| Writers workshop |
[16 May 2012|02:46pm] |
Reposted from http://pernhome.com/tjm/?p=2706
Jody Lynn Nye will once again be offering a two-day science fiction and fantasy writers workshop at DragonCon, over Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, GA.
Among the subjects to be covered during the two-day course (Thursday 8/30/12 and Friday 8/31/12) are story structure, character development, world-building, narrative hook, research, description, collaboration, nonfiction, format, the business of writing, marketing and promotion.
Guest lecturers will speak during the course on topics involving their expertise. Signed up to instruct this year are Todd McCaffrey (co-author, Dragonriders of Pern), David Gerrold (“The Trouble with Tribbles,” The Martian Child), and Toni Weisskopf (Publisher, Baen books).
The students are encouraged to ask questions after the experts’ presentations. The aim of this workshop is to help aspiring writers to learn to practice their craft at a professional level.
Students of every level are welcome, from beginners to those writers who are starting to sell their work.
For more information and to sign up, please visit the description on the DragonCon website, http://www.dragoncon.org/workshops.php#WritersNye.
|
|
| hee! |
[24 Apr 2012|08:23pm] |
Swiped from George Takai on FB - this would make a great RRU icon if I knew how to do that. :)
|
|
| Stuff! |
[18 Apr 2012|09:57pm] |
An article in today’s Washington Post by Monica Hesse tells us that the AP Stylebook has confirmed what it had already told the American Copy Editors Society, that it has joined the OED and Websters in accepting “hopefully” as it is commonly used in speech to mean “we hope” “it is hoped”. Previously, it was only acceptable grammatically to use it to mean “in a hopeful manner.” ”Surely you are joking,” the grammarian said hopefully. was the example used.
The article went on to talk about the familiar linguistic battles that have taken place/are taking place involving proper use of “nauseated” vs “nauseous”, “healthy” vs “healthful” and so on. There are hundreds (thousands?) of these words that are being argued about and will be until common usage becomes the accepted usage. The teams in these battles (as she describes them) are the prescriptivists, who believe the rules of language should be preserved at any cost, and descriptivists, who believe that word usage should reflect how people actually talk. She offered the following clever bit of imaginary conversation between the two sides. This gave me quite a chuckle, so I’m sharing it with you.
( Read more... )
Doozies:
This one brought to us by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) diebirchen. She read a character was "drooling" his line of dialogue. Gross! lol
Drool - noun - saliva that drips out of one's mouth
verb - to allow saliva to drip from one's mouth. :)
droll - adj. - amusing in an odd way; whimsically humorous; waggish. Clearly, even had the author of the above mistake used the correct word, it's is unlikely that he or she "drolled" his words. :)
Perhaps the author meant to write:
Drawl - verb -to speak slowly with vowels greatly prolonged. transitive verb. : to utter in a slow lengthened tone. noun - a manner of speaking slowly with elongated vowels.
And I forget who sent me this one, but there is an important distinction to be made:
perspective - (copied straight from Dictionary.com -
per·spec·tive[per-spek-tiv]
noun
1.a technique of depicting volumes and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Compare aerial perspective, linear perspective.
2.a picture employing this technique, especially one in which it is prominent: an architect's perspective of a house.
3.a visible scene, especially one extending to a distance; vista: a perspective on the main axis of an estate.
4.the state of existing in space before the eye: The elevations look all right, but the building's composition is a failure in perspective.
5.the state of one's ideas, the facts known to one, etc., in having a meaningful interrelationship: You have to live here a few years to see local conditions in perspective.
prospective -
adjective
1.of or in the future: prospective earnings.
2.potential, likely, or expected: a prospective partner.
|
|
| I am still alive and functional... |
[24 Mar 2012|06:39pm] |
I’ve got a ton of stuff I’ve accumulated, either from places I’ve been, or from alert members. I’ll just post a bunch of it at one time and then maybe start over? Some of the links I’ve followed and looked at, others I’m just passing on in case anyone is interested in checking them out. Feel free to comment if you follow a link and really thought it was useful, or really thought it sucked. ☺
I do want to remind you that this is a community – I’m just the mod and LJ “owner”, so if you’re a member, please feel free to make your own posts. As you can see, sending me something – whether it’s a link to something good you want to share, or a daily doozy, or whatever – does not mean it’s going to get passed on in a timely fashion. I’d much rather have the community see something every few days, than have to wait until I remember that I have stuff to post here. There are tags already set up for word usage, grammar, punctuation, writing tips, etc. so go ahead and tag your post so it can be easily found.
I do ask that you remember we are trying to educate and help people, not mock them, so try to be judicious about posting mistakes you’ve seen. If it’s too hilarious not to share, but could perhaps be identified as being from a particular fandom or author, try to tweak it a bit so that it will be hard for anyone to point to a particular fic as the source. Anything from the general internet is, of course, fair game. Unintentionally funny signs, headlines, things like that are fine.
