You should only use the word “insure” if you’re talking about buying or selling insurance policies. The word “ensure” should be used when you want to guarantee an outcome. For example, “please ensure that you don’t make that mistake.” Unfortunately, Fox News hasn’t gotten the memo…
Fox News: “We expect Russia to insure that all lines of communication and transport, including seaports, airports, roads and airspace, remain open for the delivery of humanitarian assistance and for civilian transit,” Bush said.
No, Fox, no! You will rot in the deepest, hottest bowels of grammatical hell. Devils will stab you with semi-colons until you beg for death’s sweet embrace.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, spoke at my workplace when he came to Washington in 2006. Sadly, the only thing I remember about his appearance was that I got to work within a few feet of a Secret Service agent.
This isn’t government-sponsored national service, but I think that twelve stitches and a hell of a lot of ass-kicking earn the tag.
A Tulsa newspaper reports that a Batman imposter walked into a grocery store and unsuccessfully tried to open fire. Then an airline mechanic tackled him from behind. Several minutes of unrelenting pounding ensued.
If you have a list of links in your sidebar or site-map, test the links once a month. It amazes me how often we change the permalinks without updating the sidebar. The monthly link-test is easily the most productive minute I spend on website design.
I don’t expect to post very much today, given that I’ll be in transit for 18 hours. However, in the meantime, I will leave you with this nugget of wisdom: avoid immortal characters. They’re terrible.
From Wired.com: “Thomas Edison, never shy about exploiting a situation to his advantage, especially if it could cripple a rival, therefore built the electric chair to operate on alternating current [the preferred system of his rivals]. By associating the Tesla-Westinghouse current with something as unpleasant as capital punishment, Edison hoped to turn public opinion his way. He even suggested replacing the new coinage, electrocution, with ‘to be Westinghoused.’ It never caught on.”
That invented use of “Westinghouse” is brilliant. Which words could you repurpose for your fiction?
Mary Sues are characters that are overpowerful, self-insertions of the author. This article will help you identify and fix some of the biggest problems with Mary Sues.
Expecting perfection from the first draft will probably paralyze you. On the first draft, the most important thing is to write something and then you can turn it into a coherent, clean masterpiece later. When you’re writing the first draft, it may help to think of your job as giving your internal self-editor material to work with rather than writing a story fit for public consumption.
Here are a few suggestions to avoid perfectionist impulses during the first draft…
1) Don’t edit.
2) If you get stuck on what happens in one part of the story, summarize it in a few sentences and move on. You can fill it in later.
3) Commit yourself to writing for at least 30 or 45 minutes. After ten minutes of accomplishing little, you will hopefully start to feel frustrated and lower your expectations. “Maybe this line is good enough.”
City Journal wrote a well-researched article on the future of conservative nonfiction, but I’d like to make a larger point about political nonfiction. “Since the new conservative imprints have far less latitude than traditional nonfiction imprints to fail, they tend to rely heavily on, and largely be defined by, a handful of proven iconic authors.” It’s probably true that smaller publishers have to be wary about rolling the dice with noncelebrities. But, because of blogging, I think that it’s tremendously difficult for a non-celebrity of any political persuasion to publish political nonfiction. Readers can find blogs that offer any style of political thought for free. Some blogs are exceedingly well-written and intelligent. So why would anyone want to pay for your opinion? Because you’re someone who has an invaluable perspective because you used to be a President, a secretary of state, or are a hugely popular talk-radio host, etc…*
Observations from the Balcony suggests it is because mysteries are helped more by cinema than other forms of literary fiction. I’d lay out two alternate theories: 1) it’s far easier to make a detective story intriguing and interactive, because the readers can solve the case alongside the detective. 2) The premises, particularly in detective mysteries, are easier to sell than exotic premises that use magic or advanced technology.
Additionally, I think it’s slightly easier to write mysteries…
When you try to sell your work to a publisher or readers, please do not use the word “parody” interchangeably with “comedy.” A parody imitates the style or plays on the conventions of an author/genre /work to make fun of it. Most comedies are not parodies. There are two common reasons that authors may misuse the word parody…
A character strikes a pose by doing anything that’s primarily designed to give readers an interesting visual. Unlike well-executed visuals, poses are usually distracting and rarely add anything like character development or immersion to the story. It’s usually more effective to rewrite the visual to show us something about the character. For example, a character that admires his weapon is striking a pose because he’s not telling us anything interesting about himself. You could fix that by having the character run his finger across the blade to test its sharpness. That helps develop the character as a competent and tough swordsman. In contrast, someone who just admires the weapon probably fails to show any of his own traits and is offering a visual only for its own sake.
Character 1: “Bob and I are going to Vancouver for the summer.” Character 2: “Vancouver?” Character 2 comes across as sort of mentally slow, right? Unless you’re trying to make characters sound slow (or totally disoriented), I would recommend against having them just repeat each other. Whenever a character says something, it should […]
From John Scalzi’s Redshirts: Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory. Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick […]
Since 2000, movies with 2+ superheroes have averaged 59% on Rotten Tomatoes, whereas movies with a lone superhero have averaged 50%. Lone Superheroes Company Average RT Rating Marvel 54 DC 48 Other 43 Overall 50 Superhero Teams Company Average RT Rating Marvel 64 DC 41 Other 58 Overall 59 Below, I listed […]
Is there anything about The Avengers you would have done differently? If so, what? (I wouldn’t recommend reading the comments here until you’ve seen the movie–there will probably be many spoilers). […]
If you’re interested in becoming a guest blogger for SN, I’m looking for writing advice for current and/or prospective authors (for example, on some element of writing craft, marketing/sales, promotions/publicity, agents, the publishing industry, or anything else many novelists and/or comic book writers would find helpful). Please send me a 1-2 sentence quer […]
I’d give it 3 stars out of 4. The closest comparison that comes to mind is that it’s the movie that Fantastic Four wanted to be when it was growing up (before it got addicted to cocaine and dropped out of school). Some other thoughts: The writing was very fresh and clever. I liked the way […]
Tyche Books is looking for Canadian superhero stories between 1000-10,000 words. “We want to see any and all permutations of the superhero genre, but with a uniquely Canadian perspective. Stories must involve a Canadian element — setting, politics, culture, history, characters, etc. Any genre-mashing goes: alternate history, crime, horror, romance, SF, fanta […]
