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I think in general you want your character to suffer pain, or inflict it. You want to create conflicts where there were none before; not tectonic conflicts but more minor ones. Problems that reveal...
I think of cuss words in my writing like spices. I don't want hot sauce on everything, and I don't want my carrot cake doused in Habanero Death Spiral. If you use them too liberally, then like spi...
Fix it now vs fix it later is a perennial question in writing. Often the answers given are absolutist one way or the other, or come down to "whatever works for you". But I would suggest a different...
Consider the Self the axiomatic being. An axiom, in science, is something we take as self-evidently true. It is axiomatic that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line: It needs...
There is no real way to tell if you are doing enough, of doing the right things, just from a brief description of your product and your users. The questions you really have to come to grips with ar...
There are three basic reasons for using figure references in a document, rather than just putting the figures inline in the text next to the point where they are referenced: You are referencing a...
Never, really. Or it depends on what you mean by "moving the story forward." I am writing a scene with a character that has to prove she is lethal. In a movie, we would use a walk-on, unrelated to...
People don't behave rationally all the time, and neither do characters in fiction. Your characters don't need to make the right choices all the time, they just need to make believable choices that ...
Mike's career is over either way, and his choice is selfish and self-centered. If he can hack the SETEV, hack it in a way that forces the rest of the crew off it, then steal it, so he is the ONLY ...
A person acting out of charity or selflessness is aiming to help somebody more than they help themselves, and would take such an act even if nobody knew they did. Just recently viewing news of Hurr...
In the comments you mentioned that you want to write a blog about differenct technologies, for example about different programming languages, and are having problems with how you want to structure ...
In most technology books, a chapter tackles a single subject in depth. For example, "looping" in a language, the FOR loop; WHILE loop, DO WHILE, DO UNTIL, etc. In beginner books, syntax and the r...
The thing is, readers don't care about non-human perspectives, If you believe that, then why in the world would they buy your next three books? You have essentially told us that, you believe ...
If you are using POV characters to explore a world, you are not doing storytelling, you are doing world building. That is a perfectly legitimate hobby, but it is not literature and the normal conce...
This is a very common technique among aspiring writers. It feels like playing tricks with the narrative line solves all kinds of writing and story problems for you. But this is largely an illusion....
It strikes me looking at this that what the difference between true self and false self here can be summed up as contentment vs discontent. I would like to think that contentment was the true sel...
Where prologues are concerned, it all comes down to one thing: Contents It all depends on what the prologue contains. You mention a major plot point, but you also say: Building a website fo...
I would put it as chapter 1, subtitle, "The beginning of the end", or "The seeds of destruction" or something that makes the reader realize it is important and necessary reading. I prefer to move ...
Sophistication and polish and complexity are not for the first draft. Period. Your first draft is meant to be the rough, crappy one. It's getting your ideas out. You are letting the perfect become...
Depends on what the powers are, and what the weaknesses are. Can your character fly but nobody else can? Or can he always parallel-park perfectly on the first shot? Does he have super strength or...
The term writing is kind of like the word walking, except that writing gets used as a collective term in a way that walking does not. Lots of people walk as a major part of their jobs: letter carri...
The purpose of fiction is to give pleasure to the reader. The use of profanity, like anything else, works when it gives pleasure to the reader. Of course, certain profanities will displease certa...
I think a story needs to be consistent. Consider "The Sixth Sense" [*Spoiler Alert, I give away the Twist], the "I see dead people" movie with Bruce Willis. For myself, I made sure I saw it early...
It sounds like you write much like I do, discovering the story as you go. My approach is to put notes, as I think of them, at the bottom of whatever I am writing, and carry them forward. By "note...
I am of the opinion that nobody wants to read about the world I built! Or really I mostly sketched it. I don't think people want a museum tour, I think they want a story. If what you built does no...
