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Self-publishing is viable for all and only the people who are willing and able to personally sell every copy of their own book (or eBook). It's great for public speakers, relentless self-promoters...
I am at the free-writing stages of writing my high fantasy novel. I am looking at or experimenting with different methods for hooking the reader and driving their attention towards the rest of my s...
I have an interesting plot ready, although there are a few missing blocks which I cannot develop. Story: A girl is a daughter of a druid. Druids are humans who live in the forest protecting anima...
I've once heard there are 2 types of writers, and I am definitively an architect. I can write down a few hundred pages of worldbuilding and characters, but I scrap most of my stories after the firs...
It IS a bad thing to do, and possibly a violation of copyright you can be sued for if you make a profit from it. I am not a lawyer, but I have dealt with copyright issues in my profession. Dismis...
I don't know about the user reviews but a very good source of publishers is the Writer's Market (by Writer's Digest). There is also a version just for fiction. The publishers are in alphabetica...
Dream twists just spoil our senses of disbelief. I can see how that can be excetuted carelessly, but if done for the need of showing what the main character wants or fears most then maybe it would ...
My partner and I usually enjoy role-playing together in free-form. I was thinking perhaps we could convert one of our role-plays into a book and publish it online. I wanted to ask if there are any ...
You need to ask a lawyer. I am not a lawyer, but it is my understanding that in some States (of the USA) it is illegal to portray, even in simulation, animation or cartoon form, sexualized scenes o...
There isn't a theater SE so this seems like the best place to ask, but feel free to suggest a better place. I'm producing a community play with a character who's believed to be dead, but turns out ...
Here is a different perspective: Miranda is a literary agent. She reads your query letter, and she thinks you are describing a book with an interesting premise, and she could probably sell it. Age...
The first answer to your question, as everybody else is pointing out, is research. Anything you don't know about, research. Read about it to get a general picture. Look for first-hand accounts (peo...
Describing a scene from an animal's point of view "What literary devices and techniques should be used in this kind of scene?" I should say, the same devices that you might use to write from any c...
What you need first is a market. Who are you publishing comics for and how will you pay for it? Lots of people create comics anthologies, for example. These are very popular and can be published...
The main obstacle to fanfics flooding the market is copyright. As long as the original author holds the copyright for their work, fanfics can only live as free stuff on the internet. (Or, as Kirk p...
I’ve posted several questions here recently asking for advice on how to write better. The responses I’ve gotten have been invaluable to me, and I’m becoming re-invigorated about the idea of writin...
If what you're looking for is not stand-ins for real places, but just a generic place for your characters to be in, look at how real company names, real hotel names, real band names etc. are formed...
When one is a plotter of stories, every step of the intrigue is laid out before one starts writing. Well…, no. I sometimes think discovery writers imagine that plotters are passionless stone ...
I second the idea to use videos astronauts have made. Some are made for school children to teach about the concepts (worthwhile for adults too) and others are on different topics/for different aud...
There may be action, but perhaps what you are missing is conflict. (Conflict is the MC personally having to make choices and solve problems, not just reacting to or living through "action".) Your c...
I have 25-30 "main characters," (feel free to quibble over the definition) and more supporting ones, though of course only a few are really central. Two of the main 5 characters I don't even intro...
Should I touch on the aftermath of the battle, and the mass murder, rape, and enslavement of the army's 12,000 camp followers? Yes, you should. If this is something that happened in your world...
In both scenes, this seems like for women, all roads lead to romance with men; that this is the only thing they are good for. Or in the second scene, the only reason these women are together in the...
One way of going "off the rails" not yet mentioned here is to actually embrace the predictable plot, and then go past it. With your setup, of course the hero is going to defeat the monster. Let tha...
I practice my writing skills by writing fan fiction. It's a great medium: no deadlines or word goals, and you get free feedback. The only problem is that as fan fiction, there are certain things yo...
