I don’t really anticipate typesetting anything anytime soon, but I read this and was curious. https://scribemedia.com/book-typesetting/ the article warns against widows, orphans, and word stacks, but how do you fix these when they are found? when do you hyphenate words, I assume when the spacing from justification is too long or too short but how is that determined? Is that automated with good software? is scrivener okay for typesetting ebooks or will you get substandard results?
Does a word stack look something like this? Does it mean the same word appears on lines above and below in the same place? Does that irritate readers and editors alike? You must understand though, while typesetting was a dangerous and dirty job, the orphans and widows were good at it, and would work cheaper than anybody else (if you could find an orphan who wasn't up a chimney sweeping it out all the time).
I think @Bakkerbaard has done this recently for his self-published novel. He published on a breadth of storefronts, so he possibly had to deal with format woes as well. At least a half-dozen other people here have made it through that process. Maybe a few will stop by if they're in the mood.
I think you'd be better off taking @SapereAude 's advice than mine. Nevertheless, I'm going to give it. PAPERBACK: I did the typesetting myself, using InDesign and a bunch of tutorials. My knowledge is rudimentary, but it does the job well enough. The end result isn't perfect though. I don't know all the tricks, but to the average reader it looks like a big-boy book. Initially had it done by the same young lady who did the cover for that book, but due to circumstances I caused myself it had to be redone and I felt stupid asking her again. So I just kinda forced myself into that corner. EBOOK: She initially also used InDesign for the ebook, but there's code involved with that, if I'm not mistaken. I'm unfortunately entirely blind to any kind of coding. I've tried, but I just can't wrap my brain around it. Eventually I got Vellum. Lovely piece of software, apart from it only running on Mac. But I needed it, so I had "my guy" turn my Windows laptop into a dualboot with the appropriate iOS version and got me a license for Vellum. That'll take away all your worries for formatting. Just screw around with it, find the settings you like, and tell it to "make ebook, enter". Again, I'm sure the keen eye can tell the difference, but the average reader will accept it just fine. HYPHENATION: I hate hyphenation. It's an unfounded hate. It's also none of your concern, so let's talk InDesign. You can tell InDesign to hyphenate, and on which conditions. Like after how many letters it can start thinking about breaking a word. The condition I gave it was "if I see a hyphen I will hunt down you and your family and just use MS Paint". InDesign understood very well. Seriously, though. If you're gonna teach yourself one program, make it InDesign. It's a powerhouse, and there are tutorials a plenty. Vellum will do the same, by the way. But I believe it's either hyphen on, or hyphen off, Daniel-san. Vellum takes care of a lot of the checkmarks and clicks and buttons you have to make manually in InDesign, but like all software that takes care of things for you, options become more limited. You could technically just use Vellum for most of your typesetting needs, if you're willing to accept you're going to run into a need that Vellum doesn't accommodate. WIDOWS, ORPHANS, RIVERS, OTHER FANCY SOUNDING WORDS FOR... WORDS I kept an eye on the orphans. Or widows. Or both. No single word on a line, unless it was more than five letters (my rule, not official, and I cheated with counting the period sometimes). No single word at the end of a chapter, and most definitely not alone on a page. I don't leave a single (part of a) sentence on a page of its own either. That does kinda give away that you don't know what you're doing. Other than that, I left the rivers and hills and the snakes and whatnot for what they were. A pro probably knows exactly how to deal with all that stuff, but a reader cares more about a good story in a reasonably acceptable format. SCRIVENER: I have no experience with it. Only just now finding out it can supposedly do typesetting. Hope I answered... something.
Ah, the wilderness of words! These must be the distracting white spaces that arc through blocks of text? So that all you can see is a big curve or a diagonal line as negative space. I actually think they're kind of fun. It would be cool to write a book that tells a perfect story and you can see portraits of Abraham Lincoln and Ernest Borgnine in white spaces between the words. Ok, maybe not them in particular. And I haven't seen SapereAude on the board this year. Hopefully we'll hear from him soon though.
Yeah, I've been looking out for them ever since some people here advised me to get the book about Copula Spiders. I remember the thread. Eventually we ended up on the mating rituals of actual spiders. Anyway. Still can't really see rivers. Or Ernest Borgnine. Only time I see him is when I watch Airwolf reruns.
You can't? Really? Here, this is a very exaggerated example: Having seen that, maybe you can see the more subtle ones here: I don't run into them a lot, but when I do they really stand out.
