Posts by System
What I do in similar cases is write both variants – you will very likely have a clear feeling for which variant works best.
You portray the mood-swings of a character with BPD believably in the same way that you portray any other emotion of any other character believably – by motivating the emotions. The mood-swings o...
I disagree with @Galastel. Not every character needs a backstory. Many minor characters in fiction only need to appear consistent with their context and the purpose they have in the narrative. Whe...
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...
[Not a native english speaker] I am currently writing a novel, told from the 3rd-person POV, with several characters being followed in different scenes. Will the following confuse the readers? ...
You use @media rules in your CSS style sheets to define which html tags you want to print and which are only visible on screen. E.g. @media print { .stuff-you-don't-want-to-print { dis...
Many writers eventually come to a point in their writing where they don't know what to write. They have a certain status or state of affairs that the narration has reached and another state that th...
Reinterpretations of symbols are a common occurence: The letter x given the meaning "hazard": The hazard symbol given the meaning "intoxication" or "death": The christian cross given the mean...
I think I recently read about a popular series writer employing a continuity proofreader: someone with a good memory that has digged himself into the series and the writer's work so deep to be able...
Let's look at the example from the Three Musketeers that you give. Readers today probably wouldn't know what an aglet is. And if they knew, they would probably think of shoe laces and not know how...
Thalidomide is the generic form of the brand-name drug Thalomid. I would think no one owns a trademark on a generic name. If you are taking thalidomide to treat XYZ, the most common side effects a...
"Is there some way to measure whether our own application of rule-breaking is done well?" Yes, that tool is called readers. Give your writing to a number of critical readers and see what they say.
These days, anything could "come off to somebody as somehow sexist", but I don't see a clear path from one to the other. Specifically, a story with a predominantly female cast would not, by that f...
A good trick that I use is to write the events on index cards. Just a quick summary of the things that happen. Then you can visually arrange them in an order that suits. I used to stick a post-it o...
TL;DR: Try submitting with a female pen name. If the criticism goes away, there's your answer. This is your character and you need not bow to anybody's tropes or nuances, or notions of how or why...
The best writing is one that uses typographic markup sparingly. There are some agents and publishers who prefer manuscripts to be submitted in plain text! If your writing relies on italics, boldfac...
I like to compare writing to other jobs: Chef in a Restaurant: Should you serve your customers what they like to eat, or should you cook what you like and eat it yourself? Architect: Should you b...
Two things first: Take into account that you might be wrong in your assessment. Others (e.g. publishers) might view this text differently. So emphasize that this is your personal view. Limiting y...
Whenever I go to a bookstore, they either do not have any poetry books at all, or only a very small selection of classics shelved alongside Homer and Shakespeare. When you search "market for poetr...
The publishing industry has become extremely competitive in recent years. The effect is that publishers only invest money in extensive editing and revising if they are absolutely sure that the book...
I'm a big fan of ongoing stories and longer series. But one thing I've noticed about my writing (and a lot of the works I read/watch) is that as a story goes on, the tone gets progressively darker...
What I would do: Allow yourself to put your writing (as you have done it until today) on hold for a year or so. Use this time to try to approach writing differently. First, take a month or so to ...
The villain doesn't need to convince the protagonist as much as you need to convince the reader. If you can make it believeable to the reader that the protagonist changes sides, then it will be a...
You could look at how children perceive animals that they do not yet know. What they do is subsume animals that look alike into the same category. At first every animal is called a "dog" (if a dog ...
I would say focus more on character. "He's saved the world. He's saved the universe! But can he save his deepest friendship after _____?" This could also be a backstory vehicle, but leave the b...
