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I think this is very much a matter of the overall narrative style of the work. Some narrative styles will give you great liberty to do this, some will make it very difficult or forced. The question...
While it might not be "professional," there are about eleventy gazillion words of meta-analysis (shortened to just meta) of the BBC's Sherlock, easily accessible on Tumblr by looking for the approp...
To me, the phrase Show don't Tell can have only one clear meaning, and it comes down to what it means to show. Show means to describe what the reader would see for themselves if they were present i...
I agree you must tell some things; but I think you can embed those tellings in a "showing": Anna shifted the sword on her back for the tenth time since morning, the strap refused to rest in that...
The starting point here has to be to ask yourself whether you are writing a novel or a polemic. If your story is just an excuse to make an argument against some form of discrimination, then you are...
Most writing contests have a fee to enter because they need the fees to pay for the prizes. In fact, a lot of small magazines need fees from their writing contests just to stay in business. A few ...
Since your book is about a young girl coming to understand the world they way it is (which sounds much like a coming-of-age story for a teen or pre-teen, or perhaps a coming-to-adulthood story for ...
We can't tell you how to write your story, but this is a kind of question that comes up from time to time, the sort that asks: "What is the correct way to do this thing?" Making a rule for yourself...
There's no one right answer, but generally I'd say it's too much when it slows down your narrative and you don't want it to. For example: John looked through the two windows to see Sherlock s...
If your book is going to be published by a traditional publishing house, they'll format it however they like. If your book is going to be self-published, you can format it however you like. Go ahe...
Ultimately this is a question of psychology or perhaps neurology. How does human memory work? But I think it is reasonable to suggest is that what people remember is a novel is story and the things...
In addition to Mark's excellent advice, I would suggest: 1) Start slowly. In Game of Thrones, we start with just the Starks, and Martin adds on characters a few at a time and lets us live with the...
This is much easier to accept if it's a first-person narrative, because the book is written in your character's voice. Speech/monologue/dialogue is much more forgiving than prose narration. Since t...
From what you have described, it seems pretty clear why this does not feel like a climax. Prior to this, the hero has come to terms with the sacrifices he as made and the people he has lost. But in...
A character does not have to be named, but they do have to be identified, otherwise the reader gets lost. If you don't identify them by name, then you should identify them by some defining characte...
sure, why not? just don't do the crazy poetry thing and hold the period until the blank page after the About the Author blurb. More seriously, it's a purely aesthetic choice. Use it, leave it out...
You might try Critique Circle, which is a free online critiquing community. (I haven't used it, but others here have.) If you have enough rep, you could ask in our Chat Room, the Overlook Hotel. ...
There's no one right answer. You have to write your story and let other people read it, and ask your readers if it feels too jarring. Maybe one POV per chapter is correct, or maybe your story requi...
Almost all the variations you have are fine. A few notes: A little potato-like nose was planted on his face. The grammar here is correct. However, the combination of "potato" and "planted" wo...
So give your villain more to do. Raise the stakes. If the General overseeing the various troops and hunters doesn't feel scary enough, give him more motivation. Give him someone REALLY scary to re...
I would firstly like to say that the answer by @Jay is excellent, and provides some good pointers on which characters should be one-dimensional or three-dimensional. Like others here, I have neve...
A simple way is to differentiate the narrative voice. Your narration should be clean, standard, grammatically correct prose, while these narrated thoughts can sound a bit choppier and more like spe...
But I can't have the narrator simply lie to the reader Sure you can. That's called an unreliable narrator. Instead of having a generic narrator-to-reader chapter, your "The Story So Far" mate...
This sounds like a blunt-instrument extreme variation of "Kill your darlings." The idea behind kill your darlings is that sometimes we as writers fall too much in love with our own voices. That p...
If you indent paragraphs, every paragraph gets indented, period. It doesn't matter if that paragraph is a single word of dialogue, a page-long rant, or four pages of stream-of-consciousness. So: ...
