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brynprocrastinates · 7 years ago

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Like... a bunch of questions.

I’m answering most of them super abruptly, because there’s so many. I apologize in advance x-x

From @morrigans-ink-0124:

What are your current writing goals?

Finalize Pearl, get it to an editor, and then publish it.

When did you first discover your love of writing?

As a small child writing Nancy Drew fanfic.

What motivates you to keep writing?

I’m a writer. I would die if I didn’t write. (This sounds over-dramatic, but it’s pulled me through a lot of my depressive episodes, and I don’t know what I’d do without it.)

How important is world building for your writing? (For example, do you need to have your world completely established & mapped out before you can start writing? Or, do you not need a set world/environment in order to write your story?)

I usually have the world building first and form my plot and characters around it.

Pen on paper, or typing everything up in a word doc of some sort?

Always typed up. Dyslexia is not good for transferring paper to computer.

Favourite author?

Rick Riorden, Terry Pratchett, Leigh Bardugo, some others I can’t think of right now...

Something you do to get the creative juices flowing to start writing? (music, atmosphere, a particular article of clothing or lack there of…I mean what? I don’t do that. Ahem.)

I just write. Creativity is for armatures.

Do you write better at night, or first thing in the morning?

Any time I’m awake, honestly. So right in the middle of the day.

How do you take your coffee/tea? (And if you don’t drink coffee/tea, how do you even function? Weirdo.)

Black.

You have to spend the rest of your life with only one season, which one do you choose and why?

That moment right between summer and fall, when it’s still warm but the nights are nippy.

From @raiswanson, excluding questions I already answered:

2. What’s your favorite genre? (for writing or reading) Is there a particular aspect that draws you to it?

The punk aesthetic, but the fantasy feel.

3. How many projects do you have? Are they connected, or do they stand apart from one another?

Four projects, none connected in any way.

4. Do you have a favorite “type” of main character to write with?

Nope! Each of my main characters seem to be created by my subconscious trying not to write the same main character as last time...

5. What kind of scenes do you enjoy writing the most? Do you find them harder or easier to write?

Bittersweet emotional scenes 8D

6. What tends to come first when you start a story, characters, world, or plot? A combination of two? Or do they all come as a package deal?

The wold or the characters. (But if it’s the characters they always come with a world.)

7. How much do you know about the worlds you create? Do you plan put everything down to the finest detail, or make it up on the fly as it becomes relevant?

I know nothing, but the details all exists already. It’s a paradox.

8. What kind of characters do you usually have front and center? Humans? Elves? Aliens? Dragons? Dogs? Sentient trees? (if you primarily write non-fic, what kind of job/station in life do your characters usually have?)

It’s pretty mixed between humans and non-human sentient humanoids.

9. If you could pick one OC to drag out into the real world with you, who would you pick and why?

Dejean.

10. What is your current project? Tell us about it!

Pearl!

From @summerkiska, excluding questions I already answered:

1. What’s a line in your current WIP that you’re proud of (or just like a lot)?

How about this one I’m posting soon for Pearl: “Within his chest, his heart pounds a frantic rhythm. A heart so near, so vulnerable, I could rip it free between beats.”

2. What’s a question that you wish people would ask you about your writing? (And what’s the answer??)

Not particularly.

3. What’s your favorite part of the writing process?

The first draft! Anything goes and there’s no pressure =D

4. What song best fits the theme of your WIP main character? (And why?)

Vasha’s is King by Lauren Aquilina

5. What habits or rituals do you have for writing sessions?

Having a goal to get to and completing it before I move onto other things.

6. What’s one piece of advice you wish you were given when you first started your writing journey?

Don’t listen to any writing advice unless you can figure out for yourself why it works for your story.

7. Who was your first book character crush? (Or if you can’t remember, who’s your favorite book character crush?)

I don’t crush on fictional characters? I’m weird, I guess.

8. What’s one of your writing pet peeves?

EXCESSIVE ELLIPSIS (@byjillianmaria knows this)

9. Who’s your favorite character in fiction that you loved to hate?

Any version of Loki ever.

10. What are you currently trying to work on when it comes to growing as a writer? (And how’s it going??)

Outlining solid plots before I start writing. (I’m not sure yet, I’m still in the outlining phase...)

From @my-words-are-light:

What do you look for in picking out stories?

Something I enjoy reading?

What fads rub you the wrong way in contemporary novels?

Basically every YA trope ever.

Have you ever made a character who was your hero?

Nah, my characters are all idiots and most of them wouldn’t know what morals were if you hit them over the head with ‘em.

Why did you make your favourite character?

Their dad appeared in my head one day because he liked a song, and then Vasha swooned over their dad, so I made them... (I can explain in more detail but I promise this is as much sense as it makes.)

What’s the pettiest reason for a decision you’ve made in planning or writing?

I’m about to write a sci fi novella purely because I hated both Zenith and Valarian and the city of a thousand planets, so that probably.

Who are your fictional role models for your characters?

I don’t have any?

What makes a good romantic subplot, or romance?

Me actually shipping the damn characters for once.

Do you actually enjoy killing your characters like lemmings and, if so, should I wash my hands before shaking yours?

I refuse to kill any of my characters unless it’s the only direction the story could possibly go.

Have you ever had Tim Tams?

Nope.

What do you hope people take away from your writing? A grand message? Invigoration? Maybe even just a chuckle or two?

Laughter and tears. I want to make them feel things.

From @theguildedtypewriter, excluding questions I already answered:

What character pisses you off the most?

ILYA DAMMIT. (I love him, but he fucks everything up, the trash child.)

Which scene do you think will make people cry, or laugh?

I know for a fact that over half my readers cried during a certain scene in TWLC.

What’s your worst writing habit?

There are narrator no emotions in the first draft! And if there are, then every emotion is a feeling in the stomach or the chest!

Do you follow your outline?

More or less. I write hit all the major points but mix things up on a scene level.

Which character makes you laugh the most?

I don’t laugh. I just cringe.

Do you like a good love story?

A good one yes. Good love stories are hard to find.

Do you like a good horror story?

Horror for the sake of horror isn’t my thing, but I like a good story with horror elements.

What trope/stereotype is your least favorite?

Literally all the ones popular in YA fiction.

What fairy tale is your favorite?

Beauty and the beast.

From @inkspll, excluding questions I already answered:

Where is your favorite place to write?

I don’t really have one? Anywhere quiet honestly.

What is your least favorite part to write?

Those damn emotions.

Are you a “kill all the characters you love” Kind of writer or a “ Everyone deserves a redemption arc” Kind of writer?

Neither. I give my villains a chance to redeem themselves and they make the choice themselves.

What’s a recurring trait in your stories and/or characters?

I don’t know if there is one? A lot of my characters are morally grey though, and diversity is a big deal.

From the characters you’ve created who is your least favorite?

Least favorite characters generally mean not-fleshed-out-enough characters. Suuki was my least favorite for a lot of drafts because her character was very bland originally.

What word do you use too much when writing?

Soft.

Do you write outlines and plan things out before you write?

Yup!

Favorite story idea you never got to write?

I write down all my favorites in case I ever want to write them someday, and I don’t cross any of them out ;)

From @rebeckaomalleywriter, excluding questions I already answered:

How do you feel about midnight epiphanies?

I don’t often get them, because I’m asleep xP

Did any of your characters ever materialize in your mind with no prompting?

The better question to ask is: have any of them not appeared that way?

What is the most surprising thing one of your characters has done that you weren’t planning?

I was pretty surprised when Perle caught the blood dripping form the ceiling in their mouth in the second page of Pearl. I hadn’t know who they were as a character when I started writing and that really set the ton of who they were.

Do you listen to music while you’re writing?

Always.

Do you snack while you’re writing?

Not generally.

Do you consider reading to be an important past time for a writer?

Yes, but I think consumption of all kinds of stories is incredibly useful, so you don’t need to be reading very many books as long as you’re analyzing stories of some kind on a regular basis.

