Cia

Your whole family has been gathered together for the first time in years. You think nothing of it, until you hear your cousin’s discussing some sort of announcement and find out this is all about you. What is the announcement? 

Are you thinking of Rob Colton's Timber Pack Chronicles? It's not Premium, but his scifi series "Galactic Conspiracies" is. 

Nope. There's no "just one way" to apply writing styles. They vary based on the type of writing, the geographic location of the author or the publisher's house style, etc... The best you can do is figure out which style you want to follow (in the US that's usually either the Blue Book of Grammar or Chicago Manual of Style) and be consistent. 

When you post something like this, it's better to say something about the writing element that might need work, then make some suggestions or commentary on how to improve it, not a "why do you think that everyone accepts this 'insert item believed to be subpar' and doesn't have the same problem I have with it" gist. When I post topics about writing elements, grammar or punctuation rules, story or character development, etc... it's always with a goal of improving others' work in a constructive fashion that comes across as more informative than judgmental. I write examples of what could be considered wrong, suggest how to fix it, and showcase some ways for authors to learn more about the particular subject or ask them to share what they have used to learn how to refine their skills on the subject, such as books or websites. 

It comes across a lot more constructive than critical that way. Writing is as much a skill as an art, and it's hard to know when you're doing something wrong if no one tells you that you're doing it wrong. As a commenter, though, you have to walk the line between encouraging someone to improve and telling them their work is 'unreadable' because of some grammar, punctuation, or typos. One way might actually give them an incentive to learn and apply that learning and the other might just hurt their feelings or convince them they don't have the ability to learn to write better. 

15 hours ago, pauloaragao said:

Geez... It looks like I'll have to re-write 12951 words...

 

As much as it sucks to rewrite, yes, that's often what we end up doing as authors. The first time I published an eBook, the editor tore it apart. I was doing SO many things wrong, and I had to fix many different elements from my grammar and punctuation to independent body movements, head hopping, passive phrasing, etc.... Plus I had to rewrite entire scenes and add more. Check out the mess of my first story on GA, "The Price of Honor" because I've left it alone for the last 10 years so when I say my writing started out like a hot mess, I can show exactly how bad it was. 

The only way to get better is to ask questions, take feedback, research the "rules" and refine, refine, refine. It gets easier over time; I'm a firm believer that good storyteller can become great--if they put the work into it. 

22 minutes ago, pauloaragao said:

About the POV, the way I am writing the story is: I have 3 chapters. Each chapter shows the same story through another POV. So on that excerpt, I am the author telling the story but focusing on John's feelings. Then later I'll be the author telling the story focusing on Robert's feeling and so forth. Does that make sense?

I'm telling the story this way because I want the readers to know what's going on with each character depending on their POVs. I want the readers to have their own conclusions because at the end I will show them these characters are not who they appear to be.

Honestly, no, because the author writes the story, but it should be told from the character's POV. You don't want to insert your voice in the story unless it's an actual plot element like using a narrator voice (as the author or a fictional character) to set scenes (which is often used in play formats). Otherwise, the whole concept of show, don't tell means that the story should always be told from the character's POV and that their thoughts should be the only ones shown (which then lets the reader know who the POV character is), and the reader should get to see what is happening in the story through that, plus the actions and speech of all the characters in the scene. 

While you may feel it's a 'style', what you're going to find is that it doesn't come across that way to a reader who will most likely view it as too awkward to enjoy because you're not letting the story unfold naturally. There's a way to adjust the rules when writing at times to explore tweaks to create your unique style, but it's not usually accepted to flout them completely because it will come across as unedited and written improperly, which will make readers who prefer high quality fiction stop reading. 

11 minutes ago, Dmrman said:

Thanks for Point on ellipses(...) Although not perfect, I found out I am properly Placing the right closing punctuation, using the variables described above. and the spacing, I've heard some say period, space, period method, and others have responded " the space Not needed" any how, learning Something I never knew before! Thank you

There are many different styles of ellipses and the spacing typically is what differs. You either use what works best for you as long as you're consistent, or if your goal is to be published, then the accepted style the publishing house uses. 

@Dmrman Many authors use the speech tag with every instance of dialogue with published works in the fantasy scifi or fantasy genres, but if you can show that character doing something, it serves two purposes to both show the reader what is happening in the scene and indicate who is speaking without needing to constantly use speech tags. I agree, that style does get very old quick to me. 

23 minutes ago, pauloaragao said:

Thank you for your input!

