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Simply telling, e.g. he said with a heavy Gujarati accent would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair. What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you...
No drawbacks, except for quoting trademarks, and for setting expectations. Quoting trademarked sentences may be bad "I'm lovin' it." may have the drawback of a fast-food chain sending the...
In the US, an author holds the copyright to his work for all his life, and his heirs hold it for 70 years after his death, at which point the work becomes public domain. (source) In other countries...
Put question marks when you have rising intonation. I suggest you read your poem out loud. Do this multiple times and really do it out loud, not just in your head. Try it with and without the qu...
The twin tropes you are referring to are Deus ex Machina and Diabolus es Machina. In both cases an event comes out of nowhere, not foreshadowed, to effect a drastic change. Both tropes are frowned...
I would say anything that seems to come out of nowhere is unrealistic fiction, unless the fact that it comes out of nowhere is fairly concealed. For example, I can make my protagonist's father a c...
I separate my narrator from my main character's voice. I do not write in first person, I write in 3rd person limited, with a deep POV. (Deep 3PL). Meaning, for those unfamiliar, my narrator knows t...
Focus Summary: choose wisely the necessary "difficult" words that you need to set the tone, the style and the setting, and avoid all the others. The absolute basic is that any story can be told w...
Start with a wind blowing through the normal world As others have stated, you need to start in the normal world because we need to understand who the main character is, how they live, what they lo...
I don't think you should describe the accent, what you should describe is the effect that accent has on a listener. Obviously if the listener has the same accent, then the effect is zero. (An exce...
I do not know the source of that claim you heard, but I think you're taking it too literally. Generally, most authors just use their name. There's nothing about the name "J.R.R. Tolkien" or "Terry ...
Don't, under (almost) any circumstances write a Roman-script foreign language "the way it is pronounced". It is not helpful to anyone. If I (as your reader) don't speak Spanish, the text is gibber...
When asked some variant of "Where do I start?" my mom likes to joke "Start at the beginning, go all the way through the middle, and when you get to the end, stop." In this case, that might make sen...
Nearly all stories, including novels and movies and even comic book series, begin with the MC in their "normal world." There is no law demanding that, other than the laws of economics: We want the ...
As far as we know, in our Universe all stories could start from the Big Bang. Or from the primordial soup if we want to stick to living beings on planet Earth. Does it make sense to do so? Imagine...
We use tenses to establish a temporal order between statements and from there derive chronology and causality between facts. If you mess that up, no one will be able to follow the stream of events ...
For some, writing is a job, or a significant part of their job. They write to earn a living. They sometimes write more than needed because they need to put down ideas, streamline thoughts and just ...
I am completely ignorant of LitRPG. It is entirely possible that some reader get pleasure from the insight into these numerical statistics alongside with the plot. The OP question suggests however ...
In a story that isn't set in our normal here-and-now, be it fantasy, science fiction, historic fiction, or something else, you need to establish what's normal for your setting, and what isn't. As a...
Yes, please start in the MC's Normal World. The point of beginning in The Normal World is directly related to the inciting incident: Namely, the inciting incident has the potential to change the c...
Read about and learn story structure. This is not to plot your story, but to understand the types of writing in each part of a story. I break the 3 act structure into four equal parts; each of whic...
I am not on the autistic spectrum, and I confess that it is not obvious to me to what extent and in what manner you plan to characterize your character. On the other hand, I think that your problem...
Lots of novels go into detail about music, movies, TV shows, and other art and culture relevant during the setting of the book. Also technology. In some cases the cultural details are important...
I think the main advantage is interior life. You can use narration or thoughts to give us what one character is (or several are) thinking. That's hard to do visually without a cabbagehead character...
There's nothing wrong with mentioning specific songs or tech in this way. And while it's not lazy writing to use songs as a tool for conveying a character's mood it is to rely on them solely. Expe...
