Posts by Chris Sunami
If you want to publish a shorter work AND get paid for it, then it almost certainly needs to be a complete stand-alone short story, not the first chapter of a longer work. If you can successfully ...
Religion is barely mentioned or touched upon in much, arguably most, general fiction. I've even read books like this by authors I know to be highly religious. As a religious person myself, I occa...
Generally, the answer to a "can I do this" question is usually, "yes, it just introduces extra challenges." In this case, you won't have the typical advantages of a story with an unmasked antagoni...
Given the non-standard usage of the term "cult status" in the OP Works that inspire unusually passionate or devoted fans do have a common denominator --they are risky, challenging, eccentric, or o...
What makes this phrase meaningful is that it sums up a particular philosophy --the philosophy of these characters and their subculture --in a form that is both brief and meaningful. If you look at...
This isn't a standard short story, so present it in the most clear and understandable format, so your readers won't have to play guessing games, like so: Mark: I met Jim when we were in third g...
Can you give it a frame story that gives a coherent overarching narrative that these all stories fit into organically? For instance, the POV characters all meet up in a temporary refuge after the ...
The secret to voice in writing is that what you write needs to be matched to a) you, b) your audience, and c) the specific usage. There is no objective fact of the matter as to whether a given sen...
While I'm not qualified to advise you on this specific question, I do have some good general advice. Start by doing some research in the form of interviews with someone who resembles your characte...
The Big Bad, by definition, is the primary antagonist of a story built around the defeat of a primary antagonist. If defeating the Big Bad isn't the end of the story, then either that person wasn'...
Using words wrongly or awkwardly sounds much worse than having a restricted vocabulary. Therefore, your best bet is to stick to words you know well and are comfortable with. If that includes a wi...
Audiences always confuse the author with the narrator, and your chosen format makes this particularly difficult. Slam poetry is typically confessional in nature, which means that your audience is ...
I think it's fine to have an up-down-up-down structure, but that one of the lows, probably the second one, should be significantly "lower" than the other one. Otherwise it does just feel like a re...
Usually, writer's block is a result of your inner editor overpowering your inner writer. This is a very common problem that can especially affect experienced writers, critics, and others with a la...
There are better and worse ways to do this. It can be difficult and needlessly confusing to have multiple first-person narrators --difficult to give them authentically different voices, and confus...
Stealing jokes, while not exactly uncommon, is really despised and looked down upon from within the comedian community. It's hard to tell from your description whether you're really just "insp...
As @Galastel has already noted, the standard documentary approach is to film everything, and then to craft a story only at the end, and through the editing process. This is because the story you m...
Worldbuilding gives you the setting in which to tell a story. It is not the story itself. As a writer you need to wear many different hats. Architect is one hat, and editor is another, but the o...
Perhaps this character "wants" to be someone quite different than you are trying to make her be. It sounds like she's making a mystery of herself. Perhaps this means she isn't who she claims to b...
No one WANTS to spend a year editing something and then get a mountain of rejection letters. But it's the people who tackle that head-on who tend to be successful, not the people who look for shor...
Self-publishing is viable for all and only the people who are willing and able to personally sell every copy of their own book (or eBook). It's great for public speakers, relentless self-promoters...
The breaking point will be different for different readers, because it all comes down to what we can learn from the character. If we can genuinely put ourselves in the character's place, we'll hav...
It's hard to build a recognizable identity while genre-hopping. The more successful you are with any one style or genre, the more both readers and publishers are going to demand more of the same. ...
In order for your last ending to feel worthwhile, it needs to complete some important part of the protagonist's story arc left unfinished at the big battle. The Wizard of Oz has an anticlimatic se...
I've read books written the way yours is currently set up, and I agree with your beta readers --some foreshadowing would help. However, I think you could afford to be fairly subtle about it. Th...
