Writers' Study Chat and Feedback - Ask all your questions here!

[NorseThing]

I do use source mode, but the 'paste as clean text' is a copy / paste option when preforming the paste. I am assuming that is from Win 10 on my machine, but I do not know. I feel like an idiot here at the moment.

[Skotos of Sinope]

Don't feel like an idiot, dude. Windows 10 makes idiots of us all. Anyway, I use Open Office too but it's not installed on my desktop. If you're still having the issue tomorrow, I can install it on my Windows 10 desktop and see if I can replicate the issue and maybe find a solution. (Although I'm having a tooth pulled so I may be too out of it to do anything technical. )

[Kilo11]

Hey NorseThing, I have no ideas or suggestions for the issue with alt-tab and the game switching, as I don't use Steam (or game switching, for that matter). To your issue with the text though, have you considered just using a simple text editor like the pre-installed Notepad or the free Notepad++? I mean, any formatting you might use in Open Office is no good for AAR or CW posts anyway, as we need the BB code to markup things so that they have the formatting we want, and so an editor that gives you raw text might be an easier way to go, as that will leave nothing "hidden" from you like Word programs would. Personally, I use LaTeX, but that is a bit of overkill for things here, and is really only my program of choice because I use it for the writing I do for work anyway. But that is also a raw text input program, where you have to write in your own text markup for formatting stuff, and so what is written in there can also not be hiding spaces from you or messing with you in other ways.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I don't have Windows 10, and I use LibreOffice rather than OpenOffice, so anything I say may be irrelevant.

I haven't had any trouble with TWC deleting spaces since I stopped adding formatting to my offline documents, so I'm slightly surprised your "paste as clean text" doesn't solve the problem.

Let me tell you what I do in case it helps. Either I add the formatting once I've pasted the text into my post, or I type the code out in full in the offline document.

Does that make sense? What I mean is that I don't have a document that says "As Archibald walked down the corridor, he heard a boom from somewhere to his left..." Instead, I either have a document that says "As Archibald walked down the corridor, he heard a boom from somewhere to his left..." (and I add the bold and italics after I paste that to a TWC post), or I have a document that says "As Archibald walked down the corridor, he heard a [b][i]boom[/i][/b] from somewhere to his left..." (and then I can copy and paste that directly to TWC and get the bold and italics I want).

Oh, and I still do all of the pasting into TWC posts in source mode, obviously.

But, as I say, your circumstances are different so this may not be relevant to you.

Edit: Meant to say that I also feel like an idiot relating to this - lots of people have had this problem since I started posting here, and I'm not sure we've ever really discovered what causes it. You'd think we should be able to work it out...

[Kilo11]

Edit: Meant to say that I also feel like an idiot relating to this - lots of people have had this problem since I started posting here, and I'm not sure we've ever really discovered what causes it. You'd think we should be able to work it out...

I would assume the problem lies somewhere with Windows being a little bitty and adding/deleting things at its own pleasure. I'd say it's the beginning of Skynet, but luckily I think Microsoft programs will never be clean enough to take over the launch silos and destroy humanity. And so we live another day, because of computational ineptitude!

[NorseThing]

I think I resolved at least the alt-tab issue. Win 10 seems to 'like' to only switch between open windows and not between the Total War game window and the desktop. If I open a text window before starting up the SS modification of the game I am fine. Why this is only a problem with Stainless Steel and not Lands to Conquer or basic Steam Medieval II playing is probably a mystery nt worth the effort to answer. Such is the wonders of Win 10 and Steam. I still need to fiddle with the dropping spaces issue, but thanks for the suggestions. A bit more fiddling, and I may figure this out.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

I hope you will manage to figure it out, NorseThing. I know how annoying it is.

(If you do find a solution, please come back and tell us what it was - I'd love to know. )

[Admiral Van Tromp]

I apologize if it's intentional and I missed something, but I noticed that the duels' commentary thread is closed. Is it supposed to be?

[Alwyn]

I apologize if it's intentional and I missed something, but I noticed that the duels' commentary thread is closed. Is it supposed to be?

Thanks for asking, yes it's intentional. The duel commentary thread only opens when there's a duel in progress. We do this because we already have a chat thread and we don't need another.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who voted already in the MAARC LXXX and good luck to everyone who entered! If you haven't voted yet, it's not too late.

For stories posted in our Creative Writing forum, the MCWC XX is open for submissions and nominations.

If you haven't seen the winning tale in Tale of the Week 288: After the Battle (and congratulated the winner), you're invited to do so. Only the bravest writers will dare to face the Behemoth in Tale of the Week 289!

