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In Quebec, an artist named Fred Pellerin became famous with an approach very similar to the one you are describing. I feel he doesn't alienate the public with his style because he invites them into...
Include Excerpts written in the old style You say you want to focus on a character who recorded his lived experiences. This character could narrate their experiences in 1st-person reliable past-te...
First thing you would need to decide is what you actually want to do with that sequel. Do you intend to write something that is basically "more of the same"? "More of the same", but more modern? Or...
1) Why doesn't Mr. Id have a POV scene until later in the story? It's your story. Give him an arc. 2) Instead of Porthos, Aramis, and Athos, think of Kirk (ego), Spock (superego), and McCoy (Id). ...
Time travel is cheating. You are already cheating. Even if you come up with a worldbuild-y excuse how your cheat works or what limits it, you are already cheating, so just accept it. Plot holes ar...
The reason your 4th grade poems didn't have any depth is you weren't putting any in there. As you said, they were just fun bits of doggerel that rhymed. If you want deeper poetry, choose a deeper...
No, but you will likely end up with a lot of errors. It's not plagiarism, because it's not like Google Translate uses an advanced AI to turn your writing into a masterpiece. However, it might be co...
Body horrors that don't dehumanise disabled or sick people: A disease makes people look very sick and, eventually, kills them. There is pus and blood and vomit. The hero does not shoot the infecte...
I wouldn't get hung up on prequel or sequel labels to be honest. This is more true when you have a story where events are happening before and after another story/novel. However we don't have a la...
If the torture scene is happening to your MC or your current narrator, instead of focusing on all the blood and gore which can make a lot of readers queasy or uncomfortable, focus on the narrator's...
One thing you must decide is why is this torture taking place? Is the tormentor some unbalanced person who loves inflicting pain? Is he a seasoned professional who must extract the truth from the v...
You might find it helpful to look at the Torture Porn trope, to have a clearer idea of what to avoid. A work would be called "torture porn" when it appears to seek to disgust the reader/viewer whil...
All scenes have more than one thing going on. Scenes are never just a series of sequential facts, there are negotiations and compromises, misdirections and sacrifices – yes it's all scaled down to ...
I'm gonna answer to the question in the title: Ultimately it's up to you. They are different media. Your friend must be right on some level. I too have the habit to imagine my stories as movies...
Hero 1 goes through the gauntlet to become a hero, and it's left him bitter. He's angry at how unfair it was. How many good men died just to prove purity (or whatever). He is a hero, but he's broke...
5 Hours, 5 Days, 5 years (ago) Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this, but an author/writing guide I read suggested a simple rule of character interview 5 Hours, 5 Days, and 5 Years. As...
I don't use interviews, per se, but when I think about a new character (obsessively for a week or more) what I am asking myself is how they would (or did) react in various circumstances. I would s...
There is one thing that comes to mind - the "36 questions that will make you fall in love with someone". It's a slightly different premise, of course, but the point of these questions is to make a ...
You should be able to use memory (or flashbacks, but I dislike them); or tell it from the Jewish girl's POV, but give her a reason to have conversations with a non-Jew, e.g. a teammate, an ambassad...
I find it somewhat problematic that people seem to desire fantasy books not merely about relatable protagonists, but them in particular. I personally shrug it off; I don't think there's ever gonna ...
I don't think readers are as conservative regarding genre as you make them out to be. Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber is one very well known example of fantasy, with no elves, no dragons, and a...
I don't think you should leave the twist out, though it might be a little too soon to incorporate twist. You also should not make it clear from the beginning that the hero is corrupt, instead showi...
A metaphor can also be used to explain something in familiar terms. For example, when a popular science book describes Eisenstein gravity due to bent space by using the metaphor of a rubber sheet ...
There is no "too soon" or "to late" for a plot twist. It's important how it's executed. They way I would try to lead to this twist is to keep him shown as a good guy. In many stories, "good" guys k...
Just an idea but what's to stop you from writing things out of chronological order? The initial hero may turn villain 1/3 the way through chronologically but you could choose to write two distin...
