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tl;dr- Cliches seem bad when things are there just for the sake of the cliche itself. To avoid this, you can develop meaningful notions of the gods – including what they are, why they're there, a...
I have characters like this, and a lot of teen characters at that. There are teens who will talk like this (Nerds who read. Socially Awkward kids. Motivational speeches trying to sound important...
Great writers do more than just say, "in real life people don't do X, so my characters mustn't do X". They understand why people don't do X, thereby informing their understanding of their own chara...
Tell your audience that the sparrows are cheeping and use italics for the translation. This is a technique that I've seen in a few books for communication that isn't verbal/audible the italics carr...
How do you know what the sparrows are thinking? I mean that sincerely. If you're watching them, you attribute dialogue to them because they're obviously communicating things to each other. They ...
Just use English, in quotes, like any dialogue. When we write about medieval fantasy, the narrator is always translating ancient languages to English for the reader. It is understood, whether you ...
Uncaring. Harsh. Unforgiving. And a Sci-Fi setting? Well. It depends on what the deal is, but I'll offer some things I'd throw in to really show this world doesn't care for humans. Alien world. T...
+1 to Ash, and I'd like to add another feature: lack of healthy life. If you really want to show that an environment is hostile, show that nothing pleasant can thrive there. Here are some suggesti...
This really depends on the type of world you have in mind. It isn't quite clear from your question whether you are talking about e.g. alien planets that are hostile to all life (toxic, radiated was...
There are two roads from Santa Fe to Taos, New Mexico. One runs through the gorge of the Colorado river. The other runs over the mountains through pine forests. The one through the pine forests is ...
What did you think when you first wrote that scene? Was it easy or hard? The best scenes in my complete novel are the reveal scenes, because they are fraught with emotion and interpersonal dynamic...
Realistically, life sucks, but most of us manage to find hope somewhere. Sometimes little girls have to grow up too fast and sometimes we have to deal with messes other people make. It sounds lik...
They say you shouldn't show gore, if you want it to have an emotional impact. Instead, show a teddy bear, or some other child's toy, sitting abandoned, or placed by a grave. The same can hold true...
I think my answer may be a tad tinted by my atheism, as I believe every faith and pantheon operates as a function of how a culture interacts with nature, the difficult-to-predict, and the unknown, ...
On the other hand, to reveal that a hero always had a Machiavellian side, would require depth, and thus question their value as absolute reference. My question is: in the context of a mytho...
I'm unsure if it's meaningful, if it has enough depth. How do I determine this? You might start by asking yourself: what kind of meaningfulness or depth am I looking for? With very few except...
I think it's a mistake. You certainly can do it and probably get away with it. But why make a tonal shift so severe if there's no real reason for it? Even though these are different characters, ...
(Warning: I haven't actually read Beowulf.) Option #3 sounds like your strongest choice. Start by accepting the myth as fact: leave all his initial deeds as they are, and assume he acted in charac...
I think it depends on the build up whether it seems fake. The character shouldn't just jump to tears. They should go through the whole grief cycle. This should happen even maybe in the span of a si...
I've always been a "prisoner of inspiration," but I've at long last come to understand/accept that there are technical, skill-based things that you can do to create those perfect scenes --you don't...
There is a trick for this in The Emotional Craft of Fiction. It's called 'me centered narration.' Essentially, you have the character express at length in narrative (protest too much) what she w...
I believe your first two definitions are essentially in agreement. The most important characteristic of the "New Weird" is a fantasy story set in a fantasy world, where traditional fantasy tropes a...
I use the blithering idiot test. Only end an error message with an exclamation mark if the punctuation mark could reasonably be replaced with the phrase "you blithering idiot!" For example, "th...
Genre should be seen largely as a way of connecting a writer with the audience most likely to enjoy his or her book based on elements shared with other books. It isn't an exact science, and for th...
The easiest way to accomplish this is to imitate the style of real-word mythology. There are various different sources, which all have different styles and different symbolism. In the Western worl...
