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I don't see that this is a conflict. A torturer is almost never in a position where the person they are torturing has the option of fighting back in anyway. The fact that the victim is physically ...
Yes, this is plausible. There are many ways to work around the lack of physical prowess of the torturer, with many of those solutions also serving to highlight their skill, or cruelty, and the ove...
Your physically weak character doesn't need to do the "actual" torturing. All she needs to do is to direct her assistants, "stick this instrument in there," and "twist it that way," etc. What she m...
A good book should form a thematic and, ultimately, moral whole. Multiple characters may reach their moment of crisis, but there will generally be one central climax that plays the major notes of t...
There's nothing wrong with weaving your personal opinions into your writing. The trick is to be subtle about it. The reason Assigned Male Comics is... not exactly well-received, to say the least.....
The biggest problem I see is that your "prediction" will not be appreciated, and your actual creativity is lost and considered derivative. Suppose I started writing a book about terrorists, hijack...
@Michael made a good point about some writers being good students of history. Consider it a complement! Consider also that stories with a sufficient amount of complexity are statistically likely t...
The tense is not wrong. Guessing as to why you are being told it is wrong: English grammar is a system of explanation, not a set of rules, and it is incredibly complicated, and even as complicate...
It depends what you want "Taken from the headlines" is something that is both interesting and exciting. It allows your readers to visit a possible version of the future (and whether you got it rig...
Could you use a pseudonym for the unnamed character, something he can go by that obscures his other details? Something like Strider/Aragorn from LoTR.
It really comes down to merit. The heart of every story is moral, it is about the character making a choice about values, and the reader has a basic desire to see virtue rewarded and vice punished....
I would accept the sentence you have written, usually. It depends on the context. Tenses in English are actually incredibly complex. (I have recently written a simple guide for distinguishing betw...
This depends on you. If you want it published, you should look to do so soon... The longer you wait, the more it appears to be based off real events and not your imagination. As Mark said this is...
I don't think I would count Han Solo as an antihero. He may take a little longer to cross the threshold, he may resist the call to adventure a little longer, but in the end he becomes a traditional...
What makes anti-heroes interesting characters to read about? To find that out, let's compare the morally flawed anti-hero with the cliché of the perfectly virtuous hero. They do things the audie...
There is no substitute for practice. Start working on something that inspires you. If you change your mind, you can always switch to something else, but you'll have the benefit of some experience.
Write your book now, and don't worry about selling it until after it's finished. By the time you finish it, you will be older anyway. And even if you never publish it, it will still be good pract...
Well if your style is immature, only two things will fix that, reading with attention, and writing. Do not neglect the reading with attention part. Francine Prose has a good book called Reading Lik...
Since I type at about ten times the rate I write by hand; and my hand gets sore writing by hand for more than a page or so; I opt for typing. Writing by hand is a sensory ritual for some writers. ...
Set up your POV: Omnipotent: Knows everything already, and isn't constrained by the limits of time and space. First person: Focuses on one person, it tells everything through their eyes and leav...
It is difficult to tell from your question and examples, but generally different action lines are similar to paragraphs in prose: There is no hard and fast rule for when they break off; it is basic...
Screenplays have very strict formatting conventions. These serve two purposes: 1) They make the screenplay easy to read and understand for people familiar with the conventions. 2) They make a re...
I think you have to start with understanding the role of a subplot. Artistically, I think it is fair to say that a subplot exists to provide a counterpoint to the theme of the main plot. If a short...
+1 Mark's answer, subplots often provide counterpoint. They can also provide examples of the alternative outcomes for the hero. In the case of Thor and Jane (or Superman and Lois) The subplot adds...
Check with your publisher and specifically with the editor who worked with you during final polish to see what they think. That editor is probably intimate with the subject matter of your story an...
