Hello - I'm in the How to Add Humor to Novels workshop. I know there was a gliche in getting up Lesson 1. I'm wondering if the same is happening with Lesson 2, because I don't see it there yet. I'm trying to get used to the new forum myself, so maybe I missed it? Thanks, Lori.

Leslie, I know you have oodles and oodles of time on your hands ( ), but is there a way to bookmark a thread or a particular post for future reference? It would make it easier to find a post we wanted to respond to.
Thanks.

Hi, I'm not sure my help request went through on the old website. I just renewed my premium membership on the old website and I would like to sign up for the characters workshop that started yesterday. But when I try to register only the basic member ship registration fee of 30 dollars pops up and I need the 25 dollar fee. I know it probably takes a while for everything to update with my membership, but is there a way I can register for this class and pay 25 fee now.

Thanks,
Tina
[email protected]

2 requests

#1

Can we have a spellchecker for our posts?

#2

I just took 2 courses concurrently. Except for the post titles, I couldn't tell which is which. I like to set up a separate folder for each class & I'm not able to. Can you set up classes with a [name] like YahooGroup does?

I'm curious:

Do you plan to publish traditionally with a Big 5/6 company or Indie Publisher?

or Self-Publish?

or do some combination?

This is a reprint from DeepMagik's site here.

5 Sites You Need to See If You Want to Self Publish
October 10, 2013
Nice video this week. An interview with Mette Ivie Harrison. You can watch it here. She goes over the publishing world. In this post I’m going to add some links and information about the other route…self-publishing.
Here are the 5 things you need to know about self publishing.
1. Here’s a bit of the first post, it’s from a site called copy blogger. This first article is “21 things you need to know about self publishing”. I liked this one and thought you might too.
1. Reality check
At the time of this writing, the amount of money households spend overall on reading materials is going down.
In 1994 (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics) the average household spent $165 on reading materials. In 2011, adjusted for inflation, the average US household spent $115. How come? Because there are many high-quality, free things we can read. So we spend our entertainment dollars elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the number of books being published each year rises at a steady 6% per year.
So we have less demand and more supply. Which means prices and incomes go down. You can use this to your advantage.
How? Publishers aren’t reducing the prices of their books. Actually, they tend to raise them with inflation to keep fueling their bloated machines.
So you can instantly gain an advantage by reducing prices, given the facts I’ve laid out above.
2. Audience first
If you have no readers, nobody will buy your book. Fortunately, that’s not a Catch-22. You build your audience by giving, giving, giving, giving, before you finally ask them to pay $4.99 for your book.
You write blog posts. You write tweets. You build a Facebook fan page. And on and on. The next several points are about building your platform. If you are not willing to do this, then your spouse will read your book and maybe your parents. Maybe. Your kids will not read your book.
That’s a taste of it. Read all of the 21 tips if you liked how this began. I personally think this site is awesome. I mean tip #3 is If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead. Funny way for them to give you a tip. Check it out.
2. The next post is on How to Blog a Book. It’s a great blog about the possibility of changing your book idea into a blog. But it also just gives great information about writing a blog. And Brandon strongly recommends having a blog so this one is one you dragons should take a look at.
My Critique of His First Post
You can imagine my critique.
You don’t have a plan for the blog or the book.
Your post had formatting errors.
Your post needed proofing before hitting “publish.”
You haven’t determined the focus of the book.
The post title doesn’t tell the reader what the post is about.
The title contains no keywords to help with discoverability.
The post contains no keywords to help with discoverability.
You haven’t used any subheads to help readers scan for content.
I don’t now what this story have to do with anything?
What is the focus of the blog itself? Does it have a long-term plan?
You can write.
He wasn’t too pleased.
Again, very amusing. And it has great information. Could be of some help. Read a lot of good content about writing at How to Blog a Book.
3. The Worlds Greatest Book. This is a site and guy that works on your work. Below is an example of his work.

Writing is Design: Avoid Bland Pronouns and Boring Verbs
October 3, 2013Dave Bricker 17

As a graphic designer, I see numerous parallels between the values that create engaging imagery and the values that create engaging prose. So many designs fail because the designer arranged elements on a page without questioning their purpose, hierarchy, or relationship to the intended message. Good writing is characterized by the same conscious application of order, balance, tension, tone, spirit, relevance, and clarity as good design. As a designer might scrutinize a page to evaluate margins, kerning, and font choice, a writer can search for style patterns that illuminate weak, lazy, or formulaic writing and missed opportunities to create stronger prose.
See his site here.
4. The Write’s Guide to E-Publishing. Cool site with lots of articles about all kinds of stuff centered around writing. Take a look at an example author.
I wouldn’t touch those readers with a 10 question poll
July 13, 2013 By Bufo Calvin
I wouldn’t touch those readers with a 10 question poll As the readers of WG2E know, the landscape has completely changed for independent authors since the release of the Kindle in late 2007. Prior to that, there were virtually no independently published books on Amazon’s bestseller lists. When I recently checked, 24% of the top [...]
You can see the rest of them at The Writer’s Guide.
And finally the last one, number five.
5. This one is one of my favorite sites. It’s called Write to Done. Here’s an example.
Top 10 Blogs for Writers 2012 – The Winners
Written byMary Jaksch

