Posts by System
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...
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.
Sorry if this is an ancient solved problem to ask in 2019, but I googled about this and Quora isn't really answering me. I searched for the words black and race and politically as key-words on thi...
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...
What I do in similar cases is write both variants – you will very likely have a clear feeling for which variant works best.
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...
In his answer to my previous question, @Standback distinguishes two types of erotic storyline: stories in which the stakes are romantic or sexual stories in which the stakes are neither romantic ...
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...
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 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...
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...
All bestselling fiction has a strong concept. The concept is the red thread that leads the reader through the story. It is the reference point against which the actions of the characters become mea...
Sex or gender are just a small part of who your characters are. If you take all the female characters from contemporary literature together, they don't have many things in common. As with all thin...
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 ...
Usually a story will have a narrative arc of increasing suspense: obstacles become more and more difficult to overcome, setbacks more painful, complications more confusing, the stakes are raised hi...
How to make a cool character who is really unmanly? The guy is bad at leadership, lacks endurance and strength while also being kind of a coward and having quite feminine facial features.
On the modern day many people complain about how models, actors are damaging to society because people can't identify with them. Males actors or models which are ''too'' muscular are considered ''u...
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...
It's common in stories for spectacle to build over time. Each story arc, the stakes get higher, the drama gets more intense, the villains get more dangerous, and so on. For a story with a fixed e...
