Posts by Galastel
I think you mistake the meaning of "educational" in this case. "Educational" needn't be only about dry information that's related to what you're writing about. At the heart of a story, there is a m...
As a gamer, when you gear up for a battle, you want to get a battle. Mass Effect 3, for example, was criticised for not having a final boss, even though the way the story was structured there was n...
You mean you have your first chapters already online, and now you want to go back and edit them? Your main problem would be that most readers wouldn't go back and re-read the edited material. So i...
Wiki and Flash are all well and good, but here's an answer for lazy people, like me. I use OneNote. It's already on your Windows, and it requires 0 level of tech-savvy. I am a Wikipedia editor, so ...
First, you'd need to establish the convention that you use italics for thoughts. I've seen different books use italics for thoughts, telepathy, foreign-language inserts, and more. The reader would ...
There are more things to consider, with regards to who is the main character, than who is "the most important to the plot". Who is the POV character(s)? Whose inner thoughts do we hear? Whose emoti...
This is meant to be a canonical question, to which particular cases can be referred. We've had several particular instances of this question in the past - "is my story too similar to specific story...
My first instinct was to say "you can't" - the very essence of the science fiction genre is that things are not supernatural - they make sense within the in-universe rules, if not right from the st...
A little before Einstein's time, people were saying there's no sense in going into physics, since almost all the questions have already been answered, we understand everything that can be understoo...
You're asking whether in a story narrated in first person, you can have dialogue? Of course you can. Your MC is telling the story. Why shouldn't he tell the dialogue as is - the others' words as we...
You say it yourself: I feel that he's nothing more than a soulless archetype A soulless archetype is not going to be likeable, whether they are a positive or a negative archetype. So how do y...
I have recently had to deal with a similar issue in my own writing: modern Hebrew names too have meanings. Common names might mean 'horizon','spring', etc. Actress Gal Gadot's first name means 'wav...
This site here says that the copyright for a translation of a work that is in the public domain belongs to the translator. It makes sense, if you think about it. Consider: if I translate, for exam...
In your first example, you allow the reader to experience, together with the character, the waiting for an answer and the wondering why nobody opens the door. Each time your character knocks, there...
If you are writing the story, you face a choice between making the dialogue more natural, or emphasising foreignness. @Amadeus explains the first option in detail, so I will not reiterate. However,...
Many works of the High Fantasy genre are set in a pseudo-European fantasyland, in a rather amorphous time-period that mixes early-medieval and late-medieval arms and armour (but never gunpowder), l...
While names have connotations, those are, most of the time, different connotations for different people. Hearing the name 'Brad' one person can think of Brad Pitt, another of Brad who bullied them ...
The most famous example of what you're describing is Sherlock Holmes, told of course from Dr. Watson's POV. Watson never becomes the protagonist of the story - the focus is always on Holmes, Watson...
I'm generally much more messy with my editing than @Fayth85, (I mean, I do not have a procedure, an order of editing things - I just take care of whatever doesn't feel right,) and I do quite a bit ...
There are many styles of story-telling. Consider, for example, the start of the Lord of the Rings: Bilbo was very rich and very peculiar, and had been the wonder of the Shire for sixty years, e...
Following this question, I'm struggling with writing the speech of pre-modern (in my case - 5th century) noble-born children among themselves. Characters who are well-educated would not be making ...
Any "what if" scenario is where your creativity must come to bear. It is for you, as a writer, to consider the questions you ask. The first step is indeed asking the questions. Then you find an ans...
Similes are like the Reddit 50/50 challenge: you either get something very good, or your eyes will melt off. This is an example of the second variety. ;) Several things need to be true of a s...
There are several ways a strategic mastermind can be realistically defeated. A mastermind can only take into account what he knows of. The opposing side can come up with new technology or new mag...
One of the best examples that come to my mind of executing a tonal shift is Catch 22. It starts hilariously funny, mocking all the absurdities of the military. Then the same elements are revisited ...