How many completed works, and WIPs do you have under your belt currently?

Completed...? (I have the Marshmallow Aesthetic.)

Which of your characters has the most tragic backstory?

Kleos and Kian both have very tragic backstories which they didn’t deserve in the slightest.

Which has the happiest?

No one has an incredibly happy backstory... I suppose Simone’s was pretty normal, and considering how things could have gone, Vasha, Ilya, and Suuki all had a nice childhoods.

#tag games #tag game

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laurabwrites · 8 years ago

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More of the Ideas List (Part 2 of 3)

The other day, after reading over the previous post on the ideas list for typos and whatnot, Partner looked at me and said "I'm looking forward to the novel ideas." So let's try and get to at least one of those this time.

Teleporting SWAT team

Invert The Fall of the House of Usher

Warrior Kings

Poor Private Collins

Cellmates

Glamour for plainness

Izzy

Fertility Deity

Ghost rescuing

Totemic spirit animals of extinct species

Ghost ship one-liners

Hellocene era

Locked spaceship ensemble mystery

Idea #1 came from thinking about superheroes and how I'd actually work to integrate them into society. Because maintaining the status quo is the first impulse of folks in power. And personally, I do prefer the rule of law. Anyways, my thought was, in a world with teleporters, why wouldn't you have a central dispatch to send specially trained SWAT teams (superpowered or not) in at local request. I'd route it through the FBI who already send task forces across the country. Something like the Justice League except part of the existing law enforcement I suppose. So that's a world setting to explore if/when I come up with characters and a plot. I could see this as anything from flash fiction to a novel to a series. So, onto the 'length uncertain' list.

#2 came from a couple writers on Tor.com talking about The Fall of The House of Usher about being the fridged woman in a Gothic horror story. With a psychic connection to your brother who's too busy being gothy to open the door. Sounded like a good idea so I wrote it down to take a stab at myself.

#3 came from a review of a Southeast Asian horror film review in... I think The Atlantic. The film was set at a psychiatric hospital (I think) where dead warrior kings were stealing life force from soldiers to continue fighting each other. With a set up like that, I mean how could I not want to play with the idea at some point.

Poor Private Collins came from playing a Call of Cthulhu game when Ethan, the GM, mentioned the different ways various group have played the scenario and the different results that's produced for an NPC. The idea was the NPC being aware of previous iterations of the scenario but unable to change his own behavior to affect the outcome. So he suffers through several deaths, praying for this new configuration of adventurers to finally get it right. Definitely a horror piece, the poor kid. But to write this one, I'd need to relisten to the recording of that session. And I really dislike hearing recordings of my own voice. Definitely a short story though, if I do it.

#5, Cellmates, stems from an article on how unlikely it was for complex organisms to form from simple bacteria. Which prompted the question: What if we are the only life in the galaxy that made both the leap from simple bacteria sized life to complex organisms AND into consciousness/sentience? I'd set this right as a bunch of scientists are coming to that conclusion, have them grapple with it for a bit. Make a report to some bureaucracy dealing with colonization and terraforming efforts.

#6 came out of reading Mary Robinette Kowal's Glamourist Histories series (well, the first three) and an article by a woman on what it's like getting approached all the time based on their looks. The thinking went that there would have to be at least one or two women who could cast illusions on themselves who would choose to alter her looks to avoid male attention. Which might be interesting in a Victorian comedy of manner piece. I'd aim for a short story out of the idea, but probably get a flash piece. Like I do.

Number seven, Izzy, is the one Partner's probably happiest to hear about. This reminder is a bit unusual for me in that it's just the one word and a name at that. No notes. No description. Just a nickname. And that's enough to remind me which setting I'm planning to place this novel in (PostHuman Studios' Eclipse Phase), the character (a Fall survivor stuck on Earth post apocalypse and evacuation), relationships (dead lover, dead smart-baboon companion, live smart-dog), opening scene/inciting incident, other characters (well, first draft sketches of them), and story structure/plot (travelogue/heist/adventure). Izzy's been gestating in my head for quite awhile. It's time to give her room to grow in the page. Just as soon as I finish off the current WIP, The Dangers of Fraternization.

The fertility deity idea, #8, came from Greg's backstory in our Monsterhearts campaign over on Technical Difficulties. His character's mom is a fertility deity which, combined with some friends having fertility issues, got me to start thinking about an old fertility deity in modern times and how they'd fit in. How would they feel about modern birth control? Or fertility treatments? Pretty sure this one would be short story.

The next one, ghost rescuing, came from a Tumblr post from RPPR's blog about people leaving reviews for haunted items they bought on eBay. Why are they buying these items? Are they reading the ghosts stuck to these items? Why? I'm just going to have to write this one to find out. And I don't know how long it'll take.

#10, Totemic spirit animals of extinct species, feels like an interesting seed of an idea with no supporting setting, characters, or plot. I don't know what to do with it, other than let it continue germinating and see if something else attaches to the idea to flesh it out.

I think #11 could be a lot of fun. I'd find copies of advertisements put in old newspapers announcing the sinking of sailing ships, then continue forward into the present day, the announcements getting shorter and more direct as the language style changes, and continue into the future, morphing the breadth of ships announced as lost to include submarines and container ships and finally spaceships. ... Oh dang it, I'm going to have to include the Russian cosmanauts, the Mercury fire, and Challenger. Well, that will make it harder to write a slow burn. I'll figure it out though. Short story or flash length, definitely. Too easy to wear out my welcome otherwise.

The Hellocene Era is a concept I learned about from the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt. The basic idea is that instead of counting of calendar from a religious dating perspective, we renumber the calendar based on when the archeological evidence says humans first built a temple. Which turns 2017 into 12,017. It is, once again, a seed of an idea, possibly just something to throw in the background of another story. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I should pair it up with the totem spirits idea — humans are responsible for the most species-wide extinction events in recent (geologically speaking) history, so using when humans first really started altering the landscape around us as the apocalyptic marker to restart the calendar in totemic spirit society is rather appealing from a story telling perspective. I'll have to do that. Neat.

#13, locked spaceship ensemble mystery, is just a plot, but one that combines my childhood era of too many mystery books and television shows with my ongoing love of science fiction into a locked room mystery where the locked room is a spaceship. If/when I build the setting and some characters for this plot, it should end up at novella length at minimum. I'll have to see though.

#story ideas #organization

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amazonauthorinsights-live · 8 years ago

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How to find and capture ideas for your novel

Joanna Penn

{Article_Date}

“What if” questions are often the basis for books.

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

Authors get asked this all the time and some get tired of it, because once you get into the hang of capturing ideas and writing them down, it seems like they just happen by magic.

But I remember back when I was a cubicle slave and used to write technical specifications all day. I didn’t feel creative at all and I certainly didn’t have any ideas.

I had to retrain my brain in order to start writing fiction.

In this article, I’ll explain how to find ideas and how to capture them, plus how to deal with some common worries around ideas.

1. Trust your curiosity

This really is the key. You have to notice what you’re curious about and then lean into those aspects of life.

Curiosity is about what catches your attention.

If you’re in a bookstore, which areas do you go to first? If you’re in a new city, what do you want to do with your time? If you’re sitting in a cafe, why do you notice some people more than others?

We’re surrounded by millions of stimuli, sounds and smells and sights and things happening all the time. But you will notice different things than I would about the world around you, and an idea starts by noticing those things.

If you’re not curious about anything right now, you need to start trying. Think back to a point before ‘real life’ stopped you doing things for the fun of it. What were you curious about when you were younger? What do you like helping your kids with? What do you remember as stand-out memories?

Idea generation is like a muscle, a bit like going to the gym.

If you walk into a gym now and try to lift some heavy weights, you won’t be able to do it. But if you start with the tiny weights and you start lifting those, then over time, you’ll be able to lift heavier weights. It’s true of ideas and perhaps true of creativity in any form. Start small by noticing what you’re interested in and suddenly you will start getting ideas.

