Anonymous asked:

everything about papers is hard apa sourcing is confusing when I grew up only using mla I didn't know I needed to indent until I lost marks because of it?? What a manucript page header what does that do/mean I don't understand

sciencetynan answered:

There are some websites that make sourcing references in different styles easy. Here’s a couple:

BibMe: Free Bibliography & Citation Maker - MLA, APA, Chicago …

Citation Machine: Format & Generate Citations – APA, MLA, & Chicago

That does sound quite harsh. Most of my courses are pretty lax when it comes to formatting. Though I have had very strict teachers like you’re describing.

This website identifies what a Manuscript page header is and how to make one:

How To Format A Manuscript Header Using MS Word

I hope these links help. I’ll be happy to help out any time. :)

invaderliz

Purdue owl is a good source for APA too! It’s really detailed for both formatting the paper and title page as well as the reference list

paddysnuffles

Purdue Owl really is an amazing source. They have a paper as example and explain bit by bit about how and why it should be formatted the way it is.

Another good source for help is your friendly campus writing centre (most universities have them). You can go there to get help with your paper for any reason and at any point in the writing process, from needing help with developing your thesis statement to editing your paper to helping you with the formatting.

Another possible source of help for the formatting part are the librarians at your university library (or libraries). If your university has several libraries I’d reccomend going to the one that specializes in your subject area (e.g. going to the science library if you’re a chem student), as librarians at themed uni libraries often had majors on those subjects in undergrad and are thus more familiar with the citation format your professors want.

If you’re having trouble finding sources to use, absolutely 1,001% for the love of God ask for help at the university library service desk. We’re trained on how to conduct searches (like, I literally had to take a class on how to write good search strings) and helping you is literally what we’re there for.

Here’s a tip on keeping track of your sources:

Make a cheat sheet with 3 columns:

Column 1 - A keyword you’ll use in your essay until it’s completely done.

Column 2 - Which source your quote comes from.

Column 3: Where to find the source.

Then as you write your essay, use that keyword as though it were the citation.

E.g. Blah blah blah “quote quote quote” blah blah blah (Orange 45).

(45 being the page number where the quote was in)

Once you’re done the essay and it’s gone through the final proofreading, then you go and put in the correct citation format.

Tips from an English major who had to write a fuckton of essays in their undergrad:

- Don’t bother making the cited works page citation part until your essay is done, as you don’t know what will be cut out as you edit it (plus it interrupts your writing process).

- Writer’s block? Go for a walk. No, really. This one’s a tip from my mom, who’s an award-winning author.

- If you have the option of choosing your topic (either from a list of topics or a free-for-all) try finding some possible intereting sources for the paper. If you can find at least 5 for a shorter paper or 10 for a longer paper then it’s a good choice to go with (plus, you already got the primary legwork done!)

- Planning the overall structure of your essay really helps. I really really really hate doing this part, but it really is ultimately a time-saver.

- Once you have your essay planning done, go through your sources and pluck out some quotes that might be good for each section, and place them in the part of the essay plan you think they would be good for. That way as you’re writing you already have some idea of how to work those quotes in. (Note: you don’t have to use all the quotes you put in this section, they’re there more so you can have a selection of what to use).

- Don’t edit as you write the first draft. The first draft should be more like a stream of consciousness piece; it’s absolutely fine if you ramble or use the same wording multiple times or repeat yourself. Editing is what the next drafts are for.

- Keep a list of words you notice yourself overusing so that you can have a cheat sheet of what to look for when editing.

#research #writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

mildelectrocution

bump-of-whump

Ref Recs for Whump Writers

Violence: A Writer’s Guide: This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world.

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters.

