I see a surprising number of comma splices in some books I review.
The problem with a comma splice is that the two parts of your sentence are not connected firmly enough. You either need to separate them into two sentences; use a semicolon rather than a comma; or put a connecting word like “and” or “so” in between.
There are a couple of other ways, too, which Mignon Fogarty sets out in this article.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
5 tools to fix a comma splice http://ow.ly/DURq30kCEbQ
Sample sentence: “Let’s ask my mom. Hey, Mom!”
When it’s standing in for a name, it gets a capital. The same is true of other titles like “captain” or “duchess”.
Originally shared by Grammar Girl
Whether you capitalize “mom” depends on how you are using the word. Is it a nickname, a common noun, or a term of endearment? http://ow.ly/8A4U30kCD7z
This writer did a lot of work researching an experience that she wasn’t part of in order to get it right. Kudos.
Originally shared by Conscious Style Guide
“Was I reinforcing stereotypes, or combatting them? And was I stealing attention from first-hand narratives, or shedding light on them? The first question was a matter of good writing—something I had control over. The second was stickier.”
#fiction #writers #writingtip #writingadvice
[Image: A red “Wrong Way” sign in front of distant mountains.]
For your anti-ageing and recovery-from-brain-injury story needs.
Also, wasn’t Tony Stark in Ultimate Marvel drinking because practically his whole body had turned into neural tissue, making him highly intelligent but also in constant pain?
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Transdifferentiation Can Create An Endless Supply of Brain Cells—And Fast https://suhub.co/2K7J4Yp
The most frequent believability issue I see in “solarpunk” SF is the lack of awareness of how much power you can realistically get from a solar panel or store in a battery.
Because of power-per-weight issues, we would need to improve the energy density of batteries about six times from current levels to make electric aviation feasible on a large scale. But a 6x improvement is not out of the question; we’ve seen much bigger improvements than that in various technologies over the past few years.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
Are Electric Planes the Future of Aviation? https://suhub.co/2Na6j1U
To read later – Jo Walton is super-smart, so I imagine this will be good.
Via Adriel Wiggins.
Originally shared by Rick Liebling
Hello! Economics isn’t usually a major consideration in world-building, but it permeates everything that happens in a society.
Jo Lindsay Walton, an editor of Vector, the British Sci-Fi magazine, sat down for a truly amazing Q&A to talk about science fiction economics. It’s a must read if you’re a Sci-Fi writer:
Very early days, but there’s some interesting stuff being worked on – including roads that detect traffic accidents or power streetlamps from the vibration of traffic.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
The Smart Road Tech That’s Making Driving Faster, Safer, And Just Better https://suhub.co/2Mugb58
Because this is Peter Diamandis, whose glasses are so rose-coloured it’s a wonder he doesn’t walk into walls, I automatically assume that the wonderful picture he paints here is massively overhyped.
With that caveat, this is an interesting idea: use massive computational resources and machine learning to identify and even generate drug configurations which match particular diseases.
Originally shared by Singularity Hub
How Artificial Intelligence Could Help Us Live Longer https://suhub.co/2KaksgK
:: Colorado State University polymer chemists have taken another step toward a future of high-performance, biorenewable, biodegradable plastics. Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by Professor of Chemistry Eugene Chen describes chemical synthesis of a polymer called bacterial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) – or P3HB. The compound shows early promise as a substitute for petroleum plastics in major industrial uses. P3HB is a biomaterial, typically produced by bacteria, algae and other microorganisms, and is used in some biomedical applications. Its high production costs and limited volumes render the material impractical in more widespread commodity applications, however. ::
#chemistry #polymer
Some people dislike the idea of “worldbuilding”. While the distinction made in this piece is more of a spectrum than a binary, it does have a point.
Reviewers seldom mention the worldbuilding in my Gryphon Clerks series, which was mostly worked out in advance, in detail. Several reviewers have mentioned enjoying the depiction of the world of the Hand of the Trickster books, which I made up as I went along. I think there’s something to be said for both approaches.
Originally shared by Adafruit Industries
Worldbuilding or Worldconjuring? The Science Fiction and Fantasy Debate
via Electric Literature
In contrast to “worldbuilding,” I’ll offer the term “worldconjuring.” Worldconjuring does not attempt to construct a scale model in the reader’s bedroom. Worldconjuring uses hints and literary magic to create the illusion of a world, with the reader working to fill in the gaps. Worldbuilding imposes, worldconjuring collaborates.
Let me make a necessarily incomplete analogy to another platform. In painting, worldbuilding is like Renaissance art that attempts to create realistic figures even when they are cherubs, demons, or god. Worldconjuring is a spectrum of other techniques: Matisse implying dancing figures with a few swoops of the brush, Picasso creating a chaos of objects to summon the horrors of Guernica, Magritte shattering our vision with impossible scenes. We should enjoy realistic paintings, but we shouldn’t impose their standards on every school of art.
Worldbuilding is The Silmarillion, worldconjuring is ancient myths and fairy tales. (In fairy tales, we don’t learn the construction techniques of the witch’s gingerbread house or the import/export routes of evil dwarves.) Worldbuilding is a thirty page explanation of the dining customs of beetle-shaped aliens, worldconjuring is Gregor Samsa turning into a beetle in the first sentence without any other fuss.
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