2. Consume in order to produce

If you try to create from an empty mind, you will find yourself ‘blocked’ pretty fast because there’s nothing for your imagination to work with.

You need to fill your creative well in order to write.

I like the idea of the Artist’s Date from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. Book some time for yourself and go somewhere that will fill your world with something new. An art gallery, a museum, a seminar, or even just time to read a book on a new topic. Take a notebook and write down anything you notice.

Let’s get into a bit more detail about the types of things that can arouse your curiosity and potentially give you ideas.

3. Use real places and research trips

These have been the genesis for most of my own novels.

For example, I will never forget the first time I walked into the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The visceral feeling in my stomach as I looked at the specimen jars filled with body parts sparked the idea behind Desecration.

Put yourself in situations where you’re out of your comfort zone. And when you visit a new place, notice what you’re feeling and consider the questions that arise.

Be sure to take your notebook and write down what you see. It doesn’t have to be reams and reams of information. Little notes and impressions are fine at this stage, and you can combine them later.

4. Use a MacGuffin

In thrillers and mysteries, the MacGuffin is the object that the characters are searching for, and it’s intriguing enough to become the center of the book. The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are two MacGuffins that have endured in stories for several thousand years through countless re-tellings.

I use MacGuffins in most of my books. For example, on a trip to Budapest, we visited the Basilica and saw the thousand-year-old mummified hand of Saint Istvan. Not many countries place a mummified hand at the center of their most famous monument, so I was fascinated. What if someone stole this important religious and national symbol?

That question became the basis of my novella One Day in Budapest. It’s about the rise of far right nationalists (which is really happening in Hungary) but it’s also about the MacGuffin, the mummified hand of St Istvan.

5. What fascinates you about people?

You will always need characters for your books.

Many characters have an aspect of the writer in them, and if you meet people who would make great characters, then it’s worth writing down the interesting things about them. Although, of course, never portray a character as exactly like the real person.

I’m reading a lot about war photographers at the moment, following my curiosity, even though I don’t have a particular story in mind.

I’ve read Emergency Sex, about people who work in war zones and how they deal with what they see; Hotel Arcadia, about a war photographer who’s in a hotel when it gets torn apart by terrorists, and I listened to Sebastian Junger talk about his own experiences with war photography and filming. Aspects of this research may bubble up in a character at some point. Right now, I’m just filling the creative well and I trust that the story will emerge

6. Use real events

Ben and Lucy are out sailing on the ocean beyond Christchurch, New Zealand. They look to the horizon and see a huge tidal wave bearing down on them …

So begins Risen Gods, my dark fantasy novel co-written with J.Thorn, inspired by the real events of the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.

New Zealand is on the Pacific Rim of Fire and has a lot of volcanic activity. I also lived there for seven years, so I know the country well.

I wondered what would happen if you lived through one of these natural disasters, then I started to consider a dark fantasy spin on the idea. What if the gods of New Zealand decided to take their land back?

7. Consider ‘What if?’ ideas

“What if” questions are often the basis for books.

The Martian by Andy Weir. What if you got stuck alone on Mars? 50 Shades of Grey by E.L.James. What if you met a sexy billionaire who offered you everything in exchange for something unexpected in the bedroom? The Stand by Stephen King. What if 99% of the population was wiped out in a plague and you were one of the few left?

The Stand is 38 years old, but the post-apocalyptic genre keeps coming back because people really do wonder what would happen if this big disaster happened and you were left with a few survivors. Some ‘what if’ questions will continue to be answered by many books to come … maybe yours will be one of them?

8. Use ideas from quotes

Authors will often cite quotes they have used as ideas in the front of their novels.

The title of my book Destroyer of Worlds comes from the quote, “I am become death, destroyer of worlds,” which is from the Bhagavad Gita, but was also quoted by Oppenheimer at the test of the first atomic bomb.

So that one quote encapsulates ideas about Hindu gods and the power of an atomic bomb, and became the basis for the novel’s plot.

9. Use themes and issues you care about (but don’t preach)

It’s a story, not a lecture or a nonfiction book, but many authors use big societal issues as the basis for their ideas.

For example, there are a lot of novels based on Nazi Germany. All have the same underlying aspect of the horrors of the Holocaust, but the books can end up totally different. Compare Schindler’s Ark, Sophie’s Choice, The Afrika Reich and The Man in the High Castle.

10. Use ideas from other books

“Books are made of books.” Cormac McCarthy

My short story collection, A Thousand Fiendish Angels, is based on Dante’s Inferno. The stories were commissioned by Kobo for the launch of Dan Brown’s book, also called Inferno, a few years ago. Dante’s Inferno is out of copyright, so you can do whatever you like with it, but I turned the ideas into something new.

I made notes on the book, writing down lines I liked or words that resonated. For example, the Minotaur and the Furies, characters from Inferno, ended up in the third story as real characters, and Dis ended up as a setting.

One word of caution. If you take notes from other books, don’t ever copy out entire passages word-for-word, because you may end up accidentally plagiarizing. But certainly you can get ideas from other books, then spin off and write your own version.

11. Make sure you capture your ideas

You won’t remember these sparks of ideas later, I guarantee it, so make sure you capture them somehow.

Use an old-fashioned notebook, or your trusty smartphone, or anything in between. It doesn’t matter, as long as you get them down. I have physical notebooks, usually Moleskine or Leuchtturm brand, always with plain paper. I also use Things app on my iPhone. It’s quite expensive, but I love it. Other people use Evernote or Scrivener.

Then, when you’re considering your next project, you can look through your lists and you’ll find seeds of ideas that will feed into your book.

12. Don’t fall into these common worries about ideas

Finally, there are several recurring issues that come up around ideas, so we’ll tackle them quickly here.

A. What if someone steals my idea?

Ideas are nothing. Execution is everything.

You may have an amazing idea, but it’s nothing unless you turn that into a book that readers might love. Ideas are also abundant. There are always more of them, so don’t obsess about one particular idea, just keep on creating and more will come.

B. What if my idea has been written before?

The truth is that every single idea has been done before and nothing is truly original.

Originality and creativity come from combining several things into something new, and adding your experience into the expression of an idea so it becomes something fresh.

There will always be universal story elements and emotions that resonate with readers. Consider Romeo and Juliet, Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, and Titanic. No one would say these are the same stories, and yet, at heart, they are about the relationship between a man and a woman and how they either came together and lived happily ever after, or how they came together and died.

These are iconic love stories. They essentially are the same thing, but yet, they are each so original.

C. How do I choose which idea to work on?

Once you start tuning into your curiosity, you will come up against the ‘problem’ of too many ideas. The most important thing is to keep writing them all down. Then, you can use them in different books, or combine them into multiple story-lines. After all, one idea is never enough for a whole book.

I have hundreds of notes in my ideas folder, but I find that some just keep coming back. Those are the ones to investigate further.

I hope that this has helped you consider new ways to find and track your ideas. I’d love to know your thoughts on the topic.

This article originally appeared at The Creative Penn.

Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling thriller author, creative entrepreneur, podcaster, professional speaker, and travel junkie. For more, visit www.jfpenn.com

#write #novel #fiction #ideas

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swipestream · 6 years ago

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Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey

Writers (Tellers of Weird Tales): Harold S. Farnese didn’t write any stories, poems, or articles for Weird Tales, nor was he a cover artist or illustrator. His eight letters published in “The Eyrie,” the letters column of Weird Tales, failed to land him in the top twenty contributors in that category. You might say that he was a pretty minor figure in the history of the magazine and its contributors. Except for that part where he was so central to a certain understanding of what we call the Cthulhu Mythos. Beyond that, Farnese may have been the first person to adapt a work by H.P. Lovecraft to a form other than verse or prose.

Fiction (John C. Wright): Conan is young here. The internal chronology of the stories is subject to some guesswork. But it is fair to say that this is the second or third tale in Conan’s career, taking place after Frost Giant’s Daughter (1934). We see him for the first time in what will be his signature costume: “naked except for a loin-cloth and his high-strapped sandals.”

