Posts by Thomas Myron
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 ...
Background: I've been writing fan fiction for five years now. I began when I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so my methods have evolved during those years. By now I have a solid process that I...
I am currently writing a short book. I've neared the end of the plot, but now I'm seeing a problem: my conflict isn't ending at the climax. The climax should always be the point where all of the ...
Not only will the potential pitfalls largely vary from person to person (not to mention what different people think they are), but they are innumerable, and in a variety of fields. When you are an ...
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...
As provided in this excellent answer by @what, there is a certain 'creative time,' for writing, when you can write the best. I've been aware of this for awhile, though I never really saw it for wha...
I think I see what your problem is. According to my handy grammar handbook: The exact words of a speaker should be set off from the rest of the sentence by using a comma, a question mark, or a...
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...
Humorous single paragraph sentence? The original Winnie the Pooh provides such a thing here. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples as well, but this is the only one that presented itself to m...
Is it a good idea to try and make my readers feel attached to the character's home in order to increase the emotion of the moment? This depends on the story. Why do you want to increase the em...
Your goal with any tale of horror is to inspire just that in your readers: horror. In order for them to feel it though, the people they care about - the protagonist and main characters - must also ...
Is using colons and/or semicolons in dialogue awkward? No. Using them is fine. To me at least, every one of the above quotes looks perfectly natural. I agree that trying to find another way to writ...
Which form you use is entirely writer preference. Neither 'said James' nor 'James said' is wrong. They are both grammatically correct, along with various other similar dialogue tags. Which one yo...
Pack of Playing Cards? Some might associate this with Poker and Casinos, but it would receive a lot less heat than a pack of cigarettes I believe. Really though, all you need to do is think of th...
In Donald Maass's book Writing the Breakout Novel, he talks about stakes. He goes over how a breakout novel needs two kinds: personal stakes - what the hero could lose - and public stakes - what th...
In my current novel, the protagonist is driven forward throughout the plot by events that happened to him in the past. The reader needs to know these events, so I'd like to include them in a prolog...
Can an overdone theme still work? Absolutely You have the right idea. You generally want to stay away from overdone themes, because they are, well, overdone. But if you do write a novel wit...
In studying writing, I've learned that you need to give your protagonist something - usually a quality - that makes the reader want him to win. Without this quality, the reader doesn't care what ha...
Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter? This question is intended for the beginning writer, who is unsure if he should start with writing physical books, or with writing scripts for movie d...
It depends on two things. What your skill level is. What you feel comfortable doing. I began writing with fan fiction and fan fiction contests. (Note: these contests were loose and open. The...
I recall reading somewhere (I believe it was Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy) that you should either stick with one genre or the other. The reason he gave is that if you...
