I keep saying it, and people keep agreeing, but nothing comes of it.

It would be great if we had a forum where we could post tips and advice. How many times does someone post a great tip about some aspect of writing, beit passive sentences, punctuation queries, manuscript layout, font size, show and tell, or whatever?

Instead of writing it down on a post it note, which then gets lost, why can we not have a forum titled 'useful tips'or something, and we can all post anything we think mught be helpful in there. Then we can easily access it whenever we want. It would be especially for members who are starting to edit their novels, those tips can be a real help.

So, come on David, what about it?

Katerina

Aren't those already talked aboput in the 'techniques' forum, or have I got it wrong?

vanessa

I don't mean a place to discuss how to do something, but literally a forum where tips and advice can be stored. So if someone needs to know something about passive and active sentences, they can go to 'Tips' and see if there's anthing there.

Katerina

I suggested a sort of articles thing like that because otherwise how would you separate out all the chat? Some threads get so carried away even from humble beginnings that it could be difficult to have to trawl through them to get to the bit in question.

Speaking personally, which is all one can do...

an article on say 'active versus passive' sentences, is all very well... but what happens if there are questions? Then the forum would become another 'techniques' forum, wouldn't it?

In my limited experience, there are almost no black and white 'this is right' and 'this is wrong'.

Every rule is there to be examined and discussed, maybe even discounted occasionally... and its in that discussion that Ive learned a lot.

vanessa

I think I agree with Nessie - there aren't definitive answers to these things: context is everything, and one person's solution won't be another's. You can only really tease these things out by discussing them.

There is site search, which ought to bring up most things.

Emma

In my limited experience, there are almost no black and white 'this is right' and 'this is wrong'.

Yes, yes! But how about a thread where you asked for, say, a tip per person, Katerina? I'm sure it's been done before, but I've not seen one while I've been here and it would be a good opportunity for discussion.

Ah! Now that sounds an option with possibilities...

vanessa

Doing that would lose some of the flavour of the site. What you would have would be an FAQ page, attempting, but falling way short of the mark of any number of good books on writing. Even if you get that, people will ignore the Tips pages and cut straight to the heart of their question in the Technique forum, asking whatever it is they need to know. We already know this because the same questions come up time and time again even though the answers are already in libraries, on the shelves of Waterstones and scattered about on the net. I guess what I'm really saying, is twofold: people want a quick answer without having to search, and sometimes things are better discussed.

Colin M

Yes Colin - but why not have both?

Sometimes things are discussed as nausiam where a quick clarification would be useful. i also though a list of common terms would be useful to people, some might be nervous to ask, some might not have come across them before. I personally think all these separate forums are difficult and unwieldly to look through.

If it was structured like a Wikipedia type thing, then it would be great, and if people want to go for that, I'm all for it, but my honest, personal opinion is that the result would be a confusing mish-mash of opinions. The time it would take to trawl through would be better spend posting a question on the Technique forum or shelling out for a decent book.

Oh well it's all been talked of before, hasn't it? I thought articles would be good and then you could look it up easily. I don't see that it has to be prescriptive - just some definitions and common mistakes/problems. But there you go.

I don't know if you've been to www.absolutewrite.com, but they have loads of good articles. At least that was my first impression when I found it, I though, "Wow, I've struck gold here. Look at all of this." - but then spent my whole time in the forums <img src=../images/smile.gif>

absolutewrite.com is an amazing website for articles. There are loads of links to other websites and I sonetimes read the forums but it's not such a nice place as this

I was having a look at the tab at the top here "Articles" and they are so old and outdated and very megre in their range. Links on the web are not only free you can earn from linking to other sites (this is not my territory so I may be way off with this). Absolutewrite has amazing links and surely David could update the articles page and put in similar links.

Also maybe we could write an article to be put there or suggest topics/give links we've found and if it results in a discussion it could be discussed in the Technique forum or another forum called Articles could be opened.


<Added>

Maybe the tab heading could be changed to Advice since Articles is maybe not a strong enough title.

i think that's a great suggestion, Eve.