I found, as I often do, that not only is Robert E. Howard a better writer than I was able, as a callow youth, to see he was. He also easily surpasses the modern writers attempting to climb his particular dark mountain. From the high peak, brooding, he glares down at inferior writers mocking him, and, coldly, he laughs.

Particularly when Howard is compared with the modern trash that pretends to be fantasy while deconstructing and destroying everything for which the genre stands, he is right to laugh.

Let us list the ways.

Fiction (DMR Books): After covering Barbarian Book Club’s Pre-Tolkien challenge the other day, I figured there’s no reason not to join in. Dunsany and Merritt have been pretty well covered so far, so I wanted to review something lesser known. Nictzin Dyalhis or Clifford Ball would have been perfect, but it would feel too self-serving if I reviewed one of those. So instead I selected “The Regent of the North” by Kenneth Morris, which I first read, appropriately enough, in the anthology Tales Before Tolkien. It’s the best story in the book besides Merritt’s “Woman of the Wood.” Interestingly, editor Douglas A. Anderson doesn’t believe Tolkien ever read either story, but he included them anyway.

Fiction (Rough Edges): SCARRED FACES is the second novella by Stephen D. Frances featuring Hank Janson (which is also the by-line, of course). In this early tale, Hank is still a traveling cosmetics salesman who just happens to wind up in the middle of violent crimes. This time it’s an acid attack on a beautiful young woman that leaves her dead. Shortly after that, two thugs kidnap Hank and try to take him for a ride because they think he may have seen too much. Of course he escapes, and from there it’s not long until he’s mixed up in a dangerous racket that involves several more beautiful young women, at least one of whom wants Hank dead.

Fiction (Ringer Files): I read this book while the temperatures outside were pushing the 110 degree mark. The acceptance of global warming, or at least, climate change has most of us wondering what happens to a planet that heats up. This book, written in 1963, takes a look at the flip-side of that theory and sees the world under another ice-age. I picked this up a couple years ago along with several other science fiction novels by Silverberg. I’ve come late to the game in appreciating Robert Silverberg’s science fiction novels. I don’t know how I didn’t read his books when I was in my teens and enjoying Asimov and Clarke and others.

Fiction (Black Gate): Although Leigh Brackett (1915–1978) wrote planetary adventures during the Golden Age of Science Fiction and was married to Edmond Hamilton, one of the Golden Age’s most praised masters, she seems to, well, bracket the era rather than belong to it. Her stories set on fantastical versions of Mars and Venus are indebted to Edgar Rice Burroughs, while her dark emotional intensity looked forward to New Wave SF of the ‘60s. In his introduction to Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, Michael Moorcock wrote that “It’s readily arguable that without her you would not have gotten anything like the same New Wave … echoes of Leigh can be heard in Delany, Zelazny and that whole school of writers who expanded sf’s limits and left us with some visionary

extravaganzas.”

Fiction (Lawrence Person): Here’s a book I picked up more for the state and the publisher than the author. Dark Harvest was a very active small press from the early 1980s into the early 1990s. They published primarily horror and science fiction, and did very well with it, but managed to kill themselves off by branching out in mystery.

Conventions (Western Fictioneers): If there was ever a time when I was especially proud to a member of Western Fictioneers, it was the weekend of our convention in Oklahoma City. Old friends did some catching up, and new friends were made. I lost count of the states represented. (Idaho, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Colorado, California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, New Mexico, etc.) The discussions were intimate and open, and the session topics were deeply informative, thanks to our many knowledgeable presenters.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): It’s hard to guess why William Crawford adopted the pseudonym of W.C. Rawford for his 1974 stand-alone western, “Ranger Kirk.” The copyright page says it’s by William Crawford and the book is dedicated to “Robert Gene Crawford, my brother.” Moreover, the pen name of W.C. Rawford isn’t really throwing pseudonym sleuths off the scent. Who was he fooling?

Fiction (Walker’s Retreat): The RPG Pundit put out a video about the survey that Wizards of the Coast recently put out about Dungeons & Dragons. He wasn’t the only one suspecting this. I did too, and seeing that the survey’s cooked to push this meme disease is sufficient confirmation for me to decide to cut WOTC off entirely (and with it, all versions of D&D after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition).

Gaming (Niche Gamer): Square Enix has shared the first gameplay for the recently announced Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition.

Featured above, the first gameplay of the game was shown off during this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition is launching for both PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch sometime next year.

Comic Books (Injustice Gamer): I know there’s the GenCon bit everybody has seen and written about. I just didn’t expect the con to deal itself a deathblow this fast, and that’s all I’ll write here for now.

DC co-publishers Dan Didio and Jim Lee recently did an interview on ICV2 regarding DC’s sales year to year and the industry. Bounding into comics provided a little commentary via numbers, but didn’t go into analysis, instead asking for opinions in the comments section. Didio seems to think the biggest problem is over-saturation of the comics market, while Lee is pointing to declining traffic at Barnes and Noble and waning interest in The Walking Dead.

Gaming (Table Top Gaming News): I know some of my friends are down at AWA downtown. I’m currently safely at home, grooving to some Sims 4 while I wait for this evening’s D&D session. Gotta go take care of that Strahd murder house, y’all! But I know what you are here for are the reviews I know you so desperately desire. So let’s get to it.

Today we have: Super Mario Bros. Party Card Game, Snow Time, D100 Dungeon, Tower of Madness, The Deck of Many Animated Spells, Kariba, Deities Domination, Seal Team Flix, Nanty Narking, Brass, Yellow & Yangtze, Menara, and Quests of Valeria.

Sensor Sweep: Tower of the Elephant, Leigh Brackett, Kenneth Morris, D&D Survey published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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ncmagroup · 6 years ago

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Melanie Pinola

A former editor of mine once described wordy article introductions as “throat-clearing,” as in, this person doesn’t know yet what they’re trying to say, so they’re hemming and hawing before getting to the point. You could chalk it up to writers liking to explain things or the need to dramatically set up the scene, but when it comes to everyday non-fiction writing—especially on the web—it’s usually better to get to the hook as quickly as possible. The clock is ticking.

(Already I’ve spent too time on this intro. See what I did there?)

If you want to polish your prose—whether you’re writing a blog post, an email, or a report for your team—the next time you get to typing, consult this checklist of common writing mistakes. It’ll help you communicate more clearly and put the focus on what you’re saying rather than on stray commas or needless words.

Thanks to the editors, writers, and readers who chimed in with their advice for this post, which no doubt has several errors in it. Let’s just consider them Easter eggs.

The Most Common Major Writing Mistakes

When approaching a piece of writing, most editors first check for the big picture to do “macro edits.” Here, we’re dealing with the content of the story—how it flows, if it all makes sense if the tone is appropriate, and if there are any questions we didn’t answer that readers might have. I like to call this “defensive editing,” much like defensive driving.

After that, we can get into “micro-editing” for the nitty-gritty of editing for mechanics and language issues (see the next section if you, too, nerd out on words).

1. The Intro Is Unnecessarily Long

Get to the point. The example above isn’t as bad as my initial attempt at the lede (the first couple of paragraphs that introduce an article), but, at 152 words, it’s long by most web content standards.

To remember the urgent need to get to the point, keep in mind this excerpt from former Guardian editor Tim Radford’s advice for journalists (emphasis added):

When you sit down to write, there is only one important person in your life. This is someone you will never meet, called a reader.

You are not writing to impress the scientist you have just interviewed, nor the professor who got you through your degree, nor the editor who foolishly turned you down, or the rather dishy person you just met at a party and told you were a writer. Or even your mother. You are writing to impress someone hanging from a strap in the tube between Parson’s Green and Putney, who will stop reading in a fifth of a second, given a chance.

The lede is one of the most challenging parts of writing an article, report, blog post, or even an email or memo—and also one of the most important. Advice from all the writers and editors I talked to? Just write the thing and then after the piece is done, rewrite it as much as needed, which might be several times.

