Tag: tips

Part 8 Surprises in writing a science fiction thriller

Never let the technical overshadow the art.

Then I thought about how I might explain that, and came up with this:
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Art always trumps the technical; the grammar, the sentence structure, the etc, the ad infinitum.

Technical:

What is that mild illumination coming in through the window?  That’s the sunrise, and Juliet represents the sun.

Art:

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Multiple online results talk about how Shakespeare had more freedom back then to use the English language in the manner in which he did.

Yeah, so?  What’s holding people back today?  Catering to the lowest demographic or something?

If someone were to ask me about writing in that form I would wholeheartedly encourage them to go ahead and write like Shakespeare.

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But if you are ‘terrible’ at art and really have to work at it then how would you tell it?

First of all you can do art just fine, remember that.

Second, you don’t tell it ……. you show it.

Tell:
Is that the early morning sunlight beginning to come in through the window?  Due to the rotation of the earth the sun rises in the east, and there is Juliet, her inner glow providing it’s own illumination, she’s just like the sun.

Show:
But soft! What light through yonder breaks?  It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

Early on I was very much inclined to write in the ‘Tell’ format.  Showing is moh bettah and moh fun.

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There is a last part:

STORY trumps all, including art.   Showing is good, but not at the expense of the story and it’s flow. 😀

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Update Dell 3531 Inspiron 15 Laptop

EVO850 250gb SSD for Dell Inspiron 15
EVO850 250gb SSD for Dell Inspiron 15

I couldn’t resist.  I went ahead and swapped the spinner for a solid state hard drive.

(HERE is the original review)

Big, BIG, improvement in speed.  I could finally use my laptop the way I use the desktop.

It was ok for a few hours.  Then I ran into the RAM memory limit, with the operating system (Win 8.1) closing down windows every now and then, typically webpage tab(s), again owing to the way I use a computer.

Some might say that I could simply increase the size of the page swap file.  Yes, and I did do it and yes it does ‘solve’ the memory issue.  For those unfamiliar, the page swap file is what the operating system uses as ‘hard drive RAM’.  This activity results in a lot of read/write cycles on the hard drive.  Not much of an issue with spinner drives but it can be a problem for solid state drives.  Solid State Drives have a finite limit of read/write cycles.  It’s way up there in number but still, there’s a limit.  One interesting way to differentiate cycles between SSD models is actually to look at the warranty, some are five years, others are two years and the really expensive ones are 10 years.  The cycles directly correspond to the warranty time.

So I finally got the 8gb RAM stick (THIS) and swapped out the 4gb RAM stick.  The 3531 uses one stick.  Fortunately the 8gb stick is only $60 bucks or so.  I often maxed out the 4gb.  My usage pattern seems to touch on 6.5GB according to the Task Manager.

Another speed ‘improvement’ of sorts, specifically when web surfing, is to activate the ActiveX Filtering.  In IE tap on the Gear graphic, mouse down to Safety,  and tap on ActiveX Filtering.  What this mostly does is stop the webpage from taking over your computer in order to load those infuriating sidebar videos lol.

This Celeron processor model, with an SSD and 8gb, has the speed feel of an i3 chip model.  All told, given the original price, this is now an $410 laptop.  The SSD was $110 and the RAM, $60.

It appears that the 3551 is the new version of this laptop, as of 7-9-15.  Of course the EVO850 250gb is now $97 and the 500gb is $162.  But that’s going to always happen and there will always be something better/faster/cheaper.  I knew that when I bought the parts.  If I didn’t I would continually be waiting and never actually have the components that would be useful.

Yeah, just do it 😀

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Working Split Screen in Scrivener

I searched around the net for an answer to this one.
I wanted to rewrite a chapter while looking at it, but without changing it.

What? Speak English man.

Basically I wanted to follow along on my old chapter while rewriting the new one.

Working Split Screen in Scrivener
Working Split Screen in Scrivener

If you ever tried to rewrite as you go you know that keeping track of your thoughts gets logarithmically more difficult after the first three sentences are rewritten.
This way I could go split screen and keep the old chapter in front of me (without printing out a copy).
Just hit the Split Screen graphic in the upper right of the active window n’est-ce pas?

Sort of. You end up with two screens of the current chapter. The moment you change something in the right window it shows up on the left window.

That’s when I took to the net. But the answers were wordier than this is getting to be.

The solution is simple.

Duplicate your chapter and rename it by adding OLD to the name.
Just right-click on the chapter, Duplicate, and presto, same chapter. But to Scrivener it is different.
Go back to your split screen. The active window has the chapter name underlined. Click on the title bar of your left window, go down your left hand chapter list and click a chapter. You’ll see the ACTIVE window change to the new chapter, while the other one remains on the other chapter.

That’s it. Click the title bar of the window, go over and click your chapter, click the OTHER window title bar, click the OTHER chapter.

‘Chapter’ and ‘Chapter OLD’ are now next to each other. 😀

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Part 3. Surprises in writing a science fiction novel

Word Count.

As I got deeper into my concept of the Chairman and his story I noticed that the manuscript would easily go into the six digit word count.

No problem … to me. I read Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising in about 20 hours.

Then I got into studying the publishing business and I discovered The Rule concerning debut authors.

First book = less than 100,000 words (at least for scifi stories).

Hmmmm. Ok.

Some people might immediately see these situations as limitations.

Avoid that. Dwell instead on how this could be an opportunity.

This ‘limitation’ was exactly the thing that gave me the idea for a series.
Suddenly the story opened up much further than I’d originally envisioned.

I’m still writing the series as one continuous outline to maintain my sanity in keeping the details right though lol.

I’m going for 9x,xxx word count in each book.

Easier to work with the system than to fight it 😀

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