Recent content by kiplet

  1. kiplet

    I can predict whether your story will become popular or not

    Okay... Tags Fairies Modern Fantasy No. 1.1: When the Phone rings – What is Needed
  2. kiplet

    Does chapter size matter?

    Couple-three thousand is the sweet spot: long enough to engage, short enough to read on a coffee break.
  3. kiplet

    Do readers pause at a comma?

    The comma was originally intended as a sign to the reader, who would've been reading aloud, to pause here in the flow of the text to take a breath, so yes, I'd hope they'd pause.
  4. kiplet

    Editing Wale on the wailing whale—

    Your occasional reminder that you don't wail on somebody, and you don't whale on somebody: you wale on somebody. —You're striking with such literal (or figurative) force that you're raising literal (or figurative) welts, like the wale of corduroy: thus, waling on.
  5. kiplet

    Writing The Levitz Paradigm

    Spoilers! (—The rows are my main characters for the current run; the columns are chapbooks; the colors indicate that character will appear in that chapbook, and whether they're main or secondary.)
  6. kiplet

    Writing The Levitz Paradigm

    You get a bigger piece of paper. That grid's for comicbook issues, which tend to have a bit more room for plotting than webserial chapters: so plot 3, in that grid, is teased in the first issue, doesn't appear at all in the second issue, warms up in the third issue, and goes off in the fourth...
  7. kiplet

    Writing The Levitz Paradigm

    Paul Levitz has written a lot of superhero comics, and he has a neat trick for keeping track of multiple plots that's useful for anybody who's doing longform, episodic, serial work. This is how another comicbook writer describes it: And this is one way to visualize it: So each row is a plot...
  8. kiplet

    Poll : which writing software(s) are you using ?

    Scrivener to write; Affinity Publisher and Sigil to lay out and publish, with an assist from BBEdit.
  9. kiplet

    Writing Structuring Loss Arc

    Don't put them through an arc: think of the arc you'd put them through if they were to live, the relationship(s) they'd have and the moments that would come, write as if that's going to happen, foreshadow their story-to-come as you usually would, make a promise to your readers, and then use the...
  10. kiplet

    Recommendations Your works?

    Jo Maguire, a highly strung, underemployed telemarketer, meets Ysabel, a princess of unspecified pedigree, and unexpectedly becomes her guardian and caretaker. Now Jo must make a place for herself among Ysabel's decidedly unusual family and friends—which calls for a bit more sword-play than most...
  11. kiplet

    Anybody got art of their characters?

    I know a few cartoonists. —It's a portrait of one of the protagonists, the Princess Ysabel, and her guardian, Roland, Chariot of the Court of Roses. She wants to go to a house party in Nob Hill, and he doesn't think it's a terribly good idea.
  12. kiplet

    Anybody got art of their characters?

    A few, by old friends: https://pixelfed.social/p/thecityofroses/8924
  13. kiplet

    Regarding alternative to swear words

    My grandmother always used to say, "Oh, spit!" instead of, well, you know. —And you should hear the spin my mother can put on the word "person" when she's yelling it at a driver who just cut her off. And Isaac Asimov got a lot of mileage out of unprintable: "I will do such unprintable things to...
  14. kiplet

    Teach me some good curse words for a Goddess (18+)

    Browse a list of insults from Shakespeare, any list...
  15. kiplet

    Writing Verb for "Psst!"

    I'd probably go with "hissed," but I'd modify it, depending on the situation and its implications: "gently hissed," "carefully hissed," that sort of thing.
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