Posts by Thomas Myron
Your best bet in this scenario will simply be to prevent the reader from forming any false impressions. You can do this by correcting him immediately after the word. She saw another girl, abou...
This answer requires two parts, because it is important to note the difference between cliches in the plot, and overused phrases in dialogue. They might technically both be cliches (I'm not sure), ...
There are two simple rules when it comes to writing which trump all else: Always write for the reader (or in this case viewer). Never let anything get in the way of your writing. The second ...
I am trying to write novels where the setting plays a large part. I want the setting to naturally and passively show a truth to the reader. Sometimes it is easy to create such a setting, and other ...
Occasionally in a novel, you have a point where there is dialogue, but only parts of it matter. You usually see this where the hero conveniently catches only the words he needs to hear: He cou...
Short answer: no. Long answer: A title is a very important part of a novel. That and the cover are the only two things you have selling your book to someone browsing the bookshelves (or interne...
I've long known what the purpose of inner conflict is. Indeed, it was one of the simplest concepts for me to grasp when I was learning about it. Now I'm not so sure. I seem to have developed a du...
Braveheart. Titanic. Lord of the Rings. What do these movies (movies, not books) have in common? Besides great musical scores, they have what I call Gut Emotional Appeal. In other words, at some po...
Sticking to the technical grammar definition, a conjunction is a word that connects two phrases within the same sentence. If you start a sentence with a conjunction, one of the phrases is in a diff...
I've been doing some research into twists, and after not knowing how to create one, I'm starting to get a handle on them. Unfortunately, now I'm at the other end of the spectrum, and wondering if I...
I'm getting close to writing my first novel (plotter here - I develop the book first), but I do not yet have names for my main characters. I found this question, which helped me in that area, but n...
Not infrequently is a double negative, and is therefore technically grammatically incorrect. Not is obviously the first negative. The prefix in- is considered to be negative, as it means not. The s...
I'm a plotter. I develop and plan my novels and characters well before I write them. When it comes to character development, I make sure that my characters (or at least the central ones) are people...
I am considering writing a novel in which society has fallen into a perverse pit of debauchery. This is necessary to the novel, but it also presents some problems. I want the reader to know just ho...
Background I'm a plotter, meaning that I develop my novel before I start writing it. You could say that I'm almost an extreme variety of plotter, as I narrow my outline down to the scene before ev...
Disclaimer: I am not intending on doing this. It is just a question I thought was fascinating and might be useful to other writers. Here's the scenario. You're writing a series of novels. After t...
I am not a published author, though I am nearing that stage. This is because I decided many years ago to learn all I could about writing, and hone my skill with practice, before actually writing my...
There is one rule in writing from which everything else stems: you write for the reader. However, from that rule, you can deduce that if you turn out a novel that you know could have been better, y...
I always feel that a book or movie has achieved something great when I have an emotional reaction to it. For a very brief moment, the protagonist's pain, drive, happiness, or shock becomes my own. ...
It sounds like you are missing two major parts of story development: Character and Stakes. These two topics could fill two small books, so I'll try to give you the run-down below. The purpose of ...
I'm writing a speech on using symbols, and I've just made the statement that you should generally stick with one, maybe two, symbols that span the story (smaller symbols that arise and fade quickly...
The trick here is to bend the rules without breaking them. Including something that the PoV character doesn't know about is technically 'breaking the rules.' But when writing, you have to remember ...
Welcome to the site, Bruce! In this case, describing pain in the first is no different than doing it in the third person. The only difference would be that you would use 'I' rather than third per...
Writer Preference Both ways are correct. In your first example, 'smashing it like an egg' is a dependent clause. The second line converts it to a compound verb and an adverb clause. In your secon...
Excel, absolutely. You might not want to consider this, but give it a shot. Here are the things it could do for you: Word Count. It has this one in the bag. Simply write for a session and coun...
