Posts by Cyn
Do you think teenage girls are too stupid to know when they're being pandered to? Do you think publishers of young adult fiction would not notice that an author is not familiar with the genre and ...
A common market for shorter pieces is anthologies. You didn't give a length but "long poetry" is probably still not novel length. Anthologies tend to have themes based on the subject of the work ...
The idea that inspired you has a Wikipedia page! Let me narrow down your question from (basically): Can I take another author's idea and base a book on it? to Can I use a well-known sett...
There are different levels of 3rd person narration, so it depends. Your narrator might describe the scene like someone viewing a movie. Or the narrator might be omniscient. What yours sounds lik...
Get permission from the copyright owner to republish. It's nice to ask the author too but contact whoever owns the copyright, which isn't always the original publisher, especially for an older wor...
Yes! Change it! When I saw the title my first thought was, do whatever you want, as long as it works. Then I read the question...and...it doesn't work. It's very distracting. If you use it...
No one will reject your manuscript because of one or two typos. But, yes, it needs to be in correct English (or whatever language you're using) with very few mistakes. This applies to your cover ...
I was wondering what you meant by Struggling with the number of themes in my work Because I think of themes as coming up organically and not being something you explicitly write. But now I wonder...
Yes...but... Yes, of course you can use your pen name. Your audiences need never hear anything different. None of your marketing materials need give your real name. The issue comes when you nee...
If you're doing an individual review, you should mention the entire creative team. Writers, co-writers, pencils, pens, colors, letters. Whoever is on the masthead. But for shorter citations, the...
Identify your situation with the plight of other workers deserving of tips People don't tip because they think you need the money. They tip because they understand your employer is not paying you...
How to plagiarize: Deliberately steal someone's work. This is always ethically wrong and usually illegal too. Students who do this get expelled or otherwise punished. Authors who do this get l...
You can have the murder be of someone the MC knows, or of a stranger, but they will be different stories. If the murder victim is someone the MC knows, the MC's intentions will always be clouded w...
You can't copyright a name, you can only trademark it (which is expensive). Chaos Realm seems pretty generic to me. After all, you did come up with it independently. Even being legal, I wouldn'...
If a work was published in more than one place, you only have to cite it once. You can pick which publication to cite. Edited to add comment from another answer: Original source vs secondary sou...
Sometimes What Works in a Movie Works in a Book If you have a chatty narrator, having her/him say "let's go back to the beginning" or "but I'm getting ahead of myself" or anything that indicates t...
Talk to the store Every bookstore will have an employee who sets up signings, meet and greets, readings, etc. Tell them you're the author of a book they sell and you're interested in doing that. ...
I don't think there is a particular word because the actor is the former slave owner. He or she is the one who freed Tsidia. So your descriptions would be about how Tsidia influenced the action...
Unnerving and insane are not the same thing. Unnerving is how the character makes you feel. A little uncertain, maybe even unsafe or suspicious. Insane is about the character's relationship to r...
Use the form of the comic to tell your story. This is a comic. A good artist will be able to show the transition back into sleep without a single word. Direct your artist (if it's not you) to dr...
One method would be to have her narrate things* in a straight-forward way but intersperse it with flashbacks (she probably has PTSD given what she's been through) and/or nightmares. After she meet...
I would set it off into its own lines and use italics. Since it will happen multiple times, the reader will assume that it's background and characters may or may not hear what's said (or even noti...
A Glossary Is not a Substitute for Clear Writing If you were writing a nonfiction book where precise vocabulary was required, I'd say, yes, include a glossary! If you were writing a very detailed...
Find yourself a writer's group where you critique each other's work. Or a group of friends/family will work for this. Make sure it's in person (or by video/phone conference, if you must). Now, r...
There are two separate issues here: Are there legal repercussions if you do not change the names? Should you change the names in the absence of legal issues? For the first, I don't know the law...
