#and now i have 600 words of outlining in my notes app

[thehandwitch]

haha whoa what if i wrote about stan’s relationship with tarot because i feel like you cannot be the child of a psychic (phoney or not) without picking up some tarot

[thewriting-corner]

How I draft so quickly

Helloo and welcome to brand new type of posting! Before I first started my account I LOVED it when writing accounts did posts on a tumblr format so here I am, being a basic bish :) Anywayy, the point of today’s post is how I draft so quickly. I never considered that I did until I actually did the math and realized I wrote 73k words of my second draft in 45 days and then 10k words of my 4th one in 5… so yeah. Enjoy!

Have a writing schedule

I know they’re annoying, BUT they work. As I’m sure many of you have seen me whining about on my stories, I spend most of my time studying or doing homework (as I should be doing now lol). I’m a senior in high school with only three months of finals left to graduate, so where the f do I get so much time?

Basically, I have two different writing schedules. On weekdays, I try to write at least one sentence before I go to bed. I’m usually very tired by the time I’m done with school work, so I don’t force myself to get out 1k words in one sitting. Sometimes I’ll even squeeze in some writing as soon as I get home, but I’ve found that I waste a lot of time when I write in the afternoon.

Then on the weekends and breaks I write twice a day: one before breakfast/shower and once after lunch/before bed. This way I write anywhere from 600 words to 3k because it tricks my brain into thinking I’m writing in two different occasions.

Have your notes everywhere

This sounds kinda stupid, I guess, but I recommend having your notes everywhere you go. I’m not a very organized person, yet I keep everything WIP related on my notes app on my phone. This way if I’m on recess, or in line to buy lunch or I’m somewhere I’m not doing anything, I go over my notes. This sort of helps awaken my brain and give me ideas and motivation.

Along with this, if I DO get an idea while I’m outside of the house, I write it down no matter how small. This is why I like using my notes app. I always have my phone with him, so even if I’m at the supermarket I can write down scene ideas or character related thoughts.

Listen to music

I listen to music ALL the time. At school, in the car, studying, etc. If I can, I’ll put on songs that specifically remind of a certain character or ship. For instance, on this draft I’m focusing more on my MC and her relationship so my two main songs I try to listen to are I Still Love You (can’t remember by who) and any Olivia Rodrigo song. This way, even if I’m not actually listening to that music, the songs are stuck in my brain and they help ignite ideas. Many of my scene ideas come music.

Getting stuck

Getting stuck is normal. I remember the reason my first draft took over a year to write (which is okay, by the way) is because I constantly got stuck and had no idea what to write. If you don’t like outlining, have at least a vague idea of what scene you want to write. If your character is say, at a ball, then start simple. “The stench of sweat released by the crowd of people made the princess want to die.” It’s a random sentence, why is it so hot? Why does the princess hate this smell so much? Where does she wish to go instead? Random sentence starters help tons.

Write badly

Sometimes we get this idea that we ALWAYS have to write with pretty, flowery language but honestly that’ll slow you down. Don’t be afraid to write terribly, you can edit later. If you get stuck on trying to find the write word to describe someone’s eyes, you’ll never even get to describing their motives or importance. Just write “the eyes were blue” and move on. You can think of a better way later.

Don’t read

My biggest weakness: reading what I wrote before. I’ll either get distracted because I want to gauge my eyes out or because I’m in awe that I was capable of creating something so good. Read if you have to the last paragraph you wrote to get context, but never more than that. You’ll go down a wormhole and chances are you won’t write anything if you do.

The start

If you’re starting a draft and want to write quickly but have no idea where to begin, skip the first like. Write where you actually know what to write. Skip whatever you don’t feel like writing and you can fill in the gaps later. First lines are important, sure, but they are not worth staring at your laptop for 5 hours when you could’ve written 2 scenes in that time.

[arizonapoppy]

I think I might have gotten my writing mojo back. I spent two months agonizing over my Teitho for March and got a total of 241 words written. But I agreed to pinch hit for the May the 4th Rebels Gift Exchange, and ended up with not one but two fully outlined plot bunnies.

The first one came to me in the space of 30 minutes. I ended up sitting there in a semi-dark movie theater waiting for the previews to start before The Miracle Season tapping away at my notes app, while my daughter chattered away a mile a minute, asking when would I be done so she could play on my phone. I even dashed off an email to one of my betas who has specialized knowledge asking for her help with some juicy details.

After I got home, I realized that there was no way I could use the plot bunny that had just bitten me because it was sheer angst/suspense, and the giftee requested fluff. So while I was trying to go to sleep, naturally a new and angora-soft idea showed up by my bedside. I didn’t want to get out of bed and turn on the light, so I tried to scribble ideas into my Jimmy-book by the light of my cellphone screen, which kept going out every 30 seconds, and then I had to turn it back on, or guess what I was scribbling and where the lines were on the page.

