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How does one include non-Latin-based script in an overall English work? Not like that. As Galastel noted, you're wasting space in a medium of bare-bones verbal communication on not-especially...
I'm posting a second answer because this suggestion is a little out there, but it might be a way to have your cake and eat it too. If you are publishing a cybertext, make the bilingual stuff inter...
How to write a PG13 Succubus character? You can't. How was the concept of succubus invented? First, we have witches. They go to sabbaths. What are they doing there? They have sex with the Sat...
Negative comments that are not backed by actual criticism of your story are just trolling and should be ignored. I know it's hard, but try to focus on the positive comments you're probably also get...
Do not post online as you write it; even most professional writers do not like their first drafts, and IMO a beginner should never like their first draft, so you are just inviting criticism of some...
I agree with the other answers, though I think it can be put a little more concise: As a rule of thumb, if it's a negative comment and it's not constructive, you can safely ignore it. The comments...
What my experience from several read fanfictions is: Most of the writers and readers only like the bad guys, and especialy, if they are gay and sleep with their siblings or the good guy. I don't ...
Who says it’s too complicated, with too many characters? Would you tell that to Tolstoy or Tolkien or Martin? Either way, what’s the absolutely basic outline? “Boy meets girl” sounds too extreme f...
There are quite a few examples of media where the protagonists are terrorists. Whether the characters will be acceptable to your readers will depend on what you do with them. There are several opti...
You should make a list of the most important conflict points that your character will have to face throughout the book. It's important to be able to tell beforehand roughly which problems your char...
You can think of lust as the more physical aspect as love as the more emotional aspect if you want. So a succubus in a story for a YA audience could be constantly seeking actions we consider physic...
Keep in mind that the "Seven Deadly Sins" are not grounded in anything objective, nor even the founding of any religion. Rather, they source from religious writings of authors of whom most people ...
A succubus is not the embodiment of sexuality, but the embodiment of the fear of sexuality. So it is highly relevant to an age group where sexuality is often viewed with a mixture of fear, disgust...
The best way to illuminate a boundary is to cross it. Barring that, the second best way is almost cross it. Have your characters accomplish some major task together, despite long odds. Then, a...
I assume that this is your first attempt at a novel, and that you are suffering from a strain of "worldbuilder's desease". Brandon Sanderson has dedicated one of his lectures to the problem, you m...
Painful as it is, circumstances like this can warrant writing an entirely new draft from scratch. Your memories of the characters and plot points from the current draft would inform you in such an ...
This lecture series from Sanderson has a lot of good insight in it. Specific to your question, in this episode on world building he talks about how to open a story while engaging with both chara...
When you want to write the beginning of a novel, there are two helpful analogies to guide you through the process. The first analogy is that of waking up. When you begin to wake up, you are withi...
How to start a story depends on the type of story you're writing. I've found Orsen Scott Card's MICE quotient a useful tool for deconstructing stories. It can also tell you how to start a story. H...
Maybe your story isn't made for one single novel. Sometimes your plot comes with so many essential storylines, that are important for the main story arc. What I would suggest: Try to sort the char...
I call this the "anthropic principle of fiction", based loosely on the actual anthropic principle. Loosely speaking, the anthropic principle states that it's no coincidence that we happen to be fo...
I don't usually write stories. But my theory about the difficulty of begining writing something is, it depends on assumptions about the audiences. If the story still subject to change, the audience...
A very generic guideline that is often used is to have three arguments/aspects/... This is often structured in the form of a Five-Paragraph-Essay where you have one paragraph that you use to introd...
Killing a character and killing the protagonist are two very different things. The death of somebody close to a character is obviously life-changing and can set them on a new course. It is the dea...
There are three things that make a Mary Sue. You want to avoid all three of them: The character has a backstory that is desperately tragic, but doesn't encounter serious problems in the story. (T...
