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In my story, one of the main characters finds out that a loved one (parent, lover, friend, doesn't matter) died. Worse still: they find out about it when they find the severed head of that person. ...
I wonder if you write descriptions in a screenplay the same way you write in a novel. For example, I see writers describe the physical effects of the emotion of anger rather than just saying 'angry...
When I study the style of Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and other authors, I find that they use very simple language and simple words. But when I look at present day authors, such as Stephenie ...
I’m writing a story where a vampire pulls a girl into a room so he can feed off her without anyone knowing. What are the things I should consider when I describe her being pulled into a room by hi...
Is it possible that stormy weather can be related to sadness? The weather could be related to gloom?
So two brothers are having a conversation about one wanting not to be a vampire anymore, and asks him if there is a way he can change to human. How do I make the conversation interesting and wantin...
It feels to me like it is up to the author to choose what words will fit more properly. Does it become a paraphrase?
Is it okay to have two characters who had an argument to patch things up offscreen, or do readers explicitly need to see how they made up? None of the two characters in question are the protagonis...
I'm in the middle of my first draft for my novel, and I can't seem to properly convey to my audience the image I'm trying to describe. That's what I want to show my readers, but it's coming acro...
Star Wars IV: We never really get to know Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen, and so when they're burned to a crisp, little pieces of human toast, it's horrific but yeah OK. Not as horrific as if we saw Obi ...
My recollection is that when I started reading romance novels in the 1980s, the majority (perhaps 60%) were written in the third person. This included some "young adult" romances with characters in...
For some time now I've been curious about how to classify a small group of literary works. They include The Secret Garden, Polyanna, and to a lesser extent Anne of Green Gables. I'm sure there are ...
When an author produces a popular fictional work (take Harry Potter) that's translated into many languages not native to the author, who decides how fictional words from that work are translated? ...
The book Slapping the Table in Amazement: A Ming Dynasty Story Collection is: [...] the unabridged English translation of the famous story collection Pai'an jingqi by Ling Mengchu (1580–1644), ...
Good artists copy; great artists steal. This famous Picasso quote often reminds me that the best artworks are rather a mix of many other artworks instead of something completely new. Walt Dis...
There are sometimes moments in works of fiction where the author needs to convey something to the reader without ambiguity. Let's say the situations around the characters get so weird that the auth...
In Word it's quite easy to stop the CApitalization OF THe FIrst TWo LEtters, but I cannot figure out how to do it on Scrivener. How would I auto-correct this error?
On another site, I wrote a critical review of a book that featured a "King Frederic II" of France who reigned between 1777-1819. I pointed out that this was a particularly unfortunate time to confu...
My question is: How much can one deviate from the topic sentence before transitioning to a second paragraph becomes a better idea? For example, if a topic sentence consists of an assertion, then ...
Is there any software for making non-linear story or dialogues? I tried MS Word/Google Docs but that's not good for dialogues. In one complicated dialogue I wrote in Google Drawings, it looks like ...
This question is a followup to my earlier question. Continuing the dialog with my one critic, I wrote back that I believed that certain "foreshadowing" was necessary. Then I added something like, ...
I'm writing a war sci-fi novel. At the start of the novel, my MC really wants to get into a particular unit, let's call it Space-Marines. His struggle through the training serves to showcase his hi...
I am writing a story where the character is reading a writing from someone in Europe during 1348. The thing is I don't know how a person from that time would speak or write. The line they are read...
This is a problem I usually come across with my stories. I often worry about whether the plotlines I introduce are realistic or not, and it's usually something that can't be solved with a simple Go...
A geek today is quite likely to reference the pop culture of 30 years ago: "Do or do not, there is no try", "Beam me up, Scotty" and "Ground control to Major Tom" are easily and commonly recognisab...
