It’s known as the “Scully Effect,” and it describes how many women have cited the character as inspiration for their decision to enter careers in science, medicine, or law enforcement.
Read the full article here at Big Think.
Positive tropes in fiction really can change the world. What positive tropes do you appreciate? Which do you use in your fiction? Have you created positive tropes? If so, what are they are why?
In the forthcoming Book Towns, journalist Alex Johnson catalogues these most charming of tourist destinations. He spoke to Atlas Obscura about the pleasures of out-of-the-way places defined by their books.
Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, was the first one, and it started in 1977. How have book towns changed over the past few decades?
See the rest here…where have you been?
There’s tons of material on the web about all aspects of writing. Here is a list of 100 best websites for writers as proof. Yet, few sites manage their content so that it’s easy to get an overview of all the relevant writing elements that you might want to know about. I was thinking about this yet again as I scrolled through this 2018 list and specifically when I visited this website: Fiction University.
What caught my eye was the menu on the left side — it is given in full below as an example of the ease at which a lot of material can be summarized. Really nice! It’s easy to scroll the topics and the list underscores the myriad aspects to craft.
What if this existed for articles across the web? One of the things about writing advice is that it is diverse and often conflicting. Authors all have strong opinions but what works for some might not work for all. Also, some articles stand out as best of breed on a particular topic. A curated resource that quickly and efficiently helped writers navigate would be great…I’d certainly love it. Just have to find the time to create it…
Thoughts and help welcome! It’s on the whiteboard.
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Today, it’s hard to remember the degree of resistance that nonsexist language evoked at the time.
An insider view of the history of nonsexist language by a woman who was in a position to implement.
Language evolves especially if we decide to make it do so:
Yet Webster’s third edition and nonsexist language did not cause the sky to fall. In fact, their innovations became normalised surprisingly soon.
AEON is exploring a new mode of producing high quality media – crowdfunding.
If you contribute $500 to the Kickstarter campaign you get your face in the animation depicting this classic intellectual feud:
How sex, religion and jealousy drove a fatal wedge into Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung’s frenetic friendship Read more
People with depression use language differently – here’s how to spot it
Increasingly, computational linguists are able to detect patterns in how our moods are expressed in words. It’s not just the obvious, such as saying, “I’m happy or I’m sad,” but over- and underuse of classes of words.
Searching the ‘words’ of those suffering depression shows overrepresentation of ‘negative’ words as might be expected but also overuse of the pronoun ‘I’. Now, skewed patterns also include ‘absolutist’ vocabulary:
Our lab recently conducted a big data text analysis of 64 different online mental health forums, examining over 6,400 members. “Absolutist words” – which convey absolute magnitudes or probabilities, such as “always”, “nothing” or “completely” – were found to be better markers for mental health forums than either pronouns or negative emotion words.
Today LitHub starts a new series of questions for writers. Fascinating to see what top level concepts go into a book and where writers were in their lives when they produced a book.
How might you answer?
1. Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?
2. Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book?
3. Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?
4. What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?
5. If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?
6. What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?
7. How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?
