Matthew J. O'Dwyer

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Sample Image Sizes and Alignments

March 10th, 2016

First off, here’s a fast and dirty video I recorded to show how to upload images and to explain some of the options. I apologize for all the “uhms.” I was pretty tired and fighting a cold! Also, at one point I say to not worry about the “image title attribute,” but that is actually pretty handy.

The following images will demonstrate the various size differences and alignments and will be grouped by alignment. The alignments will go from LEFT (text wraps to the right of the image), NONE (text does not wrap around the image), CENTER (the image floats in the center of the column without any text wrapping–not particularly attractive in most cases), and RIGHT (text wraps to the left of the image).

The sizes will go from FULL (the full-sized image is served, but it will shrink down to fit the column–this is not particularly useful since it won’t look different from the LARGE version–if you want people to have access to the full-sized image, you can link to the file, and I would recommend including a note in the “title” option or maybe even in a caption about clicking for the full-sized version), LARGE (a maximum of 640px wide–this is probably the best option if you want an image to fill the column. It will serve a smaller image than the full-sized version, saving bandwidth and making the page load faster, and you can still link to the full-sized version as described above), MEDIUM (a maximum of 320px wide), and THUMBNAIL (160px x 160px–WordPress does the cropping if the image is not already square).

Align left. Full size (shrinks to the maximum width of the column: 640px).

Again, because this is a large image, the coding is squeezing it down to fill the space–which is why the FULL SIZE and LARGE versions look the same on the live page, though you can see a difference in the editor since that window can grow larger than the content area on the live site (which leads me to a tip–resize your browser window while editing a post to make the editing window as close to the size of the content column on the live site as possible so that you can see a closer approximation of what the final product will look like).

Align left. Large (shrinks to the maximum width of 640px wide). I have set it to link to the file, and clicking on it will open up a new window, in which the image will show at its full size. This is useful for high-resolution images that you want people to have access to (such as book covers). I’ve also set up the “title” attribute to direct people to click for the full-sized version. Go ahead and mouse over it to see the message.

From here on out, the body text will be Lorem Ipsum filler text, so all you need to pay attention to are the image captions. When you get down to the images without captions, you’ll see that I added short paragraphs of descriptive text in bold font.

Align left. Medium (shrinks to 320px wide).

Proin non consequat mi. Cras tincidunt quam metus, eu venenatis magna porttitor consectetur. Curabitur ultrices ipsum ut nibh volutpat suscipit. Donec tincidunt neque eu purus pharetra facilisis. Morbi volutpat sagittis accumsan. Proin sit amet maximus ex, a tempor lectus. Nam a felis libero. Vestibulum et consequat justo. Nulla ut sapien non erat placerat consequat ac quis velit. In nec enim mi. Curabitur vel tellus at sapien tristique auctor. Nunc auctor dignissim tincidunt. Curabitur id fringilla nibh. Suspendisse ornare dolor non tincidunt viverra.

Vivamus sodales dui est, ut suscipit eros pretium et. Etiam magna eros, dictum quis urna vel, rutrum malesuada quam. Aliquam condimentum erat ac mauris rhoncus, nec lacinia neque iaculis. Integer sed felis id nulla scelerisque pharetra ullamcorper id felis. Morbi faucibus erat sit amet sapien facilisis, at laoreet leo porta. Phasellus eleifend mi et tellus posuere luctus eu et nibh. Sed et euismod nibh. Sed venenatis magna ac diam dictum aliquet. Maecenas leo mi, posuere porta ante id, sollicitudin condimentum lacus. Fusce tristique felis vel ex consectetur eleifend. Nam suscipit arcu suscipit nibh egestas bibendum. Sed magna purus, aliquet et tempus vel, porta at enim. Fusce pellentesque lacus sit amet tristique sagittis. Aenean sollicitudin dapibus odio in accumsan.

Align left. Thumbnail (crops images that are not already square and shrinks them to 160px x 160px). It might be useful to link to the full image so visitors can see the whole thing.

Align none. Full. (Again, not very useful, and it wastes bandwidth.) Note as well that this looks the same as the left-aligned versions of the LARGE and FULL SIZE versions. Since they fill the whole column, the alignment does not really matter. I’m not going to show any more LARGE or FULL SIZE images since they will look the same.

Align none. Medium.

Align none. Thumbnail.

Align center. Medium.

Align center. Thumbnail.

