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At the back. People will notice it if it's at the back, I'm sure they will. Normally, lists of characters are at the back of the book, lists of pronunciations are at the back, and general informati...
Set off your part with some kind of identifier: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. ...
The two words which come to mind for me are: Prologue (or prolog) - would work especially well if writing an epilogue Prelude Another word which might be used is preamble, but I don't think tha...
Got may be an overused word, but never ban any word from your vocabulary entirely. Use it sparingly; favor the alternatives when they exist, but don't miss out on the expressions ("you have got t...
English is a development of Anglo Saxon and old Norse with many borrowings from Latin, mostly via Norman French, thanks to the Norman conquest of 1066. For a long time after the conquest, the nobil...
It depends on the context. It can be casual, but it's the correct past tense of "to get." I got sick. I got a book for my birthday. I got there in time. Perfectly correct, if slightly ca...
So firstly, printing actual copies of your book to give to beta readers is a really bad idea. It costs loads of money when they could be reading it on the internet. When you are actually submittin...
I remember reading a book called A Monster Calls, which had the same thing going on. The original idea was from Siobhan Dowd, but she died, and the book was completed by Patrick Ness. I would do so...
Of course, it depends on the nature of the project and your contributions. Personally I wouldn't list yourself as an editor; just explain it in the preface. Try: (Additional) Background and co...
Be a planner and gardener. Get raw ideas and put them in a note-taking program, I used to do it on 3x5 cards. But sooner or later you have to organize them, and shuffle them around to get an idea o...
Evelyn Waugh and John Steinbeck would be excellent places to start. But while there are no doubt many ways to excel at description, metaphors, broad vocabulary, and figures of speech are not any ...
As you mention, this question is somewhat subjective which is why there won't be a hard number that somebody can provide and that will turn out to be the correct answer. Moreover, writing itself c...
Many of these answers are wonderful for determining when a work itself is ready for critique, but I think an additional metric should be added: Am I ready to receive criticism? If receiving negativ...
The experience of a writer dictates their ability to gauge when they are ready to be critiqued and when they are not. This means that beginners, should try to get critiqued as soon and often as pos...
Remember that experiment you did back in grade school with the iron filings and the magnet. I think that is a good illustration of how a good piece of writing works. It is not that everything lines...
Using þ in a story will not bring it back as a letter in English. So keep that in mind if you decide to use it. As for whether an average reader will know how to pronounce these letters, the answe...
Pronunciation is part of aural speech and cannot be wholly derived from the written form of languages, at least not in English. There are thousands of real place names that people pronounce differe...
There seem to be three different parts to this question: Does the author's public reputation affect the sales of books? Do the view expressed in a book affect the sales of the book? Do the privat...
I agree with Standback, but his answer is not generally true. In this time and age, most readers of Fantasy and Science Fiction have seen so many Science Fiction and Fantasy movies that their mind...
I agree with Standback, but his answer is not generally true. The meaning of the quote above escapes me. Besides, I happen actually to agree with Standback. The building of a unique world woul...
Yes, of course it is. What you are describing is merely a story in which nobody speaks. Since it is perfectly possible to have a story in which a character is alone the entire time, why would it be...
The best way I know of to improve this technique is to study writers who have mastered the technique in question. In your case, it might help to read published papers (ideally on a similar topic) ...
"Show don't tell," as a three-word directive, is pithy and simplistic. But it's used because it's one of the fundamentals of writing well, and one of the things new writers understand least. As La...
At the base there are "formating" guides, the driest of them all, like the Associated Press Style, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA handbook.... S&W is sometimes listed under the former category, ...
I think an author's personal stance can absolutely be a deal-breaker. I won't buy or read anything more from Orson Scott Card now that I know about his raging homophobia. It would be an endorsement...
