Posts by Galastel
Here's a question you must answer to yourself: what is writing to you? Is it a hobby, a pastime, something you enjoy but do not take too seriously? Do you aspire to achieve anything in this field (...
'Primus' means 'first' in Latin. Just as you cannot copyright the word 'first', you cannot copyright 'primus'. Same goes for 'prime'. Or any other common word. If in some fantasy universe, the enti...
The meaning of words is not set in stone. A word that used to mean one thing, can change over time to mean another. A hundred years ago, 'gay' used to mean 'merry'. Now it is no longer used in this...
@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...
Who are the readers of your magazine? The students? Imagine then, that you get a subscription to some journal. However, instead of providing you with carefully selected, edited and reviewed conten...
Going over a draft the first time around, I look for the things that really don't work, things that stick out like a sore thumb. Those might be issues with the flow, internal contradictions and inc...
Anthropomorphic personifications of death are quite old, and the older ones focus on the frightening aspects of death. Look, for example, at Oscar Wilde's The Young King: From the darkness of a...
It is absolutely certainly legal for what you describe to appear in literature. Consider, for instance, that Juliet was 14 when she married and had sex with Romeo. A more modern example: Song of Ic...
Transliteration is commonly used in cases such as you describe. Look for example at Ken Liu's short story Mono no aware: the title itself is a transliteration. Then, within the text, there is an ex...
Let me second what @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere says, and elaborate. Fiddling with a setting is an endless task: you can delve into sociology, millennia of history, technology, geography, geology - ...
From your either-or phrasing, I understand that you're asking whether you should write something that appears "hot", but that you personally find utterly boring. How then do you propose to write su...
Look at RL complete monsters. They exist. What makes them complete monsters? What makes them who they are? Hitler wanted to see his country return to its glory days. That goal is not deviant in it...
Let me start personal. My family has been in situations where a group of people found themselves unprepared for survival, lacking both the knowledge and the infrastructure to survive, lacking help ...
A start, a setup, is not a story. Consider, for example, how many different adventure stories start with "enemies" attacking the protagonist's home town, forcing him to leave home. From the Wheel o...
Forget the petty everyday annoyances like being stuck in traffic. What awakens your righteous anger? What makes your blood boil? Here are some examples. Injustice If I read about a child being bu...
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...
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 ...
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...
