Spookamania! Now with efiction (HP and Orig)

Oooh, Slytherin. 😀

The only problem I have is hovering over the links at the top, they change CSS styling so they "move" the row with it? :S

yeah, that was preset in the skin I customized (elegance.) That happens in the csszen skin as well. I removed that effect in one of my earlier skins but forgot it in the two I have loaded. Thanks for reminding me!

Hope you liked it and thanks for looking!

Pretty neat site! 🙂

Thanks! I added a Gryffindor skin tonight. I think that Slytherin one needs to be toned down a bit lol, it's almost neon. I had to wear sunglasses when I took a second look at it after work.

Thanks for looking!

Wow - your site layouts are pretty impressive!

Very very nice work.

Aww thanks! I think I tend to rely too heavily on graphics. I keep trying to simplify everything and, each time I do, I find it looks a little better.

Then I make more graphics lol. Someday I'll learn...

I'm actually coming up with skins and other elements just for originals.

I plan to have a small html site featuring writing advice written by me at length (I already have a starter version of this called "7 Deadly Sins of Fan Fiction with Professor Spooky" on my html Potter site) I always knew I could expand on it. Right now it covers adverbs, speech tags, police report narrative, description, improper formatting, believability, and cheese. It closes with some advice on how to break writers block, or just get a stuck scene unstuck. I want to write whole "lessons" on things like dialogue, foreshadowing, building believable characters. Recognizing that your character is a mary-sue, Tips from other books and experts, like Steven King, etc. I want people to leave this site with the tools they need to write with relevence and finesse. Would this be something that interests you? Or might you know someone who can write well enough to contribute and wants to? Throw some ideas my way... I'm just so interested in going the original route now... I have a lot more than Harry Potter up my sleeve. Like a rubber chicken and a disco ball... dont ask...  😀

One thing I would like to poll any fiction writer on is how they find that mood, that little niche in the mind, they need to write, and how they combat writers block. Would be good to offer more than just my own experience as different things will work for different people. Idk, just throwing some ideas out there. Writers of any fandom as well as original writers could contribute to and benefit from this. I want to do it up right!

This definitely interests me.  You ideas are actually in line with what I've wanted to try to do with my own site - basically to help writers to  foster a love for the art of writing.  A couple of the articles on my site - and sadly not very well used sections have to do with the basics of writing, character and story development... and I think I have something there with tips for beating writers block... ( http://www.escape-ism.com/index.php?topic=33.0)

One of the concepts that I'm very enthusiastic about is helping people go with the flow of their ideas and to let them evolve into coherent ideas -  and from that point on, setting personal goals for developing these ideas into something tangible that they can share with others or try to get published.  Future ideas that I have include sharing my personal experiences in trying to get published...etc.

As you can probably tell from my site design...my knowledge of coding and such are quite limited.  I'm not exactly a highly educated person - so don't expect anything I do to be overly sophisticated.  I'm probably being a bit vague right now... but I think you and I have somewhat parallel ideas, so I'd love to contribute whatever I can offer when you begin.

lolz... a rubber chicken and a disco ball  - now I'm intrigued!

You know what's excellent? The fact that everything you mentioned are topics which should be covered on a "basics of writing" site, and I planned to write none of them. What I had planned really are just the basics for now, broken down into single topics so what you envision would compliment and enrich my information. The site would be for the novice writer due to the fact that I have no professional training, there are a lot of things I don;t know, and I have nothing to my credit aside from a popular HP fanfic novel. I wrote in the homepage intro "no one here is a professional or pretends to be a master of the craft." That pretty much says it. Your adventures in publishing would be especially nice, since I have been writing novels all my life but have never submitted anything for publication.

last night I wrote the page on "Identifying a Mary-Sue" and today at work wrote some of my essay on believability, which is really an intro for "The Deadly Sins" section, which will detail things like adverbs, cheesy content, speech tags, etc. Another section I plan is writing tools, which goes into dialogue, writers block, finding inspiration, naming characters, developing sub-plots etc. I shall have to take a look at your section and see what you have. I'll post a link when I have more than the one page up.

