@Rivera824
Last seen: Mon 17 May, 2021
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: Where does "inaugural" go in this sentence? I’ve been trying to adjust my short bio/blurb on LinkedIn to include the word “inaugural†in it, but, as soon as I do, it makes everything
I’ve been trying to adjust my short bio/blurb on LinkedIn to include the word “inaugural†in it, but, as soon as I do, it makes everything feel off and I'm not sure why. Here's what I've written (details changed for anonymity):
Graphic designer and 2019 inaugural graduate of the Honours Bachelor of Graphic Design program from Harvard University.
Am I just imagining things, or does something sound wrong here? Should "inaugural" go before or after the year? Am I missing a comma somewhere? It almost feels as though the sentence is too jumbled.
Here's an alternate structure:
Graphic designer and inaugural graduate of Harvard University’s 2019 Honours Bachelor of Graphic Design program.
To me, this reads better, but I don't like it for several reasons. It draws more attention to the school, which I dislike (I didn't actually go to Harvard, unfortunately). Also, it seems somewhat strange to be referring to it as the 2019 program even though it exists in years besides 2019.
Is there perhaps another structure which may make more sense than these two?
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: Re: What is the proper punctuation when using the word "however" at the beginning or middle of a sentence? EXAMPLE: I've asked this question using many platforms and tend to get conflicting answers.
You could combine the two sentences, by writing:
I've asked this question using many platforms and tend to get conflicting answers, however, I believe the users of StackExchange will provide a trustworthy answer.
This would not be incorrect. However, I believe that t0he two-sentence version is stronger and better writing. In this form, "however" would be followed by a comma. In the one-sentence form, "however" would be both preceded and followed by commas. A semi-colon would be tempting here, but not correct.
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: You need not to contact a proper author. You can not impress specific people. First, you need to impress your readers. Trying to impress some specific people with your books is destined to
You need not to contact a proper author. You can not impress specific people.
First, you need to impress your readers. Trying to impress some specific people with your books is destined to fail.
Second, you can always self publish. Pick a platform that accepts complete, or better, in progress books, and publish there.
You gain experience as an author from your reader base, as small it is in the beginning.
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: How do I keep my character's gender a complete mystery? At first my protagonist was going to be a female role, until I started having an inclination for male characters and the fact that I
At first my protagonist was going to be a female role, until I started having an inclination for male characters and the fact that I am a total BL (“boy’s loveâ€, stories about male homosexual romance) lover. So, I decided to make my character's gender up to the reader to decide since I know some people have different tastes in orientation. But it is much more difficult, since it is a visual novel. Any tips?
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: A phrase similar to murmurs of laughter I am writing an essay and one thing I am talking about is that I hear small laughs among the crowd while I nervously give a speech. I used the phrase
I am writing an essay and one thing I am talking about is that I hear small laughs among the crowd while I nervously give a speech. I used the phrase "murmurs of laughter" but a peer said that it did not make sense, and it seems like I might have mixed it up with a different phrase. Does anyone know a concise way to word this that is possibly similar to "murmurs of laughter"
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: Re: Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay. Does that apply to me? Everyone has a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay I'm not
Find a method or structure to help you get started. I used the Snowflake Method www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/ but there are others.
I was in a similar position to you last year (except for the retirement bit). I had an idea that had been swimming around in my head for years, but I didn’t know if I even wanted to write it down, let alone how to go about it.
When I stumbled upon the Snowflake Method, I thought it might be fun to put my idea through the first few stages, just to see what happened. This particular method worked for me because it broke the process down into small steps, starting off with a single line and building up gradually. It gave me opportunities to practise writing paragraphs and single pages before tackling the whole novel, as well as providing a simple overall structure for the book.
By the time I got to the last stage - writing the first draft - the story just flowed out. For my own sanity, I ignored the general consensus that first novels are rubbish. As an older person I have read many hundreds of books and absorbed a lot of excellent writing style. I may not have written fiction, but one way or another I’ve written a heck of a lot of letters and documents, and along the way I’ve developed a style that is at least readable, and an ability to self-edit. This self-confidence stopped me feeling like I was wasting my time.
