Sharing...Sundays! 5/25/14

So I couldn't...post on Friday because I was on vacation, but I took some lovely pictures I'll be putting up on my portfolio on Devinart.

Music and Media

• Here's a wonderful Ted Talk about domestic violence. 

And while we're talking about domestic violence, I saw this video on Buzzfeed about domestic violence in public and how people react, when its guy-on-girl/girl-on-guy. 

The video is presented by the Mankind Initiative which aims to help men in domestic violence situations. 

• To hear the kind of music I've been listening to for my story, Those Crazy Years, check out these Spotify playlists.  In Full Swing & Electro Swing. Also, some classic 1920s,  Flapper Jazz Dinner Party.
• I created a "research template" for writers. Here's the PDF version. I can also send it to anyone who thinks it might be useful. Let me know what you think and if I can improve it! 

Articles From Around the Web

• Check out my friend, Rae Slater's blog! Here's some of her articles on commercialism and on what to do after you finish a draft.
• Check out this post on how to know if you're a book nerd.
• This NY Times article on putting warning labels on classic literature for students. 
• This post detailing more of the battle between Amazon and Hachette. In short, Amazon is basically trying to gain more control of the publishing industry (despite already owning a large portion of e-book sales) and is punishing publishers, authors, and customers in its quest for dominance and money. 
• How to support an author's new book.
• This Contently post- Is Beacon the Netflix and future of freelancers and journalists? 
• Another Contently post on how freelance designers are using social media to fight plagiarism.  
• New York Times' interactive calculator on whether its better to buy or rent a home.

Websites to Look At

• Who Pays Writers? tries to figure out how much writers make and offers tips and suggestions to writers. They also have a magazine aimed at helping writers as well. 
• Old Magazine Articles- They have tons of free old magazine articles available online. Writing historical fiction and trying to find out something from a particular time or era? Or just curious? Well look no further! 
• Crisis Textline- is a free crisis hotline aimed at teens with help and support available 24/7. 
• Perdue Owl offers lots of hints and suggestions not only for research papers, but for researching as well for fiction writers (well you can take it that way). 

Sincerely,

Sareh

Research isn't Just for Students!

The following post I also wrote and posted on Inkwell, but I am recycling it and sharing it on here too. 

Credit: Link

So no matter what genre you write in, you’re probably going to have to do some research at some point in time. If you’re like me, you’ll be fine with this because its exciting. If not, well not so much. But some times even when you know what subject you’re researching, it might be hard to know where to start. So tonight, I’m going to give you my suggestions for how to conduct good research.

Step 1- Know what you’re looking for.

You can start with a broad topic, like The Roaring Twenties, or make it specific like, what kinds of food did people eat back then? The more specific you are, the easier/harder it will be to find information. But if I’m researching a time period, I’ll start with broad things.

Step 2: Gather your resources

Once you’ve decided on your topic, now its time to start gathering your materials. The best place to start right off the bat is Google because that’s fairly simple.

Rule of warning: Remember that when you’re looking for sites for information, you have to keep in mind that there might be a ton of sites out there with a bunch of different information. One of the things here is that some of that information may not always be true. I have two ways of checking information, 1) Does the site list references? And are those references valid sources and are they dated? 2) Can this information be found on other sites. If you can find generally the same information on at least two or three other sites, you know that its probably true. Even better, see if you can find it in a book. (Although if you’re writing a fiction novel, your facts don’t always have to be strictly true. Because you’re writing fiction and you can sometimes get away will little things as long as its not too big).

Once you’ve found your internet references, its a good idea to bookmark all those files in a separate folder or two so that you’ll be able to find them again.

After you’ve found your internet resources, make sure to check out your local library or bookstore. Books are generally the best places to look for information that’s true. And don’t be afraid to check out kids’ books too. Sometimes those may be helpful although you might look a bit silly reading them. Other good resources to check out are magazines, TV shows, movies, documentaries, and journals (not like personal journals but academic ones).

Make sure to keep track of all the things you’ve used to find your information in because those might come in handy if you need to rent them again or something. Sometimes I give my list of resources to friends who might be resourcing the same things.