[Admiral Van Tromp]

Thanks for asking, yes it's intentional. The duel commentary thread only opens when there's a duel in progress. We do this because we already have a chat thread and we don't need another.

That makes sense. I was under the impression that the challenges themselves were issued there, so I was confused.

[Caillagh de Bodemloze]

If there's going to be a public challenge, that should certainly be issued on the duel commentary thread. But the duellists should have agreed to the duel in private before that, and PMed WS staff to ask us to provide a referee. The referee will open the duel commentary thread, and at that point, the public challenge can be issued. (It is optional, though. We're quite happy for people to skip the public challenge, public debate over the terms of the duel, and all the mudslinging, if they prefer just to get on with the writing and voting.)

[Admiral Van Tromp]

Thanks for the clarification!

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Hi guys,

I am ESL and grammar is often a thing pointed out. I was looking at some old threads and saw how awful some of my writing was. (Not all of it was bad.)

I am wondering how to improve? I mean for native speakers, you know it inside and out. For me, it will take an eternity to improve grammar and punctuation. I am fully aware of the fact that if you speak English, you need to know every single thing. I can't figure it out. What's the difference between he said and she said - etc?

How long will it take me to improve my grammar so one day its not even mentioned at all?

How do you improve pacing? My feedback that I get is that the chapters are too fast paced. Sometimes I have to write within a limit, and 3000 words say. It's already hard enough to write everything that you want I am a panster. I try outlines but only one time it worked when I meshed up different outlines together.

[Hitai de Bodemloze]

Good questions For the first point, on how to improve your grammar, I think the best way is just to keep practising. Although I'm a native English speaker, I've written stories in my second language (Chinese), so I do understand that struggle. When I started out writing, I used to get really bogged down in grammar and prose, and I was holding myself to the standards of not only native Chinese writers, but also the standard of my own English writing. And it took me a while to realise that was simply unrealistic and it was holding me back from improving. Taking a step back and saying 'you know what, it doesn't matter if this is 100% perfectly grammatically correct', was actually what I found to be the most effective. And just by writing more, I got much more confident and my grammar improved naturally, and if I was making the same mistakes over and over, then people could identify them for me quite easily. So it's one of those things that I'd suggest you just let develop with time, rather than try to force through. Your mileage may vary of course, and I understand that no two people ever have the same experience learning (let alone writing in!) a second language. Although for the record, the best writer on TWC that I've ever seen wasn't a native English speaker, so it can be done

Pacing is a tricky one, and its hard to really teach. I 'learned' how to pace my stories from reading Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which was a novel I didn't particularly enjoy, but it was fantastically well paced. I think part of learning how to pace your stories comes from thinking more critically about then. We often have a tendency to skip ahead in our stories when nothing is happening, and part of writing a well paced story is actually writing about that period of 'nothing' in between. If Jeff goes to Church on Sunday, then the next thing you want to write is him going to the shops on Tuesday, well then, what does he do on Monday? Instead of going from big exciting scene #1 to big exciting scene #2, you need boring scene #1.5 in the middle to bridge the gap and provide a sense of dramatic contrast - otherwise your exciting scenes won't feel so exciting, if they're happening one after the other all the time.

This extends to within scenes too. One common trap people fall into is just writing out the dialogue of a conversation almost as if its a script:

"Is that so?" said Jeff.
"Apparently," replied Julia.
"Why is that?" said Jeff.
"I'm not sure, but I imagine Hitai is going to tell us," said Julia.

This can be effective sometimes, but it can often really mess with the pacing of a scene or a chapter, and you're missing out on the chance to expand on how your characters are saying these things, how they feel about what they're hearing, and what's going on in the world around them. If you have really short paragraphs in general, with things happening in quick succession without the requisite description or detail, then it can make your story feel very fast paced. So part of pacing is fleshing everything out.

But to what extend one scene needs to be fleshed out over another, unfortunately it's impossible to say. I think there is certainly a knack needed for it, which comes from experience. Pacing is a balancing act that takes place within scenes and chapters, but also across them throughout a whole story. Creating such a logical and cohesive superstructure for your story isn't an easy task and it can't be solved with any real shortcut. I think there are certainly things you can do as a writer to better pace your stories, but the ultimate task of creating a coherently paced story I think has to come down to the author's own experience and intuition, because it becomes such a massive undertaking - so intrinsic to the individual story in question- that it's hard to really provide a template for. But looking over your story and asking yourself 'are things happening too fast? Is there anything I can expand upon?' is as good a place as any to start

[Kilo11]

Hey Storyteller!