Yesterday I was able to use our specialized computer system at work to look up details for the second plot bunny, because even though everything else in the story may be entirely unrealistic, I wanted this one particular aspect to be plausible. I also had to do an emergency request of a particular novel from the library, which I hope gets in before I have to travel for work, and then read it to make sure what I say is canon-compliant. I also spent half an hour down a YouTube rabbit hole of trying to find out what it sounds like when Tiya Sircar laughs. Star Wars Show to the rescue! I also now really want to see Miss India America.

This evening I cranked out over 600 words. I haven’t written this much in one sitting in months. (No wonder I stink at NNWM.) I will easily meet the minimum requirement of 1,000 words, if this keeps up. I still have four major scenes left to write.

And that Teitho prompt? I never turned it in, naturally. I’ll have to wait for the next Joker prompt. Still don’t know what to say in the middle of it.

[toptecharena]

The BT Ultra HD YouView has now been around for a number of years, piping out 4K UHD broadcasts to anyone with the kit and money to be able to watch them.

More technically known as the Humax DTR-T4000, it certainly lives up to the hype surrounding UHD. With compatible systems now on the market from the likes of Sky and Virgin Media though, does the BT option still hold up?

The Humax DTR-T4000 is a YouView+ box, virtually identical in appearance and functionality to the YouView from BT box, except with a 1TB hard disk capable of storing 60 hours of UHD content.

With live UHD content still thin on the ground, you might well be filling the BT Ultra HD YouView box with HD or even SD shows, giving 250 hours and 600 hours respectively. Another difference is that this box is fan cooled, which makes it a bit noisy when the TV’s been switched off but is totally necessary as it runs hot enough to fry an egg on.

To watch in BT Sport in 4K Ultra HD you’ll need a compatible screen with at least one HDMI 2.0 input that can handle HDCP 2.2 content protection and a picture resolution of 2160p (50Hz). Most modern 4K TV screens will play nice with the UHD channels.

Incidentally, you can also watch 4K channels downscaled to 1080p on a non-4K screen, which is something to bear in mind if you’ve got an older set.

What does it cost?

First up, you need to be a BT Infinity broadband customer (with a minimum 40Mbps connection) and a subscriber to BT TV’s top-level Ultra HD packages, which start at £15 a month.

You’ll also have to pay £50 for the box (free to new customers), line rental of £16.99/month and an installation fee of £44 if a BT Engineer is required to get you going.

New BT customers will have to pay £6.95 for a BT Home Hub router too.

Note that the IP content including BT Sport will not work if you use a different make of router, and that the Humax box isn’t wireless. BT does supply a 10m Ethernet cable, but you could try a Powerline connection.

You get 248 channels including 47 premium entertainment, documentary and lifestyle channels. Freeview channels are delivered via an aerial, the rest via internet.

Nearly 50 channels are in HD, 13 of which are premium ones (including seven BT Sport Extra channels). You also get the BT Sport Pack (BT Sport 1, BT Sport 2, BT Sport Europe, BT Sport ESPN) which includes all of the UEFA Champions League and a number of Premier League games.

Some of these will be shown in 4K on the Ultra HD channel (number 434 on the EPG). Aside from the odd live broadcast there’s very little to UHD, just a slew of short promo films designed to show off the format.

Netflix’s Ultra HD content has now arrived to add some much-needed extra 4K content. You can also subscribe to Sky Movies, Sky Sports 1 and Sky Sports 2, but only in HD.

To operate the box you use the humungous remote control, which is a touch unwieldy but at least the operating system is pleasing to look at and logically laid out, with carousels of menu options appearing in narrow bands at the bottom of the screen.

YouView+ means you get an EPG that scrolls back seven days as well as forwards and allows you to record shows from the past week so long as they are also contained within the relevant on-demand engine (iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4, Demand 5, BT Player, Now TV, Milkshake!, UKTV Play, Sky Store, Quest, S4C), plus two apps (BBC News and BBC Sport), with Netflix now joining the party.

There are also scores of movies, TV shows (including box sets) and music videos to rent or buy from the likes of Sky Store, BT TV, Curzon Cinema, Nat Geo Wild, E!, SyFy, Universal, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery, Sony TV, Discovery, TLC, History, Fox, Comedy Central, MTV, and more…

Unfortunately, the box is no quicker to power up than the BT TV YouView box, taking a good 20 seconds or so from standby (and that in the non-eco mode, with the latter taking a full minute).

Considering how complex the content offering is the box itself is pretty easy to get to grips with.

Recording shows and accessing them proves a cinch and seems reliable. My only gripe here is that fast forward and rewind don’t allow you to shuffle through at twice normal speed, four times, eight times, etc. Instead each press of the FF button skips ahead about a minute at a time, which makes it very hard to find a specific incident. Also, there’s no slow-mo (as there is on Sky’s services).

While live 4K football is shown simultaneously in HD and Ultra HD each channel has its own cameras, commentators and studio support. And both require a lot of equipment and manpower to capture and deliver the picture.

Having checked out some of the matches broadcast in 4K, we can say the extra resolution proves captivating, especially when compared with the HD feeds. The most obvious difference is the extra detail afforded by the higher resolution format.

