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I'm willing to bet Scrivener can handle a lot of what you're looking for. I will cheerfully admit I haven't even read the documentation (I'm a Mac user... we don'need no steenken manuals) so it's g...
Sketch out your entire timeline before you write your story. Have an idea of what happened before and after. Your book takes place in medias res, in the middle of things. If you decide what your en...
Write an outline. At the very least write a sketch. So you are writing your story before you write your story. Have an idea of where it starts, what happens, and how it ends. This gives you someth...
Option 1: I'm Back! For an IF game, probably the easiest way to allow character death is to allow some kind of backup, or a chance to be restored to life. Examples include: Cloning Technology - ...
Set up your world as a version of The Matrix. When the player-character dies, s/he is removed from "the game," and can now only influence other players second-hand: mysterious text messages, alteri...
It's not particularly dark. There's so much unknown that we don't even know if we're supposed to worry. A strip club which is so old it feels like it's populated with antiques isn't particularly ...
It's something to do with legal. The lawyers think that screaming gets the point across better. You'd have to ask the legal department which approved the document in question.
The ideas in this excerpt grab me. We have a first-person narrator who's dead; how does that work? This seems to have involved some sort of deal to help the narrator's son, and there seem to be a...
You have the guy walk into what appears to be a deserted bar on a deserted street in a deserted city. Then he realizes there's a live woman lying on the stage, not sleeping but lying there sprawled...
The priority of a writer is to get stuff written and in a shape where it can be read by others. (Assumedly, submitted, sold, to agents/editors, etc.) Your goal is to get stuff written. (Whether qua...
The initial "feel" I get from this piece works very well with the first-person narration you've chosen. Your suspense and action revolve around immediate danger; first-person contributes wonderfull...
What strikes me most about your excerpt is that you're speaking in vague generalities, which on their own feel somewhat bombastic. "People have given up," there is "an unarticulated notion of defea...
"The best way" is whatever works for you. They're your notes. You have to refer to them and learn from them. Take notes in whatever fashion helps you to learn and retain the information.
This could be a problem with discipline on your part. Nobody can help you follow through on commitments except yourself, but perhaps the problem is that you don't have a commitment of any sort. M...
I do something similar to your ASCII implementation, but instead of an ASCII block I use compact bulleted lists (with sub-lists). File/directory names are still styled as they would be in running ...
There seem to be two general approaches to this: One person writes the work, and the other starts revising it heavily. There might be significant problems that the second author needs to address...
Probably not a professional one. All agents are hired - they take a percentage of whatever contracts they get you (or which they negotiate for you). You're asking if you can pay extra for an agent...
Without context, this question can only be answered in the most general ways, but even though I'm not a tech writer or tech editor, I've researched the issue a bit. I hope this will be helpful. Any...
I have sort of a different take: don't narrow it down. Write them all, as short stories. Your premise is the premise of an entire society. All those potential stories are valid. So create them al...
Both scenarios have lots of potential for great storytelling. When choosing between them, consider what kind of story you'd most like to tell, and which of the two is going in a direction you find ...
Two resources that sound appropriate are: http://wordassociations.net/ http://www.wordassociation.org/search/ Though I can't rule it out, I kind of doubt you'll find existed dedicated communiti...
It's not about "spicy," it's about not being boring. Using "John" in every single dialogue tag can grate on the inner ear. That said, don't overdo it. I would say you should use character names (o...
Scrivener exists, in part, to put manuscripts into standard manuscript format. The # mark it uses as the default section break is, frankly, a little puzzling to me. (Apparently this is standard for...
The precise process from manuscript to distribution may be different from publisher to publisher - in fact, explaining what to expect is probably a major purpose of such a meeting. In many ways, ...
Generally speaking, this is a perfect job for a proofreader, so there's not much point in you trying to "double up" with a professional. There might be some minor cost difference if they charge by ...
