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You are the author of the work. Authorship means you wrangled the words. It does not mean you originated the ideas. If you composed the words, selected the quotes, and put it all in order, you are ...
It would be hard for me to answer about popular books, but I can answer about literature I enjoy. In Hebrew and Russian (my mother tongues), as well as in English, I gravitate towards either the cl...
If you mean how much work you will have to do between when a contract is offered and when the book is published, the answer is that it will vary depending on how good the MS is and how well it fits...
At the heart of every novel (or almost every novel, at least) is someone who wants something and some form of opposition, internal or external, that stands in the way of their getting it. The novel...
The reasons may be economic. I'm speculating here, but the golden age of the short story was the golden age of the magazine. If a magazine wanted to publish fiction (and most of them did back befor...
No, that would not alienate readers. We've seen this kind of conworld all the way back to Gulliver's Travels, and in more modern form, something like Hogwart's, the TV series Magicians (where they...
Apparently not, according to this study (https://contently.com/strategist/2015/01/28/this-surprising-reading-level-analysis-will-change-the-way-you-write/) which found popular authors spred all aco...
If people are telling you that your writing is very descriptive, I would take them at their word. I have been in many critique groups with many very nice people and they do not say that about every...
You really can't get a free lunch. If there were a way, it would be overwhelmed by any novice writer capable of Googling, and quickly become useless. That said: The people that do this "for free"...
The fact that you have never seen an ad for a book should tell you something. Advertising doesn't sell books. If advertizing sold books, you would see lots of advertisements for books, because publ...
I don't think it is reasonable to call a setting thematic in itself. It should also be said that a theme is not a message. A theme is what you deal with in a story or an essay, not what conclusions...
Frequently, greetings and farewells are simply left out, for time compression in the screenplay. Every second counts. Watch any sitcom, like The Big Bang Theory; and this seems natural enough. Als...
Roughly speaking, acts divide the action into sections. At the end of each act is a turning point. Some disaster has befallen the protagonist(s), who must then choose whether to turn back or go for...
ACTS when the word is used to designate timing in a story, refer to commonly accepted phases of a story line. These phases and what is in them have been observed over tens of thousands of successfu...
It is not necessary to qualify every statement you make. You are the one making the statement. It goes without saying that you believe the statement you are making. However, there are specific ti...
You absolutely should add "I Believe" if, without that phrase, you would be making a claim of fact that you cannot be certain is true. Do you have scientific proof that people should eat apples fo...
First person limited is not a rule and therefore cannot be violated. It is an analytical category that can be used after the fact to describe what an author has done. The author's responsibility it...
We ordered pork belly, beef liver, and lamb slices—a selection that made our tongues melt and our stomachs heat up. We ordered pork belly, beef liver and lamb slices -- a selection we knew wou...
Different writers work in different ways (you are going to hear the terms "plotter" and "pantsers" from multiple people -- plotters being those who plan first and pansters being those who just sit ...
There is an obvious moral hazard in the literary consultancy business, but it is hardly alone in that. There is a moral hazard in the financial planning business, for instance (advisors profit from...
Answers to this question are obviously going to be pretty opinion based. Here is mine! I look for problems people will struggle to solve, for some reason, because to me this is the essence of a pl...
Yes, those pages are copyright. Copyright is automatic. Everything written is copyrighted from the moment it is written unless it has passed into the public domain or has been explicitly placed int...
There are certainly people who will perform a substantive edit on a manuscript and give you an evaluation of it. They generally advertise themselves as editors or literary consultants. However, f...
Character dynamics come through story. There really isn't another way. You can simply tell the story in brief form to establish the dynamic, or you can dramatize it in full, but in the end, charact...
There are multiple citation standards. If your teacher or your school has a particular citation style they prefer or require you should consult the guides for that style. In not, one approach you c...
