Posts tagged conventions
I want people to understand what I write, but I do not want to use conventions such as plot or dialogue to tell a story. Without a plot I have been criticized of not having written a story, but s...
A story of mine has the following sentence: Alyssa was possessed by a sudden, fierce urge to snatch the teacup out of her sister's hand and dump the contents into her perfectly arranged hai...
I've been sending my fourth-ish novel through the my writing group. It is about a trio of teenagers running away from some mercenaries. One of them (Maris) is a girl who has only had a year of form...
I'm currently writing a story about a girl who was found by a couple in a magical isolated town, where everyone is named by the leader. I want her to not have a name because of two reasons: She d...
It seems to me that formal writing has many practices that at best seem arbitrary and at worst seem harmful. Here are some examples: It discourages using contractions, even though they make writi...
I'm writing a personal statement for graduate admissions, and I've a query regarding the use of capitalization in the midst of sentences. For example, is it correct/expected to capitalize the names...
I need to write a short folk lullaby as part of my story, but am having trouble getting the feel of it in my lyrics. What are the general conventions of writing a lullaby? Any general principles s...
I have the habit of using paired adjectives in my writing: The noise from the engine lulled her with its slow and monotonous rythim ... ... the lights on the ceiling filled the room in a s...
I am wondering if how we name a version of a spacecraft differs from how we name a version of a software. For software, I usually see things like "2.0.32.32" or something like that and sometimes th...
I've long been interested in writing a fantasy novel. Over the countless iterations I've gone through, one thing has remained clear: a quest for originality. I know some people like the fantasy c...
One of the agents I intend to query to requests the first fifty pages be attached to the query email. When I formatted the first four chapters and prologue into submission format, it reached 52 pag...
One of the most common pieces of writing advice I hear is that you should write frequently and often. Writing regular entries in a diary should fit this criteria, but I'm hesistant to call my years...
The response to this question makes it clear to me that I haven't quite asked the question I had intended, the answers are useful but not quite what I'm looking for. So different but related ques...
I am writing a side story called, The Afterglow of Jovian, which mainly takes place sometime during the final stages of the main story. Here's a brief gist of the main story to give some context, ...
Looking at the function of the beginning of a novel, it is clear that it should hook the reader and draw him or her into the story. Different techniques for achieving the hook have been described, ...
I am not certain of convention. Is one of the two of these correct? Or are they equivalent? Jane said, "Let's chase the ball." Jack looked at her in disbelief. "We always chase the bal...
Hollywood movies are a good example of this, but also many books feature the rule. When the plot revolves around life and death situations, the first to die are the characters with least developme...
I am writing a fantasy/steampunk/horror novel, and I'm wondering if mixing different cultures is frowned upon. Specifically, my novel's setting is a mix of Italy, Ancient Rome, and Transalvania/Rom...
Let's say you decide to claim that time is absolute and not relative as Einstein said. Can you still use a title like "Einstein's time", "Relativity of time", "The geometry of time", "Time dilatati...
I am asking this from the point of a reader not a writer and just wondering why, so sorry if this is a bad place. I read loads of books to my kids and the construct always seems to go: "What a...
How do you write out the second build up without killing the essence of the masterpiece? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Medias Res?
I am now editing for adverbs, as silly as that may sound to some people. :-) I have learned, 'by ear', that the advice to 'avoid adverbs' is actually not bad advice. But I am also learning that cer...
I'm writing a conversation between some no-good thievin' teens, and one of them has stolen a wallet, which has turned out to be that of an FBI member. They converse, written in indirect speech, wh...
I've got a book that I think is interesting and action packed - a traumatic scene begins right in the prologue, but chapter one is a bit slow while I introduce characters, the setting, and weave hi...
