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One is where you can connect to the millions of sites already created -- .com. The other -- .org -- is where you sign up to create your own site. The two are fundamentally different. If you want to...
I think the word is "alternating". There was a row of trees bordering each side of the road, each row alternating every other tree as Ash and Oak.
Introduce the actual plot? You may or may not actually have a problem. You have a character who is inherently more interesting than the others, she will naturally dominate the part of the story fo...
Ellipsis convey a pause. In fact, the difference between a comma, period/full stop, ellipsis, and en-dash/em-dash is solely in the length being conveyed. Let me adjust this to a music format: A...
I'm going to make two points: Don't be afraid to be more concise in your writing: There is a common misconception between us writers that we could sum up as: the audience is kind of dumb, and I n...
In Microsoft Word, use tables instead of text boxes. The tables won't bounce around the page the way text boxes will. You can just create a one-row, one-column table to hold the picture and (if the...
As a software developer and hobby writer / game designer I have encountered this already a few times - with the same temporary solution of reducing the amount of time I sleep. Especially when there...
A metaphor allows you to explain something complex, abstract or unfamliar to the reader in a way that they have a good chance of understanding or relating to. You can also use them to evoke sensory...
I found a very elegant reduction of alignments in a Tumblr post: I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night: Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals. Chaotic: Indivi...
Metaphors help me think. I may not know how to do XYZ, but if everything is related to (for example) baking, then I understand it a lot more.
First, love your character. If you don’t, why should the readers care? Make her more than just this skill she has - make her who she is rather than what she does. I have a hacker character who is ...
You avoid it by showing us a whole, three-dimensional character with attendant complexity. Doing great things is not about one thing. Your character has a mix of traits, talents, interests, incli...
When it comes down to names, this is a tricky subject. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but while you probably could get away with using his name, you probably shouldn't (without wri...
So it's important to note that morality (good vs. evil question) is not the same as legality (Lawful vs. Chaos). A prime example would be a Nazi solider who guards a concentration camp (Lawful) fr...
Ask Bob for his approval. This is the easiest and fastest way to clear this up.
A character's strength is shown not in dwelling in the past but in using what they learned there to rock their future. Yes she had hard times, but -like you said- she overcame them and is now much ...
Who is your audience? The audience for any kind of porn is not the character. (I'm speaking of the intention of the author, not who might actually end up watching it.) The intended audience for ...
I wrote a pretty long answer here, which I think applies: Should we avoid writing fiction about historical events without extensive research? In short - Look at other theories of history, and th...
Some people have some sort of dislike for semicolons. See The Good, the Bad and the Semicolon. If you're not comfortable using semicolons at all, that's up to you. But if you do normally use semic...
You should punctuate dialogue exactly the way you would punctuate the same sentence if it were not in dialogue (excepting the typographic rules around the placement of quotation marks). A sentence...
So from your example, it sounds like the scene is a lawyer is advising a client, so with that in mind I would write the sentence: "You need to record every action you make from now on, otherwis...
Page ranges are normally inclusive. "Pages 1-5" means pages 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. I think most readers would be extremely confused if you wrote "pages 1-5" and mean 1, 2, 3, and 4. Note that you sho...
I would say the central problem in an anti-Messianic story is two-fold; in particular for a known religion like Christianity. First, you need a compelling lie; one that the people want to believe ...
In a written work descriptive text is intended to be read, it should convey its meaning as effectively as possible and, as Accumulation has said, the purpose of the punctuation is to help make the ...
You can't do just "dumb." You can write a mentally impaired character, like Lenny in "Of Mice and Men," that does dumb things that cause complications out of an inability to understand. Stephen Kin...
