Interactive Fiction In The iOS Age: A Text-Based Love Story. Heroes Who Fail. 201 Ways to Arouse Your Creativity. Arouse your creativity Electric flesh-arrows … traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm. ~ Anais Nin Creativity is like sex. You fumble your way through, you get lost in it, you fall in love. Both are passionate, rhythmic, pleasurable, and flowing. I know, I know. The people I speak of are writers. Below, I’ve exposed some of their secret tips, methods, and techniques. Now, lie back, relax and take pleasure in these 201 provocative ways to arouse your creativity. Great hacks from Merlin Mann of 43 Folders.
15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will | Books | Inventory. 1. "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"The actual advice here is technically a quote from Kurt Vonnegut's "good uncle" Alex, but Vonnegut was nice enough to pass it on at speeches and in A Man Without A Country. Though he was sometimes derided as too gloomy and cynical, Vonnegut's most resonant messages have always been hopeful in the face of almost-certain doom.
And his best advice seems almost ridiculously simple: Give your own happiness a bit of brainspace. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. How 'OK' took over the world. A brief history of four letter words. Argot .com : dictionary of street drug slang. Words and Phrases Coined by Shakespeare.
Words and Phrases Coined by Shakespeare NOTE: This list (including some of the errors I originally made) is found in several other places online. That's fine, but I've asked that folks who want this on their own sites mention that I am the original compiler. For many English-speakers, the following phrases are familiar enough to be considered common expressions, proverbs, and/or clichés. All of them originated with or were popularized by Shakespeare. I compiled these from multiple sources online in 2003. Each of these words and compounds supposedly is not known to have appeared in print prior to the publication of Shakespeare's works.
For this reason, people claim that Shakespeare invented these words. How many of these are true coinages by "the Bard", and how many are simply the earliest written attestations of a word or words already in use, I can't tell you. A few words are first attested in Shakespeare and seem to have caused extra problems for the typesetters.
Scalpel_blade@yahoo.com. 25 Things You Should Know About Character - StumbleUpon. Previous iterations of the “25 Things” series: 25 Things Every Writer Should Know 25 Things You Should Know About Storytelling And now… Here you’ll find the many things I believe — at this moment! — about characters: 1. Without character, you have nothing. 2. A great character can be the line between narrative life and story death. 3. Don’t believe that all those other aspects are separate from the character. 4. The audience will do anything to spend time with a great character. 5. It is critical to know what a character wants from the start. 6. It doesn’t matter if we “like” your character, or in the parlance of junior high whether we even “like-like” your character. 7.
It is critical to smack the audience in the crotchal region with an undeniable reason to give a fuck. 8. You must prove this thesis: “This character is worth the audience’s time.” 9. Don’t let the character be a dingleberry stuck to the ass of a toad as he floats downriver on a bumpy log. 10. 11. 12. 13. The law of threes. How to Write a Prologue for Your Novel: 6 steps.
The young woman was sprawled out on the ground, her legs kicking feebly. A dark mass was huddled at her head. A man, Henry could see through the darkness. He was whispering something to the woman, who was gripping at the man’s hands, which were wrapped around her throat. Henry thought the woman looked vaguely familiar, but he didn’t stare long enough to find out. Her body was going limp, and the man kneeling there was looking around, focusing on the mouth of the alley. He was finishing his business here and then leaving. Henry silently dropped back down among the refuse and waited, listening. Henry squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to the woman’s strained struggles anymore. Reaching the number one thousand seemed to take him hours. The man, Trouble, was gone. Sightless blue eyes stared unblinkingly at his back as he left the alley.
How to Survive Life as a Character in a Bad Work of Fiction. Hero's journey. "A Practical Guide to Joseph Cambell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Christopher Vogler © 1985 “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” In the long run, one of the most influential books of the 20th century may turn out to be Joseph Campbell’s THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES.
The book and the ideas in it are having a major impact on writing and story-telling, but above all on movie-making. Filmmakers like John Boorman, George Miller, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Coppola owe their successes in part to the ageless patterns that Joseph Campbell identifies in the book. The ideas Campbell presents in this and other books are an excellent set of analytical tools. With them you can almost always determine what’s wrong with a story that’s floundering; and you can find a better solution almost any story problem by examining the pattern laid out in the book.
There’s nothing new in the book. Why I Write "Strong Female Characters" "I write characters". As an amateur writer, who specializes in female characters because that's what interests me, this nails my process exactly. On the other hand, unlike him I don't really think about gender roles or "women's perspective" or anything like that. I don't feel like my female characters give me a perspective on "women". I have a perspective on the INDIVIDUALS that I write.
What is true for one female character isn't even true for other ones in my work, let alone all the billions of female human beings on this rock we all live on. I don't write "women", I write Samantha, or Phoebe, or Tabi or Kitty or Linn. Some of them aren't even human, not entirely at least. You just can't think about how to write "women" or "black people" or whatever. I can't tell you any more about women than I could when I started this whole writing thing.
