Posts by Lauren Ipsum
I'd say yes if you're careful about it and don't overdo it. Different formatting can be useful in quickly alerting the reader that the text is from an article or an email, particularly if it begins...
There's no One Correct Way. You can have a list of attributes as if you were creating a D&D character. You can jot down notes so you have guidance for the important parts of your story. You can...
Sketch out both (or multiple) ideas as fully-fleshed plots from beginning to end. Get all your separate possibilities down on paper. Put everything aside for a week. Come back to them and re-read...
You're being given a prompt, so that will do half the work for you. I think it was J. Michael Straczynski, writer of Bablyon 5, who wrote that one could sum up "conflict" in three questions: Wh...
Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue series was allegedly an entire RPG campaign turned into a set of novels (which explains the ridiculous deus ex machina ending). If role-playing helps you to flesh out ...
sure, why not? I think as long as there is some coherent structure behind the character so that you can establish that this person would behave in thus-and-such a way, and it's consistent and credi...
There is no One True Way. Every writer is different. Even the same writer may have two different approaches to two different books (or series). JK Rowling plotted out the entire seven-book Harry P...
It depends on context. Why has the character's name never been mentioned? Why does no one know it? What label, nickname, or epithet are you using to describe the character instead? I would mentio...
The answer to this and your other similar question is the same: Your Mileage May Vary. If you can get it to work, go for it. There's no rule about it one way or the other. In Susanna Clarke's Jon...
Both ages as separate interviews, since his answers will be different and you will have to handle his responses differently. In the second interview, he can even look back and say "Yeah, I remember...
I think "selected literary pieces or passages" is your linchpin here. Let's take that college mainstay, the Norton Anthology (this one is American Literature). This is a book which contains quote...
Yes, you can ask for feedback at any and all of those stages. The feedback which is helpful at any stage is "This works and here's why" and "This doesn't work and here's why." The "here's why" is...
First of all, your protagonist almost must change, or there's not much point to your book. If s/he does not at some point stop running and pull him/herself together, your reader will feel like the ...
There are two main ways to structure a series: each book is essentially a stand-alone with a continuing story as part of the plot (Harry Potter), or each book is a critical part of the whole and th...
You don't capitalize the dialogue tag she said or she laughed if it's attached to your dialogue. You would only capitalize She laughed if it's a new thought. So: "Do you know where we are going...
So give your villain more to do. Raise the stakes. If the General overseeing the various troops and hunters doesn't feel scary enough, give him more motivation. Give him someone REALLY scary to re...
Because you are attaching your speaker tag to the dialogue being spoken. If you were using an action tag, or separating the speaker tag from the dialogue, then the quoted material stands alone and ...
It's a lot easier to think of the character if s/he has a name, but it isn't strictly required. In Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca, the first-person narrator is never named, and is only known as "the se...
If George R.R. Martin can have something like 47 POV characters per book, including one who is only in the prologue and then gets killed by a crow dropping a statue of a lion eating a dragon on his...
Put it in a drawer for a month or three. Pull it out, re-read it, mark up problems, and fix them. Then hand it off to an editor. Implement those edits. Lather, rinse, repeat as necessary. At that ...
Depending on the tone of your book, you can make that work for you by making subsequent text sarcastic, funny, meta, or the intro to a flashback. I had destroyed the earth. Okay, it was just a ...
I can think of a few options: Indent the story-within-a-story and treat dialogue normally (just double quotes). Put your Aesop section in italics, the story-within-a-story in book, and treat all ...
A few things to consider: If you're eager to write the "good stuff" where your characters are kissing, go ahead and write it out of sequence. Get it out of your system. Now you can go back and cr...
If this is a script being read over a video, then use #1, as #2 doesn't give enough information. It makes me want to hunt around and find actual directions. Suggested fixes: I've never heard "c...
If your essay is analytical (and I'm struggling to think of any other reason you'd write an essay about The Great Gatsby) then I'd put it in the present tense. Gatsby loves Daisy, but Daisy is ma...
