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Q&A Writing diversity

I am writing a military sci-fi novel about an international military force facing aliens. My cast is very diverse: the MC is Yemenite-Israeli, his love interest is German, his room-mates are from G...

5 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Galastel‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction characters
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Q&A How do you do "beta reading" for a game before the game is ready?

Say I want to work on a game and, since I'm not very good at creating games yet, I want to work on the story first and foremost. Before I even want to commit to creating the game, I want to do get ...

1 answer  ·  posted 7y ago by noClue‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question videogame readers beta-readers
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Q&A How to balance respecting diversity and avoiding tokenism at the same time

My project has an environmental theme. My characters eat meals, and because of the setting, this includes meat and eggs. Some environmentally - friendly friends find those scenes very distasteful...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by DPT‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question characters character-development
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Q&A Is it a deus ex machina if the alternative is illogical?

Background: I know to avoid Deus Ex Machinas - meaning to me a sudden and unexpected solution arriving out of nowhere to save an otherwise unsolvable problem. They are often indicative of a writer ...

4 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Thomas Myron‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question plot deus-ex-machina readers twist
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Q&A How unadvisable is it to flip the protagonist into a villain?

Essentially, I have a protagonist who I set up as a 'main' good guy in one of my series. However, in my final series, I intend to make him turn to the dark side and oppose my other protagonists (fr...

4 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Adi219‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question plot antagonist protagonist
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Q&A Is it a good idea to make the protagonist unlikable while making the supporting characters more likable?

My protagonist is a very shitty person that makes bad decisions for the wrong reasons. They do eventually redeem themselves, not because of their own decisions, but because the supporting character...

3 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by shitty_author‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question characters
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Q&A How to compactly explain secondary and tertiary characters without resorting to stereotypes?

Sure, I understand the characters, but that's because I've been thinking about them. But how do I transfer that knowledge to the reader without taking the time and space to flesh them out further?...

4 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by RonJohn‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question character-development tropes
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Q&A Fleshing out the character motivation from the plot

I decided to give a try to the snowflake method. The idea is that you gradually expand the story from a blurb into a full draft. This question stems from the character-characterization step, but it...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question planning technique characters motivation snowflake
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Q&A Creating simple jokes

Sometimes in the process of writing dialogue, I wish to insert a joke in the exchange. I could copy an existing joke, or I could come up with one. The latter option seems preferable if I could tie ...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question humor creative-writing
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Q&A Poetry when unstructured?

Like most kids, I went through the All Poetry Must Rhyme phase. Then a little later in school, rhyme was less essential (especially in English, a less rhyme-compatible language than many other ...

0 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by April Salutes Monica C.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question poetry structure
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Q&A Is there a "writer's room" for poetry?

Is poetry always a solo endeavor? TV scriptwriting is classically done in a Writer's Room, where the show-runner outlines the main plot/character beats for a season, they and senior writers break ...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by April Salutes Monica C.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question poetry collaboration
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Q&A Publishing Poetry

(I searched combined tags for publishing & poetry, and only found a few older questions, detailed below.) So - Spring 2019 - where do poets publish now? Is it all self-publish, have the few m...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by April Salutes Monica C.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question publishing poetry
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Q&A How to show that a character cares for another, but is also clumsy?

This is about a father who returns after a particularly long journey. Typically, he's not available very often anyway, but he deeply cares about his daughter. He also fails at behaving like a fathe...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by davcha‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question character-development emotions
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Q&A Vague vs Specific: When to provide motivation details for action in a story?

I'm reading Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron, where she writes the following about being vague or omitting information that the reader does not know: ...being vague is never a good idea... .....

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by iamtowrite‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question novel fiction style
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Q&A Making science for toddlers easy to remember

I have been intending to create a book for toddlers with basic scientific notions in it. Most books for this target readership that I have seen present whatever content in the form of a story, quit...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction poetry technique non-fiction children science
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Q&A Relationship Problems

In my plot, there are these 2 characters who were originally close to each other. However, they had an argument and broke up. In the end of the book, though, they get back together again. What I ne...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Jaystar‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question romance flow narrative
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Q&A Plain language with long required phrases

I am trying to create documentation for an application, and it's for end users who use keyboard (not mouse) and a screen reader. Some of our conventions require us to always use the full phrase ...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by April Salutes Monica C.‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction style non-fiction technical-writing
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Q&A Which techniques maintain reader interest when the POV is a spectator? (Sports story as sidequest?)

In my case, my character is literally a spectator. They're at a sporting event. There will be a major event which ramps up their plotline that occurs at this event, but I'm finding the event itself...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Kirk‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question fiction plot scene pov subplot
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Q&A Are submission services worth pursuing?

I have found a company called Writer’s Relief. Their service is to write compelling submission and query letters to genre appropriate agents and publishers. They ask for a synopsis, fifteen pages ...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Rasdashan‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question publishing agent submitting-work
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Q&A Does detail obscure or enhance action?

I have two versions of a pivotal scene in my novel (both already written). My SP is a rather impulsive young woman who is learning to be a bit less of a hothead. She saves the MC by literally taki...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Rasdashan‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question plot character-development combat narrative subplot
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Q&A How is the monetary value of a single submission determined?

I have read couple of submission guidelines and publisher notes that pays on the "word" unit for descriptive essays, articles and lists. (For ex, 2₹/word). Then there are different guidelines for p...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Karan Desai‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question publishing submitting-work money reviewing
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Q&A Creating character imagery without describing their physical looks

This is more for my own curiosity than anything else but I was wondering if when reading about a character with no specified gender and no description of their looks, does the choice of words used ...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Sparrowonfire‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question description characters script
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Q&A Including letters and other documents in a memoir

Writing my memoirs. I would like an opinion on how best to include 4 pages of letters/fax/emails. How about a 20-page composition? as addendum/exhibit? Too long to include in manuscript? Thanks for...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Jaensch‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question structure formatting memoir format
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Q&A Is elaborating the opposite case in brackets acceptable and clear?

Is Sentence A an acceptable and clear way of shortening Sentence B? Sentence A: A firm outperforms (underperforms) the industry when expression (1) results in a positive (negative) value. S...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Bento‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question academic-writing
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Q&A Is it important to consider tone, melody, and musical form while writing a song?

Be it Mowgli and balu singing Bare Necessities or Enrique singing Somebody's Me, each song (or poem) has their way of being sung. Were such songs written after selection of musical note, tone, and ...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Karan Desai‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Question process lyrics