The tone of the word is a neutral one; there are slang terms and racial slurs about, of course, but the one I'm looking for is one that's just a statement of objective fact, sort of the equivalent of how you'd call someone from America 'American' or somebody from France 'French'. That's the sort of term I'm looking for.

Why wouldn't you call them the name of the planet then? Like we are called "Earthlings."

But more the equivalent of "foreigner", as it has to apply to all the non-human races. Do the others have anything in common that may group them together? In TES there are "Tailed races" or "Elves" - not that either of those terms cover all other races than one, but do group more than one by common characteristics. E.g. if none of the others has legs, then Zeropods could work. Glabs if they're hairless, etc.

BWAAHAA! I'm going to start calling my husband that and see what happens, ROFL !!!

*a massive explosion was seen erupting in ETN*

That could work, and I'll give it a though. I just need to think of what the other species have in common, though now you mention it, they're all hairless. Hmm...

I have also thought of the term 'extraperson' or 'xenoperson', both of which I quite like, xenoperson especially.

Well then, Smoothskins it is! Fallout ftw!

This.

Since there's three species, it occurs to me that one might have sightly different terms depending on which species you're talking about.

For convenience, I'll call the planet... um... Caatril. (If you named the world I never saw it.) I'd recommend giving the planet an indigenous name.

Caatrilan in general. It might seem cheesey, but think of all the SF that refers to Terrans.

Just popped in for a minute and caught this discussion. Interesting dilemma you have, Colonel. I think that ghastley raised a valid point when he asked if the term was derogatory or not. If there is a blanket term that is used to describe all non-human species in your world then the implication is that humans are somehow apart from or perhaps even in control of the socio-political climate of society. If the former, then a scientific classification (xenomorph) would be valid. Humans, in that instance, could be looked upon as 'apart from' or 'not as good as' the majority of society. If the latter is the case then the term you’re looking for was probably first coined by the humans and is therefore a slur against all species 'not human' (McB's 'Alts' would work really well in this case IMHO). To use an example from our own world you wouldn't say that there are several million animal species... and then there are cats. Unless, of course, it was a cat doing the talking.

Just to interrupt the subject...

I HATE WORD!!!... ...

I'm writing a Fallout bit...

Fallout has talking robots...Therefore, talking robots in story...

This sentence is doing my head in...



Word says the "it's" is wrong...And tells me to change it to its...Which then instantly gets a green line under it to change it back to it's...

What the?...

Or indeed...

Que?!! ...

Si!!...

Senor Toucan...Away!!...

*Cough*...Sorry, wrong thread... ...

Destri: I can kind of see your point there; the term I'm looking for is a sort of neutral one, though I guess it comes with some sense of 'apartness'. Like I've said before, the term I'm looking for would mean 'sentient beings who aren't humans' and in this case, something like 'extraterrestrial' or 'alien' doesn't work very well, as it implies an outsider, but in this case they've co-habited the same planet for more than 12,000 years. And with that in mind, it seems impossible to me that a term meaning 'sentient beings who aren't humans' would not be a part of the language. That makes it tricky as using something like 'non-humans' or 'sentients' feels like a recent attachment to the language when it would have been part of the vocabulary for far longer than anybody can remember.

I'm pretty pleased with my current term of 'xenopeople' and I may well end up sticking with that.


McBadgere: You want "its", there. If you spell it as "it's" then that's an abbreviation of "it is" while spelling it as "its" is the possessive term, because English is logical like that. The only reason Word is being iffy about it is, I'm assuming, because Word can be very stupid sometimes.

Mustard, one way to approach it might be to examine other terms we use for inclusion or separation. For example one specific type of hair color is called by its name (brunette), while all others except one are called by what they are not (non-blonde). I think if humans were a new addition there would be a word for all others, but if the races had evolved together the sense of “them” wouldn’t need a specific term. It would be a layer of unspoken understanding. Getting that across would bring out your world’s culture in a way that a technical term might not.

Cheers, I thought that would be it, and I did change it back afterwards, but I just don't get what Word was after with it...It's ( ) usually done me alright...Well...mostly... ...

Ta though..

Word may also be objecting to the semicolon, where you only need a comma. The part after that wouldn't stand alone as a sentence.

If you'd had "its strange accent altered the words", then a semicolon would have been appropriate.

D'you know, I was all for saying "Yes, but the sentence I posted was incomplete to start with, but I thought it would still be fine..."...

And then I actually did what you said, just to check...

*Sighs*... ...

Ta... ...

*Robert goes back to primary school in order to be teached his grammer once more again...*...

