Posts by Chris Sunami
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...
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,...
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...
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...
The core concept of an anthology is a "collection," of things that would otherwise be separate --things that have their own separate identity and coherence. What is anthologized might be different...
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...
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've been told that, when acting the part of a drunk, a good approach is to make it appear as though you are trying to present yourself as sober and failing. Similarly, the insane person believes ...
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...
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...
Since the reader doesn't need to meet the groups, but they do need to meet each other, why not just do it "off camera." You could do a chapter break right after the meeting, and start in again wit...
Something doesn't always need to be graphically described to be powerful, and sometimes less can be more. There's a scene, in the original novel version of the Godfather, relevant to today's headl...
Something I've learned as a programmer that translates directly to writing is that quite a lot of what you write will not make it to the final product, and you have to be OK with that. A lot of wr...
It doesn't really matter how much more experience he has than you: if he's asking you to testread, he presumably wants your opinion as a reader. And this case, he didn't provide enough detail for ...
The answer to any "can I write" question is always "yes." But antagonists do a lot of heavy lifting in a book, they provide a lot of intrinsic interest, and useful narrative conflict. Readers tend...
The opposite of this rule, that both men and women identify with a male protagonist, but only women can identify with a female protagonist, has long been used as a standard pretext for focusing exc...
First, 90K is a very respectable word length for a novel, so make sure you're not just trying to meet an artificial goal when your book is already complete. Personally, I much prefer books lean, a...