Melanie Pinola✔@melaniepinola

12 Mar

Do you write the lede first or last?

Joe Yaker@joeyaker

I usually write it first, then delete it, then write it last, then delete it, then delete everything, then drink some tea and contemplate my life choices, then I write something else entirely, and then I write it first again. So… first, then rewrite later.

5:45 PM – Mar 12, 2018

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Questions to ask as you’re writing or editing the lede: Does the lede make sense—explain briefly what’s to come? Is it supported by the rest of the document? Does it quickly hook the reader to continue reading? Bonus if you write for the web: Does the lede have the keywords you’re targeting for SEO?

2. Explanations Are Handwavy or Lacking Backup

That same editor who introduced me to “throat-clearing” ledes also taught me the word “handwavy,” which according to NVIDIA’s Jack Dahlgren comes from “the magician’s technique of waving their hands to draw attention away from the actions behind the magic trick.” It’s not that we’re trying to fool the reader when we’re handwavy, it’s that we haven’t provided the reader all the facts or steps they need to understand what we’re trying to explain.

So, for example, if I’m writing an article for the general public about transferring files between computers over the internet, I should explain what SFTP is when first mentioning it, since most people might not know that SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol and that it’s a way to transfer and manage files between computers over a secure connection. In the same vein, here at Zapier, we try not to assume the reader knows what Zapier is when they first come to our blog or what “Zaps” (our word for automated workflows) are.

Pro tip: Just avoid jargon, unless you’re going to explain that jargon. No one wants to feel like an outsider. Try the Hemingway app to test writing for readability.

Similarly, you need details to prove your point. If I state that exercise helps prevent colds, I’d best link those statements to research proving that point or to experts, such as doctors, who would back up that claim.

It’s about being clear to your readers and also making sure your content doesn’t have any “holes,” so you can establish trust. As Radford writes: “If in doubt, assume the reader knows nothing. However, never make the mistake of assuming that the reader is stupid. The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader’s intelligence.”

Questions to ask as you’re writing or editing: Are terms most people don’t commonly use explained or linked to definitions? Are claims all linked to relevant research or backed by authoritative sources? If you were the target audience for this content, would it make sense to you?

3. The Content Was Written in Passive Voice

Passive voice is used too often by writers. Writers use passive voice too often. Active voice, as in the previous sentence, is more direct and stronger because the subject (writers) is doing something (using passive voice), rather than the subject taking a backseat.

Alan Henry, Senior Digital Strategist at The New York Times says:

By far, the most common thing I wind up editing out or changing is passive voice. It’s fairly simple to identify once you understand it, but it can be deceptively difficult to many writers to pick out of their own work, even if they go back and review their writing when they’re finished. If the subject isn’t clear, undefined, or you’re using verb tenses that struggle to describe the action taken by a person or party not named in the sentence, you’re probably using passive voice.

In the same vein, I find many writers rely too heavily on present participles (-ing words, for example) when the simple present version will work better, and engage a reader more directly. For example, “Bill was setting the table” is fine, but “Bill set the table” is more direct, active, and engaging, which is critical to make sure your reader sticks with you, your story, or your article all the way through—and derives value from what they just read for their own use!

Whitson Gordon, tech writer and former Editor-in-Chief at How-to-Geek and Lifehacker adds:

Passive voice isn’t always the worst thing in the world, but when it makes a sentence incredibly wordy, you’re doing a disservice to your readers. If you catch yourself saying “One of the reasons for this is,” or something similar, you should probably rethink what the subject of that sentence is.

That said, sometimes using passive voice does make more sense than the active voice. When the action is more important than who’s doing the action, passive voice is totally acceptable. For example: “My computer was stolen yesterday” is more fitting than “Someone stole my computer yesterday,” since it puts more emphasis on the event versus an unknown perpetrator. Judith Lynn Higgs points out:

In each of the sentences below, the passive voice is natural and clear. Rewriting these sentences in the active voice renders them sterile, awkward, or syntactically contorted.

Passive: Bob Dylan was injured in a motorcycle accident. Active: A motorcycle accident injured Bob Dylan. Passive: Elvis is rumored to be alive. Active: People rumor Elvis to be alive. Passive: Don’t be fooled! Active: Don’t allow anything to fool you!

Questions to ask as you’re writing or editing: Is the sentence natural and clear? Will active or passive voice make the sentence more direct and engaging? Try to rewrite with as few “to be” verbs as possible and default to active verbs and tangible nouns.

4. Too Many Words!

If you’re familiar with the Zapier blog, you’ve probably noticed that our articles are sometimes more like novellas than blog posts. While we’re fans of long-form content, we try not to be wordy.

It’s similar to the long lede issue: Wordiness within the body of the piece is beating around the bush. From Strunk and White’s seminal guide The Elements of Style:

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Common culprits? Overused adverbs and adjectives, such as “very” or “actually” or “quite.” Emily Triplett Lentz, Blog Editor and Content Strategist at Help Scout, says:

Your writing will be more concise and persuasive when you lose the overused adverbs and adjectives that ultimately detract from the meaning you wish to impart. Does the first of the following two sentences honestly convey any more meaning than the second?

Two-factor authentication is very important technology.

Two-factor authentication is important technology.

To take it a step further: Any time you’ve modified a noun or verb with “very,” you can probably choose a more precise word, which leads to more powerful writing:

Two-factor authentication is critical technology.

Just like many people use “uh” and “um” to fill space when they’re thinking of what to say next when we write, we often use filler words—or, as Smart Blogger calls them, “grammar expletives.” Look for the words “here,” “there,” and “it” to spot them in your writing: “Common constructions include it is, it was, it won’t, it takes, here is, there is, there will be.” Before-and-after examples: – It’s fun to edit – Editing is fun – It takes time to write – Writing takes time – There are many people who write – Many people write – There’s nothing better than blogging – Nothing’s better than blogging – Here are some things to consider: – Some things to consider are:

Also, you can probably cut “that” from most sentences without changing their meaning, says Bryan Clark, US Editor at The Next Web. For example, “I think that waffles are better than pancakes” could just be “I think waffles are better than pancakes” or even better: “Waffles are better than pancakes” (it’s assumed that’s what you think).

In the sentence above, “just” could be edited out also. But I’m leaving it in for tone and color—just watch out how often you use “just” in a piece.

Questions to ask as you’re writing or editing: Does this word add anything to the meaning or the flow of the piece? Can you read the sentence without running out of breath?

5. The Conclusion Doesn’t Conclude or Doesn’t Exist

If the lede is meant to hook readers and convince them to keep reading, the conclusion is meant to neatly tie up the piece, so readers come away satisfied. Often, though, I see drafts where the piece abruptly stops, as if the writer expended all their energy on the meat of the post and had no room left for the conclusion (the dessert, in this analogy).

Conclusions can be tricky: How do you tie up everything in a way that makes a lasting impression? Triplett Lentz’s advice:

When you don’t know how to conclude a piece of writing, try answering the “so what?” question. Why should anyone care about this? How does your idea apply to the reader as a human being? Can you situate your thesis in a broader context? If your post is about how to work a 40-hour week, for example, use the conclusion to address why that’s a goal worth pursuing, or discuss the widespread problems that our culture of overwork creates.

The conclusion is an opportunity to ask readers to engage with you further, direct them to relevant content, or give them more to ponder.

Questions to ask as you’re writing or editing: What’s the takeaway for the reader, and is that expressed in the conclusion? Bonus points if you don’t use “Conclusion” for your header for this section.

Micro Writing Mistakes We All Make

Comma comma comma comma comma chameleon (t-shirt available on snorgtees.com)

Now that we have the major writing issues out of the way, let’s talk about micro issues—the punctuation, word choices, and other things that copy editors usually catch, if you’re lucky to have a good one. They’re little things like using “their” when you mean “there” or “who” instead of “whom” (although “whom” seems to be going out of style and there’s no reason to use it except for the trousers and the steeds, and “they” is becoming more accepted as a singular pronoun).

