Quote - > Quote - Sure, but only this one site with 50 items and not all my items. It was possible before the change.

At the moment I need to go to every page to see, if there is a new updated item. It's nearly impossible with over 1000 items.

Would you please enter this in the Suggestion/Feedback thread and I will make sure it gets addressed.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2882335

Tina,

I gotta ask why do you consider this a "suggestion item"? It was working before your "update" now it does not work-- Breaking functionality is generally considered a bug.... or was breaking this intentional?

I have purchased over 1900 items here. The changes have made it impossible to easily check for updates... which makes this a "bug".

As noted the sort function does not work for vendor, date, order number or updated.

win 7 pro x64  firefox 30

I went back and looked at my files... the Thumbnail was 242x350... I suspect the upload page rejected it. That's kinda quirky code to accept only one size file.

I have reuploaded and as far as I can see it is ok...

Cage...

the links in your tag line point to a "default" apache / centos web server with no content or web pages... Not sure if Phandom3d has dumped the page by accident or there is something else wrong...

regards!

joel

a.k.a. gishzida

Plotto encompases what Michael Chase Walker calls the "Premise" and the "High Concept" [Power Screenwritng].

The premise is of course the result of "A clause" + "B Clause" results in "C Clause"

The high concept (call it the story / plot) in a capsule form is the "conflict event(s)" connected to the "B Clause"

The Story should "prove" the premise...

More stuff connected to Plotto -- the publisher of one of the recent release of Plotto (FIGApp.net) has some related downloads--

http://figapps.net/downloads.html

There is also "Fiction Idea Generator" app for the iPad or the iPhone...see the links at the bottom of the page here: http://figapps.net/fig.html

There is a free version available at Amazon for android devices --  http://www.amazon.com/FigApps-Net-Limited-Fiction-Idea-Generator/dp/B007IUQCCU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387635302&sr=8-1&keywords=Fiction+Idea+Generator

Quote - You always have the best stuff to research.

One might say I've spent wholly too much time researching these things and not writing enough. :)

Plotto is one of many "systems" for creating plotlines for writers.

There is another plot system in book form from the 1930s that is even rarer called "The Plot Genie" created by Wycliff A. Hill. It is contained in seven volumes [one main book and six genre volumes] but the system is so rare that a single genre volume is selling for $350.

Robert Silverberg remenises about "The Plot Genie" here: http://www.asimovs.com/2011_03/ref.shtml

Many of the writing apps out there attempt to give you a structure to hang your words on. Some try to get you to break things down to scenes, some break the storyline down into conflicts... Some give you ways to organize your background notes... I've never really found an advantage to most of these features except maybe the note organizing if only to keep a "foreign words" (SF / Alien languages) dictionary or give thumbnail character biographies so I can keep my characters and their histories straight.

Mostly I've found that fussing over a writing app is a way for the subconscious mind to resist putting words on a page. At one point in time,  I used to write everything long hand on paper and then put the second draft into the computer. But having gotten older and less nimble with my fingers [driving a pen or pencil is hard work now!] most of my writing starts in:

Textpad -- a programmer's text file editor that also has other features [no grammar checker unless you are writing in a programming language]. It does colors and has a highly capable macro feature. It has a spell checker --  but no grammar checker  -- after all mangling grammer and spelling into a "dialect" is one of those things a writer may be required to do sometimes in dialogue for authenticity.

Such dialects tend to give auto-grammar correction application fits [It would have choked on Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"]... or you end up with dialogues that read like cell phone text messages with auto-complete turned on. I've been using Textpad since version since about 1998 [it's now version 7.1... registration allows free updates to all future releases]. Betterto trust a human editor.

