Search
Even if you're thinking of this as primarily a learning project, I would advise trying to get it into publishable shape rather than abandoning it and starting a new one. As you said, it's work you...
My pet theory on this is that all story conflict is moral. That is, it is a conflict between values. If a big pile of rocks falls on the road and our hero picks them up one by one and moves them ...
A fantastic book which will explain these differences in far more depth than I can here is : The Playwright's Guidebook (Amazon). Even though you are writing a novel, I believe you'll find the expl...
A good Setting vs. Plot conflict I always like to use to demonstrate this is the Disney Film "Mulan". The Setting is Ancient China and the Plot is "Mulan must defeat the leader of the Huns, Shan ...
This is a great question, DPT! I would say that conflict doesn't always have to be taken in the literal sense. For example: Your protagonist has an orc friend she travels with. a conflict can ari...
Imagine it in terms of the types of stories you would tell your friends. If it is a sequence of events go screenplay (had a crazy night last night, this happened then this happened then this happe...
I misunderstood, rewriting. Yes, capitalize it; it is essentially their name if that is how people refer to the character.
A descriptor, or anything else being used in place of a proper noun is capitalized as if it were a proper noun, because it essentially is one. You would typically not capitalize the unless it is a...
Screenplays are rather short story, when you think about it. A typical screenplay is 120 pages double-spaced, and 25% dialogue and 50% action. That is 30 pages of dialogue, but the margins (2.9, 2....
I wouldn't repeat them, but there's nothing wrong with referring to the description to remind the reader (though there's a good chance this is what you meant - apologies if so). If your character ...
They might represent the villain's fate, but in that case they shouldn't come from nowhere they should be almost ever-present like vultures waiting for him to show weakness. This might be why they ...
I think it is tokenism, by virtue of the fact that tokenism is indeed your stated intent! In fact you may weaken the tokenism by saying the character is also fastidious; most of us consider a high ...
Short answer, yes, if you make one character a vegetarian to espouse that viewpoint you are coming close to tokenism. You haven't said much about the world you are building. But I figure it's eith...
I think humans are more than well-represented in your story so far. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who eventually crammed pretty much all of Europe plus Asia into a Sherlock Holmes story at some poin...
Have the character day dream. You don't have to reveal it is a dream and they are bored until it is over. There is a whole story on this. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber.
"Best", of course, is subjective. However, here are a couple of suggestions. https://wordpress.com/ is another well known blogging site where users can discover other blogs to read and follow. h...
I have a son who is eleven years old. He reads most of his books on his own, but sometimes, just for fun, I read a chapter or two to him at night – or I even read some of his Middle Grade fiction m...
It's been mentioned on this board before, but rules which arbitrarily declare any part of a language off-limits are ridiculous. They may be meant to give guardrails to new writers, but all they end...
Lauren's analysis is excellent. But there is one thing to add. Language is not a machine. It does not work by machine rules. It works by context and suggestion. Her father had given it to her....
Editors edit. Often for the better. Sometimes for the worse. When an editor edits something in a way that changes the original meaning it is a sign that, however clear the statement was to you, y...
Dry is not a precise or technical term in writing. It is more of an I-don't-know-what-it-is-but-I-know-I-don't-like-it term. There are a lot of those in writing because in the end it is the total e...
In biomedical science, you have the opportunity to discuss the human health impacts (and bring in broader societal ramifications) of the medical issues you're covering. My guess is that you reviewe...
+1 DPT. As a peer-reviewer for scientific articles, I would not use "dry" but I suspect it means you have no particular factual errors but the paper is a boring review anyway. For example, provid...
Setting is character. Where you meet someone tells you something about them. It may tell you a lot or it may tell you a little. It may tell you the most significant thing you need to know about the...
I would do the room first. This is a matter of your style. I personally write with very spare descriptions of what people LOOK like, and focus almost entirely on what they feel (or how my POV char...