Nitpicky as the Grammar Police might be, grammatical and mechanical errors that are easy to overlook can make your readers do a double-take and perhaps doubt your authority. As a writer, I appreciate learning from readers’ comments to not write “alot” anymore, because there’s no such thing as “alittle,” but, at the same time, I’d rather the comments were about the content.

So, here we are. It would take years to cover every grammatical mistake or point of contention, so for now we’ll just go over the most common mistakes and point you towards more resources for diving deeper.

6. Heed the Homophones

“They’re,” “their,” and “there” are examples of homophones—words that sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings. Another common pair of homophones is “affect” and “effect.” The former is a verb that causes something to happen (“I hope this post affects people”), while the latter is a noun (“We tried to analyze the effects of this post on readers, to no avail.”)—when it’s a noun, with an e, “effect” is the subject of something happening.

Pro tip: The best way to deal with homophones is to create a mnemonic or memory aid to remember when to use which word. For example, I remember the affect/effect example by thinking affect starts with a, which starts “action,” while effect starts with e, which starts “end” (as in, the thing that happens at the end after the action).

For more homophone fun, head to homophone.com, a site dedicated just to homophones.

7. Apostrophe Catastrophes

We can blame many cases of homophone confusion on apostrophes, that pesky punctuation mark that turns “your” into “you’re.” The former, without the apostrophe, means you own something. The latter, with the apostrophe, means you are doing something or are something. Similarly with “its” versus “it’s.” “Its” means that thing owns something, while “it’s” means “it is.”

Pro tip: Any time you use an apostrophe in a contraction, where you’re combining the verb with the noun (such as “it’s” for “it is” or “here’s” for “here is”), expand the contraction in your mind so you get the subject-verb agreement right. “Here’s the best apps,” for example, does not work when you expand the “here’s” contraction—”here is the best apps.” It should be “here are the best apps.” Just don’t use contractions in this case.

As usual, The Oatmeal has a fun graphic explainer on how to properly use apostrophes.

8. Comma and Semicolon Confusion

Semicolons are a point of contention on our content-minded team. We either love them or hate them. Use semicolons to connect two complete thoughts together—more of a pause than using a comma but less of a hard stop than using a period. I used to be on team hate and agreed with my manager Danny Schreiber, who quipped: “A semicolon is just a confused period,” but I’ve been coming around to this punctuation mark; my teammate Jill Duffy pointed out Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” in The Atlantic, which has gems like this:

It had nothing to do with anything. The sun was too small, and too cold, and too far away, to keep the world alive. The white ring was not enough. It was feeble and worthless. It was as useless as a memory; it was as off-kilter and hollow and wretched as a memory.

When you try your hardest to recall someone’s face, or the look of a place, you see in your mind’s eye some vague and terrible sight such as this. It is dark; it is insubstantial; it is all wrong.

(Hey, if you can write like Annie Dillard, do whatever you want with punctuation.)

That said, if you do use a semicolon, make sure the parts that come before and after the semicolon are both complete thoughts (with both a subject and a verb). “I love semicolons; but hate commas” is incorrect because the “but hate commas” part can’t stand on its own, while “I love semicolons; but I hate commas” works—even if you’re better off using a comma here. Which brings us to the next point:

Commas are the worst.

They’re the trickiest punctuation mark to master and a cause of contention when it comes to style. Should you use the Oxford comma (a.k.a., serial comma) or not? The Oxford comma, if you recall, is the comma that’s added before the last item in a list. So, for example: “X, Y, and Z” follows the Oxford comma rule, as opposed to “X, Y and Z” (missing that last comma). Those who are not in favor of the Oxford comma cite aesthetics and one fewer character needed. Those on the side of the Oxford comma cite clarity. Here’s a morbid example:

Basically, pick your side, and stick with it. But if you’re on the fence, go with the Oxford comma: It can help you avoid a lawsuit that hinges on a single comma.

From our blog style guide, here are other guidelines for using commas correctly:

Remember the FANBOYS rule before adding a comma: If you’re connecting two complete thoughts with a coordinating conjunction (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, or So), you should always use a comma before the coordinating conjunction. However, if only one part of that sentence is a complete thought, the comma is unnecessary.

Incorrect: “I’ll order the cheeseburger, but don’t want the pickles.” – “Don’t want the pickles” wouldn’t be used, in most cases, as a standalone sentence, so we don’t need the comma. Correct: “I’ll order the cheeseburger, but I don’t want the pickles.” – “I don’t want the pickles” is complete with subject and verb, so we add the comma.

Also, add a comma after “Also” at the beginning of a sentence, but don’t add a comma after “Or” or any of the other FANBOYS unless it’s followed by a parenthetical. – Incorrect: “Or, you could download this other to-do app.” Correct: “Or, if you want more features, you could download this other to-do app.”

Pro tip: Every time you want to add a comma or a semicolon, consider whether the words after the punctuation mark form a complete thought that could stand on its own.

9. Repetitive Words Repeat

According to Grammarly, one of the most common writing mistakes is using the same word often in a piece. Sometimes this can’t be helped:

But other times repeating the same words or phrases is a sign that you’re struggling to communicate or fully explain your topic without beating around the bush. Readers (that is, people) like variety, and, in some cases, the thesaurus is your friend.

Pro tip: Grammarly’s advice: Read your piece out loud, then cut down or replace frequently used words. When writing, ask yourself if you’ve already made this statement before in your piece.

10. Misused Words

Writing is all about choosing the right words in the right sequence to convey your thought or idea. Simple, right? The problem is there are so many words at your disposal and picking the “best” word is impossible. But some words are better than others when you want to get your point across and also be precise and accurate.

One of my pet peeves is when people use “less” when they should be using “fewer.” As in, “I have less readers than I did when this post was published”—it should be “fewer.” Use “fewer” when you can count whatever you’re referring to (in this case, readers) and “less” when you can’t, such as less readership or audience. Similarly, you’d say “less water” (not countable) but “fewer raindrops” (countable).

If you want to go down the word usage rabbit hole, here are the 58 most commonly misused words and phrases.

Pro tip: The next time you misuse a word and correct it (or your editor corrects it), come up with a mnemonic to remember the right word.

Sometimes writing “mistakes” are really style issues, up for debate. Other times, a writing error could trip up your reader. The most important thing is to learn from each piece of feedback you get, whether it’s your boss, a blog reader, or your future self re-reading your post months from now.

While these are the 10 most common writing mistakes we and our sources have seen, there’s plenty more where that came from, so please add your own insights in the comments.

Go to our website: www.ncmalliance.com

Write Better: The 10 Most Common Writing Mistakes You Should Avoid Making Melanie Pinola A former editor of mine once described wordy article introductions as "throat-clearing," as in, this person doesn't know yet what they're trying to say, so they're hemming and hawing before getting to the point.

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lewiskdavid90 · 7 years ago

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Engaging eLearning Design

All of us have experienced dry, boring, painful eLearning. I can say that with confidence because it’s so prevalent. The question is–why is there so much of it? My answer, or at least part of it, is that eLearning designers and developers have very few good examples to reference. So, when the Big Boss comes and tells you something is due in two weeks, what’s the easiest solution? Do what you’ve always done. Throw some slides together. Get some bullet points on there. Find a stick figure gif. Embed a quick YouTube video. Call it a day. There is so much more we could be doing, though–if we take the time to consider how to design in an engaging way.

Today I want to provide some examples of:

Engaging ways to open your course

Engaging activity elements and

Engaging presentational strategies (for when information just has to be presented and there’s nothing very active about it)

If you want to SEE examples of some of these ideas, check out my free one hour webinar recording for “Elevating eLearning Design.”

