Anyone here work on Steampunk stuff? A new web magazine called Jukepop is calling for submissions for web serials. It's paying work through August. "steampunk, slipstream, fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi, dystopian, crime, mystery, thriller, and cross genre. "
@NathanCTresch - You have any recordings? Would like to hear. (I'm a guitarist, in a celtic trio right now.)
@NeilFein I havent sung in years except kareoke and rock band. I am planning on recording myself singing over some songs that I enjoy and posting it to my blog, soon, though.,
@NeilFein If I get my lovecraft story done in time, I could write something steampunk, I love the genre
@NeilFein Its the only alternate history genre that's popular among non-nerds, so, obv I'm going to like it as I love alternate history stories
I titled a short story "The Girl without a Soul". But recently I've been thinking on naming it "The Girl who didn't have a Soul."
Do they mean exactly the same thing? Which is a more appropriate title for a short story? Is there an advantage to using one over the other?
This one - the edit is nice, but it's still asking for people to differentiate between two extremely similar titles. I really think this made more sense on English, and I'm puzzled why they sent it to us. (The conversation in the comments is not enlightening.)
I could give a good answer to it, because there are distinct differences in the connotations most people are going to have in their heads between the two words
Didn't, since it includes a contraction, is less formal and most people are going to have a much different idea about the content and tone of the story
In the past when I've written short stories, I've found that setting a word limit tends to make my writing more focused and concise (generally, the limits have been imposed by a course I was taking).
I'm wondering if there's an "optimal" word limit I could use to restrict myself when I start wri...
@NathanCTresch - It just seems like the kind of hairsplitting they do over at EL&U. Not at all what we do here. But... get people to vote to reopen, or get another mod to agree with you, and I'll gladly back off.
If people want to do more stuff like this about titles, I guess that could make sense.
I pulled a version of what you said above, about sticking in readers' minds. I added "As a short story title, what impressions will readers get from the different titles? " and reopened.
I need help making part of my resume more clear. Any suggestions that you have that will make the following statement more concise and readable would be appreciated.
Objective:
To work with a dedicated team of experts in a company where I can
enhance my knowledge and skills. Also to wo...
@NeilFein Yeah. But this one really irked me. The ELU guys were REALLY dickish to him and then we weren't much nicer (me included). The whole convo looked like a pissing match between Writers & EL&U and this guy just wants to know which is the better title. Let him ask the question, darn it. /rant
The edit helps, making the request for improvement more targeted. @justkt - what do you think? Is this a decent question or is it write-my-resume in nice clothing?
I agree about the argument in the comments; maybe I should clean up those comments?
@NathanCTresch for me the problem with the question wasn't "meh. they're the same" (they're not) but it's Is this a question language and grammar or is this a question of improving the quality of a written work
ie is this a Writers-SE question or an EL&U question
When I get overly frustrated at someone else's obvious idiocy and I've engaged in a discussion with them I sometimes ditch my eloquence in an attempt to make them as frustrated as I feel, to be honest. :P
In general I try not to talk to people like that in the first place, however, and I'm getting better at detecting when someone is a well educated and well spoken retard. :P
I have the advantage of knowing quite well that I'm incredibly tolerant and polite, so that when these situations come up I can be sure that I probably didn't do anything to deserve it. :)
This may seem like a trivial distinction, but as a title choice it's important as the title conveys an overall sense of the tone of the story.
First of all, the use of the contraction don't is less formal than without so it might be best to consider the verbiage you've used throughout the stor...
@NeilFein: This is partially a reminder to myself, but we've got some near-dupes on a very common question - where to find readers/reviewers for my work?
I'm currently in the market for beta readers, particularly for short stories. I've finished an early draft for a contest, and I'm hoping to hear some feedback. I'm open to reading the work of others as well. Thank you.
So what active internet communities are out there where I can post my own short fiction, for others to read, rate, review and discuss?
(Note that I'm not asking about local writer's groups, or collaborative story sites, or writing contests, or forums about writing, all of which have been asked h...
Seeing this site and reading some of my ridiculous stories that I wrote a while ago makes me want to start writing again. I know I'll be more enthusiastic if I have people reading my work and commenting on it, and that will also be great feedback to improve my writing. I also don't want to pester...
