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Different phrases can often mean the same thing. "Her face paled" and "she looked sick" (with context that it was a sudden change) more or less mean the same thing in American English (probably ot...
The difficulty with such a question is in the apparent need to choose which writer to side with. Are the sentences of Conrad 1910 too taxing? Do those in Landon 2013 go too far the other way? I hop...
Why would you want to "fix it"? The critique is absurd. If the only way to write literature would be to create female characters that MUST sound like if they were written by a woman, or male charac...
Allow me to start with conflict. There are authoritative definitions of conflict out there, but let's keep it simple: conflict is an obstacle. Typically, a character has an objective and the obstac...
Author of Paper, A., and B. Author of Paper. Year. "Title of Paper." Paper presented at Title of Conference: Subtitle of Conference, Location, Date. https://doi.org/10.XXX/XXXXX.XX So in your cas...
(This answer was written during the first iteration of the question. The author's changes invalidate much of my answer. My conclusion stands: this is not a juvenile book, but I could only base it...
Because of the "or", I assume the book doesn't have to be appropriate for both children and young adults. Correct. The Library of Congress first lumps things into two big groups based on whet...
Make the boyfriend more than just "MC's boyfriend". Give him a life of his own, a (minor) role in the story beyond the doomed relationship. Maybe tell some of the "home front" part of the story f...
You seem to want there to be a throwaway relationship on the one hand but not on the other hand. There are of course subtleties and degrees, but, in a broad analysis, either it is a throwaway rela...
TL;DR: Try submitting with a female pen name. If the criticism goes away, there's your answer. This is your character and you need not bow to anybody's tropes or nuances, or notions of how or why...
What I do in similar cases is write both variants – you will very likely have a clear feeling for which variant works best.
Your story sounds interesting. But even the best ideas can be awful when written up and some of the simplest, done-to-death, plots can be amazing. It's all in what you do with it. If a book se...
A useful example to consider is the case of James Tiptree, Jr, the pen name of Alice Sheldon. She wrote her stories (especially the earlier ones) from a male viewpoint, and the impersonation was so...
Slightly different angle from other answers... "However because the character swears, makes pop culture references and sexually objectifies men, some critics have commented that this makes it seem...
the majority of my characters are mentally ill Is that true, or is it really only true of your main characters, or even of your protagonists? There's nothing wrong with a certain trait or char...
Surely there's more to you than "mental illness guy"? Consider what other parts of yourself you could project onto a character. A hobby of yours can be your character's main occupation. A childhood...
You are writing political propaganda, stop Your character looks like ticking the boxes of PC list: female-check, non-conformist - check, oppressive society - check, forced marriage - check, abusiv...
I would leave it out. There are two kinds of depression; clinical depression for which people ought seek help and depression that is a natural and normal response to bad things happening. My moth...
I would recommend a PDF. I normally believe in converting files to text (marked or unmarked) for emails because so many times that Word file or whatever is just a couple paragraphs that don't need...
The components of a really effective payoff, in my mind, are these: The reader knows something is coming But: they don't know what is coming. They have open questions; they have doubts. They're i...
A common market for shorter pieces is anthologies. You didn't give a length but "long poetry" is probably still not novel length. Anthologies tend to have themes based on the subject of the work ...
I don't think there IS a good way to handle a lengthy monologue. Agents and publishers will reject them out of hand, or demand they be changed. Readers are looking to be entertained, not read a lec...
Two things first: Take into account that you might be wrong in your assessment. Others (e.g. publishers) might view this text differently. So emphasize that this is your personal view. Limiting y...
I would suggest using a variety of methods. Allow the first conversation to be a bit longer than the rest (do notice the emphasis on the 'a bit'), for two main reasons: 1) You are presenting a ne...
Edit: since I posted this answer, the OP has expanded their question to state the interest is in whether one should dumb down in the choice of genre. That is not what I expected herein. I hope what...
