Search
If you're doing essentially the same thing as 90% of your genre (flying people achieve great heights immediately, people with superpowers never have issues with getting fuel for those powers, someo...
A novella may do better as a self-pub or a e-book than a trade paperback. Or you could write a few novellas and combine them into one larger format, like Stephen King did with Different Seasons. No...
Strike a balance. Your character who speaks in dialect uses different vocabulary, word order, grammar than the person who speaks in the Received Standard version of the language. Non-Dialect Amer...
Write the good story. Feeling your story is good will motivate you to finish it, to work through the problems you encounter, and to get better. JK Rowling says she rewrote the first Harry Potter f...
The dash may be European formatting, but it's not standard in English-speaking countries. Some information on the dialogue dash here: Using dashes in writing dialogue However, if your readers are ...
When hope that the protagonist(s) will win is snuffed out. I came very close to this with Person of Interest in the middle of the most recent season. There are a number of Good Folks and several ...
Write out a few and share them. You may be completely wrong about the market. A tale which "explores a character's path through life" but not much else happens is called a character study, and th...
What does the data show? I believe data is a collective noun (though I am not 100% sure on that). Collective nouns are plural only when the context is speaking of their individual parts, or m...
When a title precedes a name, it becomes part of the name, and is capitalized: I spoke to Constable Fraser this morning. (You don't use the title and the person's first name. Not in American...
The best way to begin a book will differ from person to person. Some people, once they have a vague idea of what happens, jump right in and start writing. Some have to spend months developing chara...
Part of the value is just talking to other writers, and hearing what they do. I don't plot, I rewrite a lot, until I feel it is right. Knowing that you are not alone or that other writers also don'...
LotR does in fact have such a book (I believe it is the Silmarillion). However, that book could only be published because the Hobbit/LotR books came first. In short, there would be no interest in i...
You could get away with drastically different tones if you had two different POV narrators. If one is Tina Fey and the other is Sylvia Plath, they will of course see the world differently. The cont...
You should follow the advice that makes you go, "Oh, of course, why didn't I see that before." If you don't have that kind of clarity, then you have not understood the advice properly and will not...
+1 Lauren's answer, so I will only add to it: Part of writing is the analysis you are doing to eliminate scenes, and it sounds like you can be objective enough to make the hard choices. The slush p...
No. All that is required is that the reader know who is speaking. The conventions of dialogue do a good job of that. Bob continued, "blah blah blah." "But wait", Sue asked, "what about b...
If you're self-publishing and not doing it through a company, use your real name: "Copyright (C) 2015 John Doe". Under the Berne Convention (which applies in most countries), you own the copyright...
Your theme is the general statement you're making, but you can only make the statement via the plot. The plot should be developed via the organic actions of the characters. Therefore, decide on yo...
You may have to research your specific term to see how far back it goes and if you can find the first or earliest instance(s). Depending on what you're looking for, you may have to go to physical l...
1) Break your habit of long sentences. They are mentally exhausting. Try reading your sentences out loud and see how often you have to stop to take a breath, or if you can remember the beginning of...
I think there's a difference between character development and character depth. Development means change. You can have an interesting villain who is only ever a villain, but still has backstory, mo...
Using first person might work best for a situation like this. You'd be able to easily convey inner thoughts, use quotation marks for strictly dialog, and have the option to format intruding other "...
A supplement to this answer: All the shared-world anthologies I've read had "framing" stories written by the primary author, the one who came up with most of the setting and is driving the proces...
If it's your first draft, just write it as it comes. You can't edit a blank page. After your first draft, go back through and clean up the polyglossolalia. If you're writing in third person, pick ...
While there might be a payoff coming in the fourth chapter, if readers get frustrated enough on the way there, some of them will bail and never finish your book. So while you can ask your reviewer...