Everything is sharper than it is in HD, not just a bit sharper, much sharper. Admittedly, BT Sport 2 is a bit on the soft side anyway compared with football on Sky, which I discovered when I switched over to my Sky box to check out the Dundee United vs Aberdeen match on Sky Sports 1 HD.

Anyway, the outline of players in UHD is much clearer, the detail in the grass is better (even in wide shots), and you can actually read the wording on the ads that run round the upper tier of the Wembley stand.

This additional detail allows the camera to zoom out wider, so you see more of an overview of the action. Static detail is especially good since there is some inevitable loss of resolution with motion and the frame rate isn’t high enough to keep fast moving objects pin sharp, though it is running at a higher rate than HD.

One shot that really showed off the extra detail had Jose Mourinho standing on the touch line, taken from afar but framed so that you could see 20 rows of fans behind him, and you can clearly see the faces of around 800 supporters.

Astonishing detail

Another great shot was when Hazard took a free kick, which Cech saved, seen zoomed in from the opposite end, the clarity was a level above anything else ever seen in HD.

Any Ultra HD screen will be equipped to show off the extra detail with motion resolution holding up pretty well thanks to a 50fps frame rate.

As such, my 2015 model Samsung 48JU7000T looked excellent, especially with its Auto Motion Plus motion control mode set to the Smooth setting, keeping the ball from distorting when moving quickly through the air, and more pertinently, doing so without any processing artefacts.

Colours, set to output via HDMI in 10-bit, were also terrific, though the luminosity of the players’ pink and green boots was arguably too intense.

The match proved tricky at times for the cameras because of the immense contrast between sunny and shady parts of the pitch and the technology was clearly at its best when the light level was even (no wonder Sky adopted HDR for its own 4K service).

Even so, the broadcast was without doubt a success, with just a couple of very minor picture glitches and no sound problems at all.

Happily, the IPTV stream is outside of your internet service, so watching a broadcast won’t affect simultaneous streaming or web browsing elsewhere in the home on a computer. Also, the IP stream is user-agnostic so your speed won’t be affected by the number of other users in the district.

Given that so few boxes were out in the wild at the time of the first UHD broadcast it was perhaps forgivable that BT would skimp on the frills, with Peter Drury expected to provide the commentary and fulfil the pre-match and half-time hosting duties along with single guest Kevin Davies.

HD viewers on the other hand had the A-list – with Glenn Hoddle, Ian Wright and Rio Ferdinand.

It felt a bit like a beta service had been unleashed on the public, but Jake Humphrey, the main BT Sport presenter, was at the birth of his second child on the eve of the broadcast so there was a definite element of reshuffling.

As time has gone on though, 4K has grown in stature, with football matches at least broadcast in the higher Ultra HD resolution as a matter of course.

Considering its diminutive size and unremarkable design the Humax DTR-T4000 packs one hell of a punch, offering a broad quantity of free and paid content including the YouView seven day roll-back EPG and BT TV’s bespoke entertainment and sports offering.

Undoubtedly though it’s the BT Sport Ultra HD channel that we’re principally interested in, and without a doubt 4K UHD is the jewel in the BT YouView crown. Don’t forget that extra content from Netflix and Amazon Prime Video though.

We liked

The box is easy to get to grips with, with an intuitive onscreen menu system that makes you more inclined to explore the on-demand content than before.

The EPG is nicely laid out, which makes it a doddle to find and watch TV shows from the past seven days.

The box’s most important and likeable trait by far is the quality of the UHD channel. Utterly perfect for live sport, 4K images are astonishingly crisp and highly detailed.

We also like the way the live broadcast is directed to take full advantage of the greater clarity on offer.

We disliked

The UHD channel needs more shows, even with the addition of Netflix and Amazon Prime. The on-demand repository also requires a massive boost to its 4K content.

Recording is fine but the fast forward and rewind functions aren’t smooth and make it tricky to shuffle through a recording looking for a specific moment. Neither the remote control nor the box itself are going to win any design awards.

And for a significant portion of the population who don’t have the option of a 40Mbps BT fibre broadband this is a complete non-starter.

Final Verdict

More than ten years since the first HD broadcast the, ahem, goalposts have finally shifted again thanks to the BT Sport UHD channel.

The channel itself doesn’t yet seem like the finished article but the fact is the picture quality is so spectacularly good it makes it nigh-on impossible to revert to inferior Full HD pics once you’ve had a taste of the 4K manna.

If you’re a sport-loving BT Infinity subscriber the extra cost (£15/month and a one-off £49 charge) is almost a no-brainer, for non-BT customers the cost implications are higher and more complicated. You can check what it will cost you here on BT TV’s webpage.

Ultra HD is just getting started of course, and with Sky and Virgin Media now offering their own packages, the BT Ultra HD box looks a little inferior by comparison.

How BT gets all those pixels from pitch to picture.

Go to Source Author: BT Ultra HD YouView box The BT Ultra HD YouView has now been around for a number of years, piping out 4K UHD broadcasts to anyone with the kit and money to be able to watch them.