A year later, the third draft is getting good responses from beta readers. It may never get published (although I'll give it a go) but at least people have read it.
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: Re: How do you write a flawed character without it seeming forced, or making it painful to read This is more of a general question, but I am wondering what is the proper way to create character
Arrogance is a flaw to some and not to others. A humble meek person is not likely to be president of the United States of America. Sometimes the person recognizes the flaw and tries to overcome it, while other times they glorify the flaw. A flawed character that serves no other purpose than as an architype for the "flaw" is easily hated. In Lord of the Rings, Gollum is flawed. However, learning the backstory and given a central role perhaps we should pity Gollum rather than hate him. Another example is the story of Sleeping Beauty and its modern reframing as Maleficent.
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: Re: Should I practice writing novels before starting the novel I want to write, or plan to do a lot of editting? tldr: Though I've been writing fiction for a long time, I have no real training
Write your Hail Mary.
You're assuming that this one idea will be the best idea you'll ever have. This isn't (necessarily) true. Writing is an incredibly creative process. The more you write, the more you'll exercise your creativity, and the more creative you'll become. (Yes, I know that you've already written a lot, but I've found that writing a novel takes my creativity to a whole new level.)
But let's suppose that this really is the only "good idea" you'll ever have. Let's suppose you're JK Rowling and this is your Harry Potter. Still, write it. Why? If you keep saving it until you're "ready," you'll never write it. You're never ready.
I'm currently working my own Hail Mary. I wrote the entire novel, all 100,000 words. And guess what? It was terrible. I was so proud of myself until I put it away and came back three months later. I'm so glad I never showed it to anyone.
So, I wrote it again. I drew inspiration from my original, but threw most of it away. Another 100,000 words later, I put it away and came back to find that I had produced something that was just ok.
So, I wrote it one more time. Every time I rewrite it, my novel gets better.
If you compare my initial draft to my final version (once I finish) you'll see almost no resemblance. The underlying premise, overarching plot, and character names are the same... but character motivations, backstories, and subplots have all gotten richer.
I'm finally at the point where I'm ready to show my work to someone else. And my initial readers are impressed with how much depth is in my novel. While an accomplished writer might be able to add depth in the first draft, my novel's depth came about as a result of my rewriting this entire thing three times.
Write your novel. Re-write it. Write it yet again. Then, start editing. Somewhere along the way, you'll find that this project will take on a life of its own... but you'll never regret starting the process.
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: How to call a paper or book holding charms/incantation/magic formula? Hope the title is clear enough. I'm also looking for any vocabulary related to the act of writing magic ( 'runes' as a
Hope the title is clear enough. I'm also looking for any vocabulary related to the act of writing magic ( 'runes' as a magical writing system for example).
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: Re: Can I publish a book with the poems on my website? I have posted my poems on my website. For a long time, I have been doing this. Now, can I publish a book with the same poems which I
If you self-publish, yeah, no issue.
Via a publisher? A bit trickier, especially if you don't take down the poems from your web site first. By putting your work on the internet you've already used your first publishing rights. This makes your work less attractive to potential publishers.
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: Re: Authenticity and writing under a pen name My question is about marketing and using a pen name. Ofc I want to connect to readers, but I wonder if it's possible to be authentic if you're not
Whether a pseudonym subtly pushes you, specifically, towards glibness is a question only you can answer.
Writers who are known for their work in a specific genre and want to switch to a different one sometimes write under a different name. Does that mean they're less proud of their work? No. If anything, they do it not to disappoint existing fans. It's a valid reason, and plenty more exist.
Sincerely,
Somebody writing this post under a pen name
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: Re: How to write a scene in third person limited when the POV character is not in it? I am studying the third person POV for my novel. I read about the third person limited POV. I don't understand
I suspect your biggest hang-up is not understanding it's possible to have a book with multiple third-person limited PoVs. If your book has an extremely important scene without which the story makes no sense, but lacks the main character for plot reasons, you could tell the scene from a different character's (third-person limited) PoV.
However, don't overuse this trick and relay all important plot information via one-off characters whom the reader meets once and then never sees again. The reader generally wants to know what goes on inside a viewpoint character's head, and if there are too many characters to keep track of this becomes too difficult.
