The Simpsons disappeared into its own massive character base. It would probably be very reinvigorated if they did had the family move, and were disciplined about NOT bringing old characters back to cameo
I've often suggested they should do an entire season set 6 or 8 years in the future, where Bart and Lisa are in high school and Homer and Marge are getting older, to explore a different slice of life's issues. Sure, they've worked in a few things that are rightly an older kid's story by trickery (Bart getting a driver's license, Lisa "smoking" via second hand, several slightly out of place romances) but there's a lot more teenage material it's not easy to cover.
Also, I just think it would be hilarious if the entire season was done that way without any warning or explanation, and then the season after they reverted to their original ages and timeline, also without any warning or explanation.
Take Dilbert for example. When it came out (in the 1990s, y'all), it was a badass tour-de-force that ripped right into the buzzword bullshit culture that corporate America was at the time. As long as that culture was prevalent**, the overall meme was fully relevant, and it resonated deeply with the cubicle-dwelling audience. Fast forward to today, where much of that has faded - and with it, the whole basis of humor behind Dilbert has sort of faded with it.
Last year when I had a batch of sleepless nights I reread the first 10 or so years of Dilbert online. One thing I miss is the puns. Scott used to not be afraid to use them, but they're rare now. I actually laughed out loud at one strip this year not because of the joke, but because it was the first pun I'd seen in ages.
I was also dismayed to realize my all-time favorite Dilbert strip, one which I printed out and had taped to my desk for years, was from something like 1998. Stumbling into it so "early" in the strip made me realize just how long it's been running.
That's pretty funny. I will admit to having left myself voice mail messages so that I wouldn't forget ideas I came up with on a hike. Not sure what I would have done without phone signal.
I recommend family medicine. Every time I talk to my doctor, I have flashbacks to moments when I'm trying to get a user to convey the symptoms and problems (and any recent changes to the system) to me. It's really a very similar process.
Down side is unless you want to get arrested, you're going to have to spend 6 years in med school to be able to do this legally.
In medical research, at least as my wife experienced, the first author is the surgeon with the biggest reputation/ego, followed by every other associated surgeons. The first non-surgeon author is probably the person who wrote the article and did 90% of the research and analysis, followed by a string of interns and contributors in order of amount contributed.
If you're going to take the time to give unsolicited advice, I will say nothing but thank you. Not sure how far you read, but I do think it's in there, just takes a while to build. Test readers have described scenes as "heartbreaking" and "gave me goosebumps" but many of those are later on. The beginning is definitely light, and geared more toward humor than anything else.
Or you've gone farther and it still didn't work for you, in which case that's a data point that I'll need to consider how to incorporate in the next one.
I'm too lazy to read the article, but did they also include anything about what happens if you watch the DVD multiple times versus streaming it multiple times?
I still see a lot better quality from disk. We stream nearly everything, but on the occasion that I put in a Blu-ray, I always say, "Wow, that looks really sharp!" At least for the first minute or two. After that I'm not sure if I notice or care. Hard to tell once you get into the story.
Further, getting anything less than As closes doors for that child in the future - permanently.
Bwuh? I got B's and an occasional C up through the middle of high school, and faced practically no limitations about career path later in life.
One of the valuable things I learned by getting those lower grades was that I couldn't slack off as much as I had been if I wanted to succeed. The C was a far more valuable lesson than I would have learned by having a parent who "didn't let me" get that grade at all.
That's great. Too bad your novel's name was taken by a reality TV show (or maybe that's a good thing?)
Hell if I know. Probably get me some accidental sales and nearly as many returns. Likely a wash. I've got a knack for that. Years ago I created a game with the word Twilight in it right before the vampire books hit it big. Game got invaded by packs of teenage players named Bella or Cullen, who kept trying to figure out what superheroes had to do with vampires.
I suggest instead you focus your energy on making your next novel that's even better. Victor Hugo didn't write Les Miserables his first try.....
Ah, there's room for both. I'm not talking about spending any real money on advertising, but so far my current audience is almost entirely people who know me, or who know people I know. I'm sure there's a way to reach further than that.
