In today’s Journal
* The DeepL Translator
* Some Great Stuff in “Of Interest”
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
The DeepL Translator
I failed to mention last time, when Norbert W in Austria emailed me, he used a translator to translate his Austrian (German language) email into English.
I tried the same thing later, and I believe DeepL is a very good translation program. I’ve added it to my Writers’ Resources over on my author site. You can find the free version of the translator at https://www.deepl.com/Translator.
The development of this translation program also seems to be heading in a very good direction. At present, you can even select whether you want the translation delivered in a “formal” or “informal” tone.
After they’ve developed it a little more, I might even use it to translate some of my stories and/or novels into Spanish. Of course, most characters speak informally, but a few speak formally, so any translation would take some tweaking.
As a former instructor of English as a Second Language, I also am very curious how well the program would translate idioms. American English is replete with them, and those were more difficult to explain to a classroom full of eager students than even our weird spelling rules.
There’s some great stuff in “Of Interest” today: a very basic but useful primer on printing options, an entertaining post on fairy tales and tall tales vs. “realistic” fiction, an informative post on the use of “cue words” (catchwords) by characters in fiction, and then two posts on creating conflict. (IMHO, the first is more classic theory and the second is more real-world.) And all of that wraps with a rare post by Neil Gaiman, albeit one that has nothing to do with writing. Still, you might get some story ideas out of it.
Enjoy, and I’ll talk with you again later.
Of Interest
See “The Short-Run Printing Option: Pros and Cons” at https://www.janefriedman.com/the-short-run-printing-option-pros-and-cons/. A superficial overview that is still helpful, though in a limited way.
See “Fairy Tales and the Fictionness of Fiction” at https://countercraft.substack.com/p/fairy-tales-and-the-fictionness-of. I found parts of this delightful and thought you might too. This reminds me of Juan-Carlos Salazár, the fictional bartender and Keeper of the Tales in Agua Perlado (Wes Crowley series), who is a much better storyteller than I am.
See “Cue Words in Dialogue” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/11/cue-words-in-dialogue.html. These are what I and others call “catchwords” or “catch phrases.” They are Bart Simpson’s “Cowabunga” or “Don’t have a cow, man” and they are Festus Hagen’s “Matthew” when everyone else calls the marshal “Matt.” How your characters speak is almost as important as what they say.
See “Adversaries in Fiction: Who Is Standing in Your Character’s Way?” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/adversaries-in-fiction-who-is-standing-in-your-characters-way/.
See “Need Conflict? Just Let Your Characters Talk” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/need-conflict-just-let-your-characters-talk/.
See “Art and Climate” at https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2021/11/art-and-climate.html. Not specifically about writing, but maybe some story ideas.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 470 words
Writing of WCGN 5: Tentative Title (novel)
Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for November……… XXXX
Total fiction words for the year………… 623282
Total nonfiction words for November… 4680
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 183170
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 806452
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 13
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 66
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.