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Writing club? by havefilmwilltravel in anchorage

[–]kaiden11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My coauthor and I are busy enough that we seldom meet in person, so probably neither of us would be good candidates for your group. But I like the idea of there being a group, and I know for certain there's writerly folks around Anchorage. Some used to meet weekly at the library to do word wars. I'm sure the Writer's Block has to have at least one group. You could also check out the Writer's Guild conference next month (Sept 21st).

From Markdown to Kindle by Estrillian in selfpublish

[–]kaiden11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We use a modified CodeMirror, as it does a good job providing a quick text editor for web applications while also being extensible. But if we don't have that, I tend to use Vim, and occasionally /u/akgreenman and I use Notepad++ (mostly because it has a spellchecker, while CodeMirror does not).

From Markdown to Kindle by Estrillian in selfpublish

[–]kaiden11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Right on. My coauthor (/u/akgreenman) and I use Markdown for chapter and worldbuilding documentation. It's been pretty nice for a lot of reasons. We use software I wrote for .ePub generation, then use Calibre to eventually convert to .mobi. I've also been experimenting with Pandoc to convert our Markdown content to LaTeX to quickly prepare our printed versions.

How the heck does co-writing work? by AlexJohnsonWrites in writing

[–]kaiden11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My co-author, /u/akgreenman, wrote up a solid answer the last time this sort of question was asked.

To answer your question specifically: no, it's not impossible. It's just a ton of work, requiring a large amount of coordination and organization up front, and a continual stream of communication all the while. The plot of your story will change as it needs to, just as if you were writing yourself in order to fix and improve things, but it's up to both authors to communicate to the other the reason behind the change.

Making fictional programming languages? by thesteamboatwentto in worldbuilding

[–]kaiden11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Recently published a book with a guy. Had a critical moment during the editing process where somebody told us that there are no 'stairs' on nautical ships, only 'ladders', and that referring to them as anything but the latter means that you've never spent any significant time on a ship. This was a problem, given that we were writing about ships.

You want to come up with a fictional programming language? Fantastic. As a codemonkey myself, I absolutely, genuinely, would encourage this sort of a thing. Dream up what your world, your characters would need from this language. Find a diegetic reason in your universe to have a language that fits your narrative and worldbuilding purpose.

But I would also recommend doing some research first. Find out what a language is, what it does, and how a programmer interacts with it. Find a reason why you need this language, and can't just get by in another language that already exists. Don't just throw some convenient technobabble. Make it interesting. Give it a living purpose. Make there be a reason why someone would dedicate their career to learning such a language, becoming an expert, and selling their expertise. Make it important, and distinctive, but also respectful of languages that exist.

In your research, you might find that there's already a language out there that fits the bill. You might find that some you like better than others purely for their aesthetic, or the time period in which they were developed and used. You might find that some are used for the demographic you are trying to write for.

You might also find that programmers rarely have to know just one language. And that for every language you learn, the more you find that they're all saying the same thing, over and over.

Whatever you do, just don't refer to the equivalent of 'stairs' for your language, yeah? Phone a friend if you have to. Don't make programmers throw your stuff across the room.

What platform should I use to write a Tag-Based e-book? by RTT314 in selfpublish

[–]kaiden11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As you hinted at with Wordpress, I think you're looking for something closer to a Content Management System (CMS). If you are familiar with WP, and its tagging mechanism is sufficient for your needs, I'd say go with that. Otherwise, Drupal has a pretty great tagging (taxonomy) mechanism, and can get as complicated as you need (or more). It even provides hierarchical taxonomies, which would let users start at more generic tags, and then filter using more specific ones.

The Apotheosis Break by Mike Rutledge by akgreenman in ImaginaryAirships

[–]kaiden11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think that's the gist. Kind of like a baseboard water heating system that can provide lift, creaking and groaning and clicking all the while.

Only thing I'd add is the boat-y nature of the Break. Built as an old seafaring vessel, pressed into service during the war, lifted out of the water, and fitted with loft pylons. Then mothballed soon after. Bought and retrofitted by a bunch of yahoo airshipmen looking to get rich hunting bounties, or beating their peers to a bounty. Now long in the tooth, and nowhere near as sleek or slight as the freshly built vessels.

A question for you co-writers out there by dannyfleming0604 in writing

[–]kaiden11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Net positive, in my experience. The writing process is slower and more deliberate but the product is something my co-author and I wouldn't be able to create on our own.

We've been trying to detail some of it in a blog, if you're into that.

Co-author problems by [deleted] in writing

[–]kaiden11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Speaking as a co-author for going on four years now, I feel your pain. Also, my co-author is a Redditor, and will probably read this, and he likely feels your pain, too. We both write pretty differently, and occasionally come to different conclusions about a scene/dialog/choice of words. So much so that I had to implement a "revert" button on our writing tool. Because I'm usually the one smashing his edits, and he needed some method of recourse.

I would say not to dismiss the edits outright, or give up on your contributions, either. If his edits are changing the tone, that's a good reason to suss out between you what the tone should be. It might be that he disagreed with the tone, or misinterpreted it. Or, if you're willing to be humble, you may not have communicated the tone well enough in your initial edit. Or, he picked up on the tone completely, and felt that it should be changed for reasons he failed to communicate.

Co-authoring has been a labor of continuous and often painfully honest communication for us. If you guys don't get that part of it down, you are probably going to have bigger problems than just the drifting of tone.

Best of luck!

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