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Authors have to write about things they haven't experienced all the time. Just look at crime authors writing for TV or Movies: They must show characters being raped, murdered, burned alive, mugged ...
The first answer to your question, as everybody else is pointing out, is research. Anything you don't know about, research. Read about it to get a general picture. Look for first-hand accounts (peo...
Misery Loves Company. I think you'd have to make him, at least apparently, very observant and intelligent. One way to make him hated and cheerful at the same time is to have him tell jokes about ...
In many (most?) companies you do not need a degree or certificate; what you need is demonstrated skill. Technical writing is not a super-common degree to begin with; many technical writers have de...
As Matthew Dave pointed out, you don't really need dialogue for that kind of flashbacks. They are memories shared in a common, telephatic link; you can write them as a series of vivid images - citi...
Think of your flashbacks like you think of any other scene. The fact that this is a flashback shouldn't make a significant difference. There are five senses you can engage: sight, hearing, smell,...
Writing a complex story with multiple storylines, I find it useful to chart things. I draw a timeline: what happens when, what age characters are at the time, which event occur simultaneously, how ...
There are several reasons why acronyms, abbreviations and initials would be used. Some of those reasons have to do with the reality of the relevant professions, others might be as much for the audi...
Are you familiar with Bioware's games (Dragon Age, Mass Effect)? Because of the many different plot choices the game offers, a player might well find themselves returning to an earlier save-point a...
Permission is given by the entity that owns the original copyright, which may be the author, the publisher, or some third party that bought the rights to it. That could even be the person adapting ...
Videogames with sexual content do exist. Bioware's Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises offer "vanilla" sex, same-sex sex, BDSM sex, interspecies sex. All of it loving, consenting, and heart-warmi...
I think the line is subjective, and relates to whether the typical reader will feel like the narrator (that is not the author) cheated or tried to trick them. Of course the author tried to trick t...
What makes a page turner is that the reader is always wondering what will happen in the next few pages. But, as @Alexander says, it doesn't have to be action, per se. It only means you have a cons...
Some references to popular songs would count as "fair use". For example, Sir Terry Pratchett, in his novel Soul Music (which is all about Rock) makes references to multiple Rock songs. For example...
Here is a different perspective: Miranda is a literary agent. She reads your query letter, and she thinks you are describing a book with an interesting premise, and she could probably sell it. Age...
"I'm just curious" is not a very compelling argument, especially when you're emailing a random stranger who's probably too busy to answer every such email that enters his inbox. "I'm writing a book...
Speaking as a research scientist, I cannot really explain to you "how things work in my field." What things? There are myriad things, like in any other profession. How to propose experiments, how...
If you think it would be a cheap trick, then don't do it. But it is an already somewhat estabilished tecnique - there are tons of books where the prologue has a different PoV from that of the mai...
If the readers think the opinion of your protagonist is your own opinion, then I'd guess the problem is not that the protagonist has that opinion, but that the protagonist's opinion is not or not s...
In some sense you are talking about an anti-hero; a hero that has qualities or attitudes the audience may think are bad, but put up with because the guy is intent on accomplishing something else th...
As you noted in your answer, the common approach to doing this is to just introduce another villain, or another threat, and keep doing that as necessary. The trick is to balance it in such a way th...
Most native english speakers will probably have a mastery of the english language superior to your own. I'm a non-native english speaker myself and, since I read a lot in english (and somewhat stru...
The answer to your question depends on whether you're writing fiction, or non-fiction. Non-fiction If you're writing non-fiction, particularly if you're writing an academic text, being understood...
I suggest you search for "knock outs". I've done some research on martial arts, and there are several hot spots on the head that, if struck, can knock somebody out cold, so bad they can fall and fr...
A character has a "voice" if, when you read about a page worth of that character's dialogue (without any attributions) you could identify the character correctly. Not EVERY character needs a voice...
