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If you only have one or two ranks to explain to the reader: Simply explaining it in the text may be your best option; i.e., exposition may be the lesser of the evils. The clumsiness will be over qu...
I'm not a movie expert either, but for all the same reasons Bernardo suggests, I think you should create a detailed outline and storyboards rather than either a short story or a screenplay. You wa...
Howzabout: The Web Product Provider's search result, "Individual Provider Map," does not... If I in fact understood that chunk of jargon correctly.
None of these are correct or incorrect, but my optimal way to say it would be without parentheses or dashes; the former are hard to use well, and the latter are overused in modern fiction. When...
1) Pick any one item and take it to an extreme. "Organizing is good." Okay, can I alphabetize my spices? (bad example. I actually do that.) Uh, can I sort my vegetable drawer by size and then...
1) So, don't. Keep several books going at once. What's stopping you? Maybe you need to switch gears often to keep yourself fresh. 2) Write short stories. Easier to finish in a bite. 3) Write an o...
You have to define the problem before attempting a solution. Are you distracted? (ambient noise, music, silence, TV, someone talking) Are you uncomfortable? (crappy chair, bad posture, headache,...
I like "Create a Cluster." If I'm actually RTFM, I'm usually looking for instructions on how to do something. Well, what do I want to do? I want to Create a Cluster — so that's what I'm going to lo...
The Microsoft Style Guide says it depends on usage: In general, use imperative constructions in conceptual or informational topics for both the title and the headings. Describe what the user wa...
The immediate thing to bear in mind is that the use you're describing is something very specific and unique to hypertext documents. You might as well ask "onstage I can wink at the audience, how ca...
You're looking for balance, so the answer is double edged: Stay compelling by avoiding drifting off on tangents; don't explain about your world where it isn't relevant to the story at hand and to...
Don't dumb down. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a dictionary for? If you're that concerned, add a list of character names with pronunciations at the beginning or end of the story...
Besides "personal privacy" there is "professional privacy", an author that holds a sensitive full time job, in public, may not want to publish under their real name because the content of their fic...
Generally speaking, ask the person or people to whom you are submitting how s/he/they want the document formatted. Barring that, I have seen the first line indented and subsequent paragraphs not i...
Write something amazing. Make sure an editor looks over it for mistakes. If it's really good, nobody will care if you're a second-grade dropout or have a Ph.D. in teaching underwater basket-weaving...
Why, wherever writers can be found. :) Various writers' forums will have places for announcements. You could try approaching writing blogs - emailing blogger, asking for a link to your site if the...
If you have that many important points, make them a bulleted list instead of making them bold. They will stand out without being overwhelming. Blockquote is used to quote a big block of text, as o...
The term "card" is fungible. Your card can be a 36x48 poster or seventeen pages in Scrivener or an entire notebook of thoughts. It could be a character quiz, a playlist, a drawing, a list of favori...
The plural of anecdote is not data... but speaking from my own experience, sci-fi and fantasy are just about all I read. So it doesn't matter how popular the Girl Who Kicked the Dragon Fire Tattoo ...
The English is fine, but as Janet at EL&U said, it does feel artificial. Not because of the phrasing, but because of the content - C is announcing her intention to do something very uninteresti...
I write blog posts in the present tense even if I'm writing about something which happened in the past, because it's funnier to be "present" as the gag is unfolding. I prefer novels in the past te...
Here's what I'm familiar with: a lot of people see present-tense as a description of something happening right now, while past-tense is a narration of events that have already concluded. So: Some...
This can really change very drastically from author to author and from story to story. There's no doubt that developing characters and then building a plot around them is a great way to come up wi...
Story arises out of a challenge to character. The same event may challenge some characters and not others. A given character will be challenged by some events and not others. So, to create a stor...
