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It's essential that you tell us more about the characters or the context in order for us (as readers) to know who to cheer for. Consider a scene ripped from the middle of a(ny) Wolverine story. If...
You do it by limiting the narrator's gaze. You can describe things from the point of view of one or more characters, who haven't yet figured out the secret identities of the celebrity characters. ...
Two years ago I took a course with a new professor in our university - a fresh immigrant from the US, who had to teach in Hebrew. Said professor is one of the most brilliant researchers at our facu...
The other answers here are all to do with making the character come across as intelligent in conversation. There is a flip-side to this, which probably bears mention: Non-verbal cues. Consider t...
Insight. Or, if you're so smart --- Prove It! I think you misunderstand intelligent people, and I wouldn't rely on vocabulary to indicate it in the first place. I am a professor in a university, ...
It sounds like you are worried that he (or someone) might scam you. There is no special legal status for an editor (beta or otherwise) that would protect your ideas or actual writing more than f...
I feel like this question is very broad. The majority of writing (especially fiction) is about writing things you've never experienced. I would say the majority of answers will be the same thing: ...
One possibility to increase or cause the main character emotional problems would be to have the ending of the fight witnessed by his mother or a teacher (assuming a modern setting). The young prot...
"I am writing a story about a boy and a girl who are in love, but can't be together. Is my story too similar to Romeo and Juliet?" See what I mean? Many stories share similarities. If one story is...
You can make your tale less similar by changing the characters, plot, location and/or theme but please don't. The world needs more Harry Potter (HP) type books where good triumphs over evil over a ...
From the description you've given, I don't think your book is really all that similar to Harry Potter. Sure, they have some elements in common, but you have a lot of differences as well. However I ...
In addition to what GGx and robertcday have mentioned, it is because the submissions you are talking about, the over the transom submissions, are their lowest priority. Publishing houses, agencies,...
Keep in mind that many small journals are staffed by volunteers that have to fit their manuscript reviews into their lives along with everything else. Some of the bigger magazines, which get more s...
He sounds like a social character who has got all the attention a teenager (I'm not assuming he is one) could want - it’s good if he has some goals but too many would get tedious - what is the most...
You have your trope (The Scrappy) wrong; the trope you are looking for is called Good Is Not Nice. The Scrappy is disliked and stays disliked and does nothing to redeem himself from being disliked...
If I were a rich man, all day long I'd sit and write. To elaborate: What do you eat while you're writing your first novel? Did you manage to get your first novel published? What do you eat until...
I knocked several times but no one answered. No more than that. Any emotional response to knocking and getting no answer has to be set up in advance. Show us that a reply was expected. Show us...
In essence, you're asking how to convey dread of a past event, past threat. There are several ways to do that. Elders shaking in fear at the mere mention of "threat" is cheap. It can be used in co...
I would say, in plain English, a "method" is an approach to accomplishing something without any guarantee of success. An "algorithm" implies greater accuracy, dealing with well-defined and consist...
I think the answer to your question lies in the very problem you're having. You say you've created a character whose language is so clean it's almost comical, and you yourself feel awkward when yo...
One mistake early writers make, is writing to directly influence the reader. The minute I say this, the retort is Isn't that the whole point? Yes, but influencing the reader is not the kind of th...
If X gets hurt in a fight, recovers, gets hurt in a new fight, recovers again, etc. that is going to start to get boring. If you want to avoid boring your readers, fights need to have consequences...
how can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it? Why do you think you're implicitly supporting it, to begin with? Many fantasy stories (too many to list) include kill...
Powered armour of some description is a boon to any author who doesn't want to kill off characters, the armour can take debilitating damage without ever harming the occupant making it easy to put c...
Make every injury worse than the last. The first time you get badly hurt, you may think its the worst pain you've ever experienced. (You may look back on it later and think you overreacted, but ev...
