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A simile usually implies more than the mere appearance. In the comparison you link two entities that share some features. Sometimes the common elements are marked explicitly, for instance: her ha...
First of all, mazel tov! Your next step is to publish the book. This means that the book is in a final form and either printed on paper with a cover or in an e-book format. It also means you hav...
In general, writing for the web is expected to be shorter, with briefer sentences, paragraphs, and sections. I have found PlainLanguage.gov's guidelines extremely helpful. (I linked to the "be con...
No, you don't need to convey a moral. And probably shouldn't. Many blog posts are just informative and explanatory about what is going on in the world, from your point of view. The scope can be gl...
Many readers will not read everything you are writing. They will skim through everything you present them and will decide which of the things interest them and which do not. The most important way ...
It is not unusual for the main character, or the POV character (not necessarily the same thing) to be a writer. There's even a trope for this: Most Writers are Writers (tvtropes link). A famous ex...
"Write and cite" is good practice that you should start getting accustomed to early on. The longer the piece you write, the more sources you would have to juggle. Now, imagine there are twenty arti...
Sometimes when someone asks "which should I do first when writing?" the answer is "whichever one you want." For example, I'm writing a historical novel requiring a lot of research. While I'm a re...
You've said it yourself: 18 = life. It follows that had there only been 17 travellers, they would not have come home alive. Preferably every child, but particularly the stowaway, must have a crucia...
How difficult/dangerous is their quest? You can have the 18 travelers manage to escape from dangerous situations unhurt time and time again, and generally keep having miraculously good luck. Simila...
I see two parts to your question: signaling that 18 is significant, and signaling why it is significant. Assuming that you'll have Jewish readers too, don't skimp on the first part -- you want to ...
You can use factorization. Some task takes 6 groups of 3, say making camp. Another takes 3 groups of six, say one group of six stands watch while the other two sleep. At some point, they divide int...
Certainly it's okay to have people (or animals) die in middle-grade fiction. I mean, Bambi (the movie) is rated G and young Bambi sees his mother murdered before his eyes. Ditto with dad in The L...
It depends on your intended audience. If your audience is literature professors, then you can use pretty long and complex sentences, as long as you make sure that they are reasonably well-written....
An example of an interesting story with an unlikeable/unsympathetic POV character is The Stranger, by Albert Camus. The POV character (Meursault) is fairly detached from the action - there's no emo...
A real-life case of this (not a self-help book but a cookbook) is the book (and movie) Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. Julie Powell's book is about her experienc...
It seems to me many paranormal stories (like possession, or demons on Earth) just begin with the paranormal, period. In The Exorcist a child is possessed and must be cured. In The Omen, Damien (th...
You have two problems here: Lots of good people dying, "on stage" - in front of the children Good people killing other good people The first is dealt with very well in The Hobbit, for example...
This kind of killing is never done with a light heart. While you can easily jump over the act itself, you can show the turmoil and torment that goes through the mind of those that have to execute i...
Epilogues are very common in a variety of novels, as well as movies (sometimes they're filmed, sometimes they're prose on the screen). My own novel has both a prologue and an epilogue, but I guess...
You might choose to do a series of vignettes. Break the novel down into many short chapters, each one with a different set of characters. You won't be spending much time on any one character but...
Like @Rasdashan, I am a discovery writer. My characters take shape as I write. You might find that this approach works for you too. That said, since you wish to write about a group of characters, ...
Hide their goals. You are writing about professionals. They would be less than amateurs in their line of business if they were to reveal their goal so easily. In fact, revealing one's goal gives t...
Names are almost never globally unique. This is true whether the owner chooses or the owner's parents do. Author Alex Feinman even has a note on his web site (.net) saying "looking for the other ...
Follow the rules set out on the page you want to copy from. The railway schedule is part of the Bob MacIntosh Collection. Bob has given the DARDPI wiki permission to use his image collection ...
