RESEARCH
It’s been a while since I’ve done a proper Click Here, and since I have several links relating to words, that’s what you’re getting this time around. Here goes:
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, includes 100 new words or expressions, including these favorites:
1. Bollywood
2. chaebol
3. crunk
4. flex-cuff
5. ginormous
6. gray literature
7. nocebo
8. perfect storm
9. smackdown
10. speed dating
Want to know more about how a word makes it into the dictionary? Read THIS.
Did you know there is an American Dialect Society? You may have heard about the 2006 word of the year, since it was announced in January. If so, sorry for the old news. But I hadn’t heard about it, and I like PLUTOED:
Read MoreI haven’t posted a Click Here in a while, so here you go. Continuing with our screenwriting trend, these research links that should appeal to the Hollywood-intrigued among us.
Does your story have a clear protagonist and antagonist? It it emotionally, rather than intellectually, driven? Is there clear conflict? Does it possess an interesting “air?” Might it make a good screenplay? Hmm… Check out The Seven Tests of a Good Screenplay Idea HERE.
Love Chris Vogler’s Hero’s Journey and want to see it applied to a well-known flick? See how the Journey breaks down with Star Wars HERE.
Ask a professional screenwriter’s advice at Done Deal Professional: David H. Steinberg’s Hollywhooped
Read MoreNow that I have the June issue of Writer’s Digest in my steamy little hands, I can tell you the rumor is true: Writer Unboxed was named one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers! There are a load of fantastic sites referenced in WD–a hundred others–and while I’m sure they’ll soon have them all on their own website for easy clicking, here are a few to hold you over:
Get your fill of ideas at Creative Writing Prompts – HERE.
Want a critique? At Andrew Burt’s Critique.Org the cost for receiving one is giving one.
Writing Time provides inspiration, creative exercises and more.
There’s a great agent database at First Writer.
Protect yourself with a visit to Agent Research & Evaluation, which runs a check for nasty reports on the agent of your choice.
Lots of links for specific genres, too. And a GREAT interview with Christopher Moore. Definitely an issue worth picking up.
Enjoy the clicks!
Read MoreA fantasy novel that includes a convincing, original imaginary world AND a great story AND complex, memorable characters is a treat to be savoured. Sadly, for every one of those I discover, there are ten books I can’t get through. Poor research in fields I know about, such as music, is one major turn-off, and wayward choice of character and place names is another.
Hang on, you say – in an invented world, doesn’t anything go? If I make up a language, a mode of speech, a set of names, they belong to me, the author, and it’s not up to anyone else to say they do or don’t work.
Not so, at least not in the opinion of this rather picky reader. A slapdash approach to the linguistic framework of an invented world will turn me and others like me right off your book. The most basic tenet of fantasy worlds is that they should be internally consistent. You need not be Tolkien to achieve this in your naming. A philologist has the advantage over most of us in inventing languages. But I believe a basic knowledge of the way languages work is an essential tool for a fantasy writer.
Read MoreIt’s that time of year again: Time to gather receipts and hope you actually brought in more than you spent on writing! Here are a few links I’ve culled from here and there (many from Authors and the Internal Revenue Code by Linda Lewis
Writers Guide to Taxes by Linda Adams and Emory Hackman
Profit vs. Pleasure: Rules on Losses
How Long to Keep Financial Records
TAXES AND THE WRITER at Publish Lawyer
A Home Business and Taxes article by Teresa Stone
Here are a few links specific to freelancers as well. Good tips within that can apply to any kind of writer:
Read MoreI’m back from my Floridian adventures. Yes, we saw Cinderella’s castle and had breakfast with Goofy and all that jazz. It was surprisingly chilly, but we still had a blast, then headed to the beach for a few days to enjoy shell hunting and the faint whisper of warm sunshine on our skin. We didn’t have the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the trimmings; instead, we had lemon chicken and green beans with garlic butter and key lime pie [Kathleen injects Homer Simpson drool noise here], and we ate it in lawn chairs on the patio of our little beach house. It’s the first Thanksgiving I can remember not feeling like I was going to pop after eating the meal, and it was kind of refreshing! So, in honor of my unconventional holiday, I’m posting a Keeping it Light Click Here – a collection of links I hope you’ll enjoy.
Need humor for your current wip? Check out the Wacky Laws Homepage. By perusing these chuckle-worthy decrees, you’ll learn, for example, that it’s illegal to carry an ice-cream cone in your pocket in Lexington, Kentucky (that’s just got to make it into my next story).
You can always find something interesting and idea-sparking at the Guinness Book of World Records site.