Blood on the Page: This handy resource is a must-have guide for writers whose characters live on the edge of danger. If you like easy-to-follow tools, expert opinions from someone with firsthand knowledge, and you don’t mind a bit of fictional bodily harm, then you’ll love Samantha Keel’s invaluable handbook

#writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

hungwy

grandhotelabyss

Anonymous asked:

Advice/hard truths for writers?

grandhotelabyss answered:

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

#writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

kelssiel

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

deanofbeans

OMG

dduane

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

#fr and like when you have thousands of posts on your blog? even tagged ya gotta refresh every now and then to actually find the damn thing #writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

sleepymccoy

Writing a novel when you imagine all you stories in film format is hard because there’s really no written equivalent of “lens flare” or “slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir”

audacityinblack

You can get the same effect of a lens flare with close-detail descriptions, combined with breaks to new paragraphs.

Your slow-motion montage backed by a Gregorian choir can be done with a few technques that all involve repetition.

First is epizeuxis, the repeating of a word for emphasis.

Example:

Falling. Falling. Falling. There was nothing to keep Marie from plunging into the rolling river below. She could only hope for a miracle now, that she would come out alive somehow despite a twenty-foot drop into five-foot-deep water.

Then there’s anaphora, where you write a number of phrases with the same words at the beginning.

There were still mages out there living in terror of shining steel armor emblazoned with the Sword of Mercy.

There were still mages out there being forced by desperation into the clutches of demons.

There were mages out there being threatened with Tranquility as punishment for their disobedience, and the threats were being made good upon.

Mages who had attempted to flee, but knew nothing of the outside world and were forced to return to their prison out of need for sustenance and shelter.

Mages who only desired to find the families they were torn from.

Mages who only wanted to see the sun.

This kind of repetition effectively slows the pace of your writing and puts the focus on that small scene. That’s where you get your slow pan. The same repetition also has a subtle musicality to it depending on the words you use. That’s where you get the same vibe as you might get from a Gregorian choir.

Damn I made relatable reblog- bait post and writer Tumblr went hard with it. This is legitimately very good advice.

ariaste

For more neat tricks (aka figures of rhetoric) like epizeuxis and anaphora, read THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE by Mark Forsyth. It’s both educational and delightful, not to mention overflowing with wry wit. Great book.

#writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

zombified-queer

If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

#writing #writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

princessbonecrimes

erosofthepen

LETS TALK ABOUT SPARRING

I’ve read a lot of fics, have seen many shows, and have watched many movies that are completely inaccurate when it comes to sparring. NOW, i know it’s fiction, and I greatly enjoy it nonetheless, but I would like to share a few things with you, as a person who trains in Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). There are a few general things in this, as well as stuff more focused to a certain european weapon. (this is all Historical European stuff, obviously if you’re writing for a different region, this probably won’t apply that much.)

SPARRING

-you don’t practice with real sharp swords. Never. It’s incredibly dangerous, especially since sparring is trying to practice your killing/injuring skills. In older times, you would use wood, maybe wrapped in leather or canvas to practice. Today, you use weighted nylon swords/weapons, and you usually wear a mask while doing so. Steel is and was an option, but the blade will be completely dull, and the tip will be bent over itself.

-It’s practically impossible to knock someone off their feet while sparring, unless you are hooking your foot or weapon behind their leg. It’s hard to push back and cause someone to fall, since they can just retreat back a bit.

-YOU. DON’T. SPEND. HOURS. SPARRING. ESPECIALLY WITHOUT A BREAK. It’s exhausting, the most people usually go is 10 minutes before they have a break. During Training, you only spar for about 2-5 minutes before stopping and having a rest.

-You try your hardest never to cross your feet. It’s dangerous and it unbalances you. Your opponent can take advantage of you easily.

-Usually, you want to strike your opponent with the last ¼ of your blade, basically just the tip and a little below. That’s the sharpest point, and you get the most force behind it.

-Swords aren’t super heavy. Stop the giant, huge, I-can-barely-lift-this trope. Longswords are usually 3lbs. It’s not heavy when you pick it up. However, it gets heavy when you’re holding it up above your head for a while. Swords were not made to be heavy, especially since you would have to hold them up in battle for sometimes hours.

