posted
I realized I have a lot of random online resources I use from time to time. I thought other people might benefit from them, and perhaps be willing to share some of their own.
http://www.behindthename.com/ When I need a name, I most often gravitate here. The site, while certainly not all-encompassing, has a wide enough variety of options to get me thinking. While this particular branch of the site is for given names, they also have a website for surnames linked toward the bottom of the page.
http://septicscompanion.com/ If you need to easy access to British slang, this site is your friend. http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-slang.html If you need easy access to slang common in the Old West, this site is your friend. ...There are sites like this all over the place, honestly, if you know what to look for. I used to have a site bookmarked that was all about Thieves' Cant.
http://www.pantheon.org/ This site has basic overviews of various mythologies. It's not a good place to go to for serious study, but it is a good place to learn enough of the basics to find out what you need more detail on.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/ There are a TON of public domain religious texts, mainstream and otherwise, to be found here. The format leaves something to be desired, but it's free.
http://calendarhome.com/print-a-calendar/ This will seem silly... until you think about the fact that you can use this site to check what day of the week a specific date fell or will fall any time from year 1 to year 10,000. Sometimes, the little details are useful in a story. I know. I'm a goof.
I'll throw more links out as I find them. Feel free to do the same!
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For example: type in sucker and you'll get 14 examples ranging from suckerpunch through schnook and on to felon. Yes, felon, I quote from the entry: "Another theory (advanced by Professor R. Atkinson of Dublin) traces it to Latin fellare "to suck" (see fecund), which had an obscene secondary meaning in classical Latin (well-known to readers of Martial and Catullus), which would make a felon etymologically a "c*#k-sucker." OED inclines toward the "gall" explanation, but finds Atkinson's "most plausible" of the others.
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If you need help with definitions or synonyms, there's always dictionary.com or thesaurus.com, but my favorite dictionary site has long been onelook.com because it pulls results from several different dictionary sites AND has a reverse dictionary.
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A useful (if grim) resource I found when researching what a person's face actually looks like during a hanging. Considering how often characters in stories end up victims, perpetrators, or witnesses of violent acts, this resource can help you get the details right. Intended for use by forensic investigators, but secondarily useful to writers.
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Thank you so much for those links, Disgruntled Peony!
Just dropping by to rave about Behind the name. Using the "Advanced Search" option is a tad clunky but I love it. It helps me narrow down results. I don't like to repeat sounds or initial letters in character names so it's nice to filter by sound, initial letter and syllables.
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I've always loved Babelfish. It's not a great resource for extended translations (it has no concept of grammar or context, so the translations are always very literal), but if you need a quick translation to or from another language it's wonderful.
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Project Gutenberg and Archive.org offer numerous reading and study opportunities: fiction long and short, prose essays, and essays on writing and writing-related topics. All content in the public domain, most from before 1923, some from later, due to lapsed and overlooked copyright renewals. Gutenberg hosts an entire science fiction section, and fantasy, horror too.
I needed to read an 1833 essay by an English bishop and philosopher about irony. Connop Thirlwall coined the term "practical irony." My interest is twofold: an original source matter for aid in appreciating the term's meanings and distinctions. What is practical irony? Why distinguish practical from other irony types? The answer to the latter, practical irony as distinct from Socratic irony is foundational for prose's arts.
And evaluate and validate others who cite Thirlwall's essay as source material. Do they misapprehend his intent?
The Thirlwall essay "On the Irony of Socrates" I could not locate independently at other sources: libraries, booksellers, anywhere. The essay is part of collections and cited in its entirety in criticism texts, though at expensive $$$ costs. Archive.org has a digital text and PDF image copies from an 1877 edition collection of Thirlwall's works: Remains Literary and Theological of Connop Thirlwall. Deep. Ta-dah. Source found.
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I found a link that lists several good literary magazines people can submit to. I recognize a fair portion of the sci-fi/fantasy magazine names, but a lot of the more "literary" magazines were unfamiliar to me. They even have a list of flash fiction magazines!
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The lists of the LetsWriteAShortStory site are for digests that both pay for accepted work and don't routinely charge a reading or entry fee for submissions. Many literary journals anymore do charge a reading fee and journals that pay are increasing in number, not all, many. Literary journals are anymore as numerous as commercial digests. Roughly two thousand-plus each in the U.S. print market and digital commercial digests about the same number.
Digital literary journals are less numerous though many publish online companion content. Publication competitions range for journal and digest, too: many charge an entry fee, many don't; many pay, many don't; most provide winner copies for part or all of a contest's awards.
