You are about to read Writerly Round-Up (12 – 18 May)
In my youth, I wanted to be older than my brother, I thought I could run the world and time passed at a snail’s pace.
Funny how my take on reality has changed.
I am okay with my brother being the oldest of 8, I am not going to run for president in 2020 and another week has passed.
Welcome back to another Writerly Round-Up. You will see snippets of things that fluttered into my email, Facebook or Twitter feed during the week. Hover and click on the Headlines and you will be whisked out of my post and into the whole article that caught my attention.
Writerly Round-Up (12 – 18 May)
CNET Releases Crowdsourced SciFi Novel
Daniel Berkowitz
In October 2015, CNET asked readers to help the tech site write the novel, and dozens decided to contribute, with hundreds of others reading and providing feedback, collaborating in a single Google Doc under a Creative Commons license to shape a rough draft of the story.
The venture was inspired by National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and its goal was to produce “a novel-length work of fiction at least 50,000 words long in the span of just 30 short days.”
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My Favorite Tool for Checking Story Sequence
Mary Carroll Moore
Two of my private clients are working on nonfiction books. They have a ton of expertise to share, but they normally teach in person, so putting their techniques and theories into a logical sequence on the page has proven challenging for both. They found my website and decided to work with me to check the structure of their books-in-progress.
I start them with basic structure analysis techniques, which I learned as an editor at different publishing houses. Most writers just write–they don’t necessarily know anything about structure. Editors used to take care of that, but they don’t anymore, so we writers must learn to analyze the structure of our own books and get them in shape before we submit the manuscript.
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Writerly Round-Up (12 – 18 May)
Law and fiction — blogs with a real-life view of lawyering
Leslie Budewitz
Writing a character who is a lawyer, but you’re not one — or closely related to one? A recent post on favorite blogs for lawyers on the Washington State Bar Association blog mentioned these, so I took a quick look. Good inside info.
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Can a DNA Sample Reveal Age?
D. P. Lyle, MD
DNA will of course reveal gender, but there is also research suggesting that race, hair and eye color, and physical features such as stature might also be determined from a DNA sample. These aren’t completely worked out yet but they are intriguing aspects of DNA analysis.
But what if a DNA sample could be used to determine the approximate age of the person? This would definitely help as, once again, it would narrow the suspect list. For example, if the crime scene DNA could be shown to have come from someone who was approximately 25 years old it would effectively eliminate a 60-year-old suspect. But is this possible? Maybe.
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Are We There Yet?
The Future of Books: VR, Augmented Reality, Self-Driving Cars and More
The physical book is a great device, and for many purposes it will continue to be the best format. But if we believe the digital transformation in book publishing is almost complete, we will soon find out we are wrong.
There are many new technologies on the horizon that will impact what and how we read. At the recent F8 (Facebook Developer Conference), Mark Zuckerberg shared his 10-year plan, including many ideas about his vision for virtual reality (VR) and chatbots. Do publishers have a 10-year plan? Are publishers prepared for what is here or almost here?
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Writerly Round-Up (12 – 18 May)
Authors on Twitter: 43 Stunning Header Image Examples
This one came from a Facebook Post by Sandra Beckwith
Building an online platform often means having a presence on Twitter. While readers may engage more with certain authors on social networks like Facebook or Instagram, and it’s hard to actually sell books on Twitter, many authors use Twitter to connect directly with readers, other authors, and industry professionals.
Twitter’s header image offers a great opportunity to spark recognition between a book and its author. It is highly visible to Twitter users when looking at a profile on the web, on Twitter’s mobile app, or after clicking on a Twitter handle in third-party apps like Tweetdeck — but even with its high profile, this space is often underutilized or neglected altogether.
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Well, readers, this is it for Writerly Round-Up.
I hope you are finding these weekly posts useful.
Till next time, don’t touch anything sharp.