Step 3- Organize your resources and make notes

Say you’re researching the 1920s again and you need to know exactly where to find something or there’s something in a specific book you need. If you’re looking at your internet resources, make sure to organize them. For example I’ve been studying this era for a novel and under my bookmarks I have specific folders for sites related to “Flappers”, “Model T Ford”, “Speakeasies”, “Prohibition”, etc.

If you want to make notes, keep a stack of notecards near you and write down the quote you want and then remember to source the item you got this information from. If you can’t remember how to do something like the MLA from high school, there’s plenty of sites that will show you how or even do it for you. Doing something like the MLA may not seem all that important, especially if you’re writing fiction, but its a good habit to get into. Not only will this help you keep track of your information, but you can’t be accused of stealing that quote or anything.

And remember basic note taking tips like, you don’t have to write everything down and summarizing is useful.

Step 4- How do you know when you have enough?

This is a good question, one that I’ve often struggled with myself. I’m one of those people who will research a subject until I’m sick of it and ready to die. But from that I’ve learned that there’s ways to know.

A good way to know is that you can just start with the basics. Because you can always go back and research more later. But most of the time we just need a couple things to get us started and informed.

Also, research as you go. You don’t need to know everything before you begin writing because you don’t know what you’ll encounter as you write. Or what will come up. Research what you need and leave it as that if you’re afraid of over researching.

Also keep in mind that you won’t use everything you’ll learn. Sometimes not only that, but if your story is still good without knowing what exactly people ate in the 1920s and how long they cooked it, you don’t need to research that. Its not needed! Don’t go through the trouble of putting something into your story just for the sake of putting it there, cause that’s unnecessary.

Step 5- Don’t be afraid of creating. 

If you can’t find something you’re looking for, keep in mind that the information you want may not be known or even accessible to you. And if you are determined to add something that you can’t find, add that something anyways. Its okay to expand on a topic even if you’re not exactly right. (Mostly though if you’re writing fiction.)

If you can’t find say what was the most popular hair color back in the 1920s, its okay to put in that lots of people like blonds or red-heads. After all, you’re writing fiction, not a non-fiction book. You don’t always have to have all the facts out there.

Main Points to Take Away

• Don’t limit yourself to just one resource! There’s a ton of information out there on any subject. Don’t just look on the internet or in books, try other types of media too. Like movies and magazines.
• Its a good idea to double check that your facts are true. Even if you’re writing fiction. While it may not be the most important thing, it’d be horrible if you got something wrong and everyone knew it but you, after you’ve been published. Because then its kinda hard to go back and change it.
• Don’t steal! Make sure to give credit to where you found your information. Even if you’re going to be the only person to know.
• Keep organized. This way, its very to find information when you need it.
• Keep notes! Also makes it easier to find information!
• Use what you need as you need it.
• Try to have fun!

So, do you enjoy researching? Why or why not? What is some of the most interesting things you’ve come across before?

Writing Tips- World Building

World building is very important. It's probably easier if you're writing in a real-world setting and even harder if you're creating your own world. In any case, it requires research and thinking.

First Step: Research
World building has two things to build a great and believable world. Creativity and research. When one researches, one must remember that you do not need everything you research. In other words, you must figure out what to read. If you're using historical parts in a fantasy novel you probably don't need the most credible sources. Although it's also good to make sure you have true facts in case you end up using something that makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. But even if you're creating your own version of a culture, you'll still need to use your imagination.

Even though one must be careful about how much you research because it can quickly take up your writing time and you may never end up starting the story, how much one researches depends on how closely you want your story to relate to true facts. If you want your story's culture to sound like something from Ancient China, you may want to research that culture unless you want to loosely base your culture off of it.

But besides researching historical facts, researching scientific facts and other things will make you sound like you know what you're talking about. You might ask why you need all this researching if you're writing a fantasy novel, but you see, there's these things called plausibility and realism.

Plausibility vs Realism
Plausibility is making your fantasy sound real, as if you're almost there. Realism is using facts from the real world to help make your world sound real. Without real facts, you might end up making your work harder than it has to be.

