|
feedmyleg posted:ESL writers often have better grammar than native English speakers. If you have anyone able to do some minor editing or can commit yourself to doing a careful editing pass yourself, it's a no-brainer. Plus if you ever want to translate your own work back into your native language it'll be a lot easier than the other way around. This is a very fixable problem of course - I need to read more carefully and build up an inventory of useful words, and I can almost assuredly do that on the fly - but it weighed on my mind a little. Nae! posted:For what it's worth, I would have never picked up on you being a non-native speaker just from reading your post, so I think you can safely take a crack at writing prose in whichever language you prefer.  . I always tell myself "nonsense, you're obviously really good at English", but I also know that I'm an arrogant bastard and shouldn't always believe my own delusions of grandeur. It's good to hear that there isn't anything obviously wrong with the way I write...Pham Nuwen posted:I can feel the academic writing influence in your post but as others have said, I didn't notice anything in your post that screamed NON NATIVE SPEAKER. You all have convinced me to start in English, thanks a lot ! I'm quite excited to be done with the rough outline soon and start with actually putting down words. Once I got some chapters I'm satisfied with, I'll be sure to post them for sentence length scrutiny  .
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:26 |
|
|
Read more, write more, close thread.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:36
|
|
|
HIJK posted:Read more, write more, close thread. And add a box of puppies to a scene
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 22:59
|
|
|
HIJK posted:Read more, write more, close thread.  ?
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 23:01
|
|
|
Simply Simon posted:But what if "Les mehr, schreib mehr, schließ den Faden" is better
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2018 23:27
|
|
|
i find it harder to go from prose fiction to academic writing than from academic to fiction. like "gently caress i gotta use passive voice all up in this methods section and i'm screaming inside but active voice in experimental methods is weird and not generally helpful." or "oh i can't use a fun metaphor here cause my PI will cross it out." or "so many words i can't use to truly capture my feelings  "for fiction it's like sure just chuck all that poo poo in there and edit it up, though I have occasionally gotten some  responses when i use words that i think are more commonly used than they apparently are.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:00
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:00
|
|
|
SelenicMartian posted:English doesn't have 'doch.' Can you live without 'doch'? erm "doch" is something like "you don't think it be like it is, but it do" in one word and can be considered quite rude and childish. My Math teacher used to say "don't doch me bro" with his (humorous) explanation being that "doch" is an abbreviation of "you ox". Be glad I'm not writing comedy, basically.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 00:01
|
|
|
crabrock posted:i find it harder to go from prose fiction to academic writing than from academic to fiction. like "gently caress i gotta use passive voice all up in this methods section and i'm screaming inside but active voice in experimental methods is weird and not generally helpful." or "oh i can't use a fun metaphor here cause my PI will cross it out." or "so many words i can't use to truly capture my feelings If you want practice writing in passive voice, go work for literally any corporation and spend five minutes reading emails. You will master the art and also want to die.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 07:10
|
|
|
I would rather not and never want to, thank you Nano won, Charred is...probably half way done? A little over? We'll see! Genuinely not sure how long Charred is going to go but I doubt it'll be longer than 100K
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 07:17
|
|
|
The true horror is entire pages written entirely in subjunctive mood, for example in accident reports where they need to describe what people were supposed to do instead of dropping a satellite on the floor.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 08:39
|
|
|
I've read a (really good) history book that was almost completely written in conditional mood, because most of it was speculation and the author was determined not to make any declarative statements unless she had evidence for them.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2018 11:45
|
|
|
Simply Simon posted:Grammar is actually not what worries me - it's vocabulary. I have a sad habit of being a little lazy when reading - I read very fast, and often rely on context to "fill in the blanks" I gloss over. That works almost always, but it means there is a vast number of words I don't actually know the meaning of. I thought about this on the way home, and immediately stumbled on a random example: a word like "awning". I don't know what "awning" means. It's part of a building, something outside, and I've seen it used in a bunch of sentences where people traverse it, but the word itself carries no meaning to me. It took me quite a while to admit to myself that I didn't know if the "attic" is creepy and dark because it's downstairs or upstairs - if you only ever read sentences like "they decided they had to look for the monster in the dark, dusty attic, where nobody had gone for years", it could be either thing, and the cellar makes more sense, even. I mean, not that I consider myself that great at writing fiction, but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot more important factors than vocabulary in writing good fiction (e.g. pacing, plot, character development, register, etc). There are a handful of writers who have enormous vocabularies and can get away with swinging them around (e.g. China Mieville), but you can do great things with very few words (e.g. Hemingway).
|
|
#
?