As an alternative to putting information out on the page directly, consider sprinkling a breadcrumb trail of clues for the reader (and viewpoint character) to piece together. If the heroes in a fantasy novel are two thousand miles from the siege evil orc overlord Bargzhuil-Gro-Gorgak lays on the Empire's capital city, you could switch to the overlord's perspective for that scene. Or, you can have the heroes arrive two weeks later and find a city in ruins, orc and human soldiers rotting out in the field, ravens pecking at dead eyes. Either option communicates the same information.
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: It's difficult to know if a person will like or dislike a book in advance, and the reason why is even harder to guess. For the most part, it doesn't matter all that much whether the agent
It's difficult to know if a person will like or dislike a book in advance, and the reason why is even harder to guess.
For the most part, it doesn't matter all that much whether the agent or acquisition editor (or his/her personal assistant) personally likes your book or not. While enthusiasm might help, the goal publishers and agents share is to make as much money as possible at the lowest cost. That's different from getting as many good books in the hands of those people who would appreciate them most.
Practically, this means an agent might read your book, like it, then send a rejection letter anyway because he or she does not think the book would ever sell. The other side of the coin is the agent dislikes your book, but thinks it might sell well. The latter often happens when some popular mould-breaking book hits the shelves and agents break out in street fights to get their hands on anything similar to jump on the successful book's coattails.
Sometimes publishers are dead wrong in their estimate of how well a book will be received, and it's most obvious in children's literature. Too many adults simply don't respect children, and (erroneously) believe they know better than them. A famous example is J.K. Rowling's first book. The story goes she was rejected time and again, until one editor handed the manuscript to an actual child and asked for her opinion. I don't think I need to explain how the story ends.
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: Re: Is it a copyright infringement if I include a magical newspaper with moving pictures in my novel? I want to add a magical newspaper in my novel. In the newspaper, all the images are moving,
No, it's not copyright infringement. But it's boring. It's not a novel idea.
Be creative and come up with another idea... like a newspaper that:
Telepathically injects images into the reader's mind
Bursts into flames when the reader opens it, and the ashes fill the air, then the cloud forms the images
Projects holograms onto the reader's retina so that bystanders can't read it
Connects to the cloud to downloads the latest news, but only when the reader blinks or looks away. Thus, the reader can never seem to get to the end of the newspaper.
I came up with these ideas after 30 seconds of thinking. If you can't come up with a decent idea after spending an entire day of thinking (and I hope you have thought about your book!) nobody will read it.
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: Re: Korean sensitivity reading for a modern fantasy world I've been working on a YA/adult contemporary fantasy novel for a while and I had some questions about sensitivity reading. The world featured
I’m a Korean person and I think I might be able to help answer the second question, regarding the name of the love interest.
One thing that really stands out to me is that Koreans tend to have a somewhat negative feeling towards the Japanese, ever since the Japanese took over our country for a bit. We also are pretty bitter about the fact that they are trying to take over our land and claiming it to be theirs (this is a very shortened version and I won’t go too deep into it).
What I’m trying to say is, I don’t necessarily think you should use Sora as the name. If the meaning of the name Sora (which means “sky) has to do with anything, you could use Ha-neul, which directly translates to “skyâ€.
(There’s also the fact that “Sora†directly translates to “conch shell†in Korean hehe)
I hope this helps!
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: Re: Can I have a non-living thing with its own perspective? We typically have third person or first person narratives in literature. I have a requirement - to unveil the suspense, I want a non-living
Permitted by whom? The Big Book of Writing Laws was abolished in 1849. You can use any POV you feel comfortable with for any reason or none at all.
Ask yourself why you want to switch to a hitherto unseen POV. Do you have a compelling reason? As a reader, I've spent the story inside the head of a character I've either come to love or love to hate. A sudden switch at the climax to a non-character I possibly can't care about by virtue of there not being any pages left in the book might leave me cold.
Or, perhaps that's exactly what you're going for. If in the penultimate chapter the heroes decide they have to leave the zombie-infested mall and the final chapter is from the distant and emotionless view of a security camera taping the approach of a zombie horde thousands strong, that tells me the story probably doesn't have a happy ending. In which case, the POV switch is devastatingly powerful.
