Search
I do have to comment that your first example is getting kinda laughable in it's ability to cause a sense of Urgency... we all know it will be the last possible second that the bomb will be defused,...
What are some conventions for creating a sense of urgency? Maybe there are conventions, I'd posit that there must be motivation, and stress from thwarting factors. A sense of limited time is a...
There is no postmodern canon that you have to work through to be able to participate in postmodern intellectual and artistic discourse. If you want to create postmodern art (which is always at the ...
Human being have a inbred psychological need for stories. Like all our other needs, there are specific receptors that have to be matched for the need to be satisfied. If the body does not recognize...
You may be discovering the difference between a plot and a story. A plot is a series of events. A story is an arc of rising tension followed by a resolution. Events intervene in the lives of charac...
Always work around your characters. They're what drives the story forward, not your plot. Without interesting characters, you've just got a series of events happening one after the other which wo...
Are you writing this in first person? The choice of first person is the cause of many writing woes because it is a POV that essentially puts the writer in a box. If you are writing first person and...
Have parts of the story be in the point of view of characters you add, not just your main character. This way, you can show how the character thinks as well as act, and you can expand upon your cur...
If her loneliness is essential to the story, I don't see this as being a problem. You don't need to add a huge cast of well-rounded characters just to have them. In fact, I think that this might en...
One doesn't have to be alone to be lonely. One can have 1000 facebook friends and not have a real friend. In fact the more facebook friend one has, the lonelier one is likely to be. It is a si...
Humans are not distinctly rational or logical. If your characters were vulcan from the Star Trek universe, their devotion to logic might shield them from some emotional backlash of their decision'...
Stories, either written or on film, get boring when logic dictates what does and does not happen. We don't empathise with logic, we empathise with the human elements of choice, namely strong emotio...
You are either presenting real science principles or you are writing a novel. You can't do both. You might as well say that you are presenting a symphony concert but first you are starting off with...
It's a little convenient, but you can get around that a few ways: 1) Hang a lampshade on it. That is, have the characters point out that they found that other MacGuffin at the treasury too, and wh...
As I see it, there are three possible uses for such a scene. You show the skill of your protagonist because you need your reader to know it later. Just saying that your knight is skilled is not s...
If I understood your question correctly, there is a fourth option: Tell the main story, with small sections referring back to parts of the backstory as needed, peppered wherever it makes sense in ...
As fantasy writers, we all have to build our own worlds, and it can get tedious. I know that many writers have what they call "bibles" just to keep track of everything because, as you pointed out, ...
That's a substantial bit of revision. It can definitely be done, but the question is if that's what you want to prioritize right now. During a first draft, there will be a lot of things you'll wan...
I am always reminded of Anais Nin's line: "We are not writers. We are re-writers." My experience has been that one should stay with the flow. If changing to TP is disruptive to ideas that are comi...
As above, but with the addition of an exercise I often perform. I see the basic, linear story as a piece of string, then as I edit, I look for opportunities to introduce misdirection, diversion or...
There are so many different plots that can be written. The majority of them can be narrowed down to even more broad terms until every story is just a variation of around a dozen different types. T...
A great plot is a plot that can engage the readers from start to finish. It has nothing to do with the twists according to my thinking. Again this depends on the audience you are writing for. The ...
Amazon isn't going to clarify their policy anytime soon -- nor make it consistent -- unless a Court or their customers force them to. Here's an example of something they carry with a cat-derived...
The word choices you make have to work for your story. An alliteration is a tool, like a rhyme, and if you use it without a purpose, it will sound strange and unnatural, if not jarring. Why do you...
I am not sure, how lower gravity would allow people live higher up a mountain (it is not gravity, it is a lack of oxygen which limits the habitability in that dimension, and the lower the gravity i...
