A Note to Authors

When you've got a character you're referring to on a regular basis, pick one term for them and stick to it. If you're going with their first name, or their last name, or their description, or job, or whatever, fine. Stick with that, though. Don't jump between Name and occupation and race and physical description and back. IT gets too confusing and trips up the reader, making them have to think to figure out who the hell's talking. When you introduce them, sure, put their name and titles and things, but then just use one.

Like in Discworld, Sam Vimes is referred to 90% of the time as "Vimes." And most of the time when he's called something else, it's by one of the other characters. That's how you do it.

This min-rant brought on by a confusing and suboptimaly written fight scene. (Also, I didn't think they even HAD half-elves in Magic. But who am I to quibble, he's published, I'm not.)

Technorati Tags: Language, Writing

Nanowrimo

Man, I'm getting nowhere in Nano lately. I don't know if it's because I'm distracted, or what. But Nano doesn't seem quite so important this year either, kind of. It might just be that I'm not making myself get started and letting myself get distracted by the shiny Internets, but I don't know. Maybe because I've done it twice, and I've proved to myself I can write 50K words in a month, but never actually done anything with any of those after Nano was over. But whatever the reason, I'm still at less than 5000 words. And I'm sure I can catch up, if I ever sit down and make myself do it. I'm just not sure how to do that.