before querying? Let's say you have completed a novel. Since you're not totally naive, you have also complete a few drafts, where with "few" I mean

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Editing #Publisher #Publishing #Queries

Let's say you have completed a novel. Since you're not totally naive, you have also complete a few drafts, where with "few" I mean at least more than two.

You are at a point that your book seems good; while it could certainly be better, you - the author - need some external input on how to fix the last, hopefully few, issues left. Let's imagine that doing another draft by yourself is not feasible at the moment just for the sake of the question.

Do you call in a professional editor or you start querying to publishers?

I understand that this might seem like a no-brainer. If you book isn't the best it could be, you should (ideally) query. Yet, in my limited understanding, major publishers are supposed to give you at least some kind of editing service.

Related:
At what point does an author deal with an editor?

Edit:
I've just noticed a very similar question from 8 years ago. I'm adding it as related. My question seems slightly different, but I may be wrong; please see if it's a duplicate.

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: Re: Getting My Rights Back Back in the late 90's I wrote a picture book which eventually was published in 2002 by a big name publishing house. The book was critically acclaimed, won an award,

@Ogunnowo420

If you have a contact at the publisher you could start by asking directly; but it sounds like you've been down that road. You could easily get the run-around here or talk to someone who has not the power to do what they may feel is a good idea. Business practices want to hoard IP, not release it.

If you have an agent, have a conversation and see if you can work the social network of connections. Even if you can't get the rights back, you might be able to engineer an environment where they want to reprint it; which it sounds like is what you're really after.

Finally, if the above two don't work your only option really is a lawyer. Might not be worth it. This type of thing in the states is basically a game of chicken played with your bank account. If you can be annoying enough and the contract is vague enough to have an opening and you live in the right state and you get the right judge and the lawyer on the other side believes certain things then this can work. It's a giant puzzle full of twisting nobs and twisting any nobs, your opponent can also twist (by spending money and time). Whoever is less interested, and less monnied will probably lose. If you're of equal interest/monetarily interested then it could be drawn out, stressful, and may burn bridges. But sometimes all you need is a strongly worded letter.

If you're on solid ground, you feel legally, then you could take the risk of doing what you think is your right and leave it to the publisher to prove you wrong. There is risk here. It's definately not worth doing without talking to a lawyer.

Mostly this type of thing sucks and its a reason to pay close attention to the contracts you sign when you sign them. Some things you just can't see coming.

Good luck.

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: The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. Use this tag for questions on rhetorical devices and techniques,

@Ogunnowo420

The art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques. Use this tag for questions on rhetorical devices and techniques, or rhetorical analysis/rhetorical criticism.

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: Re: How do discovery writers hibernate? I am 20% outliner and 80% discovery writer, (I know many will object that this is not possible) meaning, I have a very brief outline of what is going to

@Ogunnowo420

In my experience hibernation doesn't help, unless you are so into a story that you're suffering from burnout. Nine times out of ten, if I leave a story unfinished, it will remain that way.

In your case, hibernating makes even less sense since you already know what you want to write in the final chapters. So, what keeps you from writing those chapters?

"Inspiration" is partly a truth, partly a myth. We all experience the need to write, the feeling of being lost in the flow of words coming out from our fingertips effortlessy. It's a pretty nice feeling indeed.

But you don't have to be inspired all the time to write. Nobody is. I'm willing to bet that the more you're willing to wait for the fleeting feeling of inspiration, the more you'll fall into periods of inactive pessimism. If you keep writing without relying on ispiration alone, you'll get more chances for inspiration to appear.

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: Re: Is it okay for a chapter's POV to shift as it progresses? I have this duo in my novel, they're always together in chapters. Usually the story alternates between them within their plot, though

@Ogunnowo420

The traditional way of doing things would be to have one POV per chapter, or, if you must switch within a chapter, to divide them with a section break.

But, as a general rule, less "head hopping" makes for stronger writing. Multiple POV changes are hugely popular with newer writers, but you don't see it so often in successful published works. It's a very difficult technique to write well. Putting the reader into the headspace of a character takes some effort, and continual changes of perspective often create an emotional distance between reader and characters.

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: How can I portray a resentful character without making them overtly angry? I am writing a fiction story about a elite unit, SFD (Strike Force Delta), during the Third World War. The war is

@Ogunnowo420

Posted in: #Characters #Combat #Emotions #Relationships

I am writing a fiction story about a elite unit, SFD (Strike Force Delta), during the Third World War. The war is basically extremely variable, it lasts from 2025 to 2030. I like to call it the 'mixing pot war' because all of the theaters of the war mimic previous wars in that area. Instead of having nukes, the countries use a myriad of nerve agents and other poison gases against each other.

The story is written from the point of view of the Sergeant who leads the squad. In the end, all of his men are killed in a horrendous battle and the squad is awarded a Medal of Honor for their actions before they died. (The men don't all die at the same battle, BTW).

Currently, the men are stationed in Passchendaele, awaiting the General's orders to attack. There is a character who is in the squad who knew the Sergeant before the war, and married the Sergeant's college sweetheart.

How do I write the Sergeant's POV without making him a angry guy but still resentful toward the character? The Sergeant is supposed to be a hot-headed laid-back guy. So how do I write this so as to keep the Sergeant's personality?

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