Engaging Course Openers

You’ve got to remember that every learner is opening your course expecting to be BORED. If you can surprise them right at outset and capture their interest, they’re willing to open up to the idea that your course has something valuable to offer. Consider these ideas:

Tell a Realistic Story: Immediately immerse the learner in a story that sets up their role or plays out what happens when the desirable action for the course does or does not happen. In short, show the impact and results to others and the organization. This helps create interest and reinforces the relevance of the topic to the learner. Capture their attention by showing them what can happen when they’re successful or what happens when they’re not. Then, step back and show them how to be successful.

Use an Analogy or Fable: Start out with something compelling and interesting, like an analogy or fable that seems completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Then, connect the dots and show them how it pertains to the content and their role. For example in a customer service course, to address an issue of technicians who were being demeaning to customers, I once started a course out by telling them their child was sick and letting them select the doctor who would care for them based on word and tone choice (with some doctors modeled after the exact behavior customers were complaining about). After that I “flipped the script” to make comparisons about how bedside manner really counts when someone’s in a tight spot and worried and needs help.

Give the User a Role: Ask the user for their help and show them what interesting—and relevant to the story—tasks they’ll need to accomplish during the session.

Create a Villain: Adding to the previous idea, set up a villain character with destructive intentions and let the user help defeat them.

Object Lesson: Use an “object lesson” approach to gain attention: this can be done just as easily in eLearning as in the classroom. If in the classroom you talk about time management by using the age-old “rocks and water” example you can still illustrate that in your course. Ask them to drag things to a jar to fill it up and see the results, etc.

Illustrated Concept Video: Create an interesting animated concept to illustrate the “What’s In It for Me (WIIFM)” of the course using a tool like GoAnimate or the basic animation functions in your rapid development tool.

Elephant in the Room: If there’s something undesirable about the course or goal, play it out in a story or other form to get it out in front of the learner, address their objections, and address the value of the course. “Does it ever seem like a total waste of time to input your task hours into the company’s online tracking tool?…”

Put Them On the Spot: Ask the user for their opinion, decision, judgment, or “bet.” A lot of courses start out with statistics or reasons why a program or product exists. Rather than lecturing about why something is important or sharing information about why a change is being made, ask the learner what they think. Ask them ‘how bad’ they think a problem is or how prevalent it is. Ask them how many customers they think are lost every year due to lackluster customer service scores. The list goes on. If you ask them to think and actually put a stake in the ground, they get far more interested whether they’re right or wrong, and in the actual information.

Engaging Activity Elements

Activities are so much more than “click and reveal” or “drag and drop.” There are so many more things you can add to spice it up. See my blog about converting ILT to engaging eLearning for a detailed model and walkthrough of how you can do this, but here are basic ideas for engaging online activity elements:

Jump Right In: When appropriate, let the learner jump right in and make a decision, using your content to provide support resources (rather than making them sit through several presentational slides and then quizzing them on the content). Most adult learners are fine with getting involved—especially with a provided resource—rather than being lectured at before getting involved. This is especially true if it’s clear it’s not a graded assessment.

Make it Fun: Through visuals or controls, make interacting with the page fun and appealing. Rather than a click and reveal, try a fun slider with a theme. Try a dial. Let the learner “play” with manipulating an image through destroying or building something. Visually theme the activity so that it doesn’t feel like it’s just any old page.

Match Story, Role, and Task: In a course that has a central story and where the learner has a role, have the activity’s task align with the user’s role and move the story forward. Often, the learner isn’t given a role or purpose in the story – or if they are, it’s marginal or mismatched to the actual learning objectives. Aligning story, role, and task is an advanced concept but when you make it happen successfully, you can create award-winning courses.

Show Impact: After the user interacts, don’t provide feedback. Show them the IMPACT of their choice first, then let them modify their choice. This is a great way to address common mistakes and understanding and use emotional impact to increase retention. See my blog article on the 4Cs to Creating Meaningful Scenarios for more information—specifically the “Consequences” article.

Full Bleed Immersion: Find a way to make the screen “full bleed” to create the feeling of full visual immersion in an environment (aka have the picture extend all the way past the edges of the screen so there are no margins rather than slapping a square picture in the middle of a white slide) and ask the learner to interact with the “environment” by exploring a desk or peering inside someone’s inner thoughts.

Approximate Reality: Ask the user to do what they’d be doing back on the job. Approximate their reality to the highest degree possible in an electronic format. Relevance is engaging. Theoretical disconnect is not. If the task is to build something, try to find a way to let them build it. If the task is to evaluate something, put it in front of them to evaluate it. Sorting, matching, evaluation, judging, etc. can all be mimicked in eLearning very directly and built as part of a story or an environment.

Let Them Play/Easter Eggs: Build some fun elements into the page that don’t have anything to do with learning, but encourage the user to stay engaged and maintain curiosity. For example, you could let them change the radio station on someone’s desk…or show the seasons changing outside a window.

Violate Their Expectations: Any time someone expects something and the opposite happens, you have their attention. Ask yourself what they expect, then do the opposite (for important points).

ENGAGING “PRESENTATIONAL INFORMATION” TECHNIQUES

Sometimes, the learner doesn’t need to do anything with the information you’re presenting, but…it has to be covered. Even still, there are engaging ways to get it across.

Narrated Example or Story: Instead of directly explaining theoretical information, consider telling it in the form of a story, case study, or narrated example, calling out key points as they appear along the way. Quick comic book/novella formats can easily be made in any tool.

Infographics: Convert the information into an infographic. People would much rather visually explore something interesting than read a paragraph of text. There are simple ways to do this.

Iconic Illustration: Illustrate the main concepts through iconic illustration. Bring the icons and in and out of the slide with movement and narration or music to maintain interest.

Exploratory Interactions: Click to reveal, timeline, or slider-based exploratory interactions can at least chunk, sequence, and put some visual appeal to presentational information.

Visual Presentation: The associated visuals with your content can go a long way toward making the content feel more interesting, rather than boring. Vary your layout and images from page to page while being consistent about what matters, like brand and navigation. Tie concepts or acronyms to graphics and let the learner explore those to study the concept. Find a way to make the reading “active” if there is no way to get around the reading.

Interesting Layouts: Changing up your page layout and creating interesting layouts and bundles of information can help it feel more interesting than it is and keep the user from becoming visually bored with the same layout and approach slide after slide.

There are so many good ideas out there! Explore online communities, Pinterest, LinkedIn groups, and other resources to get ideas. The more you see—and create! —good eLearning, the more you can distance yourself from the reference and habits of boring eLearning. Take some of these ideas and try to implement one or two in your next course. Have some ideas to add? Share them in the comments below!

Contact our Custom Solutions team to see how we can help you build engaging eLearning.

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rueur · 7 years ago

Text

Morning Pages #50 (04.11.2017)

Saturday 4th November - 7:52 a.m.

So a lot has happened. A lot has changed. I think it’s fitting that I’m starting this up again the day after I submitted the last assignment of my degree. That, and I’m right back where I started the very first day I started these morning pages: back at Emily’s apartment in Northcote. Except it’s my apartment now! Mine and Evan’s. We moved in together on the 12th of August, because Emily is going to be living in Sydney for most of her time now. She’ll still be travelling interstate for a bit, but she’ll be spending a lot more time with Bruno and Romy and Quinn, her partner. We’re still receiving a lot of her mail, which I haven’t had the time to forward to her because of uni and work and everything, but I’ll have the time now, I suppose.

Anyway, I should let you know that I am indeed on track to graduate, on the 15th of December with a weighted average mark of over seventy, which is fucking incredible. I actually cannot believe I’ve been able to do this, uninterrupted for three years despite all the shit that’s come my way through it all. I am actually an incredibly strong person, and I forget that so often because of all my momentary bouts of fear, of all my apprehensions and timidities. I have to acknowledge that it takes so much strength to just be who I am. I’ve communicated that to Evan and he understands what I’m talking about, for the most part. I’ve told him a lot about my grandparents, and my parents, my sister, Ikaros, and all my pets. We’re thinking of getting a dog, Evan and I. It’s just that we don’t really have the space for one here so we’ll have to move first, which is a shame because I’m really enjoying living in this apartment with him. This place is basically the setting of our first few months together. On our first date he dropped me off here, we kissed goodnight on the steps outside. The first time we had sex was in this room. I’m fairly certain I wrote about that so I won’t write about it again now. Far too much has happened to be looking that far back.

