Posts by Cyn
You absolutely can not publish this without permission. It doesn't matter if you make no money off of it. Putting something in the public domain doesn't it make it better (and might make it worse...
Magic vs advanced technology is a common enough question in fiction that your readers will already be primed to wonder. I agree with Amadeus that the reference to "knobs" is, in and of itself, eno...
In food writing, there is a specific sub-genre for works (both short and long) that are photo-heavy, with particularly good-quality photos. Food porn. Where you draw the line depends on your audi...
People will draw parallels between racism in your world and actual racism, because both you and your readers live here and now. It's not just that it can't be helped, it's part of why we write. W...
With a few exceptions, every one of my characters has a name, gender, age, and family relationship. A large percentage also have a backstory. I have well over 100 characters. As others have said...
As a spinoff to this question: Incorporating research and background: How much is too much? I'm writing a middle-grade fantasy novel with a historical fiction component based in Ancient Egypt. I'm...
First of all, congratulations! If your publisher says it's up to you, then they're not seeing any red flags that would make a pen name advisable. Lots of adults write for both children and adul...
There are 3573 entries on Goodreads with the word "f***" in the title (I only splat it for this site, not for my own sensibility). The titles contain the full word, spelled out. 2744 entries with...
The chapters in my middle-grade novel are all over the map (408-1712 words). So far it hasn't been a problem, as I end them at natural stopping points, but this may be something I have to fix when...
Full confession: I read cookbooks like novels. The best cookbooks, in my opinion, are those with great descriptions of the recipe that turn it into a story. History of the recipe or the ingredien...
The best appendix is one the reader never needs to use. The same thing applies to footnotes. They're there for people who want the exact reference. They shouldn't have material that you need to ...
You need to get inside her head. Everyone makes sense to themselves. She has reasons for doing things and, you might disagree, but they're valid to her. She has goals and dreams and desires. Sh...
The amount of research I'm doing for my novel is staggering. To the point where my spouse says I need to write a companion book (or a blog) just talking about the research! Sometimes I research f...
Both. If I get an idea, I'll have a good sense of the target audience. The age group, the genre, etc. But when I'm writing, it might morph. And that's okay. I'll keep writing and let it be wha...
Beta readers. Find beta readers who are native speakers of English and give them red pens and completed manuscripts (which you've already run though Google and done the best edit you can on them) ...
Use the narrator as a tool to avoid annoying the reader. The narrator controls the flow of information. Have the minions do their thing. Once. Then... The crowd clapped politely as the rule...
Guilty. I'm one of the people who told you to do seemingly impossible things. The truth is, sometimes you can't. Shadowing someone at their job or activity is often really really hard, and nobod...
I would name it once. Have the viewpoint character notice the panic on the other character's face. It can be near the beginning or closer to the middle of the scene. Maybe later. By "scene" I m...
Joe is the worst. Nobody likes him, not even the so-called friends he teams up with at school, filling other students with terror. He's sarcastic, nasty, and a bit of a racist, and especially ant...
The main benefit is that people see your copyright as legitimate. To be sure, some people take ebooks and copy them and stick them right back on to Amazon under their own name and with all the m...
Legal and wise are not the same thing. Legally I believe you're in the clear. There is no trademark on government symbols. But if you use the actual symbols from the USSR, you are writing yourse...
Absolutely. My own book is filled with references to Judaism and to American Jewish culture (the number 18 is one). In lots of those cases, it's explicit, but not always. I would venture to say ...
You finished your book, congratulations! But almost nobody writes a novel that doesn't require major restructuring, especially not on the first try. If your readers liked it in general, but had i...
When writing a book of your own, you absolutely can use other books on the topic as references. And you can quote those other books. In both cases, you want to credit the other book. For quote...
I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English. I have time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. None of the kids speak anything but English (aside from a few...
