http://inkless.danmcminn.net Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:10:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en establishing a setting for your story without making it seem dated When Anthony Burgess created his masterwork A Clockwork Orange, he didn't get his slang by simply transcribing ideas from high schoolers. He created a lexicon for his near-future hoodlum based on a reasonable assumption (in 1962, when it was written) ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/06/diy-slang/ using language to give your story a foreign context In writing, adopting the perspective of a foreigner can give you an angle on a story that may provide you with much more insight. Particularly in speculative fiction, but also in other fiction, alien or unworldly characters can be very satisfying. And ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/06/no-direct-translation/ What Makes a Good Time-Travel Story? As a general rule, I dislike time-travel stories. On the thematic side, many wind up being blunt and bludgeoning "commentaries" about what's wrong with the world today (similarly to zombie movies), or condescending and superficial cultural missions to the ignorant. On the technical side, science ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/06/perfect-timing/ Some Microsoft Word Macros To Help You With Common Tasks I've just added a new page to the site that will be a central area for ideas and macros to help you with common tasks in Microsoft Word. I will try to think of others that are within my VB programming ability ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/05/new-macros-page/ rhythm is more important than spelling in imitating regional dialect In Reading Like a Writer, a book on literary analysis for aspiring writers, Francine Prose quotes Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (pg 16). Part of the quote is this piece of dialog: "Now look here, Bailey," she said, ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/05/speaking-in-tongues/ Highlighting Paragraph Length Many of the writing books I've read recommend varying paragraph size. The goal is to establish a natural rhythm and flow to sections of text---avoiding both lulling readers into a stupor with enormous blocks of text, or pummeling them with punchy one-sentence paragraphs. Here's how Self-Editing for Fiction Writers ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/05/the-shape-of-your-story/ Overly Leadable Characters in Speculative Fiction I've just finished reading The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold, quite a shift in gears after James Joyce's Dubliners. Like much speculative fiction it was rather like a ride in a hovercar: the interesting technology was (mostly) able to carry the story, keep our ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/05/a-motivational-speakers-paradise/ Insurmountable Disadvantage in Science Fiction Everybody loves to think that it's the size of the fight in the dog, not the dog in the fight, that determines things. I like them so much so I was probably one of the only people who could really suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/05/fightin-ewoks/ After a bit of fighting with the table-creation program, my list of resonances and list of discordances are ready to go live. I use the term "resonance" to mean a word which is an idea onomatopoeia. Rather than “hiss” or “splat”, which are meant to sound like the phenomena they ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2008/01/resonances-discordances-pages/ Fiction as a String or Web of If-Then Statements In addition to laboratory experiments on ideas, works of fiction can also be thought of as elaborate if-then statements, comparable to those in much clearer-defined fields such as mathematics and logic. For fiction, the basic details and the elements of stories about ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/07/big-ifs/ Fiction as Thought Experiment From time to time, one hears from people who, for whatever reason, disdain fiction. Usually, they are the kinds of people who consider themselves non-fiction purists, and their most common jibe is that fiction is all just a pack of lies. Perhaps because writers are self-conscious lot, ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/07/fiction-is-not-lying/ One of the first mistakes beginning writers make is that they use too many adverbs. This is probably due to a number of misguided efforts aimed at making writing more vivid: 1) the beginning writer's desire to cram as many detail words as possible into every sentence 2) the notion that adding ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/the-word-pyramid/ This is the eighth and final category in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. The story elements at this level are the most broad, and often require the most out of story planning time to execute. Some of them are so ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/8-series/ This is the seventh of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. A number of very big issues gain predominance at this level, mostly focused on story cohesion and creating a recognizable path through from beginning to ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/7-novels/ This is the sixth of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. Though chapters are often shorter than short stories, since they require reference to larger book-length issues or themes, they are in a broader category than ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/6-chapters/ This is the fifth of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. It will focus on the issues that come to the fore when writing on the level of short stories. Primary among these issues is characterization: ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/5-shorts/ This is the fourth of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. Since it focuses on paragraph length, much of this section is devoted to the rhythm of writing: the painting of text against the white space ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/4-paragraphs/ This is the third of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. It is concerned with the sentence-level organization of writing. As such, it covers many of the no-fun aspects of writing: proper grammar, punctuation, and the ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/3-sentences/ This is the second of the eight categories in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. It is concerned with those quick descriptions: the handful of words that can sum up an idea in a way that is immediately understandable by ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/2-phrases/ This is the first and most minute level of detail of the eight levels in the Story Gamut, my way of classifying story elements on a scale from micro-elements to macro-elements. It is the most minute element: encompassing issues like word choice, the sounds of words and whether or not ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/1-words/ Organized by Size Welcome to the first post on Inkless Writing. I intend for this site to present all of the important aspects of writing, organized by the length of the material being written. I freely admit that this is a fairly arbitrary way of organizing the various elements of writing. However, ... http://inkless.danmcminn.net/2007/06/aspects-of-writing/