Anyway, yeah, we’re thinking of getting a dog. I’ve been going to adoption days a lot, mostly by myself because Evan’s been working so much. But we went to one together on the 29th of October because it was a Sunday and it was just up the road at the Northcote pet warehouse. There was a dog there named Raven who just came up to me right away and gave me a massive hug, the little thing. My heart is breaking all over again just thinking about her. I really want to find her again and rescue her. Oh man I haven’t done this in ages and my fingers and my arms are hurting from writing this fast. I used to be able to get these pages done in like fifteen to twenty minutes and it’s been ten minutes already now and I’m not even finished with the first page. I’m getting there though. I suppose you have to maintain the habit for this to feel as easy as it had felt in March or in April. I want to keep writing about all the stuff that’s happened since June but I know that technically these entries aren’t supposed to be like a diary at all. I just choose to write about my day and my life and Evan and all of that because it’s what’s on my mind most of the time, and it’s nice to have a record of that stuff, I suppose. I haven’t been able to record me and Evan moving in together which is a shame because I had recorded a good bulk of the beginning of our relationship. Ooh! Second page now! My arms are hurting a lot I think I may have to change the way I’m sitting right now. I’m lying down facing the window and listening to Childish Gambino’s ‘The Night Me And Your Mama Met’ on repeat. This song is just so soothing, it’s been really nice to write essays to. Okay, I’m changing the way I’m sitting right now though. I was only sitting this way because my laptop needed to charge a bit but now it’s on 66% and that should be enough to finish off these last two pages.

Evan and I had sex last night, it was the first time since Sunday, I think. We’ve been having a bit of a periodic sex life because of all the clutter we’ve had to deal with: Evan’s prolonged work hours, my crazy uni/work schedule, and the fact that I only get evening/weekend shifts at my restaurant. Yes, I’m working at a place on High Street in Thornbury, a place I handed out my resume to with Wren and it turns out they liked me and they hired me, back at the end of July. It’s a pretty okay gig. $20 an hour, and the evening shifts are about 5 hours long so 2 evening shifts a week and 2 weekend shifts, I end up making about $400 a week: basically more or less the same as Evan for less than half the hours Evan works. But I am hating the fact that working at the shop takes away my entire weekends, most of the time, and Evan’s entire week is taken over by his work. So we don’t really have too much time together. I’m looking for full-time work right now, something I can do with my degree. Kill Your Darlings is hiring and I think it might be good to look into that? There’s a good chance they may hire me just because I used to be a subscriber! Actually I think I might still be a subscriber, but I haven’t been reading anything at all. I should probably do my research.

Anyway I’m working today. 11:30 a.m. till 12 a.m. which may or may not be 1 a.m. because I might have to close the shop. I hope not, though. I just got my period, last night. During sex. Evan was cleaning up afterwards and the condom was just all covered in blood. His fingers were all covered in blood. It was strange, but thankfully he didn’t seem to mind it. But goodness, this morning I woke up and felt like I was either going to explode, or that I was so empty that my body would collapse in on itself and I would turn into a black hole. I took a dump and I’m yet to eat, but I’m feeling a lot better now. I miss Evan though, I miss him so much. He left at like half past seven and I won’t see him again till LATE tonight because of my dumb restaurant job. They’ve also been hiring other people which means I’m not getting as much shifts or as much choice of shifts and it’s really fucking irritating. The place is so mismanaged. And although the work is pleasant and the people are lovely (with one exception: Josh), being there is just not good for me, I think. That and I’m keen to finally find something in my field. I’ve been working three years, getting my qualification so that I can contribute to Melbourne’s creative industry. I mean I’ve been doing that with The Yarra Reporter, but I want to do MORE. That, and it would be nice to be paid, you know?

Actually, I’m also thinking of volunteering at an animal shelter. To get my dog fix until we can actually adopt a pet ourselves. We really can’t have one at Mitchell Street, as much as I would like and as much as I’ve been trying to persuade both myself and Evan that we can...it’s just not a viable option. This is no place for a dog. A tiny, second floor apartment with one human who’s barely ever home and then me, who’s looking for full-time work as well. I really don’t know what I’m going to be doing with myself though. Sam said she’d write me a letter of recommendation to work at Robinsons, but I’ve been thinking about that and I don’t know if I’d want to work at Robinsons. So I’ve been asking myself what I DO want to do, and I don’t know if anything’s at all appealing right now. All the creative writing jobs on Seek are ‘content writer’ or ‘social media manager’ or something like that, which could be fun but it also could be totally capitalist and soul-destroying. But the main thing that’s put me off Robinsons is the fact that it’s retail and I’ll have to make ‘sales’ and be equally capitalistic. Fucking hell though, it can’t really be avoided, can it? I applied for The University of Melbourne’s Master of Secondary Teaching, specialising in English and SOSE. There’s a very real chance I’ll be accepted into that, but I don’t want to be a teacher either. Not right away, that is. In all honesty, I see myself doing that eventually...but definitely not right out of uni. It’s a personal belief of mine that teachers should have a fair amount of life experience under their belts before they return to high school on the other side of it all as teachers. The best teachers I had were teachers who’d lived, and who’d taken their field by storm, seen all there was to see and then used all their passion and experiences in their classrooms. I want to be a teacher like that, and in order to do that I’ll need to be really really brave and step right into the creative industry. That means time to write more slam poems, time to write short stories and novellas and novels and enter them into competitions, time to write articles and send them to Djed and Peril and KYD and Going Down Swinging, everybody. Time to do a lot more at The Yarra Reporter, time to make myself fucking prolific. I have to be everywhere, doing everything. Rue Tunga on the scene with my camera and notepad in hand, taking in all that Melbourne has to offer and spewing it all out in the form of CULTURE. I’m actually terrified right now, but writing this has gotten my head together a bit, it seems. I mean I needed this. It’s 8:22 a.m. now. It’s been a half hour of writing and I’m nearing the end of this third page. I’m not as slow as I was when I started this, that’s good to know. But to be fair, I’ve been writing non-stop all week. I had four assessment tasks due within a week of each other. And I had to finish them all one after the other. I think the worst one by far was my gothic fictions essay. I got my last one back and it turns out I didn’t do too well on it: H3. Part of me thinks it was justified and part of me doesn’t. But I swear to god I deserve way better on this last essay I did on Dracula and Frankenstein. I compared the two monsters alongside the era they were written in.

Oh, so I’m running out of space now, so I’ll just say one more thing before I’m done for the day. Evan and I got a lift to my restaurant (from Wren and their cousin Tahni who’s visiting from Queensland) to hand in my employee papers (it’s been cash in hand since I started, like everybody’s been cash in hand up until now) and then we were walking back home when we decided to get some stir fry things to eat with the rice I had in the rice cooker at home. We bought food stuffs and were walking down Mitchell Street when Evan slipped and fell on our bag of prawn crackers. He got so mad he swore REALLY loud and then flung the bag into the street. He said he almost threw our food too. Then he walked home really briskly and left me behind a bit. We got home and the rice hadn’t cooked because I hadn’t turned the rice cooker onto ‘COOK’ it was just on ‘WARM’ for three hours. So Evan, in a continued state of agitation, ordered three packs of steamed rice from Loving Hut on UberEats. Fucking hell. I flipped the rice cooker on, and our rice was done before the Uber rice came. He said he almost punched a hole through the door, and he almost threw our whole bag of food. Because he slipped and fell. It was a bit of a stressful scene. But it was followed by some nice food and Dexter, and a really honest and loving night, and some great - if not slightly bloody - sex.

#morning pages #50 #04.11.2017 #stream of consciousness #i'm sorry i've been away for so long #bytheway

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