But I'm also nearly done with the rough draft for the next novel, so there's no stopping the writing train. Can't afford another editor, though, so I'm looking for other ways to handle this one. Possibly releasing it online in serial installments, in order to pick up some test readers and get some free feedback and proofreading as I go.
Heh, maybe. The thing about aspiring authors, though, is they often have (or find) more time than cash. It took me more than a decade to feel like I had enough money to fund it myself.
On the other hand, 1) I probably needed that decade of practice to have a novel ready for a professional editor, and 2) I did get a kick-ass editor who made a tremendous difference to the final product, so I'm not complaining too much.
Now I've just got to figure out the marketing angle...
Heh, really? I'd do just about any professional job for a year for a million dollars. Heck, I'd probably double down for a second year and then retire. But mobile app development? That sounds like enough fun I'd be doing it now if I thought I could keep my current wage.
If I had wanted to pay an editor it would have cost around $1500--I looked into this, but decided to play with a combination of early-reader feedback (I have a number of friends whom I trust to tell me when things are crap, and believe me, they did), mechanical editing based on research-grade natural-language processing tools, and semi-automated proofreading (which I wrote my own code for using a variety of heuristics tailored to the kinds of errors I'm particularly prone to making.)
Damn. I need better friends. I wrote a fictionalized memoir, and I couldn't get more than two of the people who were IN the book to actually read it, and of those two one wouldn't give more specific feedback than "It's a good read."
Ah, go for it. One of the things that traditional publishers use in their calculation is enough readers to break even on the money they put into the publishing process. They may be looking at your book and saying, "Well, it could sell X copies, but we need 3X or 5X to justify the whole process." You, on the other hand, could still do well self-publishing and hitting the X readers in the niche audience. Maybe you'll only reach half that many, but that'll still feel good. You might also be surprised to find there's enough appeal for 3X or 5X people after all, and then you get the money instead of the publisher.
It may help you build an audience for your next self-published book. It might be proof that you have a big enough audience to convince a traditional publisher with your next project.
It is very unlikely you will "find out you suck." In the worst case scenario, it's more likely the book won't sell very well and you won't know if it's marketing, the writing, the editing, or something else. It may leave you scratching your head, but it won't condemn your talent. You do have to know if you put your work out there, some people won't like it, but that's inevitable no matter how good your book may be. Weigh that against some possible good feedback. I don't know your genre, but just think how you might feel if someone said, "I've never related to a character that closely before" or who knows what else. It can be sublimely satisfying to know you've reached someone.
(All this is said especially with the idea in mind that you've gotten some decent feedback along with your rejections. That is strong evidence that the book doesn't suck. It may be a niche market, which again is often better served by self-publishing than traditional. It would be completely different if you'd gotten back 20 "this is terrible and deserves to be burned" rejections.)
More importantly, how do you find good authors who have been edited well?
Reviews on the sites that sell the books, ideally. Or a place like Goodreads, which may do a little selling, but isn't on the scope of Amazon or BN. You can get recommendations, see reviews, etc. I don't think any place has picked up on a multi-category rating system yet which recognizes you might want separate values for quality of story and quality of editing, but I'm hopeful as more self-published books go out there someone will figure that out sooner or later. (It seemed obvious enough to me during the half hour I spent brainstorming ideas for a book recommendation site before discovering Goodreads.)
Yeah, but then you're on the line for a lot of money up front that you may not recoup. Writing is expensive enough just from the perspective of the amount of time you have to put in ahead of time, without shelling out several grand in cash, too. That is one aspect of the old model that actually works for the authors.
I say this as someone who paid out of pocket for editing for a self-published novel. I have possibly sold enough copies to have earned minimum wage for my time spent, but I haven't put a dent in recouping the editing costs.
Slashdot Mirror
Road Ends, Convert to Hover Mode
The Simpsons disappeared into its own massive character base. It would probably be very reinvigorated if they did had the family move, and were disciplined about NOT bringing old characters back to cameo
I've often suggested they should do an entire season set 6 or 8 years in the future, where Bart and Lisa are in high school and Homer and Marge are getting older, to explore a different slice of life's issues. Sure, they've worked in a few things that are rightly an older kid's story by trickery (Bart getting a driver's license, Lisa "smoking" via second hand, several slightly out of place romances) but there's a lot more teenage material it's not easy to cover.