For what I have learned, best way to find a editor/beta is to post on the forum saying I'm looking for one?

English is not my first language, so I need corrections, yes.

 

But in regards to the dialogue style, I really stand by it.

I know it does look like a script, but I dont feel like I'm cheating just because I'm not writing continuous sentences with many quote marks.

I do stop and write narration and about what the character is feeling, how he physically reacted and the setting and movements.

Here is an example:

 

"They were looking at each other: Robert looking coldly at John. John’s face in rage, red, his heart beating a little faster. After all, his husband just confronted him, and what’s worse, in front of someone else. He hated that! John looked back at Robert’s confrontational look and his glass was up in the air, his arm was still. Daniel was looking at John, with disgust.

 

John – You’re not going anywhere without me! Although you seem to forget, sometimes, we are married! Anywhere I go, you go! I’m not letting you go to a club and be ‘Peter Pan’ by yourself.

Robert – Whatever! Then I guess you’d have to come with us…"

 

Why is it so wrong to do it this way?

 

Thanks!!!

As an author, I would say it's incorrect both technically, by all accepted standards for formatting text that you'll find used by any publishing house and because it intrudes on the scene and the visual your words should be giving the reader in their head as they follow the characters and the story. For me as a reader, it comes across as an author who doesn't follow the basic structure either because they don't care to learn about writing conventions which smacks of ignorance/laziness or they feel the need to tell me each and every time who is talking because they don't have the skills to do it by mixing the speech and actions naturally (which the constant speech tags some authors use that are technically correct but read as redundant comes across to me as well). 

When I read your example, all the actions are occurring at once and then the characters speak afterward. But that's not true to life. People move and talk and think all at the same time. But when a reader is reading a story, the things happen as they read them, so when you don't mix the different motions/thoughts/speech it comes off as unnatural. 

Also, keep an eye on how you share the physical cues when you're sharing information from a POV character. In this segment, John's your character who is sharing his thoughts and the person the scene is showed through, but unless he's looking in a mirror, he can't know his face is red because he can't see his own face. And using 'they were looking at each other' is author voice as well because the main character wouldn't be thinking of himself and the other person as they or we in that way. If I were to write a scene like you've shown, it would be written like this:

John's face was hot, his heart pounding out of control. He could not believe his husband had just confronted him, and what's worse, in front of someone else! "You're not going anywhere without me. Anywhere I go, you go. I'm not letting you go to a club and 'Peter Pan' by yourself." 

 

Robert froze, his arm outstretched with his glass held in front of him. "Whatever!" He stared coldly at John. "Then I guess you'd have to come with us...."

Though, it seems weird that John would tell his husband he can't go somewhere without him, but the emphasis is on where 'I go, you go' instead of the other way around like... where Robert goes (to the club) John will go to because he doesn't want his husband off by himself. If that's the case, then it should read, "Where you go, I go." 

And, while we're talking about punctuation, when you end a line with ellipses (...) they must have closing punctuation of either another period, an exclamation point, question mark, etc... regardless of how you format the ellipses in regards to the spacing. 

I have to echo Myr's statements, especially dealing with the support requests and other messages of "Where did this go?" It can get really old, really fast. Not because it's hard to answer the question, but because we get all the alerts and sometimes struggle to check them as soon as possible to make sure there isn't a serious issue just to get our third "Hey, I can't find..." message of the day, for instance. Another issue Myr didn't mention is authors misusing the site to polish works before they publish. This doesn't necessarily mean we don't allow people to remove works for published--we do--but we feel like authors might be more prone to removing content for this reason if they don't have to request it from staff. 

And, to me, it's not a bother to have requests for deletion. It's not all that frequent, so it isn't an undue burden as far as site work goes. 

I think that's been discussed ad nauseam. Life isn't perfect, and neither is the text editor. If you find a formatting solution that works and doesn't break when the various upgrades happen, great. For my part, I prefer to keep my formatting as simple as possible because I don't want that, or the words, to distract from the way I hope the story is unfolding in the reader's mind. 

We've said many times that the issue with 'pasting from Android' is typically the processor capabilities in the device itself. In theory, you can use mobile devices to post. In reality, most of them just don't do well because they don't have the computing power comparable to a computer. That causes issues. The best way to post in the text editor in Stories is to use Word and a Windows-based computer. 