In general, I think all of Hitai's points are bang on, and I would say the same things myself. A couple additional things that come to mind are the following:

With regards to language and avoiding mistakes, I think a really important thing is just to read a lot. English is my native language, so I don't have any issues there, but I know German as a second language and I would never have dreamed of writing in it because the grammar is just so complex in comparison to English (not to mention written German uses and entirely different set of cases than everyday spoken German). However, after reading more and more in German, and especially reading different types of texts (some children's stories, some adult novels, a good deal of philosophical texts), I have become much more confident in my understanding of the cases, tenses, and all too many options for conjugation of things. I still am not near a level where I'd be comfortable writing something in German, but simply by reading it more my understanding and confidence with the "nuts and bolts" of the language has much improved. That would be my biggest suggestion for that, to just read a lot, and to read differing styles, as some writers will use really simple constructions and grammatical devices and some will use much more complicated ones, and it is always good to be familiar with both ways of doing it.

For pacing, I think Hitai has hit most of the important points worth bearing in mind. I would just reiterate that pacing should vary across a story (unless you have a very particular idea in mind where you want to explore some sort of pacing). If it's all quick and snappy that gets tiring, and makes every action scene seem cheap and sort of bleh. Using rich descriptions in between will draw more attention to the action, and make it memorable, rather than just par for the course. It might be helpful to also think about how movies use pauses and slower sections to build suspense and place more focus on the action. I mean, some of the very best and classically "action" oriented movies have a lot of down time with little happening in them. Think about how much time is spent in Die Hard with John McClane just climbing through vents and counting bad guys. Those drawn out bits make us crave the action more, and make the action scenes memorable and catchy.

[Skotos of Sinope]

WS, I'll second the great advice given by Hitai and Kilo. And while all the languages I've learned have been dead ones, I think I understand where you're coming from. One of the best bits of wisdom I've found on this subject has been Anthony Lauder and the video below:



Relax. Don't focus on rules, focus on absorbing. I think Stephen Krashen input hypothesis explains much of why this is key to language acquisition. To underscore Kilo's point above, we learn more by unconscious imitation than conscious memorization.

[The Wandering Storyteller]

Skotos, Hitai and Killo.

I have been busy, but have read your answers with great indepth.

You have given great answers and I surely would put this up for more ESL writers to read. Your posts was very encouraging and motivating, and I cannot comprehend the vast knowledge but only offer thanks.

May I ask this last question: Do you need a course in English grammar to be given verification that you are proficient in English grammar?

[Alwyn]

The advice from Skotos, Hitai and Kilo looks good. I wonder what you mean about verification of proficiency in grammar.

Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who voted in the MAARC LXXX so far. There's still time to vote.

Thanks to NorseThing for entering Tale of the Week 289: Behemoth. I look forward to seeing who else will take up this challenge.

[Swaeft]

Hello one and all,

It's the end of February (or the start of March, depending on your timezone), and we have some news for you! In a very intense MAARC competition, the tie-break for second place is currently ongoing. All are invited to head over and cast their vote.
In other news, the submission period for Tale of the Week 289: Behemoth has been extended, so sharpen those quills and hop on over if it strikes your fancy.

Have a great March ahead!

[NorseThing]

I played a short campaign (destroy Poland and HRE as factions) with Hungary this weekend. Curled up writing and game play. Even slept late due to the daylight savings kicking in. Yeah it takes a while for me to even play 60 turns from the beginning. Had a great time. Even my beloved did read some of my writing.

Started out with the decision of playing at peace and allied with both and thought build up and Crusade to Antioch. I then let nature take its course with another Crusade on Cairo. Did the sleazy buy Vienna off the HRE for some token tribute plus trade and alliance. It took a while since I was not in a hurry.

Eventually the HRE thought it better to stab me and retake their precious Vienna at the cost of excommunication about 10 turns after Cairo's Crusade ended. Need I say more? Saw quite a bit that might be useful in an After Action Report even though I only went 60 turns (more than I have done for my AARs, LOL). I was worried about Venice the whole game, but they were loyal until the end and that meant the end of the HRE with a joint Crusade. I never did get to the Polish problem though.

I might do a replay and see what varies. Oh, I found it interesting that converting Bran to the city line when it reaches nearly a fortress level population interesting. That alone could be interesting in an AAR. Sofia became my main Balkan fortress. I was not planning on the Mongol invasion since the Hungarians did not at the time either. Made for a better game. In the past, I always had one eye on the known future. Such looking forward spoils playing the eastern factions for me. Nobody should expect the Mongol invasion.

Any recommendations for other Hungarian AAR's that have been written? They need not be on the basic game nor on the 12th century. I would not want to duplicate in any case, but it might be interesting to read what others have done based upon member recommendations. A good read is never a waste of time.