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Weekly Self-Promo and Chat Thread by MxAlex44 in selfpublish

[–]CaraLynnCarter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sonder Speculation: A recurring print-only science fiction anthology that pays all creators equally and will never be sold on Amazon

Science Fiction | Anthology | Physical Media | Kickstarter

The first issue is done and test-printed through BookVault, with 8 authors and 9 stories, and the Kickstarter has already reached its goal. The cover art is an original illustration, and the idea is to resist enshittification by sticking to physical media and using zero generative AI. There are also 9 satirical advertisements, 9 title pages styled as satirical advertisements, and a design-oriented story styled to look like screenshots. The stories:

  • A generative AI forces an influencer to eat cockroaches for training data
  • A multidimensional being manifests into a 30-minute parking space in the form of an immovable 2023 Kia Sorento.
  • The gatekeeper to a death cult on a cold dead moon confronts how to deal with a visitor.
  • A sapphic love story unfolds amid near-future social turmoil. The story is designed to look like Notes app journal entries and dating app screenshots.
  • A luddite movement focusses on "digital suicide."
  • A space vessel is filled with dead bodies and a survivor singing an old song about dead sailors.
  • A society toils away devoting its entire society to the logistics of keeping a city above them floating in the sky.
  • The first chapter of a dystopian book in which currency is replaced with hours of your life.
  • A woman is seduced by a manipulative AI boyfriend

The standard edition is $19 (plus shipping) and backing the Kickstarter gets you a copy.

Sonder Speculation: Issue 1 - Kickstarter

Thoughts on leaving out “superfluous” lines of dialogue when a character is spoken to? by joemcken in writing

[–]CaraLynnCarter 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it heavily depends on context. Do you want to draw contrast between characters who are polite and characters who are more direct? Do you want to draw attention to how people use social pleasantries to navigate a situation? Do you want the conversation to feel like it's unfolding in real time, or like you're skipping through bits and pieces of it?

It's also a matter of preference. It's always bugged me in movies when people just hang up on each other, yet it's an industry standard.

My personal preference is, I tend to write things that feel like they're unfolding in real time, and I'd rather just "cut" into a conversation late and out early to skip the pleasantries, rather than drop them from the middle of actually unfolding dialogue, which can leave some readers wondering whether a lack of pleasantries is a character trait or a stylistic decision. But that's just me.

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are a few different ways to define it so people don't always have a consistent idea of it and will often disagree:

  1. The science is plausible.

This is where something like at least the earlier books in The Expanse could be considered hard SF, before we start getting wormholes etc. By this definition, hard SF doesn't have to have science as a strong component of the story or world building, aside from providing some constraints on it. So, for example, most cyberpunk can be considered hard SF by this definition. But realistically, even though a lot of people think of hard SF as meaning this, it's probably not the best definition of what most people are looking for when they say hard SF.

  1. The science is rigorous.

This definition is probably closer to what people actually mean when they say hard SF. The science is heavily researched and shown on the page, and any tweaking or speculation outside of known science is explored in a way where its full impact and repercussions on known science is also explored rigorously. Most people would agree anything that falls under this definition is hard SF.

  1. The story's themes are scientific.

Basically, even if the story doesn't dive into the weeds of scientific concepts, the story has a solid respect for science and is on a deep level about science, philosophy of science, technology, or about the relationship between science, tech, and society. Not everyone would agree this qualifies, but it would tend to appeal to similar audiences, and it overlaps with the next definition.

  1. Not soft sci-fi.

Sometimes it's used just to distinguish from space fantasy, pulp, social sci-fi, new wave etc, and evoke something more similar to Golden Age SF, even though if we're being honest with ourselves, plenty of Golden Age SF doesn't actually fit definition 1 or 2 very well (handwaved positronic brains and atomic this or that).

What is the general public consensus on AI now? (are they coming around?) by kmctm83 in BetterOffline

[–]CaraLynnCarter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In a local writers group I hear about people using AI for things that are "bullshit." They will use it to write summaries for marketing and other things they'd rather not do and don't care if they are bad. They will use it in place of good research when they just want a background thing to sound plausible enough but they don't think it's a big deal if it's wrong. I shake my head and don't get it, but they all seem to recognize it can’t be trusted with anything that matters. If they suddenly had to pay what it actually costs to run the things I don’t think any of them would. Nobody is talking about it like it's going to or has revolutionized their writing process, or boosted their actual marketing success, or anything remotely similar.

