Posts by _X_
You could also start writing your story and retro-fit ideology and symbolism. That is how it often works in real life. It took a lot of wars to come up with the idea of uniforms and standards. En...
I sometimes write poetry. The creative process for the first draft can be summarized in these steps: I first choose a global structure (e.g. a ballad, a sonnet, a free-stanza-but-fixed-verse, etc...
We all have seen at least one of these clickbaits (or some variation thereof): "single mom discovers the meaning of life with a simple trick" or "billionaires don't want you to know this...
I am looking for the representative references on writing style in English that would pre-date Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (possibly in the period between 1750 - 2000). I would like to...
I gave my latest book to my favorite beta readers, and they liked it except for the very ending, i.e. the last 20 pages, which they thought fell short and a bit rushed. I therefore decided to try a...
I'm writing a scene in which four characters play a high-stakes poker game. So far my narrator has been an omniscient third person, who just does not wish to enter into the characters' heads. I st...
TL;DR, Give him the same personal traits as the here nameless human subject discussed in some of Anna Arendt's writings: a mediocre self-contented clown in need of constant approval from a group o...
There are two issues at play: First person present tense (FP-PT) is a very particular combination. A lot of the descriptions found with third person narrators, or with past tenses, would feel gim...
In paranormal stories you first need to establish normality. Make sure that you note down the elements that you have presented as the cardinal staples of normality. You then need to break them, one...
Two possible approaches. Before you start typing your text. You can set up a list of auto-complete words. From Project -> Project Settings -> autocomplete. After you typed. You can use the ...
Rather than gender diversity, I'd worry whether my characters are interesting enough to my readers. Suspension of disbelief, where well supported, would make anyone enjoy just anything. Do your c...
Most definitively! In fact these types of cultural references serve two purposes. On one hand, they are for the reader: if the reader identifies it, it may resonate with the feeling that the refe...
Use events in your story to provide excuses for describing their look: Naide stretched her neck. Her powerful shoulders were still aching from the long flight. In truth, she could handle twice ...
It is not the personality, it is the style Following on the OP's generalisation, a narrator can be divided in at least two parts: the persona the narrating style The persona is the entity itse...
The novel I am writing is set in Europe. For the setting, I'd need to find the Latin names of places, e.g. villages and geographical features, in the regions corresponding to modern-day England and...
Internet is a trove of information. In more than one occasion I've found Khanacademy to be a good place to jump start a subject. https://www.khanacademy.org/science/physics/quantum-physics I have...
Yes. Yes. And yes. When I write, my rule of thumb is: if I start wondering whether something is too much, too off, or too something, it probably is. The author is the mind and motor of the story...
As the author, you have full foresight of events to come in the plot. You know in advance which characters will be with your MC, where, why and when. If you decide to write about them it is becau...
Expanding on Cyn's last paragraph. In the case of bootcamp, you can skip it entirely and just give a summary at the end. The important element is making the reader know what all the boot-camp brou...
The simple approach. All you need to agree is what is the status quo at the end of the first part, which, incidentally, will be the status quo at the beginning of the second part. It is like a j...
I would normally advise to write it as you think it should be written. It is your artwork, made out of a piece of your most personal experience. Having reached the point that you feel you are ready...
Real name > Fake name That is true if and only if the narrator is supposed to know the real name of the character. For instance, in a first person narrative, the narrator may not be privy to su...
Independent of the Referencing system, your option (1) seems the most reasonable: you are quoting the question correctly and entirely, i.e. the text inside the double-quotes is exactly the text y...
Maybe a third person omniscient narrator would serve you better. This narrator knows the inner streams of thoughts of every character in the story, hence it can expose them in the narration as requ...
I would inspire myself to existing chatbots These are just two examples that came to mind, I hope they help: Emacs psychotherapist a rather old one, asking questions on the previous statement wi...