Word affectionados will appreciate “words that are fun to say.” The list is HERE.
Creating a character outside of your age group? You can get a clue about his/her generation by visiting this great website, which, when fed a birth date, provides a list of historical events and the corresponding age of the person when said events happened. Click HERE to check it out.
Read MoreThe girls have been asking me to write a post about HTML, so instead of talking about writing prose this week, I’m going to see if I can come up with some HTML basics for those of you who don’t already know them.
A bit of background
HTML means hypertext markup language. A HTML document is a plain text document that your browser reads and interprets in order to deliver web pages to your screen.
The Code
Luckily for us HTML is fairly simple to learn.
We use markup or tags to describe the structure and content of the webpage we want to build.
First we need a text editor. You can use wordpad, notepad or even get something as fancy as Crimson Editor to help you with your markup.
We start by telling the browser the document is HTML, and we do this with a <html> tag at the top of the document. We also put a </html> tag at the end of the document to show the code has finished, but we can worry about that later.
HTML documents are made of two parts, the head and the body. So we put a <head> tag after our initial <html> tag. All sorts of information can go in the head section of the document, but as we’re only looking at the basics I’ll leave that for another time. One of the things that does go in the head section is the page title. <title>My Webpage</title>.
Read MoreYour manuscript is hungry for information, and it’s time to go fishing for historic details, a better description of a particular item, a list of Mexican tourist attractions (whatever). Armed with your favorite search engine and some idea of what you’re looking for, you sink your net deep into the Internet ocean. When it comes up, it feels good—not too heavy, not too light—and you’re ready to inspect it. But do you know how best to sort through the e-weed and old boots to uncover the best possible catch?
Here’s a start!
Refuse to be awed by the top ten hits. Advertisers pay some search engines to display their websites as first hits on web searches. This means you can’t count on your search engine to sort hits for you in order of relevance, even if they claim to. Sites promoting products may be too biased to be trustworthy. Investigate other options.
But wait, there’s more!
Read MoreI went to a Yankees’ game yesterday. Ungodly hour of waking, couple hours on the bus sitting behind children who wouldn’t leave the shades alone, $12 bucket of popcorn, the whole nine yards. Unfortunately I found it more compelling to watch pigeons target fans with guano bombs than focus on what wasn’t happening on the field. Oh, we were disgusted, yes, and not by the pigeons. So I think today is the perfect day to bring out this particular batch of links. Before I do, though, you have to pretend this next line is delivered to you via James Earl Jones:
Win a brand new AlphaSmart 3000, simply by jumping through one small hoop set out by the benevolent souls at Writer Unboxed. Click Here to learn more.
And now, on to The Plague.
Read MoreOriginally, I was going to post a very cool pic of a two-tone lobster for this post…and then Floyd Landis won the Tour de France yesterday. If you’ve been following the tour, then you know all about the drama–the dope charges that kicked so many out of the race at the start, Floyd’s own battles with a wasted, paining hip (it’ll be replaced in upcoming weeks) and his struggle to reclaim the yellow jersey after having a dream-crush ride earlier in the week. This guy’s determination and strength, the fact that he was able to make up a stunning 8-minute deficit over mountainous terrain has put him in the Tour’s record books and endeared him to all. Fodder for a novel or a new protagonist? Could be! And so it’s only fitting that the lobster move on over and give Floyd the top spot in my Hot Stuff post this a.m.! Enjoy…
The Writer’s Medical and Forensics Lab is a site “where writers and readers can learn, be entertained, and obtain the specialized medical and forensic knowledge they need to make their stories come to life or to better understand someone else’s story.” Great page of links to more info, too.
Wish someone could pay you to sit and polish your wip? Maybe someone can. Check out C. Hope Clark’s list of Funds for Writers. While you’re there, check out her contest page as well, where you’ll find lots of good possibilities for submitting that poem or short story.
Longing for the day when I actually need to use this one…here’s a Royalty Calculator, thanks to Kresley Cole! Using statistics, such as the dollar amount of your advance, the print run and more, determine if your book will “earn out.” The calculator shown on the site is fixed, but Kresley has generously offered to send a free interactive copy of this calculator to anyone who emails her!
Elizabeth Lucas-Taylor’s Marketing and Promoting Yourself is a super 75-page PDF file loaded with tips, including how to print your own ARCs, promote a booksigning and maximize impact of those book blurbs.
Stay with me now…
Read MoreThere’s Kath–riding her pony back from her beachly travels. She’ll be back tomorrow, and I can honestly say I have a brand new appreciation for having a partner on this site. Buddies/ partners/ helpers are great, and so this week’s Click Here is all about helper sites on the ‘net. Enjoy!
