Posts by Standback
Here's a set of guidelines I really like: You can refer to each character by the moniker most appropriate to him, so long as you use the same one consistently. Readers will happily accept any nam...
How sympathetic to make your villain depends heavily on what your villain's role in the story is. Once you're able to figure out what role he has, what effect you'd like him to have on your audienc...
When an individual writes a novel, he owns all rights over the manuscript until he starts selling those rights to others. What is the situation when the novel is a collaborative work? How are suc...
It's really good that you're looking for professional critique - that's a really helpful thing to have! However, a Kirkus book review might well be the wrong address. Kirkus Reviews A Kirkus rev...
They're fine; they certainly aren't an error. If a particular use sounds awkward, don't hesitate to drop attribution entirely (it's often still quite clear who's talking, because most conversations...
From TV Tropes ("In Media Res" and "How We Got Here"): Fight Club starts with Tyler Durden holding a gun in the Narrator's mouth, then goes back to the beginning and catches back up. Kill Bill Vo...
So here's a question I'd like you to consider. You're trying to grip the reader. What, in this passage, do you expect/hope will manage to do that? I'm afraid I didn't find this opening to be very ...
The way a character thinks of a ship tells a lot about the relationship between the character and the ship. For example: Someone who thinks of the ship as an inanimate tool will naturally tend to...
What Query Shark Says Let's take a look at what precisely QS has written there: This is a log line. Avoid them. Think about it: it [refers to: they must decide whether to resign their liv...
It's possible that all may be lost; on the other hand, maybe not. Distinguish between losing interest in the project and merely losing interest in its current state. The latter is somewhat more sal...
The way to play this depends heavily on what you're trying to achieve with your antagonist's secret goal. The key concept here is that every major thread should have some set-up and introduction in...
The method I'm familiar with is a writing bible - a document where you're constantly recording any new information you add to the world; any new detail you want to be committed to throughout the bo...
I think the reason for the popularity of the trilogy structure in the fantasy genre is compelling, but far from expected or mandatory. It's simply that fantasy novels tend to be long, for many rea...
Traditional Publishing Pros If you're in, you're doing good. If you've got an offer, that says a lot about your writing ability. Not that all good authors get published or all published authors ...
Try tackling some appropriate pages from TV Tropes, and just branching out from there. That should give you about a gazillion times more examples than you'll know what to do with. :P
I would definitely avoid Tooth and Nail - it's already heavily overused. I confess, all three titles sounded very generic and indistinct to me. They tell me this is an action-packed thriller, but ...
Here's a simple reformulation which breaks you out of the structure you dislike: Since the database layout is sufficiently similar across all source data formats, we can write a single SQL quer...
Jim Van Pelt has a great one: In a nutshell, two students talk to each other so that each speaks twice. One of them records what they said. That produces four lines of raw dialogue like this:...
CAVEAT: I am not a lawyer. At the level you're describing, yes, this is copyright infringement. Basically, if it's easy to demonstrate that your work is "substantially similar" to another pi...
I would say this is extremely common in comedy, and much more difficult in drama. And even in comedy, a likable character can win sympathy very very easily even if he's totally unsympathetic - in f...
I'm very appreciative of NaNoWriMo's "your first step is writing a crappy first draft" credo, and I like the motivation that NaNoWriMo encourages. I'm precisely at the point where what I feel I nee...
It sounds like you're describing an infodump (warning: TV Tropes), and that's a phenomenon best avoided. The issue is this: by your own description, the explanation is not interesting enough to h...
Look for an agent. Don't give up until you've exhausted everybody who's a good fit. And look beyond Australia. Be sure you're querying agents that actually represent the type of book you're trying...
I really like that you open with "Questions you would typically ask a home contractor." That's a great way to get across, very simply, what type of questions you deal with. You avoid needing to def...
OneLook's Reverse Dictionary seems to offer precisely the kind of tool you're looking for. However, I don't know that they're very good - I tried get on a plane, but board came back as result #96...
