Advice, tools, and other goodies for writers

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, so I believe that I mentioned this before, but Istune's suggestion has brought it back to mind.

Folks might remember the WriteOrDie web app I've mentioned before. It allows you to set targets for time spent writing, word count, and words per minute. To keep you going, it has the option of three modes: Stimulus, Reward, and Consequence. Stimulus simply provides ambience to help you keep chugging along. Reward is similar to stimulus, except it's only triggered so long as you maintain your target WPM rate. Consequence punishes you with scary sounds and jump scares if you do not maintain your target WPM.

As an added thing, it has a "kamekaze" mode where it will delete everything you're written during the session if you don't keep up.

Through the use of cookies, the website tracks your previous sessions and it even permits you to export what you've written in several formats.

But the fly in the ointment is that it hasn't been updated in over three years. And as the webapp is right now, the interface seems to work best under Google Chrome.

But what to do? Because we all know about how Chrome has... issues with privacy.

I would say "Use Sandboxie", but Sophos has pretty much abandoned it. They did leave the source code on GitHub, and it has been forked by a few people. But I don't know how well it's going to be kept up. This one seems to hold promise, but the coder handling it needs money for licensing the driver software, otherwise it winds up being picked up as a false positive by antivirus software.

Get Sandboxie here so you can safely contain Chrome: https://github.com/sandboxie-plus/Sandbo...tag/v0.4.2
Write or Die is here: https://writeordie.com/

[batzulger]

Ok,  I would suggest disabling your computer Auto-correct for this exercise.

One of the easiest tools for breaking writers block is to get in to the habit of writing stream of conscience for one hour, every day. By that I mean you sit down, and write whatever comes into your head even if you start by writing "I don't want to write today." Save these session in a separate folder, and at the end of the day go review what ever you have written from three days ago.

That is pretty much how I write in a nutshell. It has enabled me to power through some nasty writer's blocks.

[Matrix Dragon]

A little guide for puncuation in regards to dialogue in writing, something that all too often fucks me up

https://matrixdragon.tumblr.com/post/641...jaskierist

[Black Aeronaut]

Oh MAN this is gold! Thanks, Matrix!

[robkelk]

RhymeZone - online rhyming dictionary on steroids.

Rhymes, near-rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, search in Shakespeare, and more.

[Black Aeronaut]

Just came across this thing on Reddit.  It's a freakin' goldmine.

Trying to write relationships?  Having trouble trying to come up with realistic problems?  Try reading this Ask Reddit post: "What are some 'hard to swallow pills' about relationships?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comme...lls_about/

[classicdrogn]

Huh, apparently reddit has joined the ranks of sites that break with adblocking turned on. Oh well.

[Black Aeronaut]

That's probably because you're blanket-banning all scripts. And the simple fact of the matter is that pretty much all forms of social media rely on scripts in order to function. That said, though, unless you're fucking huge like Facehook, most social mediates still rely on third parties for their ads. Which means this is a simple enough thing to work around.

Just use NoScript to allow the stuff that actually comes from Reddit - such as reddit.com, redd.it, redditmedia.com, and redditstatic.com - and block out the ad servers like amazon-adsystem.com and aaxads.com; and trackers like googletagmanager.com. Works better than using just a bog-standard ad blocker because it doesn't interfere with the website's functions.

[batzulger]

https://www.scifiideas.com/

So many generators...

[robkelk]

The Big Lie About Writing Compelling Fiction

Once you get deep into the article, you discover that there's actually a half-dozen lies...

[drakensis]

Writing Advice You Won't Like

TLR

Write your first draft. Then open a new document and retype word by word, fixing errors as you go.

I don't enjoy the prospect but I can't deny that this might help me pick out errors that otherwise I currently miss.

[robkelk]

Writing Advice You Won't Like

TL:DR

Write your first draft. Then open a new document and retype word by word, fixing errors as you go.

I don't enjoy the prospect but I can't deny that this might help me pick out errors that otherwise I currently miss.

I have done this on occasion - not with entire drafts, but with scenes that have troubled me (or that weren't saved properly the first time).

It works.

