Posts by Lauren Ipsum
I used to do the same thing when I was first starting out. My sense is that it's because you are excited and inspired by The Thing, and you want more of The Thing, so you make more of it by mimicki...
Fix it now. If you realize you made a mistake, go back and fix it now. Not, I stress, because the last 20K would be "wasted," because no writing is wasted, but because it's clearly blocking you an...
First of all, let's be clear: "aggressive and angry" is not "emotionless." He's either one or the other. Second, "a bad man redeemed by the love of a good woman" can fall very easily into cliché. ...
The only bad ideas are the ones which stop you from finishing the book. Write and edit if you like. Write halfway and edit. Write the whole thing blindfolded. Write only at night, or only during a...
You're missing item 4, or 3a: "Here's another Good Thing which will allow us to win!" In your swordfighting example: I can put in the same kind of work they do and become as good as they are! ...
Remember that terms like "third person limited" are not meant to be jails. They are descriptive. If it works for your story to have one (or a handful) of scenes outside your protagonists' viewpoi...
I am in favor of rules and coherence. However, also remember that you do not have to show all your work. Just because you as the writer/creator know how magic/powers work doesn't mean you have to ...
Accents are not decorations. Have a reason for using them beyond "I'm writing a fantasy and they look cool." (The same goes for apostrophes.) In addition to Daniel's very good answer: An accent ...
I would use the case which is in the application, to make it easier for the reader to match apples to apples. You might even add quote marks and other formatting for additional clarity: Figure ...
1) Where's the best place to hide a red fish? In a pond full of other red fish. Since you're writing in a fantasy genre, you have liberty to create an entire society. You're doing all your own wor...
You should only attempt the style of the 17th/18th centuries if you're writing some kind of pastiche or mimicry of a book written then — for example, a Sense and Sensibility and Dragons kind of thi...
It's also similar to Harry Potter and Divergent. Just as there was a rash of vampire/paranormal YA fiction after Twilight, there's currently a run on quasi-facist highly and arbitrarily segregated ...
If your books are not standalone, a "previously on..." intro is probably a good idea. You want just enough information to orient the reader without spoiling or rehashing the previous book(s). Al...
Speaking as an American who has limited familiarity with any version, I suggest King James, because that's the one the general American public would hear the most in passing outside a church contex...
@lew answered this when addressing this question: Is this an example of an unreliable narrator? From this Wikipedia article The Naïf: a narrator whose perception is immature or limited through...
yes, and in fact I encourage this. If it's from a child's POV, try to use a child's language, understand and perspective. Don't stress so much about what's "allowed." Do what seems to work for you...
Your characters may not have names, but they have to have some identifiers. Other examples in fiction: Star Trek's Borg use designations which specify where each drone (individual) is in the hi...
I just wanted to write a story about these two friends. So, maybe that is your theme. That friendship is beautiful, rich, enduring; that friends help each other through obstacles, or despite t...
The Carnegie Hall method: Practice, practice, practice. You know those Word-A-Day calendars? We joke about them, but they're not bad as a starting point. Each day you pick a word you want to start...
It depends on what you want to accomplish with the scene, and the character. Neither one is better writing per se. They do have slightly different tones, and slightly different meanings. "When y...
An unreliable narrator is one who knows the truth but doesn't reveal it to the reader. It sounds like your story has a narrator who does not, in fact, know the truth. Dr. Watson is sometimes seen ...
In addition to this answer here: What's the best way to show a foreign language in a manuscript? If you have a lot of swapping back and forth between two specific languages, and the characters are...
There are two versions of "the reader can't figure out the ending." One is Sherlock Holmes, and the other is Murder by Death. In the Holmes stories, the reader doesn't necessarily see all the deta...
Generally speaking, humor comes from the unexpected. You anticipate that A will happen, but B happens instead. Someone says "I want to give up cigarettes and switch to vaping." You expect that th...
If you want people to sympathize or identify with a character who does awful things, then the people she's doing those things to have to be worse than her. They have to deserve the manipulation and...
