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You have too many characters As soon as your characters begin to resemble each other, you have more characters than you are able to deal with. It might be a problem of having more characters than...
With four weeks still to go, the emphasis on your thesis has shifted from one of presentation to one of finding out what went wrong. This will lead you to three probable outcomes : 1) You discover...
Worldbuilding gives you the setting in which to tell a story. It is not the story itself. As a writer you need to wear many different hats. Architect is one hat, and editor is another, but the o...
I would like to say that the thoughts take place in the present, given that they are narrating what is happening around them.
For some reason, when I read this question, my thoughts were immediately drawn to the book The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. At one point in the classic science fiction story, the protagonist is...
Very fun question. Is it a paradox that "the Chosen One" is the only one that can defeat the great evil they face, or are they "the Chosen One" because they are the only one that can face it? I don...
This is the beauty of the Oracle scene in the Matrix and the Beauty of Breaking the Vase (Upon entering the Oracle's kitchen, the Oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. Neo looks around for...
As @Galastel has already noted, the standard documentary approach is to film everything, and then to craft a story only at the end, and through the editing process. This is because the story you m...
I don't want to make it too obvious before the reveal. OK, question: why not? Consider the fundamental structure of a plot twist, or a reveal. It's usually either: Reader is expecting A; ha...
You are writing in the order that is important in that situation. There is no clear rule and you can vary from situation to situation. For example you could simply start with the first one to ent...
The defining characteristic of the thriller genre is suspense. That is, the audience expects something bad to happen. Suspense can be created if the audience knows more than the main character. Fo...
The problem here is that by giving him a clearly understandable (even if evil, misantropic) goal, you're making your Fenrisúlfr more human-like. Sure, we can say - by rough sketch - that it wants ...
There are quite a few critically acclaimed novels that feature only a single character. For example, William Golding's Pincher Martin tells of how the protagonist reaches a rock in the sea after a ...
A chapter generally needs a miniature conflict and arc of its own, and as such must have some kind of tension. As you pointed out, having multiple characters makes it somewhat easy, but a character...
Love the question! IMO It is very distinct from the gore fest that makes a good horror. A good thriller will grab your interest - you won't be able to put it down. It will sometimes leave you br...
Possible ways include: One night she has a dream about him. It need not be erotic, or even romantic, just the two of them in the same situation. Some detail of his appearance, manner, speech, etc...
If it's what you're going for thematically, that their duality leads to mutual destruction, then by all means do it. As long as the story builds to that, there's no reason not to do it. If you're ...
Ditto to the other answers. I break it down into specific goals. Each pass requires about a week. Check commas and other grammatical issues. Fix instances of passive voice. Make character voices c...
I see this a lot in unpublished writing (including my own early drafts): "I entered the room and saw a red couch and a bookcase. I thought it was a particularly nice red. I heard the clock ticking....
As the others have said; you are doing too much telling. As a rule of thumb; don't impart information about the character or environment if it is something they would not be thinking about at the t...
LISA's main character is called Brad because Dingaling's father was called Brad, and he associated the idea of father with that name. He loved his father so much, he renamed his studio to LOVEBRAD ...
The em dash does not mean pause. There is no piece of punctuation that means pause. The em dash is a more emphatic substitute for the comma, colon, or parentheses and can be used to indicate omitte...
It depends. Are you in an omniscient perspective? Are you in a limited perspective? If limited, you'd only describe those attributes that the point-of-view character notices. So, if the point of v...
Remember your own days at school? Some people you knew well - they were your friends. Some you didn't know so well - classmates you weren't close with. Perhaps there were the people you didn't get ...
I am confused here of whether I should describe each and every character with detail for readers to understand that character's norms, habits, beliefs and nature? Do not do that. All that mat...
