Posts by Galastel
If I understand you correctly, on the one hand you want your hero to willingly go through with a selfless sacrifice, wiping himself out of time so he never existed in the first place (or something ...
Writing a complex story with multiple storylines, I find it useful to chart things. I draw a timeline: what happens when, what age characters are at the time, which event occur simultaneously, how ...
Think of your flashbacks like you think of any other scene. The fact that this is a flashback shouldn't make a significant difference. There are five senses you can engage: sight, hearing, smell,...
For me (and for the people who answered before me, I see,) story and worldbuilding go together, with the story in the driver's seat. Let me give you an example: Suppose I'm writing a military sc...
The meaning of words can be inferred from context. For example, in his book Elantris, Brandon Sanderson has a character insert words from his (fictional) mother-tongue into conversation. Raoden...
I've read the Three Musketeers when I was 10. Here are some reasons I did not find the violence troubling, and how you can apply them to your writing. (And just to clarify, I wasn't a child who did...
The only way I see to maintain the effect you're talking about is not to use pronouns. You can use the character's name. You can use their profession / rank / etc. You can say "we did", "they did" ...
The core novels of the Dragonlance series by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman started out as this - a D&D campaign. You might find it useful to take a look at their work. In some scenes of Drago...
I'm not writing erotica - I'm writing fantasy and sci-fi. But sometimes my characters make love, sometimes in ways I cannot be familiar with. In one story, it's two guys (I'm a girl). In another st...
The subject of your sentence can be something other than the MC when you're writing in first person. For example: My phone rang or Footsteps were coming down the alley behind me You don...
To answer your question, first you would need to answer for yourself the following: The anthropo-weasels - do they view themselves as the same kind of creature as, say, anthropo-lions? Can anthro...
The answer to your questions depends entirely on how you characterise the girl's friends. Are they prudish snobs? Then yes, they would shun her. Otherwise, no reason why they should. If they disagr...
An idea is an image. Consider, for example: The fraternity of critics, in reality a dark brethren, linked by profane rites and blood vows. To destroy an author they sacrifice a child and perfor...
Since you are writing a group, consider what character traits are missing in the group without the character you're struggling to write. Does your group have a comic-relief? A moral compass? A quie...
If you succeed in eliciting strong emotions in your readers, you've done good. If you make your readers cry, bite their nails to the quick, put the book down in fear only to pick it up five minutes...
Writing fantasy and sci-fi, I grow a sizeable specialised vocabulary per story (names, locations, fantastical things, etc.) I grow tired of the autocorrect grumbling at this vocabulary, and would m...
If you look at older literature, Victor Hugo for example, stories do not necessarily start with the main character, and switch between multiple POVs. So in and of itself, there is nothing wrong wit...
It is not terrible practice to write some parts sloppily, if you later come back and edit them. I am familiar with the desire to get to certain scenes, and yet I need at least the general shape of ...
A superhero team is first of all a team. You might therefore find the question How to write a story about a team? useful. With that in hand, you must also determine whether your team are all super...
Since you're telling the story in first person, you can say outright that the conversation is not in the language of the narration. Something like: I understood StrangeLandian, but I spoke it b...
If I understand you correctly, the subject of your documentary is standing on the brink of a major change: there's his life up to "now" (what you call "act 1"), and then there's the way things will...
How do people in Real Life fall in love? They get to know each other. They share some interests, so they enjoy spending time together, and have common things to talk about. They respect each other....
I have a scene I struggle with: it has potential for inherent drama, but it reads as an info dump. In a high-fantasy setting (more or less), character Alpha, a 14-year old daughter of a nobleman c...
A related question: How to open a novel? It sounds like your prologue opens in medias res - in the middle of the action. You already have orcs marching, preparing to fight. Since, in terms of plot...
Either can be used, as @DPT says. I heard a loud screech from beyond the gates, then silence. 'What is going on?' I thought. Here, effectively, you are presenting the thought as internal mono...
