pippychick

Thanks, Bronx… I will hold back. Actually it might play into their hands to respond, given that this “discussion” is happening on the troll’s comments page.

Well, I have followed your advice, Des and Bronx, and have submitted a report to the abuse team. Here’s hoping it can be quickly resolved. Thank you!
 

Glad you followed the above advice!  It’s always best to NOT feed the trolls.  It’s what they want.

Thank you, Des I am still thinking about it, but you are probably right. *nods*

I actually have to side with Des on this. Report it, repeatedly if necessary, and if they continue, report the new content. Don’t let up until you get a response from the site. But if you respond on their comments, it will only incite them.

Report and ignore it, that's about the only option that won't drag you down with the trolls.  Plus this documents the issue in case it comes back up.  (Assuming this other sites mods care as much as AFF's do...  Anything to the trolls will just bait them further.  IMO.

Well, this is a new one on me. On another site, some time ago I received a troll review which was full of swearing and nastiness. It was deleted and reposted again and again over the course of about an hour. Since the troll review was from a registered user, I took a screenshot from my notification email and reproduced it on my review page so that I could reply, thinking that would be the end of the matter. And it was… for a while.
This morning, I have a new troll, and I find there is a long rambling discussion about me on the comments section of the original troll’s story (I won’t repeat it – it’s pretty nasty), where they are encouraging each other to continue trolling. I’m hesitant about ignoring a public discussion of myself containing harrassment and namecalling, which leaves me with two options. I can either report the abuse right off the bat. Or I can calmly ask them to stop (on the review board where they’re having this public “discussion”), then report if they do not subside. The second option would seem to be preferable, but I don’t want to start some kind of flame war. I was thinking along the lines of:
 
So… what do you guys think? I am kind of at a loss… *sighs*
 

The Art of Foreshadowing
 
What is it?
Quite simply, foreshadowing is to hint at something, in a casual way, where it will be brought up again later on in the story in a more significant and relevant way. The ‘art’ is in exactly how you lay that little hint, without telegraphing “THIS IS IMPORTANT! REMEMBER IT!”.
 
Why it’s important
Story telling is easy. No, really, it is! The art is in how you tell the story, that’s what makes it scary, exciting, sexy, etc. Foreshadowing is a very important tool to use in many, if not most, stories. I’m sure most of us have watched movies where all of a sudden, the hero just happens to find the one thing he or she needs to save the day. “Oh that was convenient!” we shout at the screen. It’s far too convenient, and therefore, annoying, for the hero of your story to miraculously find exactly the right thing he or she needs right when they need it the most. This is the reaction you’ll get for unrealistic and unbelievable story telling. What you need to do is to leave a little hint earlier in the story, something that, at the time, didn’t seem all that relevant or important to the story, but allows the reader to later say, “Oh, so that’s why the author did that!”
Foreshadowing is more important in some stories than others. Detective mysteries rely very heavily on foreshadowing. Everyone reading the story is hoping to guess who the killer is before the detective, and a well written story should provide enough hints to allow the reader to do this, if only they work out what’s important and what’s a red herring. There’s nothing worse than coming to the conclusion and realising that the detective was apparently privy to information that we, the reader, were not. This is bitterly frustrating and poor story telling. When the detective goes through the steps that allowed him or her to catch the killer, everything there should be something that the reader could also have picked up on. Nothing should be a clue that we hadn’t been exposed to in some way.
As suggested above, you can also use foreshadowing to misdirect the reader, by laying a hint that you know the reader will think is important but is actually a red herring. You would then follow it up a little later with another hint – the true one, this time – but because the reader has thought the earlier hint was the real one, they might be tempted to overlook the true one. I think you’d need to be a little careful with how you do this, because it can backfire if done poorly. If done right, though, then it can be a clever way to get the reader to watch your left hand while your right pulls the card out of your sleeve.  On the other hand, some stories, like detective stories, rely very heavily on leaving plenty of clues and red herrings, creating a pretty tangled web that needs to be weaved with great care.  This is why a good detective story can be so difficult to write.  Huge respect to Agatha Christie!
 
