6 rules for writing scenes

Good stuff, explaining the six rules that every scene in a novel should have.

We start by dividing each scene into two parts: scene (action) and sequel (reaction). We then further divide each of those halves into three more pieces each:

SCENE

1. Goal (the protagonist or POV character sets out to accomplish or gain something).

2. Conflict (en route to his goal, his efforts are blocked by an obstacle of some type).

3. Disaster (the character’s attempt to gain his goal is at least partially stymied, forcing him to move forward on the diagonal, instead of rushing straight ahead through the plot).

SEQUEL

4. Reaction (the character must then react, however briefly or lengthily, to the previous disaster—this is where the vast majority of character development will take place).

5. Dilemma (as the result of the disaster, the character is confronted with a new complication or dilemma in his attempt to reach his main story goal).

6. Decision (the character comes to a decision about how best to act, prompting a new goal in the next scene).

 

Source: 7 Questions You Have About Scenes vs. Chapters – Helping Writers Become Authors

ChunPo Rises

ChunPo kneels on the ground in front of a cherry blossom tree, and listens to the sounds of battle, born to him on the winds. He understands that these sound are from wars in far away lands, lands he abandoned when he made his choice to stay here in Pandaria after helping free his beloved homelands from the evils of the Sha and the Orcs.

ChunPo makes a daily pilgrimage from his homestead in Halfhill to here, Emporer Chao’s grave and the memorial to those who sacrificed their lives in defense of Pandaria, both here and in Orgrimmar. These were the wars that ChunPo fought in, and these are the wars that left him with the physical scars that have faded and the emotional scars that never will. All ChunPo wants is to enjoy peace in this home he fought to the death for.

Yet the sounds of these new, far away wars grow louder and louder. The winds call to him, call him to leave his home, possibly never to return, because… Because…

“Azeroth is in danger…”

ChunPo tries to ignore this voice, but it grows louder and more urgent every day. He ignores it, but knows that he will give in. Azeroth needs him, had given him years of peace but now calls him to action…

ChunPo kneels and communes one last time with Emperor Chao’s spirit, and is not surprised as Lorewalker Cho and the Celestials join him in saying farewell. Their voice echoes in his mind, radiating warmth and love and courage, and they say as one:

“Rise, hero, your time of solace is over, it is time to stand once more. For Azeroth. For the Alliance.”

The Celestials, having delivered their message, vanish. ChunPo rises and looks into Lorewalker Cho’s eyes. They kneel to each other, then yell as with one voice:

“FOR PANDARIA!!!”

Todoist + Your Calendar – Todoist Help

I had no idea this existed, now I cannot live without it! Todoist can integrate two-way sync with Google Calendar! My one gripe with Todoist is that it couldn’t sync with Google Calendar, and my one gripe with aCalendar+ was that it could only sync with Google Tasks. This left me with no other option but to switch between two separate apps, one for calendar and one for keeping a todo list, which I grant you is a first-world problem, but is still valid.

Google Calendar syncing with Todoist solves this though. The sync now basically comes to:

Todoist <-> Google Calendar / aCalendar+

Easy peasy!

Source: Todoist + Your Calendar – Todoist Help

Christmas Playlist 2017

This is my Christmas/holiday playlist for 2017! I had to re-do it once, but this is the final version. All of these songs mean a lot to me, I hope you find some songs that you like. Just click “Play” below.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Add SD-Card as internal storage in Android Marshmallow and above

Are you like me, and just got a new Android device whose manufacturer has the device configured to not allow adoptable storage for SD-Cards? Some manufacturers have a bad habit of doing this on all their devices (looking at you, LG, for doing this on both the LG G-Pad X and the LG G6). It is possible to work around this, by turning on Developer mode, enabling USB debugging, and then using adb to do the dirty work. The steps are:

1. BACK UP THE DATA YOU HAVE ON YOUR MICROSD CARD. Your card will be formatted by this process, so make sure you have saved any pictures, videos etc. from your card to your PC before you start.

2. Decide how you want to split your card. You can either commit 100% of the card to internal storage, or split between internal storage and conventional SD. This option is useful if you like to unplug your card and put it in your PC. I would probably recommend committing the whole card.

3. Open your command window / terminal on your computer and type the ‘adb shell‘ command (with your phone connected of course). You will need to enable USB debugging in developer settings (which in turn is displayed by tapping the build number of the device 5 times) in order to see the option.

4. Type ‘sm list-disks‘ to list the disks available for adoption. It’ll look something like below – take note of the disk ID (disk:179:160 in this example).

5. Partition the disk. For this we use the ‘sm partition DISK TYPE RATIO’ command. For example, to partition the disk above as fully adopted storage (aka private) I’d use the command ‘sm partition disk:179:160 private‘. If I wanted a 50/50 split between adopted and regular, I’d use the command ‘sm partition disk:179:160 mixed 50‘. Easy right?

6. This process will take a while, but when it’s done, the Settings -> Additional Settings -> Storage view on your device should show the new Internal Storage.

I am doing something here I almost never do: I’m pasting the full relevant info from the website’s article here. Please go there, so they get the views and clicks, but the tech pages I link to have a habit of disappearing, so I included a full paste of the relevant steps.

Fix middle-button click on Dell Inspiron Clickpads

I seriously cannot believe that it took me as long as it did to find a fix to this issue. New-ish Dell Inspiron laptops have moved from touchpads to Clickpads – the biggest change is that Clickpads have no physical buttons on them at all. Everything is done by a combination of taps and clicks and gestures. Blame Apple for screwing around with something that should be straight-forward.  😛

Anyway, after a few hours of searching, I found a fix. It’s straight forward, linked below:

The content of my file is:

# This option disables software buttons on FocalTech touchpads.
# This option is only interpreted by clickpads.
Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "Disable clickpad buttons on FocalTech touchpads"
    MatchProduct "FocalTech"
    MatchDriver "synaptics"
    Option "TapButton1" "1"
    Option "TapButton2" "3"
    Option "TapButton3" "2"
    Option "ClickFinger1" "1"
    Option "ClickFinger2" "3"
    Option "ClickFinger3" "2"
EndSection

Hopefully this will save y’all hours of frustration!

(via http://askubuntu.com/questions/761931/cant-simulate-middlea-click-with-my-trackpad-asus-zenbook-ux305ua-fc057t)

Use @example.com email address for sites that require email

You know those annoying websites that are designed to briefly show you the page, but then block you from actually using it until you enter your email address? That annoys the crap out of me! There’s an easy way around it, though, if you don’t want to use your real email address: make an @example.com one!

There’s an explanation of example.com below, but basically it is a domain that seems like a real domain and accepts email from other mail servers, but immediately dumps the email. This allows people to test out programs they write that need to send email, but it also provides an interesting back door to websites requiring an email address.

All you need to do is come up with anything – anything at all, whether it’s names, words, just a bunch of random letters – and put it before the @example.com. As long as it’s a valid email format, example.com will accept it. So go ahead and use IROCK@example.com, or xxsddfswe@example.com or youcanthavemyemailaddress@example.com.

One caveat: this isn’t a secret, and there are quite a few coders out there that won’t allow any @example.com email addresses. This trick will work at most websites, but don’t be surprised if you get a “not a valid domain” message from time to time.

Happy surfing!

select a domain name without creating naming conflicts if end-users try to use the sample configurations or examples verbatim.

Source: example.com – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia