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Give him his own arc. (I am amused that the gender here is the reverse of what's been a problem for a long time, but the advice applies to any character of any gender.) In the 2017 Wonder Woman f...
There are multiple examples of novels that are little over 40,000 words. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is 46,118 words. Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - 46,333 words. Erich Ma...
A Glossary Is not a Substitute for Clear Writing If you were writing a nonfiction book where precise vocabulary was required, I'd say, yes, include a glossary! If you were writing a very detailed...
If you've ever studied a foreign language, you'd know how annoying it is to go check words in a dictionary; it breaks the flow of your reading, breaks the immersion, and sends you off to perform a ...
How can I convey her inner conflict and inability to trust herself in an effective way? You have to first make the reader be willing to trust her, then voice her inner questions, and only finally ...
While I haven't done exactly what you're doing, I've often needed to format two side-by-side sections that are in precise vertical positions. Formatting for two columns does not work well. It's o...
I'm not familiar with every book you list, and of course I haven't read your manuscript. A lot of the themes of novels, and a lot of characters as well, are fairly universal. Or at least common. ...
Use the form of the comic to tell your story. This is a comic. A good artist will be able to show the transition back into sleep without a single word. Direct your artist (if it's not you) to dr...
Talk to the store Every bookstore will have an employee who sets up signings, meet and greets, readings, etc. Tell them you're the author of a book they sell and you're interested in doing that. ...
Unless your game is for young children who might find reading harder, you want game instructions to appear in text rather than voice-over. The reason for this is that players often change key-bindi...
Generally, do not start with a pronoun. Start with a MC name. Other than that, sure, open with "Jack ran, [Why Jack is running, something about the scene]." On the first page readers are forgiving...
The MacGuffin is bound with the plot - it can't be any random thing not related in any way to the plot around it. Consider some examples: The Hobbit: Thorin wants to find the Arkenstone, a partic...
Horses are very much like ramped up dogs; the long face, the legs. They have hooves instead of paws. You have to add on manes and hairy tails. But if somebody has seen large dogs, like a Labrador R...
I thought the point of the MacGuffin is to force the characters into a journey, so they can be transformed by the journey, whether they get the MacGuffin or not. A clear example of this is Doroth...
'British' is a rather broad definition. What place in Britain? What time period? What class? Cockney sounds very different from Received Pronunciation, someone from Yorkshire would sound very diffe...
Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series addresses this issue in an interesting way. The main character, male, single, and in his late twenties in the start of the series, very much notices the looks of ...
One alternative is to let him indulge in sex without love or romance. Especially in modern times, there are at least some women that want the same; there are apps for that. for example the vast ma...
I'll take a different tack on this. Read My Answer here that goes into the Three Act Structure in some detail. Basically, you increase erotic tension the same way you increase any story tension: ...
We don't have enough information to determine if they are "too bland". I will answer generally. I think you are paying too much attention to physical identity and color, neither of which are gener...
Do it exactly the same way the company does it. If you know what job to apply for, it's because you saw it in an ad, on their website, or in another listing. The hyphen and the slash are used d...
In academic writing, this is appropriate. You don't want to do an entire paper like this but, yeah, those individual references are important. If this was a news article you could say: Goodma...
It's extremely important for media to depict people out of the gender/sexuality mainstream as normal. So your best bet is to do exactly that: have a diversity of characters and show it all as perf...
The answer is research, research, and more research. I'm not an expert on horseback riding, or sword-fighting, or ruling a country. The only way I can write convincingly about those subjects is by ...
The game Dragon Age - Inquisition did this recently, quite successfully, with a side character, Krem. Krem is the second-in-command of a mercenary group one of your companions leads, so an NPC you ...
Beta readers can be helpful in a variety of ways. They will of course help you with the content of your work. But if you have other elements in place, include them too. For example, try to set a...