In short, the answer depends on both intent and your ability to convey said intent.
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: Re: Is there a way I can print a book only for myself? As selfish as this sounds, I’m really interested in having my own book printed physically for myself. I don’t intend to sell it or
'Publish' is a word with specific meaning and from the context of your question I can tell you're not looking to publish. You're looking to have your work printed.
That can be done quite easily, if you have to spare and live in the US.
(I'm not affiliated with BookBaby and have never had them print a book. I can't say anything about the quality of their work and this answer is not an endorsement. Other printing services are available.)
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: My protagonist being needed for my story is a life changing event, does that mean the event needs to be in my story? My protagonist is a first-generation native on a colony world. The general
My protagonist is a first-generation native on a colony world. The general culture of the colony makes it clear that everyone must contribute to the colony in a meaningful way. But instead of following everyone else's lead and finding a conventional role in town, he just starts exploring, causing him to be labeled an outcast.
The colony is going to need his singular knowledge of the world when story problems develop. For him, this means finally being accepted, which is a life-changing experience for him.
The bulk of the story will be about six months from that point when the impending sh!t hits the proverbial fan. Should I leave it out because it's so long before my story, have it as a prologue or make it a flashback?
I can't move the story much closer to this event because the colony would definitely see the problem (spaceships) coming for quite a while before they arrived (no FTL).
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: Re: Asking about outlines and writing techniques How do I write an outline? And is it necessary for each story?
Outlining isn't necessarily straightforward, there are many ways of doing it, and you may not want to do it at all!
It's all a personal choice(unless this is for a school assignment). You can find many ways of outlining on the internet, but I'll lay a few out here...
First, you could plan the entire book from start to finish before you even start your first page. You would write out a basic plan for each chapter, maybe a few sentences, or if you want more detail, paragraphs about what each chapter should do for your story.
Another option is to plan as you go, planning a few chapters out and seeing where you end up after you write them. Writing always seems to help generate more ideas about what comes next. Many people find this to be an easy strategy to follow.
Finally, I'll tell you that you can just plan key points throughout your story and figure out how to connect them while you're actually writing.
The bottom line is you have to find what works for you, try different things and look up how people you read do it. Just make sure you get around to finishing your story.
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: Re: Engineer who wants to improve their writing from scratch To expand on the title, I am about to finish my engineering degree. However, I haven't really written an essay for the past ten years.
You should have more confidence in your skills. Your writing is clear and expressive. Your thoughts are organized and you get your point across. I wonder if someone was unfairly harsh in their criticisms of your writing in the past.
For language, the equivalent of basic math rules are grammar and style. The fastest way to improve these is to check your writing with software such as Grammarly AND then cross-check each recommendation against a reference such as the HBR Guide to Better Business Writing or The Oxford Modern English Grammar. The software will help you focus on your particular weaknesses; the references will help you counteract the software's 25% error rate. After a week or so of doing this, you'll make far fewer errors and your writing will improve significantly. If you have the time, I also recommend enrolling in an online class such as www.edx.org/course/english-grammar-and-style. That "struggle with making sentences flow" you mention is common to all writers. Practice helps, but by far the best strategy is revision (which is what I'm doing write now). Give yourself permission to write your ideas imperfectly the first time(s?) through - leave the cleanup for later. Then, go back and tidy up.
The importance of using correct English depends the circumstances. It's less critical for informal communications. Most Tech/Engineering companies that hire global talent do not expect correct English for internal communications. However, using correct English IS important when you apply for positions, particularly customer-facing roles. For make or break documents, such as your resume or a client proposal, you should have a professional writer/editor review your work.
As an engineer, you'll probably find technical writing skills very useful. Google has free online technical writing courses. These do a good job of teaching you the most important skills with minimum fuss! They've created "these courses at people in the following roles:
professional software engineers
computer science students
engineering-adjacent roles, such as product managers"
If you prefer to learn-as-you-go, the Microsoft Style Guide is excellent. Just look at these Top 10 tips for Microsoft style and voice.