Literary journals generally are university English or creative writing departments' "flagship" publications. Partially supported by university funding and state taxpayers, journals are required by law to partially self-support if they accept submissions from the public. Self-support includes private and public arts grants, donations from eligible organizations, subscription revenues, and reading fees.
Program students under faculty sponsors' guidance and under certificate internships and curriculum degree programs usually produce journals. Journals, more often than not, use university press facilities for production and distribution at cost-plus commercial-comparable rates.
Journals I've interned for and subscribe to span the gamut. Of note, membership dues for a literary organization usually includes a subscription to the organization's "flagship" journal. Literary organization conference dues may also include journal subscription.
A flagship journal is both a showcase and marketing strategy for a literary association, as well as a marker of an association's prestige, a substantive reason for existence in the first place, a mover and shaper of literary culture, art-professional-commerce-instruction training and proving ground, and social network for like-minded creators and consumers. Needless to say, journal creative slants range as broadly as what constitutes "literary" composition.
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I've been wanting to learn a form of shorthand, and this looks like the easiest one to learn/use that I've found online. Thought I'd pass the fun along in case anyone else was interested! Posts: 745 | Registered: May 2015
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So often we're told to show rather than tell. This may be of using in showing emotion in your characters rather than just saying: Janice was afraid of Max.
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The ChangingMinds.org website is a valuable resource that indexes an inventory of persuasion modalities. Akin to an annotated bibliography, the site offers gross summaries and skimpy explanations of persuasion tactics and strategies, though only captures the superficial tangibles of the matter and misses the deeply complex intangibles thereof -- a point annotated bibliography methods are meant to capture.
Also, though the "The Caveat" page acknowledges persuasion's moral imperatives, the caveat is mere lip service and more liability disclaimer than an admonition to responsibly exert social persuasion. Yes, persuasion is like any tool -- usable as sword or ploughshare; however, that is the site's singular misapprehension and equivalent shortfall: appreciation that empowerment is as much responsibility as right and not including modalities of appreciating socially responsible persuasion. The site emphasizes manipulation over persuasion.
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Apologies if it appears I'm recommending the contents of the entire site--I'm not. My only interest is in the categorisation of involuntary body actions/reactions in relation to perceived moods/emotions.
As for any philosophical merit, I didn't even bother to look. I have my own methods of persuasion and while I may resort to manipulation in certain circumstances, that is not my usual modus operandi.
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The site hosts ample content for character development potentials: antiheroes, nemeses, and villains, and agonists' personal moral growth generally, and well-rounded characters in particular. The body language section combined with several other pages models emotional context and texture for realistic scenes. Only -- used as a writing tool, not actually as a private, public, or professional weapon, though weapon for the prose page where such responsibly belongs.
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This is an incredibly useful article on how one should actually calculate word count. I haven't tried it yet, but I find it intriguing and will never rely on my word processor's count again.
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This site features warnings about suspicious publishers, contests, and the like.
Honestly, considering how many random links I've found that trace back to it, the SWFA site as a whole is wonderfully useful.
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I was doing some research for making an alien creature and I came across this site. All kinds of sounds! Wonderful http://www.sounddogs.com/Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
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100 rejections per year means about 2 per week, which would mean producing at least 1 story per week (emphasis on the "at least") in order to have enough stories out to collect that many rejections.
Which sounds similar to what Kris and Dean and Kevin J Anderson recommend, though I think Kris and Dean only recommend one story per week.
The idea is that cranking them out helps you improve, as well as gets your name in front of editors, who will notice that you're improving, and may actually start cheering for you.
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That's... incredibly intimidating. XD It sounds like a weirdly fun challenge, though. Even one story a month would be worlds better than my current output. I'd just have to get my idea-maker to work faster, and perhaps try for shorter stories (mine tend to run in the 5k range, and a lot of online magazines cap at 3k).
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The most productive writing I've managed was one two- to three thousand-word story per month, and kept that pace up for four years. Each one contained qualities readers commented favorably about, and more of the micromanaged negative comments sort too. None submitted were accepted. Bluntly, to me, each and all are crap because of structural and aesthetics shortfalls.
Since then, I took a step back to assess why, shortfalls and strengths, plus what my aesthetic slant is and who my audience is. Many answers arose; again, overly broadened horizons that needed limitation and focus. That's been my study focus for a while. Now the time has come to get busy again and put it all together.
