What are you writing about now?

david_wendelken said:

Writing one poisons the soul and reading most of them numbs the brain.

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Fortunately it seems, I've never done either. Speaking of 'how to spend time' as I did above, and appreciating your input, I'll maintain that lack of experience.😄

I've been thinking about how to improve the "show don't tell" aspect of my books.

One of the problems I have with Book 2 is that Book 1 isn't finished. So, when I have someone read Book 2 to give me their feedback. they don't know who any of these people are, nor their backstory. Back when I was trying to just get Book 2 into existence, I didn't want to spend time and energy in telling people what they would already know once book 1 is finished. Plus, that's a lot of exposition up front and that's to be avoided.

I figured out a few things that might help solve that problem (other than magically finishing book 1 next week).

This evening, I started an experiment. I'm splitting the first chapter of book 2 into two chapters. (It's a long chapter, so that's probably for the best anyway.)

A piece of info that's important to understand. Book 2 covers one calendar year, starting the November before the War of the Ring breaks out.

Chapter 1 is currently told by an unnamed 3rd person narrator. As the premise of my books are that they are translated historical documents, said narrator would have had to be someone on very good terms with all parties involved, and with a "friendly" point of view towards them. It's never been stated anywhere in the book (yet), but it's a minor character later in the book that rises to heroic level and becomes a family friend and retainer of the main characters. That character is a bard, also from Lorien, and would want to research and record the family history for the people of Lorien.

I've decided to split chapter 1 into two parts. (It's a long one, so that's probably for the best anyway.) The first part will be told by two different characters, playrights and pranksters, who are already family friends. They will be relating the first part of the chapter, which they witnessed and participated in a bit under a calendar year earlier. But they will be telling this story, in person, around a campfire on the road back from Minas Tirith (after the wedding of Aragorn and Arwen) to Edoras. So there are also elves of Imladris and humans from Gondor, Rohan and Rangers of the North around the campfire, swapping tales. It gives me a natural way to explain things folks who aren't from Lorien wouldn't know. One of them can interject a one line explanation when needed. Plus, these two characters are, well, characters. They're pranksters and playwrights, and very funny and witty. Hopefully I'll like this opening even more!

(Ent: they are the two elven scouts in the Money for Honey story I sent you.)

I picked up a book called "Lord of Maps" by Isaac Dushku. He does modern maps in the Tolkien Map style. I mention it because he included a few pages towards the end on how he makes the maps. It includes what pens he uses for which map features and instructions on how to draw said map features. I gave it a whirl while stuck in a hotel room and the results made me very happy. I think with a day of practice I'll be able to knock out maps in that style for my book.

Not sure that's technically "writing" although the maps will be labeled. But illustrations are key to a story and for a Tolkien-style story, maps are essential!

I'll need a Lórien map with some surrounding territory.
A map of the raid by the goblins of Moria when they entered Lórien to catch the Fellowship (and the resulting small battle).
A map of the full scale invasion from Moria into Lórien during the War of the Ring.
A map of the Battle of the Anduin where the orcs and spiders of Mirkwood crossed the Anduin to assault Lórien.
A map of the Battle of the Fords of Celebrant where the Easterlings - the Variag and the men of Khand - assaulted Lórien after forcing a passage at the Undeeps.
A map showing the territory from Lorien to Edoras to Minas Tirith and back via Hollin and the path of the elves to Lorien and back.

After doing my mapping roadtest with Dusku's instructions, I'm pretty sure I can pull them off! I have a light table that will help.

And now that my art class finals are over, I can get back to editing and writing!

david_wendelken said:

"Lord of Maps"

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His maps are epic! Pretty cool if you're able to replicate them, too.

Glorfindel Goldtress said:

His maps are epic! Pretty cool if you're able to replicate them, too.

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I think pretty much anyone could. It's really simple once you see how its done. (And the book shows you!)

About 10 weeks ago I replaced my computer of some years with a new Dell. A key popped off the keyboard less than 2 weeks later. The tech sent to fix this broke all the USB ports, the camera, the microphone, the speaker, left huge gaps between the top and bottom plastic case when he reassembled it, made the screen work only some of the time, and left a pile of screws and such on the table "because he didn't know where they were supposed to go back."

Over the next 3 visits, they made the screen work only some of the time again, the built-in mousepad, and speakers again. I think there was more but after awhile it got hard to keep track of it all.

