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Writing a novel means: Planning, drafting, editing, submitting, finding agent representation, editing again, submitting again, finding a publisher, editing again, approving cover designs, typesett...
Check out The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant for a supreme example of this "genre". When I read the series, it was just the first two trilogies, and in writing this answer, I just discovered that M...
To me a good resurrection is a good plot twist, meaning the reader could go back and re-read what went before, and see it in a new light and realize the clues for the resurrection were there, they ...
Personally I dislike resurrections in books. They are often meant to bring back a popular character without a reason. Many did it and there is always a kind of aftertaste. Even if the character is ...
As Amadeus's one and other answers have pointed, atheists do use religious vocabulary in real life quite often. However, please keep in mind that anything you write can be used to convey some idea ...
Yes. I'm an atheist, and I still say "thank god" and "god damn it" on occasion. It's your job to make the language feel like an authentic part of that character. As long as you can do that, it's ...
Religion is a great contributor to popular culture. It is therefore common for people of any religious alignment or lack thereof to reference religious language in common casual and even business a...
They mean exactly the same thing. Outside of cases where you must following a specific manual of style, if the writing is formal, it's up to you. You should, however (according to Strunk), place e....
I can't tell you how to think of a good ending, but we can summarize what it should achieve (though you might not need all of these): Have a character's personality or development somehow earn or...
Here are a few of the techniques that I've seen employed successfully. Make sure that every chapter of your story has moved your readers closer to the ending. Sometimes in big ways, sometimes sma...
Do as much research into the place you want your fictional village to be as you can. Find out the topography, the climate, the surrounding large towns. Know something about the people of that tim...
Something irrevocable transpires. I would say a decision is made when something irrevocable occurs. Words are spoken and heard, a button is pushed, a trigger is pulled, a letter is mailed, an emai...
On the contrary, I think readers are more likely to lose interest if the work isn't dark enough. Barring young children, no one wants to read a book in which the heroes easily accomplish all their...
The key question is: Why should I care? Part of the reason people like a book is because they get invested in the plot and the characters. They continue reading because they have a vested interest...
The specific problem you're trying to avoid is called "Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy". If you feel like destroying your productivity for the next week, you can look it up on TV Tropes. People ca...
A start, a setup, is not a story. Consider, for example, how many different adventure stories start with "enemies" attacking the protagonist's home town, forcing him to leave home. From the Wheel o...
People die, and Kings emerge. I would operate on the notion that our human nature itself, how we see the world and what we will do for survival (of ourselves or kids or those we love) will not be ...
Let me start personal. My family has been in situations where a group of people found themselves unprepared for survival, lacking both the knowledge and the infrastructure to survive, lacking help ...
By far not all has been written. Sure, there is a limited amount of patterns, but there is an infinite amount of stories to use them for and all the stories are new variations on the patterns. Wha...
Have you considered having the act of time-travel be your decision-locking event? Under normal conditions, while all of us are riding along with the current of time, it doesn't matter whether rece...
So my solution to this problem was the rule that can be boiled down to the following: The Past is set in stone, the future is clay. The present is the kiln. Basically, knowledge of a future even...
my name is Robert and I'm an Beta Reader. This answer is based on my experience. I started cataloguing my books (the ones I owned and those I intended to read) on Goodreads in 2013. Since then I h...
Your question can be read in two ways: are you talking of stage magic, or of a fantasy world with actual working magic? If you are writing about stage magic, you should very definitely do your res...
It is probably impossible to fact-check magic because, at least for most of us, magic is not real. You could study existing fictional or mythological systems of magic, but the "facts" you find abo...
Research is an essential part in the path of an author. Be it fictional or non-fictional writing. In fictional writing, you can't do "Das Rad neu erfinden" (german for "Reinventing the wheel"). It...