Align right. Medium.

Align right. Thumbnail. From here on out will be versions without captions.

This is a large image without a caption aligned left. The full-sized version would look the same. This text is simply normal paragraph text with bold applied.

Alt text! This is a medium image aligned left.

This is a thumbnail aligned left.

Alt text!

A medium image with no alignment.

A thumbnail with no alignment.

Alt text! A medium image aligned right.

A thumbnail aligned right.

Tags: artwork, books, fantasy

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Writing Wednesday: Game of Thrones Week: The Difference Between Necessary and Unnecessary scenes.

March 27th, 2013

Hey, everyone! It’s Writing Wednesday again here on the blog and it’s also Game of Thrones week. With the premier of the HBO show taking place later this week, these posts will mostly focus on the television series. Be on the lookout for a week dedicated to the book later this year.

For Writing Wednesday, I thought I would actually talk a little bit about the differences between the novels and the show. This isn’t going to be a straight comparison. Instead, I’m going to look at one challenging aspect of the first novel incorporated into the show, as well as a scene in season two that never took place in the books.

First, I want to talk about a scene with Petyr Baelish. I believe this scene took place in episode eight of the first season. Petyr is instructing two prostitutes on how to have sex with one another for five or ten minutes while giving a monologue. At first glance, it’s a fairly graphic scene that heightens the sexual reputation of the show. However, the scene is actually pretty genius.

While you might not want to sit down and watch this scene with the whole family, it does serve an important purpose. In the first novel, Martin gives us the background of Petyr Baelish and his history with Lady Stark. However, this information isn’t given to us through dialogue. Well, in a television show or movie, information like that needs to be given through dialogue or a voice over. In most cases, dialogue is the better option. This scene gives the audience a private moment with Petyr and allows him to give the information to someone that truly wouldn’t know the information, the new prostitutes. While it is a graphic scene, I do have to applaud the writers for working Petyr’s backstory into the first season.

The second scene I want to talk about is something I felt was unnecessary in the show. In season two, Tyrion sends two prostitutes… wait… I’m seeing a theme here… anyway, he sends two prostitutes to King Joffrey’s room for his birthday. Joffrey then commands the women to beat one another mercilessly with a club or some kind of strange Baratheon staff.

This is another scene you probably won’t sit the family down for. However, unlike the first one, this doesn’t happen in the books and there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it. In fact, given the way Martin writes, the reader never sees a private moment with Joffrey. I’ve heard arguments for and against this scene. The argument for the scene has a couple of valid points. This should be a moment of forbidden pleasure for Joffrey, but he’s turned it into a moment of pain for these two women. He’s also in private, which means that he’s not putting on a show for anyone. It’s meant to show that he’s evil in, quite possibly, every way. I tend to favor the argument against it. At this point, we’ve seen Joffrey threaten and torture (emotionally or physically) just about anyone who crosses his path. The audience already hates the character, there’s really no need to put this scene in as well. This is a moment where I feel the writers reached too far. It didn’t come across as clever, it came across as fairly unnecessary. Perhaps the scenes greatest downfall is just how unnecessary it seems upon closer examination, unlike the scene with Petyr Baelish.

Now it’s your turn! What did you think of these two scenes? What other moments in the show deviate from the book or display information in a creative way?

Tags: A Clash of Kings, A Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, books, fantasy, Fiction, Film, Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin, HBO, Joffrey, Joffrey Baratheon, Novel, Petyr Baelish, Sex, Story, Wednesday, Writing

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Writing Wednesday: Using RPG Books

March 13th, 2013

Hey! It’s Writing Wednesday again and today I’m going to talk about RPG books. Books for Roleplaying Games like D&D, which I’ve talked about on the blog before. These books can be amazing tools for writer, especially fantasy writers. While you might be skeptical at first, trust me, these books can be a great source of information and inspiration.

A couple of weeks ago I took part in a Google Hangout with R² Writes. I’ve mentioned her on the blog before. If you haven’t checked out her blog, stop by and take a look at it, she’s really great. Anyway, in the background, I noticed what looked like a Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual on her bookshelf. When I brought it up, she revealed that she owned a few of these books for the purpose of looking through monsters for her own writing. They can be an amazing starting point for inspiration in a person’s writing. I’ve always advocated the use of these books to other writers and when I saw it on her bookshelf, I thought it might be worth doing a blog post on the subject.