[itsune9tl]

When I grew up, this was the only way to properly edit your story.
Mind you opening a new document at the time meant starting with a fresh sheet of paper in the typewriter.
don't forget to double space your lines for easy proofreading.

Funneist thing I've done is watch the face on a newspaper Editor when we pointed out that, not only did he misspell a photographers name, but that it was spelled differently for each photo, 3 of which were on the same page. ...

[Black Aeronaut]

A bit I saw on Tumblr regarding some wordplay...

https://cthulhu-with-a-fez.tumblr.com/po...tromegalus

[batzulger]

In 1895, Mark Twain wrote an essay titled Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses, a criticism of the writing of James Fennimore Cooper. In this satirical (it is Twain after all) piece this is included...

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. In “Deerslayer,” Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the “Deerslayer” tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air.

2. They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the “Deerslayer” tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

5. The require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the “Deerslayer” tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the “Deerslayer” tale, as Natty Bumppo’s case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the “Deerslayer” tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the “Deerslayer” tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the “Deerslayer” tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the “Deerslayer” tale, this rule is vacated.

In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.

Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the “Deerslayer” tale.

[classicdrogn]

If you haven't updated Calibre in a while, v6.0 finally properly supports dark themes, but no longer supports Windows 8 if that matters to you. It's due to using a newer version of Qt that isn't available for WEight due to M$ having ended support for it themselves, from what I understand, and al;so means that plugins from v5 and v6 are not cross-compatible, so frequently-updated ones like FanFicFare will break sooner than later if you don't upgrade the whole package? Someth8ng like that, from what the release notes said.

Also according to the release notes all currently-maintained plugins have been converted over so upgrading should be painless. I did note that the font displayed super-light (as in line weight) the first time I started v6, but changing it and changing it back in Preferences -> Look & Feel then restarting Calibre cleared it up. The big news this release is that full-text searching is now available, though it does need to be enabled and a background indexing operation run first. I'm planning to leave that turned off myself; I get enough false hits just searching titles and tags (thanks so much AO3/sarcasm) without turning up every time someone used a word in the text too.

What's New in Calibre

[classicdrogn]

An interesting article on what makes Science Fiction different from other sorts:

https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/explode.htm

The teal deer boils down to being the context expected for the dialogue between author and reader in order to properly understand the work; an SF work will create a very different expectation, or at least be open to far more possibilities, for the phrase "her world exploded" than a travelogue or a murder mystery.

[Bob Schroeck]

Great essay and I definitely agree with the author's thesis.

I just can't figure out the Heinlein reference in the quote with the liquid/crystal door.

EDIT: I expect that when someone points it out to me, I will facepalm at how I missed something that obvious.

[classicdrogn]

"The door irised open."

[Bob Schroeck]

...yeah, I suppose. But I don't associate that strictly with Heinlein.

[robkelk]

Nor do I - if anything, I associate fancy doors with Traveller.

[classicdrogn]

He's the one with the famous essay about it, though. I mean, there could still be some other thing I missed too, but that all's what all I got for you all up in down over there, ya know.

[Inquisitive Raven]

This goes away at the end of next month. Humble Bundle is offering a collection of author resources in honor of NaNoWriMo. I got last year's collection and I'm probably going to get this year's. Proceeds from the sale of this bundle go to the NaNoWriMo organization.

[robkelk]

Two pages for those of us who write, and thus need to name, original Japanese characters.


20 Most Popular Japanese Girl Names And What They Actually Mean

Most popular Japanese girls’ names are written in kanji characters, though there’s a recent trend of hiragana being used . The following listicle is arranged from 1 to 3-character names. 1-character names are more classic, 2-character names are more commonplace, while 3-character names are rarer but cooler.

("recent" is as of 29 June 2021.)


List of common Japanese surnames

Officially, among Japanese names there are 291,129 different Japanese surnames (姓, sei), as determined by their kanji, although many of these are pronounced and romanized similarly. Conversely, some surnames written the same in kanji may also be pronounced differently. The top 10 surnames cover approximately 10% of the population, while the top 100 surnames cover slightly more than 33%.

If I'm reading these lists correctly, 佐藤 凛 – Satō Rin – is the Japanese equivalent of Jane Smith.