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Is the point of the story to realistically discuss how this person became mute, in some clinical sense, or to spin a story around the initial premise that he is mute? If the story is intended to b...
Sci-fi and fantasy don't NEED to be fundamentally different. If the people in your fantasy world approach the magic that exists in their world in a "scientific" way, then your fantasy elements bec...
The issue is that you have your character losing the ability to speak as a young adult. There has to be some kind of trauma (physical or emotional) for that to happen. The neurological pathways for...
I used to play an online mmorpg game named Popmundo and to be a regular columnist for their game magazine: It's Pop. In the agreement of the game, they specified that the content you create was loc...
I've seen so many books and movies with similar reasons for people to lose their ability to speak that, in a mere reader point of view, I would have no reason at all to doubt that it could happen. ...
I think the general rule should be, Will the reader care? I heard a speech once by an American who was a reporter in Nazi Germany during World War 2. When I saw the advertisement for his lecture I...
A couple of pointers I've picked up (apologies if one of them is pulled from another post I wrote): 3-5 good descriptors are way better than 10 mediocre ones. If you're describing an employee bre...
Blending sci-fi and fantasy is actually quite easy, and can produce some excellent results; consider Steampunk for instance. There are definitely plenty of great examples out there of sci-fi/fanta...
If you're not knowledgeable in the field, then it is unlikely that anything you write will be convincing to someone who is. But as several have said, if you're writing a novel, then by definition i...
There are different styles of emphasis: underlining, spacing, italics, bold face, all caps and small caps, change of font face, color etc. Some of them can be found in printed magazines, others hav...
I don't know about your prologue, but as a reader I seriously despise prologues that don't feature the protagonists, for two reasons: I read novels, because I am interested what happens to the pro...
Orson Scott Card has discussed, in several places, how prologues (particularly to fantasy epics) tend to be dull, disembodied history lessons. For example, from an interview: The most common mi...
I am German. You will soon understand why I state this up front. In German cultural theory a difference is made between so called 'serious' literature, music, painting and so on, and 'entertaining'...
"Love Story" by Erich Segal. (Book and movie) "The Way We Were" (movie only) "Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell (book and movie) "Romeo and Juliet" by...really, I could have just led wit...
Do you want to piss your readers off? No? Then call a tragedy a tragedy, a drama a drama and a romance a romance. This question is all about customers' expectations. You can call your story a roma...
As an amateur writer I'm writing my first novel and this question came up when I was searching on writing tips on how to end my novel and I posed that same question which is how I got here. Breaki...
The same solution as every decent DM has to Pun Pun. You Are Not The First Who Thought Of It. And the one who did think of it first really doesn't like competition. They are a background god, one...
The intriguing thing about magic is that you can imagine being able to do things that you cannot do in real life. But characters that can do anything are exceedingly boring. What drives a plot for...
Religion, time and blackmailing Have your world feature a religion that forbids the use of certain kinds of magical practices that would use your loopholes. The in-universe explanation would be th...
One thing to consider is just how important the setting is to the story. If there are key aspects of the setting that factor into the story, then that could enhance the actual story. For example, "...
Oy. Chop, chop, chop. You establish the metaphor of the treasure chest, so you can just declare that A=B without the transitions. The plastic container was a treasure chest of food. I peeked in...
The number of treasure-similies seems over-the-top to me, the prose equivalent of a scene from Tampopo. Maybe I would appreciate them better in the context of the rest of the story, or maybe I woul...
Hi: I laid out my notes to you per sentence from your revised paragraph. Opening the plastic container made me feel as though I were unlocking a treasure chest. I peeked inside to admired its con...
For me, your sentence it is perfectly understandable. I don't feel it's weird when I read it.
Keep in mind that a book is not a movie (yes, this sounds trivial and stupid, but bear with me). Movies uses images so they are easy imaginable. Opposite to that producing images in the reader's h...