The Monster Manual books are great, from any edition, and have some fantastic artwork inside of them. They can also be used for an interesting look at lore, though your mileage will vary with different books and different description. While those books are great, they’re not so different from finding collections of bestiaries and flipping through those. So, while those are useful RPG books, there are some with even more uses.

About twenty years ago a company named White Wolf acquired the rights to the world of Ravenloft created for Dungeons and Dragons. White Wolf proceeded to make quite a few products about Ravenloft, my favorites being the gazetteers. They numbered five in total and each book covered only a couple of regions that make up Ravenloft. For each region they would discuss how much education the average person had, and how much a wealthy person had. They addressed the number of wealthy to the number of poor, the fashion, the languages, and the cultural traditions of the region.

The information you acquired about a town, a region, would most likely be more than you could ever make use of in your Dungeons and Dragons campaign. However, it was there, the information was present. The DM could use or disregard any of it. For writers, this is what we need to achieve with our own novels and our own world building. These book can be wonderful sources because we can look at great world building and see what it involves. We can look at different regions and question ourselves about the different regions in our story. Then, just like with a Dungeons and Dragon campaign, some of the information will be brought into the story, some won’t, but it will all be there if the storyteller needs it. They can be wonderful for inspiration but they can also be a guide for you to look to when you feel your own world is underdeveloped. They can be a blueprint of the things you should know about your own story.

Now it’s your turn! What helps you with inspiration for world building and monsters? What sources do you look at when you feel your own world is underdeveloped?

Tags: Bestiary, books, D&D, DnD, fantasy, Fiction, Genre Fiction, Monster Manual, Novel, Ravenloft, Roleplaying Game, RPG, RPG Book, Science Fiction, Short Story, Story, Wednesday, Writers, Writing

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Story Sunday: The Prestige

March 10th, 2013

Hi, everyone! It’s Story Sunday again and this week I’m talking about The Prestige. This movie is an adaptation of a novel with the same name by Christopher Priest. As with all adaptations, the question arises as to which version was better, but this is one of the few cases where I can’t decide. So, for this Story Sunday, I’m just going to take a little time and look at both versions of the story.

The novel has quite a few things going for it. The two main characters, Borden (Christian Bale) and Anjier (Hugh Jackman), are seen reading journals in the movie. Well, in the novel, the reader is actually reading the journals and that’s how the story is told. Anjier’s account, if I remember correctly, is dated and numbered. Borden’s journal is quite different. Rather than being a daily account of his life, it seems to be written in the future and looks back on his life. The style is amazing and the format is truly a different way of storytelling.

In both cases, you have the theme of obsession. Both magicians throw their lives away in a feud but have different ideas about why the feud is taking place. The audience sees that the obsession can manifest itself in different ways. For Anjier, the implications are personal. For Borden, it’s the people around him who suffer. His wife suffers, his daughter, his brother, everyone else suffers for the sake of the performance. Anjier sells himself, his soul, his humanity, to become better than Borden.

Now, there’s a spoiler ahead for those of you who haven’t seen the movie or read the book. In the movie, Anjier’s machine creates copies of himself. However, they’re true copies, they’re like clones. This leads to the conclusion that he killed himself, or his clone, in each show. The novel is different. The novel produces what seems to be a corpse. The new Anjier appears on a balcony and the old body has to be disposed of. The real difference comes at the end. Borden tampers with the machine during a show and the machine turns off halfway through the teleportation. This leaves a physically sick Anjier, and a wraith Anjier. The wraith can actually never die. He’s an incarnation of obsession that will never leave the family of the world. Both versions have amazing moral and personal implications. I really can’t say which one I prefer, so I’m glad to have experienced both versions.

Now it’s your turn! Which version of the story do you prefer? What do you think of these two men who sacrifice everything for obsession?

Tags: books, Christian Bale, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Priest, fantasy, Fiction, Film, Genre Fiction, Hugh Jackman, Movie, Novel, Science Fiction, Story, Sunday, The Prestige, Writers, Writing

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Writing Wednesday: Giving Feedback

March 6th, 2013

Hi, everyone! It’s Writing Wednesday here on the blog again! Today I’m talking about critiques, the importance of giving thoughtful feedback, and how to handle the work of others. As always, these are just my thoughts. I know that this subject can turn into a heated debate. I’m not saying my way is the only way, or the best way, it’s just the one that works for me.

