Dale Emery

6,139 reputation

823

bio	website	dalewriting.dale.emery.name
	location	Sacramento, CA
	age	54
visits	member for	2 years, 5 months
	seen	54 mins ago
stats	profile views	50

I write non-fiction about leadership, software development, testing, and resistance to change.

I also write fiction (primarily the beginnings and middles of yet-to-be-finished novels) in a variety of speculative genres.

I also write about writing.

	6,139 reputation	bio	website	dalewriting.dale.emery.name	visits	member for	2 years, 5 months
823 badges		location	Sacramento, CA		seen	54 mins ago

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23 Comments

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Apr 23	comment	Critique: Make excerpt more visual/flow better In general, if we're in a character's head, we don't have to say "he sees." We can just describe things in a visual way, and the reader will know it's coming from what the character sees. And sometimes you can drop "he looked." The reader can usually figure out that if the character sees something, he's looking at it. But sometimes you have to make him look.
Apr 23	comment	Critique: Make excerpt more visual/flow better If we've established that he is not looking at her, we'll have to get him to look at her first. An easy way: "Peter turned. Ariett was pointing..."
Apr 18	comment	Best practice for stories based on other writers' stories If your story uses recognizable elements of someone else's fiction, trademark laws may apply. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_issues_with_fan_fiction Consult a lawyer before publishing.
Feb 17	comment	how should a writer use version control to track drafts, rewrites, and revisions? git has checkin comments. The first line of the comment is treated as a title or summary. Some parts of git display only the title, and only the first 50 characters of the title. So it's best if the most important information appears in the first 50 characters. But after the title line you can write a detailed description of any length.
Feb 26	comment	How can I make this essay more succinct? The two examples of "passive voice" that you mention are not passive voice. Passive voice means that the subject is the recipient of the action. That is not the case in either example. I do agree that helping verbs (and "to be" in general, even mine in this comment) leave sentences kinda wimpy, and that strengthening the main verb usually improves a sentence. And I agree with your advice in all of your examples.
Jan 4	comment	What software can handle both revision control and layout? Start with the Wikipedia entries for TeX, LaTeX, DocBook, and Markdown. Markdown is the simplest. You already know some of it. StackExchange uses markdown syntax in posts (for bold, italics, block quotes, lists, probably some other stuff). DocBook is XML-based. TeX (and the related LaTEx) are completely their own thing, quite complex and powerful. Wikipedia nicely describes each, and links to official pages. One thing I like about markup is that I can break sentences across lines of text. That makes it easier to move phrases around during editing. It also plays nicely with version control.
Sep 20	comment	How do I successfully structure a long fiction piece? I have tremendous trouble with endings myself. I "ended" my first novel by having the Spanish Inquisition arrive. Unexpectedly, of course. I can easily come up with a fun external conflict. Internal ones are more trouble for me.
Sep 13	comment	Dialogue writing practices? You could use the dialogue structure to send secret messages!
Sep 11	comment	Has anyone tried “pair writing” before and been published? What I've found is that my pair and I develop a consistent pair style--consistent at least for the course of the story or article.
Sep 1	comment	Other options for “had had”? Depending on the context, you could try dropping the verb altogether: Enough of this nonsense. I was ready to move on.
Aug 28	comment	All persons fictitious disclaimer — ideas regarding modification? I always wanted to see: Viewer discretion is discouraged.
Jun 14	comment	What's the modern way to handle gender in tech writing? There are no requirements here, no demands. Each suggestion invites you to consider an alternative way to say what you want to say. If an alternative would obfuscate, or otherwise interfere with what you're trying to accomplish, drop it from consideration. I find that considering a variety of ways to cast a sentence often helps me to clarify what I'm trying to say.
Jun 3	comment	Example of a fictional story without any characters (the story being 1000+ words) Yeah, that's why I double caveated with "kinda sorta."
May 14	comment	Why is this ‘loved’ italicized? The funky formatting was due to the spaces at the beginnings of paragraphs. The magical StackExchange formatter treats such paragraphs like lines of code, and formats them in a fixed width font with no line wrapping. I removed the spaces.
Apr 26	comment	How to attract the average reader to an “intellectual” novel? I may be wrong (and smug), but yes, that's what I meant.
Apr 25	comment	How to attract the average reader to an “intellectual” novel? I agree that the passage is abstract. I kinda like that the quoted stuff is abstract. But the narration is abstract, too. Consider "tried to imagine that for a while." This is not only abstract, but also a narrative summary, which distances us from her thoughts. Try replacing that with her actual thoughts as she tries to imagine. Also, the whole passage (including the quotes) would benefit from tightening. For example, we likely already know that Maru is reading the inscription, so you can delete "After reading the inscription".
Mar 11	comment	How should dialog be formatted? If my answer doesn't seem to fit the question, it's because it was moved here from another question.
Mar 3	comment	Signs of Bad Character Development I like to use actors for this. Imaging Steve Buscemi as your character. Or Paul Newman. Or Jake Gyllenhaal. Or Maggie Gyllenhaal. Each choice gives you a very different character.
Mar 2	comment	Finding the 'voice' of a character Eric Meisel has a terrific book called What Would Your Character Do? It describes 30 scenarios like this, with questions to help you explore the character in each situation.
Feb 11	comment	Strunk and White vs “Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace” by Williams and Colomb I liked Elements, too, but I found Style more immediately applicable. It's possible that when I read Elements (long ago) I just wasn't ready to apply it. If you like Style, and want more in the same vein, consider Martha Kolln's excellent Rhetorical Grammar. It's far more readable than the title suggests.