Posts by System
Sorry, I don't have answers for you, only more questions and a few thoughts: I think it doesn't have to be a waste of time, it can still be a really cool story - Game of Thrones was a hit TV serie...
In my current project my goal is to go for the following narrative style within scenes: Show only what the POV-Char can see, hear,... sense. Show their emotional reaction (through body-feelings, ...
I have a powerful antagonist perform important functions within my story. At the midpoint, he just leaves. Several Plot developments depend on this character. I tried replacing him with other char...
Before you read this answer, understand that this is written not so much as a writer, but as a reader with knowledge of mental health issues, both professionally and personally. Take the exampl...
I feel like the title is worded really bad, but I seem to be unable to find a better way. I am not a native speaker. Scenario A: A character is in an exceptional state of mind (i.e. drug use etc.)...
Bathos is a storytelling technique that consists in the rapid succession of 2 “moments” with conflicting tones. This trope occurs when a serious moment gets followed by a gag. One of the many, many...
Most erotica today is written by and for women, and bestselling erotica is narrated from a female point of view. The "male pornographic gaze" that sexualizes the female body has been considered off...
I have three variations of the same storyline and cannot decide which one I want to write: erotic story turning dark and dangerous A young adult man and woman fall in love. It is the woman's fir...
I am writing a story in which at some point two characters with the same name interact each other. I can't use their last name to differentiate because it's necessary for them to have no last name....
You are writing a novel, and @Galastel's second example explains how you may use conventional dialogue tags to label the different speakers of different parts of song lyrics. In poetry, commonly t...
Anything goes. Musicians often use unconventional pseudonyms, from Royce da 5′9″ to , but sometimes writers use uncommon punctuation or orthography as well. There's a German crime author who publ...
My legal name is Barbara but I have gone by Babs since I was in the 4th grade. I have written a children's book and wanted to list my name as Barbara (Babs) but my editor said that it might not ap...
How do you learn anything? By practicing it. And no, you don't learn to write by reading. That is a huge misconception. By reading you acquire knowledge about how stories work. And if you read "wi...
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...
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...
The protagonist of my trilogy-in-progress suffers from a serve case of Borderline Personality Disorder. Among his symptoms are continually splitting, unstable self-image, chronic feelings of emptin...
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...
Always Chaotic Evil denotes an entire species in a fictional setting as outright evil - no matter how one treats them, they reward kindness with treachery and violence. Frequent recipients of this ...
I am someone with no formal writing background, who has come to love writing for the fantasy adventure role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (fifth edition) during my free time. I am currently ru...
Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses is when writers portray female characters possessing traditional feminine qualities as being less desirable, competent and reliable instead of their tomboy foils. They...
I am editing a book for a writer who has quotes at the beginning of each chapter. The first chapter has a quote of her own. It's weird, but it's what she wants. Do I just treat it like the other qu...
[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...
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...
