Posts by Amadeus
I peer review many papers; half a dozen this year. If it is defined before the first use (e.g. "For brevity we use 'randvar' to specify random variables, 'logvar' to specify logical variables.") t...
The fourth chapter is too late. You need to do this within the first 10% of the story (by page count), anything more is too late. If your MC does violent things for good reason, you need to give t...
How can a creation of your mind (a character) do something that you don't imagine? Implications. I will explain! What I imagine when designing my characters is scenes, things they have done in t...
You have an advantage that people in the moment do not have: You have all the time in the world to think it through, and you can time-travel to the past to fix anything that goes wrong. I wrote a ...
Generally you are correct, your piece has to be judged by readers to be clever, in order to be considered clever by the public. Entities with a larger budget can buy advertising that (without attr...
Every story is different (or it is just plagiarism); "plot structures" come from generalizing stories and the types of events that occur in them. There are serious analysts that claim there are on...
You have to analyze your own writing. You are weaving together three things. The Plot, the basic events that force characters to take actions. eventX happens, charA respond with eventY, leading ...
IN GENERAL for the modern novel, the MC is the one with a problem to solve, the MC has to take the risks, and the MC has to solve the problem. One exception to this rule I can think of is Dr. Wats...
Your story has to make sense, the plot has to make sense. It has to seem like the characters are making realistic decisions for their situation, with their goals. What they say and do cannot come ...
Is this considered a bad writing habit, or is it all a matter of opinion? I consider it mediocre writing. I don't think it is possible to write actual taste experiences, at best you can refer ...
OP: Can all three of these character flaws be resolved? Probably. OP: Is there a general rule to determine how many character flaws can be fixed? No, it all depends on how clever you are in ...
Personally I use Latex, more specifically pdflatex, which is free to download. It is text-based, learning it will probably take a week or two, but there are online examples and help through StackEx...
I don't think readers notice 3rd person view as another character observing the MC. I have read many books written in 3PL (3rd person limited; narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of the ...
First, I would not do the "translation" of your last sentence. Second, you need to understand that swear words are typically one or two syllables, and the audio effect needs to be somewhat similar...
Is it a good idea to leave those things to the reader's imagination? No. This is not good writing, to compare something we know to something we don't know is backwards, at best the reader will m...
For writing fiction, I don't use semicolons in dialogue (spoken or thoughts) and I don't use it in prose. That said, I am in Galastel's camp on other forms of punctuation indicating to the reader...
I am a discovery writer, I make 90% of the story up as I go along, so I do what you are doing (inventing background, thoughts, feelings, biases and attitudes, etc) constantly. However, anytime I d...
The reason for the "adverbs are the devil" rule is they are generally "telling", not "showing". The reason we want to "show" instead of "tell" is that it is the writer's job to assist the imaginat...
I think you are not writing a story, you are writing a vignette that captures a moment; this is more akin to poetry or a painting or a song or photography, those all (aim to) capture a feeling, emo...
My answer to The Psychology of Starting a Piece of Writing is a guide to getting started. Other answers there are good as well. This will explain how to get going on the first line, first scene, fi...
Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated? In general I don't think so. If by "component-wise" you mean the motivations and back-stories of the people fighting it, the on...
I don't understand the dilemma, just write it the way you want. Ultimately if you want a strong women that embraces her femininity, you are going to put her in a dress, have her pay attention to he...
Falling in love is generally a combination of sexual attraction, complementarity, and commonality. Friendship is often founded on the last two; i.e. it is minus sexual attraction. Complementarity...
I would skip the poetry, but use the personal approach. Project X I had several duties on this project. My primary responsibility was mixing dangerous chemicals in a cauldron for various e...
The "lie" can be just an untruth that she accepts. Here, the untruth can be that she knows the way to happiness. She thinks that by expanding her husbands land and wealth, this will keep her fami...
