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What you are describing is quite acceptable. G.R.R. Martin uses this method in "Song of Ice and Fire", with many many more characters: each chapter follows a different POV character, with 7+ POV ch...
I wouldn't say that the premise that you shouldn't switch protagonists between novels is an absolute truth in the first place. What's so frustrating about reading about new characters? Doesn't one...
Despite the sources that ScottS cites, I believe this idea that you should use a new paragraph for a new person speaking is bogus. Paragraph rules are paragraph rules. You use a new paragraph for a...
Don't forget that you have magic so you can use magical items; perhaps at some price exacted by the Gods. So an example system would be that your amulet or ring or bracelet is a contract with a p...
Surely it comes down to identifying what human quality your AI lacks. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep Philip K Dick identifies that quality as empathy. He takes pains to illustrate the lack ...
There are heavily illustrated books with weighty serious content. Terry Pratchett's Last Hero and Neil Gaiman's Stardust are two examples I have standing on my shelf. Both are very much not childre...
I'm not sure if I am interpreting this correctly, but I would not "mix" character questions with explanatory exposition (or answers in exposition), and I wouldn't make characters too "ignorant," th...
If your paragraph is a gray wall of text, break it up where it makes sense. You aren't required to break it only on dialogue. And trim your narration too: A figure under the box moved behind Pr...
Personally, either may be correct, but visually the second broken up option is better. It better redirects the reader's mental view from William, to Elizabeth, then back to William. Breaking parag...
First of all, that semi-colon is incorrect. It should be a comma. Here's why. A semi-colon is used 1) to join two independent clauses (stand-alone sentences) which are related in content, or 2) to...
It depends on whether you are using the local unit of measure for information or for atmosphere. If you use modern units in an historical setting (kilometers and grams in ancient Egypt, for instanc...
How long should a memoir be? The same length as any other piece of prose: exactly as long as it needs to be to tell the story you want to tell. No more, no less. Don't feel like you have to omit an...
I don't pretend to be able to interpret Sorkin on this, but I would make this point: When we write, we have punctuation to break sentences into meaningful phrases. In speech, unless you are Victor ...
This depends on your characters and story If you have a happy fairy-tale story for young adults having a lot of smiling characters may be exactly what you want - a mostly happy world. If, on the ...
Of course the narrator can talk to the reader. That is their job. It is what narrator means. I suspect what you are really asking is, can the narrator comment on the action? Again, the answer is ...
You are writing a first-person novel; as a character in the story standing next to Penry and relating what happened at certain times. So you are speaking directly to the reader at all times. Howev...
The typical user of technical communication is in a hurry and in a bad mood. They were working along trying to get a job done so they could go home and have supper with the kids then something brok...
Probably the easiest way is presume the character is intelligent, well read in history and sociology, and unencumbered by "stick in the mud" thinking. An obvious choice would be to make her a profe...
Well, the best way to introduce a reader to a world is to describe it to them. It worked for Tolkien. It worked for Rowling. It can work for you. The best way to make a fish out of water characte...
Well, there is no good practical reason for it. In other words, there are no studies showing that passive voice is more effective in communicating technical information. That leaves us with social ...
As a female reader of SF/F who enjoys fantasy books with protagonists of whatever gender and plot, my advice is: Make it interesting. It doesn't matter if the basic plot structure is older than ...
In the translation work I've seen for user-facing documentation, the translators stuck to the organization of the source but sometimes rephrased entire paragraphs, particularly if the source used i...
Not a traditional zombie There are many ways to label this kind of creatures. Zombie doesn't quite fit, as they normally only regenerate once in the sense that they are coming back to life. But th...
You could be describing an immortal, in many such descriptions it looks like they are killed, but they magically heal their wounds and rise. For example, the Outlander series. Usually they can only...
I'm not sure that the issue with enormity is that it has emotional baggage. The issue is that it has restricted usage -- it is only use in certain constructions such as "enormity of the crime". Thi...
