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First, I am not a business lawyer, or tax attorney. The following are my understandings from being in business, do not rely on this as legal advice, and you should consult with a business lawyer or...
Use a wiki Many people are using a wiki when they are creating their worlds, as can be seen by this answer to the question What software is available for keeping and organising notes about your wo...
How can you tell whether "yes, this is good" or "okay, this needs work"? These are objective artistic judgments. Emotional distance from the work is certainly part of what you need to make them ab...
How should I approach plotting a compelling story, i.e. one aimed at changing the way people think and behave (rather than just being "art for art's sake")? I want to write a novel or collection o...
Lots of people start writing novels in their teens. Most of them are not very good at first. That is to be expected. A novel is one of the most complex forms of art that can be created by a single ...
I like reading stories where the characters are given an initial run-down as they are introduced into the story. The run-down could roast the character in sarcasm, describing what others say and h...
I don't think in medias res should necessarily be understood as jumping into the middle of the story. I think we should look at it more as a story is embedded in a history. You may need to understa...
As others have said, the main conflict is what the main character wants and can't get. But I think the point that needs making here is about what plot is. I think it is all to easy to get into th...
There are some stories where backstory is extremely important; there are some where it's entirely inconsequential. The easy answer is: If you know what kind of story you're telling, you know whet...
In fiction there are protagonists, the characters that the writer wants the readers to identify with, and antagonists, the characters who have opposing goals and seek to stop the protagonists from ...
No, it doesn't have to be. Your example: 88k vs 75k. Those are already very similar word-counts. A reader will most likely not tell the difference when reading them. My example: Alternate history...
You need to make a very clear distinction between imaginary history and story. It seems to be quite common for aspiring writers to construct elaborate imaginary histories and then struggle to write...
Yes, it will be disappointing, but that disappointment will not likely occur at the end, but much earlier when the reader begins to get the sense that the character they are following has no arc. O...
I find myself in a similar position with my novel and it's in the modern age (1995, with a couple quick chapters in 1942 and 2020) and in the past in a time and place that actually existed (even if...
When writing a book of your own, you absolutely can use other books on the topic as references. And you can quote those other books. In both cases, you want to credit the other book. For quote...
Getting your facts straight is one of the rules of literature. As with the other rules of literature, it is one thing to know the rule and know when to break it, but another thing to ignore the rul...
One way to depict a brilliant military mind is to find a successful battle or campaign in history which starts from similar conditions to the type of starting conditions you want at the start of th...
No, I think there are lots of good writing tools to choose from. Also, as I think editing is as much a part of the act of writing, I've included two editing tools. So, here are my favourite editi...
What techniques? I can give you some ideas, at least. Just remember - it hasn't all been done before, and it never will be. This is the precise reason why new books are written and new music is p...
A free open-source tool for telling non-linear / interactive storylines is Twine Another non-free alternative to articy:draft is Chat Mapper From the forum posts and reviews I read, most that t...
Before we begin, I'm terribly sorry that this post is massively incoherent, badly formatted and error-ridden, It's very late. I'll try to fix it somewhere next week. You can reasonably skip to "Sum...
I haven't seen the presentation you describe and it's not clear to me what sort of marketing it calls for. You mention giving out a free sample. Like a sample chapter or something? I see two big ca...
You can't This is not a romance. This is a master having sex with his slave. Or wanting to have sex. But he's going to free the slave! Is he now? But the person is still a slave when this all...
As Mark says, not without a track record of one bestseller after another. But if you got that, you should be pretty rich, so why bother? Rowling and Stephen King probably don't worry about stuff li...
Sci-fi and fantasy don't NEED to be fundamentally different. If the people in your fantasy world approach the magic that exists in their world in a "scientific" way, then your fantasy elements bec...