No shortage for ideas. An inventory of my projects at some stage of development takes up several pages, single spaced, and one-line working title and sketches for each.
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The first link above, Hatrack's autocensor substituted asterisks for the four-letter word of the url. Ergo, the link misdirects to a page-not-found page. A workaround would use a TinyUrl, though that would defeat the intent to keep Hatrack content and access "clean."
Or, interested individuals could "correct" the four asterisks.
Frankly, I feel the colorful language adds nothing to the essay, is gratuitous. The point of the essay is encouragement to write past obstacles, as many writing prompts are, from writing books and online essays. Being spewed off-color, vitriolic language at is unproductive persuasion. Not that my ears are so tender of sensibilities; rather, those are emotionally empty expression due to so much language of the sort being anymore common place and abundant, and being off topic and unnecessary and inconsiderate of audience.
Decorum: suit words to subject matter and each to the other, and to the occasion, and the audience. The only actual net result is that of off-color language's self-glorification and is unoriginal as well. Instead of this or that word, why not a fresh expression? As is, the stale, off-color language leaves me less than persuaded or enthused.
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quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: [QB] The first link above, Hatrack's autocensor substituted asterisks for the four-letter word of the url. Ergo, the link misdirects to a page-not-found page. A workaround would use a TinyUrl, though that would defeat the intent to keep Hatrack content and access "clean."
Or, interested individuals could "correct" the four asterisks.
I think the latter option is the better one, all things considered. I purposefully avoided listing the name of the article because of the language involved.
Also, I get why you're not a fan, extrinsic. I have friends who use similarly colorful language, and as such it didn't bother me. I am, however, thoroughly aware that there are plenty of people who feel differently. That's why I gave the warning.
(Honestly, I'm fairly neutral on the subject of swearing. I grew up in a family where it was frowned upon, then made friends who hailed from different lifestyles in my late teens and eventually grew more relaxed on the subject. Sometimes, swearing is cathartic. I do, however, try to keep the sensibilities and preferences of those who I'm speaking with in mind, and tend to only swear around people with whom I am both familiar and comfortable.)
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I'm not offended by the language at all, I just find such lists pointless and a waste and time. I gave up reading such useless advice a few years ago.
posted
The off-color language left aside, my issue with the essay is its implied and direct second-person imperative grammatical mood. The essay only says, You just do it. Of all the writing advice across the culture, that one is the most all-time common one. And as empty as a spilled oil tanker.
I've been screamed at, ordered, imperatively made to do tasks beyond what I've realized is in my or anyone's best interests. Many, too, are the vitriolic vents and stress decompressions for which I've been the whipping post.
Plenty of dysfunctional advice in the culture overall -- imperatives, really -- and to the point of toxic self-promotion at the expense of targeted audiences' well-being. A kernel from which appreciation grows is that of survivorship bias: I did succeed; therefore, anyone can. Here's how: Just do it.
Different, less dysfunctional approaches at least self-effaces second-person imperative, or, and both, ironically uses second person's self-reflexive case. In other words, charges persuasion such that subjectivity of a de se manner, of the self, presents foremost.
In this Digital Age of anyone and everyone now can publish content of whatever topic and scattershot topics to as large an audience at anytime, anywhere, etc., that's attracted, the ability to evaluate sources, and the content by and large overall subject to question, if not outright dubious or junk altogether, is evermore crucial than pre-Digital age content which was largely screened by knowledgeable others.
A teachable and learnable composition skill is ability to evaluate sources, their logos, logic; their ethos, credibility; and kairos, occasion (decorum); perhaps kleos, too, pedigree: what experiences make So-and-so a worthwhile source to use, borrow from, adapt, and adopt, or worth a reject.
On the other hand, and this to me is contrary to creative composition's appeals and strengths, being ordered how to act, believe, think, feel is a manner which many individuals are accustomed to and expect, maybe need. Perhaps such imperatives are the lynch pin that unlocks the logjam.
The Poet's Journey is fraught with wasteful and perilous detours, many which intend to defuse competition. Which are toxic; which are fruitful? Transcendence of the chaotic miasma comes from personal choice.
Many are the easily explained, somewhat limited mechanics of composition; the aesthetics, though, make all the difference and are near infinite of possibility. Those are impossible for any one writer to encompass all. Therefore, personal choice that both limits focus and expansively exceeds its bounds is the miasma transcendence strategy: one, ability to think consciously, critically, for one's self; and two, an aptitude for informed, independent decision-making -- especially when two or more equivalent selections are dissonant and appear irreconcilable.
