Posts by Chris Sunami
Shakespeare, who may not have coined all the words he's credited with, but who certainly popularized a lot of neologisms, tended to recapitulate or paraphrase a possibly unfamiliar word in the same...
I think you've hit on the key in your question: All secondary story arcs need to reach a satisfying conclusion prior to the twist. This is because what we seek at the end of a story is emotional ...
There's a truism, origin unknown, to the effect that "bad decisions make good stories." If everyone makes great choices all the time, it doesn't lead to much in the way of drama or suspense. On t...
As a reader, I very much dislike large casts of characters, I lose patience and the ability to tell them apart quite quickly. However, a lot of it depends on how they are deployed. If your main c...
In my opinion, erotic writing is more about frustration than fulfillment, even in an explicit context. Once you give the reader exactly what they want, you've spent your load, so to speak. So you...
Assuming you aren't a woman yourself, I would suggest talking this idea through with several women to see how it strikes them. It can be difficult to see through the eyes of a group you don't belo...
Every writer must wear two hats, writer and editor. All cases of writer's block, no matter at what part of the process they occur, are because your internal editor is overriding your internal writ...
Loneliness: Writing is primarily a solitary activity. Many software developers are introverts already, so lots of solitude and isolation may not bother you, but for me, as a social person, it's ...
Not unsimilar to myself, my protagonist potentially has too many goals. He's isn't a likeable character (which is how I intended him) so to keep reader interest, I would like them to become invest...
You need to recognize this is a tool in your toolbox as a writer. It isn't "wrong" to do it, it just has a specific effect and impact that you may or may not want: Use of slang, in general, estab...
To transition to screenwriter from a novelist you need to: Master screenplay format, which is very strict and standardized Learn to approach writing as a collaboration, not a solo activity. ...
If you do this, it will have a very specific effect --it will create distance between the narrator and the setting, which will tend to remind the reader of the artificiality of the writing. You ma...
Dialogue is my favorite thing to write. I tend to use a lot of dialogue in my writing, which sometimes results in long, talky passages -- a bit similar to this question about breaking up exposition...
This is probably a not uncommon problem for less professional publications, where editorial norms may not be as well-understood. That's not to say that ALL college publications are less profession...
Soap opera scribes are not bad writers, they are writers whose (often considerable) craft is turned against the aims of more substantive writing. The defining characteristic of soap operatic writi...
Query letters and book proposals are two related, but distinctly different tools for selling your book. A query letter is a brief "hooky" one-page document that is often sent as a "cold-call," mea...
A succubus is not the embodiment of sexuality, but the embodiment of the fear of sexuality. So it is highly relevant to an age group where sexuality is often viewed with a mixture of fear, disgust...
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...
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...
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...
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...
