Posts by Shantnu Tiwari
With realistic novels- I assume you mean thrillers. And not 200 pages on how Betty goes to work and comes home everyday. :) All selling novels have an element of fantasy and make believe. In thril...
So I want to write a Sci-Fi where humans have spread across the solar system and into the galaxy. There are multiple stories going across at several different times. E.g.: Aliens attack Pluto 3 w...
There is no standard definition. And not just for historical fantasy. Give me a definition, and I will show you a best selling book that doesn't follow it. If your book has both historical and fan...
I have written mainly novels in Scrivener, and am now thinking of writing a small non-fiction work (which I will self publish). When writing a novel, you just keep typing til you reach the end, bu...
This will always be a matter of preference, but I'd err on the side on little exposition. As a reader, I get bored by an info dump and usually stop reading. The only exception is humour, like the H...
I am thinking of going down the self publishing path. Now looking at most agents and publishers websites, it seems the expected word count for most novels is around 70-90K. Now these word counts m...
So I have this great character( not the main protagonist), who is funny and intelligent. Each scene I write for him is a delight. But the problem is, he is doing nothing for the plot. I have tried...
What you are talking about isn't "voice", but a scene change. If something is important to your to your scene, you need to describe it in detail. This is especially true in scenes with danger or s...
There is no harm in starting Nanowrimo with a basic plot outline. Writing without plotting is very hard, and few people other than Stephen King can pull it off, as I said in another answer. The re...
I would like something in which I can set targets - like write/edit 10,000 words a week, set a final end date for the project, set mini targets, track any lag etc. The only PM software I've used i...
Stephen King, by my understanding, was a discovery writer. I will paraphrase what he wrote in his book On Writing. You create some real, believable characters, put them in a challenging situation...
For those who don't know what a Mary Sue is: see here. The problem is, there are far too many ways a character can be a Mary Sue, as seen here. Many websites that offer tests to see if your chara...
I personally don't like books that force me to buy another 2 books to get the whole story (and maybe wait months or years if the books haven't been published yet). More and more, whenever I see so...
It varies for each reader, but the majority(at least the vocal majority) say that if I pay for a book, I should own it fully. It should be mine to move to another e-reader, another PC/laptop, or an...
I just finished the first draft of my novel, and Im going to put it away for at least a month. The book has a lot of spelling / grammatical errors, as in true Nanowrimo style, I kept typing withou...
I am writing a novel with two groups of characters. They will have their own adventures, and meet somewhere after the middle to take on the main villain. Now in the book, the stories will be inter...
I had written the first draft of my book and put it in the freezer almost 6 weeks ago. Yesterday I took it out, and after going through a first read to note my reactions, I have decided to start wo...
Lately, more and more fantasy books I've seen are part of a trilogy. Is this because readers like it, or is it a cynical plot by publishers to draw out the story longer, so they can make more money...
The question is as per the title. I read about log lines on Query shark. Now I know what Wikipedia says about them, but I'm still not sure what they are, and why are they bad for writers / queries?
I keep hearing the word "beat" in Writers.SE, as in "... break your scene into beats" from this question. What is a beat? How is it different from a scene?
I remember reading somewhere that while plots should have tension, too much tension will tire the readers out, so there should be some breathing place, where the reader can get a chance to catch th...
When I read books, blogs, or even answers like this, the advice is usually always the same: To revise properly, you must print out your manuscript, and revise on paper. The thinking goes that one c...
I have multiple scenes in a chapter, sometimes from different POVs, or different locations/times. Now I would like to make it clear to the reader that they have left a scene and are entering a new ...
For my book I'm planning to self-pub, I aim to hire a copyeditor / proofreader at some point. The question is this: Should I do any proofreading myself, other than using a spell checker? Currently...
So can we write the interesting action bits first, then add in the in between stuff, that maybe needed to understand the story or characters, but isnt so exciting by itself? For example the intere...