How and when to foreshadow
More often than not, foreshadowing should be of the fairly subtle kind. If it’s shouted from the rooftops then it can cause the reader to keep a close eye out for it, so when it happens, it’s of no surprise at all to the reader, and, frankly, spoils the story. A better way is to drop the hint in such a way as to cause the reader to either all but forget about it, or to make the reader think that your hint was just a bit of flavouring, and nothing more important than that.
You can go overboard with foreshadowing though. If everything in your story is important, then the reader soon learns to understand that everything you mention is going to have something relevant to do with the climax of your story, which only helps to lessen the impact. By adding things to your story that aren’t important, it ensures the reader is never sure what’s important and what’s not. On the other hand, when you later proofread your story, you might actually see how you could turn one of these story flavour enhancers into an actual foreshadow. But as I said, these ‘story flavour enhancers’ should rarely be promoted as “THIS IS IMPORTANT” moments. Describing how the ashtray on the coffee table is overflowing with ash and cigarette butts might just be a way to simply show that the occupant is a smoker and a bit messy or lazy, or it might have important relevance later on. Who knows? Certainly not the reader, and that’s what’s most important.
Remember, foreshadowing should very rarely be obvious. It should be a fairly subtle hint that the reader may or may not pick up on. Too overt a hint comes across as too obvious and too forced. It needs to flow naturally with the story, appearing as something that is nothing more than a flavour enhancer.

Writing Dialogue
 
Writing dialogue can be a very tricky affair for novice writers, and even more experienced ones. So here’s some hints and tips on writing good dialogue.
 
There are very few stories where dialogue isn’t included. Some are dialogue heavy, while others are very light on dialogue, often because the writer isn’t confident in writing them. Dialogue, though, is an extremely important part of story writing. Dialogue moves your story forward; it provides important information; it brings your characters to life. If the dialogue isn’t believable then the readers pick up on that immediately and damages your story, often to the point where your readers simply stop reading. Dialogue is that important, yet it’s perhaps the one area where writers have the most problems with. If you wish to call yourself a writer – even an amateur writer – then dialogue is something you need to get right. So if you feel you’re bad at it, keep practicing!
The very first thing you need to do is to understand your character. This is vital for every story you ever write. If you don’t know your own character then how do you expect your reader to? You need to know how he or she thinks and feels and behaves. Once you do this, you’ll be in a much better position to know how they would talk.
The dialogue needs to be realistic. This is where many people go wrong. I’ll give an example of bad dialogue and better dialogue.
 
BAD: “Hello Jennifer, how are you? I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
BETTER: “Jennifer, hi! Wow, I haven’t seen you in ages! How are ya?”
 
In the ‘bad’ version, about the only people that would speak like that are unfeeling psychopaths. And no, I’m not kidding. There’s no emotion there at all; it’s like a robot talking. In the ‘better’ version, there’s much more emotion. You can tell the speaker is surprised and very happy to see Jennifer. Now, in my mind, the speaker would pronounce the last ‘you’ word as ‘ya’ in that situation, but perhaps your character would pronounce it properly? This is all about understanding your character.
Would your character use slang in their speech? Then use it! But you need to be careful about this. Some slang is not just local to only your country, but perhaps even local to just your town. If there’s lots of slang then your readers might soon get confused and not have a clue what’s really being said. A confused reader is an unhappy reader. If the other character is from out of town then this can give you a good reason to explain what various slang means. But remember, most people don’t speak in non-stop slang.
What if a character is a foreigner, where English is a second language? How do you portray that without your character coming across as a stereotype? This is… tricky. Very tricky, in fact. The problem is that stereotypes are there because real people can often actually fit that stereotype. For example, I have an Asian girlfriend and I’ve been to Asia, and the simple fact is, in many occasions, their English really does sometimes sound like what we might call stereotypical. For example, my girlfriend initially pronounced ‘broccoli’ as ‘broccori’. I nearly wet myself laughing when she said that the first time. Thankfully, she too saw the funny side of her mispronunciation, and worked hard at getting the pronunciation correct. But if you wrote your Asian character mispronouncing every letter L as the letter R, is that a good thing? To be honest, most people would see that as you simply being racist, even though you’re just trying to portray your character in a way that you see as accurate. So what’s the alternative? Perhaps have them mispronounce the odd word here and there instead of every one. Have someone comment on their very good English, thereby eliminating the need for the stereotypical speech at all.
If you’re not sure if your dialogue sounds natural then there’s a very easy way to find out: read it out loud. If it sounds awkward and unnatural to you, then it will sound that way to your readers. Next time you’re with a group of people, listen to how they communicate with each other. If you do that then you’ll quickly see that people are much more relaxed and casual with their speech when they’re talking with friends and family.  Proper English and well constructed sentences are frequently not adhered to.
On the other hand, though, people are usually a lot less relaxed and casual if speaking with their boss. Is your guy shy and nervous around women? Then that will reflect in how they talk with them, particularly a woman he’s interested in. As a guy who is shy and nervous around women I’m interested in, I’m all too familiar with this. Not knowing what to say is common, and if you do say something, saying the wrong thing happens a lot, and eventually walking away thinking “she thinks I’m a moron” is definitely not uncommon. But what if he’s a braggart overly blessed with self confidence? That will also reflect in how he talks with the opposite sex.
Remember, understanding your character is the very first step. The second step is to write your dialogue in a realistic, natural, believable way. If you’re unsure, read it out loud to yourself or to a friend. The third step is to keep practicing!

