Posts by Cyn
You'll need to establish that superpowers are part of your world early on. Whether it's magical realism, urban fantasy, or comic book standards, your novel needs to set the framework within the fi...
Slice of life describes the depiction of mundane experiences in art and entertainment. In theater it refers to naturalism, while in literary parlance it is a narrative technique in which a s...
What kind of a writer are you? I tend to write more than I need, then I hone the work in the editing process. So for a 300 word essay, I would probably first write a draft of 600 words. I wouldn...
Asking for a certain number of pages, along with particular formatting, can seem like a holdover from a pre-computer age. They forgot to update their requirements! And sometimes it is. But anot...
Sometimes you don't. You can (and should) read it out loud to yourself. But there really isn't a substitute for having other people listen to it. In my critique group, we read a portion of our p...
Every reader's opinion is valuable to a degree, though some carry more weight than others. If several people in your critique group are giving the same feedback, there's probably something to it. ...
Put your pauses wherever you wish but know that they will tell the reader how to read it. Poetry is meant to be read aloud. Or at least imagined so in the mind. Tell your reader how and where to...
When the narrator is wrong about something in the book's world, it's called an unreliable narrator. When a narrator has a single point of view (sees through one character's eyes) then it's inevita...
If you want a limited 3rd person narrator, then you need to accept the limitations that come with it. Either find a way to convey (or let go of) the information in your examples, or change the typ...
Don't try to chase trends. Everyone wants to be the next best thing. The perfectly timed topical hit. If that works out for you, great. But don't try to make it happen. Even if you finished yo...
You may be in breach of contract if you sell your books anywhere but Amazon. I'm not having much luck finding definitely contract information about this but one source states: As part of the e...
Comics have an age rating system similar to videogames, but it's not completely standardized. Marvel and DC, the biggest comics producers, have slightly different systems from each other. And her...
A main reason to choose a first person narrator in the first place is to limit the scope of the narrator (and to get deeply into that one character's head). So, no, the narrator should not be priv...
Books set in the future are Speculative Fiction Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre encompassing fiction with certain elements that do not exist in the real world, often in the context...
Wands have been a feature of magic for decades and perhaps much much longer. Tinkerbell in Disney's version of Peter Pan (1953) has a short wand that works with a flick of the wrist. I could com...
A theme isn't a "meaningful moral" Or even a regular moral. A theme is the central idea and a moral is a lesson. These can overlap, but they're not the same thing. It's okay to develop your the...
Amazon allows your parent to publish your book for you 4.1 Eligibility. You must have an active Program account in order to participate in the Program. You represent that you are at least 18 ...
Have the narrator tell the action in that place, not show it. Then show Old Man's reaction. Example: "Nothing gives you the right to do this." Old Man sat back down in his chair, hoping Taylor...
It's not uncommon for people to start off writing works that are either straight up fan fiction or so strongly "inspired" by someone else's work that they might as well be. And that's okay. What'...
I am pretty sure this isn't a proper question for this site, but I will answer. First, it's "I will argue" and not "I will arguing." Second, it's "cause unemployment" or "cause increasing numbe...
Sometimes a predictable plot is not a bad thing. If you choose to go ahead with it, you can still shake things up. Take something like the modern movie Titanic. We already know the boat is going...
The Bechdel Test (which was originally about movies, not books, not that I know which your work is) is meant to apply to the work as a whole. It's not about individual scenes. Look at your work a...
The reason to have an agent is to get a publisher. The publisher may or may not do a lot of this marketing but they will take care of the release dates, getting the book into stores, number of cop...
I'm going to complicate this even more for you. Every printer is different! So, yes: More pages cost more. More copies costs less per copy. A larger page costs more. So you're going to have to...
Events will have less emotional impact on the reader if you write them in the background and not for specific characters, especially not your main characters. For example, compare a scene descri...