Also, I just think it would be hilarious if the entire season was done that way without any warning or explanation, and then the season after they reverted to their original ages and timeline, also without any warning or explanation.
Take Dilbert for example. When it came out (in the 1990s, y'all), it was a badass tour-de-force that ripped right into the buzzword bullshit culture that corporate America was at the time. As long as that culture was prevalent**, the overall meme was fully relevant, and it resonated deeply with the cubicle-dwelling audience. Fast forward to today, where much of that has faded - and with it, the whole basis of humor behind Dilbert has sort of faded with it.
Last year when I had a batch of sleepless nights I reread the first 10 or so years of Dilbert online. One thing I miss is the puns. Scott used to not be afraid to use them, but they're rare now. I actually laughed out loud at one strip this year not because of the joke, but because it was the first pun I'd seen in ages.
I was also dismayed to realize my all-time favorite Dilbert strip, one which I printed out and had taped to my desk for years, was from something like 1998. Stumbling into it so "early" in the strip made me realize just how long it's been running.
GOTO 110
110: print "I am not a script!"
That's pretty funny. I will admit to having left myself voice mail messages so that I wouldn't forget ideas I came up with on a hike. Not sure what I would have done without phone signal.
And it it something we will not up with put!
I recommend family medicine. Every time I talk to my doctor, I have flashbacks to moments when I'm trying to get a user to convey the symptoms and problems (and any recent changes to the system) to me. It's really a very similar process.
Down side is unless you want to get arrested, you're going to have to spend 6 years in med school to be able to do this legally.
In medical research, at least as my wife experienced, the first author is the surgeon with the biggest reputation/ego, followed by every other associated surgeons. The first non-surgeon author is probably the person who wrote the article and did 90% of the research and analysis, followed by a string of interns and contributors in order of amount contributed.
No, it's okay. The spelling's the same, but the pronunciation is different. The old one was "yo-sem-it-ee" but the new one is "yo-sum-ite".
If you're going to take the time to give unsolicited advice, I will say nothing but thank you. Not sure how far you read, but I do think it's in there, just takes a while to build. Test readers have described scenes as "heartbreaking" and "gave me goosebumps" but many of those are later on. The beginning is definitely light, and geared more toward humor than anything else.
Or you've gone farther and it still didn't work for you, in which case that's a data point that I'll need to consider how to incorporate in the next one.
Thanks.
Nope. *Genetically* they're identical. The entire rest of their biological development is independent and can diverge significantly.
I'm too lazy to read the article, but did they also include anything about what happens if you watch the DVD multiple times versus streaming it multiple times?
I still see a lot better quality from disk. We stream nearly everything, but on the occasion that I put in a Blu-ray, I always say, "Wow, that looks really sharp!" At least for the first minute or two. After that I'm not sure if I notice or care. Hard to tell once you get into the story.
^^ That! ^^
Not gonna happen. But I'd place odds that in 2035, in Soviet Russia ...
What languages did he code in? What con's did he attend? What was his comic book/manga collection like? What technical degree's did he hold?
I think I just found out I'm not a geek. Unless owning 'Watchmen' counts as a comic book collection.
Okay, I code a little in PHP. But I've been told around here that doesn't count, either.
Further, getting anything less than As closes doors for that child in the future - permanently.
Bwuh? I got B's and an occasional C up through the middle of high school, and faced practically no limitations about career path later in life.
One of the valuable things I learned by getting those lower grades was that I couldn't slack off as much as I had been if I wanted to succeed. The C was a far more valuable lesson than I would have learned by having a parent who "didn't let me" get that grade at all.
That's great. Too bad your novel's name was taken by a reality TV show (or maybe that's a good thing?)
Hell if I know. Probably get me some accidental sales and nearly as many returns. Likely a wash. I've got a knack for that. Years ago I created a game with the word Twilight in it right before the vampire books hit it big. Game got invaded by packs of teenage players named Bella or Cullen, who kept trying to figure out what superheroes had to do with vampires.
