Posts by Cyn
I'm finding your use of "Black" and "White" as character names to be distracting. I realize that it's meant to be more straight-forward to use the chess sides as names, but it throws me off. Gi...
You have three issues to solve: There are two different worlds. The sequential nature of each world's chapters (that there are not gaps where the other world's chapters are). The two timelines ru...
I'm also writing middle grade fiction and dealing with the same issue. I have decided to go with your option #3: use a milder alternative. Though in a different way from how you've laid it out. ...
Sometimes editing to fit a requirement makes you a stronger writer. And sometimes the onerousness of the requirement means you're in the wrong genre. If you said you have a 750 word limit and som...
There is an in-between. Many ISPs have Wordpress as part of the package you purchase from them. I use a great local company who offers both internet access and online accounts separately. The ...
What you may be looking for is an anthology. Anthologies are similar to magazines and, in some cases, may overlap. But they have significant differences and are often done by different types of p...
I would hide the basement but not the locked door. A coded padlock on a door inside a house is really weird, and the sort of thing someone would notice and probably comment on. If the MC has a gu...
This is an offshoot from a comment exchange on an unrelated question. What to submit when asked for "sample chapters"? I know a large percentage of traditionally published fiction authors, especi...
It's called a memoir. Memoir is a subset of autobiography, which is a subset of biography. A biography is the story of someone's life. Autobiography is when you write your own biography. Memoir...
Who is your audience? The audience for any kind of porn is not the character. (I'm speaking of the intention of the author, not who might actually end up watching it.) The intended audience for ...
The important word here is "the." All of us use "the" to reference people whose names we don't know. We'd never say "the nameless person." Instead, we talk about "the waiter" or "the bus driver"...
C. You need to find the text the author is citing and cite it directly. If the actual statement is as vague as your example (I realize you may simply be using a generic example as a placeholder),...
For a submission (to a grant program, competition, agent, or publisher) that asks for sample chapters, which chapters do you choose? For example, a grant program for unfinished works I'm intereste...
Just don't. You have a good ten thousand years of (semi) recorded history to choose from, in what is now hundreds of countries and multiple continents. There are many places and times you can pic...
This is a followup question to What language shall they sing in? I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English with time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. ...
Take a dance class. I'm not joking. If you feel the rhythm in your body, you will be better able to evoke it on the page. Going to dance performances is also helpful but you need to understand t...
I don't think you need to show anything special at all. Lots of people have multiple love interests (or hookups) over the course of a novel. In some novels, it's entire the premise. If a chara...
I'm boring and just use Word and Excel for writing my novel and keeping track of stuff. I've tried a couple others, including Scrivener and Evernote, but never got into it. I like the idea of spe...
Step one is to get feedback that you're basically on the right track. A lot of people don't feel ready to show their poems to anyone (maybe outside of close friends or family) and need some encour...
I have 107 characters. In a single-book, standard length, middle-grade novel. There are a small handful of auxiliary characters too. Obviously, they're not all main characters. I'm not sure h...
User interaction is a commitment. Moderation, as Galastel discusses, is one important component of it (use software such as Wordpress that emails you all new comments and allows you to set moderat...
Sometimes authors write in ways to drive future literary critics crazy. Then they laugh. Because everything is potentially a symbol. If you've ever taken a lit-crit class, it's quite an experien...
My middle-grade novel is third person with one primary and one secondary viewpoint character. Sometimes the narrator hovers a bit more, sometimes the narrator is more in the character's head. The...
I use the "medium" size in Wordpress, which is 500 px width and height proportional as required by the image. This fits across my entire column (depending on the monitor/window size/browser of cou...
How do you deal with frustration over a publisher's choices? All the stories and art for an anthology are in the publisher's hands—camera ready in digital form—and approved (deadline was 4 months...
