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Posts by Mephistopheles‭

57 posts
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Q&A Can I keep my characters in my book or should I just give up with them?

[Not a Lawyer, nobody's a lawyer here] Double, triple and quadruple down, make them Creative Commons. I don't think said person have copyrighted them, but if she did, that's already grounds for ex...

posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to subvert expectations and abort plotlines without alienating the reader?

Subverting expectations and suddenly aborting plotlines was a no-go zone for me for a while. The only time I could successfully abort a plotline was in a thought train. After watching How To Tr...

2 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A I feel like that misinformation feels too artificial as a plot-driving force in my story, how can it be more natural?

Misinformation is an important element of my story as is pretty much kicks the plot in motion: Gyvaris, a young dragon, steals a sheep from a large flock since he's really hungry and just couldn't...

2 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to realistically describe pain?

So, I was doing a writing excersie, I came up with, to help me with sentence structuring and developing my style. One thing, I ran into, however, was that I couldn't describe pain very well. Th...

3 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by Mark Baker‭

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Q&A How do you make characters change believably?

Changing is an important aspect of every character and is what makes them believable. Yet, if you remember the ending of Game of Thrones, people weren't too happy about Dany going from "don't...

3 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Making conflicts based on misunderstanding

So, the problem is that I can't make conflicts based on a misunderstanding that wouldn't resolve in five paragraphs. My chars are too smart for that, I'm too smart for that (and also have all the t...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How not to give up hope on Scrappy

We all know the spiel: We have an insufferable jerk who is a jerk/annoyance for 95% of his "screen time". In the remaining 5%, he sacrifices himself to save everyone else. The fans dance around a...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Making similies and metaphors work as intended [closed]

Similies are like the Reddit 50/50 challenge: you either get something very good, or your eyes will melt off. I mean, you can ruin the mood with a bad one and make yourself a laughing stock. Metaph...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to defeat a strategic mastermind without throwing the idiotball? [closed]

My antagonist is a "strategic mastermind", similar to the one discussed in How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating? Proceeding from this kind of antagonist, my question is h...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Executing a tonal shift

A novel's tone/atmosphere is typically established within the first few chapters of the book. So, let's say, we establish the story as a light-hearted, over-the-top fantasy deconstruction, with hu...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to make a repeating plot "slice" not annoying

In my fantasy novels, I don't want to kill anyone off, I just want to get them injured, like badly. I made up numerous believable excuses for this (low-violence, a genuine will to live on the enemi...

6 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to control safety nets in discovery writing

Even though discovery writing is about letting the story go without interference, you still don't want the characters to get killed in the first chapter. For this exists safety nets, people, objec...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  edited 3y ago by Canina‭

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Q&A How can I understand characters whose worldview is alien to my own?

I feel I've got a huge obstacle, whenever I'm pretending" to be a character and trying to make out how he/she would react. I feel strongly that the mentality of the creator is reflected in his wor...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Offensive aesthetics and naming conventions?

So I'm writing a story that features an alien character, who happens to be a really "internet troll"-ish type with a somewhat godlike tech and a personal army of robots. He/She (?) is fond of Eart...

4 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to make a deceitful trainwreck of a character likeable

So, due to a smaller miracle, a scrapped concept, a badly timed Eragon review from Nostalgia Critic and the SAO abridged came together and created a good "filler" episode concept and a character i...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to write repeated actions

So, I was writing a test story to see if my tools can work together in the way intended. Few paragraphs into the first chapter and there is a problem: Character A is a scaredy-cat, and I based the...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A What does "juvenile tone" mean?

I often hear the word thrown around, but I don't have any idea of what it is, or how can it be avoided. So, what does "juvenile tone" mean and how can I prevent it?

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A In-universe swear, curses, similies and sayings, how to make them less cringeworthy

Hold Your Hippogriffs: A (more often than not) cringeworthy version of a saying (though can be invented on the spot), that is prone to cause Fatal Death in most readers. But it sounds fun, who wou...

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A What is the purpose of showing [closed]

If I have a hard time dissecting showing directly, then I just simply ask about the end result: What showing wishes to create in the readers?

2 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Giving the narrator a personality that doesn't gets tiring

Proposition: Stories are information packets aimed to "entertain" people, and just like every other form of communication, they have: A basic and lasting knowledge for interpreting the informatio...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A When writing down a huge amounts of detail is inevitable

In hard-SF the writer has to adapt to the world and its limitation. Under normal circumstances, this shouldn't a problem, as you can always make something great, even with the limitations. Howeve...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Doing walls of text dialogue right

Shakespeare did it, he did it quite a lot of times, but there are a few problems with it: He was a screenwriter in an age, where we couldn't afford building enough sets (or cities that don't catc...

1 answer  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Question style dialogue
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Q&A How to make "Joffrey like" characters for a "kick that son of a bitch " moment

We know what I'm talking about. The feeling when the legal side of a story doesn't bothers us too much because we want to see Joffrey getting strangled with a string of sausages. So basically we ...

4 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to make good anti-heroes?

Dr.House, the God-Emperor of Mankind, Han Solo, and so on, and so forth. Something is appealing about anti-heroes, for instance: Superman is bland, perfect and ultimately a bruh superhero, whose c...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Weaving VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS into a story without murdering it

In Bad Webcomics Wiki, a place for reviews of bad webcomics, there's a common phrase: the "VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS". The novelists who endeavor to enforce what they are pleased to call "moral t...

3 answers  ·  posted 6y ago by Mephistopheles‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Question creative-writing