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The chapters in my middle-grade novel are all over the map (408-1712 words). So far it hasn't been a problem, as I end them at natural stopping points, but this may be something I have to fix when...
Fantasy racism is normal In my experience of fantasy works as well as in my own writing racism does exist between the various races. Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves are the most obvious example. Dwarf...
Shorter chapters for shorter books, but you don't have to. I mostly read novels on longer side, epic fantasy and similar. In these chapter length varies widely from author to author. The most comm...
I'm a discovery writer, I don't name every character, or even every character with lines. Here's a waitress (I just made up) with two lines: The waitress approached, a smiling young girl that h...
I say don't censor your "discovery" -- include the names of everyone -- they may come back in later, or you may want to explore their story in a specific vignette. (I'm thinking of Neil Gaiman's Sa...
With a few exceptions, every one of my characters has a name, gender, age, and family relationship. A large percentage also have a backstory. I have well over 100 characters. As others have said...
The main benefit is that people see your copyright as legitimate. To be sure, some people take ebooks and copy them and stick them right back on to Amazon under their own name and with all the m...
+1 SF, emotional impact is important. But basically the advice is the same: Stay technical. If on first impression, you "don't like" a poem, ask yourself if you weren't intended to like it. To tak...
Guilty. I'm one of the people who told you to do seemingly impossible things. The truth is, sometimes you can't. Shadowing someone at their job or activity is often really really hard, and nobod...
I don't buy any of the "ask an expert" notions either; although here on StackExchange you may find some experts in certain fields, I've been impressed with a few here on Writing, and others on Worl...
I guess I do this analytically, and naturally. Naturally because we all know other people that are unlike us, yet we have mental models of what they like, don't like, would do, and wouldn't do. I h...
It isn't exactly empty; a spreading circle of fire might look like a growing crown; with high fire on the perimeter and no fire in the middle. (But ending with "on its way" throws me, it should be ...
A line that refuses to be the right length is one of the struggles with writing poetry. Here's how I (try to) deal with it. Consider what it is you're saying, in that line, and in the lines around...
This is probably a variation on other answers. I often ask family and friends what they would do in the situations in which I put my characters, and why they would do so. I struck a conversation o...
Almost always it is legally fine. There is one major exception: Nazi symbology is banned in quite a few countries. And there are isolated examples of other symbols banned in individual countries, b...
I wrote some steampunk. In the plot, there were some elements that the reader should take as novelty, and they were presented with great emphasis. Other elements were supposed to be common in the w...
One of my favorite "constraints" is that the audience is more willing to accept things. If it's a film/video/tv, they expect some realism. If it's a play, instead of needing to go On Location, a ...
When writing a book of your own, you absolutely can use other books on the topic as references. And you can quote those other books. In both cases, you want to credit the other book. For quote...
There are no rules. Many people read and enjoy stories without looking for or considering allegories. Heck, the Wizard of Oz is supposed to be an allegory for the politics of the 1890's, who watchi...
Stage productions aren't just about the script. In your corpse example, there are several ways to handle it and it depends on the director more than the playwright. The corpses pile up and then ...
When describing the scenery, your goal isn't only to convey dry information (there are houses, there are trees, etc.). Your goal is to evoke some emotion, some feeling. Your key to extending the de...
+1 Galastel. I would add to her answer memories. If my MC has never seen it before, how does what she see connect in her memory? What has she been told about this place? By whom? If she has bee...
You have the legal right to reuse elsewhere what you post on Stack Exchange. It's your content. When posting to SE, you give SE a nonexclusive license to use it, and doing so requires that it's yo...
In works that aren't strictly visual novels, where players/readers might not expect their choices to matter, then visual indicators work well to remind them that yes, the choice they just made will...
Be concise, factual, polite, clear and sincere all at once I don't believe there is a single correct way to write a comment on this site. The help centre advice on comments tells us how and when t...
