Daily 10 News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - io9 "1. 4Chan script kiddies unleash a virus that takes control of military drones (yes, such a virus already exists), crashing them into random targets just for the lulz." Would it be more likely that virus or worm would instead keep fetching porn images from 4Chan and then display them on the operator's monitors as the drone useless crashed into a children's orphanage or something? "2. How do people deal with space elevator music? The trip from Earth to the launch platform is three days long!" I'm think this would be handled in the same why as cruise ships or train travel, lots of movies, books to read and shuffleboard. "3. I'd rather see that happen to Dennis Richie, who died at roughly the same time, and in co-creating Unix and writing the first C compiler, had at least as large affect on the world as Jobs and Woz did. Sadly his death got almost no fanfare in the press. "4. For this! [www.youtube.com] "5. That is a frighteningly serious possibility. "6. Actually I think Gibson did this. "7.
60 Awesome Search Engines for Serious Writers June 20th, 2010 Finding the information you need as a writer shouldn’t be a chore. Luckily, there are plenty of search engines out there that are designed to help you at any stage of the process, from coming up with great ideas to finding a publisher to get your work into print. Both writers still in college and those on their way to professional success will appreciate this list of useful search applications that are great from making writing a little easier and more efficient. Professional Find other writers, publishers and ways to market your work through these searchable databases and search engines. Writing These helpful tools will help you along in the writing process. Research Try out these tools to get your writing research done in a snap. Google Scholar: With this specialized search engine from Google, you’ll only get reliable, academic results for your searches.WorldCat: If you need a book from the library, try out this tool. Reference Need to look up a quote or a fact? Niche Writers
Ten rules for writing fiction Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin 1 Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2 Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. 3 Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. 4 Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" ... he admonished gravely. 5 Keep your exclamation points under control. 6 Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose". 7 Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. 8 Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. 10 Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Diana Athill Margaret Atwood Roddy Doyle
30 Days of WorldBuilding By popular demand, you can now download the Magical WorldBuilder Guide in three easy-to-carry (non-DRM) formats: PDF for printing out at home or reading on a computerePub for use with many fine ereader devicesMOBI for use with Kindles and MobiPocket software.As of 2007, The world-builder exercises are licensed under a Creative Commons license to help you in deciding whether you can translate (yes, with credit back), distribute to your writing group (yes, with credit), sell (not without permission), reprint (yes, for non-commercial purposes), or mirror (yes, with credit back) this useful guide! In October, 2004, I posted 30 days of world-building exercises to the NaNoWriMo discussion forums. These are short, 15-minute exercises that can help you make crucial decisions about your world, and what you want your story to say about it. These exercises have been edited for general use and re-posted here. So, give yourself 7 and a half hours this month-- 15 minutes a day-- to build a world.
5 situations where it's better to tell than show in your fiction @ceti: BAH! Curse you both! This is a ploy with my co-worker, who only mentioned that I need to take this book from my shelf, dust it off, and read it already. You're all my Jiminy Crickets...Resolution #1 decided. @ceti: (My posts don't show correctly at times, so I apologize if this is a double.) Curse you both for conspiring with my co-worker, who only yesterday mentioned that I needed to take this book from my shelf, dust it off, and read it. You are all my Jiminy Crickets...Resolution #1 decided. Thanks! @Craig Michael Ranapia: Good example. That was pretty captivating!
How to write a novel: 25 rules 1. Never be in awe of your own style. 2. Writer's block = writer's indecision. 3. Write anything at first. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. How Not to Be a Clever Writer I think you're somewhat misunderstanding what I'm saying here. I'm not saying "No risk or experimentation." I'm saying those things are tools — use them to tell the story you want to tell, don't just use them because you want to use them. My interpretation of the article is that it's a sort of 'How not to be JJ Abrams'. As much as I love the majority of what I've seen of his stuff, he does seem to try too hard to be clever a LOT of the time. I love the complex plotting of Lost, but it gets convoluted and drops a lot of interesting ideas at times, and the bracelet thing at the end of Super 8 was cringeworthingly heavy-handed. Sometimes with this kind of cleverness, it's best to accept you don't know how to make it work in this scenario. And I think you're misunderstanding me a little. :) No, you're not saying it, but your piece does suggest particular directions over others.
Feedbooks | Free eBooks and Best Sellers 10 Worst Mistakes That Authors of Alternate History Make Nazi Germany also didn't have the population available to fight the fight they chose. Under Stalin, the lives of Russian peasants were crap. It wouldn't have taken much to turn the local population against Moscow. As it was with Nazi racial attitudes, Slavs were maybe half a step above Jews, but still beneath contempt, so they treated the locals worse than Stalin ever did. Had England rolled over as easy as France did, then Germany isn't fighting a two front war, and then there's no staging area to invade Europe, and then maybe. We had huge problems coming up through Italy, and that stalemate could have been continued indefinitely. It's fun to think about. But even if they took it all, they probably wouldn't have been able to hold onto it all for too long, anyhow, unless the Nazi leadership was willing to kill all of the locals for being untermensch...which they probably were.
m.guardian.co.uk Margaret Atwood. Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian 1 Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. 2 If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. 3 Take something to write on. 4 If you're using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick. 5 Do back exercises. 6 Hold the reader's attention. 7 You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. 8 You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. 9 Don't sit down in the middle of the woods. 10 Prayer might work.
Brandon Sanderson: Sanderson's First Law Introduction I like magic systems. That’s probably evident to those of you who have read my work. A solid, interesting and innovative system of magic in a book is something that really appeals to me. True, characters are what make a story narratively powerful—but magic is a large part of what makes the fantasy genre distinctive. For a while now, I’ve been working on various theories regarding magic systems. I’d like to approach the concept of magic in several different essays, each detailing one of the ‘laws’ I’ve developed to explain what I think makes good magic systems. The Law Sanderson’s First Law of Magics: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic. When I applied to be on the programming of my very first Worldcon (following my sale of Elantris, but before the book was actually released) I saw that they were doing a “How does the magic work?” It my very first panel at the convention. “Well,” I said.