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To be honest, I think if you were to do this, you would not have one story, but two. One, the story of the world up until the villain wins, and Two, the story after the world changing event. So, ba...
Text Compression Compression of text is a lot like refactoring code. A lot of people here code, so maybe they'll appreciate this concept Abstraction A complex idea can often be represented by a ...
Tell it in narration. You have plenty of opportunity to show this character's social pathology in her adult life. And plenty of material to do it with. This establishes her personality and the l...
The "stupid action" of your character needs to line up with the traits that character usually shows. It cannot be a random action taken out of the blue - that would, as @Amadeus points out, break t...
The best advice I ever heard on how to write characters falling in love, is to make each the characters two people who fit each other's deepest needs. So, I'm assuming that you already know who yo...
The examples you bring are of food taste described badly, as @MarkBaker explains in great detail. Those descriptions fail to evoke what they're supposed to evoke, and instead take your mind to all ...
Is this bad writing? Yes. A great description should be precise and evocative. Food neither runs wild not explodes (both would have unpleasant consequences for the eater). They are just the wrong w...
Let the Reader Diagnose (But that means you need to give them symptoms) You don't need to tell the reader "Eris has PTSD." You do need to give them enough info to get there themselves. Harry doe...
It really depends on how you write it, how important all the components are, and if you can construct a consistent narrative journeying through the story. Think back to all the big budget movies y...
The combination "?!" has been in common usage enough that the interrobang (‽) was suggested as a punctuation mark to replace the need to use two symbols. Note that the interrobang (and thus the in...
As has been pointed out, there are no "rules" stopping you from having a sequel starting within the time frame of another book in the series. "The Horse and His Boy" takes place wholly within the l...
I have read books where authors deliberately misspelled words to try to describe the character's speaking. However, I personally think that this makes it difficult to read and awkward. Instead of ...
There is nothing fundamentally good about love. It is a completely selfish emotion, a form of desire. If the character you are writing is evil, then he would act on this desire in evil ways. He may...
The more your documentation is aimed at people reading it like a book the less you should repeat yourself. The more your documentation is a look at this one page read it put it away the more you sh...
The blogger These Heterogenous Tasks has been writing his analysis on specific CYOA books, and general observations about their history, trends, and common structure. https://heterogenoustasks.word...
One of the questions to be asked first is why is the character there? Someone just arriving at a new place for a business chat with the occupant is not going to observe the place the same way an in...
Focus on the character's reactions in that moment, given his intention and state of mind as he enters that environment. Different characters would likely attend to different details, and would rea...
Note: This answer uses my own examples, because I couldn't think of any examples in published work off the top of my head. Due to an ongoing bug, I couldn't post a comment asking if this format wou...
What is wrong with it is that it is not idiomatic, as you note. Writing idiomatically is the important thing here. It really does not matter whether you can explain or justify an idiomatic expres...
The new viewpoint must feel organic, that's all. A year ago I would have said you need to establish the viewpoint rules of your novel up front, but now I believe otherwise, based on re-reading Mis...
Have a clear list of things that you want to get out of the meeting. What do you want to know from them? Make a list of questions. If the conversation wanders to other topics organically, great. B...
Light vs darkness is not and never had been the only theme in novels. In fact, in the simplistic sense in which it is practiced today in things like post-Tolkien fantasy novels, it is a pretty new ...
Lots of people start writing novels in their teens. Most of them are not very good at first. That is to be expected. A novel is one of the most complex forms of art that can be created by a single ...
The cover is important, the blurb is important, the reviews are important, the story structure is important. The first page is important. One of the best exercises I ever did was to bring home tw...
Is there a way to add this? Yes. It's not the easiest thing in the world, but it's not impossible. More relevant: Is it worth it? The answer to that is probably no. The software this site is ...
