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I can't give you the advice you want, but I will give your advice you need: The books you need to read are models, not how-to guides. Count me among those who, unlike the many you mention, do not ...
Abuse grammar all you wish! Leave it dead in a ditch if you must to get the rhythm right. Right now the nice imagery is being let down with by the dragging artificiality of the metre. To see why, ...
If you're writing a poem, you are allowed to throw pretty much all the rules out the window. You can eschew just punctuation, just capitalization, both, split the difference per stanza or per line,...
Depending on what kind of writer you are, you might benefit from creating an outline, and trying to hang your cool scenes on that. Writing scenes which aren't connected to anything can be fun, an...
A "Mary Sue" is a character who represents a highly-idealized version of the author (usually). This is the sort of character who, as needed, can perform brain surgery with one hand on a turbulent ...
As much as I adore Scrivener for writing, I wouldn't expect it to output in pristine, publishable format. It's a writing tool, not a layout program or even a word processor. I would necessarily exp...
I'd call it stream-of-consciousness prose. And try magazines which accept short stories.
I would say Mercedes Lackey's Shadow of the Lion and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell would both qualify as "historical fantasy." The latter has relationships, but I wouldn't cal...
Not online. Try a writer's group, where it is absolutely and explicitly clear that you are discussing this in the service of a story, and where other folks are discussing things just as potential...
No, don't hold stories back unless you have a specific reason. Unless a publication specifically asks you to re-submit a specific piece at a later time (maybe they have a theme issue planned), hold...
Under the "Product Details" heading, you have several links for updating book information and notifying Amazon of problems. That'd be a good way to try. More directly, there's the Contact Us butto...
We have learned through experimentation that a new-enough version of Microsoft Word (we tested with 2010) supports format-preserving cut-and-paste from Stack Exchange posts. We drew up some format...
I believe the most relevant law is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents Terms are defined in Part I, Chapter 2. Section 17 (2) defines ...
You could try Lightning Source. I've heard good things about them and I've seen a couple of the books - they look pretty good. Considering using it for a volume this year (that I'm editing, I shoul...
Adding to Maura's answer: "Detailed design" implies you will go in-depht showing the abstract structure of your project. This means showing what the program does, without looking at the code. Desi...
I would say it depends on how the item is discussed in the body of the book. If a Markov chain is something referred to as a single entity, then index it as a single item. If you discuss several ...
five and a half years No hyphens. Hyphens are for adjective phrases: It was a five-and-a-half-year journey. You also don't use the hyphen with the fraction. 51⁄2 years
Take notes when you're suffering for later use. No really. Get into the habit of carrying something to jot down your thoughts on (phone, tablet, moleskine notebook, marbled notebook, whatever) and...
If you want to have a series of books which tell an ongoing story, but you want readers to be able to drop in midway, you will of necessity need to recap something in the beginning. How you do it d...
From a story standpoint, you have, more or less, two choices: Recount what's come before the current book, or embed critical information in the narrative itself. The more realistic it is for chara...
Myths and religions are "stories we already know." Adding references to known mythology in a contemporary story both grounds it to reality and connects it to our larger culture. Think about moder...
All your constructions are useful in different situations. Keep John Smithers's comment about cause and effect in mind, and vary your tags so that you aren't repeating the same sentence structure c...
These are all details that need to be determined in some sort of contract or agreement with her. You can grant and withhold whatever you choose. Be familiar with what different rights you have over...
The best answer I ever heard was from an English professor: "Write as if you're explaining the text to a slightly stupider classmate."
Paragraph length isn't the problem here, although the paragraphs could stand to be broken up a bit. The biggest problem here is a problem of focus and organization. A paragraph should have a fairly...
