Posts by Ash
I've always been told there are two ways to deal with setting: write the story and the setting will follow, or not, several of the best pieces of writing I've ever been privy to are all character...
You need the broad strokes of the world filled out before you can really start to run characters through their paces. You can know what your characters are going to do long before you have a finish...
It's not really a paradox, the chosen one is seen as the chosen one because they succeed where others cannot, but they can only succeed because they are already the chosen one to begin with. To put...
The reader doesn't actually have to know that the father survives, not past a certain point anyway, if you don't specifically identify the MC's mother then the MC may already be on the way before w...
I'm not certain that this question is strictly on topic but I'll take a bat at it anyway. The demon king is either a threat or not, if he's a threat then he's worth fighting, if not then another co...
Several of my favourite authors have told me the same thing about writing for publication, don't their advice is to "write yourself the story you want to write, the way you want to write it". If it...
I'd say no, if they are well written you can get readers attached to many characters and as long as a main character is compelling and relatable they don't have to be particularly likable at all to...
I don't think there is a better or worse way there is only the way that works for the person who is using it. Personally I have a writing setting, a place, and a set of media, that defines the sit...
Topic-based authoring is actually a particular form of Modular authoring. Modular authoring is most common in technical works but refers to any writing practice where-in different authors are given...
Most mysteries don't exist in isolation, but rather they are manifold, take one of my favourites, Roanoke, there are several mysteries within the mystery of the Roanoke disaster: where did the co...
I'm going to point out that the named casts in Peter F Hamilton's works often top the 30 character mark. Having said that those works are huge, don't commit to more characterisation work than you c...
I have heard it stated as a fact on a number of occasions that people in general only make two serious decisions per year, the rest of the time they just go with the flow. Most of the time life h...
For what it's worth, because this is a pretty subjective topic, I think the less you show your audience in horror the more terrifying it becomes. You have to set a scene certainly but the more you ...
I feel it would be appropriate to start with the something in the vein of "two years earlier" though you may just want to date both events and let the readers work it out, that's more of a personal...
Powered armour of some description is a boon to any author who doesn't want to kill off characters, the armour can take debilitating damage without ever harming the occupant making it easy to put c...
You need to introduce you characters that's a given but do you need to introduce them to the readers as a separate exercise, there I'm not so sure. It's going to read a little flashback-ish but if ...
Short answer no, you can get to know a character very well without actually getting invested in them, especially if the character is "a bit of a tool". To get people to care about a given character...
I'd replace the existing university myself it gives you a solid location but you can set your own rules.
The modern world has few true mysteries, among them the fate of the Roanoke colonists and the crew of the Mary Celeste but do such happenings have a place in futuristic settings? In settings with ...
The response to this question makes it clear to me that I haven't quite asked the question I had intended, the answers are useful but not quite what I'm looking for. So different but related ques...
I've recently been working on some stories written in the first person from the point of view of what, in the grand scheme of things, would be called minor characters. Examples include a junior bri...
In short I'd like to write a story from the point-of-view of a character who ultimately dies within the narrative without the story being either A. a ghost story or B. a life/after-life retrospecti...
I'm working on a science fiction universe in which time travel exists, in a very limited form, but it's useless, at least it's the intention that it be useless. To that end time travel, on the rare...
Normally this sort of thing is easier than actually writing the piece for me but this time I can't get anywhere with the overall structure of the story: I want a character to win a great victory, ...
I've read the answers to this question but they focus on getting ideas written down pretty much as they occur, that's not my issue, I have both digital and analog methods for doing so with me at al...
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