Posts by Galastel
Here's something important: if I am invested in a character, I would feel cheated if that character suddenly changes off-screen, and I am supposed to just accept that change as their new "character...
You write. If what comes under your fingers is not great, if you're not satisfied, you rewrite. It's easier to find what needs to be improved once you have something, than finding the perfect scene...
@MatthewDave suggests asking yourself what your story is about. I would go farther: ask yourself what is the meaning of your story, what it is you're trying to say. If you're saying nothing at all...
You are mistaken in your basic assumption regarding what gives characters depth. If heroic Beowulf is in your story secretly a bad guy, that in and of itself doesn't make him three-dimensional. Tha...
You have multiple options. You can, as @Amadeus says, rewrite, so your character can be in the battle. You can have somebody recount the battle to your character after the fact, with your charact...
You don't detach yourself from the character. On the contrary - you let yourself feel the pain of her death, experience the loss, and you pour all of that onto the page. When a character dies, it ...
You have a world with a Problem. That's your setting. Why does the Problem matter to the character? How does it affect him? Your character must interact with the Problem - that's what the story is....
According to APA 6th Edition Citation Style, When a work’s author is designated as “Anonymous,” cite in text the word Anonymous followed by a comma and the date: (Anonymous, 2010) If, instead...
In every country, some names are particularly common: 'John' in the UK, 'Juan' in Spain, 'Ivan' in Russia. Those names are common almost to the point of being stereotypical (consider 'John Doe'). ...
"The best-laid plans of mice and men oft go awry" comes from Robert Burns's To a Mouse. It is a commonly used expression, though the "mice and men" part is often omitted nowadays. In fact, not ever...
If I were to describe Waterloo from Napoleon's point of view, it would be very different from that same battle from the point of view of a soldier, or even a cavalry lieutenant in the front ranks. ...
What makes a battle scene tense and visceral is the immediate danger and the fast-paced action and reaction. For that, the human soldier needs to be on the battlefield, in the action. Here's the p...
As @Amadeus points out, a robot programmed to interact with humans would know what range of colours "yellow" corresponds to, and would use "yellow" when interacting with humans. Interacting with ot...
I think it's like this: a normal person wants a lot of things: a new car, a raise, sex, some peace and quiet... When something dramatic happens, a person suddenly realises what's really important ...
In 1984, Big Brother succeeds. Big Brother is a very successful bully. In the end, one even learns to love Big Brother. There is no validation and agreement in 1984. There is a terrible warning. ...
Easiest example where not all protagonists find "someone else" is The Lord of the Rings. Of the nine members of the Fellowship, Aragorn and Sam are the only ones who marry within the course of the ...
Like @Rasdashan, I am a discovery writer. My characters take shape as I write. You might find that this approach works for you too. That said, since you wish to write about a group of characters, ...
You have two problems here: Lots of good people dying, "on stage" - in front of the children Good people killing other good people The first is dealt with very well in The Hobbit, for example...
In a comment to my post here, Cyn mentions wishing to avoid implying that the characters might all die, because she's writing for a mid-grade audience. Which made me wonder. I remember reading Th...
You've said it yourself: 18 = life. It follows that had there only been 17 travellers, they would not have come home alive. Preferably every child, but particularly the stowaway, must have a crucia...
"Write and cite" is good practice that you should start getting accustomed to early on. The longer the piece you write, the more sources you would have to juggle. Now, imagine there are twenty arti...
It is not unusual for the main character, or the POV character (not necessarily the same thing) to be a writer. There's even a trope for this: Most Writers are Writers (tvtropes link). A famous ex...
Your story must be perfectly readable and understandable by people who do not play chess, do not know the rules, and only know through pop-culture osmosis that there are pieces called 'rook', 'knig...
Not a direct answer to "how specific", but a technique you might find useful not to get bogged down in details: instead of writing a list, make it a tree. In your example, "writer", "actor", "prog...
Let's explore the proposition you're making here. You're saying "a white person cannot know what it's like to be black. Ergo, a white person should not write about black characters." So, white writ...