-It’s incredibly hard to engage in witty banter and such. You are constantly moving and trying to strike your opponent. Since it’s fiction, you can do what you want, but just know that trying to have a conversation while sparring is like trying to have one while running. It tires you out even more, and usually just comes out breathless and wheezy.

-Swords are not lightsabers. You cannot try and hurt someone with just any part of your blade. It will just annoy your opponent. Now, for sparring, you will want to focus on hitting your opponent with the edge of your blade, and you won’t really ever be trying to hit someone with the flat of your blade.

-In sparring, you will get hit. And get bruises. I count five from just 2 days ago. (Also reminder that bruises don’t form for 1-3 days.) If you happened to get a hard thrust to the ribs, they will probably fracture. It happens. I haven’t had it personally, but those who’ve trained longer have. The worst injury I’ve gotten is a bruise on my chest that didn’t fade for nearly a month.

I will be focusing on using a one handed sword in this next bit, specifically a Scottish Regimental Broadsword. A basic sword to build off of.

-FOOTWORK. It’s not a super complicated series of perfectly planned out steps. It just isn’t. With Regimental Broadsword (which is what I will focus on, since it’s what I’ve trained with most), you have to have a good base (rear-weighted stance, front foot pointed at your opponent, back foot turned sideways), and then once you have that, you just have to move around and try not to get hit.

-Slipping. (Continuation of footwork). With a rear-weighted stance, the goal is to be able to move the front foot anywhere. You should actually be able to keep your front foot an inch off the ground without having to adjust your back foot. Slipping is when this comes in handy. If your opponent takes a swing at your front leg, you should be able to just slip it back to go next to your other foot, and swing your sword up to get your opponents head. Slipping is really important.

-Advance and Retreat (other continuation of footwork). While moving forward or back, you always want to feel the ground with a heel-toe movement, so you can tell if there are rocks or branches and such. Advancing, you want to move your front leg first. Retreating, your back leg.

-Traversing (last continuation of footwork)(maybe). Transversing is basically advancing in on your opponent in a circular motion. You’re trying to get close and personal. Reminder to not cross your feet. You will loose balance and probably end up getting whacked with a sword. Traversing is a spiral motion sort of. Your opponent can avoid getting trapped If they do it as well.

I will probably come back and add more soon, because there’s more I know, but can’t remember at the moment.

#sparring #writing refs #action scenes #swords

payslipgig reblogged

kelssiel

bruciemilf

Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on " inside a cinema " or something like that. Then, BAM. Here's a list of smell and sounds. I can't remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3

bruciemilf

I FOUND IT BITCHES

dramono

This is going to save me so much trouble in the future.

#writing #writing refs #art refs #useful things

payslipgig reblogged

chazzaroo47

bitegore

i made a character sheet. free to use as you wish, feel free to change whatever you want XD open source ass thing. spent all of ~maybe an hour on it.

Credit: the text in the insert-image box comes from this video, and the text for the top three lines (intense, complex, fruity) comes from this post. The actual image was made with the free NBOS character sheet creator, which is a sort of dated but free and solid text-layout sheet maker intended for ttrpg style character sheet creation.

mirrorbird

this is GENUINELY one of the best character development sheets I've ever seen. Cuts right to the core of what you and your readers will glom onto, doesn't waste time on details that don't directly affect the narrative. Stupendous. Effervescent. Finally, some good fucking food

#writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

kelssiel

fixyourwritinghabits

drake-the-incubus asked:

NaNoWriMo is around the corner and if I’ve fully moved out by then I think my goal is 30k words (1000/day) to prep for actually getting into writing habits.

I just need to learn to channel some of my ideas into the act of writing lmao.

fixyourwritinghabits answered:

Okay here are my slap down quick dash rules on how to prepare for NaNoWriMo. These rules assume the following things:

1. You have one project to work on.2. You have a finishing goal in mind.3. You will stick to a due date, even if that’s not Nov 30th.