Over the years, people have told me that my feedback is often thoughtful and insightful. In truth, I don’t really know that my feedback truly deserves the praise it gets. I tend to say what I think and everything I say is in the interest of making the piece better. To me, it’s always been a simple goal. Recently, someone (let’s call them Vinny Von Varlow) asked me to give them advice about looking at the work of others. The people around Vinny Von Varlow didn’t seem to value, or react well to, the feedback given to them. So Vinny came to me with the hope of sharpening his skills.

This request made me think about what qualifies as good feedback. I needed to think about what I was doing, consciously or unconsciously, that made people respond well to my advice. I also thought about advice I had received in the past, what advice I liked and didn’t like. What made me listen and what made me dismissive.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the person came to you for advice on their story. One of the most common errors I see in workshops comes from a disconnect between the advice giver and the person receiving advice, the writer. The advice giver should always try to remember that they’re helping the writer mold a story. Think of it like clay. The writer has handed you their clay and said, “I’m trying to make a komodo dragon.” The person giving feedback should then proceed to give advice on how to make the clay look more like a komodo dragon. It’s rarely appreciated when the feedback is, “komodo dragons blow, make a duck.”

To give thoughtful feedback, you need to try and see what the writer is going for and help them accomplish it. Pinch the clay here, reshape it there, and say, “if we added some more clay to this spot, it might look better.” Sometimes it’s hard to do this, I know. We start reading someone’s piece and think… there’s so much potential with this idea. Get rid of these characters, add a few over here, and really, the plot should revolve around this person rather than that person. Do all of that and you know what you have? A completely different story. A different story created by someone other than the writer.

There are exceptions to this rule. One time a friend came to me looking to brain storm new ideas and directions for a character. He wanted to make major sweeping changes to the plot arcs and characters. We had a lot of fun with it. However, when someone doesn’t ask you to do that and you take it upon yourself to demand major changes to plot, lore, and characters, it probably won’t be appreciated. In truth, it’s a very simple idea. When you give advice, make sure you’re helping the writer tell the story they want to tell. If you move away from that and begin telling the writer to write the story you want to tell, of the one you want to see them tell, you’ve missed the mark.

Also, in my experience, overwhelmingly negative feedback doesn’t really help anyone. One of my professors would make a checklist for himself. Essentially, it was a checklist of the most important writing elements that need to be present in every story. So I’m talking about things like a coherent structure, developed characters, and so on. When he came to three major issues in a story, he would stop there and focus on those three issues. He would educate the person on how to improve in those areas. He would then mention that there are some other problems, but note that fixing these three large problems needed to come before anything else. This created two feelings, a sense of priority because these things need to be fixed first, and a sense of hope because the story hasn’t been torn apart at every level.

I’ve heard a few arguments about feedback and I don’t mind saying where I stand. Some people believe that writing workshops should be vicious camps where everyone gets torn to shreds and people are forced to tears. Others have told me that they believe students and writers can benefit just as much from only getting positive feedback. I think they’re both extreme. So here’s what I believe. When someone does something write (and they usually do something right), praise it. Tell them it works, tell them it’s good, tell them it’s the strongest part of their writing. When something needs to be improved, point it out. However, don’t just point at it, explain how it can be done better.

This is crucial, don’t just announce that what they’ve done is wrong, tell them how they can do it better. If I point at a character and say, “that character is flat,” why should the writer listen to me? On the other hand, if I say, “this character seems flat. I would like to see more tension and conflict from the relationship she has with her husband. Her kids are driving her crazy but her husband doesn’t help, does this make her think back on the dynamics of her parents and the house she grew up in?” That’s decent, or at least it’s a start. A writer can grab onto that and think about what will make their character better instead of focusing on the negative aspect of the comment.

Vinny Von Varlow had made some of the larger missteps that I mentioned. I’m happy to say that since making some adjustment to his methods, his partners react better to his feedback. This is great for everyone. He feels useful, the working relationship is mended, and his partners will probably spend more time giving him thoughtful feedback in the future. Like I said, this is what works for me. I’ve seen it work for a few other people as well, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only, or best, way.

Now it’s your turn! What does thoughtful feedback mean to you? When you receive feedback, what makes your listen and what makes you dismissive?

Tags: books, Critique, Draft, fantasy, Feedback, Fiction, Genre Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novel, Review, Science Fiction, Short Story, Story, Wednesday, Workshop, Writers, Writing, Writing Workshop

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