Craig Sefton
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The original profile on Stack Exchange can be found here: https://writers.stackexchange.com/u/1624.
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See all 21 »I've not done collaborative writing before, but I've read several works, and sometimes the text strikes me as having a split personality: some parts were clearly written by one author, while others...
3 answers · posted 14y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 6y ago by Monica Cellio
As a basic boundary, Fantasy depends on what couldn't be. The amount of fantasy can be slight, or it can be grand, but that strangeness element must be there. More importantly, for a work to be rec...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
There are several books that provide an excellent breakdown of the elements that make a good story or script. For example, The Writer's Journey by Christopher Volger identifies common archtypes and...
0 answers · posted 12y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
This is a bit like asking how long a piece of string should be. A fantasy work should be as long as it needs to be, no more, no less. One book, three books, ten books, as long as that's how it sho...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
To me, this question confuses what "realistic" means when it comes to characters in fantasy. Characters should be realistic in the sense that they're realistic for the story itself, not necessaril...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
Have a look around for the AD&D 2nd Ed. Monstrous Compendium (or whatever the current equivalent is under their new rules), which listed hundreds of possible monsters (I think there were severa...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
I would say 100% you should be well read in your genre. There are several reasons why, but the most important is because you should become familiar with conventions in your genre. Why is this imp...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
I'm assuming that when you say "realistic fiction", what you really mean is "non-fantasy fiction". Then the answer is, of course fantasy has less of a readership than "realistic" fiction, because y...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
As far as UK style guides go, what you're probably looking for is the Oxford Guide to Style, formerly known as Hart's Rules (that link also contains a useful section outlining what the nearest US e...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
Unfortunately, I can't think of any stories that follow your strict requirement on excluding anything that "is able to reproduce". The closest I could come is Ray Bradbury's short story, "There W...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
The best way to avoid this problem is to understand your characters as deeply as possible, and remember that it is the character who should speak, and not you, the author. The things characters say...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
Your list is pretty good, but it's missing something a bit fundamental. Most reviewers tend to think that they're trying to help someone make up their mind whether or not to buy a book based on th...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
I'm assuming here that you mean you've got your own footnotes, but some of the citations from the original work contain their own footnotes from that work. If this is the case, the first question ...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
There are a number of ways I've seen this done. For single word items, I suggest either use no punctuation, or use semi-colons, with a period for the last item. For example: Apples; Pears; Orang...
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
It depends on what you want to say/imply. "Engulfed" implies the fire completely surrounded him. "Jumped on" is an odd one, because it implies that it only affected a particular part of his body....
posted 15y ago by Craig Sefton · last activity 7y ago by System