Dec 2, 2018 07:05
|
|
|
Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean, not that I consider myself that great at writing fiction, but I'm pretty sure that there are a lot more important factors than vocabulary in writing good fiction (e.g. pacing, plot, character development, register, etc). But, again, I'm probably overthinking this. I'm more than ready to drop my posts here now (but I kept thinking you probably deserved an answer for your nice post, so here you go ), thanks a lot again to all of you for the encouragement! I'm having a lot of fun with the current stage of my project and I think I'll share some of that fun in the chat thread - that's probably gonna motivate me to stick with it as well, always a plus. I'll hopefully soon be back here (or even with an own thread) with some actual examples to critique.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2018 00:24
|
|
|
Thinderdome is the most active fiction thread, doing a week or two of that will give you a good idea of where your ESL prose sits, but you express yourself well in posts.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2018 02:09
|
|
|
simply just having a beta reader who uses mostly english will help sort those things out. they dont even need to be an editor or writer if you just need somebody to tell you “nah we dont rly use those words like that” or if you missed a word or something
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2018 03:19
|
|
|
Get a dictionary. A big dead-tree dictionary. Preferably a weird old one that tells its own story. Mine is the 1950 Webster's Student Dictionary, inside the front cover it says "this textbook is the property of the state of Florida." The only person who bothered to fill out the "Date Returned" space put "1/12/70." It has a section in the front for "new words" that kids of the 40s and 50s should know, like "montage" and "ack-ack." The best thing, though, is the pictures (I can't bring myself to call them "illustrations"), tiny hand-drawn masterpieces of concision. I got it and a thesaurus of similar provenance from a friend who maybe paid a buck for each of them... if that. The thing about paper dictionaries is that, if you look something up and you fall down a word hole, it's a hell of a lot easier to pull yourself out than an internet hole, and maybe you'll discover a nugget to steal on your way. In his excellent book on writing, The Lie That Tells a Truth, John Dufresne says to start collecting dictionaries immediately. I laughed when I read it... and then jumped on the next one I saw in a donation box, Blackison's Gould Medical Dictionary along with J.I. Rodale's Synonym Finder because thesauri are even more subjective than dictionaries. That was a heavy trip home. I'm not saying only this for people trying to work their way through the oddities of English, but for everyone who writes. One of my favorite bits on M*A*S*H (and this is saying something) was ad-libbed by Alan Alda on set - Hawkeye was asked if he'd brought any books with him to Korea and he said "the dictionary, because it has all the other books in it." Which kind of says it all.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2018 06:01
|
|
|
I'm doing some world building and i wanted to avoid the unfortunate implications of calling other completely different sapient beings as "races", opting to use "species" instead. my only real problem is how can i explain how hybrids happen between different species?
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 16:35
|
|
|
You're going to be in iffy territory no matter what. If they can mate then they're not completely different species, outside of F1 hybrids. But if you're going down that road, just do research into the language around different species mating is talked about in reality as in mules, wolf/dog hybrids, etc. But you're going to end up with a lot of uncomfortable words like "crossbreeds" and "hybrids" and "interspecies" that have problematic histories in our world and don't sound so great when applied to sentient beings. You can always just make up your own term that won't carry the same baggage.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 17:01
|
|
|
feedmyleg posted:You can always just make up your own term that won't carry the same baggage. that's the thing, i suck at naming things. i either have to rely on generators or mashing names together and hoping it ain't a curse word in another language or already been used. i guess i'm very conscious of being as inoffenseive as possible.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 17:18
|
|
|
Fruity20 posted:that's the thing, i suck at naming things. i either have to rely on generators or mashing names together and hoping it ain't a curse word in another language or already been used. i guess i'm very conscious of being as inoffenseive as possible. Blamfgoobles?