If the story turns out to be is good enough to need be formatted then I'll move it over to MS Word or LibreOffice [a fork of Oracle / Sun OpenOffice]. The point for a writer is after all to write... I figure that it is better to write something that may have grammar and spelling issues than to write nothing at all... After all that's what the second and third draft are all about.

http://www.textpad.com  $27 or 16.5 Pounds

There are some other free text editors available which are just as capable as Textpad. So if you'd like something like that, try Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Just remeber these were designed to write and not necessarily do fancy things like grammar checking

A free Windows file diff app can be found here: http://winmerge.org  -- a great way to help merge different versions of the same story into one version.

yWriter - yet another writer / story plotting program for Windows. . yWriter fully functional and free  and has a low registration fee ($11.95 if you want to register - the author of the app would appreciate it).  If you use Linux, it will install via WINE or Crossover Office (I did this on an HP Mini netbook that has Crossover Office installed on a  Kubuntu Linux install. Works just fine. The downside is that it closed source and there's only one developer.

http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

The developer of yWriter recommends  "Schivener" if you are a Mac user. Schrivener can be found here:

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php they now have windows version $40 for Mac or Windows

Celtx -- A scriptwriting  app which will do all kinds of document formating [Film Script, Audio Script, Storyboard, Comic Book, Theater (Play). Celtx is a specially modified version of the Firefox browser to turn it into a "cloud aware' collaborative script writer / sceduler / planner.

Celtx was designed to do media scripting so includes features not found in "normal" writing apps. Among other things it has scheduling features, casting,  it has some "database" like functions where character bios, images, job assignments, etc can be stored.

There are plugins -- "cork board plotting" (aka 3x5 card plotting), "full screen mode" which allows choice of colors and an add-on of icons / images all for a low price). The version I use is version 2.7  but the current version is much  more internet "cloud" focused (after all selling clouds seems to be all the rage and guarantees the app developers a revenue stream) -- you can "rent cloud space" for about $10 a month of $70 a year [the price has gone up]...It has the advantage that you won't lose your work to a local computer crash on the other hand it is on-line and is subject to all of the current snooping of internet traffic.

http://www.celtx.com The basic editor is Free... up to $14.95 for a plugin package.... or monthly / yearly fee if you want the cloud versions

There are several others that I have tried:

Dramatica - which is a story structure application that forces you to think of your story in the terms of the Dramatica idea for story [see http://dramatica.com/theory for an explanation]... I bought it a long time ago [the late 90's] and while it might be useful for story analysis, I found  (at least for me) it was useless as a writing app or as a way to put together a story. You spend more time trying to wrap you thinking around the theory and so never get anything written.

Storybook Pro -- very similar to yWriter above. I actually bought a license for version 3.2 but did not really use it the way intended. Recently the program's publisher seems to have gotten into trouble with the tax authorities in Switzerland who seized the web site and so the "pro" version is unavailable...

BUT since the "basic version" was open source software that was hosted on Sourceforge, someone has stepped forward to restart the opensource  project with the goal of adding the pro features as free open source software. requires Java to be installed... The basic version can be found here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ostorybook/

Other tools:

Microsoft OneNote -- just for research notes can also be used as an OCR app to convert images of text to in text... it's pretty much useless for anything else.

Plotto -- Not an writing app but a e-book of a book written in the 1930's  with an algorithm for generating plot ideas / plot threads... Available at Amazon for $3.99

http://www.amazon.com/Plotto-The-Master-Book-Plots-ebook/dp/B008913086/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1387004160&sr=8-2&keywords=plotto

TableSmith: written as a role playing game aid for Windows this app can generate names [modern, ancient, elven, etc.] , places, and so forth. Low registration fee of $10.

http://www.mythosa.net/Main/TableSmith?from=Utils.Html

regards!

edit: Prolife / Patristic rules vs. being allowed to choose

Quote - Oh my! This is a hard one. I don't even know where to start with this one. I hope some other writers take up the challenge too.

Hints:

Global warning

Washington Gridlock

Homophobia

Oppression by the 1% "Elite"

Racism

Religious intolerance [both the giving and the getting]

Terrorists

Poor folks

The impoverished

Prolife vs. Patristic oppression

The Dustbowl

Corporations as "people" who oppress

The list is easy... its the writing it that is hard....

