Politics and the English Language | The Orwell Foundation. This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the permission of the Orwell Estate. If you value these resources, please consider making a donation or joining us as a Friend to help maintain them for readers everywhere. Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes.
Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. 1. Dying metaphors. Operators, or verbal false limbs. Pretentious diction. I. Leading authors sound alarm over post-Brexit changes to copyright | Publishing. Bestselling writers including Philip Pullman and Kate Mosse are warning of a “potentially devastating” change to the UK’s copyright laws that could damage authors’ livelihoods by flooding the UK market with cheap foreign editions. The Intellectual Property Office launched a consultation this week into the UK’s approach to copyright in the wake of Brexit. One option under consideration would see a change to the “copyright exhaustion” rule, which governs when the control of a rights holder over the distribution of their property expires.
For example, if a customer buys a book, then the owner of the book’s copyright would not then be able to prevent the customer selling that book to another person in the same territory. As part of the EU single market, a first sale within the European Economic Area has been the point at which the copyright owner can no longer control onward distribution, but Brexit means the rules for the UK are being reconsidered.
Triarchy. This Note-Taking System Turns You Into An Efficiency Expert. Note-taking is a skill not easily acquired. In the hands of an artist, designer, or Hollywood serial killer (à la Seven’s John Doe), an idea-crammed notebook can even become a rarified, and in the case of the latter, creepy, object all on its own. Too often, however, the ability to take comprehensive, ruminative, or even attractive notes and sketches is conflated with simply buying a stylish book of paper, say from Moleskine or Field Notes. Wrong. The most important step to keeping a great notebook is organization. No one knows that better than web designer Ryder Carroll. After a decade of development, he has just released a system for note-taking that promises to change the way you work and play, or at least the way you record doing so. The first thing you notice about the Bullet Journal notebook is...no physical notebook. Carroll outlines the simple how-to in the video above, and emphasizes that the ease of his system lies in its familiarity.
J.K. Rowling's Plot Spreadsheet. (Click to enlarge) When you're writing a book (actually, a series of books) with a bunch of plot lines, you need a way to keep track of what's going on. How can you structure the book so that everything fits, and moves, and you don't leave out any of those zillions of characters and subplots? How do you figure out what goes in each chapter? Well, apparently J.K. Rowling made a spreadsheet -- the old-school way, using a piece of paper. (Yes, prior to computer spreadsheets, a "spreadsheet" was done on paper.).
One sample sheet popped up on the blog état omnipotent in 2010, though apparently this page had been floating around for years (I've read some comments suggesting that Rowling herself released it on her website for fans). A spreadsheet plot written out by J.K. Spot anything interesting? Publish Books Instantly From Evernote. It’s never been easier to be an author. Evernote is an especially popular tool for many writers. It serves as the place to collect, find, and organize source material, archival information, and photographs.
For many authors, Evernote is the place where ideas are assembled into words and manufactured into stories. The white canvas of a note is a comfortable place to pour out prose and organize the elements of a publication into place. Now, with an integration by FastPencil, authors have a full-fledged tool to create and distribute a book in Evernote, from start to publish. Here’s all you need to know to turn your Evernote notes into published content with FastPencil: Create. Review. Publish. Distribute. Evernote is a great resource to capture ideas and write, but with this integration from FastPencil, it’s a powerful new tool to format, structure and print your content and share it with the world. What will you write and publish with Evernote? The Neurobiology of Writing.
The PHD Movie Sequel! - Help us make a sequel to the PHD Movie! Click here! If you haven't seen the first one, you can watch it for FREE all this month at: phdmovie.com. Tell your friends! Doctor (of Philosophy) Shirts - are back in stock! Thanks for your patience! (More Doctor Mugs coming June 5th) UK Lectures! New shirt! Order it here Need a last minute gift? Click Here! THESIS FUEL MUG BACK IN STOCK! Now shipping! 2014 PHD Calendar - is here! The Best of PHD - I'm happy to announce that we'll be publishing a run of the "Best PHD Comics" on Tapastic! The feed will be curated by me (Jorge), and will feature behind-the-scene commentary on why each comic is special to me.
Tapastic is a pretty cool platform for webcomics. PHD Lectures - I'll be speaking at Penn State and Washington College this Tuesday and Wednesday (9/17, 9/18)! GOOGLE+ - Hey, PHD Comics is now on Google+! Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers. Image by the USO, via Flickr Commons In one of my favorite Stephen King interviews, for The Atlantic, he talks at length about the vital importance of a good opening line. “There are all sorts of theories,” he says, “it’s a tricky thing.” “But there’s one thing” he’s sure about: “An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.” King’s discussion of opening lines is compelling because of his dual focus as an avid reader and a prodigious writer of fiction—he doesn’t lose sight of either perspective: We’ve talked so much about the reader, but you can’t forget that the opening line is important to the writer, too.
This is excellent advice. Revision in the second draft, “one of them, anyway,” may “necessitate some big changes” says King in his 2000 memoir slash writing guide On Writing. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. Related Content: 10 Things That Every Brand New Creator of Science Fiction Should Know. Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling--Visualized. Note: This article is included in our year-end storytelling advice round-up. A while back, now-former Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coats tweeted a series of pearls of narrative wisdom she had gleaned from working at the studio. This list of 22 rules of storytelling was widely embraced as it was applicable to any writer or anyone who was in the business of communicating (which is pretty much everyone, including software developers). And much of its advice (e.g. "You gotta keep in mind what's interesting to you as an audience, not what's fun to do as a writer.
Last week, Dino Ignacio, a UX Director at a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, created a series of image macros of the 22 rules, posting them to Imgur. Have a look through more of them in the slides above.