Mustard, could you give Ghastley one of yer fishy sticks?...I'll have to owe you for it though... ...

*mALX whips out ketchup bottle*

CRUNCH!

"Oh wait, you said give the fishy stick to Ghastley? Er...sorry, I thought I heard my name...er...gulp."

@McB:
I really hate Word, too. The red squiggles means it is objecting to a spelling/misspelling.
The green squiggles refer to grammar errors. Frustrating!

That's why I never use it to write fiction . . .

I have a question regarding format. My story, A Question of Fate, began with a prologue written in 1st person that stated, "I have always kept a journal." As I have been writing, I have decided to place interludes between some of the chapters to give pieces of backstory. These interludes will be written in 3rd person. I have placed a date at the beginning so that the reader will know that the events occurred well before the timeline of the main narrative. It then occurred to me that since the main story is basically a journal, that I shoiuld include dates in it as well.

So here is the question. Should I always begin each chapter with the date, even if the date is the same as the previous chapter? The first five chapters all occur on the same day. In some chapters, the date will change during the chapter, in which case I have noted it after a "* * *" break line. So, should I only note the date when the date actually changes?

What I would recommend doing is note the date each time, but if the date is the same then add 'Continued' after it. For example, if you've got Chapter N being marked as '15th Hearthfire', and Chapter N+1 being on the same date just later in the day, it would be '15 Hearthfire, Continued'. Either that, or provide a time of the day 'Morning, 15th Hearthfire' for Chapter N, and then 'Evening, 15th Hearthfire' for chapter N+1.

If you're writing first person, then the question is how you character would do it. Each time he opens his journal to write something extra into it, would he date the entry? If so, then the same date might appear more than once. If he'd just continue the entry for the day, with some small annotation like "More..." or "Later ..." then do it that way.

Some of that would arise from when he does it. If you've decided that he sits down in the evening, to write up the events of the day, then it would all be written at once, and the chapters here are your own division of the narrative. If he writes it down as soon as the events are over, before he forgets, then the style would be different. The method you choose will help show the characters' ... character.

I put the date at the beginning of each chapter, and if it spans multiple days I put the dates it runs to and from, like so:

That is a really great idea.

I think I'll go with a hybrid of Mustard's and SubRosa's suggestions. Thanks a lot for your feedback everyone.

On to a different question, regarding adult content, which I know is not allowed in this forum. In an upcoming post to my story, there is a scene which might push that envelope. It is not overtly graphic, and no vulgar language is used. I feel that while it is descriptive of events, it is done in a way that is not offensive. I do truly believe that there won't be an issue with it, but how do I find out if it is okay to post?

Take a look at a few love scenes from other posts. Grits' story has quite a few between her characters Jerric and Abiene. There's another in mine.

You can give a general overview of what's going on without being completely descriptive.


Be clearly vague, is what I'm getting at.

The best thing to do is to write the scene as you want it- and then PM it to a moderator for a review. That way, you are covered.

I did write it already. I sent the one paragraph in question to another author on this forum, although she is not a moderator, to get an opinion. If she finds it "iffy", I will certainly do as you suggest. Thanks Trey.

Here is an old post I made about this:

I think as long as you do not get into minute detail about licking genitals or swallowing fluids you will be fine. I have kept my erotic scenes down to describing kissing and caressing, but not gone any further. You can end the scene and let the reader imagine what happens next. I have also written them from the next day, with the character looking back fondly upon events of the previous night. Again, without going into exacting detail, but enough so that the reader knows the mattress was danced upon.

For example:

*Swallows and loosens collar*...

Go on... ...




I agree with Treydog...

If you can't see it being in a PG-13, or 12A film then it shouldn't be in it...

There has been, of course, been a debate as to what that actually allows, but we won't go into that here... ...

PM one of the mods is absolutely the way to go...

Calm down!!! XD
My rule is, if I can't show it to my mother, then it isn't acceptable.

Doesn't that depend on the mother?... ...

I wouldn't show stuff like that to mine, but the wife used to write a lot of...Racy vampire stuff...And made hers read it all... ...

Well, my mom used to sell uhhhh...the things single and unlucky married women use for when they have no...men...and she's still pretty prudish.

Good job she's not Welsh...She'd be called Dilys... ...

*Cough*...

Sorry...I'll go away now...

It's one thing to have them on the shelf, but anything else is another thing entirely...

The M-I-L used to start any sentence with "Aw *wife'sname*" and massage her temples when she read apparently... ...

I used to too.

