We need some new words for when someone is acting weak or cowardly. Like real derogatory insulting ones. All the good ones we have nowadays imply some unchangeable characteristic of a subgroup i.e., they’re all references to women. Women are not weak and not cowards, so these no longer have any meaning. Yelling at someone “stop being a girl” carries no weight when people exist like Ronda Rousey and Malala Yousafzai and Simone Biles and Hillary Clinton and Winona LaDuke and Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elizabeth Warren and Leslie Jones and Emma Watson and on and on. The word “pussy” refers to female anatomy. I guess if you don’t have…
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Words that Take You Out of Fantasy Settings
Last night I was tossing and turning because I was worried about my new novel. It’s a first draft, it should be written badly, but that doesn’t stop me: it’s boring, the characters are flat, there’s not enough action, I’m wasting my time on scenes that don’t advance the plot. Stuff like that. And the biggest problem that I’m glossing over is that, while I’ve done a lot of world-building, I haven’t done a lot of terminology obscuring. What that means is changing those certain words that pull you out of the fantasy setting. For example, I had one character say “the heavens”, referring to up there. Well, this is…
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I Can’t Talk About Rape Retraction
I’ve been reading and re-reading this I Can’t Talk About Rape post I wrote two years ago, and keep referring to when I get in Internet kerfuffles. The content and context is quite sensitive, and recent circumstances has forced me to re-evaluate my words. I write this blog with the attitude that no one is reading. Because really, no one was, and it was more freeing. But it’s no longer that simple. Commenters forced me to rethink about what I had said (see? you guys can change things! You just don’t need to yell.) Should I issue a retraction? Well, that would imply that I didn’t believe in what I…
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I Am a Dick
The fact is, I was going to write a counter-argument parable to Jim C. Hines. You see, I was angry. I was sincerely trying to understand this concept, but I kept getting shut down and told “you don’t get it, so I’m not going to explain it to you”. It was going to be fairly well-thought out too. It was about a pig who went into a book store, where she was going to complain to the store owner (a Wolf) how they shouldn’t stock the new book from Tim W. Grimes because it contains references to magic. And her son couldn’t do magic — some kids were making fun…
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Little Red Riding Hines and the Big Bad Wolf
I don’t know why I keep getting in kerfuffles with Jim C. Hines. I think that if we ever met in person, we’d get along great. It’s just we have some convictions we disagree on, or I’m woefully ignorant of. It’s not like I’m coming away obstinate and unchanged. I now understand that inability to give consent for sex = consent not given. You’d think that’d be a no-brainer, but yes, it did need to stew in my brain a little while before I understood it completely. White male privilege is an insidious thing. I resolved it by using the metaphor of stage-diving. You want to jump off the stage…
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Mermaid Story First Draft is Done
I finished the first draft of the Mermaid Story today (tentatively titled Merm-8). Elapsed time: 135 days (4 months, 14 days). Final Word Count: 73,000. Not where I wanted to be, as far as word count. I was hoping this would be a 90,000 word story. And it felt like it. It was 147 pages in Word (12 pt. Times New Roman) and I wrote each scene expecting a 100,000+ word count, based on my Black Hole Son experience. But I ended up short. At least 75,000 is more marketable than 120,000 (not that it’s going to stay at that word count). It kind of makes me sad. I thought…
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Macro 2: Find Sentences Longer than 20 words
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. Okay, here is the second one, and probably the 2nd most useful. Word already has the ability to look for long sentences, but in today’s age, long is a lot longer than you should have. Especially if you’re writing query letters or synopsisesises. You can customize what the cut off is by altering the “maxWords” variable. One of the most difficult things when developing these macros was determining when a sentence begins, when it ends, and how many words are inbetween. Word claims to have native functions for this, but I found it quite…
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Macro 1: Find Questionable Words
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. As part of my everlong quest to help my fellow writers, I will be posting some of the Macros I’ve provided (I’m a programmer!) to help out with writing. Here is the first one, and probably the most useful. It searches for all words in a given list (adverbs, overused words, and cliches) and highlights them. To use: 1. Copy the code below. 2. Open Word. 3. Press Alt+F8 (or go to Tools->Macro->Macros) 4. Click Edit. Microsoft Visual Basic will open. 5. In the project window (upper right), select Normal->Modules->NewMacros 6. Paste the code…
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White Mage Story Update & “You Got Your Reality in my Fantasy!”
I have two questions for the audience today. I find myself in conflict with White Mage Story. The first is the ending – I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the message that I wanted to send, with the message that everyone received. It’s like playing telephone. I was trying to say something about “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it to the best of your ability”. Instead, people got “learn the value of what you do, rather than trying to change it”. I think a lot of people misinterpreted White Mage Story, which is my own fault. The trick now is whether to go with…
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Writing Advice #12
Never use “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. A short tip today, but nicely tangible. We’ve got one cliche, and one word that’s just overused. You figure out which is which. “All hell broke loose” is not a phrase I ever use, just naturally. It’s not descriptive enough. “Suddenly”, I do. My first stories used suddenly so much it became a like a word in a magic spell – meaningless. My problem was, how was I supposed to communicate that something happened unexpectedly and quickly? Writing doesn’t give you the luxury of timing. Right now, I just drop the suddenly, whenever I see it, without even looking at it. I’m…
