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Eye dialect You might also consider this technique to be a form of eye dialect where the author intentionally misspells words to reveal something about the character. Some more information about ...
I've seen this done several different ways. Chorus in bold (typical in printed lyrics to be sung from if everyone, including the lead, sings that part together) It was in nineteen hundred an...
You are writing a novel, and @Galastel's second example explains how you may use conventional dialogue tags to label the different speakers of different parts of song lyrics. In poetry, commonly t...
The bare minimum is not the backstory The bare minimum that you need to show is not the backstory, but whether the MC is convinced about Matt's good character. For instance, Arthur Conan Doyle do...
The given name I've been known by since High School is not the same as the name on my birth certificate or driver's license, but it is, like yours, a known nickname for my legal name. I used to us...
Ultimately audiences don't need a lot of details about most characters' history, what they do need, in order for the story to make sense and be immersive, is justifications for their actions. If a ...
I disagree with @Galastel. Not every character needs a backstory. Many minor characters in fiction only need to appear consistent with their context and the purpose they have in the narrative. Whe...
If you want to get published, the latter style is not acceptable. Follow the standard convention. Just Google for "Formatting Dialogue", look for sources related to written fiction (as opposed to ...
The conventional way to write a nickname is in quotation marks between the first name and the surname. For example, E. E. “Doc” Smith. Either Babs Benge or Barbara “Babs” Benge works, but I’d go ...
Edward Elmer Smith is not well known but E. E. 'Doc' Smith certainly is, punctuation and all, among the right classes of science fiction fans. As other people have said, brackets may look odd but ...
Anything goes. Musicians often use unconventional pseudonyms, from Royce da 5′9″ to , but sometimes writers use uncommon punctuation or orthography as well. There's a German crime author who publ...
You portray the mood-swings of a character with BPD believably in the same way that you portray any other emotion of any other character believably – by motivating the emotions. The mood-swings o...
First, if the context is obvious, you don't need a dialogue tag at all. "Albert, you're already drunk! Stop it!" she implored him. "Nah, if I stop drinking, I won't have an excuse to miss work t...
I will disagree with the advice you received. The vast majority of self-published fiction earns nothing, or at best some friend and family sympathy purchases. The case is even worse for un-markete...
How do you learn anything? By practicing it. And no, you don't learn to write by reading. That is a huge misconception. By reading you acquire knowledge about how stories work. And if you read "wi...
Other answers have already covered rather well the benefits you can get from both writing and reading so I won't rehash those but rather to add another - get feedback. Join a local writers group o...
@CortAmmon hit the nail on the head and your answer partly confirms this. This is a story that is being told from a robot's perspective. To whom is the Robot telling the story too? English speak...
I think your should use "it" as long as you want your audience to think of your robots as not having human-like characteristics. However, at some point if they are characters in your story, your jo...
I had a similar problem with a story I was writing. Since the story was set in the future, and since language evolves, in the end I decided to invent my own pronouns: 'xe' (pronounced 'zee', instea...
If the characters talk about having played the game, rather than actually playing on-screen, as it were, the actual game is in danger of becoming an extraneous detail -- at best, it's group charact...
Is it uncompelling to continue the story with lower stakes? It depends on the type of story you are telling. If you are telling a character-driven story, one in which the reader becomes heavi...
I'd like to add to Thing-um-a-jig's answer. The written "voice" of a character has at least three components. The character's lexicon. This is the unique way a person/character uses words. Thi...
The most important rule is to match the stakes with the promises you've made to the reader You most emphatically do not have to constantly raise the stakes to make a compelling story. As your ins...
In Game of Thrones there were two sets of stakes: the magical Night King, and the mundane power struggle for the Iron Throne. The characters reasonably decided they had to deal with the magical, mo...
As the other answers have stated, I don't believe re-using the story's name for the first chapter is a particularly good idea, especially if it means something different later on in your story. How...