Yes, Word is actually the preferred editor to copy text from to use in GA's text box. If you want the best visual result for the chapter, don't use fancy formatting as mentioned. In fact, it's best to use the option to remove formatting that will appear below the text editor as a clickable option once you've pasted in your text. That strips out indents and hidden formatting you might not see. It does also strip out italics and bold, so you have to place those back into the text if you have them, but as that is 'special formatting' in writing and shouldn't be used excessively anyway. 

I loooooove to read. Anything, everything... except Huck Finn. I had to read that in my 4th grade reading group and hated it with a passion. As a little kid it was Aesop and Grimm, then historical stuff like Native American folklore, which lead to mythology, which lead to scifi... At the age of ten I tried romances and hated them and steered clear of them until my mid-twenties. I still won't read contemporary male/female romances (OMG, the tropes kill me!) but I will try just about anything else. A few of my favorites through my pre and early teen years: 

1. Little House on the Prairie: These were given to me by my grandmother, still in great condition since I cherished them carefully. This led to my love of writing a strong lead character. 

2. LoTR: 2 box sets. My original I got at 11 is literally taped together, but I have a movie set. This taught me about writing detailed works, but also about how you can have too much detail. 

3. Clan of the Cave Bear series--epic journey, imaginative world. But sometimes the pages of description feel like an author voice info dump and get repetitive. 

4. Outlander: Historical romance can be exciting and adventurous, and that men in skirts are HOT! 

5. Dune: Spice is Life. Also, if the story is written too technically (books in the series post-Dune) then they don't come off nearly as well. Reading should be entertaining. 

So much more has influenced me as a writer, like the Mercy Thompson and Anita Blake books, as well as most Sean Michael MM romances: there is such a thing as too much sex. Out of the Darkness by Kate Sherwood & Keeping Promise Rock: If you make readers love the characters and cry, they will love the book. M.A. Church's The Harvest series: don't judge a book by the title because it might actually be massively awesome, and be careful how you title your manuscripts if you're a writer. Cari Z's Ten Simple Things for Surviving the Apocalypse: I like humor in books, the snarkier the better, but I can't really pull it off as a writer so I just follow my favorite authors who can instead.

Can't Stop Reading 

1 hour ago, Sam Wyer said:

I don't have any kind of interestingly different approach.  I write for me, and pretty much only for me.  And like @Valkyrie says, any feedback is great.

But... latest comments feed?  I've only just started posting stuff here on GA but I'm already struggling to know when there are new comments, which I want to know, because I like to respond.  How/where do I find this feed?

As Valkyrie said, that is the current way of seeing notifications, and the best part is they stay in your steam until you access them, not get buried under other notifications. We have always had notifications that pop up or email for comments on stories or chapters, but that system is broken and we haven't been able to get our custom software (Stories) to connect properly with the forum software we get from IP Board. 

I've looked at the issue (via my Surface Pro with Edge) and found that I can see the blog with the post in your profile and go to the blog itself. When I click on the "Read More" drop menu the post opens. When I click on the link "Read More" I get the EX0 error with these details.

The error also occurred on the blog: Snowflake The Soundtrack, Brandon Smiling The Soundtrack and any blog post with a YouTube link in The Wisdom of M blog, but the error did not occur on any of the regular posts, even if they had offsite links that were not video related. 

Edit to add: I just tried clicking on Valkyrie's Musings From Valhalla post October 2006, which has images but not a YouTube link, and got the same error. 

On ‎8‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 11:27 AM, pauloaragao said:

I didn't go through the entire topics, so forgive me if this has been answered before...

What about using dialogues with this style:

 

John – You really think this is the best decision?

Clark – Yes, we do.

John – This is absurd…

Robert – John, please…

 

Is this ok?

Thanksss

If you're writing a screenplay... maybe. But the goal is to let your reader 'see' what is happening and it's not like every character is going to say their name and then whatever they're saying in the story. The appropriate punctuation of quotation marks are important to separate out what is actually being said versus thought or story narration that shows people what is happening by indicating motions and other happenings. And, while it may seem finicky to expect authors to use these rules when most readers won't be able to tell you a dangling participle from a gerund, most of the time, they will instinctively know when things are right versus wrong. That's especially true with basic punctuation because we naturally pace how and what we're reading with those marks. 

A good story can become great when it's written well... but a good story can also be tanked by an author not putting in a basic effort to write it to the best of their ability. 

Happy Birthday!! 

I'm unable to reproduce the error, Northie. I did note that you have the number of images you state, so I'm unsure of what the problem is. Have you continued to have it? Have you tried a different device or browser?