So, yesterday I got the replacement computer in and set it up. Everything is peachy except I messed up the transfer of the MS Word automatic correction list. I use it A LOT because it lets me type in Lorien and it automagically changes it to Lórien. (And a host of other words with the (to Americans anyway) funky letters in them.)

So that's what I'm doing tonight. I'm rebuilding that list.

PS - If anyone wants to know how to set up this feature for use, let me know. It saves a lot of bother when typing and editing.

david_wendelken said:

A key popped off the keyboard less than 2 weeks later. The tech sent to fix this broke all the USB ports, the camera, the microphone, the speaker, left huge gaps between the top and bottom plastic case when he reassembled it, made the screen work only some of the time, and left a pile of screws and such on the table "because he didn't know where they were supposed to go back."

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That's... honestly terrible. 🤦 😬

Server Room Gremlin said:

That's... honestly terrible. 🤦 😬

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I forgot to mention there were several loose nuts or screws scattered around the inside of the case as well.

david_wendelken said:

I forgot to mention there were several loose nuts or screws scattered around the inside of the case as well.

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perhaps sending an automobile technician to fix a laptop is a mistake... I'm not sure, but well. There you have it.

david_wendelken said:

PS - If anyone wants to know how to set up this feature for use, let me know. It saves a lot of bother when typing and editing.

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I'll likely avail myself of this training from you 'soon' sir Wendelken. I weary of 'cut and paste' techniques, or just 'ignore it and move on.'

Ent said:

I'll likely avail myself of this training from you 'soon' sir Wendelken. I weary of 'cut and paste' techniques, or just 'ignore it and move on.'

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In MS Word, once you spell the word correctly, highlight it and right-click on it. Sometimes the menu will show "Add to Dictionary", sometimes this command is on a sub-menu under "Spelling" or thereabouts. If you do this, then if the word is spelled correctly, the spell checker will ignore it and it will flag it otherwise.

That's part one, it helps you avoid misspelling the word. On my American style keyboard, I get access to those "funky letters" with the Alt-I-S command. But that's awkward. For example, for this character name, Carnemírië, I've got to do that twice EVERY SINGLE TIME I type the name. It's slow, it's a pain, and it's prone to error. The Dictionary trick I mentioned earlier will flag the ones I got wrong, but that's editing work I would simply rather not do.

Wouldn't it be great if I could just type in Carnemirie and Word would automagically change it to Carnemírië? To make this happen, highlight the correctly spelled word. Go to File->Options->Proofing and then press the AutoCorrect Options button. There are a bunch of nifty checkboxes options at this point, you might want to take a look t them. But the part I'm directing you to is where you tell it to Replace As You Type.

Now comes the fun part. For reasons known only to the programmers who created this interface, I've seen it switch between two different behaviors. I have no idea why. Either way, there are two words slots. The slot on the left is the word you type in the Word editor and the slot on the right is what it will change it to. In my example, I would want Carnemirie in the leftmost slot and Carnemírië in the rightmost slot. The different behavior I've mentioned is sometimes it puts the highlighted word in the left slot and other times it puts it in the rightmost slot. Depending, you may need to copy/paste the correct word into the rightmost slot. (The Alt-I-S command does not work in these word slots.)


You'll need to press the Add button once both slots are filled, or the Replace button if its realized you're overwriting an instruction you entered earlier.

That's all it takes. It saves me a world of fuss and bother, both in typing words in faster and also getting them right the first time.

Hope you find it useful!

I just experienced a wave if indigestion. i will review this later again and digest it properly.
Once supported by the kinesthetic application essential to the needs of my particular heartwood to take it in and keep it, I'll be fine.

Thanks so much for the detailed explanation.
I can't wait to become more effective..!

Here are some more tricks I use that help me stay organized with a minimum of bother. I don't write a book from front to back. I bounce from chapter to chapter as ideas come to me.

1) I switch back and forth from View->Print Layout mode and View->Outline mode. I have two background colors I use for the chapter headings. (It's on the Home menu, the Text Highlight Color command. I use a pale blue to mean I've done substantial work in that chapter but it's not done. I use a pale yellow to mean the chapter is largely unwritten. (There might be some notes or scribbles, but little to no finished writing.) No color, of course, means the chapter is done. I don't color the entire chapter heading, that hurts my eyes and it's wasteful of expensive ink. I just color the first two letters in the chapter name. Gives me a list of chapters that need work at a glance and if any of them spark my imagination, I know to set to work there next.

