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I live in India. And the stories I write don't want to. The thing is, as you all might already know, my country has an extremely- excessively, perhaps- rich cultural and historical heritage. It's...
Take your eyes off the plot. Focus on originality in your characters and setting. I'm not saying this is easier, it isn't always easy to create new characters and new character dynamics, but this ...
Summary: I'm looking for a way for reviewers to comment collaboratively as close to "inline" as possible on a large HTML project. The problem in detail I work on a team that documents a large pro...
Art is obsession, and how well (or badly) it's dealt with seems to fascinate artists. Ernest Hemingway was the focus of Dan Simmons's The Crook Factory, a faux-historical novel set mostly in Cuba...
In my story, there are two characters: a schoolgirl and a strange person with a creepy mask who gives her a tour in an art museum at night. Well, actually there is a third character; the boyfriend ...
Remember there is always a journey in a story. Many writers will call this the "plot", but the two don't co-incide compeletely. You've put your two characters on a journey with each other through...
I don't think it does. Sure, in music and sports, public speaking and race car driving, practice makes perfect. But in many things, such as cooking and painting and writing, passion and talent shin...
Our ~1500-page documentation set contains numerous screen shots and related graphics (schematics, flow diagrams, etc). Sometimes the user interface changes and we have to update all the affected g...
John Smithers' advice is good, but I'd add a few details (and leave it for longer than three weeks!) Before you put the MS away, make a first pass at your query letter, as well. This is good beca...
Plagiarism is like patent law: You cannot patent something that is not original; you cannot patent "cake" or "bread". Only original mechanisms can be patented: The common screw has been around for ...
I am learning to write better, and have read books such as The Lively art of writing and Element of Style. I realize what I am missing is the grammar books that teaches me the different ways to con...
I wrote a short story here http://zecountess.deviantart.com/art/Mirrors-440990952 whose ending explains everything that is narrated before. The feedback I got from my readers is varied, and none o...
At the heart of all art is vision. The artist is an artist because the see something and find a way to express what they have seen so that others can share in the experience. No work of art can suc...
I am an engineering student in a non-English speaking country and I'm writing my master's thesis in English, as well as all related articles. I can't use the country's language nor my first languag...
I would suspect that you may be having a specific problem with storytelling (which is not quite the same thing as writing.) I myself do a lot of worldbuilding for fictional purposes, and your desc...
It depends on the book design. Generally speaking, the width of a text column is kept within certain bounds in order to make the text scannable. A column of text will become much more difficult to ...
Servus, I once again started wondering what might be the problem that keeps me from finishing most of my novels. To compare, there are two novels about 400 pages; one of these was really liked by...
If you don't have an idea for a story, you can retell an existing one. There are a few ways to do this. One is to take a song that tells a story (a lot of folk songs and ballads are small stories) ...
There are no great plots. There are great stories and there are lousy stories. Great stories and lousy stories can have exactly the same plot. The soundness of a story lies in the rising tension of...
There is a lamentable process by which averages become aphorisms. That is, we see a common pattern and turn it into an absolute rule. Adverbs are often used badly, so don't use adverbs at all. Writ...
If you don't think Pride and Prejudice has cult status, you are looking in the wrong place. It's cultists are called Janeites. And I think you may be overestimating the staying power of Star Wars ...
There is a fundamental difference between the desire to imitate and the desire to create. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the desire to imitate. Indeed, it is the foundation of our social or...
The difference between funny and offensive is execution. People are offended by comedy when the comedy is so bad that you can not tell if it's comedy or just being plain mean. The best example I ...
A play has certain practical requirements that are met by dividing it into acts: It provides an opportunity to change the set or to redress the existing set. It allows you to suggest a change of ...
First and foremost, I would suggest that you resist the urge to describe everything that happens in a scene. In a movie, all the actions of a scene like that are acted out and are visible on screen...
