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It seems complicated, but it isn't. Even the word act is misleading, because you can have a one-act play, with an entire drama taking place in that one act. That's an artificial structure. A true ...
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 ...
I feel like there's a lot of talking around the central point rather than addressing it: The word "act" is sometimes used as part of a metaphor. This metaphor imagines a story to be somewhat like...
If your working on a piece for publishing that will attack a figure or orgainzation, "I believe" could be useful to denote that the accusation is not based in anything provable. For example "Spide...
You don't "have" to do any work, unless it's written into your contract. But if you want your book to be a success, you'll want to work on promoting it. These days, even the best and biggest publ...
The Animorphs fanchise used this exclusively through all 54 main title books (told the main story through a fixed rotation of one core cast per book), five "Megamorphs" books (told from a rotating ...
Mark has covered your question admirably and I agree with everything he has said. I would offer only a few minor additions. If you want to write a successful book, you need to look at marketing b...
This stuff is called "The Bible" and is mostly exclusive to the right... it's essentially a way the writer can keep track of ideas, rules for the universe, characters, possible themes, how all this...
I'm not sure that the phrase "Curley's wife" was intended to express possession. Be careful not to view things through a contemporary political lens. (Actually, two points here: don't let contempor...
My high school teacher gave us some writing assignments that forced us to focus on short scenes. She would give us a picture (usually of a painting) where you could see one person, or more, halfwa...
Using a certain character's point of view to describe a particular event in your story is nothing more than a technique. Q: Is this okay? Of course, it is. It had been done time and time agai...
Any rule can be broken, the trick is to know why the rule exists. In this case, it is difficult (and potentially frustrating) for the reader to (a) follow/understand and (b) emphasize with too many...
It really isn't possible to bone up on the vocabulary of a field in a few hours. The vocabulary of a field exists to express experiences, distinctions, and idea that are unique to that field. In ot...
Since English is not my first language, and I learnt all this terminology with completely different names, bear with me as I go over the terms. So you have started writing using the third person. ...
You have a few options, all of which are (in my view) perfectly reasonable: If you're using an intimate narrative style (with access to only one character's thoughts at a time): Simply call her...
If the narrator has respect for Maria (and respect for her decision to change her name), they will probably refer to her in the way she wishes to be referred. The readers will be able to keep up as...
I have a character (say Lucy) that in various circles is always pretending to be someone else with another name: She is Mary, Lisa, Brittany, Virginia. The narrator always calls her Lucy. She intr...
The emotional lives of children, adolescents, and adults are very different. This sometimes lead adults to dismiss the emotions of children and adolescents as trivial or inconsequential, which is u...
You are probably suffering from a case of Grimderp - when your dark parts go too dark and it stops being dark and becomes just silly. It is when a work of fiction goes so dark that it wrap around i...
The short answer, which Termite Society stated is correct. A motivation for doing so is to show some sort parallelism or simultaneous actions. In my opinion, fiction writers should focus on cause ...
Just because The Crunch happens doesn't mean that your protagonists all lose. Yes, the obvious antagonist is The Crunch. But is that all your heroes are fighting? Is that all they're striving for?...
No, you don't. Just like you don't pluralise Arabic numerals.
You don't ever use apostrophes to form plurals, so that's right out. If the Roman numeral is part of the name, you would add an S: A total of 15 Saturn Vs were built, but only 13 were flown. If ...
Perhaps the most famous example of switching from an involved to external narrator is Dickens Bleak House. No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy is a more recent (and shorter) example. It is wo...
Remember, names can also throw a reader out of the story if it is difficult to read or pronounce. You want the story to flow, and if you have a name that makes the reader slow down too much you may...
