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Several thoughts here. The first is, don't be discouraged by failure. Learn from it and move on. We all fail sometimes. Thomas Edison, when discussing his attempts to invent a practical light bulb...
Do you have a style guide for what you're writing? That should give you advice on using things like headers. I would advise against using headers or hypophoras if you can - writing is much more el...
I think it depends on the piece and on what it's for. Most people will highly advise using headers for blog posts, for instance, because search engines LOVE them and they're useful for skim-readers...
Heavy-handed means you force your plot, your characters, your prose, your dialog, and any other aspect of your writing, to fit a preconceived concept, regardless of how well or naturally it integra...
The sports term for "heavy handed" is "piling on." In American football, if the runner has been "tackled," there is no need for other defensive players to jump on him. Chris' example, " She had ...
There are different kinds of writing. Writing for business (formal, industry jargon) is not like writing fiction (establishing a world, creating characters) which is not like writing advertising co...
I've had quarrels with some of my friends where they say that some book or movie is bad because it depicts people doing evil things. And I say, But look HOW it depicts them! It clearly depicts them...
Note: Not a legal expert If you based a character in a historical novel on a real person from the present, it would take a fair amount of concerted effort for anyone to even notice, and even if th...
Why not test the hypothesis, starting with the negative test? You are unhappy in your current career. You have some background but nothing official. A BA in English might or might not be a meani...
In my experience, those who are employing Technical Writers require their writers to have the following: A command of the English language. Knowledge of writing style, technique and style guides....
Reality is complicated. Usually, in the case of domestic violence, many factors lead to it. For example, both partners have specific fears, both show certain behavior, and all this slowly builds up...
As long as you make it clear to the reader where you are in time in relation to the previous scene, it's perfectly fine. (David and Leigh Eddings, writers of the Belgariad/Malloreon series, also ...
Stories do not have tenses. Individual verbs have tenses. Even an individual sentence can contain verbs in different tenses. Tom is saying that Jane promised that she will marry him in Septemb...
Assuming there are no requirements for chapter length you are supposed to meet, I don't believe it matters. Some books maintain a steady chapter length of twenty or so pages (Harry Potter), but I'v...
The number one rule in making things believable is detailing. This applies to outlandish theories just as much as world-destruction type stakes. None of it will seem real without the details that l...
I think one thing you are missing in all of this is that at the time they were written these books were the latest science. Let me give you an example of a few things I have seen in my own lifetim...
Adding to Dale Emery's answer, and maybe clarifying it a bit, I would say that the tense depends on the narrator. If the story is narrated by an omniscient narrator, then the ocean is vast, becaus...
First you need to remember that people are different. Some are most creative without rules, some are most creative when breaking rules and some are most creative within rules. The best creative eng...
I think about the, "This is only the beginning" concept more as "This is the first step". It is very common in academia to think about your PhD as a stepping stone to your initial body of research ...
This is a dilemma that people are having a lot lately and I think it is mostly misled. For starters, as a writer, I physically cannot give you any information unless I tell you something. I only ha...
My exercise for this is forcing my imagination. First we must define the difference between showing and telling in a useful way for writing. Showing is writing that assists the reader's imaginati...
"Glennkill" is written from a sheep's point of view. Which is one of its main points of attraction. I remember a story from the perspective of a cup (Böll maybe?). "The Remarkable Rocket" from W...
You practically answered your own question. In these two cases, you should probably use a third party narrator. "very intelligent, like Sherlock Holmes (In the books, Dr. Watson is the point of v...
Word choice What words and phrases you can use in your narration is determined by the character of the narrator and the stylistic distance you choose to employ. If you chose a very distanced narr...
Having your character calling the man raising her father isn't a problem. She knows he's not her biological dad but as far as she is concerned, he is her father and will call him as such. Where y...
