Posts by Lauren Ipsum
You'd capitalize "beach party" if the entire phrase is a proper name, because it's an official event: You are invited to the WidgetCo Christmas Beach Party! This is being held across the street...
When hope that the protagonist(s) will win is snuffed out. I came very close to this with Person of Interest in the middle of the most recent season. There are a number of Good Folks and several ...
In old fairy tales, the protagonists were sometimes referred to this way: the king, the princess, the miller's son. But there was only one of each, so it was okay to leave them lowercase. If ther...
You could get away with drastically different tones if you had two different POV narrators. If one is Tina Fey and the other is Sylvia Plath, they will of course see the world differently. The cont...
A sentence has a subject and a verb, sometimes an object. He recites. (Subject: he; Verb: recites) She throws a book. (Subject: She; Verb: throws; Object: a book) A sentence fragment is ...
Placehold the highlights. Write the notes of what you want to accomplish. Beth: Wow, that was really nice of the waiter. Alanna: Do you think the boss will punish him for that? they d...
You have all your parts; you've sort of discovered your story backwards. Now you need to reverse–reverse-engineer an outline. A very rough skeleton for an outline is: Intro: set up the story worl...
"X was most likely to be electrocuted" doesn't have an actor, so that's fine as is. But if you have "many new things were done," tell us by whom, and what they did. While the 15x15 was pregna...
The first time the character sees the monster, he's only going to get a few basic details. Christ, that thing is huge! It's green! and the teeth! After he's ducked out of the way and looked back o...
As Ville Niemi comments above, the simplest way to make this not a coincidence is to have your protagonist do some work to find these people. In fact, I can't imagine how she could casually stumbl...
Sounds fine to me. The prologue and epilogue are literally before and after the story, so it's fine for them to be formatted differently or have a different POV.
If it's your first draft, just write it as it comes. You can't edit a blank page. After your first draft, go back through and clean up the polyglossolalia. If you're writing in third person, pick ...
Up to the writing. If you create characters with whom your audience can identify in some fashion, someone to root for, then their species doesn't matter. Diane Duane has many non-human protagonis...
Depending on whether the character actually stutters or just rewords mid-thought, you might write: "Lo— I mean, Warden," he amended. "Lor— er, Warden," he amended. "Lo— Warden," he am...
When a title precedes a name, it becomes part of the name, and is capitalized: I spoke to Constable Fraser this morning. (You don't use the title and the person's first name. Not in American...
You may have to research your specific term to see how far back it goes and if you can find the first or earliest instance(s). Depending on what you're looking for, you may have to go to physical l...
I am interested in creating slang or a vernacular for a particular group in my story. I want it to be distinctive and a definite marker for in-group/out-group, but not incomprehensible. I'm not loo...
I think there's a difference between character development and character depth. Development means change. You can have an interesting villain who is only ever a villain, but still has backstory, mo...
But those words are a quote, so they should be quoted. If your text is in first person — so that your narration is actually the thoughts of the narrator speaking to the reader — then you'd use spe...
I find thoughts inside speech quotes to be incredibly distracting, because I have to spend time figuring out if the person is thinking or talking. So don't do that, whatever punctuation you use for...
I think it's subjective. To my ear, to avoid is a series of individual events, while avoiding implies something continuous and ongoing. "She started to avoid me" sounds like "I called her and she ...
As @what sensibly points out, just because you have an opinion doesn't mean it's wrong. Mention your biases up front. "I really enjoy rhyming poetry, and free verse doesn't work for me on an aest...
I would put them at the end as appendices. That way they're part of the documentation but not in the way when someone goes to look up a feature. But I actually like the idea of having them as part ...
My instinct is to preserve as much of the original rhythm and flow as possible, but to make it sound readable to a native ear. In both your examples, the original uses short, punchy sentences, whic...
Given your quote in context, the obscenity works. It's blunt and to the point, and since you are in fact pointing out that people don't have time or energy for philosophy when they're starving, it'...
