Search
Read a lot. Pay attention to how your favorite authors present dialog. You might find that written dialog doesn't include everything everyone says from when they meet to when they part. It starts...
What you describe is a person who denies the value of anything, and yet creates things. This is a contradiction. If nothing has value or meaning, there is no point in creating anything, and, for th...
I disagree with the notion that an Author must delve into the background of each character for character development. But, this is one of the primary ways to develop characters without affecting t...
The point of a story is to have a conflict on the road to a goal. In your case, your goal is to have a nihilistic life, and therefore a conflict to this would be situations that clearly attempt to...
This depends greatly on the bookstore. Recently there has been a rebirth of small independent booksellers, which were once an almost extinct breed. A bookstore like that might be more inclined to...
I agree with Jenny, it would be totally insensitive to order a self-published book printed by CreatSpace (Amazon) from an independent bookstore. IngramSpark, another POD printer (part of Lightning ...
Passive arrogance, as others have mentioned, is about believing they know more than others and more than they really know. They are right and being wrong would be a sign of the coming apocalypse. T...
An unreliable narrator is one who knows the truth but doesn't reveal it to the reader. It sounds like your story has a narrator who does not, in fact, know the truth. Dr. Watson is sometimes seen ...
Think of writing fiction as a translation of a novel from the place where your story is set into English. Following Lauren Ipsum's answer, simply noting that the conversation was occurring in two...
The antagonist doesn't have to be particularly stupid (or the protagonist particularly clever), the protagonist needs to just find a piece of information that the antagonist doesn't have, not becau...
Yes, I was breaking too many rules. It's over a year later. I finished the book based on advice here, largely sticking to my original timeline and expected word count. The novel has been placed in...
You finished your book, congratulations! But almost nobody writes a novel that doesn't require major restructuring, especially not on the first try. If your readers liked it in general, but had i...
It sounds like you're writing top down. Try bottom up where you're having difficultly. Let the characters lead and follow their interests. Introduce conflict and goals at that level. You should sta...
Am I free to change my descriptive language when changing POVs? Absolutely (leaving aside the fact that you are free to do whatever you wish–it is your story), and I agree with Lauren Ipsum, t...
A query letter is a sales tool. The feedback you want is not from writers but from people in the business of selling books. I don't know that there is a reliable way to know if you are getting that...
I recommend three pillars: 1. Practice 2. Thesaurus 3. Drafting The more you write, the better your writing will become. This means finding the best word, and the best order to put the words in. ...
Don't. I know the use of fancy vocabulary may seem like a sign of sophisticated writing, but it's not. Every fancy word you use makes you prose less accessible to readers. The only reason to bring ...
If the antagonist will win in a fair fight, don't have the protagonist engage him in a fair fight. One way to make this happen is to make the protagonist's objective something other than killing/d...
-WARNING: TV TROPES LINK SPAM INCOMING- There's nothing at all wrong with having your villain make a stupid mistake. Villains do it all the time. A better question is why your villain would make s...
Being opponents can take lots of forms, leading to a lot of different outcomes. Direct Combat This could be a physical fight with bare hands or weapons. This surely is the least complex form fo...
It's great that you're going to have 250K words to start from. Note that I said "start from." Keep writing, make your way all the way to the end of the story, and don't worry at all about the len...
If your hero can't possibly win, then don't have him win. Have him survive, but just barely! Then apply all of that effort which you were willing to invest in a total rewrite, into writing a sequ...
It much depends on the story that you are trying to tell. The quest for something (item, allies, knowledge, etc.) that levels the playing field and gives the hero a chance against an (initially) s...
A is strong, B is weak, they fight and B wins because he's the good guy is indeed a boring story. There is probably more to the story, so tell it. "Rocky" is an entire movie about nothing other th...
They could have a harder fight and still give the win to the antagonist. Or use mind games: let's say the underdog comes up with a plan that gives the impression to the antagonist that he's winning...
