Posts by Lauren Ipsum
The narration. I'm thinking of not using the narration at all. Please don't do this. It is very, very hard to understand even when handled by a master. If this is your first book, it will be...
Sherlock Holmes is famous for deducing answers to puzzles from observation. He was widely and deeply read, although he also deliberately forgot information which he felt wasn't important. He was a ...
Option 1 will probably be easiest. Create a Part or Section break and give it a name: Part II, Rivendell, The War. You indicate the passage of time with some kind of identifying text at the beginni...
If you're not telling a humorous story, and your protagonists come across something which looks like it should be funny but ends up being deadly, then you have a Killer Rabbit situation. Bear wit...
Dialogue and monologue. Dialogue with her friends, one by one, until they leave. With a bartender or barista. On a chat room or a BBS. Monologue could be writing in a diary or a blog. Or potenti...
This related answer may help you, but I'll expand more here: I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Bablyon 5, who wrote that one could sum up "conflict" in three questions: What does ...
This is a classic "cabbagehead character," who allows you to gradually unveil your worldbuilding as he leaves his isolation and goes out into the larger community. Nothing wrong with this at all....
Most trilogies or series follow chronological order, but there's no requirement. Do whatever serves your story. As long as it's clear to your reader what's happening when in relation to other event...
You're 95% of the way there; you have good instincts for what's readable. • For your first example, I'd try to put as much of the logistics of translation into narration as I could manage. After ...
You've almost got it — you need to add a few more quote marks. You have quote marks for dialogue. In American English that's a double quote ("). When something is quoted within dialogue, you nest...
Don't name him in his own thoughts. (I'm going to add names here for ease of discussion.) You have: vengeance was his, Garth of the Bill clan. He was the Foremost of the Forsworn But he's no...
men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women identify better with female protagonists (the claim being, they can certainly sympathize with male protagonis...
Show a little preview. Pick one thing which is small and easy to do: call Fire. So your character can light a cooking fire. But Fire can be used for a lot of things: a lamp, a furnace, a hot air b...
The term "card" is fungible. Your card can be a 36x48 poster or seventeen pages in Scrivener or an entire notebook of thoughts. It could be a character quiz, a playlist, a drawing, a list of favori...
Well, "good" is subjective. You can have a loathsome, hissable, completely irredeemable villain who roasts puppies, shoots women with crossbows, and writes comics where Captain America is revealed ...
If you indent paragraphs, every paragraph gets indented, period. It doesn't matter if that paragraph is a single word of dialogue, a page-long rant, or four pages of stream-of-consciousness. So: ...
While this isn't Graphic Design SE, my first impulse is to say "Change the COLOR SCHEME!" White text on black is seriously painful to read. Make it black text, larger, on a white or light-colored b...
Your writing career will only end if you stop writing. Period. So don't stop writing. You may not have as much time as you want, or as much as you think you need. But don't stop. Write at night, w...
Look up "encyclopedia fairies" on Amazon and peruse some of the available books. Pick any being and start varying it. Cross a few. Add an unexpected characteristic. (Within reason. I think even Tol...
Can the game do math? I might suggest "X needs n more MP to do that." "You must have n MP for that move." "Dammit, Scotty, I need more MP!" [yeah, I know, Paraborg's lawyers will come after you]
Sure, why not? I think thanks should be in front and information should be at the back. Gratitude should be expressed early on, and homework should only be offered if the reader is still intereste...
Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress. These are desktop publishing programs, which are designed to do exactly what you want to do (among many other things): lay out printed pieces like a magazine.
You are going to have to edit at some point. That editing may mean taking out huge chunks of text, entire plot lines, entire characters. If it's easier for you to do that early on, edit as you go. ...
I write blog posts in the present tense even if I'm writing about something which happened in the past, because it's funnier to be "present" as the gag is unfolding. I prefer novels in the past te...
The plural of anecdote is not data... but speaking from my own experience, sci-fi and fantasy are just about all I read. So it doesn't matter how popular the Girl Who Kicked the Dragon Fire Tattoo ...