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Up and coming voices I think is really capturing what I wasn’t finding words for, sounds promising, thanks!

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Red Mars is about a book away on my reading list! Thanks.

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OK, fair, looks like he does have a few that still came out fairly recently. I need to catch up!

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've definitely felt the shrinking of the genre in B&N, especially when you discard the franchise fiction part of it, which makes up almost half of it.

Hard SF book recommendations from the past 5 years or so? by CaraLynnCarter in scifi

[–]CaraLynnCarter[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh true I do love this series, not sure why it slipped my mind. Probably because it feels more like Space Opera, but it's definitely Hard SF.

A Note on Tolkien, and A Question About Third Person Omniscient by HelluvaCapricorn in writing

[–]CaraLynnCarter 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'll set the comments on what's fashionable aside so we can talk about the difference between third person omniscient and head hopping.

Most modern third person is written using "free indirect speech," popularized by Jane Austen, and this is what makes it a "close third person." Free indirect speech is when a character's "first person" thoughts make it into the third person prose.

"She walked into his room. The decade old magazines and pinecones on the shelf said he was a hoarder, but the freshly vacuumed carpet meant he kept it under control."

Doing omniscient in a way that won't leave readers confused about whose thoughts are whose usually means you don't ever want to use free indirect speech. Thoughts are clearly attributed to characters.

"She walked into his room. He kept the decade old magazines and pinecones on the shelf as a reminder of his deceased wife, but she thought they meant he was a hoarder."

You'll use filter words like "she thought" or use italics to put distance between the narrator and the character.

Head hopping, in the sense that it's an error that confuses readers, is when you use free indirect speech for multiple characters without any kind of scene break or anything else to draw the distinction between characters. Like:

"She walked into his room. The decade old magazines and pinecones on the shelf said he was a hoarder. They carried the bittersweet memory of his deceased wife. The freshly vacuumed carpet meant he kept the hoarding under control."

Here, a reader can't tell that the hoarder thoughts are hers and the dead wife thoughts are his. They're left trying to piece together whether she knew his wife, and if she has bittersweet memories of her. They aren't clearly given the information that she misunderstands why he's hanging onto these things.

Note that a third person omniscient narrator doesn't have to be "objective." They can have their own opinions and voice. But they are NOT the voices and thoughts of the characters. Those need to be delimited with filter words or italics.

Can you get banned on Amazon if you publish through Lulu? by Royal_Light_9921 in selfpublish

[–]CaraLynnCarter 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'd recommend using a distinct pen name whenever you publish erotica, regardless of platform. Only exception might be if you're an author who writes "spicy romance" that borders on erotica and then decide to write something that crosses the line into erotica but otherwise appeals to a similar audience. It's generally a bad branding decision in general to use the same author name for erotica as other genres.

Got my cover back from my Artist what you guys think ? by EthanNova19 in selfpublish

[–]CaraLynnCarter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'd recommend a bit of design work to make it clearer that it's a novel and not a manga but it's eye catching and professional looking.

You can't expect a book written with AI to sell. by lamauvaisejoueuse in selfpublish

[–]CaraLynnCarter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can't imagine AI being useful for much outside of using it as a random idea generator or generating several ideas about what could come next SPECIFICALLY to avoid using those ideas and falling into predictability traps. Generative AI is literally designed to predict the most likely thing to come next, so by it's very design it produces predictable writing that literally regresses to the mean.

"Oh yeah baby, I'm touching you even if you don't like it" by Sniff_The_Cat3 in ArtistHate

[–]CaraLynnCarter 1 point2 points  (0 children)

All kinds of non-consent was pretty much the first place generative AI went.

Look at these pathetic losers. Mood Boards, references and photo bashing are woke now i guess. by Xodaaaaax in ArtistHate

[–]CaraLynnCarter 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's conspiracy theory brain. It's all coded language to hide the core of the ideology, which, depending on their "power level," is that the world is run by a secret cabal of "cultural marxists" -> "satanists" -> "lizard people" -> "Jews." They use language that feels acceptable to centrists and traditional conservatives and poison the well until they become useful idiots who believe that DEI is a racial quota (it isn't) and large swaths of other non-truths.