Posts by SF.
Adapt to the culture. If it's a town of demons and the narrator is implied to be well familiarized with them, then you can go with 'tiphoof' and other such expressions, coining new idioms for the c...
As a user, you use API for certain purposes. You have certain goals you want to achieve, and the API is a tool that should help you achieve them. Your problem is, how to achieve these goals. Thin...
If you are writing different subjects with headings, stay consequent and give the conclusion a heading, period. If you are writing lengthy segments about different topics without headings, or if y...
Don't be hamfisted. If you provide enough good hints of the location, that's sufficient. The location should be established, but telling it directly like that is a rather rarely used stylistic tool...
An example of the problem in an aggravated form surrounds the controversy of France changing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ in official paperwork - where the controversy suggest...
"Don't confuse the reader" is one of the rules that exist to be broken. As usually, "when to break the rule? When you know what you're doing." In this case, straighten it out immediately after he ...
You can be sure you'll offend someone. This is unavoidable in this day and age. Peppa the Pig offends Muslims, Bob the Builder presents patriarchal stereotypes, Teletubbies are satanistic, and NASA...
Stories need conflict - that's a rule. Rules are there to be broken - that's another. And there's the unbreakable one, about when the rules can be broken: when you know what you're doing. Story ...
The main problem with "revealing too much" is info-dumps. Boring the reader early on. If you can reveal a lot without boring the reader, that's great! The opposite of what you do - dribbling bits ...
One easy, cheap and workable approach to writing without worldbuilding is when the world is known. Your story takes place at the White House, your protagonist is President Trump. Everyone knows al...
Translator's footnote. * [Translator's note]: Dargo was using a heavy Tuvelarian accent, characteristic to the small, isolated rural settlements of Tuvelar. To reflect this, I'm using the Texan...
Ideas are not copyrightable. Having a character follow a philosophy is definitely not a form of plagiarism. Presenting that philosophy as a paraphrase of the original work might be plagiarism, thou...
If you're writing for broad audience, you will be accepted if you're skimming the details and not going in-depth. If you focus on a specific audience, you might ride the wave of the success of The...
Take your criticism down A LOT of notches. Instead of struggling on that One Great Idea you can't get, and dismissing everything you come by as crap, pick a painfully generic plot, add one simple,...
Stanislaw Lem had a very nice method for that. Read his "Observation on the Spot" for it, although I'm not sure if translation captures the spirit. In essence, the acronyms compose into meaningful...
There are two basic applications of this technique: serious and comedic. In the serious version, your character changes opinion about given passage while writing it. It tells about character devel...
A paragraph or chapter that outlines "possible future research directions" is a common part of many theses, placed near the conclusion. Do not treat it as "this is missing." Your thesis is complet...
Oh, you are doing well here. Very well. You are breaking a rule about cliche dialogues exactly where it should be broken. You are writing a meaningless, dull prattle that lulls the reader into sli...
When to break the rules? When you know what you're doing. Breaking the rules "the good way" always serves some purpose. It's never done "just because". Writing is all about eliciting certain moods...
I don't think any character is ever too complicated. Some may be alienating to more "mainstream" readers, but that only means you shift your target audience to more ambitious readers. Then, of cou...
Which end do readers expect? Either of the ones you given. Some will expect one, others the other That's why you should choose neither. You have two obvious options, plus a dull 'no choice made'....
Seems like step 2 of the 3-step method of coming up with the title. First step: you compress the story into a half-page summary, that catches the essentials, piques interests, and so on. You conde...
There is nothing wrong with writing like that in first draft. Get events in order, write down attributes, reasons, settings, in a way that is comfortable for you. Have all the essentials in an easi...
First off, technical non-writers make better technical writers, than non-technical writers do. They usually can write in a way mostly understandable to layman and factually correct (as opposed to n...
There is an alternative: force yourself to write from the beginning. Use the giddiness to reach the scenes you have fleshed out in your mind as a motor to build awesome introductions. It's like e...