I'm also not exactly a pro when it comes to coding and such. I use a program and, as for the coding itself, when I need to do it I'm rather skilled at figuring things out. I began the site with absolutely zero knowledge so anything is possible. Don't be so hard on yourself. I'm no idiot, but I'm no genius, either. I'm sure your intelligence level is perfectly fine.  🙂

EDIT: I finished 3 more pages tonight. Believability, which didnt come across as well as I'd hoped, adverbs, and speech tags. The site is highly unfinished, there isnt a single graphic, not even a banner really, but you can have a look if you want. http://spookamania.com/web-content/Pages/Writing/Writing.html

I actually like the article re: Believability.  I think maybe it could be fleshed out a little bit more.  This might help you - it's just a list of questions to ask when writing a story: http://www.escape-ism.com/index.php?page=8

I love the way you have it organized now.  It won't need many images, I think. 

I have a few articles - that I'm going to work on fleshing out into something a bit more coherent - so that you can let me know if you'd like to use them.

I have one here - regarding beta-reading that you may or may not  wish to use : http://www.escape-ism.com/index.php?page=6

I did take a look at your threads and I think you could certainly be an asset to the site. Your writing comes across as intelligent and informed. I liked your beta article. The rest of the stuff seemed more like just a forum discussion, which is exactly what it is but, if they could be fleshed out, the topics were perfect for the site. I'd love to see your articles when you have them ready.

I know the beleivability article I wrote seems to start well and then kind of looses steam and that is because I was tired and got sick of writing it lol. I also didnt want to go in-depth because 90% of what I was saying would be discussed further on the other pages. I'll touch it up later, probably after I write the other pages and see what hasn't been said. Thanks!

So far, I like my article on speech tags the most. Currently working on "police report narrative." Believablility is the one I like the least. 🙁

Excellent.  I'll start working on trying to make something of substance out of them.  I have a hard time with non fiction, to be honest.  It's like I have to be prodded with a stick if I'm not writing for the pure pleasure of it, but I will give this the time it needs.

I'm giving it the time it needs, too. I have most of the Description and Foreshadowing articles finished, but writing all that non-fiction started to hurt my brain. (you may have noticed that I tend to write in my own voice with nonfiction and ignore all of my own writing advice lol)  😮 I will go back to it soon. I want to work on the look of the site for a while and give the writing part a rest. After all, I'm also revising my 36 chapter Hp novel and am only on ch 21, writing ch 23 of its sequel, and also finishing an HP Egyptian adventure story, an HP deserted island story, and am also writing 2 original novels, one of which I recently decided needs to start over from the beginning. On top of that, I have a full-time job, am a single mom, and build/maintain a website of decent proportions. Sometimes I think I take the word "hobby" into the depths of "overwhelming" lol.

Nah... I'm pretty good at switching things up so that no one thing sits too long, ignored. However, the revisions are getting my top priority right now because I am posting the revised chapters in my new efiction archive and have the story half here, half there. When that starts to hurt my brain, back to the writing articles I'll go because that's my #2 priority.

How are yours coming along, Miko?

EDIT: I did apply a new look to the writing site and made a skin to match in the efiction archive. I wanted a neutral skin as default because I host three different kinds of fiction and I loved the writing site's graphics so much I went with that. Archive skin needs some tweeks, but I like it a lot. If someone wants Harry Potter, the Gryffindor and Slytherin skins are available - minus their previous bg's. They're graphics over white now. Took the "whitescroll" skin down. It had some issues. Anyway, check out the new look if you get a chance.

I have 3 other skins that I like, but would anyone be willing to tell me if this new skin is ugly? (BlueOrig, it's default right now) I love the graphic, but I just dont know if it's really striking or really awful. I had 2 friends look at it. One person loved it, the other replied "Gasp! Don;t listen to your other friend." 😐 It did have a white bg. I just changed it to the blue yesterday, so try to picture it with white as well. I dont know if I like the blue, it just looked so empty. I try not to bother people I dont know for opinions, but I never know if my friends are just trying to be nice when they say something looks good. Dont be afraid to put your opinion out there. I dont take offense to opinions. If you hate it, please say so! Suggestions are welcome.

http://spookamania.com/Quills/index.php