Search
Theoretical concepts are always difficult to understand without examples. Plus, the examples can provide evidence of the soundness of the concepts and generally increase the reader's confidence bot...
Historical fiction based on real events is a huge part of the genre of historical fiction. In fact, the taste today seems to be for stories that are as close to historical events as possible, with ...
What you describe, if I understand it correctly, is historical fiction. That's a genre with a long and proud tradition. It includes works as diverse as Ivanhoe, War and Peace, The Three Musketeers,...
I am not a lawyer, but do business with copyright law, and this is my understanding. First, it IS possible to copyright characters in other works. Here is an excerpt from Protection of Fictional ...
Fantasy and science-fiction is a genre that's bigger on the inside, and you'll find a lot of weird fiction enjoyed and celebrated within the genre. Surrealism and oddness definitely have their plac...
Short answer: definitely, absolutely, wholeheartedly 3. Long answer: Sir Terry Pratchett wrote somewhere that since he was reading a lot as a child, when he was little there were many words he kne...
What you're looking for is beta readers. Beta readers would read all your work, and look at exactly the things you are unsure about: general flow, plot holes, etc. Who can be beta readers? Friends...
Well, first, you cannot write about any politically charged issue without being read as taking sides. If you are ideologically aligned with one side, the other will throw rocks through your window....
I'll borrow an idea Memor-X pointed out to me in my question Are there tools that can aid an author in writing a branching storyline?: yEd It's a free tool that allows you to create flowcharts. I...
If they haven't asked me to read it, or tell them what I think, I would do nothing at all. Given any opportunity that qualifies as an "ask", I would be truthful. I would not pretend to be any more...
Yes, author's do this all the time. One of the books I use frequently is The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook", it lists 25,000 first and last names and their meanings from around the wo...
How do I write LGBT characters without looking like I'm trying to be politically correct? Don't Try. Do. Actually BE "politically correct." "Politically Correct" is originally (and in my view...
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...
