Recent content by skip.knox

Congratulations on getting to the point of print. The nerves? Totally natural as I'm sure you know full well. There's no arguing with them. We just let 'em yammer until eventually they slink away.

I have a decent vocabulary, but plenty of books send me scrambling, probably none more than T.H. White with The Once and Future King. It was a cornucopia of nouns. It is also one of my best beloved books.

That's a bit like asking, how do you write men, how do you write women, how do you write old people. Heck, how do you write people. In the first place, you write them so they are believable *to you*. You are the First Editor. If a character sound off to you, then you have some revision to do...

I did not find the process quite so quick. I have always had to fiddle with the print cover, and especially fussing with getting the back cover just right. On the inside, it's making sure the Table of Contents navigates properly, that you have page numbering right. Layout for ebooks is not the...

Setting and character are not mutually exclusive. In the best stories, the characters draw me in, but also those characters are deeply involved with their world. The places they inhabit or visit are places they care about (or hate or fear). And because I care about the characters, I'm also...

I agree with the last three lines, but I'm pretty sure that print requires better than 600x800. Scale to a larger size for print; you can always downsize for the e-readers. The usual advice is 300dpi, which is not the same as pixel ratios. Here's a reference Common Map and Book Sizes for RPGs: A...

Writings belong over in the Story Showcase or in the Critique Requests forum. This forum (Writing Discussion) is for talking about writing in general. Take a look at the threads to see what I mean. Just FYI. No need to repost, unless you specifically want a critique.

Congratulations on having completed a draft. That's a huge accomplishment in itself. When you get discouraged (and you will), remind yourself of this. Several of your comments are grounds to believe you will do well on the rewrite. Not many newbies are able to look at their own work and see the...

Welcome. You should consider posting over in the Worldbuilding forum and there put specific questions. You could say what you have so far and where you have particular questions or ideas.

Maps and more maps. Not just maps of the world, but maps of a particular city, a map of a building within that city, and even a map of a room where action happens. In drama it's called blocking: you can have your scene, but you need to know how it plays on this particular stage which has a...

I have acres of notebooks, going back to the early 1970s. I keep them in order to curse my children with them. My current favorite notebooks are Septcouleur. The paper is good quality and holds anything from a ball point to a fountain pen without bleeding (though I have to be careful with gel...

Seems odd to me to arrange them so that none of the spines show. How on earth do you actually find something?

Why are you showing it? Are you looking for just a vague "I liked it, you can dance to it" reaction? Are you looking for detailed editorial comments? Are you showing it because the other person is kith or kin and they want to see what you've written? All this will affect not only what you show...

Prince of Spires has the right of it: much depends on the era. To which I would add much depends, too, on which peoples. Do you mean to have, say, carpentry be the same for humans, dwarves, elves, orcs? Or will trades vary (which of course means shops and buildings will vary). Now, cutting up...

Sounds like graphics card, which is not great news, There was a cartoon, many and many a year ago, that has ever held true. When there's trouble First look up Then look down Then look in your wallet. [minor edit: I think the line was, Look at your shoes. I can still see the line-drawn...