@Standback: hi there, it's lit.se again with a last minute migration possibility. Sci-fi seems unsure about this one, and it occurred to me that it might be pretty applicable to writing:
There are a number of universities that offer courses on Harry Potter and many academic works on the same. Given such scholarly interest, has there been any sort of consensus on what made the series so popular? What are the major theories, who proposed them, and how are they supported?
@ladenedge - The answers are all people speculating and theorizing,not answering a question. The truth is that nobody knows the answer. Unless someone else here wants it, I'd say no thank you.
@standback - All three are list questions. Either close 'em all, or merge them into one big reference question and CW it. What's current policy on CW reference questions?
Thanks for asking!
(If the upcoming library science site opens, though, it might be appropriate there. Once the site is archive-ized, can questions still be moved out?)
So, I'm interested in devoting some of my time as a mod here, and I understand that it's put to some kind of a vote? What is the process for that like, I have no idea?
At this point, I think it's basically a matter of getting more people here,posting and answering questions and - importantly - voting on questions.
We need more high-rep users here, with close-voting privileges, and editing privileges, and so on. So the community can properly run the site without so much in the way of moderator intervention.
Actually, there's a thread on Meta asking for ideas about publicity. We've made inquiries to the SE people to see if there's money for advertising. This is not a joke at all. We'd love more ideas there.
@NathanCTresch If the Area 51 stats are to be believed the biggest problem, it appears to me (as a layman) that the BIGGEST problem is the amount of questions per day. A healthy beta is 15. less than 5, you have a problem. Writers is: 1.6 questions per day
The problem, as I see it is that we get 1.6 questions for every 1,000 daily visits. At that rate we will need (a little rough math) about 10,000 visits/day. I don't think publicity will solve that quickly.
What the problem seems to me is an inability to convert page views to question asking (or are the Writers ratios in line with other fully fledged sites?).
I'd like to learn the APA style guide, so that, in addition to the fiction and general non-fiction I work on currently, I can start accepting academic editing jobs. However, I know very little about the details of APA and I don't know what the best strategy is for learning it. I also understand i...
Is there any reason that an editor should know how to use Scrivener?
I generally see manuscripts after they're out of draft but before proofreading. (I'm an editor.) However, I see a lot of talk about Scrivener on this site, and I'd like to know more about what it can do.
I've read the develo...
In the UK, what are the equivalents to Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press style guide, Yahoo, APA, MLA, etc? Most importantly, what are their intended audiences? (AP is used for journalists, Yahoo for the web, APA for academia, et cetera.)
I'm specifically asking about style guides t...
Are there revision features in Final Draft, similar to Track Changes in Microsoft Word? While I can get the program to show added text in a different color, deleted text is not tracked as far as I can tell.
As you can see, Word shows text that's been crossed out, an advantage to editing someo...
SF&F might be a better yardstick. They graduated with 8.2Q from 1632 Daily visits.
When you dig a little deeper the "problem" is that Writers baseline community is one of answerers not askers. our answer ratio (which is great) is 150-200% of other sites who graduated from beta.
@NeilFein: Because questions like "what is the origin of word X?" and "what is the difference in connotation between X and Y?" are much easier to phrase, polish, and ask than our usual subjective crafty fare.
That is the problem. A significant number of good, important writer-ly questions have subjective argumentable qualities to them, which is antithetical to the typical stack exchange site
(apologies for my extremely spotty activity right this moment - watching my daughter before rushing out to rehearsal. Probably will be able to talk about all this more at length at some later date.)
There's no references anywhere to it being anything else in literature, if there were you ccould make a descriptivist argument that it's acceptable
But there isn't so prescriptivism wins the day and it's prescribed in OED, which is considered the most official source for word definitions and forms
additionally, in english one of the things we don't do is play hard and fast with words that we inherited from Latin, as the reason we inherited them is because they were proscribed in some form.
You can ask in ELU, and they might even give you a different answer because they are douchey like that, but it would be wrong
@KitFox I got so frustrated with helping people at ELU because of the constant douchey passive aggresive downvotes with no explanation of correct answers
@KitFox Most especially frustrating was the downvotes and rude comments from people who are ESL, clearly didn't have a great command of the language who were being snarky about idiomatic meanings
Can I get some feedback on this potential migration? Would this question about revision tools in Final Draft be on-topic here? Because this would open the doors to questions about using Word, Scrivener, and so on here.