I read ender when it was a short story... the second book of the series "Speaker for the Dead" is excellent too. Check Amazon for his books on writng...His web site is http://hatrack.com/

He is an excellent writer but sadly also a bit misguided in his stated homophobia.

While everyone is entitled to an opinion but that does not mean one has to support them. I won't purchase Card's books... Paying to support a someone for being hateful is dumb.

I have a packrat mind and my bookmarks show it. Below you will find a random mish-mash of links to various mythology, fantasy or SF resources which can be used for writing. Some of the things listed are to feed your mind with different ideas and some are ready to use utilities. Some may be more useful to you than others

Several of the items are physical books and some of the books are out of print. Check Ebay or Amazon... or if you live in a major metro area check out your local used book store.

If it is an on-line resource I have inserted the URL. 

Starting with Fantasy and Mythology:

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature - Sumerian Myths, Proverbs, and stories  -- http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/catalogue.htm

This is Oxforn University's online repository for Sumerian writings / stories / poetry / prayers / and proverbs. If you are interested in mythology, ancient poetic forms, or proof that William Shatner learned to act by reading Sumerian poetry [Sumerian poetry tends to be repetative and"overact" to get the important points of the poem across to the listener], this is one of the places to find Sumerian writings from 4000+ years ago.

"A Dictionary of Angels including the fallen angels" by Gustave Davidson, The Free Press [paperback edition] 1971

The Fairy Mythology (1898) by Thomas Knightley -- http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/tfm/index.htm Sacred texts http://www.sacred-texts.com/ has some other interesting things on religion, magic and folklore...

Also consider looking at Andrew Lang's Fairy Books at Project Gutenburg.org
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=Andrew+Lang+fairy+books

Science Fiction Reference Books:

Habitable Planets for Man
Written by Steven H. Dole  http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB179-1.html for the US Air Force in the early 1960s-- Free Download from RAND Corp  http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB179-1.pdf  ---  This book is a condensation of everything that had been learned [at the time of publication (1961)] about the parameters that man needs for a planet to live on...

The information in this book is used as the foundation of many Table Top Sci-Fi Role Playing Game Rules such as GURPS Space by Steve Jackson Games and the original Traveller by Games Designer''s Workshop.

There is also available the "second Edition" which was slightly 'dumbed down" co-suthoted by Isaac Asimov entitled "Planets for Man"  http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB183-1.html

PDF Download: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB183-1.pdf

"World Building"
by Steven L Gillet, Writers Digest Books 1996 I think it is out of print. Check eBay for Amazon.
A science book on planets and planetary systems written for writers to put the Science in their Science Fiction. Gillet is a geologist and a contributor to Analog SF Magazine.

"Aliens and Alien Societies"
by Stanley Schmidt, Writers Digest Books 1996 I think it is out of print. Check eBay for Amazon.
A science book on aliens written for writers to put the Science in their Science Fiction. Schmidt is a biologist and former editor of Analog SF Magazine.

SF Resources from Role Play Games

Building planets and their background the easy [and mostly scientific] way--

Game Designer's Workshop published in the early 1980's the first "Space" pencil and paper role playing game... and their rule books actually followed what was then known of planetary science. Drivethrurpg has low priced PDFs of the rule books which will halp you generate your own planets

"Traveller Book 3: Worlds and Adventures" http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80179

"Traveller Book 6: Scouts" http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80174

These books have the most straight forward of the world generation "rules" I have found and is pretty much scientifically accurate in its use of formulas [Scouts is a more in depth rules expansion of book 3]. It will save you time if you are looking to do "hard science fiction"

Traveller Book 7: Merchant Prince http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_info.php?products_id=80175&src=s_pi is good for Interstellar commerce simulation

Drivethrugrpg has a number of low price world building resources in PDF format:
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php?keywords=world+building&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

Astroid Impact Simulator [a flash application] from Purdue University: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth/

3D Star Mapping and simulation software
THE reference page on making 3D Star Maps is Project Rho http://www.projectrho.com/starmap.html created along ago by WINCHELL CHUNG whose real name is "Nyrath the nearly wise"  The sub page on mapping software is extremely helpful but be warned some of the links are out of date...