The double, or more, bind: "a psychological predicament in which a person receives from a single source conflicting messages that allow no appropriate response to be made" (Webster's 11th) (also "dilemma"). An example, at the family dinner table, dad is away for this meal, and table behavior is more casual than normal.
Mom says in an ironic tone, "Your dad told you to keep your elbows off the table." Huh? Mom's more easygoing than Dad. Does she mind elbows on the table or not? What's the appropriate response? Take elbows off the table or leave them on the table? Or something else? Honor Mom or Dad, or both how? Reconcile to both. Okay to unobtrusively occasionally leave elbows on the table when only Mom is in charge, never when Dad is, nor ever let Dad know Mom is less strict. Though, in any case, respect the etiquette of the occasion and the audience -- casual dining and Mom.
quote:And the article may be helpful for some people.
I must disagree, Kathleen. While your statement is loaded with qualifiers it is doubtful anything in this specific list has any real value to anyone, however, if it does, any such value will be transitory only (a few days), and ephemeral.
At their most benign such 'Writer's Lists' are nothing more than click-bait generating web traffic. At their most destructive and malevolent they are agents of despair: "If it's so easy, why can't I do it? I must be stupid! I'll never write anything good."
Phil.
[ September 27, 2016, 06:00 AM: Message edited by: Grumpy old guy ]
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posted
A bunch of family members were discussing which flavors of pizza to order for a group meal, and I suggested one that I enjoyed, and thought others had enjoyed as well in the past.
A family member responded by saying, "Nobody likes that kind of pizza!" and went on to suggest other kinds.
I tried very hard not to take that as a slap in the face, because I, for one, am not nobody, but it still stung.
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posted
An interpretation of the essay could be constructed around a self-reflexive subtext. The essay writer addresses the self and shares those reflections online. No solid clues, though, that is the intent. The struggle and self-reflexiveness are accessible from the two overall voice matters of imperative mood and off-color language. In a sense, the foul language curses the self for unproductive writing; curses to mean condemns. The imperative mood is directed to the self, though second person.
But for appreciation prior to publication of the second-person reflexive voice potential, the essay falls short in its intents to persuade. Not much, several clues that signal an ironic intent would transcend the otherwise toxic command -- You just $*#&-ing do it, #@*%-head @!!-hole. The proverbial they say about flies, honey, and dung: humor persuades more effectively than bile, especially self-effacing humor.
To me, after reflection, this above is my interpretation, that the essay is self-reflexive and a situational irony; that is, an irony observable of intent to do or say one thing and the net effect is another thing altogether. But for an under-realized potential.
The latest fashion of lists derives from humorous media sketches intended to satirize some social circumstance. The essay misses that satire and humor convention. David Letterman's "Top Ten" lists, for example. Derivative imitation, though, tends to dilute an artful circumstance. Tel est la vie de escritur: Such is the life of writing.
In other words, I learned from the essay through processes of analysis, source evaluation, interpretation, informed personal choice, and second guessing the writer's intents, meanings, methods, and results.
posted
First off, I would not have posted the link if I had not personally found it helpful and interesting. I also found it amusing, and laughed through half the article. Of course, everyone's sense of humor is different, and I did not expect everyone to react the same way I did.
On the other hand, I don't feel it is a good practice to dismiss something as universally useless simply because one doesn't find it useful on a personal level.
I apologize again if I offended anyone. That wasn't my intention. However, I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. The article held merit to me, at this particular point in my writing journey. It might do the same for others in the future. Clearly, it's not for everybody, but then, it doesn't have to be.
posted
Okay, considering how things exploded the last time I posted a link to Chuck Wendig's blog, I am prefacing this link with a warning.
WARNING: Chuck Wendig swears a lot in his blog posts, and while his sense of humor tends to amuse me it may not amuse you. If you don't like his blogging style, feel free to leave the link unread or close the page.
That said, he had some observations on writing scenes today that I found interesting and helpful.
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Wendig's admonitions to start a scene as close in time to a change in status quo, and to exit a scene as rapidly, fast start and finish, in the vernacular, imitates Edgar Allan Poe's similar guidance.
However, the thesis sentence of the essay asks "What, exactly, is a scene"? The essay doesn't answer the question to any transformative completion. Well, you know, we all know what a scene is, like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's "I know it when I see it" (Jacobellis v. Ohio, 1964) decision regarding the distinction between artistic expression and pornography, a decision long since abandoned for lack of merit, though now a widespread culture idiom.