First of all, a MEME for WU: We’ve been added to the Preditors and Editors site as a RECOMMENDED visit for serious writers. How cool is that? So now I have some authority when I say, Writer Unboxed should be your first stop when you’re looking for a helper site (I know, I know–I’m preaching to the choir).
Want a business card without spending oodles of cash? Design your business cards for FREE at Vista Print. Choose from 42 designs.
Do you tend to use the same words over and over again? Check out the Web Frequency Indexer, where you can cut-paste a segment of your wip to check on frequently used words. Click their process button and get a run down on how many times you use the same words over and over again.
Want to learn how much moola an author might make from various publishing houses? Check out Brenda Hiatt’s comprehensive list Show me the Money! available at Karen Fox’s website.
Stay with me now…
Read MoreKathleen goes to the beach, Therese goes to a soggy Washington, D.C. Where’s the justice? I guess I’m in the wrong city for that…sorry, couldn’t resist! (Our hotel is very cool though, with the glass-backed framed pics of Barbie and Ken on the wall, the plasma TV, the funky green mosquito netting around the bed, the huge red lamp and pillowed coffee table…)
Because I’m currently surrounded by historical magnificience, I thought it’d be fitting to post some cool history links this week. Enjoy!
Need some authentic folk medicine for your historical novel? Check out UCLA Folk Medicine where you’ll find much more than your basic cranberry-juice-for-urinary-infections advice. (Did you know that salting your head was sometimes prescribed for headaches in 1607?) Established by one of UCLA’s top professors in folklore and history, this site’s information comes from published scientific works as well as popular sources and even unpublished interviews.
Wish you could refer to an old website that has long since been updated to exclude the info you most desire? Journey back through history with the Wayback Machine, a virtual website time machine that has archived sites back through 1996.
Speaking of history, Time Magazine, with its wealth of articles and fabulous photography, recently opened its 83-year archive up to the public. Use the engine to search for articles or cover stories, and beef up your manuscript with historical facts. Even if you never use the site for your work, it’s a great resource to save in your Favorite Places.
Stay with me now…
Read MoreAfter eight billion-and-a-half years of working toward my master’s degree in psychology, today I am turning in my thesis paper. Since my paper is on memory for certain kinds of imagery (interactive imagery in advertising, if you’re burning of curiosity – snort), I thought it fitting that today’s Click Here be all about good stuff for the peepers. So without further ado, here ya go:
Explore over 100,000 works of art at the Art Encyclopedia site. Allows you to search by artist, title of work and museum. Results include high-quality image archives. This is perfect for rounding out a story, including the description of a work of art in detail, or simply for taking an “art break” and soaking up expressive visuals before getting back to pounding keys. (Love it? Want more? Check out the ArtLex Art Dictionary.)
Like photos? There’s an enormous 120,000+ archive at Every Stock Photo. Not enough for you? They’re adding to the archives at a rate of about 20,000 new photos weekly, so check back anytime.
I think this site is really fascinating; maybe it’ll inspire someone else out there, too. Watch Ilana Yahav create and recreate some amazing sand art in this set of videos.
Having trouble visualizing a fictional locale? Maybe you’ll hit on some inspiration during a visit to Visual Collections, an inspiring sensory treat. Be sure to check out the architectural link. After all, you know what they say about a picture’s worth…
Read MoreThis Friday, we’ll post the first part of an empowering interview with Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss. Given that Victoria is dedicated to helping us remain cookies of the smartest order in the sometimes crumbly world of publishing, I thought this week’s Click Here links should help us to write smart with good research! Here we go…
Writing about an unfamiliar state or country? Places Online is the ideal first stop for learning more about it. A service of the Association of American Geographers, Places Online provides links to some of the best place-based websites available. Each site chosen provides unique information to help you get a true feel for a locale, as if you were “actually present observing the human and/or physical environment.” Beginning with a map of the world, hone in on the area you’d like to virtually visit. As it will be continually expanding, this site is definitely one to bookmark.
A search engine you may want to investigate now (and later) is the interesting A9. Not only will search results provide the usual links to websites and images (these portions powered by Google), they will show “inside the book” results (thanks to Amazon.com), movie hits (provided by the Internet Movie Database) and reference material hits (encyclopedic, dictionary, etc…) as well. If that weren’t enough, A9 also refers to your own search history and bookmarks to highlight pertinent sites. The layout is dynamic, a nice blend of text and images. Click here and give it a try!
Want more?
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