Posts by Standback
Orson Scott Card answers your question precisely and eloquently in his excellent Character and Viewpoint, under the heading One Name Per Character. Go, read. For posterity, I'll summarize: Names...
I don't want to make it too obvious before the reveal. OK, question: why not? Consider the fundamental structure of a plot twist, or a reveal. It's usually either: Reader is expecting A; ha...
Separate concerns. If you think of editing as "fixing everything in my novel," it's going to be a huge and unmanageable chore, and there's nowhere to begin it that will give you even a sense of pr...
A lot of current science-fiction and fantasy magazines have online submission systems, accepting Word documents. And where I remember, way-back-when, submission guidelines noting that (printed) man...
A story should finish what it starts. You control what, exactly, you choose to start. If you're not going to be finishing a murder mystery with a solution, you need to be careful not to set the st...
At extremes: yes, relying on "chance" as a plot device can be very unsatisfying. The reader knows that "chance" isn't really a matter of luck; instead, it's the author manipulating events. The re...
To decide how many points of view (POVs) you can handle, you need to take into account the demands a new POV makes on you. Each POV needs character and voice. When you have more than one or two PO...
The bigger, and more famous, a city, the more it tends to show up in thrillers. The biggest ones - New York, London, Paris, Tokyo - have been set-pieces in any number of thrillers, and I can assume...
Write a synopsis. Then get feedback on that. Your synopsis should be as brief as possible, conveying only the elements that are absolutely crucial to the story - the elements without which the sto...
The classic solution is to introduce conflict or tension. These naturally intrigue the reader and command his attention. Any conflict, no matter how minor or subtle, is enough to engage the reader'...
NOTE: I am not a lawyer, and the following is just the result of some Google searching. You're allowed to publish basically anything you want; the concern is not whether you will be able to pu...
If you have an agent, ask them first. If you don't have an agent, this might be a good time to try to consult with one. The specifics of your book and the specific market can be crucial to the deci...
You'll need to contact the original author and/or their publisher. Either one will direct you to the correct person to deal with - there's no blanket rule over who has which rights, so you'll need ...
An immensely helpful resource on this topic is Writer Beware, a volunteer organization associated with the SFWA and MWA. Their essay on warning signs of questionable agents answers your question in...
It's an excellent idea. Your considerations are quite correct - a first draft can be absolutely terrible; most of its value is in fleshing out general details, structure and plot. It gives you a s...
I AM NOT A LAWYER. As long as it is clearly evident that the piece is fictional, my understanding is that you can basically employ celebrities however you like. Major issues you generally wa...
Frame It Appropriately Here's the issue: There's a pretty firm assumption that, the moment you're following a tight first-person (or third person) narration, you're following around in their head....
I'm afraid I've never seen any statistics on this. As the comments have noted, this is a very difficult estimate to make - there are many different definitions of "getting published" (does self-pub...
This is called a "simultaneous submission," and a well-organized contest should have a clear-cut rule on whether or not they're allowed. If a particular contest doesn't call simultaneous submissio...
Here's the money quote from the script formatting rules that cornbread ninja linked in the comments: Some writers also use ALL CAPS when a sound effect appears in Action. Others capitalize impo...
Your difficulty is that you need an elevator pitch. If you're unfamiliar with the term, an "elevator pitch" is a super-brief description of your book - basically, how you'd pitch it to somebody sh...
GRRM's primary goal with Feast was to fill in crucial details, whereas most of the volumes had the goal of portraying epic plot and conflict. I'd suggest that the structure used in the previous vol...
The latest two volumes of Martin's Song of Ice and Fire have been poorly received compared to the series' earlier books. What's interesting here is that Martin's original plan did not include thes...
A all-questions-welcome resource will, almost inevitably, be less helpful than finding pertinent resources for the specific topics you're asking about. And that'll be a case-by-case process. The g...
Keeping track of details invented for a work of fiction is never simple, often requiring writing bibles and continuity editors. But when two people are working on the same book simultaneously, then...
