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and welcome to the site. I do not know of any novels that follow the format you are describing, but that is a good thing. I believe one of the reasons World War Z stood out from the mass of zombi...
I suggest a popular literary technique called 'indirect characterisation' If your writing in first person; write about her thoughts and reasons and actions. If she is approached by someone who spe...
If you're writing for broad audience, you will be accepted if you're skimming the details and not going in-depth. If you focus on a specific audience, you might ride the wave of the success of The...
Is it possible? sure. It is your novel, so structure it as you will. Is it wise? probably not. Prologues are theives which steal from their creators. They steal the backstory and motivations wh...
There are some stories where backstory is extremely important; there are some where it's entirely inconsequential. The easy answer is: If you know what kind of story you're telling, you know whet...
You could try looking at lists of homophones and homonyms. These lists can give you ideas about similar sounding words. However, in the end, you just have to keep practising. Sometimes it does take...
An "idea" is not copyrightable, only its expression is. "Bad faith" is an idea that is as old as time, that Satre "popularized," but did not invent. What is attributable to him is an exposition ...
No, Dostoyevsky explored religious and existentialists ideas in many of his books--his genius was to add to the discussion by exploring existing ideas through fiction and finding new ground through...
Ideas are not copyrightable. Having a character follow a philosophy is definitely not a form of plagiarism. Presenting that philosophy as a paraphrase of the original work might be plagiarism, thou...
Plagiarism is an academic violation. If you wrote a scholarly article for a professional journal and did not give proper credit to your sources, you would be guilty of plagiarism. If you were caugh...
This seems like a great idea, and possibly the best way to approach this would be to have the time of disorientation be relatively brief. I've not written dream sequences ever, so I don't have any...
I personally think you shouldn't shy from conveying the experience of the disorientation as long as the narrator clearly conveys their confusion so we get into their experience of it, rather than o...
Simply choose another adjective: I drove past the empty stables and the deserted servant's quarters, and after another quarter mile I entered a very large circular driveway. Or break up the s...
Prose should slide off your fingers like warm butter. If your brain screams "discombobulated" at you, you don't have to ignore it because it's a big word. There is of course a limit based on your w...
In addition to Mike C. Ford's excellent suggestions, there is a secret technique, misunderstood but effective, known to all professional writers but divulged to few outsiders… Don't show, tell. "...
Write for your audience plus a little. If you're writing a book for five-year-olds, you don't want to use "sesquipedalian," but there's nothing wrong with "lengthy." Part of how we expand our voc...
In looking at your excerpts, and granting for translation, I think the problem is that you start well and then add too much. You don't have to give all the details at once. If this is a person we n...
You can cast it as an early report on your beta launch, or as a preview of your forthcoming launch. Assuming that you're restricting it now so you can work the kinks out before spreading more wide...
The opposite of this rule, that both men and women identify with a male protagonist, but only women can identify with a female protagonist, has long been used as a standard pretext for focusing exc...
A non-cheesy happy ending is generally a mixed bag; the hero may not get everything they wanted, but they did get what was most important to them. For example, they didn't get the treasure, but th...
My advice (Probably not helpful advice, but still) Make the character relatable You have probably heard this a million times, but it is important. Many readers, including me, are turned off by rel...
It depends a lot on the plot, the "genre" (I don't like this word too much, but there is a difference between pulpy science fiction and literary fiction), and other dynamics. For genre fiction (=s...
Character-Driven Story Is Driven From Self-Concept Self-concept is one of the strongest powers on earth. That's because so many people have self-concepts which put them at odds with the world arou...
Find a story of a magic system that evolves and see if you can follow that pattern. In the "Goose Girl" series, the characters discover long lost magical abilities, so their power grows as they lea...
If you are using actual fluorescent lights and nuclear energy and so forth, or fluorescent lights which have been slightly improved or altered by magic but are essentially the same technology, this...