Please forgive any blasphemy in this question.
Every winter, Hogwarts students return home and celebrate Christmas with their families. But when you think about it, why would wizards be Christian? I have to imagine how Jesus would appear from a wizard's point of view.
Why would people from a ma...
@NeilFein If the question is: Should questions on writer-specific software like Scrivener (that I am trying but not loving) be allowed in Writers, then I say yes. BUT...
THAT specific question I do not think would work well in Writers because it appears to be asking a question of a technical nature regarding a feature of a word processing program
Perhaps the dividing line is if the question concerns writing or editing, it belongs here. IF it's about the tech specifically, we send it to Super User.
Are there revision features in Final Draft, similar to Track Changes in Microsoft Word?
While I can get the program to show added text in a different color, deleted text is not tracked as far as I can tell.
As you can see, Word shows text that's been crossed out, an advantage to editing som...
I need to revise a screenplay in Final Draft, and I'm finding that the revision features in the program are poor. Are there any ways to introduce revision features in to Final Draft, similar to Track Changes in Microsoft Word? If not, what kind of workflow could give me the same benefits of keepi...
Weird. Screen name changed in all of my SE's but not in Chat. Weird
Woo-hoo!
Fixed!
So ... what was the cliff notes version on how to handle critique requests? Did we come to an agreement? I'm finding the Meta posts on critique to be less than clear on the matter.
@JedOliver - The closest we have to a quick version:
In general: Post a bit of writing, have specific questions about it. "Make this better" or "what's wrong with this" or "proofread this" will be closed.
The Meta SO thread? Yeah, but if you read the comments, it's actually not all that clear. SE legal has yet to make a ruling on this.
I understand there's never been a test case of anything like this.
Personally, I can't imagine an excerpt, posted for the express purpose of improvement, would be an issue. But someone could in theory argue that the excerpt is the core of a derivative work.
I have no idea if this would survive a court challenge.
I would have to have a blurb that said "...and portions of Keeping Your Ford Tempo Alive appeared under a Creative Commons license at writers.se.com..."
Because I think one way Writers could continue to establish itself in the writing community is to provide a crowdsourced discussion of brief excerpts of written work ... but that dog won't hunt if writers have to be concerned about losing control of their intellectual property
Perhaps you could bring this up on Monday's chat? I'd love to hear how this could be melded with the existing SE Q&A engine.
For my part, I'm assuming that these legal concerns will be addressed at some point. There are too many ways this could be a problem with too many sites for them to ignore the problem.
If meta.photo is correct then providing a hyperlink to your intellectual property will not subject it to the possibility of falling under SE's Creative Commons policy
It's funny. I thought photo would have a lot of "critique my work" requests. They don't. The only discussion they have on it instructs people to go elsewhere for critiques.
The closest they have is their pic-of-the-week discussion, which takes place in meta and explicitly states that critiques are not needed nor are they wanted
Audio allows something similar to our critiques. Post a mix of a song, ask a specific question. I did one for this question about recording a djembe.
room topic changed to The Overlook Hotel: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. writers.stackexchange.com general chat. To ping a moderator here, you can type @ followed by the mod's name. (no tags)
I titled a short story "The Girl without a Soul". But recently I've been thinking on naming it "The Girl who didn't have a Soul."
Do they mean exactly the same thing? Which is a more appropriate title for a short story? Is there an advantage to using one over the other?
I need help making part of my resume more clear. Any suggestions that you have that will make the following statement more concise and readable would be appreciated.
Objective:
To work with a dedicated team of experts in a company where I can
enhance my knowledge and skills. Also to wo...
This may seem like a trivial distinction, but as a title choice it's important as the title conveys an overall sense of the tone of the story.
First of all, the use of the contraction don't is less formal than without so it might be best to consider the verbiage you've used throughout the stor...
There are a number of universities that offer courses on Harry Potter and many academic works on the same. Given such scholarly interest, has there been any sort of consensus on what made the series so popular? What are the major theories, who proposed them, and how are they supported?
Please forgive any blasphemy in this question.
Every winter, Hogwarts students return home and celebrate Christmas with their families. But when you think about it, why would wizards be Christian? I have to imagine how Jesus would appear from a wizard's point of view.
Why would people from a ma...
The Overlook Hotel
The Overlook Hotel