Email
When we asked you to nominate your favorite writing blog as one of the top 10 blogs for writers, we got a huge response! Great to see how passionate readers are about their favorite writing blog.
As you’ll see there are some previous winners, as well as some talented new bloggers in the top 10 of 2012.
This article in particular is a best of for sites like I’ve listed above. Lists and lists are great. They help, so get to reading them. They will improve every aspect of your writing, but also, they will improve the way you *think* about writing.
Thanks Dragons,
In the comments let me know any other great sites you guys and gals know of and also let us all know how great the interview was. We all look forward to hearing you.
-d

About DeepMagik
Fumbling through this Hitchhiker's Guide trying to get to Arrakis... aka Have Spice Will Travel Find my book and my blog at www.DeepMagik.org

I'm at about the 70% complete mark in my Urban Fantasy, and at no point did I intend to write in a sex scene. There is lots of heat between my leading lady and main man, but no hanky panky.

Only they changed things up on me yday.

I let the words flow in a scene where innuendo lead to a training session instead and now LL is kinda hot and bothered. Because I'm writing UF, I can see this going one of two ways: 1 - (the planned idea) was to get in the kiss, establish interest, but have LL's distrust pull her back from the brink OR 2 - the smexing will commence.

Online forums are divided on the subject - some readers want hints of sex only. No images of it on the pages (I interpret as "scene goes to black"). Others don't mind a page of hot and heavy as long as the majority of the story isn't dedicated to the romance. A minority will throw the book at a wall if a UF skews romantic.

If I had a CP or two I'd ask them their thoughts; instead I wonder if you lovely people would mind sharing yours?All opinions are welcome. As I said, I'm torn and open to any advice.

Thanks!
Hetal

Check out this article in The Atlantic about ghostwriting and books, such as The Hardy Boys, The Nancy Drew Mysteries, and other series written by ghostwriters. The "packagers" as they are called pull together the initial drafts of ghostwriters and funnel them through a system of editors and intermediaries with a short turn-around, so they can still produce 2-3 books a year under the pseudonyms, Dixon and Keene.

Right now, a pink box shows quotations, with a portion hidden e.g. Click to expand

Two issues surface.

After an instructor has posted a lesson (including the quotation in pink), a classmate reading the post requires additional clicking to read the whole post. There is no way to leave the 'quotation' as a full post. Instructors don't know that using the 'quote' feature, creates an additional effort on the classmate's part.

Why is this important? It doesn't show up fully in the emails. We have to access the site to read it. Once in the thread, it requires additional work to expand it.

I can understand why 'click to expand' works when someone has quoted the thread post several posts above, and most likely everyone has already read the full post, but it is different when the quotation is brand new and never seen before. Interrupting the reading of the posts to have to click to expand is an inconvenience for the participant.

In addition, moderators wishing to copy and paste are forced to copy the quotation separately. It will not copy the quotation in the full post without requiring a separate click, copy and paste (which requires finding the spot to add the additional quotation not included in the first copy and paste).

Solution: Is there a way to make quotations be included in their entirety and not diminished, when there is need to see the whole post as a single unit? Can this be made as a selection of the poster/instructor/moderator?

Thanks,
Lyn

Wondering about he jimmy morris class-- since Monday only 4 intros? Can't be right can it? Also I did the thing where I changed my password for the new site --and if I use the direct link the current one will work but if I go through google to savvy it wont--it requires that I change my password every time I go to the site. So once my class is done I might have a problem again. Otherwise its change every time I visit.
Dory

Hi,
Sorry, I need a bit of help. I would like to make up my own log-in password. The new site build required a new password and the ones sent to me are not ones I could ever remember. I'm not finding a way to generate my own password.
Thank you.

Hi!

I've already asked about this, but I haven't heard from you in a while. I can't get the system to load the upgrade account feature. I would like to become a member before I register for another class. I've tried it in both chrome and firefox, and the little loading symbol in the upper right-hand corner starts up but never loads anything. I mean, I walked out of the room, forgot about it, and came back 1/2 hour later and it still hadn't loaded.

From the same page, I've tried to enroll in the motivation course, and the same thing happens. I'm kind of bummed that because of this bug, I've missed the month of May. If you get this fixed, can I enroll at the beginning of any month, or only when it's advertised again? Or can I enroll mid-month and catch up? (because it isn't fair!)

Anyway, please let me know.

Thanks,

Marianne

This shows why English is so much more difficult to learn than other languages. If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.


Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain .
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty , library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas .
Sea, idea, Korea , area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight ,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

I am looking for a few tips to describe a situation in a way that it is not dragged on and on. But it is sweet and to the point. For instance, I want to describe a situation in a pub where boy meets girl. What should I do? Describe in a few short words what the scene looks like, the other persons and then concentrate on my main characters?

Hello. I have been a member of your forum for some time and I enjoy being a member of this community. I am also an amateur writer and I am taking a shot at my first real novel. But that is a story for another time

I have visited some other forums and there are a few things that I have been accustomed to which I do not see here. I think that they will improve the user experience here a great deal. Here it goes. 1) A recent threads box on a separate page showing x latest threads. That would be a good way to keep track of them. The New Post that you have here it makes posts disappear after you read them. 2) A Like and Dislike options for threads. For instance, there are a couple of threads that I like and I would like to be able to like them and then give a reason as to why I liked them. The same goes for threads that I dislike. I want to let that be known. And all threads that will be disliked most can be locked or moderated. These were what I can think for the moment. I do hope that you will take my request into consideration.

Best Regards,

Celeste

Hello,

We are experiencing technical difficulties with our chatrooms, but we hope to have it up and working as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the Bootcamp sprints won't be able to take place. We will post a message as soon as the problem has been corrected.

We apologize for any inconvenience.
The Savvy Crew

He claims his income is $450K a year. This is how he does it.

https://medium.com/@CharlynKeating/...m-the-app-stores-there-s-someone-ac5082d8de47

I am part of the BootCamp and can't get into the form, discussion, or report pages to report my word count or participate. It worked once, but now I just get blank pages with "148" in the upper left hand corner. I'm not sure what to do with that. Can you help me out?

Thank you,
Dianne Sagan

Hello! Am I just not seeing the print button on each post, or is there not one? I print out my lessons and read them at lunch, but when I use the standard print option on my computer it cuts off the very last line. It looks likes it's covered by the bottom box. Help!

I lost my ratings, my picture, my everything in the new set-up.
I have to start over and including from zero on ratings? my photo???

Rules for life also good for writers

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short not to enjoy it.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.
5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for things that matter.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye… But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words, ‘In five years, will this matter?’
27. Always choose Life.
28. Forgive but don’t forget.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give Time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d
grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you think you need.
42. The best is yet to come…
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.
(Source: reginabrett.com)

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Pxc3...written-by-a-90-year-old?sthash.1J93Madi.tupo

I saw these two requests from Sahara and DMac about the videos of Pat Haggarty's class on Scrivener.

Neither were answered. Did you see them?

http://forum.savvyauthors.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=429&threadid=21022&enterthread=y

http://forum.savvyauthors.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=429&threadid=21010&enterthread=y

Are these videos archived on the site here?
Lyn

Holly Lisle says:

Writers of #fiction and #memoir nonfiction: How do you RELIABLY sell more books?

Right now, NOBODY knows.
Publishers have been using 'throw enough writers against a wall, and some of them are sure to stick' as their method for promoting books.
Publicists do great for most kinds of nonfiction, but have no reliable way to put fiction and memoir-type nonfiction into readers' hands.
Techniques like giving away free copies on Amazon used to work, but they aren't so great anymore.
There is currently no reliable way to promote your book and know it will sell for you.
A team of volunteers and I are researching what DOES work

I'm working with my UglyLaunch Mastermind group to figure out what DOES work to sell fiction and memoir-type nonfiction, whether indie-pubbed or commercially published.
I've built out a launch system based on the process I use to teach writers to WRITE fiction---and now we're going to see if that process can give those writers more readers for their work.
My UglyLaunch volunteers and I are putting together a series of launches of different books to:
test, re-test, and refine my process,
to understand the principles behind what writers can do to sell their fiction,
and to turn it into a step-by-step system ANY fiction writer or memoirist can use.
Our objective is to uncover the process that will allow writers to contact their readers from...
their mailing lists,
Facebook,
Twitter,
Goodreads,
their blogs and
anywhere else,
...give those potential readers cool launch content that will put them inside the writer's story during pre-launch, and create a LOT of sales of that book and that writer the same day the launch goes live.
OUR FIRST TEST LAUNCH is now less than a week away from pre-launch.
You can watch this in progress, see every step we take, read every email, watch every video, and find out when it's all over whether we got something that worked this time that we can build on to improve, or whether we have to go back to the drawing board and start over from scratch.
And you can receive notification every time we do a new test launch, and observe that, too.
When I have a process that works every time, I'll build a Fiction / Personal Nonfiction Launch course, and the folks who have been following along will get an EarlyBird discount.

Interested?
Right now, our test launches are available to you on free list, and even if you just watch the launches, you'll start getting a feel for what works and what doesn't.
So join us now

I'm excited about the possibilities. I hope you are too.
Cheerfully,
Holly Lisle

P.S. A few folks have had problems with just getting a picture (no join button) from the link above.
If this happens to you, you can join here.
But you'll be helping the whole test team debug the first part of the launch process if you try the top link first.

Click to expand...