Tips to help your world:

• Make a list of rules and stick to them: If your world uses time travel and you can hyper-jump to a planet, make sure that if so, you can hyper-jump during any time of the novel unless there's a reason why. If your spaceship can do so during one chapter but can't the next, why? 
• Create maps and research them: I love making maps. They can be very helpful in not only knowing what your world looks like and deciding where things are, but they can help with traveling. They can help you decide what routes to take, where buildings, towns, and geographic features are. How long does it take to get to the next town? How far apart is one town from the next? Knowing where deserts commonly are found and why can be useful. Knowing weather patterns and what causes them are the same. 
• Stick with real things or have a reason not too: If you decide not to have gravity or some universal rule, make sure you have a reason why. Maybe a gaint spell came along that caused the world to loose its gravity. Or it has something to do with being closer or farther away from another planet or maybe it's less dense or more dense. 

What Creatures inhabit your world?

Three tips to decide what flora and animals are normal in your world:

1. There are no created animals, all the animals and plants we know of exist.
2. There is part created creatures/plants, part animals we know of existing: Creatures that don't really exist live in the same world as animals and plants such as deer and coconuts. Remember that the animal kingdom is arranged in a pyramid with large predadors at the top and a larger number of smaller creatures at the bottom.
3. There is no creatures that we know of exist: In other words, you created all of your creatures and plants. Remember that your creatures should fill the same roles as earth animals. Like horses. Although your creature that has a horse-like roles can do things horses can't like flying.

Government

Creating your culture's government is very important. Every society and culture has some type of government. And characters are often a part of something government related. Some types of government can be:

• Empires
• Kingdoms
• Anarchy
• republic
• city state
• feudalism
• dictatorship/totalitarian
• communism
• federation

And then these governments can be separated by even more things like:

• patriarchal
• matriarchal
• militaristic
• theocratic

And within these are even more things your people can be apart of. States, armies, secret societies, government agencies, guilds, and other things ran by governments. 

Creating Culture

Many things help create culture, things like:

• Religion- What someone believes in can greatly affect the culture. How often do the characters pray? Are they deeply religious or not so much? If your culture has religion, recall that religion usually affects every day life and almost everything that people do. In Christianity, most people might go to church every Sunday or some people go once in a while. Muslims pray several times a day. 
• weights and measures- Things like pounds, miles, and quarts are part of the system that America and one other country uses. Everyone else uses things like the metric system. The American system was based on how long the average person's arm or foot was, while the metric system is based on the number ten. How do people count time? By the postion of the sun or the moon? How much does something cost? And what do they use to decide that? Coins, feathers, shells?
• sayings and slang- What people say, how they say it, and what they mean by it differs from culture to culture. Where I live, people say something is "breast" when something is awesome or cool. My cousin says "cool beans" when something is cool. I bet people over in Africa have their own slang for when something is cool.
• diet and food- What does your culture eat? Meat, just veggies and fruit, or both? Also remember that many cultures have different foods from other ones. Italian is very different from Chinese food. Or something that's a common dish in Africa would be exotic in America. 
• music, art, and pop culture- Music and art all say something about people's culture. The Egyptians are famous for their hieroglyphs and the sarcophagus that hold mummies. While the Olmec in Ancient America carved giant heads.  
• prejudice/racism/tolerance- Back in WWII there were many anti-Jewish feelings. People were racist or against Jews. People can be prejudiced against fat or malformed people. Some people tolerate certain groups of people but view them as like second class citizens. 
• manners- Is it polite to bring food when you visit another home? How does your people greet each other? Its important to know what is rude and what isn't. As is how to show respect to someone of higher rank. Do they bow or salute? 
• clothing- The type of clothing and how they wear it contributes to culture. People in India wear saris while the traditional dress for the Japanese is the kimono. Is their outfits made out of cotton during the summer and wool in the winter? Are bright colors worn in the summer and spring while dull colors are worn in the winter and fall?

So what are your favorite created worlds?


Sincerely,
Sareh

In the News- When Social Networking is Too Much And Glowing Animals.