So we know what a scene is when we receive it? No, rarely do receivers note the demarcations of any given scene, let alone know the features of one. Wendig labels and explains a few scene features; he doesn't define the parameter gamut. What then is a scene in all its bases? A dramatic unit, yes, that entails an event, a setting, and a character or characters, that alters the status quo, yes. However, those parameters are as useful as dictionary definitions -- too vague to be of service.
L. Rust Hills rather, Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular, 1979, not intending to do such, adds a particular parameter for a scene not noted by any other as yet. What are the subdivisions of a scene's subdivision? Those are dramatic units, too. Wendig suggests a scene is the smallest dramatic unit, itself a subdivision of an act, a subdivision of a whole action. Wendig does note that a scene should entail a beginning and an ending, worth note, therefore, a middle, too.
Hills, though, explicates the parts of a scene as sequential segments of preparation, suspension, and resolution: beginning, middle, and ending. Or in other words, setup, delay, and delivery; complication introduction, complication satisfaction efforts, and complication satisfaction. Complication satisfaction, not problem resolution, which the latter is a subset of complication's parameters. About a majority fraction of narratives do pursue conflict resolution, though are more so straightforward simple plots and telegraph their outcomes.
So Aunt May wants a brand-new car. Great. Problems complicate her want satisfaction, each problem is resolved as it rears its hurdle, eventually, Aunt May gets a new car, and not much else overtly or covertly happens, no noteworthy change to May's true nature, only tangible physical differences transpire. Well, yeah, that's how we humans perceive existence. Yet along with the process comes maturation transformation, overlooked due to observer bias -- May was perfect before she wanted a car, now is more perfect because she possesses a brand-new car? No, she's human.
Anyway, those tangible and intangible features complete a scene: preparation start, suspension delay, partial complication satisfaction, complete satisfaction outcome, even if different outcome from what is at first perceived as the problematized want (motivation), more appeal if, in fact, different; that is, a maturation tableau transpires from a tangible complication, more or less morally mature than before the action at hand.
And each scene, ergo, ought best entail maturation movement. Status quo upset, emotional upset, maturation upset, complication upset -- Upset preparation start, upset suspension middle, upset partially satisfied per scene and completed per outcome.
Segment, sequence, scene, act, whole. A scene is a complication segment sequence that entails a partially or fully completed tangible and intangible transformative event, interactive setting, and interactive characters.
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The essay simplistically deconstructs synopsis composition through a Star Wars example. The simplistic nature is both a benefit and a detriment to synopsis composition processes; benefit, simple synopses are more effective than complex ones; detriment, the description of the process leaves much to be desired.
The section labels are more insightful than the content of those, like "1. Opening image." Yes, an image, though best practice more than an image which sets up the whole, necessarily one that initiates dramatic movement. Dennard leaves that feature too late for an effective synopsis, the next section, "2. Protagonist intro." Who and why what he, she, or it wants, which is the single most effective dramatic movement initiator and reader engager. Note, want's complication feature.
"3. Inciting incident," one of the more succinct definitions of essential incitement criteria, that is, what incites the protagonist to take initial action. However, other theorists note that an initial incitement may arise earlier if not at the immediate outset, for the purposes of dramatic movement start. Too much setup and little dramatic movement can untimely delay or spoil reader engagement, synopsis, query, or narrative alike.
"4. Plot point 1." Misses the point that a start feature is a first dramatic pivot, a second and third one also follow before this fourth division. Also, labeled as a "plot point" does not express what a plot point is. "Dramatic pivot," a dramatic direction transformation, at the least a marked change in emotional equilibrium status.
And so on through eleven divisions, misses one, after "10. Climax," misplaced itself, more like number 6, misses the action fall section, final complication satisfaction effort toward denouement.
Labels the final division "11. Resolution," valid if an outcome is a "conflict resolution" type narrative, though several other outcome types are somewhat common: revelation, trick, decision, explanation, solution, and illumination, per Damon Knight, Creating Short Fiction. In some mien overall, though, is a complication's satisfaction outcome -- Denouement: the outcome of a main dramatic complication, as for a literary work, (Webster's paraphrased).
In all, the how-to exceeds average guidance for synopsis composition, though more so a start from which to adapt one's own original, lively structural organization template, again, query, synopsis, and narrative. The illustration does reduce the motion picture's pertinent content to an effective less than five hundred words synopsis.
In which David Farland discusses how much editing is too much, and also points out that not all writing advice is good.
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