2) I use Styles extensively. I ACTIVELY AVOID adding formatting to text. I add formatting to a style and then apply the style to the text. That way, if I later decide that I want to use a different font type or size, I only have to change the style and the text is automagically changed to match. I have a style for foreign words, chapter headings, date/location indicators, normal "translated" text (like the LOTR, my work is a translation of existing documents), modern "scholarly" editorial comments about the translated works, etc., By having "foreign" words in their own style, I can use the find feature or macros to find them all. It will make indexing them much easier. Now that I think about it, I should do a style for character names and another for locations. Should make indexing them easier!

3) If you tinker with the Table of Contents command, you'll find you can specify which styles show up in the Table of Contents and how much they are indented when they do so. For example, the first line in each chapter, right after the Chapter Title, is a date/location indicator. It orients the reader to the date or year, and the location that chapter starts in. Example: 3A 1942, Lasgalen. This is not a Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, etc. style. It's just a regular style because I don't normally want to see it in an outline. But when I do, it's because I want to verify that the dates between the different chapters make sense. I.e., there's enough time to get from the last location in the prior chapter to the starting location in the next chapter.

Managed to get in more editing this week. I'm down to 128 usages of "looked", of which I know I want to keep 25. I've also cleaned up a bunch of other over-used and/or lazily used words. As I've been doing the editing on "that" and "looked' and a few other culprits, I also took the time to try to add more "showing" and less "telling" to those sentences. I got a side benefit of dropping the number of commas used in my sentences by a goodly bit! (I'm particularly happy about that last part. Readability scores improved because of this!)

I still have too much telling and not enough showing. I've got between 500 and 1053 adverbs to take a look at. 10 adverbs account for over 250 of those. I'll check those out first. After that, depending on how happy I am over the amount of improvement in the story, I'll check out the rest.

Hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and get lots of writing done!

Seven pages to go on the main story. (There are still appendices, including some stories within them that need this editing for "Looked", but I'm getting close to the end of this specific editing task.)

Seven different usages of looked on the same page! Yech!

Ever see a tennis match on TV where the viewers look left, then right, then left, then right, ad nauseum? I need to go take a strong drink before I tackle this page.

david_wendelken said:

I need to go take a strong drink before I tackle this page.

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or perhaps strong drink is what got 7 uses there to begin with?! 😅

I am so over "looked".

I'm working my way thru the Verb Tense Consistency Report. I am a bit puzzled by it. Also understand that I've never really (before this) formally known what the main verb tenses are called...

Here is an excerpt of a sample document I created to test this Verb Tense Consistency report. (Ignore the number of verb usages, I had to pad the sample to a minimum size document in order to run this report.)

It took me a bit to understand what was going on until I created this sample. The more complex verb tenses show multiple colors to denote which portions of a given verb tense denotes past, present or future. Once I understood this, the report became easier to use.

There are some issues with this report, though.

The word “dance” is not marked as a verb in the Simple Present or Simple Future tenses. Presumably, this is a symptom of a wider problem as I had noticed other verbs in my real document weren’t getting marked either.

Second, I don’t understand why there are two different “past tense” colors. What, precisely, causes a past tense verb to fall into the Red or the Black past tense color category? Is it obvious to any of you with a better grounding in formal verb tense training?

Of course, I've sent this same query to support, but maybe one of my clever and knowledgeable friends here can share the answer with me!

Oh, example sentences and verb tense explanations can be found here: https://www.thesaurus.com/.../what-are-the-basic-verb.../

david_wendelken said:

I don’t understand why there are two different “past tense” colors.

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So David
To be absolutely sure regarding your question, are you speaking strictly to this portion of the chart? strictly the nature of the action involved with 'past tense' only?
If so, perhaps I can provide a few examples and comments to help.

Ent said:

So David
To be absolutely sure regarding your question, are you speaking strictly to this portion of the chart? strictly the nature of the action involved with 'past tense' only?
If so, perhaps I can provide a few examples and comments to help.

View attachment 28130

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Yes.

OK. I'll jot some things out later. Off to family festivities.

I think maybe the black past tense verbs are auxiliary verbs.