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 17:27
|
|
|
Find a word that's close but different. "Splice" and "scion" would work well to capture the idea of some kind of sci-fi offshoot gene combination nonsense.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 17:38
|
|
|
You could also use the term "chimera" which isn't scientifically accurate but gets the idea across and doesn't have a ton of baggage.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 17:41
|
|
|
setting is more or less science fantasy with emphasis on fantasy. so yea i might take that.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 18:03
|
|
|
REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Blamfgoobles? I like this
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 18:21
|
|
|
Star Trek had this all over the place (species from totally different planets interbreeding), but I don't think they ever named it. That said, I'm pretty sure they did it intentionally as a way of addressing and exploring the issues biracial people face, rather than as any attempt to agree with actual science.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 18:22
|
|
|
Fruity20 posted:I'm doing some world building and i wanted to avoid the unfortunate implications of calling other completely different sapient beings as "races", opting to use "species" instead. my only real problem is how can i explain how hybrids happen between different species? Sentients? Sapients? Or what other people are saying and make up a new term.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
feedmyleg posted:You're going to be in iffy territory no matter what. If they can mate then they're not completely different species, outside of F1 hybrids. You are correct, but really, cross-species mating is so common in sci-fi and fantasy that most readers aren't really going to even bat an eye when you mention that a character is half-human, half-Arzaninan. I mean, there will probably be a few scientifically knowledgeable people who go "that's not how species work", but this isn't something I'd lose sleep about unless you're really going to go deep into exploring what it means to be part of two different species. "Interspecies" sounds like a good term to use.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 18:34
|
|
|
thanks for some inspiration ideas. i just wanted to ask since there's a plot point where a tribe of harpies are trying to repopulate by capturing human men in hopes of siring male harpies to breed with. the problem is that 90% end up being hybrids instead of purely harpies. knowing how stubborn they are they keep on doing it. another is i'm trying to be a tad bit more scientific with some of my mythical creatures. not too realistic per say as some hybrids/chimeras can still breed but the rest can't. demons are the exception as they aren't a species in the traditional sense.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 19:06
|
|
|
Fruity20 posted:thanks for some inspiration ideas. i just wanted to ask since Did the Incryptid series by Seannan McGuire ever delve into the science bits? You might want to pick up that series.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 19:12
|
|
|
Exmond posted:Did the Incryptid series by Seannan McGuire ever delve into the science bits? You might want to pick up that series. thanks for the recommendation
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 19:19
|
|
|
FWIW Star Trek called them "hybrids" and I can tell you this because my wife and I are ridiculing our way through Voyager right now
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2018 19:28
|
|
|
I'm writing in a third-person PoV, and I can't seem to decide whether to have the dialogue tags "X said" refer to the protagonist's parents by their names ("Jim said"), or what the protagonist would call them ("Mom said".) It's such a small choice, and it seems dumb to worry about it (especially since this is only relevant to the early part of the novel). But I think it matters in terms of distance between reader and protagonist. I should have a consistent distance, it can't shift. It feels awkward, or false to me to see "Dad said", but going "Jim said" puts greater distance between the reader and the protagonist.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:02
|
|
|
Are you writing it in the character's voice, or in a different voice? If the former, go with what they'd call them. If the latter, go by their name.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:24
|
|
|
If a character speaks phonetically most of the time, should I drop the apostrophes? I've seen a lot of people do it, and it looks wrong, but if I keep the apostrophes it looks like ev'ry uvva word's got dem apostr'fees innit.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:31
|
|
|
Djeser posted:Are you writing it in the character's voice, or in a different voice? If the former, go with what they'd call them. If the latter, go by their name. That's helpful. If I was doing this in first person, I would be writing it from the character's voice, but I'm writing in third person because there will be multiple PoV's in the book. Thinking about it like that, your advice makes a great deal of sense. I'll probably stick to the name, I'm more comfortable with that. Screaming Idiot posted:If a character speaks phonetically most of the time, should I drop the apostrophes? I've seen a lot of people do it, and it looks wrong, but if I keep the apostrophes it looks like ev'ry uvva word's got dem apostr'fees innit. You should probably not go overboard with writing phonetically, as that can get tiring to read. Eew woodnt rite a dum caracter sew awl there wordz r miss spelled, wood ewe? An occasional word here and there for flavor is fine, just be careful not to get carried away. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Dec 13, 2018 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:32
|
|
|
Screaming Idiot posted:If a character speaks phonetically most of the time, should I drop the apostrophes? I've seen a lot of people do it, and it looks wrong, but if I keep the apostrophes it looks like ev'ry uvva word's got dem apostr'fees innit. If it looks bad, that might be your brain going "hey dummy don't do this".
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:44
|
|
|
Screaming Idiot posted:If a character speaks phonetically most of the time, should I drop the apostrophes? I've seen a lot of people do it, and it looks wrong, but if I keep the apostrophes it looks like ev'ry uvva word's got dem apostr'fees innit. It's been a while since I've read them but maybe review James Herriot's books? He frequently tried to capture the particular Yorkshire dialect and it usually felt pretty readable to me. An over-abundance of apostrophes is just going to make your dialog look like a Robert Jordan book imo
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:45
|
|
|
Pham Nuwen posted:It's been a while since I've read them but maybe review James Herriot's books? He frequently tried to capture the particular Yorkshire dialect and it usually felt pretty readable to me. Good call, i know what you mean. Irvine Welsh is the counter example, he does the phonetic accents well but it's a bit of effort to read.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 06:47
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:26 |
|
|
I could use a bit of advice about structuring my first act. The story I'm working on is a episodic spy thriller- there's a problem, the team goes on a big, dumb mission to figure out what's going on and stop it, they rest, then a new problem appears. In my first draft I actually start with the viewpoint character getting recruited, and they spend about 20,000 words at spy hogwarts making friends and learning how to pick locks and murder dudes. I like the section, because it really helps you empathize with the protagonist by following them on their journey from normal goober to james bond, but it's a really weird island of content. From the instant they graduate they're in a by-the-numbers spy procedural, and my kneejerk reaction is to say that if that's where the bulk of the book lives, I should toss the deep end and just start the book with them doing what they'll do for the entire story. So am I being too aggressively structuralist in cutting the opening just because it doesn't follow the same mold as the rest of the story?
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2018 12:42
|
|