Read the reference work page: http://www.projectrho.com/smap10.html

take a look at the on-line version of accrete -- a solar system maker that was developed based upon Stephen Dole's work [he used a similar generator in the mid 1960s] http://www.znark.com/create/accrete.html Some of Dole's simulations appeared in Carl Sagan's Cosmos

if you know BASIC [programming language] here's a world creation program [i assume its qbasic compatible]  http://www.projectrho.com/world.bas

NBOS has a program named Astrosyntesis V3  that can generate stars, planets, and solars ystems as well as other things  http://www.nbos.com/products/astro/astro.htm

Cosmography of the Local Universe  -- http://irfu.cea.fr/cosmography [this is an actual cosmology project]

Online and Off Line Information Generators

Generators are a way to randomly create names, places, planets, words, and even plots [tho' the plots tend to be rather stilted].

On-line Generators

Chaotic Shiny --Generators are the links on the left  -- http://chaoticshiny.com/index.php

Seventh Sanctum -- One of the oldest online "generator" sites http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

donjon -- lots of fun stuff here including a planet generator http://donjon.bin.sh/

A list of links to various name generators / lists: http://www.rikkidonovan.com/?p=109

Name Lists

Ships, boats and planes and other things - http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/boats.htm

Millions of Names [yes, millions.] at Name-List -- http://www.name-list.net/

Ramdom Information Generator Programs

TableSmith - I've used this since probably version 2 [around 1998] and I personally have written a number to tables for it like a Sumerian word generator, A pulp title generator, a story starter, a  plot generator.  This is a low cost shareware application for PC. An iPad compatible version has been released.  http://www.mythosa.net/Main/TableSmith

InspirationPad Pro - A free generator from NBOS software http://www.nbos.com/products/ipad/ipad.htm not as much support as TableSmith but its a lot newer.

Namegame http://gamename.plasticwarriors.org/

A book about the Theory of Games
Remember the Cold War deterrant called "Mutually Assured Destruction"? "MAD" [as it was called] was the result of the application of "Game Theory".

The Compleat Strategyst
Being a Primer on the Theory of Games of Strategy - http://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB113-1.html - "When The Compleat Strategyst was originally published in 1954, game theory was an esoteric and mysterious subject, familiar only to specialized researchers, particularly in the military. Its popularity today can be traced at least in part to this book, which popularized the subject for amateurs, professionals, and students throughout the world. It has been reprinted numerous times and has been translated into at least five languages, including Russian and Japanese. Now, more than fifty years after its first publication as a RAND research study, and to celebrate RAND’s 60th Anniversary, RAND is proud to bring this classic work back into print in paperback and digital formats."

--- and you can get it from free from the Publisher:

PDF DownLoad: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/commercial_books/2007/RAND_CB113-1.pdf

A summary of Simulism [The Matrix is real]

"The Matrix" was not the first story which proposed that the world / universe is a simulation. For more on the idea wander through http://simulism.org/Simulism_Home
See the links page here: http://simulism.org/Links for more on the background. Nick Bostrom's site http://www.simulation-argument.com/ has some interesting non-fiction articles on the subject

More Frebies from the RAND corporation

The RAND Corp Classics
The RAND Corporation has been advancing human knowledge for over 60 years. Certain RAND books and reports that stand out as classics are now available online in their entirety.  The RAND corporation is a quasi-governmental think tank founded in the 1950s by Douglas Aircraft. It is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA  Wikipedia history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation  Available free "classic" publications http://www.rand.org/pubs/classics.html

Plots
    
Propp's Morphology of the Folk Tale
Vladimir Propp studied the "architecture" of Russian Folk Tales.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/propp/propp.htm

Some general summaries of plots / plot types etc.
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/plots.htm

"20 Master Plots (and how to build them)" by Ronals B. Tobias, Writer's Digest Books 1993 - There is a summary of this book on tvtropes.org

"Power Screenwriting,  The 12 Stages of StoryDevelopment" by Michael CVhase Walker, iFilm Publishing, 2002 - There is a summary of this book on tvtropes.org

This is a bit long so I'm going to stop here for the moment.

