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Chapters don't need to have a title. "Chapter NN" is fine. Or you can have only a title — that's generally when the title identifies some kind of shift, like a different time, location, or narrat...
You are allowed to have the prologue narrated by a different character as long as it is absolutely clear who the narrator is. You do not have to change the whole book. In fact, every chapter can be...
In narration, stay in one tense. "She had green eyes" is fine, because your entire story is in the past tense — the "present-past," if that makes sense. If she had green eyes as a child but has bro...
The idea of the anointed one is as old as recorded history and recorded literature. But we should remember that this idea exists in the context of societies in which everyone has a specific role to...
One reason to give a hero a mark is simply for writing efficiency, between characters in the book. Everybody (in the book) recognizes them, except perhaps children (and often even children). In Ha...
You have several different options here, depending on what effect you're trying to achieve. Chat room dialogue is a little tough to work with, because it's pure dialogue, with no emotion or actio...
I see no reason why you'd treat the punctuation/quote convention any differently for a single letter than for a paragraph. The interaction of punctuation and quote has to do with white space and cl...
If you really think someone is going to use your book as a how-to, then write a preface which is a single large, comprehensive disclaimer. Put all the "don't do this at home" copy there, and if it'...
Go to Preferences > Corrections, and uncheck this: Sentences will no longer automatically capitalize the first letter.
Sometimes it may be difficult to tell if a book is based on real events, but often the book makes this explicit. "Documentary" is a term generally applied to films, not books. But there are books...
So, without having to waste decades on a lost case, or, conversely, without wasting your life in a job you don't enjoy when you could have become the next John Grisham I will key on this state...
Sounds like Scrivener might work nicely for you. You write your pieces in text, you can add graphics, you can view your pieces either in a list or as graphics which you can tag, and you can organiz...
If it's important enough to mention the hour then it's important enough to be clear which one you mean, but using "AM" and "PM" in fiction may not be the best way. If the scene already makes it cl...
There's nothing wrong with the sentence. It's a little flowery, but if that's your style, as long as the reader understands what you intend, it's fine. Your friends may have different tastes in pro...
Names generally have spaces between the initials because they are representing two names, but that's a matter of personal preference. k.d. lang uses periods but not spaces or capitals. e e cummings...
It depends on what kind of writer you are. NaNoWriMo doesn't have anything to do with it. Some people are "pants" or "discovery" writers. Whether they write the whole thing in a month or a year or...
I think you can vary the structure depending on the story. By way of example, mystery writer Jennifer Moss splits her descriptions: of her three novels and one short story, two start with the dete...
I might use an M-dash for the whale example, because it's startling. For the gold watch, that's more of a thoughtful pause, so it would take an ellipsis. Also related on this site: Using dashes i...
I would see the double entendre. As an editor, I would change it to something else. Assemble or install, probably. "Install" to me means "Start with all the pieces, put it together, test to make ...
Add a little stage direction. "We read the letter." She had the grace to look a little shamefaced. "Apologies. Standard procedure." He nodded, even if his heart hurt a little to think the cops ...
What I actually wanted to ask is if I can adapt the writing style and not the story content from the forum. That I can say: "I know how to narrate my characters in this forum so I can do so in b...
I think all your original examples sound fine. Go with your inner ear and let your beta/editor add or remove commas for the sake of grammar. As Bobn points out, the commas indicate pauses, and all ...
Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee sort of did this with the Rama series. The first novel reads startlingly like a history book from the future and focuses on the military and government people who fi...
Third-person (he/she, rather than first-person, which is I) omniscient (all-knowing) means that the narration has access to everyone's thoughts. Whatever character is the focus of the scene is th...
Your best bet is to break down the source into broad mythical elements and rebuild your story from that. Harry's tale is both a coming-of-age and a Hero's Journey, and you don't get much more arc...