Have a lot of ideas? Pick one. - Look, I know. I know. You’ve got all these ideas. They’re all shiny and interesting and fun. But if we’re sticking to one project, with the goal of finishing that project, you need to devote the entire month to doing that thing.

And yeah, this is going to suck sometimes. It’s going to be real hard not to reach for one of those other shiny ideas just because you can’t slog your way through this scene. However. The best way to use NaNoWrimo as intended is to stick with your strongest story idea all the way to the end.

You have no ideas? Find one. - How do you exist. Just how. Okay, fine. You want to write, you just don’t know what. Use a plot generator, write fanfiction with the intend to revise it later, grab an outline and get to work. If Tamsyn Muir could get her start in Homestuck fanfiction, you can too.

Have only vague ideas? Hammer that fucker down. - Get down whatever you can. The characters you want to use the most, the events you’d most like to happen. Your idea will likely change a great deal as you write, and that’s okay. Just get down whatever specifics you’d like to start with.

You don’t know how to take structured notes? Write anything down. - Character names, descriptions of places, scenes you want to happen, etc. Slap them on sticky notes and paste those to a big board. Keep them in a notebook and highlight the ones you’ll need the most. Take that notebook with you wherever you go. Embrace being one of those weird writing people.

You don’t know where to start with the plot? Sketch out vague story goals. The big fight, the romantic kiss, whatever you desperately want to get into this book. The beginning truly doesn’t matter, you will undoubtedly change it in the future, but simply starting with ‘John wakes up and his house explodes’ gets you out the door. Who gives a shit about the middle, you can figure that out as you go. Having the big climax would be nice, but if all you can come up with ‘Alex and Bad Guy fight’, then you have a goal to work toward.

Worried about getting stuck? Switch to the inner journey. Sometimes forward-moving plot isn’t going to happen. Mapping out your characters inner flaws, wants, and needed changes can get you whole chapters of introspection. You may have to cut that later, but any writing that gives you better understanding of your future finished book is writing worth doing. In figuring out plot goals, don’t neglect character goals.

You should also think about:

Use materials you like. I buy special pens from Japan because they’re the only brand that doesn’t smear on my left-handed ass. I like thicker index card over flimsy ones. Invest in good tools that will help you focus, but don’t break the bank for untested methods. Scrivener will only help you during NaNoWriMo if you know it’s effective to your writing. You don’t want to spend several hours trying to learn how to use it once November starts.
Book out that writing time now. If you build writing time into your daily schedule ahead of November, it won’t feel like hitting a wall when you devote that time to writing on 1st. Get up earlier (I hate thing part, but it works). Block spoilers for shows you won’t have time to watch. Save those unfinished books and art projects as ‘rewards’ for after NaNoWriMo.
Check out those writing spaces ahead of time. See if your local library has a quiet corner - and if not, they may let you book a room for a group writing event. Find the cheapest cafes that will let you linger the longest. Clean out a spot in your room or house that you’ll be able to focus in the most.
Shit will happen. The world will conspire to keep you from writing. School assignments will be due, family emergencies will come up, you’ll have several bad writing days in a row. I see a lot of people quit in the second week because they’ve 'fallen behind’ and won’t ever catch up, but reaching your word count is not the goal of NaNoWriMo. The goal is to keep trying to reach that deadline every day for a month. No matter what gets in your way, you’ll always end up with more than you start with.

#nanowrimo #writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

kelssiel

catchaspark

this should be a tweet but I don’t want to deal with people on Twitter. everyone stop having every character in your fiction talk like their goal is to get an A in therapy.

catchaspark

I love cathartic conversations too and that is why I am begging you: stop hunting them to extinction by making them constant, characterless, and corny as hell

hajimeme-hinata

patchmates

YES

daystarsearcher

Here is what you do:

1. Find the thing the character wants to say, their deepest and most fundamental truth.

2. Congratulations! That’s the one thing they cannot, under any circumstances, say. Imagine they’re under a fairy curse if you have to.

