Writing Stuff

“Aren’t you going to try to tell me to stop being mad? Do you not even care?”

Medical trauma is absolutely a thing.

And I’m not entirely sure what you mean by how but I suspect it means ‘how does this affect them.’ I’m going to advise you to look up trauma reactions in general and look at first person references for cancer specifically.

New York Times did an interview. (Link)

This is a blog by a person who had cancer. (Link)

Also, articles about it from groups that help out with cancer:

Livestrong has an article about life after cancer here. (Link)

This one by Journey forward deals with learning to cope. (Link)

Here’s a thing about life after childhood cancer. (Link)

Cancer.Net has a thing about it as well. (Link)

As does the American Cancer Society. (Link)

Cancer Today touches on it too. (Link)

Now, the things about life after childhood cancer are often going to be directed at loved ones/the family or they’re going to be about the stats of remission/other side effects of treatment.

But rarely in life are any of us going to find a first person reference that meets what we need exactly, which is why it’s important to do a lot of research and combine what you can to make the picture that you need.

Hopefully that helps a bit,

note that people who are high self monitors will notice these behaviors more often and can adapt to different conversations more than those who are low self monitors, who may not realize that they are reacting inappropriately in a situation.

second note that we only remember a fraction of dialogue and conversation, what sticks in our mind is how a person made us feel during the conversation

women, parents, good teachers, and actors are more sensitive to gestures and expressions and noticing subconscious behaviors in others.  

please note that some of this may not apply to everyone, keep in mind where these social situations could change for your neurodivergent, mentally ill, and disabled characters

under the cut, i go through non-verbal interaction, gestures, personal space, and eye contact

Thanks for your question, love!  I love friends-to-lovers <3  It’s probably one of my favorite romance dynamics – like 90 out of my 100 OTPs are friends-to-lovers.

But there are a lot of these kinds of relationships that I don’t like, too, and it’s for the reason you’re stating.  They’re over-direct, and obvious, and unrealistic.  Two people don’t just go from a platonic place to, “Whoa, I guess I’m in love and never noticed.”

There are two ways to remedy this.  The first is to keep their friendship a little flirtatious in the first place, which is something we see with Andy and April from Parks and Rec, and Jim and Pam from The Office.  Though these two couples both began as strictly friends (and in both situations, one of the two people was in another relationship), they had a hint of attraction toward each other, whether it be purely physical or deeper feelings.  There was something there that you could sense – something palpable, so that when the relationship developed, you could go, “Oh, that makes sense.” 

You don’t have to do this, though.  There are other friends-to-lovers relationships that begin from a place of little or no attraction, like Monica and Chandler from Friends, or April and Jackson from Grey’s Anatomy.  In these cases, there was a particular instant of connection (in other words, a one-night stand) that caused them to view each other differently.  I’m kidding, though – it doesn’t have to be a one-night stand, and in fact, that’s kind of overplayed.  But any moment of connection, physical or emotional, can cause you to reevaluate someone’s role in your life.  Comfort over one another’s loss, a genuine display of friendship, or even a meaningless physical interaction (you know what I’m talking about, Community fans) can spark the random daily instances of, “Wow.  He has gorgeous eyes.” and, “She’s gonna be there, so I have to look nice.”

Overall, though, there are a few different ways to showcase (growing) affection without directly announcing romantic feelings.  Character A might:

Notice Character B’s looks, or reassess them from a romantic standpoint

Take sudden interest in Character B’s opinions, hobbies, or whereabouts

Engage in frequent conversation with Character B (often taking a passive listening role)

Feel more comfortable being themselves with Character B

Think about Character B while alone (”They would like this book,” “I wonder what they’d say about this,” “I hope they’ll be there.”)

Become more physically affectionate with Character B

Defend/explain Character B’s actions and intentions to others

Desire to improve themselves for Character B

Worry about Character B’s opinion of them

Have decreased romantic interest in anyone else (including current romantic partners)

Compare others to Character B (”My date isn’t as funny as she is,” “I’d be having a better time if he were here.”)

Rethink past interactions with Character B from a romantic standpoint

Ask other people for their opinion on Character B

Those are just a few ideas.  If you need more help, be sure to let us know!  Good luck :)

– Mod Joanna ♥️

M-most people don’t t-talk like th-this when they st-stutter from n-nerves.

