I’m really nerdy. So nerdy in fact, that every one of my writing projects, from active things to plot bunnies I ignore after a week, has a main file that looks roughly like this:
Continue reading “Templates and Patterns”Tag: latex
Anything related to my use of LaTeX as a typesetting tool.
Writing Like a Geek
A few people have asked me for more details on my writing process so I figured the easiest thing is to document it here. This about the literal process of how I put together my projects.
Continue reading “Writing Like a Geek”Special Characters
Section 11.12 of the The Chicago Manual of Style’s sixteenth edition recommends including a list of special characters at the end of any manuscript (a special character generally being anything not found on a standard keyboard). Because I’m lazy I want something to do the work for me so I don’t have to track what characters I’m using through revisions. Let’s make LaTeX track the special characters we use.
Continue reading “Special Characters”Naming Characters (and Places, Groups, Gods…)
I’m awful with names. Actually that undersells how bad I am. I’m the kind of person who likes things to be precise and correct from the beginning (engineering hat) so I don’t even like having placeholders and calling my characters Bob, Janet, and Tony. I’ve tried, really, but I keep fidgeting and will spend hours trying to come up with the perfect name. Plus even if I somehow move on find/replace can only do so much. If I screw up and talk about how Bbo and Tony are trying to one-up each other to take Janet on a date we all know what’s going to happen.
The solution: placeholders. Yeah, even though I hate them they’re still the best option. Let’s look at a practical example.
Continue reading “Naming Characters (and Places, Groups, Gods…)”