I was a produce clerk at a local grocery store. Lots of cucumbers...

Hahahahahaha!!!!

Go wild, friend. Go wild. Someone here told me as long as it didn't involved the swallowing of fluids, then we're in the clear. Oh and violence and sexuality in a single scene might be frowned upon, too. So be careful.

In fact, I'll send you a few scenes I wrote(though I never posted them here ).

Yeah, but...cucumbers don't have three speeds ( slow, medium, and who needs a man )

This question has more to do with actual posting in the forum than a writing process. I use MS Word for writing and editing. Was that an audible "Ugh!" I just heard? Anyway, here is the question -

Is it possible to post in RTF or WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) format?

When I post, I copy/paste from Word to the Reply text box. At that point, I have to go through the text and insert my italics, bold face, paragraph breaks, etc. Doing so is not the end of the world, but pasting and having it look exactly as it does in Word would be so helpful, especially when it comes to editing after the fact.

I would also like to thank those that responded to my post regarding content. You were all very helpful. It turns out that I was fretting over nothing, as the text is very tame compared to other text that has been deemed acceptable. Thanks again

It works with Firefox, but not with Chrome. Can't say about Internet Explorer, because who uses Internet Explorer, amirite?

I use IE...

I've taken to just typing the italics tags right into my documents while I'm writing. Like this:


Kind of looks goofy, but it works. Boldface is the same except with a [b] and not an [i]. Not sure what you mean by paragraph breaks, I just put extra spacing between paragraphs.

I do exactly the same thing. Though I do not use paragraph marks in Word. A long time ago I got into the habit of putting a space between all of my paragraphs in Word instead. So I just have to manually bold and italicize everything after I paste my text into the forum.

Like KC, I just draft using the bracket tags like [i] etc and have gotten used to it. Regarding para spacing, I find that if I make sure that my working draft has line spacing set to no spaces between paragraphs, I get (on the forum) the same thing I get in my draft (proper para spacing).

I also do at least a couple of my latter edits by pasting my draft into a PM to myself and reviewing it there. Not only does it give me a different look, but it is a good time to verify forum format. I like using a PM to myself for this in case I accidentally hit the wrong button, it precludes posting something before I'm ready. I mean, not that I've ever accidentally posted before I was ready. . .

I do the same with the [ ] [/] business. For the paragraphs I make sure that Word is not adding a space before or after paragraphs that make it look as if they're... do we still say hard returns?... um, makes it look as if I've hit enter but actually didn't.

Also I PM my posts to myself first to check for spacing and the like. That way I'm not dancing around and cursing when I go to actually post.




EDIT: Lol, ed

SPEW!!! Nor have you ever accidently posted your next chapter on someone else's thread, ROFL !!! Those were the good old days on the BGSF, weren't they? ROFL !!!

I do too, and never have a problem transferring my old MS Works stuff onto it at all. Unfortunately, I can't transfer my old MS Works stuff anywhere else without issues, lol.

My twopenneth...

I always write (type) it out (which is always a good start )...I copy and paste the amount needed to a new page, keeping the original formatting...This keeps the original typing out clean...Then I go through the new one adding the [ ] and [/] stuff around what's there already...

So then, when I get it to here, it's all done...

Then I preview it on the post, just to go through it one more time...

And then Robert's your relative...One post...

That said, it's been a while since I needed to anyways...So, as you like... ...

Yes, Preview is your friend. Except when the Internet decides to take a nap and eats your incredibly clever "Where we are" intro- which you did not save in Word and which therefore does not exist anywhere except in your fevered (and highly annoyed) imagination.

PMing to self is an excellent idea. I normally do the copy/pasta from Word, go through and find all my italics and then Preview to check for line/paragraph breaks that got garbled. It gives me another chance for a proofread- although (according to some people) I have read the thing so many times by then that the words are worn out anyway.

So I guess I am married to the current process, unless I decide to add a third browser to my machine (already have IE and Chrome). Well, like I said, it ain't the end of the world. Regarding the Preview, I agree and already use it as my final proof read. And I still leave nits!

I'm one of those weirdos who edits as they go along. Then when I'm sick of editing, I quit until I'm ready to post. I go over it and sometimes completely change the flow of the chapters unless it's been in my head for weeks.

So do we all. That is why editors have jobs. If I paid Acadian for every nit of mine he found, he would be the richest man in the world...

Indeed. And I find new ones every time I change the font.

Back in the day I used to read everything (product specs, promotional materials) backwards before I sent it to the printer to make sure I had written the words I thought I had written. Spell check sometimes causes its own problems.