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Are you sure that that criticism came from someone who actually likes romance novels? I ask because "flat, uninteresting and no one would care if they lived or died, death would be better because t...
If you've worked out the tech, why haven't you worked out the scale? Isn't that part of "working out the tech"? Just coming up with the idea of "a rocket that goes to the moon" isn't sufficient. ...
It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. It's a device to drive the story. The entire plot of Casablanca revolves around a pair of passes that cannot be revoked by the local Nazi authorities. T...
Don't mention it. Seriously, don't mention it. No one wants to read a short story or a novel with equations in it. Tell us that your character calculated the result if it is really central to your ...
How did your teacher in second grade taught you subtraction? Your teacher used words. It's as simple as that. You don't write any formulas in there. If you are bent on making it a little mathemati...
Yes, it can be done. But I would think twice about it. A novel should be about telling a story. It should not be about seeing if you can pull off an unconventional storytelling technique. People ...
I tend to think of the process of writing a novel as follows: Invent a bunch of characters. Spend time with them until you fall in love. Then torture them to the brink of madness. The redeem or con...
First, I think we need to make a distinction here between what we might call Easter eggs -- little in jokes of the sort of which Stephen Moffat and his cronies are particularly fond. Sherlock and D...
There is writing and there is storytelling. Writing is about the words. Storytelling is about the event, the people, the sights, sounds, smells, tragedies, joys, births, deaths, surprises, victorie...
The term "subtext" seems to be used for a least four things each of which is distinct, and only two of which I will suggest are on topic for this site. It is used as a catchall for literary devi...
I agree, subtext is something the author does throughout the work, in various ways. It is not necessarily a psychological leaning of their own, it can be an explicitly formulated principle. Nearly ...
I would challenge your assertion that the journey is a metaphor for maturation. In today's highly (one might almost say pathologically) individualistic society we do tend to think that the story is...
Let me approach this another way. The idea of a maturation plot occurs in more than one of the various schemas for classifying plots by type. Those schemas divide plots into multiple types, but the...
Vanity presses make money from authors, not from selling copies, so there's at least a decent chance you've kept or can get back your copyright. Unfortunately, if you didn't study your contract to ...
If they can't possibly lose, it is not a battle, it is a spot of exercise. There is nothing exciting about a bandit ambush if the bandits have no chance. Certainly going to win and do is not exciti...
I think you can get away with it, using an approach such as Lauren suggests, with one important caveat. You need to make sure that the stakes are higher than last time. If you have not raised the s...
I think the question you are really asking is, is the backstory the story you want to tell, or is it simply a fable on which the real story is based. None of us can answer that for you. If I had to...
I'd be fine with your backstory as a standalone novella which functions as a prequel to your main story. Harry Connolly did this with his Twenty Palaces series. There's a main trilogy, and then a ...
The questions you need to answer are: What story do I want to tell? What elements do I need to have available to tell it? If you want to tell your backstory, and it stands alone, then you ha...
When he is introduced in the story, and when he receives a new title, give the full title. If he's being introduced when he walks into an important event or a throne room, it's contextually approp...
Personally, I'd be leery of writing a book with an ending in which the good guy is betrayed, fails and dies, which is your back story. If evil prevails, then I would prefer to refer to it later. S...
Several people have said that you should look into the historical names for clothing. However, as you pointed out on what's answer, a name that the reader is not familiar with can confuse him. This...
This is not a copyright question, it is a contract question. You signed a contract with them. The terms of the contract tell you what you can and can't do. No one here can tell you what your contra...
I didn't completely understand your problem description... but I think you're talking about repeating a certain plot element in a new book. The Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout feature certain elemen...
The answer to this is "do your research." If you're writing about Ancient Egypt, you start by Googling "clothes in Ancient Egypt." If you're really serious, you find books about Ancient Egypt and ...