There is a mirror site on DW – but if you don’t have an account there, don’t worry about it. I’ll copy/paste your post into whichever journal didn’t get it. Unfortunately, DW tells me they cannot make communities available for automatic cross-posting, so we have to make two entries to get things up both places.
And this is already so long, I’m just going to end it with a quote I saw on FB yesterday. I’ll compile some other stuff and put it in a different entry.
“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”--E.L. Doctorow
|
|
| interesting conversations? |
[04 Mar 2012|03:39pm] |
Because there is such an interesting discussion going on over at my LJ, I'm going to link to it from here. As is often the case, the comments are where the meat of the discussion lies, although I have tried to pull out the important thoughts in my two follow-up posts. The discussion is about bad!fic and how or why it gets recommended or reviewed positively. Lots of good thoughts and ideas, including some good theories on why that happens. If you've got the time, I recommend following the discussion threads.
Here's the initial post and comments. The two follow-ups (where much of the good discussion occurs) are tagged with this one as "reading post" so you can follow the tag to the next two threads.
http://slaymesoftly.livejournal.com/497405.html
Today's doozy - FYI - earrings "dangle", a piece of meat might be "dangled" over a pit of crocs (if you're very brave or stupid), but babies are "dandled" on knees. (Unless you're Michael Jackson with a baby and a balcony, but let's not go there.)
|
|
| Doozy - Tenants of the Church |
[02 Mar 2012|05:49am] |
I keep coming across an error that drives me nuts; mixing up ‘tenants’ and ‘tenets’. Writers mention the ‘tenants’ of various religions and it’s not what they mean at all.
Tenants live in property owned by a landlord or an organisation. The tenants of the Catholic Church would live in church property, possibly farming lands owned by the church, and paying rent or doing service (in a Medieval setting) in return.
The beliefs and principles of a religion are its TENETS. The tenets of the Catholic Church are laid out in the Catechism and in Pope Paul VI’s ‘Creed of the People of God’.
Please, fic writers, stop confusing them because it results in your story confusing me. When a Forgotten Realms writer talks about the ‘tenants of Tyr’ I expect the writer then to mention peasant farmers, or perhaps an order of paladins housed in a Tyrran temple, not to go on about Truth and Justice and so on. If you obey the tenets you will defend the weak, punish the unrighteous, and uphold justice for all; if you obey the tenants you will mend the leaky roof, repair the holes in the access road, and fix the broken water-pump.
It’s a big difference.
|
|
| Hee! |
[20 Feb 2012|10:50am] |
Snagged this from an English teacher friend on FB:
|
|
| places to go, things to see... |
[21 Jan 2012|05:54pm] |
Here's a link, courtesy of eowyn315 to a place that offers writing prompts to it's members on a daily basis. Neither of us has checked it out yet, so let me know if you like it and find it useful.
And here's another one she sent me that I'd already copied from FB (I think) but hadn't done anything with yet. Very funny.
|
|
| stuff and things |
[14 Jan 2012|10:50am] |
Thanks to petzipellepingo who sent the following article about word usuage – specifically the word “like”:
( Read more... )
And, more fun than the above article, some interesting word booboos spotted recently by sharp-eyed members (and me!):
Sorted – um, I do not think this means what you think it means… if something is “sorted” it has been organized in some way. “My socks are all sorted by color and type.” Unless you’re British – and then it means you’ve solved some sort of issue. ☺
Sordid – skeevy, dirty, squalid “I’m not interested in hearing about your sordid little affair.”
And, from the same blog… “baited” breath is going to smell fishy. Just sayin’…
Okay – I can’t find the other word usage things just now. I’ll do another post after I’ve located and copied them all to one place. I knew I should have done it when they came in….
I've got more links, too, but need to get them all in one place before I can post. On the plus side, that means I may actually have another post to make tomorrow. :)
|
|
| Woot! |
[13 Jan 2012|05:48pm] |
I've been able to get our pretty community page back. Alas, that means it is still on the old style #1, so the issue about being able to see the posts without either clicking on the title or highlighting the text still exist. But, for me, those seem easy steps, so unless I get a lot of complaints, I'm going to keep it like this. (I'm also going to save the banner to my laptop so I won't ever lose it again!).
ETA - okay, I can't snag the banner. I guess Selene has it protected somehow, or else you can't grab header banners like you can posted ones. *sigh* I'll just have to hope nothing bad happens to it.
|
|
| Know where you're going? |
[03 Jan 2012|06:45am] |
Below is a quote from the journal of one of fandom's (BTVS and Merlin, anyway) writers. One of those who has also had success in publishing original fiction and is a great storyteller. Here is what she said in her journal:
To start off the year, I'm focusing on this quote from Seneca: If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. While I truly believe that knowing your goal is vital to achieving results in the day to day world, I recognize that not all creative processes work well like that. Writers who are pantsers might end up freezing with an outline in front of them, but honest to god, I think that at least knowing where a story is going to end is half the battle to starting it. People get caught up in the art of the word, and it ends up freezing the actual story that wants to happen. The art can often come on edits. Know where you're going so you can at least get started and ignore all the rest.
