Posts by Matthew Dave
There's a saying about writing fiction: You have a harder job than God. Because while coincidences and chance play a massive role in real life, in fiction, things generally need... a reason to hap...
You can run into problems with publishers if you make the thing they're trying to sell for you for money free online. It's a direct attack on their business model, and if it was done by a pirate, ...
I can recall a video game that did this in a very satisfying way; Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. In the final boss, you have Reflux the Knaaren, essentially the Big Bad, Andre's muscle. He's souped-up on...
I'm writing a novel which has alternating point of views; odd chapters are from an angsty, neglected twelve/thirteen-year-old girl who's struggling with belongingness, puberty, and parental confusi...
The novel I'm writing is third-person limited POV in style. This means that the narration's coverage is limited to what the POV character can observe, think, feel, while others' thoughts, feelings,...
Life and death is actually a pretty low-stakes conflict in my opinion. Yes, of course, it's the ultimate thing we all want to avoid, but when it comes down to it, how many of us have experienced be...
A chapter generally needs a miniature conflict and arc of its own, and as such must have some kind of tension. As you pointed out, having multiple characters makes it somewhat easy, but a character...
If it's what you're going for thematically, that their duality leads to mutual destruction, then by all means do it. As long as the story builds to that, there's no reason not to do it. If you're ...
Generally speaking, you want to offer consistency in your style, and erratically switching to a minor characters' POV for one random chapter can appear jarring. An example would be in Enduring Love...
The first thing to note, if you want these characters to be capable of being protagonists, is the potential for an arc. This means that the character must want to be somewhere, be it physically, em...
I'm a strong believer in books/novels being as long as they need to be; if it turns out short, don't try to pad it out, and if it's long... unless there's chaff to cut out, it's long for a reason. ...
Now, to clarify ahead of time; I'm quite aware that compelling doesn't necessary equal sympathetic and vice versa. That being said, here is the dilemma. There's a character that I intend to write ...
I'm a strong believer in genre being largely a thing that's used for marketing, an easy shorthand for book stores to know where to place your book and sell it better. It's also, unfortunately, a sh...
Note: I'm primarily asking this question because while Surtsey, the original asker of the question didn't actually ask a thing (and instead copy-pasted an excerpt of a novel) I believe it's a worth...
I'm of the opinion that a story should stand on its own; any worldbuilding that is necessary for the plot and story to function should be part of the story. However, at the same time, the world I w...
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