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The two I can think of off the top of my head are Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dirk Gently, et al.) “Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl...
What is needed is a definite story shape. Stories are not merely a sequence of incidents. There is a definite progression. The protagonist has a desire. That desire is frustrated. The protagonist a...
Joseph Conrad was one of the greatest novelists ever to write in the English language. He was born in Poland and did not become fluent in English until his twenties. It can be done. But writing a...
There is no universal public opinion of any author. People read of pleasure and for edification. There are various pleasure you can get from reading, and various forms of edification. Some hold tha...
"they would have gone from children to teens to young adults" is called a Bildungsroman, or a coming of age story. It's a classic and perfectly serviceable plot journey. Your plot is based on each ...
Plots twist. Stories don't. Sometimes a plot twist will show that reader that the arc of the story was something other than what they were expecting. But the story still needs to have a satisfying ...
The climax of the action of a story is not necessarily (or even usually) the climax of the moral arc of the story. The climax of the action is the crucible in which the hero is tested and purified....
Italic text is the most common format for telepathic communications. Savil spotted the soldiers filing into the pass and called up to her nephew. Get into position. They're here, she sent. A...
The best way to give the reader the sense the the character speaking is angry is through the words they say, not through the description of how they say it. Make the word angry and you don't need t...
Your trouble in finding a word is that it does not exist. You will need to use adjectives and other descriptions to properly describe it. My first piece of advice would be to find a good example ...
Sherlock Holmes is famous for deducing answers to puzzles from observation. He was widely and deeply read, although he also deliberately forgot information which he felt wasn't important. He was a ...
It sounds great. I think what's throwing you is that you're expecting to get the story from both protagonist and antagonist perspectives. Just focus on the hero. His or her story will have the grea...
Not every novel has an antagonist. Basic story structure is about desire and the things that frustrate desire. The thing that frustrates desire does not have to be a person -- an antagonist. In man...
You are telling a story, not a history. There are times in the history of the character when the arc of the story is not progressing. That really does not matter as long as the story arc continues ...
Option 1 will probably be easiest. Create a Part or Section break and give it a name: Part II, Rivendell, The War. You indicate the passage of time with some kind of identifying text at the beginni...
In the classic model of a story, the protagonist pursues their desire to the limits of their endurance, concluding in some profound change or revelation (depending on whether you think people can c...
If you're not telling a humorous story, and your protagonists come across something which looks like it should be funny but ends up being deadly, then you have a Killer Rabbit situation. Bear wit...
Most slogans and rallying cries are banal in themselves. Terri's example of "Remember the Alamo" is a case in point. Unless you do remember the Alamo, and unless you care about what happened there,...
Prices are set based on supply and demand. Cost of production has nothing to do with it, except to determine whether a product is worth producing.
Freelance writing, as a career, is enormously oversubscribed. At the bottom of the market there are far too many writers chasing far too little work, and therefore prices are rock bottom and market...
Show a little preview. Pick one thing which is small and easy to do: call Fire. So your character can light a cooking fire. But Fire can be used for a lot of things: a lamp, a furnace, a hot air b...
All you need to do is establish the idea of progress in magic. You need to introduce the reader to the magic system as it stands at the beginning, sure. But for this case, you also need to demonst...
This strikes me as a semantic quibble. You can have a section in which the stories of various main characters are told before some larger action commences. Lots of novels have multiple parts, often...
I think it depends on what the main problem is in the novel. If the main problem is technical in nature, the reader needs to have some sense of what it technically possible. If the main problem is ...
Proper names get capitalized. Generic names don't. Federal Bureau of Sparkly Vampires Department of Redundancy Department Imperial Dogwalkers Consortium The Sacred Order of Turnip Twaddlers The C...