Good luck! I hope this is useful!
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: Re: Quoting another poem in your own I wanted to intentionally reference a famous Dylan Thomas poem in a poem of my own. I wondered whether there is a convention for how to do this or if it
You can quote the line or words from Thomas using quotation marks or italics. Mentioning Thomas in the poem is one possibility. You can also reference Thomas in the title or in a note afterward.
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: Re: Writing an emotionless character? I need help writing a character that doesn't like other people and rarely shows emotion due to high amounts of emotional trauma? He would let a person die if
Emotionless characters still have emotions. They just don't show it.
If your emotionless character is your POV character, you can still describe all the thoughts and feelings of the character... but emphasize that they don't show it. The Hunger Games does a good job of doing this by either describing how Katniss sees her expressionless face on the screens, others comment how she's so hard to read, or she shows a general distrust of people who exhibit emotions (she thinks they're insincere).
If your emotionless character is not your POV character, follow the example of how CS Lewis describes the Hrossa in Out of the Silent Planet. Dr. Random repeatedly misreads the Huossa or simply has no idea what they are thinking. Even when the Hrossa speak, Ransom can't figure out what they mean because they're so expressionless.
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: Re: How to show a character with multiple personalitites? To preface this, I have seen the question multiple personalities characters speech in text and I feel that my question is different enough,
I'm writing a similar story, and I deal with it by giving the two personalities the same last name.
When transitioning, it's always "Ms. Smith."
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: Re: How can I indicate time passing? There is a scene in which my main character is hiding from the villain while they are both in the same room. I want this to be a suspenseful and agonizing
My favorite way to pass time to to make the characters get lost in their thoughts.
What was that? A floorboard creeking? It must just be a mouse. At least Jim hoped it was. It wasn't supposed to end this way... ever since he sold the doughnuts to Sally, she had begun to suspect that they were running an underground operation.
Doughnuts.
How could he have known that such a simple action would end up betraying them? But it was too late to be filled with regret now.
Continue along these lines for several paragraphs.
Think about what your characters are doing during the long periods of hiding. Are they thinking? Playing cards? Planning their escape?
Show the reader how slow time is passing.
Another way is to make the characters confused about the passing of time.
Everything was quiet. Was it safe to come out? Jim cracked the door open. Light from the opposing window flooded the closet.
How could it still be daylight?
Jim closed the door again and continued to wait for night to fall.
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: Re: Is the often used black and white symbolism inherently racist? It is an extremely common trope that white/light means good and dark/black means bad/evil. I thought that - contrary to the appearances
To be honest, the answer to this question wasn't obvious to me until I started researching it and discovered this amazing article, Color Lines - A Chicago art class challenges the racist assumptions behind the color wheel by Olivia Gude, who is a community muralist and an assistant professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Here are some quotes from that article:
"Over and over, we discovered that lightness is associated with good and darkness with evil. Simba and his father, the true king of the lions, have light manes; the evil brother who wants to usurp the throne has a black mane and nails. We contrasted the good light animals with the threatening dark ones; the high chroma kingdom with the dusky and fearsome land of the marauding hyenas. We considered what this means in a story that opens with the notion that 'every living thing has its place in the great circle of life.' Of course, we could not help but hear an echo of the traditional racist exhortation to 'know one's place.'"
"Consider, for example, Joseph Conrad's classic novel of a European's encounter with Africa, Heart of Darkness. In the colonial worldview that Conrad examines, darkness is associated with the unknowable, the irrational, the primitive and the chaotic; light is a symbol of reason, order and progress. Such associations created the historical concept of "the white man's burden" to bring order and reason to "dark places" and thus the justification for the dominance of White cultures over peoples of color."
"Even if we succeed in dropping all art and literature that include offensive color symbolism from the school curriculum, our students will still encounter such symbolism daily in cartoons, traditional fairy tales and everyday expressions. The solution seems to be to help students understand the history of color symbolism and to deconstruct its use in contemporary culture."
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: Re: How to make a weak character fight in major battle My character is about to fight someone that really strong but he believes that he is still weak. So how can i force him to fight. (For
I think you might be focusing too much on a plot device and not enough on character development.