It’s more…it’s more like going back and…and starting over. Maybe repeating some, some words.

Heyo! I’m of a mind that there is really no such thing as an honestly asked stupid question. If you don’t know something, asking a question is a perfectly sensible thing to do. :)

Is it possible to hack security cameras? Yes, absolutely. At it’s heart it’s a computer, computers can be hacked, therefore security cameras can be hacked.

Is it possible to control/move around said hacked cameras after your character’s Super Sneaky Virus™ has nabbed them? That depends. If all your character has done is hijack the feed so that they can see what the camera sees, then no. Moving a security camera requires that a signal be sent to the camera by an external source, so if a character is only ‘listening’ for information, they won’t be able to move the camera. Also this kinda goes without saying but for the sake of thoroughness: if the camera doesn’t have the ability to move/zoom, all that fancy stuff, then no matter how good the Super Sneaky Virus™ is you won’t be able to control that stuff.

If, however, your character has managed to ‘convince’ the security camera that their computer is in fact one that the camera should take orders from (or has just taken over the original controlling computer, or something equally nefarious/heroic, delete where applicable), moving, zooming, changing angles, anything that the camera can do is just one correct command away.

In short, the amount of control your characters have over the camera is whatever your plot requires and/or your characters have the resources/knowhow to accomplish. If the camera can do it, it can do it while hacked.

Thanks for stopping by, good luck with your story! ^^

Disclaimer

Ah yes, the cocky villains (or the daredevil heroes, delete where appropriate). I’m sure they have a fantastical reason for wanting to do this, I’ll leave that to you ;)

There is actually several apps that do prettymuch that. They exist today, and some of ‘em are even Free!

No, not that kind, bad!

One of these apps, called Periscope, illustrates the concept well. You can download it right now and test it out, see if it fits your character’s needs in terms of what you need it to do. It’s a free live-streaming app that, from what I hear, makes the source pretty annoying to track down.

As for the other questions, is it trackable by The Man, could it be closed down, that’s a little more complicated, and I’m going to have to make some assumptions in order to give you a somewhat satisfactory answer.

Can it be tracked? Eventually, yes. There are ways to make tracking one’s online activities harder, but at the end of the day, your characters can be tracked. However, by using such things as TOR, IP proxies, and other such sneaky things, a character can make it very hard to find them.

Using Periscope (or comparable live-streaming platform) and configuring their device to use TOR (a protocol/method/browser thing that makes a user almost completely anonymous at most links in the chain via encryption and all manner of fun things), your characters could conceivably get away with streaming their naughty, naughty activities cat videos. For added security they could sign up for new Periscope accounts every so often, use different/new phones on occasion, make sure not to give away ANY personal information, or even futz with the GPS chips if you’ve got a savvy tech type character who wants to make The Man think the stream is coming from The White House.

These methods don’t make them invincible, and if they get cocky and make a simple mistake (super subtle plot bunny, shhhh) then they could be found easy peasy if someone is looking. Keep these things in mind ^^

Could the internet provider shut down the stream? Yep, absolutely. If the ISP decides to shut down a particular access point to the internet (probably at the request of Señor Cheeto-In-Chief Baron von BadGuy) then they absolutely can. But here’s the rub: they gotta know which access point to shut off. Tracking the origination point of the stream has to come first, because all internet traffic looks kinda the same. Sure if you look at the patterns of bits it starts to look different, but until The Man (or more accurately, the clever-clogs cyberwarrior that The Man employs) starts to look for it, it’s all the same. Without knowing where your characters are accessing the internet from, it can’t be shut down by the ISP.

And then at that point they’d still be able to transmit data via cellular networks, or just go to a starbucks and use the wifi there which, again can be tracked and cut off, but it is some more red tape for Baron von BadGuy to work through.

Plausibility of the scenario? Absolutely plausible. Granted, I don’t know everything, and the three letter agencies may have shortcuts and such to make finding people a lot easier in this instance (honestly wouldn’t be surprised). But so long as your characters do a bit of research and are careful, they can stream their cat videos :)

~Lotus

Disclaimer

Oooh, distraction time! Don’t Try This at Home (or anywhere else for that matter). I’m also not going to go too much into detail in case some clever little bugger decides they want to set off the fire alarm and go home from school early by setting off an exploding phone.