Science Fiction. Advice, etc. About Smashwords. Kristenjtsetsi.com. There’s an entire thread on Amazon’s discussion forum dedicated to the “high” cost of Kindle e-books. One commenter, J. Bryan, writes I only buy books that are $3.99 or less. If the publishers and/or Amazon want to be greedy, that is their choice,but I will not pay. J., I understand your position. $3.99 can seem like a lot of cash for a book. But, if I may… Consider the song “Sail” by Awol Nation, for example. At $.99 for this 131-word song on Amazon.com, you’re paying approximately $.007 per word. However: 25 of those words are “sail.” 14 of them are this: “La la la la la la oh!” 5 words, “Sail with me into the dark,” are sung three times, so they account for 15. Which leaves 74 original words at $.012/word. Now, consider John Grisham’s Kindle version of The Client, well above your acceptable price range at $7.99. The Client is 496 pages. Cost: $.0161 per page (which is just a bit over the price per word for the song “Sail”).
Average word count per page: 250 Cost of The Client per word: $.00006. The Rules of Magic, According to the Greatest Fantasy Sagas of All Time. About | Unstuck. Copyright Primer - Part I. Rachel Toor Articles <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Dreamweaverl 3.0 Mac"> <META NAME=description" CONTENT="Rachel Toor Articles"> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="Rachel Toor, writing, books, non-fiction, The Pig and I, Admissions Confidential, articles,
I do not like people who say they like to write. Once I asked a friend who is a novelist -- an irritatingly good novelist, a prize-winning novelist -- when he worked. He said, "I write when I feel like it," but before I could bond with him in slackerhood, he added, with a grin that made me want to smush his handsome face into the well-manicured lawn of his huge Victorian house where his lovely children play and his beautiful wife hangs out, "And I almost always feel like it. " From another friend I heard a comment made by a novelist we both know, who was working on her second book.
She said that each day she sits at her desk and channels her main character; hours later, she notices that she has written pages and pages. I'm glad that remark came to me secondhand. Had I heard her say that in person, my response would have been less than pleasant. My hackles rose. Maybe novelists can go into some kind of fugue state while they're writing and it's enjoyable. Routine helps. A book about music that strikes a chord.
Five Commonly Repeated Words to Hunt Down in Your Writing. The Best Language Tools for Geeks. Sample Query Letter. A.V. Harrison – Publishing. All Smart Cookies Can Self Publish! Now Available On Amazon! Pricing for eBooks has been the topic of leading blogs for the past month. And, I was contacted by Lynnette Phillips, [Link: a couple of days ago to chat about ‘book pricing’. We had an interesting discussion, and I’d like to hit on the high points of what I am observing in how eBooks are priced. Fiction: eBook pricing for fiction is coming down to (1) market demand; (2) the author's 'emotional comfort zone' and (3) 'trial and error'.
As the economy cooled, book sales waned, book stores closed, writers discovered a way to make an income in the easy-to-publish eBook industry. So how do ambitious, new writers get the attention of a global marketplace when there is ‘so much out there’? There! Starting with Dean Wesley Smith [Link: Which brings me to John Locke. His non-fiction, ‘How I Sold 1 Million Books In Five Months’, is going for $4.99.
Lordy! How To Get Happily Published - Finding a Publisher. Lessons I’ve Learned Starting a Micropress. I started a micropress, Tiny Hardcore Press, and it has been an awesome but very challenging adventure. The best part is getting to work with writers I respect to publish awesome books that practically fit in the palm of your hand. There is no worst part but every single day I learn something new. Most of these lessons have risen from my own ignorance. Who just decides to start a press? A press is a small business. I should have done more research. I had put out two books already via PANK, but that’s not really research. 1. 2. 3. 3a. 4.
About three and four weeks after my first mailing of Normally Special, I started getting these curious scraps in the mail, often in larger envelopes, from the USPS. I have decided that what the USPS does with mail is take your envelope into some sadistic room of destruction where postal workers gleefully jump up and down on your envelopes with their muddy workboots. Still, this was my fault. 5. 6. 7. 8. 8a. 9. 10. 11. You have to be prepared to hustle. Dean Wesley Smith. 25 Things I Want To Say To So-Called “Aspiring” Writers. Seen a lot of folks giving advice to so-called “aspiring” writers these days, so, I figured what the hell? Might as well throw my dubious nuggets of wisdom into the stew. See if any of this tastes right to you. 1. No More Aspiring, Dingbats Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. 2. You can aspire to be a lot of other things within the writing realm, and that’s okay. 3. Nobody respects writers, yet everybody wants to be one (probably because everybody wants to be one). 4.
There exists no one way toward becoming a professional writer. 5. Point is, fuck the One True Way. 6. You will always have days when you feel like an amateur. 7. You learn early on how to write. 8. I’m just going to type this out a dozen times so it’s clear: finish your shit. 9. …in order to know when they must be broken. 10. . … in order to know why they matter. 11. Writing is a technical skill. 12. Why are the days of our youth known as “salad days?” 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. R*E*S*P*E*C*T. The Business Rusch: R*E*S*P*E*C*T Kristine Kathryn Rusch Crank up the Aretha Franklin as you read this. Because her classic “R*E*S*P*E*C*T” is blaring as I write this. I am fed up. This is the kind of mood I get into when I tell bosses to go screw themselves, when I walk off the job, when I say, “That’s it, no one treats me like this. Not a soul.” In the past two days, two different editors have told me that I don’t know how publishing works.
Excuse me, children? And I do mean children. I know. So why did this piss me off? Because I bent over backwards for both of them to do them a favor. Honestly, the first one I understand. But the second? I probably wouldn’t be this mad if it weren’t for the other editors who have treated me this way. I’m really tired of the lies. In the early 1990s, I was talking to the most decorated short fiction writer in the field about writing and editing, and that writer said to me, “You’re the first editor who has treated me with respect in nearly a decade.” Yep.