In an article I read a while back and meant to post about, the topic is about living in what the article's author calls the "Conversation Age."

He goes on to say how it is getting increasingly harder to keep up with online conversations. Those conversations which happen to be with family, friends, co-workers, and other people that could be important. Not only that but with the increasing amount of social networks, it is hard to keep with who is on what and what is being said. There is Facebook, Google Plus, blogs, and many other sites where people are trying to talk to us on a daily basis. So with all of the conversations going on, and not just online, how does one keep up with it all?

You can't.

Or you can very much try. It could help by limiting how many sites you're on and who you talk to. For example, how many of those friends on Facebook do you really ever talk to? And how many of those people do you see every day? Is it really that important to talk to someone online when you can talk to them by phone or offline?

Anyways, I don't really use social networking sites all that much. I mainly use facebook these days to keep up with my friends far away or to manage the pages I've created. Most of them have turned into well faring pages the began as book reports and were never meant to become liked by anyone other than me. But now I have a following on those pages and I like to update them and talk to people about the books on it. I also have the facebook page for this blog which I try to keep updated.

But other than that, the only places I talk to people online is here on my blog, other blogs, on Goodreads, or on Inkpop. I sometimes use emails, but not as often. The really only person I email is a cousin's cousin. Personally, I'd be fine without talking to people online, but then, I'm fine with talking to people online too.

Anyways, I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this topic anymore, so I'm going to turn to another subject.

Tegon, the glowing beagle.

 Discovery.com, reported a couple weeks ago that scientists have genetically modified a female beagle to glow. Yes, you read that right. The beagle, named Tegon, glows fluorescent green when under UV lights. And the whole animal glows when under these lights. But Tegon is not the only animal to be modifed by humans to glow. Another puppy named Ruppy, glows fluorescent red and a cat named Mr. Green Genes, glows...well green.

According to the article:

He and his colleagues achieved the feat using a five-step process. The scientists first inserted a DNA fragment that controls the expression of a green fluorescent gene into dog cells. They next extracted DNA from a dog oocyte (an immature female reproductive cell prior to fertilization) and injected the fluorescent-modified dog cells into it.

The third step was to use a process known as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer to generate an embryo. The resulting embryo was then transferred into a surrogate dog mother. After 60 days of pregnancy, she gave birth to Tegon. When given a doxycycline antibiotic, the female beagle literally glows under UV light.

The animals are created because researchers hope to use them to improve benefits of humans. Dogs, especially, are good for this type of thing apparently. They have 268 types of genetic diseases that are close to what we get.

 "Also, the dog has physiological and anatomical similarities with humans. These reasons make them a good model for human disease."

Lee said the genes injected to make the dog glow could be substituted with genes that trigger fatal diseases. He and his team would then be able to chart the course of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and more, better understanding how such diseases develop.

Dogs also make good candidates for this kind of research because they have "good communication skills with humans, which enable them to have good response skills to direct orders. They are also easy to handle." He added, "Compared to mice and other smaller animals, dogs provide a much larger sample collection." 

Injections? Glowing? Fatal diseases? I don't know about you but this sounds somewhere along the line of animal abuse. I understand that it is to help humans with diseases, but what about these poor animals? Even if injecting them with glowing genes doesn't harm them, I think adding fatal diseases to the mix does.

How would you like it if people injected you with diseases in order to save other people without your consent? You probably wouldn't like it.

Also, don't be surprised if glowing dogs and cats become a new pet trend in future.

As Ko said, the "technology could be used for producing a variety of unique cats and dogs, possibly creating a new area of commercial interest."

Hm, a glowing pet? While that would be interesting, I think it would get annoying at night when you're trying to sleep. Plus everyone would have to get UV lights and glasses just to see their pets glow. Unless, of course, they came up with another way to make the animals glow.

Resources
Conversation Age
Glowing Animals

So, do you have troubles keeping up with social networking? How has social networking impacted your life? Would you like a glowing pet? Do you think it's abuse to use animals for research and medical purposes?

Sincerely,
Peony