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@FraEnrico talks about epistolary novels, and I agree with him - it does sound very much like what you're trying to do. What troubles me, however, is that usually one would have epistolary novels. ...
Each writer is of one gender, and one sexual orientation, and in order for their stories to reflect real life, they have to learn to write from the POV of other genders and other sexual orientation...
So, you are concerned about representing a minority in your story, because you do not belong to that minority. Following the same logic, men shouldn't write about women, WASP Americans shouldn't wr...
I agree with others. Don't change your story to remove diversity because you are worried you can't write those characters. Embrace diversity in your writing and your life. The best way to write ...
I'm talking in a purely theoretical manner: what will I say is not backed up by direct experience Well, in theory, the skillsets you need to be a good editor and a good writer don't overlap comple...
In Uprooted, Naomi Novik deals quite elegantly with this issue. First, she doesn't dump all the information at once, but sprinkles it where it's relevant. We lived in Dvernik, which wasn't the...
Describing something is significantly easier if you can look at it - you find words for what you're seeing, you form associations. Quite a few astronauts publish short videos from the ISS. Here's o...
I'm getting the impression that you're not looking for a story, so much as a world, a framework in which stories can take place. Consider, then: what is that world like? Our world (more or less)? O...
People on long journeys talk to each other, about themselves. Even life-long friends (I have traveled with some) talk about what they are seeing, what it reminds them of doing together, what it rem...
I would use relative sizes to compare sizes or countries. "The armies of Asia are many hundreds of times our armies in Fengard", or "The map makers say five hundred of Fengard could fit ...
Join a writing group. This is much better than using friends because everyone commits to reading what you wrote and commenting on it, because you're doing the same for them. It also makes you act...
Often books take a while to get into when they have a slow start, when not much is happening for the first part of the novel. However, you say that's not the case with you - you have plenty of acti...
I have resorted more than once to citing Neil Gaiman's 2012 address Make Good Art. Let me quote from it here too: The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street na...
Writing can be a very intimate activity: no wonder you might feel a bit anxious! But remember, first and foremost, you're writing for yourself, rather than for someone else. Chances are that writ...
how do I switch between these characters without it being jarring for the reader? Short answer: you don't. There will always be a moment, when switching from a PoV to another, when the reader will...
The main obstacle to fanfics flooding the market is copyright. As long as the original author holds the copyright for their work, fanfics can only live as free stuff on the internet. (Or, as Kirk p...
Yes, just do a different POV every chapter (or two if you must). You can handle the transition with chapter titles and sub-titles, or an identical opening on a particular day: Pick something like ...
I agree, too much exposition. Which likely means, too little "setup" in your book. If Celeste thinks Marko is brilliant at chess or Go, that should have been shown earlier, in the story setup. (AC...
If anything, I'd say your book is too short for that age. 3rd grade is 8-years-olds, right? At that age, 25 minutes to read out loud is closer to one chapter of a book they'd be reading. At 8 year...
If what you're looking for is not stand-ins for real places, but just a generic place for your characters to be in, look at how real company names, real hotel names, real band names etc. are formed...
First, people do not notice "he said" or "she said", and you should use them more often. We expect them, they work, and they are not intrusive; stop thinking they are. That said: When there are on...
Surprisingly, dialogue tags are language-specific. In English, 'said' is considered transparent, the dialogue tag to be used most of the time, as opposed to "intoned", "articulated" etc., which are...
While that's fine, I wouldn't require online citations. Hszmv's description is how I would go. Don't forget the channel. A number and city if it is local, the company if it is not local. Exampl...
As others have explained, if a story is written in first person, the readers expect to be privy to the POV character's opinions, thoughts and feelings. This is true of third person limited too, and...
Depending on what kind of writing you do, you don't necessarily need an outline. If you're writing a short story of few thousand words, then, sure you can just bang it out. But writing long form f...
