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Often when writers use terms for concepts like "Buddha nature", I'm not sure the writers understand the concept themselves. A good practice, I find, is attempting to paraphrase the concept in comm...
Thanos is a narcissist of the highest order. He speaks in such a commanding way because he believes unwaveringly that his every idea is superior to that of any other being. He twists every action,...
Here are some questions that I would consider: Will the reader be able to enjoy the story without understanding the concept? Will reading the story from beginning to end make the reader understan...
One example is Janet Jeppson, who wrote a few books under the name ‘J. O. Jeppson’, but after marrying Isaac Asimov wrote many more (some alone, some with her husband), mostly under the name ‘Janet...
As you say, they are philosophical; and they seem powerful because they seem true and momentous. I ask you, to what end? Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same. He is explaining...
If you drop these scenes/locations from your story, where does it leave you? Does your plot still flow smoothly? Are your characters developing the way you want them to? If your plot and characters...
For many years --decades actually --my goal with every piece of writing I wrote was that it be read and appreciated by someone. There were plenty of things I wrote that didn't achieve that goal, an...
For me, writing is a passion. Not writing is an impossibility. There are stories in my mind; I need to tell them. I need to find out where they go, how they go, what they mean. I have something in ...
Writing is not a passion for me, not at all. I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a scientist, and I became a scientist. As a scientist, I spent much of my life learning. Through learnin...
When I was in high school, a friend and I wandered together downtown and came across a psychic's booth. Out of curiosity, we stepped inside. We were both writers, she told us. My friend wro...
For me one of the uses of writing is to help me work out, clarify and order my thoughts on some matter. The process of developing a clear and definite explanation for someone else, regardless of wh...
As Emerson said, 'Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm' - and some significant hard graft. Writing that aims to be read can be difficult, frustrating and so forth, but the rewards, sh...
There is a distinction that needs to be drawn here: are you talking about practice that helps you improve your writing, or are you talking about the kind of practice you can put in a CV to help you...
I think that my problem with thinking of this as serious writing practice is because it's already a habit of mine and it feels like cheating to accept something that I already do and don't have ...
It is natural for people to notice any physical feature that stands out, but some words such as "tall", "big", "fat", "short" etc are not that descriptive. Adding "very" doesn't help. If it is nec...
TL;DR The magic is not in the place, but in the characters' reaction to it. The story is told from the POV of the characters. They may find your three main locations interesting, and the places in...
As a general rule, lyrics will be written with little punctuation. When at a line break, it's not uncommon to use a slash to note the line is breaking and then begin the next line with a capital l...
Sometimes you'll see authors avoid constantly repeating character names by replacing them with descriptors. For instance (assume that all three descriptors are referring to John, the tall man who ...
Just use your Initials and last name G.R.R. Martin J.R.R. Tolkien J.K Rowling seems to work well for them... If your last name doesn't have a nice ring to it, just make one up. Or if your las...
The frame challenge of this question is whether you would like to be read by someone who considers your name to be an important factor in the decision on whether reading your book. If having the l...
For whom have my hands laboured, Urshanabi? Both temporary setbacks and unexpected failures in the end are entirely appropriate. Unexpectedly unhappy endings are as old as civilization. The best...
Inconvenience is more realistic and hence more relatable. Think of Donald Duck cartoons--everything seems to go wrong, all the time. Many people resonate with that, although in this case exaggerati...
I read an article by a writer once in which he said that he spent a great deal of his time putting doors in alleys. And he explained that what he meant was, if he has a scene where the hero is bein...
Current practice for attention-calling literary elements --I'm thinking primarily here of things like accents and dialects --is to start out with enough to give the flavor, and then to assume that ...
Focus on contextual usage and descriptions, and consider the process behind how you learn new words. How often have you learned a new word by opening a dictionary and reading definitions at random...