3. But they want to. They want to so bad. So it’s going to bleed into everything they do say, everything they do. What would you do for someone if you couldn’t say you loved them? That you hated them? That you love them but the things they do remind you of their father?

#writing refs #legit good advice #remember that a decent chunk of plot and dynamic interactions is that people Very Rarely say the truest most correct and honest thing #there are a MULTITUDE of reasons for this and few are duplicitous!#but like. imagine your own life if you knew the right thing in the right situation w the right person every time. unbelievable yeah?

payslipgig reblogged

chazzaroo47

zorlok-if

Putting this here in case other writers (and people in general) don't know about emotion wheels. This shit is helpful on so many levels.

#writing refs

payslipgig reblogged

vrishchikawrites

sleepnoises

The Onion Method is a outline method that consists of two major elements (Character-Driven Plot, and Thematic Thesis) riffing off each other. One informs the other, vice versa, creating multiple alternating layers in conversation.

Now you see where the onion metaphor came from.

These two elements together will create an Onion Story – a character-based story that when cut open, reveals layers upon layers of character motivation and story themes, ideas, topics, messages in conversation with each other.

How I Outline a Graphic Novel: The Onion Method, Reimena Yee

#writing resources #writing refs #to read

payslipgig reblogged

sleepymccoy

writingdotcoffee

New Editing Tools in Writing Analytics

This week, I launched a set of new editing tools for Writing Analytics. They will help you weed out adverbs, passive voice and all sorts of other style issues. The best thing about them is that they can be individually turned on and off.

Maybe it’s just a pet peeve of mine, but what annoys me about many grammar checkers is that you can either have the whole thing or nothing at all. Maybe I don’t care about having a bunch of adverbs in my prose? Or I’m writing something technical that will need a lot of passive voice in it.

Grammar and style are quite personal. Today’s automated grammar and editing tools are far from perfect. They probably never will be since even we can’t agree on what’s proper usage sometimes.

How It Works?

There are five different tools in total:

readability
passive voice
adverbs
style
duplicate words

By default, everything is disabled during writing sessions and enabled during revision. You can turn them on and off as you wish, though. I will occasionally enable them for first-drafting too. Seeing the highlights appear straight away can be helpful. You can restructure your sentences right while composing them when they get too complex.

Readability

I do like a nice compound sentence, but things can get out of hand pretty quickly. Doing a readability check before you send your draft off will help you uncover issues you may have missed.

Writing Analytics does this on a sentence-by-sentence basis. It will highlight hard-to-read and very hard-to-read sentences.

Passive Voice

I’ve noticed a major improvement in how I use passive voice since I started watching out for it. Before, I used the custom highlights feature in WA. That caught the majority of them, but it didn’t account for irregular verbs and various other things.

Since passive voice overuse is a common issue, it made sense to build a more accurate, dedicated tool for it.

Adverbs

I don’t care about adverbs during the first draft. Coming up with more appropriate synonyms would slow me down too much. However, this often leads to some pretty lazy writing.

That’s what second drafts are for, innit? And if you use Writing Analytics, the editor will highlight adverbs for you, so you can consider whether you need them.

Style

It’s always good to know if there’s a simpler alternative to a phrase you may be using. Many writers have a set of “usual offenders” that they watch out for. One that I can’t seem to shake is “period of time”. Why not just say “period?”

Writing Analytics keeps a collection of hundreds of these. In most cases, it will also give you a few suggestions for better alternatives.

Duplicate Words

Honestly, I built this one pretty much for myself. When I’m cutting bits out and rearranging my sentences, I always end up duplicating a bunch of words. My brain seems to ignore those 😬.

In case you have a similar problem, Writing Analytics will highlight those so you can get rid of them right away.

Where to Get this?

Highlights are a feature of an app for writers that I’ve built. I’m writing this post in it too 👋.

You can try Writing Analytics for free for 14 days (no credit card required). And if you like the app and decide to stick around, you’ll be supporting a small business 🙏.

