Patches

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42 Comments

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Feb 19	comment	How can I put something in book format without “publishing” it? @Jay Thanks! It's too bad they can't do other covers, but considering their price point & on-demand, I can't complain. :)
Feb 15	comment	How can I put something in book format without “publishing” it? That's an awesome idea. I've actually never seen a book printed by create space, as far as I know. How would you rate the quality of what they print for you compared to a similar kind of book from a store (printed by offset printing)? Particularly the cover?
Jun 25	comment	Issues with Scene/Sequel model +1 excellent post. I'll highlight your thriller point by adding: action books feel like action books because they tend to go from scene to scene, with very few sequels. Introspective literary books feel like introspective literary books because they're mostly sequels. You don't need to have a 1 to 1 relationship between scene and sequel.
Jun 25	comment	How to distinguish if a novel is science fiction or fantasy? @FearlessWriter I think, if I may be blunt, you should write a good novel first, and then worry about where it fits. Genre is a marketing distinction.
Jun 25	comment	Shared World licensing fees And, at that point, ways to monetize it will present themselves. perhaps discrete ads, perhaps source books (ala table-top gaming, but set up for writing in the universe instead), and perhaps, if it gets big enough, and cool enough, and enough people have published fiction in the universe (for free!), then perhaps a BFB will come to you to license it for a game/movie/whatever.
Jun 25	comment	Shared World licensing fees @OrionDarkwood does facebook charge you for an account? Does stackexchange charge you for each question you post? Nope. (Er, actually I don't know if SE does. FB sure does, though) So yes, I do mean give it away. Except it's much more than giving it away, it's letting in hordes of people to play in your sandbox. It's building that community, who in turn build out that universe to a level that'll actually be cool.
Jun 8	comment	“Lacking meat”, “Content-free”, and poor defense-development. Please critique my work @Flimzy you're correct. I fixed it.
May 3	comment	Title Choice: “The Girl [Without/Who Didn't Have] A Soul” +1 for pointing out "didn't have" is past tense and "without" is present tense
Apr 28	comment	How do I organize a massive collection of personal files and writing? @marienbad I did mean it for your existing notes. What you do is copy/paste each separate bit of data out of a file and into the right spot (which is defined by you) in OneNote. Once everything is out of the file, you delete it, and move on to the next one. I admit my answer wasn't obvious in how you could use OneNote for your notes. I've edited my answer quite a bit to do just that, so please do take another look at it.
Apr 24	comment	“Lacking meat”, “Content-free”, and poor defense-development. Please critique my work Also it's worth mentioning I do like your "voice" in your writing. Take care, as you go through this process of editing, that you preserve and foster that voice. A great voice can cover many writing sins, and more importantly, is what draws people to your work. So don't kill it.
Apr 24	comment	“Lacking meat”, “Content-free”, and poor defense-development. Please critique my work For what it's worth, the article did make more sense to me the more I (re)read it, and oddly, I liked it better on your blog. Something about the formatting/fonts/background made it easier to read, I think. Point is, this critique is based on my impressions from the first pass. With your most readers, you only get that one shot.
Apr 24	comment	“Lacking meat”, “Content-free”, and poor defense-development. Please critique my work Incidentally, you can't skip past the ads on hulu.
Apr 16	comment	Is it a bad idea to have all the action in the beginning and all the dialogue in the end? @alexchenco "... story is really about the in existence of the soul." Gee, ya think? You fairly well bludgeon people about the head with it. This is an underlying problem with the story - you have a message, and the story is sacrificed to it. This is a common problem in religious fiction like this. When an author comes into the story with a preexisting conclusion, and the reason for the story is spreading that conclusion, what's often not understood (by the author) is that a conclusion is an end -- and what's missing from the story is the journey to that end.
Apr 16	comment	Tips for describing features of unusual place that I often visit @KoenVanDamme +1 for using other senses. Frequently, if you analyse a descriptive scene that sticks in your head, you'll find senses besides sight used. For me, smell seems to be a sense that really makes a scene stand out.
Apr 11	comment	A rhyming dictionary worth bookmarking online or purchasing? the kind where it's pronounced "what what", lol.
Apr 11	comment	How can I catch more errors when I proofread? Especially good if you put it down for a while, a couple weeks perhaps, then pick it up and read it to someone. That gives your brain time to clear out the auto-insert cache so you stumble over a missing word rather than speaking it anyway.
Apr 5	comment	What should be put on scene notecards? (for novel writing) +1 for "note my goals...". That plays well with the direction nathan lawrence's answer just sent my mind in.
Apr 5	comment	What should be put on scene notecards? (for novel writing) I'm really intrigued by your #3, "Why they're there" and #4, "How this affects the characters and the story" (and @Aerovistae 's excellent expansion on it). I'd usually have #1 & #3, but really, that's just factual information I already know... making myself explain why the scene's there and how it plays in the story arc may be just what I was missing. I think I'll go do some navel gazing on it and try couple of test cards on my current story.
Apr 5	comment	What should be put on scene notecards? (for novel writing) @NeilFein no, not offhand. This was several years ago, so they're buried somewhere in a box or something. I'll have a look, but I don't know if I'll find them. Basically though, what I'm looking for is toward the Best Practices end of things for the next novel, not trying to salvage that one (it needs a total, ground up rewrite to even think of being good :-) )
Apr 3	comment	Water Sprinkles Usage @NeilFein (in the interests of helping someone new to Writers.SE and the whole English language) Would this rewrite of the question meet the guidelines? -- I was explaining the following event where water sprinkles got on someone's clothes, and wrote it this way. [quoted sentence] I think I wrote it incorrectly, but I can't figure out why. Is this correctly written in English? And if not, where did I go wrong? -- Note that to me, his question comes off as a question on grammar, not a critique request (except for the last sentence, of course). You can't google up a critique, after all.