Search
Redundancy in prose is often useful because people forget things and because the real world relationships implied by the grammatical relationships is not always clear. One often finds that overzea...
We tend to have more and simpler words for things we talk about regularly than for things we talk about seldom, so there probably isn't an exact equivalent to "human" for ants, at least, not one th...
The third person narrator can describe the thoughts and feelings of the characters, both of them, without restriction. Instead of the dialogue of a conversation between Bill and Chuck, I would des...
The main thing I see, in such a novel, is avoiding having this insanity be the equivalent of a deus ex machina that ultimately defeats him. I think the hero must defeat him in a way that would work...
Use transitional phrases when you need to clarify or highlight a connection. Especially in technical writing (where concise is better), don't use them just to use them. In your example, the secon...
Character driven is typically about life changes (or life ending) for a character, basically the character(s) undergo some kind of deep emotional transformation that is life-changing. Becoming a se...
I am not a lawyer, so do some legal research. The following is my opinion and not legal advice. They may well regard this is defamation, if your character can break into them it means they have la...
Consider the mania around spoilers. Why do we demand that people discussing books and TV shows online warn us if their posts are going to contain any information about how the story ends. Here's ...
No, it's better to keep it Your goal is to present the information as clearly as possible to your reader and that may require to "repeat" the information in this case. Imagine that your reader doe...
A story (of any length) consists of a beginning, a middle, and an end. Google for the "Three Act Structure", here is a link to an example worksheet, it applies to all stories, even one page stories...
Adding to A.T Catmus answer, mental communications could have a sort of "flavour". As humans we are able to determine emotions of a speaker only judging by a spoken sentence; thoughts could be tre...
A script is not supposed to contain images, so you can't include one. Use the description you have, without revealing it is Chinese, and later reveal the source. Anybody considering your screenpl...
You never want to slow down the pace of a story. Pace is everything. But pace is not about rushing to the exits. A pace is a comfortable speed at which to see all the scenery and experience everyth...
2050 is not a bad place; I can provide a scientific perspective. There is a whole theory in science about the lifecycle of innovations; see Thomas Kuhn and his book The Structure of Scientific Rev...
In screenwriting you should not have any "chunky" descriptions at all. More than six lines is probably too many; the rule of thumb in screenwriting is that, if you cannot see it, don't write about ...
Find an author you like. For me I like Stephen King, or Orson Scott Card, or half a dozen others. Books I personally enjoyed that also sold millions of copies. Now, take a scene or a long section ...
Be careful not to fall into writer as actor syndrome, imagining the movie of your book and how the actors might act the parts. You are writing a novel, not a prose description of a movie. While y...
Plot is the servant of character. One of the most common mistakes of beginning writers seems to be to start by inventing a plot -- essentially an imaginary history -- and then peopling it with char...
There is a fourth option you barely mentioned. Distillation. You can try this on just a few pages, a chapter, whatever. If you think your writing is poor, do the whole story this way. First, make ...
People will forgive a war crime if the character committing it is NOT motivated by cruelty or hatred or bigotry, but is motivated by some combination of love and logistical necessity. I don't know...
You could try going in the negative. "You're not a god." Or, "You're not infallible." Or, "Nobody is perfect." You could try going sympathetic. "We all make mistakes. Welcome to the club." Or, ...
As is the case with any scene intended to evoke strong emotion from the reader, 90% of the effect is achieved via the setup. If the reader is going to scream "please don't", it will not be because ...
We scream "please don't" because of about half a book's worth of endearments, and making the character like somebody we would like in our own life, or at least in our life if WE were a character in...
Writing is a stupid waste of time. It will make you lonely, but it won't make you rich. I can think of only two legitimate reasons to write: A profound and unshakable regret for not having writte...
The best way I have seen to infodump is through conflict, preferably between people that (at least for the moment) don't like each other, or are trying to top each other. Here is my analysis. T...