As Artichoke mentioned, your character doesn't need to fight. If your character is so weak that he would never fight, there's no way to force him to do so.
You could make him run and hide. Even though the enemy might pressure him to fight (such as endangeringl his family), if your character is really very weak, he might still hide and then live to regret his actions.
If you really want your character to fight, you have two choices:
Change his character. Don't make him so weak.
Give him an experience where he grows and becoemes capable of fighting. For instance, maybe he fled and regrets it for the rest of his life. Follow him for months (or years) after this incident, and make sure he has constant flashbacks. Then, a long time later, something similar happens... and now he's finally ready to fight.
Don't rush the story.
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: Re: How do I write a computer-savvy/hacker character? I have a character in my story for whom being computer savvy is supposed to be a major personality trait. The character works with computers
Suppose you needed money to run an organized crime ring. Would you get the money by hacking into a bank's network and wiring yourself cash? No! Not only is that extremely difficult to do, but you're almost guaranteed to get prosecuted because the bank will track you down.
So, it's very very rare for hackers to infiltrate high profile networks. They always go for the low hanging fruit first.
Suppose a small 12-room hotel in the middle of nowhere keeps their guest information in a Google Doc, and the owner accidentally enabled global sharing. A hacker would eat that up in a heartbeat. Or, suppose another small business registered their domain name with GoDaddy and didn't use a secure password. Now, it's just a simple matter of logging in and editing the DNS entries. I can redirect traffic to the wrong server and grab credit card numbers whenever anyone orders. Easy peasy.
My point is that the vast majority of hacking operations are very small-scale.
Movies make hackers do big-scale operations... but why on earth would you break into an armored fortress when the guy down the street doesn't lock his doors?
So, if you want to make your novel realistic, your hackers should try to find ways around super secure networks, rather than breaking in.
Suppose I want to steal social security numbers. If this was a movie, I'd hack into the IRS's supper secure network and pull up tax returns.
But that's too much work!!
Easier: Hack into TurboTax's website.
No, that's also too hard.
There's a security vulnerability in older versions of Internet Explorer that will let me do a buffer overflow and essentially track data sent over the device for the remainder of the browser session. So, I'll steal social security numbers of everyone using old browsers.
Hackers usually go for the weakest link.
These are all black-hat examples, but I could just as easily list their white-hat counterparts... like scanning GoDaddy accounts for weak passwords and changing them to more secure ones. (This would protect these people from becoming easy victims of the black-hats)
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: Re: How do I write characters that aren't just a copy of myself? I am finding it difficult to create fictional characters with personalities that are not a copy of myself. I'm having trouble trying
Read obscure texts. I'm currently writing a novel where I'm blatantly stealing a character from a novel written in 1800. I'm sure nobody has ever heard of the original character because this Chinese novel was never translated into English.
Ok, you don't have to go that obscure. But pick your favourite character from a book you really like. Just don't pick Harry Potter. Change enough details to make them unrecognisable.
When writing your story, really get into their heads. Remember that every character is the hero of his own story. Did you (the author) not give Mr. Sneed enough action last chapter, leaving him stuck in the office all week? Mr. Sneed is bitter about that. He's angry about his fate. After all, he's the true hero of this story!
Try to see the world from their POV.
When the "hero" captures Mr. Sneed and puts him behind bars, Mr. Sneed is filled with righteous indignation. Is there no justice in this world?
Everyone thinks that the "hero" is some sort of godsend... but only Mr. Sneed knows the truth.
People are sheep.
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: What's the different between the part of Abstract and the part of Introduction in academic writing? I'm really understand the two things between the Abstract and Introduction in academic writing.
I'm really understand the two things between the Abstract and Introduction in academic writing.
In my opinion, the Abstract just talks about the aim of the articial and the structure of articial. And Introduction prefers to discuss the background of topic and central sentence of whole articial. Is it correct for my view?
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: Re: How can I show time passing with no way to measure time? In the writing, I was doing recently, a character is locked up in a wagon and dragged across the country by rich slavers. How could
If your character is a man (in the sense "not a boy anymore"), you could use his beard growing as an indication of time passing.
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