Posts by Galastel
There is a distinction that needs to be drawn here: are you talking about practice that helps you improve your writing, or are you talking about the kind of practice you can put in a CV to help you...
For me, writing is a passion. Not writing is an impossibility. There are stories in my mind; I need to tell them. I need to find out where they go, how they go, what they mean. I have something in ...
To improve your mastery of a language, you need to immerse yourself in it, as much as you can. This doesn't necessarily mean travelling to a location where the language is spoken, though that would...
In a story that isn't set in our normal here-and-now, be it fantasy, science fiction, historic fiction, or something else, you need to establish what's normal for your setting, and what isn't. As a...
Simply telling, e.g. he said with a heavy Gujarati accent would be my solution, but you say that isn't enough for you. Which is fair. What is the most characteristic aspect of the accent you...
I am writing a short story, about a particular field with multiple specific terms, none of which are in English. (Specifically, I'm writing about bullfighting, but the question could apply to other...
There are multiple examples of works of fiction using for their title a quote from another famous work: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and more. The ad...
Let's take a look at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in the Lord of the Rings: First, we have the Rohirrim. Among them are Theoden, Éowyn, Éomer and Merry. Then we have Minas Tirith, with its va...
Let us suppose an unmarried female author. She publishes something. Then she gets married, and chooses to change her surname to her husband's. Obviously, she can choose not to change her surname. ...
This is how Tolkien solves a similar problem in The Lord of the Rings: ENT. When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough; When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is...
If your editor says something might look unprofessional, you should listen to your editor. Your editor is a professional, whose task is precisely to make your work appear at its best. We, on the ot...
Something nobody has yet mentioned: you might want to write your story as a tribute to another work. For example, Neil Gaiman's A Study in Emerald is a tribute to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes sto...
In English, the dialogue tags you want to be using most of the time are "said" and "asked". "Answered"/"replied" is also OK. Those dialogue tags are transparent, as it where - our mind slides off t...
The best way to improve as a writer is to write. Just write. Then write some more. Then look at what you've written critically, ask others to read and comment, then rewrite and write some more. Co...
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...
Here's a thing you need to consider, a frame challenge if you will. When setting your story in the 1950s, or in the 1920s, or even in the 1800s, your characters can speak the way people spoke back...
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...
Whether the novel is set in Russia, or in the Middle Ages, or somewhere in Alpha Centauri, you are writing it in English. Whether your characters are "really" speaking Russian, Old English, or a to...
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...
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...
Creating a branch is the easy part To create a branch, as you read the book take note of every choice the character makes. Map those out - what that choice leads to, what does that in turn lead to...
What is your book about, really? Not "a Devon village". Is it about relationships? Is it about the skeletons in people's closets? Is it about the tiny day-to-day bits of kindness people do for each...
I will answer this question quoting Neil Gaiman. Here is his complete answer to the question "where do you get your ideas?". A particularly relevant excerpt: You get ideas from daydreaming. You...
I am in the process of editing a short story. It is science fiction of the "if this goes on" kind: I take a social trend I see, and paint its event horizon - a troubling future. 1984 and Fahrenheit...