If there is interest or questions I'll dig in my bookmarks some more.

Quote - It was suggested that I look at tvtropes.org

 Well, I did and if you’ve never been there before you should check it out. It was confusing right at first as I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. The site is a monument to everything that has been done. I wouldn’t consider using any of the ideas there, at least not consciously, in the writing of a book, script, or whatever; it’s more like what not to do.

 Many of the entries made me laugh at how silly the idea was to begin with but got used anyway. I think it is a good site to study tropes and maybe avoid pitfalls of foolish past ideas. One in particular that I noticed was that in Sci-Fi, every alien planet (almost) has only one government, except Earth. I never really thought about it before, but it seems to me a good pitfall to avoid if you want a bit of realism in your story.

Believe it or not most stories do use "tropes". One could call them stereo-types or archetypes or plot elements... but regardless what you call them most writers use them.I've never used tvtropes as an idea 'generator' but I have used it to look at how stories are assembled from "known components". Thos components are part of every popular / famous / successful story.

Why? because readers / audiences seem to expect / need them... and besides-- writers working in TV / Film need a pool of plot elements... so they reuse the old tried and true things which work... since the whole point of doing a show is to keep it on the air or in the theaters or doing new installments.

[a professional is someone who is paid-- whether they walk the street or write for Hollywood-- the only difference from streetwalking is the writer gets to stay home where its comfortable]

Take for example your world goverment vs balkanized government argument... Its been theorized that to achieve an interstellar civilization a planetary government is required.

For more on that kind of stuff  see chapter 21 of Robert Freitas' non-fiction on-line book  "Xenology" found here:

http://www.xenology.info/Xeno.htm

[Note that Freitas makes his living as an engineer and some of his work has appeared in Analog magazine.]

Notice the levels of civilization he defines... and then regard all of the SF you've ever read. Interstellar travel in the beginning does not come cheap which means a wide economic base to draw the resources from.

As technology advances the cost of travel goes down. Another downside to a balkanized planet that it is more likely to be conquored by an alien invasion than a united planet [again for resource reasons].

Jerry Pournelle in "A Step Farther Out" gives an explanation of the choice of an "Empire" as the government in "The Mote in God's Eye". [Yes I too am a long time science fiction reader... and have discovered some good resources for writing it too].

So tropes or achetypes are used consciously or unconsciously by writers but they are used... Even starship engines have tropes. Geoffery Landis {another Analog contributor classified them:  http://www.projectrho.com/stardrv.txt

In the 90's Christopher Vogler,  a script consultant at Disney, discovered Joseph Cambell's comparative mythology book "Hero with a thousand faces". He wrote a memo to Disney management explaining how this book by Campbell was the foundation for every successful adventure move made from the Mid-1970s starting with Star Wars. He went on to write a book named "The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers" which explains the trope of the "mythic journey". You can foind pout more about this at tvetropes.org.

There is book by Victoria Lynn Schmidt called "45 Master Character, Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters". It is a book about character tropes. For the most part the archtypes ring true but there is a caveat-- the author draws certain conclusions about things she has never studied or makes ovious mistakes. For example she conflagrates "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction" as a single genre!  She also seems to have adopted the fallacy that the myth of Inanna's Decent is at it's heart a "feminist myth" and is the matching "female journey" to the "heroic journey" [which is assumed to be a "male journey"] which is arguably untrue. For the most part the book is ok but then I got the book used at a steep discount. Your milage may vary.

