Afternoon randomness

[mrissa]

The color quiz says I will be happy if I have lots of sex. I wonder what colors I would have had to pick for it to say I would be miserable with sex. I don't really feel like experimenting to find out, though.

When I don't feel like looking something up that's on the tip of my tongue and breaking the flow of a scene, I will put a shorthand for it in square brackets. I just found a bit where I indicated Lysistrata with "[Greek women refuse sex play]." Which is actually a much more useful note than some of them, which say things like "[guy]" or "[place]." I have not yet resorted to "[thingy]" on my manuscripts as I do in conversation, but I suspect it's only a matter of time. I have also bracketed a paragraph in pink with the label, "Make more sense." Good advice for many writers: hey! Make more sense!

It's a pretty low-energy day for me, and for timprov, too, but we're trying to be of some use anyway. Working on Sampo and "At the Sign of the Fish and Amulet," in my case, although there may be snow yagas in my future. There may also be a nap in my future. We'll just have to see.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Heh. I do that with the square brackets too, except that since I'm writing papers in TeX, I have it automatically also put them in boldface and slightly smaller font as well as in square brackets. I've written whole paragraphs and occasionally even half a section in successions of square brackets.

And, yeah, I also have occasional bracketed notes along the lines of "That last bit was very poorly worded. Fix it." This seems to be useful for turning off my internal editor; once the complaint is registered, I can go on to the next bit, rather than trying to fix it right now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep. And sometimes it's very obvious how to fix it when I go back to it, and sometimes it requires a little more effort, but either way, it's marked; on I go.

[ellarien]

My coterie of co-authors does that; we have a standard 'note' command that gets defined at the top of every manuscript. Sometimes small square-bracketed conversations develop as the manuscript goes back and forth.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

The color quiz hit way too close to home for posting, for me. eee!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You will take a long journey over land and meet stranger handsome people than average?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I use lots of placeholders. My rough drafts have things like

///ing/ly, /name/ hoisted/picked up the /noun/. "Are you sure?" //ly, he/she /verbed/ it. "Quite sure?"

That's because what I get first is flow, movement, breath. Then dialog. The stage-props can get plugged in later.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is not a method I could use, nor one I've ever seen before, but I'm a big believer in doing what works.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

sepdet, teaching a college class, once actually received an essay from a student with "[insert more bullshit here]" at the end of one paragraph.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is good to search on the [, yes.

[ellarien]

I don't think they've ever got to the editor, but my early drafts of scientific journal papers tend to have boldface notes along the lines of 'need more blather here.' Occasionally, in very early stages when I need a bit of text to stop the figures all glomming together, I've dropped in chunks of draft novel in lieu of lorem ipsum.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I use double parentheses for notes ((like this)) so I can easily search for them later. When I co-author papers, those double parentheses can enclose entire conversations.

B

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I do that, too. But usually I just type "xxx" where I want more stuff to be. It's a useful thing to search for before it's "finished", too.

Although I have had studies (a study, I think) approved that had "xxx" in them. Oops....

[greykev.livejournal.com]

when I'm writing longhand I use // to divide dialog & paragraphs.

Also, yay endorphins?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Is there a reason you don't use the same type of dialog and paragraph spacing longhand that you would in a typed document?

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I'm usually trying to make full use of the paper, so //s let me write dialog in paragraphs and make for easy transcription. I add in the punctuation and attributions as I type it into the computer.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You draft without attributions? Wow, talk about different strokes! For me, the attributions are a crucial part of the flow of the scene.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

I have a tendancy to get bogged down in Tom Swiftiness if I do them on the first pass. Or I'll agonize about how to show what they're doing as they talk. If I leave that out I can get into the flow of the conversation and better hear the characters' voices.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I say, different strokes.