L.G. Estrella's Blog, page 54

Some Advice To Students

Having lectured at a major university in Australia, I thought I’d offer a few words of advice to any students out there:

Do not wait until the end of semester to ask questions.I’ve lost count of how often students have waited until the end of semester to ask me about things that they don’t understand. Not only does this not give them a lot of time to learn what they need to but it also makes the rest of the material much harder to understand since not understanding one thing can often make i...

Is This Test Good? How To Evaluate Psychological Tests

Psychological tests have become increasingly popular and influential. There are tests of intelligence and personality, along with tests designed to diagnose various mental disorders. Given the way that these tests are used (e.g., college admission and clinical treatment), it is critical that we understand how to evaluate the quality of a test.

But what makes a test good or bad?

The simplest way to answer this question is to examine two questions:

Does the test measure something accurately an...

How To Write Action Scenes

Action scenes are not for the faint of heart. A good action scene can have readers on the edge of their seats, but a bad action scene can leave a reader more interested in puppies and kittens than in bullets and explosions. To make your job as a writer easier, allow me to offer a few helpful hints.

Bigger is always better.Bigger explosions are always better. Bigger guns are always better. Bigger swords are always better. If you’re not sure what to do, always go bigger, not smaller. Why have...

Students Everywhere

One of the more amusing things about having been a university lecturer is that I have met quite a few of my former students outside of university.

Here are a few examples:

I have had a car pull over next to me while I was walking home, so that one of my former students could say hello to me before they told me what they’d gotten up to since they took my class. I have met former students at no less than four different stores of a certain popular retailer while buying things. In every single c...

Growing With An Author

One of the most interesting and rewarding experiences that a reader can have is growing with an author. By this I mean the experience that a reader has when they read something that an author has written and then continue to follow that author as their career continues. Perhaps the most recent example of this on a large scale are the readers who grew up with J. K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series.

The experience of growing with an author is fascinating because of the interplay between the...

Gods and Fiction

Mythology has long been a source of inspiration for my writing. One of the reasons for this is that in many myths, the gods are very much like people. True, the gods are often depicted as incredibly powerful, but they are also given very human flaws.

Myths embody something about the people who created them. The way that people saw the world and believed the world to work inspired the mythology they created to account for the world around them. In that sense, the gods that people had were ofte...

Unlearning American English and Accent Confusion

When I first moved to Australia, I came fully equipped with English. Alas, it was the wrong kind of English. Nowhere was this more obvious than in all the spelling questions I got wrong in elementary school because, apparently, spelling things the same way in English across the entire world would be too easy.

I can distinctly remember the aggravation I felt whenever I was tripped over by yet another word that was spelled differently in Australia, such as humour, colour, honour, metre, centre,...

The Unconventional Heroes Series Part 3: Another Update

It’s been just over a month since my last update about the third part ofThe Unconventional Heroes Series, which features Timmy the necromancer and his precocious apprentice, Katie,so I thought I’d let you know what’s happened since then.

A month ago, I finished the first draft (the skeleton draft). That draftweighed in at ~73,000 words. However, that draft was really quite bare bones. It contained all of the essentialelements of the plot, characters, ideas,and settings, but not much else. It...

About The Oxford Comma

The use of the Oxford comma is something that continues to be debated. Technically, it is not necessary although many advocate its usage for reasons of clarity.

Consider the following two sentences, the first without the Oxford comma and the second with it:

I talked about my parents, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. I talked about my parents, Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton.

In the first sentence, the lack of an Oxford comma (the comma preceding‘and’) means the sentence is potentially am...

Family Battle

I was in the car today talking with my mother when I discovered something shocking.

My mother does not support the use of the Oxford comma.

I no longer know what to believe in.