When in the editor, select Highlights from the main menu. A window will pop up where you can configure which highlights you want to see and even create custom ones. This is useful for highlighting the names and pronouns of your characters. That way, you can see how much “air-time” they’re getting on the page.

#writing refs #writing tools #my usual technique is ‘force Grammy to listen to me read a piece out loud at 3am’ but this is. likely better

payslipgig reblogged

allofthemoths

wantstoflyafraidtofall

hey writers! OneLook Thesaurus lets you find that word you can’t think of but can describe! go check it out!

#writing refs #personal brain fog refs personal ‘I’m gonna use this and still not get the right result and become SO FRUSTRATED BUT MORESO’ refs

payslipgig reblogged

federalbureauofislam

olreid

Anonymous asked:

hey ej, i've been devouring all of your literary posts, they really make me super excited about books and storytelling and they make me want to read more lit analysis.

however, i never had any kind of """serious""" lit education; the college i went to was really pretty awful in that department. i've taught myself a little over the last few years, but not having that foundation makes things a struggle sometimes (for reference, i had to look up "ontological" and "diatectic" yesterday).

do you have any recommendations for articles to read? any foundational lit analysis texts you like(d)?

olreid answered:

hello sweet friend ! i will tell you a secret: i have never had a ~serious lit education either ! my academic background is in sociology and social theory, not english, and whatever skill i have at lit analysis comes from reading i've done on my own, people i've learned from online, and the influence of irl friends who study english and are willing to discuss different texts with me. i think you're doing it right - looking up things when they interest or confuse you ! but if you want i can rec a couple basics, a couple theory texts more specific to my areas of interest, and finally some works whose methods of close reading helped me get a better grasp on what it means to analyze text. let's dive in:

some lit theory basics:

narratology: introduction to the theory of narrative by mieke bal
the cambridge introduction to narrative, ed. h. porter abbott
marxism and form by fredric jameson

some lit theory that's less basic:

the madwoman in the attic: the woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination by sanda m. gilbert and susan gubar
reading the romance: women, patriarchy, and popular literature by janice radway

some of my fave examples of books & essays that do close readings well:

ghostly matters by avery f. gordon - close reading of novels including beloved by toni morrison in order to develop a theory of haunting as social and historical phenomenon
cruel optimism by lauren berlant - close reading of poems and novels in order to elaborate a theory of 'cruel optimism,' or the attachment that we have to things which actively harm or hinder us. this one is definitely a trickier read but very good imo!!
the imperial archive by thomas richards - close reading of nineteenth century english novels (verne, wells, etc.) in order to excavate the ideologies animating nineteenth century british imperialism
mocked with death by emily wilson - close reading of some classic texts - oedipus, king lear, macbeth, paradise lost - in order to think about the function of death and/or the inability to die in tragedy
the world of wrestling by roland barthes - what it says on the tin ! super short read about wrestling that might help you think about what it looks like to apply close reading to events rather than texts
lana and lilly wachowski by cáel m. keegan - reading the wachowskis' films as trans films.. jupiter ascending my beloved

misc:

something else that i think helped me a lot especially when i was younger is podcasts that do close readings. two of my faves are harry potter and the sacred text and the tolkien professor, but i bet you could find one focused on any classic text you like and go from there !
i also often just search google scholar or other pdf websites for analysis of topics or texts i'm interested in at any given moment. my philosophy is def more 'read about what interests you' than it is 'read about the basics if they don't interest you' lol.
finally this is a call for any friends, foes, or mutuals who actually have a literature background to add your recs in replies or reblogs as this is def not my area of expertise <3

#literature #writing refs #tbr

payslipgig reblogged

sleepymccoy

vintagegeekculture

zaturnz-barz-deactivated2017071 asked:

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.

vintagegeekculture answered:

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked.

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion.

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story.

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised.

IIRC “Judgment Day” was part of the inspiration for the excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars.”

may-shepard

This whole post is liquid gold for writers.

#writing refs