Posts by Galastel
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...
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...
My answer to your other question, here, should also answer this one. In brief, English is the language you're writing the novel in, so English is the language you're writing their dialogue in. Engl...
First and foremost, every character requires a backstory in your mind. You need to know who they are, why they act in a certain way, how they would respond to new situations, etc. Once you have th...
Building on Amadeus's answer, what you want to avoid is your character monologuing his backstory. Sometimes, a monologue can be done. If that story is gripping, and the scene is such that it makes...
Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Forest House is a lose retelling of Belini's opera Norma. Several hymns were taken from the opera verbatim, something done as tribute to the source material. Zimmer Brad...
You needn't reveal that the character has the ability, but you need to reveal the fact that the ability exists. Otherwise, indeed, this is a Deus ex Machina. How you reveal the existence of the ab...
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...
Aged 10-12, my understanding of sex was "that's how you make children". It didn't sound like fun, so my understanding of why people would do it, other than to make children, was rather in the "adul...
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 ...
The way a character talks reflects their social class, their level of education, where they come from, what kind of people they are and how the see the world. The last one in particular is key - if...
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...
Trilogies are rarely, if ever, published back-to-back. Instead, first one book is published, then, if it is successful, the second one, then the third. What this means is, when you query an agent,...
You say you've been lucky - nobody has given you a cause to hate them. Now imagine someone, or some group, laid deliberate, continuous, unjust abuse on someone(s) you cared about. Or imagine your o...
As it turns out, Wikipedia has your answer: List of Latin place names in Continental Europe, Ireland and Scandinavia List of Roman place names in Britain Wikipedia also has the "external links"...
A character looks at another character, skin colour creates certain associations. A character looks at himself, and associations would be shaped by society, and by what is "normal" in that society....
There are two easy ways to handle this, depending on whether you want the readers to understand what is being said, or not. In truth, whether you want the readers to understand or not is the only i...
The reality of pre-Industrial Revolution times was that about half the children born died before age 5. It would be a mistake to think that parents cared less - we have multiple written records sho...
Between the brief ordered spreadsheets @Liquid suggests and the detailed but time-consuming wiki you suggest, there is a third way: keep notes of what you need in a semi-organised way that is conve...
