Posts by Lauren Ipsum
"Strong and independent" does not have to mean "behaves in a masculine way." Strong can simply be "has healthy self-esteem and doesn't rely on third parties for her self-image." Independent can s...
I found a very elegant reduction of alignments in a Tumblr post: I figured out a simple guide to the alignment chart last night: Lawful: Rules matter more to me than individuals. Chaotic: Indivi...
1) Why doesn't Mr. Id have a POV scene until later in the story? It's your story. Give him an arc. 2) Instead of Porthos, Aramis, and Athos, think of Kirk (ego), Spock (superego), and McCoy (Id). ...
Add other characters who also fit all the "not replaceable" chosen-one requirements. You could have several heirs, a highly trained merc squad, a prophecy which covers all first-born daughters conc...
The point of "subsequent drafts" is that for 99% of writers, the first draft is weak. That's completely fine. The purpose of the first draft is to get the damn thing on paper. You can't edit an emp...
Monica's excellent answer provides you with the how, but I'd like to touch on when, since you asked "how soon is too soon?" The rough answer is "It's too soon if the villain hasn't earned it." Y...
I think it depends on how you're going to access it — that is, what you will need it for. Is your story a huge era-spanning saga? You may want to list things chronologically. Is your story heavi...
A sentence can indicate who is speaking without being attached by a comma. “Yes, but I mean no.” Steve stumbles over his words. “Not the come home part.” In this instance, Steve stumbles ove...
You're working in the wrong programs. I haven't used LibreOffice, but Word is a word processing program. It's not a layout program. Write your stories in Word or whatever. Write them in two sepa...
The Bechdel Test has three rules: It has to have at least two [named] women in it Who talk to each other About something besides a man Some people who try to apply it use "man" in the romantic ...
The purpose of the Kansas section is to establish the Real World before embarking on the Quest (to use the terms from the Hero's Journey). The Real World is the place which the Hero (gender/age/nu...
To create a plot, you have to ask three questions of your protagonist: What does the protagonist want? What is stopping the person from getting it? What will the person to do achieve his/her goal...
It's been mentioned on this board before, but rules which arbitrarily declare any part of a language off-limits are ridiculous. They may be meant to give guardrails to new writers, but all they end...
I've always considered the two poles as cooperative and competitive. Cooperators want to do things in a group, to get the opinions if not the consensus of others, and consider their own wants sec...
I suggest you start with an Innocent (or an Outsider) — a Cabbagehead kind of character, someone who doesn't know anything about your world so the world has to be explained to and/or experienced by...
Pay attention to your editor's/beta readers' reactions. Ask specifically: Were you satisfied with the story? Did it do what you think it set out to do? Were you suprised in a bad way about anyth...
1) Related to Secespitus's answer: Are you familiar with Rory's Story Cubes? they are dice with little icons on the sides rather than pips or numbers. They might be stick figures doing something, a...
You absolutely can publish your book with CreateSpace and NOOK at the same time. Each print version needs its own ISBN. I wrote to B&N about this exact issue, and this was their response, emp...
oh mercy, "the" is invisible. Stop fretting so much. Write your story. Write it with repeated words, with TK placeholders everywhere, wif badly grammar, with too much emphasis, with lots of... elli...
Your story generally happens at some particular moment, whether you're telling it in the present tense or past tense. There's nothing wrong with describing actions which happened a precise amount o...
Two examples spring to mind, neither exactly your situation: Christopher Tolkien did work on his father's oeuvre, but that's more curation than editing. He did cobble together The Children of Húri...
The three-act or five-act structure can still exist even if the elements are not shown in order. It's the effect on the audience which is changed. In the case of Memento, you see the end first, an...
Things that are good are things which you liked, and elements which achieved what the writer was going for. Funny bits: anything which makes you laugh (which is clearly supposed to) Nice turns of...
Yes, you can develop secondary characters, and should to the extent your narrative has room. While they are multi-volume arcs, David & Leigh Eddings's Belgariad and Malloreon series are good ...
If it's really short — no more than a few paragraphs — set it off with italics. It should quickly become apparent from context who the first-person-italics character is. If it's pages and pages, ...
