Posts by Galastel
A start, a setup, is not a story. Consider, for example, how many different adventure stories start with "enemies" attacking the protagonist's home town, forcing him to leave home. From the Wheel o...
Let me start personal. My family has been in situations where a group of people found themselves unprepared for survival, lacking both the knowledge and the infrastructure to survive, lacking help ...
Here's a question you must answer to yourself: what is writing to you? Is it a hobby, a pastime, something you enjoy but do not take too seriously? Do you aspire to achieve anything in this field (...
From your either-or phrasing, I understand that you're asking whether you should write something that appears "hot", but that you personally find utterly boring. How then do you propose to write su...
It is absolutely certainly legal for what you describe to appear in literature. Consider, for instance, that Juliet was 14 when she married and had sex with Romeo. A more modern example: Song of Ic...
You've got characters, you've got a world. What you need is conflict: it is conflict that makes a story. This can be conflict between characters, conflict with some other force ("antagonist" or nat...
Forget the petty everyday annoyances like being stuck in traffic. What awakens your righteous anger? What makes your blood boil? Here are some examples. Injustice If I read about a child being bu...
Bathos is not the mere fact of a serious moment being followed by a light one. It is an intrusion of a cheap vulgar laugh into a dramatic scene. It undermines the seriousness of the stakes, the dra...
As others have pointed out, since you are in the main character's head, it's very hard to hide the fact that she feels no empathy. We are in her head, we know what she thinks and feels. That said,...
I would like to offer a frame challenge: you're asking "will X make my story not fit the 'dark fantasy' sub-sub-genre". I say, write your story, make it a good one, then think what genre or sub-gen...
The short story Orange by Neil Gaiman, from his collection Trigger Warning takes your idea one step further: it's framed as a subject's responses to an investigator's written questionnaire. The que...
The answer to your question depends on how strongly the set of names is associated with the preexisting work of fiction. Not just the individual names, but the set of names together. For example, ...
I don't get only supporting the freedom of the kind of speech you like. If speech needs defending, it's probably because it's upsetting someone. (Neil Gaiman, The View from the Cheap Seats, The ...
A song has lyrics and music. Translating the lyrics, you'd want to keep the music. It means that as you're translating, you'd have to try to sing each line to the original music. The beats would ha...
Your cookbook's primary function is being a reference book: providing clear recipes. My personal preference is to always have a picture of the final product, and preferably also intermediary stages...
There is a surviving account of the first meeting between Portuguese sailors and Japanese locals. What's interesting about it is that accounts of the meeting survived from both sides. The accounts ...
Is there a way to have comments in different colours, in Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer, or Libre Office? (I am currently using Open Office, and I'm happy with it, but I am open to making the s...
When describing the scenery, your goal isn't only to convey dry information (there are houses, there are trees, etc.). Your goal is to evoke some emotion, some feeling. Your key to extending the de...
There is a prince. (Or some other person of high rank.) And there is that prince's good friend, who, naturally, holds a somewhat lower rank. There are two ways I could show the close relationship ...
Time travel can enable the plot - appear as a plot device once at the start, and never show up again. Time travel is part of the setup, not part of the story, as it where. This is the case of Mark ...
I have three characters, who are supposed to be good friends. Athos, Aramis, and Porthos, if you wish. Instead, I have two characters who share a strong Frodo-Sam relationship, and the third guy, w...
Thinking a bit further on the comment I've made, I think bookmarks are the most effective. Here's why: I'm offered a flyer, if I take it, I read, then throw away. Or, I find it interesting, stuff ...
There are many elements of style, of the narrator voice, that have changed over time. @ChrisSunami talks about this, and brings the example of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel - one example I was ...
Where does one go to find out about the day-to-day of military life? In countries other than my own? I don't mean combat - I mean the boring routine. Basic training. What kind of food is served in ...
To answer this question, I think it would be useful to look at The Lord of the Rings. We are explicitly told that Frodo is "chosen" for the task: Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by it...
