Search
A story is like a scientific experiment. You have to isolate the subject of study from outside influences in order to focus on its properties. Setting is the main tool that novelists use to achieve...
Using a colon in your writing is a difficult choice when it comes to fictional writing. For academic writing it's quite easy to remember. A colon is used before a list and that's about it. You coul...
The Earth was not at its place. That was of course impossible. But Alice had checked all the data several times, and the space ship definitely was at the place where the Earth should be. Except t...
Birds of a feather flock together. This is a universal truth and one that you ignore in a story to your peril. A story which ignores this truth may check a bunch of ideological conformity check box...
You have to accept that different readers will have differing levels of patience for this sort of character. But the universal thing that pushes every reader out of a story is characters performing...
One of the most important aspects of writing both fiction and non-fiction is managing the reader's attention. Parts of a scene are for atmosphere. They are meant to flesh out the setting so that it...
This question presumes are rather economic view of redemption. If the number of good deeds exceeds the number of bad deeds,the characters is redeemed. If their assets exceed the debts, they are red...
"this isn't what I thought I was reading"? This is the key phrase. The reader needs some idea of what kind of book this is. But this is where genre conventions come to your rescue. Each genre ha...
As a quick thought, many species lay eggs and are not birds. Personally, I would find a second feature from a non-bird egg-laying species (or a sporulating species, or an asexual species) and plant...
I pretty much agree with what's been stated about the examples you gave. Writing, particularly fiction writing, usually focuses on evoking emotions in the reader. We often read fiction because we ...
Like this answer, I don't think you need to use first-person to get into a character's head. I want to focus a little more on how to do that in omniscient third-person. An omniscient narrator can...
Notice that you don't "click" a mouse. You point to an object with the mouse point and you press the mouse button. And the mouse button makes a clicking sound. Click is not an action, it is feedbac...
Having thought much about this question since I proposed it, I am going to suggest a somewhat abstract answer: A happy ending is one in which perfection meets desire. That is, the ending which is ...
I just noticed a small problem: When editing a comment, you get a miniscule comment box. Fortunately it can be resized.
The point of view of a story is the point from which the reader experiences the story. What you do with point of view should be based on what the reader will want to experience at any given point i...
For many of us, our first dive into writing consists of writing plot-driven stories peopled by one note characters, characters who are just types with a name assigned to them. That's fine. Writing ...
Of course it's allowed, but only if you punctuate it correctly! The mark you want to use is known as an interrobang. Say what‽ Yes that's right, there are more punctuation marks available than th...
Calling this completed. I've raised the file size limit to 2MB, and I've added some information in the UI to inform you of that limit when you're uploading images.
Writing is judged both objectively and subjectively. Bad grammar, bad spelling, generic labels, clichés, etc can be objectively identified. Long passages of uninterrupted dialog can be objectively...
One way to shorten a piece of writing effectively is to remove any duplication. Sometimes, we repeat something for effect, to highlight how important it is, but it can be effective to remove dupl...
Try looking for places where you're overly wordy. Your third sentence for example is clunky and seems to be trying to fit in words for the sake of getting close to the maximum. I'd re-arrange it...
There were multiple proper courses of action. 1) Refuse to let him publish it under your name, and retract permission to use the paragraphs you wrote. You did not write it, it was a first person n...
Depending on the type of comic you're creating, there are several ways. Comics have the added benefit of placing narrative directly with the picture. You can simply introduce it through that meth...
I am a discovery writer, I have been for many years, and I complete stories. Scrap your outline. Most discovery writers (including me) have struggled with what you are talking about; finding the ...
I have recently finished my 25,000 word novella and contacted some publishers and agents about a month ago. I have only heard back from a couple rejecting me but considering the format of my boo...
