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I'll offer a middle ground that requires a lot of polishing as I go. I write polished and readable story as I go. The only thing I would say is 'first-draft' is that I may postpone easy details th...
From the information you provided, I would say making it a prologue would be fine. Of course, I don't recommend info-dumping in the prologue, saying, "The world balanced on the backs of elephants w...
Humor has very little place in business writing, just like erotica or violence. The reason for this is people are not generally in the frame of mind, when consuming business writing, for anything ...
I've often seen the following strategy used to great effect: if the cursing is relatively mild, it is directly written in the dialog of the character. On occasions it is very harsh, its effects on ...
The Inheritance Series (Eragon and etc) had the word 'blast' as a cuss word. Including the protagonist's (it becomes 'barzûl' in Dwarvish). So maybe you could use a similar rough word as a cuss.
In my opinion it depends very much on what your story is trying to achieve. The established fantasy races exist in hundreds, even thousands of other books. Are readers bored of that and itching fo...
My favorite series use novel creatures - but describe them with the traits that make them ... Elf like, ... Ewok like, ... Witch like,... Without using those labels. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "The Hajarla ...
Starting "in the middle of things" is an absolutely classic technique, and i see it done quite frequently in published fiction. I would prefer not to label such a thing as a Prologue, unless it is ...
A general principle of citation is: only cite what you actually used. You haven't seen the original work, so don't cite it based on someone else's quote. What if the quote you're working from is ...
I think you can use the traditional ones if you do not stray far from what readers would expect. Don't call them "elves" if they are ogres, or have extra arms. As you note for yourself, when you e...
Short answer no, you can get to know a character very well without actually getting invested in them, especially if the character is "a bit of a tool". To get people to care about a given character...
Which is more valuable or necessary to you? that the reader be given the mechanical details that those details be codified in publication Actually, I mention this one for the sake of completeness...
Pretty much what Tom said, and you could give the reader enough to pick up on a hint that the plants are affected by infra red radiation by introducing a temporary source. Someone could light a fi...
To the specific issue about something technical being boring: It was probably boring because you were bored. Unless you really wanted to inform the reader about the important differences between "l...
First, 90K is a very respectable word length for a novel, so make sure you're not just trying to meet an artificial goal when your book is already complete. Personally, I much prefer books lean, a...
"See figure x" or "Figure x" is the usual way of doing it, or just "(fig.x)". It's perfectly fine as long as the captions on the figures match the references in the text. If the screenshots are of...
Stakes, in a plot, as not what the character wants, but what they will have to give up to get what they want. Love is a desire. But gaining the one you love may require giving up your pride or your...
No, there is no software that would automate the translation of newly written paragraphs for you This is not something you would normally do. You might think that you are "going in one straight pa...
Let your character stumble upon the book of a monk, that analyzed the flower. I guess he tried to remove the flower from the cave, expose it to sunlight, try growing other flowers in the cave, etc....
Readers enjoy moral dilemmas they can identify with, because it helps them form their own moral intuitions. But a dilemma must seem balanced in order to be compelling. In this case, perhaps you'v...
First, congratulations on sticking with it so far. Let's try to fix some stuff. ... the more the reader knows about him, the more they will care about his death, and thus his death being a grea...
As a reader, I would have been extremely put off by Mike's behavior. Also, since I read too much fanfiction, I would have attributed this to the author making a mistake, and stopped reading. I'll t...
It boils down to "show, don't tell". You as a writer need to know your characters on a deep level, so you can show the reader who they are through their actions and words. As you already have dis...
It may or may not be true that every crisis in the real world is an opportunity, but it is true that every writing challenge is a writing opportunity. The challenge of multiple language isn't an o...
If your character is influential (and I know this is a bit overkill), they could form something akin to a brotherhood whose sole purpose is to get this letter delivered (think Dan Brown's Priory of...
