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You don't have to put the homicide into Chapter 1, but you might want to. While this approach is a well-worn cliche of police procedurals, especially series (in which the protagonist is known in ad...
Yes and no. I don't think many people purchase a book because of the cover. The cover will not give you direct sales (maybe a couple...). But imagine that you are looking for a book. Either kno...
The web is crowded and you will have to shout very loud to be heard. I find people to enjoy my work and spray the word IRL. When I meet people, I immediately tell them to go watch my stuff (or I gi...
The answer given on the Movies and TV site could be useful to you. Basically, George RR Martin invented "Ser" to add some difference between his novels and the real world.
It depends. Using Amazon's book store as an example: If your book is in an Amazon category that has very few books and the reader finds a poorly-done homemade cover that speaks to what they are ...
It looks like you're looking for readers of your works in progress. My instinct with that was never to use the shotgun method. I've always just sent my drafts to one or two trusted readers. That mi...
The best way to avoid overly general openers is to write them. Go ahead, write them all down. Get them out of your system. If you don't, they're gonna be on your brain distracting you. Once you...
Get to the point? In the field of mathematics, there are problems that present an exceptional level of difficulty. Isn't really the point of your paper is it? This is just fluff. You lose...
I'm not sure what "hinted" means. Nevertheless, to get rid of "he said" tags and "-ly" adverbs, preface the actual dialogue (in quotes) with a description of what he is doing (that gets rid of "re...
No one can copyright an event The events that happened to your father don't belong to anyone. They just are. Different people will have different knowledge (or beliefs) about various portions of...
If this happened in European Union using his name and other specifics without his permission may violate General Data Protection Regulation. Note, if your father died more than 10 years ago, ...
Have animals react to them strangely It's a trope (with a surprising amount of real-world evidence) that animals can sense things wrong with the world that people can't. Impending earthquakes, can...
Brandon Sanderson uses shadows which point the wrong way, towards the light instead of away, in at least one of his books to mark when something is wrong. Maybe your being should similarly warp ph...
There was a short story I read a while ago, where a character was clued in to some mental meddling by another character answering a question word-for-word the same on three occasions in the text, w...
Creepy normally scare people away. Maybe its just their eyes that are an issue not counted as murderous but just don't look straight into them. As someone who has a family trait of both resting bit...
Nothing is too weird to be published. Truly, nothing. But plenty of works will not interest any of the publishers that currently exist. Even many works that are totally mainstream don't get publ...
Apparently the 3 months element is useful IF you expect lawsuit issues. From the Copyright Circular from https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html (more specifically - https://www.copyr...
If you are writing via planning and worldbuilding, your creative process goes like this: idea => concept => detailed plot/setting Research can be (and should be) used in every step of the p...
My advice is to be certain these characters show up again, either as characters or as something else --like an idea, a value, a representation of those characters. I always fall back to Luke in St...
Adapted from my answer to Can I self-publish a book on the Kindle store when I'm under 18? Absolutely, whenever you publish something with multiple authors—whether it's a collaboration or a work w...
I would be fine with either a comma or a semi-colon, although I think I'd prefer the semi-colon. Lists, particularly with sentence fragments, are pretty flexible in terms of content and punctuation...
You asked: Will I be shooting myself in the foot by doing this? Would it preclude the agent to publisher route for which we tend to hope? There are a few salient points to consider here: ...
I worked for two book publishers, and books were often offered at a prepublication discount. This would bring in some money ahead of the printing bills, and it would allow any large orders (such as...
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...
It's complicated. An indie writer who mostly does their own marketing winds up taking on two jobs -- writing new books, and marketing them. Although these can feel related, they're very, very dif...