I suppose that I should take some time to put together a list of resources I have found for writing Science Fiction.

If you haven't seen it before, another outstanding writer's idea resource is tvtropes.org which is home to a wiki of plot / character / style /device / sumaries for all kinds of writing as well as sumaries from writing books on topics suchs as character archetypes and plot types.

While TVtropes of itself  will not tell you how to write, it will help you see the parts and pieces [giving them mostly funny names] which  writers use to construct their stories.

After a while of digging through these things you might see how plots are like jokes-- some are good only once, while there are others that are good always...

Do what you can get your readers hooked on.

When I started writing the trend in creative writing classes was to announce all of the things you could not / should not do on a lamb, on a cam, on a ram, with a mouse, on a house, with Sam Iam and green eggs and ham. Then everyone in the class would joyfully shread your work with inarticulate glee for its failure to be "literature" or for being more perfect than their successful results in seeing Dick and Jane run.

So yes there are many rules that get thrown about and many the teacher's pet that did not get slapped down for making foolish pronouchments about what was the right thing.

At least for me the point of the story is to tell the tale in an entertaining way. If you can get there with attributives or dialect or a 500 page free verse rendering... great!

Floating around here in my stacks of books [they seem to have over flowed the bookcases] I have a copy of "Voice & Style" by Johnny Payne published by Writer's Digest Books... he doesn't seem to mind but...at one point he implies that there is an "anti-intellectual" bias in American writers that causes them to want to write stories rather than literature

In your excerpt you are flipping the flop between authorial, narative and discoursive voices... which will work in a first person story as an extension of the narrator's personality... and I can't see a problem with doing so except where it might confuse the reader.

What works for some stories might not work for others. To have your Authorial voice spitting, bitting, chewing, growling, ejaculating, throwing, or otherwise slinging phrases about might confuse your audience if the story is telling a "classic story" [Pick a Greek Play or Dickens or any other story plot that is considered litterature] where the expectation is that you are going to speak in a litterary voice.

Throwing, gambling, gamboling, gasping, snorting, spewing, or coughing out the lines of dialoge sounds in some way like a great way to take the "food fight" meme to the next level.  Yet were you to attempt to do this in the middle of a tragic or romantic scene, I think you would find the result to be comedic rather than tragic or romantic. To me at least this is a "comedic" affection to be used in situations where the narrator is a bit of a bombastic bloke telling tall tales on a dark and stormy night. ;)

Can you give an example?

What do you think is wrong with your writing? Or what do you think you are missing?

Most folks who are on the "fan art" level of writing tend to write stories for themselves first and then maybe for other people. When you point this out they seem to be amazed that writing might be approached as a means to entertain an audience other than one's self or that if the writer is entertained surely everyone else will be too.

As an example... I recently was talking with someone who was working on a fan art story based on a popular game and they wondered what it would feel like to merge the minds of two beings together... after some discussion it became  clear to me that the person who had asked the question was not really interested in an answer... at that point I realized that they were not really writing a story but 'playing' with an idea publicly and was more interested in 'playing' in the game universe that writing.

The first point to be learned is that to write means you are writing for other people-- your readers -- especially if you want to be paid for the work.  Writing is "entertainment" and if you don't entertain then what is the point? 

Once you realize that you are writing to please other people then you get to face the real task... telling your story in a way that makes other people like the story as much as you did when you thought of it.

Then comes all of the craft stuff: plot, characters, setting, mood, style, the archetypes, the motifs, the tricks and tropes... the voice... the twist and so on...

The point of course is to tell a story only the way you can tell it... but in a way that entertains your readers / viewers. Anything else is a waste of your time and theirs.

I don't claim to be an expert but I have been writing one thing or another since the early '70s. Had some things published... I don't take it serious enough to make it a career but I do have a bit of a resource library.

What do you think will liven this place up?