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I can think of a few options: Indent the story-within-a-story and treat dialogue normally (just double quotes). Put your Aesop section in italics, the story-within-a-story in book, and treat all ...
If you add commas to your first example, it will carry the weight of the parens without needing the larger pause and extra words. The quote marks and the generic wording of ThisCo make it clear you...
The number one thing that you have to realize about technical writing is that people do not read it for its own sake. They read it because they are trying to do something and they need more informa...
Not quite, you can add Drop Caps to the CSS of the ePub file that Storyist generates for you This Storyist forum gives an example of how to modify the CSS for your .ePub file (which is just a zi...
I think what you have in your example is fine. Quotes don't have to be strictly spoken dialog. You've indicated in narration twice that it's written on the sign. The reader will understand.
A few things to consider: If you're eager to write the "good stuff" where your characters are kissing, go ahead and write it out of sequence. Get it out of your system. Now you can go back and cr...
John Carroll did extensive research on an aspect of this in the 80s. His finding are recorded in a book called "The Nurnberg Funnel" and lead to the development of a practice called "minimalism" in...
Short, simple, straightforward words like "I" and "you" don't really interrupt reading flow with moderate repetition; they're clear and unobtrusive. The only thing to do right at the start is get ...
@gravity_train has it correct in the comment above: a plot twist is unbelievable if it comes from absolutely nowhere. A plot development, twist, and/or character action is unbelievable if it ...
One way to show passage of time is by referring to time-based events. Over the course of a year you can use seasons for this; if we see your characters walking through the snow, and next see them ...
If you're not submitting this as part of any assignment or for publication in a standardized format, where there are rules about content and structure, I say go for it. Foreword, dedication, acknow...
Use whatever you think will work best for your story. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote all but two or three of the Sherlock Holmes stories in first person, from Watson's perspective, and you see the longev...
Other than Scrivener, already noted above, Excel or another spreadsheet program might be what you need here. In your first column you have your scene or other outline notation to identify where you...
I'm not sure about the rhyming part, but running a sentence onto the next line is called enjambment: Enjambment is the continuation of a sentence or clause over a line-break. If a poet allows a...
Example 1 puts us in the POV of the listener: I heard a cough. There's also the very tiny implication that it's not a person, but perhaps an animal, a monster, or maybe a mechanical sound which app...
First, two general principles: Consistency with other publications is useful. Consistency within a publication is also useful. So write a style guide that documents your house style. Your house s...
I think it's subjective. To my ear, to avoid is a series of individual events, while avoiding implies something continuous and ongoing. "She started to avoid me" sounds like "I called her and she ...
Let's call them Monty the Moderate and Larry the Left-Winger for the sake of discussion... I think both your charaters are less left-wing and anti-war than you think they are. If Monty is willin...
More detail about why you have this dilemma would help, but I can answer this question in a general sense. I'm assuming you're writing fiction based on the historical setting of World War II Europe...
These are both prepositional phrases. Number 1 should be included. Number 2 does not have to be. Below I explain why. A prepositional phrase must consist of a preposition (behind, on, in, under, ...
In many ways you approach this the same way you would approach any other new project: Review any available high-level descriptions (like functional specifications) and user stories: what is this ...
This is not an ethical question. It is a legal question. Ethics deals with professional conduct over and above what is required by law. Copyright is a matter of law, not ethics. In this particula...
As can be gathered from the other answers, there are many causes of writer's block. It will be impossible to deal with them all at once, meaning you will, at some point, experience it. Don't worry....
You have it correct EXCEPT for the capitalization, as pointed out by krman. The sentence should read: "Yes, I th—" He was not allowed to finish. "Shut him up NOW!" the guard growled. Th...
I think Writer's Block occurs differently for different writers. For myself, the main cause of Writer's Block is in what I've already written; somehow it prevents me from writing the next scene, wi...
