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This is entirely a matter of preference. The choice of how and when to convey information to the reader is important, and will help to clarify your Authorial Voice. Personally, I agree that it's ...
It is necessary to use them, yes. You should, I think, use them - sometimes. It will be tedious if you use them too much. So, use them. Use them where you think you should, leave them off where y...
I like what you did there. Looking at the painting made it clear in the relevant paragraph that "he" was speaking. I'm a big fan of this approach myself. A whole bunch of "he said", "she said" loo...
If the readers already love him, it will be important to have a plausible reason for why he's not around at the moment (Law shows set in New York seem to have the meme that someone is "in London" -...
Perfectly doable. Consider the upcoming Marvel Movie "Black Panther." The hero and at least two of the other lead characters were introduced in 2016, two years (and five years) before his movie's...
I'm doing some research into free and open source software for writers. The most promising candidates so far, in no particular order, are: yWriter yWriter is a word processor which breaks you...
Ask someone native to the target language to read the translation without telling them it's a translation. See if they can notice anything that doesn't make sense, grammar mistake, or just plain st...
In my current story, a kind of spy girl has name A, but at various times goes by B, C, D, and E. I always refer to her as A in prose, and other characters call her by whatever alias she is using at...
In my opinion, if it was clear that you wanted the reader to be unsure, then there is no problem. For example, if Olivia did not always answer right away when someone said "Olivia!" then you are ...
Something doesn't always need to be graphically described to be powerful, and sometimes less can be more. There's a scene, in the original novel version of the Godfather, relevant to today's headl...
I suggest writing it with all the detail you can muster, then returning to it cold and rewriting to delete repetitiveness and all the detail you can stand to give up. Remember these passages are l...
I think you should hold nothing back. I believe there's a quote about how softening and sanitizing your style to appeal to a larger group is the recipe for mediocrity, but I can't find it. Do you ...
On the contrary, they do copy from each other, all the time. See this link On Contract Drafting and Plagiarism. The key paragraph there is this, I have highlighted the most important sentence: ...
For one, a literal story teller can use all the body language, vocal tones and facial expressions they want to convey what their characters mean, which you must find another way to do in print. One...
Several years ago we invited a storyteller/author to visit the school to talk about writing and tell some stories. To prepare for his visit, I read a large section of one of his novels to the class...
Different versions of Word count words slightly differently. For files that are just text, this isn't generally a problem, it's things like text in graphics and footnotes that throw this off. There...
Different tools use different algorithms to count words in a document. For example, Apple's Pages counts 2-7 mg/v as four words while Microsoft Word counts the same string as two words. Or if for ...
First and foremost, I would suggest that you resist the urge to describe everything that happens in a scene. In a movie, all the actions of a scene like that are acted out and are visible on screen...
In the second case, yes add it. It would make it more clear. In general, if you detect ambiguity, eliminate it, clarity trumps all else.
For the sort of poor soul who can only enjoy themselves if they are rooting for one side in a fight, then I suppose that a story that does not take sides will be boring. But that is not and never...
There's no hard and fast rule, and it depends how many drafts you're thinking of doing before the final version. If this is the only draft, I would aim higher than the limit. If there will be seco...
You should really act like how you feel. There are no specific guidelines for how many words on your draft or what word count. Just write everything, finish it and then start the editing (I’d bette...
What kind of a writer are you? I tend to write more than I need, then I hone the work in the editing process. So for a 300 word essay, I would probably first write a draft of 600 words. I wouldn...
The easiest way to make your character an expert is to make all your other characters fear him, respect him, or be defeated by him, in his field. You characterize your Chief of the Bomb Squad as h...
With a bang If you want a big plot twist to have a lasting effect so that your readers will remember it for a long time, you should try to seed a few small hints here and there that something will...
