Posts by Chris Sunami
So, she's rational, data-driven, and rule-following AND the rules say she can't be a leader? The conflict practically writes itself: Her data and rational analysis tell her she should be leading,...
The general rule is this: The more current something is, the quicker it goes stale. Allusions are a way of contextualizing a piece of work, a shorthand way to borrow some of the magic of the sourc...
In general teenagers tend to be (a) a little narcissistic and (b) intensely interested in their peers and what they think and feel. When you write in the first person as a teen protagonist, you ar...
What needs to be kept in mind is that writing isn't for you, it's for the reader. As a writer, we imagine the story in our heads, we see it vividly, and then we write. But that in itself doesn't ...
Music is a performance art, it takes place in "real time." Writing does not. So while there is an inevitable trade-off between spontaneity and polish for a musician, the same is not true for a wr...
Your best bet is to build from your previous experience working for magazines and journals by submitting to ones that pay. In addition to the big, general interest publications, there are a lot of...
Even if you're thinking of this as primarily a learning project, I would advise trying to get it into publishable shape rather than abandoning it and starting a new one. As you said, it's work you...
I'm facing a similar issue with the book I'm writing. As a member of more than one minority group, diversity in literature is very important to me. But at the same time, I'm very conscious of the...
A descriptor, or anything else being used in place of a proper noun is capitalized as if it were a proper noun, because it essentially is one. You would typically not capitalize the unless it is a...
I'm a little wary of purely data-driven writing changes. Without reading your book, I can't say if 62 smiles is 3 smiles too many or 5 smiles too few. But in terms of a warning sign of possible de...
I try to always answer in 3 paragraphs whenever possible. Less is often too little for a substantive answer, and more becomes less and less likely for people to read. The first paragraph should a...
It may or may not be true that every crisis in the real world is an opportunity, but it is true that every writing challenge is a writing opportunity. The challenge of multiple language isn't an o...
It would be difficult to pull off a first person murderer in a mystery format and still play fair with the audience. About the only way I can see to make it work is to present the entire narrati...
In my opinion, when we read --or watch--, we are looking to learn something of value to our lives. We don't want a didactic lesson, but a visceral one, an emotional one. So we need a character an...
You've chosen a challenging structure. Normally, for a twist ending to land, the reader has to have been given most of the relevant information along the way -- think Sixth Sense. The only succes...
I think you're taking the wrong lesson from Amadeus' post. There were any number of kids' books about magic schools before Rowling, and the idea of secret conspiracies at the Vatican probably is as...
I would venture to guess that most writers whose prose has a poetic quality produce that quality naturally, without conscious effort. However nearly anything that can be produced by nature can b...
The main thing to remember is that the audience doesn't need to know the details of your magic system unless the characters need to know. You may be geeked about the system you've put together, bu...
What sticks out to me about this sentence is not that the descriptor "apparatus" for a pocket square is too difficult, but that it is simply wrong. An apparatus implies a complex assemblage of par...
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...
If you are writing a screenplay, you'll have all the visual and auditory resources of film at your disposal: Ominous music, a dark palette, etcetera, which is what Star Wars uses. However, please ...
Your basic strategy is the same as that of any magician: misdirection. Drop the clues while the characters, and hopefully the reader, is paying attention to something more interesting. A typical ...
I find myself giving versions of the same advice over and over, but it's applicable to so many situations. I call it the Sturgeon/Delany rule. Work out every last detail and implication of your n...
Don't let your friend scare you away from doing what you know is right for your book. Sure, it makes it more challenging to keep the audience's sympathies when the main characters do unlikable thi...
I think this is a good technique, I've recommended it myself elsewhere here, but it needs to align with how people really create and use words. Curse words and oaths are generally used for shock v...
