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I think you have a good premise. It is worth asking some rhetorical questions about why you would (and would not) want to shift POV with an ensemble cast. "good" reasons: Keeps the pace and te...
To me it seems that your main issue is not having decided a common background-language for your story. In fantasy novels, either you Invent a whole new language (cfr. Tolken) Borrow languages f...
Create a Fantasy Map. It doesn't need to be terribly detailed, and it is a beloved convention of fantasy genre. Writing Excuses has a podcast on the topic: https://writingexcuses.com/2016/11/0...
Why wouldn't it be possible? Yes. Fifty Shades et al are Twilight fanfics. Note that you may have to reskin a work (change characters, names, settings, etc) to get far enough away from the origina...
A story is a narrative - an account of connected events. Somebody is giving that account - there's no avoiding that. There you've got your narrator. Even a newspaper, which seeks to make the journa...
No, a story does not need a villain. There are many stories in which a person struggles against nature, struggles to survive, struggles to invent something new, etc. All the story requires (to be...
I'd say parents might not buy an 8-year-old a book for reading it out loud at all. Regardless of length. An 8-year-old can read, and read well. He has no need for someone to read a book out loud to...
You can give hints of cartography through the words you choose. As for an example, let's call country A the Holy Empire of Highmarch, and country B the Duchy of Hillsberry. I just made up these na...
There are three ways you can deal with long journeys. First, skipping time is a time-honoured tradition. If nothing happens during the time of travel, you can just skip it. It is quite common to r...
Can you provide a little more detail around your setting and your character goals? If you look at Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, they adventure group went on an apparently long journey and had...
I don't think the narrator adapting to the name change would be a problem per se. However, what needs to be clear to the reader is which character you are referring to. So, suppose that we have a ...
So why is the first half of that sentence a quote and the second half your paraphrase? That's the part that seems odd to me. I would either make it all a quote (using ... to indicate that you lef...
There are a few things that need to be made clear: 1: How are females seen in the story's society? 2: What age is one considered adult and can, therefore, legally decide for themselves? Scenar...
It's a fine balance you're trying to strike, between "unrealistically resistant to pain", and "we get it, get on with the story". I'd say, try to use the reminders that "character is in pain" to p...
Galastel gave an already excellent answer about using the pain to propel the story forward. I'll add my two cents: What you want to avoid is showing the pain for the sake of it. As you said, y...
I'd say mention it whenever it affects the character's thoughts or behavior, or the outcome of plot elements. If the injury has no affects on the choices of characters or on the plot, then you can ...
Your proofreader felt disturbed because there may be some inconsistencies in your story. I'll point my finger against the fact that you changed some country names. This - per se - is not a proble...
Alternative history can allude to history and make the reader think ‘this sounds a bit like the Great War’ but the names of the countries have been changed. That is fine, but you need not do that. ...
The easiest solution is to split up the introduction. If it's possible at all, have the MC share a scene with one or two characters, then with two or three others, and so on until you've introduced...
Technically, not ending a sentence with a preposition is a rule that Latin-obsessed 17th-century nerds tried to impose on the English Language, as a part of a larger attempt to make English grammar...
Let's start with description: how to describe a living creature, without referencing other living creatures. What does it have - scales, tail, wings? How many limbs? On how many does it walk, if at...
One of my characters, a kind of spy, goes by several names in the course of her story. The narrator always refers to her by her real name. I make sure she introduces herself by whatever cover name ...
You can associate your character with something else, thats easier to remember. For 7 you could use the 7 colours of the rainbow or the 7 weekdays. This is only appropriate for some storys though ,...
It would be helpful if you could provide a sample of your writing. It is a bit hard to judge whether you're using too many exclamation marks, if we can't see how many you're using. :) As a general...
I've been told, by professional teachers of creative writing no less, that the correct number of exclamation marks to use in any finished piece of writing is zero; I've also read the works of Terry...