That said, let’s get started.

There’s always setting off a smoke-bomb to trigger the fire alarm, even put it on a timer and hide it in something innocuous, but I don’t suppose that’s quite what you’re looking for if you’ve come here.

Now, did you ever hear about the Samsung exploding battery stink? It was all over the media for a while, got banned on planes and all sorts of fun stuff, ended with a recall (two, actually) to fix the issues. This could very well fill your author needs, especially if your MC has access to the phone beforehand and at least a basic understanding of electricity.

One of the problems with the Samsung battery was the positive and negative terminals of the battery degraded quickly, and shorted out the battery circuit. When this happens, the entire voltage of the battery flows through the resistance of just the path between the terminals and the internal resistance of the battery itself. Long story short, high current flows through the battery’s internal resistance causing rapid heating, which causes gasses to build up, pressure to build up, eventually leading to a lovely dangerous kaboom.

Your character could take advantage of this and, with a little technical knowhow, rig up a system that would short the phone’s battery on command. It would probably take a few seconds to get going, but your character would probably test this beforehand to see how long it takes and decide if it fits their needs. Scientific method, people.

Getting in and tampering with the phone, your MC could create a new path in the complex circuit that is their phone. This path would basically amount to a switch that, when power is applied in the correct way, connects the terminals of the battery and causes the short. This switch could be a transistor, a solenoid, or anything that brings the terminals of the battery into permanent contact somehow. Hook the other end of this new path into a part of the phone that is only given electricity in any great amount at certain times, and viola.

With this setup, your MC could call the phone, set an alarm (specific time or length of time), or do any number of things to trigger the short. Place the phone well, and the fire alarm will probably go off.

Your MC could also just tamper with one of the fire alarm switch housings in the same manner, creating a switch that closes and sets off the alarm upon a set of conditions being met, get a small timing circuit driven by a ten-cent timer IC and a battery. This would mean having enough access to one of these housings to figure that out, however. It’s probably fairly self evident but it is worth mentioning that tampering with or falsely activating safety systems is illegal. Don’t do this.

Of course, your MC would have to be very careful or they’ll be caught when the burned phone is found and the cops called. Fingerprints, a stray hair, the various unique numbers associated with the phone, the sim card (and more), all relatively trackable.

And seriously, don’t try this at home. C’mon, people.

~Lotus

Anonymous asked: “Something I always do in my writing is I cut off my sentences with a dash, like ‘she couldn’t breathe-’ but its starting to get too repetitive. Helps?”

Cutting your sentences off regularly with a dash is fine to do in early drafts, especially when you are just trying to get your thoughts and the feelings you hope for down on the page, however when you are at the stage during editing where you want to be paying attention to how you craft sentence structure, there are a few things you’ll need to look for. 

Anonymous asked: “Should I write a prologue? I’m not sure if I should make this scene a flashback or a prologue and what I have in mind is quite melancholy compared to the rest of the story.”

Generally speaking, no. Don’t include a prologue just to have a prologue. Prologues are more helpful when you know what direction your story is headed in but the first few chapters might not suggest it. Slower openings might be better off with an exciting prologue.

It is very important that the language in your novel reflects the time and place in which the story is set.

For example, my story is set in Italy. My characters would never “ride shotgun”, a term coined in US in the early 1900s referring to riding alongside the driver with a shotgun to gun bandits. 

Do your research! A free tool that I found to be very useful is Ngram Viewer. 

You can type any word and see when it started appearing in books. For example…one of my characters was going to say “gazillion” (I write YA) in 1994. Was “gazillion” used back then?

And the answer is…YES! It started trending in 1988 and was quite popular in 1994.

For example, did you know that before 1986 people never said “I need to”?Instead, they were far more likely to say “I ought to”, “I have to”, “I must”, or “I should”.

Don’t believe me?

Anyway, most people won’t notice subtle changes like that. But your reader will notice and be confused when characters in your medieval world use metaphors involving railroads and rockets.

One of the things you can do besides use Google Ngrams is to read books or watch movies written in the time period you want to set your story. The key here is that they can’t just be set in that time period, they have to have been made in that time period.