Posts by Galastel
It depends. How much do you have to tell about the MC after he undergoes this transformation? Is this the main conflict of your story, or merely something that impedes the MC from dealing with the ...
Four chapters in, your readers should have an idea what they're in for. Not everything that's going to happen, but certainly a hint. Once you've hinted that there is darkness, you can skirt it, tur...
I will second @MarkBaker and @Amadeus: avoid the repetition. "But I need the response," you say. "It doesn't flow," you say. Very well, that's the problem you need to solve - how to make it flow de...
There's more you can do with a trope than play it straight or subvert it. You can play with it in various ways: invert it (which you did), parody it, lampshade it, exploit it, and much much more. A...
You talk of your characters as one or two basic characteristics, and that's it. That's where your problem is. There is more to a person than a short tag. Think about your friends. Chances are, you ...
Some people have some sort of dislike for semicolons. See The Good, the Bad and the Semicolon. If you're not comfortable using semicolons at all, that's up to you. But if you do normally use semic...
@Monica and others talk about Man vs. Environment stories. Since that has been explored, let me take your premise in a different direction. Another way by which the world might be a compelling vill...
First of all, learn about the fantasy species you want to write about You want to populate your world with the traditional fantasy species, but your own perception of them appears to be based on o...
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 ...
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...
In my mind's eye, the characters I write about are "real people": I do not ask myself what I want them to do. I ask myself what they would do in the given situation. I know their fears and their de...
Horror works on building tension. Humour breaks it. On the face of it, you've got two cardinally opposed directions here. How do you mix the two? First, there's gallows humour. Gallows humour does...
Depending on your setting, it might make sense for your character to be racist, it might even make more sense for them to be racist than not to be. For example, in medieval Europe, if someone wasn'...
I am an (aspiring) fiction writer. I write prose. However, every so often, I run into a need for poetry. I might need a prophecy, or a ritual blessing, or a character might be serenading another, o...
Taking a life of their own is exactly what your characters should be doing. They should have enough of a "character" that a reader can predict how they would act in a given situation. That's what m...
You don't necessarily need to distinguish the two. If you write, for example, Dan stared out of the window of the classroom. A green park spread outside. Tulips and Hyacinths were in full bloom...
One solution, at least at first, is to just use the pronoun: She woke up in a room she did not recognise. How had she got here? Where was she? Come to think of it, who was she? With a horrible ...
There are other stakes than death. From all of Jane Austen to some of Asimov, sometimes the world isn't about to end, and nobody is about to die. So what else is there? First, your story can be sm...
My gaming experience is with Bioware games. In those games, choices you make significantly affect the way the game ends. Consequently, it is quite common to play multiple playthroughs to achieve th...
Neil Gaiman said "Make good art." In the same speech he says: The moment that you feel that just possibly you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind an...
Can you? Yes. There is nothing wrong with it, either legally or ethically. What you're doing would come under "artistic license". In fact, Alexandre Dumas' "The Man in the Iron Mask", for instance,...
My first thought is, if you're struggling with this issue, why not make your character struggle with it too? If she has no family name, then in situations where she needs to be addressed by one, sh...
In my fantasy novel, I have a species that is fully hermaphroditic: all individuals have both male and female reproductive organs. Like garden snails. Consequently, they have only one gender. They...
Originality isn't contained merely in what populates your fantasy world. In fact, I'd say that's one of the least important elements to an original story. You can have a new, fresh, original story ...
