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All writing in print is (technically) telling. You can "show" in a movie or a play, but everything you're doing in a book is telling, if you want to get technical about it. A lot of times it is b...
As you say yourself, "show don't tell" is a guideline and not an absolute rule. I write computer software for a living. (Sadly, I make way too little money writing to live on.) I've had many occa...
As I was trying to find my own answers, I thought for a while about changing my settings in order to satisfy the theme and characters. This wasn't working for my story because it was so difficult t...
From your description I think, you are overthinking this: You are describing a very basic plot twist, in which one of the assumptions your characters made turned out to be false, changing the meani...
Break the chapter into three scenes. Each scene has a POV character. First and last scenes have one POV character. Middle scene has the other POV character. Since the scenes in the chapter will dif...
There are two questions hiding in your question, 1. Can the POV character not be the character who's most active? Consider Sherlock Holmes as an example. Watson is the POV character, the story is...
The best way to pull this off is that both the magical answer and mundane answer are plausible because the answer of "is it magic or scientifically explainable* doesn't matter as the result would b...
You need a major twist earlier in the story. The promise to the reader is that there is a debate about the strange events, and that things don't always turn out as they appear. That makes your end...
Characters interrupt each other People don't always wait for one another to finish speaking (and say "over" to indicate they are done) before they start talking. To extend Amadeus answer from abov...
All of these answers are correct. I think this is a more technical way to look at it, which may give you some better direction: All of dialogue has a rhythm, and people reading the dialogue will ...
Options depend on how complex/'interactive' you need your generated PDF to be, and how 'turn-key' of a solution your technical abilities would require. If you already know (or are comfortable lear...
Making political, moral or legal arguments in novels can always get you backlash, especially when it is obvious who or what you are criticizing. If it is a topic with particular passions/people beh...
Shadowzee makes some excellent points in their answer, so I won't talk about those. Ideally, when arguing against a long-standing tradition/law (like speed limits), you would have some good argu...
In your comment to @tryin, You say "It is a non-debated social perception the character would be fighting." I am not a lawyer but I believe in the USA at least, and possibly elsewhere, there actua...
Many authors have written works which challenge political and ethical norms. These usually won't get you in trouble unless you were to make explicit claims about real people or organisations which...
Since you’re explicitly asking about legal fallout, rest reassured you that you’re most likely going to be fine, even if your book may rub readers (and/or authorities) the wrong way. Short of inci...
Typically, if we are going to introduce any shorthand for a long name (including initializing it), the first time we use it in full and then note the shorter name we will use throughout: This can j...
This is a frame challenge. I think your issue could also be that your characters do not have a distinct voice. A 15 years old sounds different from a 20 years old. I am not referring to the timbre...
There isn't one, fiction, both reading it and writing it is a subjective experience, everyone sees it differently so there's no single formula that works in all cases. The best way to learn good wr...
Dialog in a story serves to advance the story or develop character. I’ve been taught that dialog isn’t conversation as much as its the ‘best of conversation.’ It condenses while it evoke emotions...
You leave out small talk by focusing on big talk! By this I mean every thing a person says should be something at least one person in the conversation needs to hear, or wants to hear, or is surpr...
Some of the best worldbuilding is done gradually. If you introduce all the elements of your fantasy world very near the beginning, you risk boring your readers with a massive infodump. It's often ...
@Liquid covers most of my answer. Sometimes you would refer to your father by his title or office, not to emphasize distance, but to emphasize that role of influence, especially if their blood rel...
Why don't you paraphrase the action? Say what he is literally doing. How does he give the chip? Is it in an envelope? Does he extend his arm? Is he tossing it? .... "Here's the chip in question...
Just get rid of the redundancies, and it will sound fine. Original: "Here's the chip in question." he said as he handed to chip to him. "It's a very old chip, make sure you take care of it." ...