Dude, I had to feckin' look twice at that first example... And what jumped out at me with the other example was the second paragraph. Squashed like a medieval peasant in a trebuchet battle. That's the kind of mess I try to prevent and if that causes a river (which I saw, yay!) I'm fine with it.
It's not really that good of an illusion. It's one of the first ones I remember seeing on the internet, but now it seems pretty crude compared to others. I can see both at the same time if I concentrate.
You must watch Emperor of the North. He plays the ultimate badass, called The Shack: Emperor of the North theatrical trailer @ Youtube His rageface puts Arnold to shame. That is all.
Took me far longer than it should have, but yeah. I've got this issue with less tangible things too. Like, to me (any random title that comes to mind like) Jaws isn't some elaborate analogy for coping with a bad divorce. I see a shark with an attitude eating people, so that's what it's about. Sometimes I can see what an author or a director is secretly telling me, but only because I know certain things are supposed to mean certain other things. My ex studied art. Did you know a lute often suggests sex? Unless it doesn't, in which case I win. Either way, it's a great way to enjoy terrible movies. I loved Sharknado because it was about sharks in a tornado. They ate people. Somebody was probably going through a divorce. I love it when nice guys go bad(ass). I'll put it on my list. There's a lot to unpack in that there trailer, son. Somehow makes me think of Vanishing Point. Guy needs to get from A to B with a big ol' engine, but the bad man doesn't want him to. My favorite part is where the seriously serious narrator goes "Hang on for action-adventure that roars like thunder." and the train goes "chug... chug... chug..."
That's mostly what it's about. Yeah, there's a divorce or whatever. Wait, no, that was Close Encounters and ET. Chief Brody remains married throughout. What's really hidden is the story about Spielberg and his generation of directors (the New Hollywood) being mocked by the older generation of cowboy directors like Howard Hawks and John Ford, who thought these young college-boy upstarts were a bunch of sissified hippies who didn't know anything about making movies. Serious, it's really in there. I never knew it until somebody clued me in, then I watched it a few more times and picked up on it (it's one of my favorite movies, so no loss there). Captain Quint represents the old-school directors—tough as nails, pitting themselves mano a mano against the sharks, while Dreyfuss (who represents Spielberg with his beard, denim jacket and glasses) brings in all his gadgets and devices (representing special effects equipment I believe) that Quint makes fun of, but that end up saving the day. Spoiler: spoiler Then the shark eats Quint. There's more, especially in Close Encounters. But this stuff isn't meant to be seen or understood by viewers, it was purposely buried as deep subtext, mainly I think just for Speilberg to test his capabilities as a filmmaker and have some fun. I won't clutter your thread (what was it about again?) with this though. Maybe I'll write it up on my blog. It's actually some wild stuff.
Damn. I know the movie by heart at this point as well, and now I see it too, yeah. See, but if you hadn't pointed it out, it would have just been a movie about a shark. Not my thread, else I wouldn't mind the clutter. But it was about how typesetting is an analogy for sharks in cowboyhats eating tornados, I think. Anyway, I'd say back to the matter at hand, but that would mean I had more to offer on the subject.
Oh I never would have either. One does not simply 'see' this stuff (unless it just hits you right one day). To analyze a movie you start with one you're very familiar with, that you like enough to watch over and over. You already know the story, so that frees you to start to look deeper. Now you start to pay attention to things besides the story. Freeze-frame every time it cuts to a new scene and write down what you see in the frame. This is if you're really serious of course, I don't usually go to this extent, but with some movies it really pays off. At least have writing material handy and any time you notice something strange stop the movie and write it down. After a while some of these will link up with each other, or you'll notice connections with other movies the director has made. But I never would have thought to even look deeper into either Jaws or Close Encouunters except that I used to hang out on a little message board for movie analysts and a few people said that Speilberg's early films are movies about making movies, and that he encoded some stuff in there about the excitement he felt on becoming a filmmaker and going to Hollywood. They didn't say more than that, but that was enough. Another thing you want to do is read material about the production of the movie, watch featurettes about the BTS, interviews etc. These all can have clues to what to pay attention to. So it isn't just a matter of me being more pereceptive or anything, I really looked deep and hard to see this stuff.
When I make time for a movie, I just wanna see big things go boom. Do yourself a favor, if you haven't already, and do that for the whole Mad Max series. It's about as good as the movies.
