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Posts by _X_‭

141 posts
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Q&A Scale: How to handle a personal story set in an epic war?

If removing the frame does not affect the story, then remove it. If the story lacks, then harness the frame. Case I. There is a disconnect between frame and story The epic tale of wars is a fr...

posted 5y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to portray a character who has mood swings?

Diagnosis is hard; mirror mood with style Even with the increased sensibility of our times towards these conditions, I would still have a hard time discerning a person with BPD from a random atten...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Using quote as title - disadvantages

No drawbacks, except for quoting trademarks, and for setting expectations. Quoting trademarked sentences may be bad "I'm lovin' it." may have the drawback of a fast-food chain sending the...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A A torrent of foreign terms

Focus Summary: choose wisely the necessary "difficult" words that you need to set the tone, the style and the setting, and avoid all the others. The absolute basic is that any story can be told w...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Help, I cannot decide when to start the story

As far as we know, in our Universe all stories could start from the Big Bang. Or from the primordial soup if we want to stick to living beings on planet Earth. Does it make sense to do so? Imagine...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Shifting tenses in the middle of narration

We use tenses to establish a temporal order between statements and from there derive chronology and causality between facts. If you mess that up, no one will be able to follow the stream of events ...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Why do most authors shed their LitRPG elements as the stories go? Is it a genre convention?

I am completely ignorant of LitRPG. It is entirely possible that some reader get pleasure from the insight into these numerical statistics alongside with the plot. The OP question suggests however ...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A What's the point of writing that I know will never be used or read?

For some, writing is a job, or a significant part of their job. They write to earn a living. They sometimes write more than needed because they need to put down ideas, streamline thoughts and just ...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue?

Show it. Using a different spelling is akin to telling: you could similarly just make a recording and ship it with your story. It does not make much sense, right? You could instead show it. Write...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How to write disorientation with sensory overload?

Related writing.SE literature: Effective techniques for describing pain How to describe pain in first person? We can break down the problem into separate components. The style Increasing th...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Compelling story with the world as a villain

The frame challenge of the day is whether the world is the villain, or is perceived to be the villain by the MC. Other answers have already covered the case in which the world being a villain is ...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How could the disregard for both plot and dialogue tell the story?

A knowledgeable Writing.SE user once said you could write fifty thousand times the word 'meow' and call it a novel. Such a piece of writing would hardly be considered an account of anything, even l...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A To what extent should we fear giving offense?

Be free, and truthful If there is a truth, speak the truth. If you as an author decide what the truth is in your fictional world, then, again, speak it. You should only be worried about a lie: if ...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A How should I handle amnesia-based plot threads? (interesting vs cliché)

The challenge of the day is to rename your magical process as 'memory erasing' and the person affected as 'memory cleansed' or 'memoryless' (or variations thereof). No more worries about amnesia, e...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Spicing up a moment of peace

In the ever swinging tone of a novel, one may wish to show a moment of peace amidst all the chaos. In my novel it happens a few times, most notably when characters are travelling across vast natura...

3 answers  ·  posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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Q&A Do we simplify descriptions when they sound weird?

Case 1: The opening of the wallet is irrelevant to the story You have already established that the woman has a small wallet from where she pulls out small coins. You can skip all subsequent restat...

posted 4y ago by _X_‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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