“When you stop buying a calendar and start using a stone circle.”

At a certain point, you just need a word processor, the software doesn’t have to be fancy.  The user interface doesn’t really need to get an annual makeover, misplacing all the icons/menus so you have to relearn it all.  Generally, I’ve found LibreOffice to be quiet stable and consistent.  It might be a bit outdated/obsolete in certain areas, but that’s fine, it just has to work.

Well, I’ve had a little time to play around with LibreOffice and it seems fairly straightforward so far, so if I can just crap out 1000 words or so for a dribs drabs story chapter I can actually achieve mine! So, You! 3 then… 
pippychick>
I can see the posters now:
“Daddy, what did YOU do in the Trump War?”
And the father looks up concerned that he didn’t produce enough porn during the long dark years. 

I vowed to find time to do something creative everyday. Creating a feast for family today. Health, happiness and wealth is my wish for us all. 

Now, more than ever, we need to establish that AFF writers’ commune/Guild HQ/Union somewhere that won’t see any action.
Then, in years to come, documentaries will be made about the written pornography that was circulated during WWIII. Which not only lifted spirits, but also caused a crucial delay in the activation of nuclear strikes, since the soldier with the job was waiting for just one more chapter, hereby averting total catastrophe and saving the world for future generations to slowly rebuild and enjoy.

Write something I can get paid for. Find a future that doesn’t involve street homelessness. Go to the local Labour party meeting and use the ‘thirty minute topic’ to explain to the right-wingers why they’re all twats. Watch the slowly approaching Brexit/War in Europe/US Presidency with a sense of creeping horror. Just the usual, really.
 

Now, more than ever, we need to establish that AFF writers’ commune/Guild HQ/Union somewhere that won’t see any action.
Then, in years to come, documentaries will be made about the written pornography that was circulated during WWIII. Which not only lifted spirits, but also caused a crucial delay in the activation of nuclear strikes, since the soldier with the job was waiting for just one more chapter, hereby averting total catastrophe and saving the world for future generations to slowly rebuild and enjoy.

Write something I can get paid for. Find a future that doesn’t involve street homelessness. Go to the local Labour party meeting and use the ‘thirty minute topic’ to explain to the right-wingers why they’re all twats. Watch the slowly approaching Brexit/War in Europe/US Presidency with a sense of creeping horror. Just the usual, really.
 

I’m going to stop being so negative. I just realized that I have a shitty outlook on everything that has to do with anything I do. This was pointed out to me by my family while most of them were a little drunk which means it’s probably true.
I’m also going to get to work on that fallout shelter I’ve always wanted just in case things go the way I have a bad feeling they will. I’ve already got a couple of cases of wine so my stockpile is off to a good start.
Oh and I guess I might try to write some stuff too.
Happy New Year!

Write something I can get paid for. Find a future that doesn’t involve street homelessness. Go to the local Labour party meeting and use the ‘thirty minute topic’ to explain to the right-wingers why they’re all twats. Watch the slowly approaching Brexit/War in Europe/US Presidency with a sense of creeping horror. Just the usual, really.
 

BW, convert your money to British, then you can most definitely lose 25 pounds!  (Likely the cheaper way to keep the resolution too )
 

Mine is: “Find a publisher who isn’t going to go belly-up.”
Oh, and lose 25 pounds, because my body dysmorphia is playing up again.

I just have: “Gonna find time to write.”

Fantastic news! Congratulations, CL I really, really, love that story.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!