Posts by Lauren Ipsum
That's what a contract does. You, and ideally your agent, negotiate a contract with a publisher. The contract specifies what rights you are allowing the publisher to have in exchange for distributi...
Capitalizing a pronoun gives it proper noun status or deity status. So writing It means either that the thing's name is literally It, like Stephen King's monster, or you're referring to a god the w...
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...
This is purely a matter of style. It depends on where the writing is being published and what the content is. House style will usually dictate if you use periods/full stops at the end of bullet poi...
If you are following the daily wordcount rules, NaNoWriMo is explicitly not about quality. It's about committing to getting stuff on paper so you can work with it. So many of us start a novel and ...
It's completely fine. This technqiue is known as in medias res, "in the middle of things." If you've written it correctly, it shouldn't lessen the tension because we should be invested in the chara...
Two methods I can think of: 1) The character says or thinks what he's understood. "So you want me to go to the hut in the forest and kill the wizard?" He listened as the elders discusse...
If writing long sentences is a habit, you have two options: 1) Break the habit. 2) Write Regency romances, where lengthy and convoluted sentences are preferred. More seriously, it doesn't matter...
I think this is a great question, and I commend you on your self-awareness. If you're having trouble conceiving of a drive for your hero on your own, I suggest you go through some of your favorit...
It depends on the commenter. Is this a friend who is just being effusive, or someone who's offering constructive criticism (or praise) with an eye toward getting you published? Roughly speaking, it...
The amount of realism in your book is set up by you as the writer. It's up to the individual reader to decide if this is the reader's particular cup of tea. Some fantasy books are so stiff with cl...
I would say you have to attribute the quotes, even if you don't have to cite them flat out. So your first mention would be something like: This scene was in fact shot in Seville, Spain rather ...
A rival, as opposed to a mere villain or antagonist, is someone who is competing with you for the thing, person, or goal you both want. The only place where Malfoy and Harry directly competed was i...
Since your story is in third-person, I think you're fine for that handful of scenes. Susan Elia MacNeal's Maggie Hope mysteries are set up like this: 95% of the scenes are from a specific character...
This kind of thing is always Your Mileage May Vary, of course, but I think if you're doing it in an epilogue (clearly labeled as such), you can probably get away with it. The main story is done, an...
As long as you clearly mark what the date is so that the reader knows your scenes are not in sync, you're okay in terms of clarity. But you should have a good narrative reason for doing so, and not...
Strictly speaking, you don't need an English degree to get writing jobs, nor are you guaranteed any kind of job in writing/editing/publishing if you have said degree. You get hired when you convinc...
It sounds like you're seeing this problem in Hero's Journey stories, which have a pretty standard arc (Hero leaves Home, gains Mentors and Helpers, faces Challenge at Threshold, returns Home with K...
Write a bunch of short pieces with no particular plot to get used to writing him. Drabbles (100 words), double-drabbles (200), flash (1,000 to 2,000). Your stories should just be little windows i...
If you have "a lot" of differences among the three media, then you have three different stories coming from the same kernel of an idea. Write them in whatever order you like — for pleasure, for mon...
Whatever you decide the reason is for Numbers to take on others' personalities, you have to explain it to the reader in a way which makes sense. Your character could have Giovannini Mirror Syndr...
The problem is not verb tenses. The problem is subject placement. You don't quite have a dangling participle, because there is no other person being discussed who could be shaking his or her head n...
C is the clearest and easiest to read. The commas not only set off the interrupter to highlight it but give the reader a moment to pause and note the two items being discussed (least and most).
Don't worry about it in your first draft. Wait until your second, possibly your third. Your first draft is to get the story down on paper. Then you let it sit for a month and go back. The second dr...
I like @Stephen's idea, which I think you should adapt into a series of exercises. Sit in a park or at a café somewhere and people-watch. Try to write down what you see. You can't know what peopl...
