Posts by Galastel
If a character appears in the third act and helps solve a major problem the main characters have carried for the two previous acts, that character is sort of deus ex machina - something previously ...
As I recall, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Horace Smith, and whoever else their friends were, used to challenge each other to write things. Quite a few novels and poems came out of those...
King Matt the First is very explicitly written for seven-year-olds. It's about a seven-years-old prince, whose father dies, so he becomes king. He tries to be a good king, but there's a war, and he...
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...
"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...
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...
Growing up in Israel, I am surrounded by Jews. Interacting with Christian acquaintances, and reading literature written by religious Christians, there are a few things I noticed - things that stood...
In an interview that I can't find now, Neil Gaiman stated that the short stories in his latest collection Trigger Warning had one element tying them together: they were all the short stories he had...
Tolkien dealt with exactly the same situation in The Lord of the Rings, starting with the breaking of the Fellowship. For example, we have simultaneously Merry and Pippin being carried by orcs; Ara...
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...
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...
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...
Each usage has its place. #1 is most commonly used in such situations. Even if you're not writing for children, you don't necessarily want every bit of cursing. Sometimes telling that the characte...
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 ...
Expanding on what I said in a comment to @Amadeus's post, I don't like thinking of "talking" with my character as an interview. A character might not want to answer a journalist, an interrogator, e...
Neil Gaiman, making a commencement speech in the University of the Arts in 2012, said the following: When you start out on a career in the arts you have no idea what you are doing. This is...
In essence, you've got two elements to balance: the fantasy, and the cooking. So let's look at them separately first. Cooking: The recipes need to work. Recipes that mean nothing can be a fun gi...
I need to speak at the unveiling of a memorial plaque (this one, incidentally). I have an idea of what I want to say, and how I want to arrange it. My struggle is with the opening. I have spoken ...
You do not. Nowhere in Green Eggs and Ham does Dr. Seuss tell you that the whole thing is written using exactly 50 different words. It's an "Easter Egg" as @Alexander points out in a comment. It's...
You have read books like this, or at least are familiar with books like this: Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls is set in Spain, and it is indicated, repeatedly, that the dialogue is in S...
More than one author has struggled with the same problem before. There is a Russian children's story about a dog named 'Shoo' - the dog has been shooed so many times, that by the time it was adopte...