I suggest instead you focus your energy on making your next novel that's even better. Victor Hugo didn't write Les Miserables his first try.....
Ah, there's room for both. I'm not talking about spending any real money on advertising, but so far my current audience is almost entirely people who know me, or who know people I know. I'm sure there's a way to reach further than that.
But I'm also nearly done with the rough draft for the next novel, so there's no stopping the writing train. Can't afford another editor, though, so I'm looking for other ways to handle this one. Possibly releasing it online in serial installments, in order to pick up some test readers and get some free feedback and proofreading as I go.
Heh, maybe. The thing about aspiring authors, though, is they often have (or find) more time than cash. It took me more than a decade to feel like I had enough money to fund it myself.
On the other hand, 1) I probably needed that decade of practice to have a novel ready for a professional editor, and 2) I did get a kick-ass editor who made a tremendous difference to the final product, so I'm not complaining too much.
Now I've just got to figure out the marketing angle ...
Heh, really? I'd do just about any professional job for a year for a million dollars. Heck, I'd probably double down for a second year and then retire. But mobile app development? That sounds like enough fun I'd be doing it now if I thought I could keep my current wage.
If I had wanted to pay an editor it would have cost around $1500--I looked into this, but decided to play with a combination of early-reader feedback (I have a number of friends whom I trust to tell me when things are crap, and believe me, they did), mechanical editing based on research-grade natural-language processing tools, and semi-automated proofreading (which I wrote my own code for using a variety of heuristics tailored to the kinds of errors I'm particularly prone to making.)
Damn. I need better friends. I wrote a fictionalized memoir, and I couldn't get more than two of the people who were IN the book to actually read it, and of those two one wouldn't give more specific feedback than "It's a good read."
That other stuff sounds pretty spiffy, though.
Ah, go for it. One of the things that traditional publishers use in their calculation is enough readers to break even on the money they put into the publishing process. They may be looking at your book and saying, "Well, it could sell X copies, but we need 3X or 5X to justify the whole process." You, on the other hand, could still do well self-publishing and hitting the X readers in the niche audience. Maybe you'll only reach half that many, but that'll still feel good. You might also be surprised to find there's enough appeal for 3X or 5X people after all, and then you get the money instead of the publisher.
It may help you build an audience for your next self-published book. It might be proof that you have a big enough audience to convince a traditional publisher with your next project.
It is very unlikely you will "find out you suck." In the worst case scenario, it's more likely the book won't sell very well and you won't know if it's marketing, the writing, the editing, or something else. It may leave you scratching your head, but it won't condemn your talent. You do have to know if you put your work out there, some people won't like it, but that's inevitable no matter how good your book may be. Weigh that against some possible good feedback. I don't know your genre, but just think how you might feel if someone said, "I've never related to a character that closely before" or who knows what else. It can be sublimely satisfying to know you've reached someone.
(All this is said especially with the idea in mind that you've gotten some decent feedback along with your rejections. That is strong evidence that the book doesn't suck. It may be a niche market, which again is often better served by self-publishing than traditional. It would be completely different if you'd gotten back 20 "this is terrible and deserves to be burned" rejections.)
And then how do you find good authors?
More importantly, how do you find good authors who have been edited well?
Reviews on the sites that sell the books, ideally. Or a place like Goodreads, which may do a little selling, but isn't on the scope of Amazon or BN. You can get recommendations, see reviews, etc. I don't think any place has picked up on a multi-category rating system yet which recognizes you might want separate values for quality of story and quality of editing, but I'm hopeful as more self-published books go out there someone will figure that out sooner or later. (It seemed obvious enough to me during the half hour I spent brainstorming ideas for a book recommendation site before discovering Goodreads.)
Yeah, but then you're on the line for a lot of money up front that you may not recoup. Writing is expensive enough just from the perspective of the amount of time you have to put in ahead of time, without shelling out several grand in cash, too. That is one aspect of the old model that actually works for the authors.
I say this as someone who paid out of pocket for editing for a self-published novel. I have possibly sold enough copies to have earned minimum wage for my time spent, but I haven't put a dent in recouping the editing costs.
I'm 99% sure he also meant "Shadow of the Colons."