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too much dialogue. too much information about what you want the reader to guess (that is, the suspenseful bit). not enough information about the characters to care. The point of suspense is to l...
Suspense is all about anticipation. What you've done very nicely is set up an immediate problem, probably a threat - the missing girl. You've also established a mystery - the guy's past and presen...
Why would you add extra anything if your plot doesn't need it? Most writers have trouble taking things out, and you're trying to stuff things in? We should all have such troubles. ;)
Your two examples are from very different people. The first guy is confident, mocking, and ironic. The second guy is insecure, nervous, and looking for validation. So as iajrz points out, it depen...
You almost certainly want to avoid a shopping list of details about the park. You're not describing the wind and the trees and the building and... You're describing one unified moment in space and ...
I largely agree with this answer, to which I add: Order of perception by your POV character fits nicely into all the other stuff that you're telling through that POV, so it's a good place to star...
"Intellectual" often means a labyrinth of language. (Try reading any doctoral dissertation.) Try this instead: “The universe changes gradually, from one condition to another, without any abru...
I think Craig's answer is solid, but in terms of getting the balance right, one trick I use is to read the dialogue out loud. It works even better if you can rope someone else into reading one of...
I believe in creating dialogue touchstones: find each major character a couple of lines that they would say, that no other character would say. Some of these might be catchphrases, or might sound...
Basically, anything that the reader considers implausible when he's already suspending disbelief, can spoil the illusion and break that suspension. The key issue to understand is that up to a certa...
A popular variant of the whodunit structure is the howdunit or the howcatchem, in which the question isn't who committed the crime - it's how he managed to pull it off, and/or how the detective suc...
Here's the perspective of an editor who does some writing on the side: It depends on what you need in a dictionary. When editing UK writers, I usually use Cambridge, I think I'd continue to use t...
The postscript is indeed of limited use, but it might still be useful when one has something else to say, but doesn't want to compose the email all over again. People still do compose letters fro...
If you want to look up by both title and date, I'd list each entry as: [Entry title] [Entry date] [Page Number] where "Page Number" refers to your existing 2-page numbering. You'll have no tr...
You could arbitrarily re-number the pages. Use a prefix like A, start at the lower outside corner of the first page, and call it A1. Your next page, left or right, is A2. Continue to the end. Use t...
On the general topic of opening with a dream, I'm going to second Kate's excellent comments: it's a technique that's heavily predisposed to backfire, because you're explicitly kicking off with some...
Sounds perfectly clear to me. I think your English is quite good.
To expand on Craig's suggestion, go ahead and write the exciting scenes if that's what keeps you motivated, so long as you're willing to "kill your darling" later on. Self-editing is one of the h...
A story without an "antagonistic theme" is a story with "no conflict." Conflict drives plot. Without plot, you have a character study. Without conflict, the character has no reason to change, grow,...
Certainly stories can be written without a "traditional" antagonist. An example that popped to mind was Daniel Abraham's The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights; this stor...
There are a certain class of works in which the theme is discovery or enlightenment and the antagonistic force is simply ignorance. The effort to overcome ignorance may be a struggle, and enlighten...
Can a book be written without an antagonist? Yes, it can. I'm answering late and have read the other answers. I had to look it up, but in every dictionary reading I have found, "Antagonist" i...
It's not a proper adjective, and therefore should not be capitalized. The name "adventure" is generic. It's not like saying "This game is in the Zork genre," referring to a particular early game.
Don't worry about "it's been done before." Your goal is to do it your way, and never mind what anyone else has done. Your theme (Lack of purpose => Apathy => Failure to adapt => Vicious c...
There's certainly a fair number of science-fiction and fantasy stories that describe a world, a society, or some other concept, without relying on individual characters. Talking about a people, but...