ETA: I plead lack of caffeine - thanks to <lj user=silk_labyrinth for the catch!
|
|
| Just to prove we're still in business... |
[22 Dec 2011|08:32pm] |
Underwear is something you wear under your clothes. It is not related to the kind of wares you find in a hardware store, nor to the software on your computer….
Fishy breath has raised its smelly head again, so just a reminder that breath is bated and fishhooks are baited. (And fic is often beta-ed or beta-d)
One can diffuse information, but you would want to defuse a bomb.
A layer is a hen who gives eggs, or something that lies in between other similar somethings. A lair is where evil creatures lurk and plan to do evil things.
A tier is similar to a layer – part of a series of steadily higher rows. A tear is what you may get in your eye when you realize how high your seats are…
You might hurl something across the room, but you will hurdle anything that is in your way as you hurtle across to retrieve the thrown object. ☺ (thanks to lostboy for reminding me of the word I really wanted to use there.)
|
|
| Gah! |
[22 Dec 2011|07:35pm] |
Okay, in an attempt to fix a little thing that was bugging me on RRU, I managed to lose Selene's beautiful banner and layout and get kicked back to a generic free account setting. Then, since I'd decided to upgrade to a Plus account and hope the ads wouldn't be too obnoxious for everyone, I tried to change the style to the recommended one, only to find it was stuck on telling me my "old" data was corrupted and they couldn't upgrade it. So - as of right now, we have a blue, very bare bones community page, probably with ads.
I've filed a trouble ticket, but have no idea what's going to happen. Just figured I'd better let everyone know what had happened so far so you don't freak when you see the community. Sorry! I should have left well enough alone, I guess. *sigh*
|
|
| just testing |
[21 Dec 2011|09:27pm] |
I do have a post to make - it's about 75% finished, but this is just a test to see if the changes have affected this community in a negative way.
ETA - it looks like the gorgeous banner that Selene made so long ago has vanished. Didn't show up in the preview. That will be a shame, for sure. *sigh*
EETA - The banner is there. All is well. Doesn't look like it's had any negative effects here. I'll do the real post tomorrow.
|
|
| misc. stuff |
[28 Nov 2011|09:16pm] |
Here's one that's been seen again recently:
for all intents and purposes - practically speaking; for every functional purpose; in every practical sense; in every important respect.
Here's how it has often been misheard and misconstrued: for all intensive purposes - FYI - that is not how the phrase goes. :)
do - verb, to perform an action
due - something is owed and it's time to pay up
dieu - French for God
doo - doo-wop (a kind of music), doo-doo (poop)
(one of our math teachers used to have kids keep a notebook of "re-dues". I never did figure out if she was making a deliberate play on words, or just didn't know that a "re-do" of something is what you do when you do it over. :)
|
|
| Good stuff |
[22 Nov 2011|05:26pm] |
Fly by post of two urls that lead to some good advice on writing sex scenes and other action scenes with wandering body parts. It's good information, and I encourage you to read it, whether you write or beta. However, being the contrary person that I am, I would say to take some of it with a grain of salt. Now, the poor woman who wrote in to the first site has some serious issues with writing. I suspect these things are the least of her problems. But some of the (bad) examples used are such common expressions, that everyone knows what is meant by the phrase and I seriously doubt that anyone takes it literally. In all honesty, I think there may some confusion here between writing metaphorically and writing impossibly and unintentionally funny. But it's often a matter of taste, and it's usually better to err on the side of clarity when you're hoping to have a work published. The hints in the second one on how to self-edit for mistakes like these are good suggestions. The urls are:
http://romanceuniversity.org/2010/07/16/wandering-body-parts-oh-my/
http://bigbluepencil.blogspot.com/2011/08/wandering-body-parts-cautionary-tale.html
And just to make it legit:
would've = contraction of would have (not would of). Yes, when we say it aloud, it does sound like "would of" and many people do say it like that thinking that's the correct phrase, so if you use it in dialogue, it's probably okay (if it's appropriate for that character), but if it's in your narrative - uh uh, nope. Don't do it.
|
|
| Good stuff |
[10 Oct 2011|11:04am] |
Behind the cut is the text of something I picked up off the Subversive Copy Editor's blog this morning. Some advice (from different sources) for writers on self-editing before you submit. It talks about things we probably don't think about as we write. Interesting and useful stuff. I recommend it highly.
( Read more... )
I can provide links to both this article and to the blog mentioned at the end if anyone would like them. Just let me know, and I'll make an extra post or edit this one.
|
|
| Two days in a row! |
[29 Sep 2011|05:45pm] |
|
Found this good explanation and a quick tip for knowing when to connect your "a" to the following noun. Some of them, I find hard to believe people would confuse, but others I do often see done incorrectly, so... go here to see what GrammarGirl has to offer. Example - ahead (to be leading the race) vs a head (you found a skull in a bag?)
|
|
| navigation |
| [ |
viewing |
| |
most recent entries |
] |
| [ |
go |
| |
earlier |
] |
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
riters_r_us
