Posts by Amadeus
I set "levels," and don't include technology beyond the level. Often I only research a word, in an online etymology dictionary, to see when it originated. e.g. "linen" comes from "linum" which is t...
In an action scene, short is better, and in a battle, people do not have time to reflect (unless they have magically fast thinking). IRL fight training, there is a strong emphasis on repetition to ...
I think the problem is that for somebody that doesn't care, Banshee gets awfully worked up about not caring, and this emphasizes an evil side, not a neutral side. I think you are trying too hard to...
Can a banana ever be just a banana? Yes. I mention food in my writing, but not symbolically. In fact I almost never use any symbolism in my writing, at least not consciously. [Must I always be...
For me, a short story is a story. It follows the three-act structure, but it requires some inventiveness to compress that into a short space; in some cases to a line or two. I don't care about met...
You don't have to skip to the end. Just don't get repetitive. Skip over uneventful periods of time. Look for (I mean make up) the events, the things that have meaning in the course of the fight, in...
The narrator can describe only beauty, but that doesn't mean you can't have a mean and petty character that (in dialogue or perhaps thought) describes people in ugly terms. This doesn't have to be...
What criteria can I use to determine when to use words and when to use images? I think the criteria is simply real-estate. The empty box that would contain the photo or sketch. If you can describe...
I am a professor, I peer-review scientific articles; one or two per year, in fact I did one two weeks ago. The first things I look for are correctness and understandability, particularly in any ma...
It's a personal decision. For me, I wouldn't. I think your goal is to be a novel writer, not a non-fiction writer, not a research writer. Notes as you have them (or much less) is fine; at most I'd...
I'm a discovery writer, I don't name every character, or even every character with lines. Here's a waitress (I just made up) with two lines: The waitress approached, a smiling young girl that h...
I think chapter length matters, some of my readers have specifically complained about my chapters being uneven. Although I don't personally do this, I think some readers use chapters as a kind of p...
I recall "Two Meatballs In The Italian Kitchen", by Pino Luongo and Mark Straussman. It was two chefs with different styles of Italian restaurants that got together for a cookbook. The basic prem...
It might make more sense if you did the same thing, but shorten the chapters so the alternation is faster, event by event. Basically, "here is what Mike saw" then "here is what Nancy saw" for the t...
Added due to comments: I use LibreOffice Writer. My comments below reference it, not OpenOffice Writer. I believe these were derived from the same original code, but apparently they have diverged s...
+1 SF, emotional impact is important. But basically the advice is the same: Stay technical. If on first impression, you "don't like" a poem, ask yourself if you weren't intended to like it. To tak...
I don't buy any of the "ask an expert" notions either; although here on StackExchange you may find some experts in certain fields, I've been impressed with a few here on Writing, and others on Worl...
It isn't exactly empty; a spreading circle of fire might look like a growing crown; with high fire on the perimeter and no fire in the middle. (But ending with "on its way" throws me, it should be ...
I think it weakens the prose, unless it is clearly intentional ("he had a big head, big teeth, a big nose, a big attitude.") In your example, "sleek" is not a very precise description, to me. The ...
Does someone need to physically die? No. This is going to depend on how you choose to write the story. Most villains are written in a way that their death is the only way to prevent them fr...
The beginning has a job to do, and the length depends upon how big the job is. The job is bigger if the Normal World is unfamiliar to the reader. The job, in essence, is to lay the cultural, physi...
+1 Mark. In keeping with his description, I consider most stories to be a description of a change or transformation of a main character, and potentially other characters in the show. This is true ...
Obviously, if the title is "The Neurotypical Tyranny", you are not starting out "neutral". :-) I wouldn't try. My grandson is autistic, and (contrary to most fiction) no superpowers in the mental ...
I think you name all the correct issues. The reader starts with no context, the setting is obscure, the reader won't be invested. And of course you don't want a cliche. On the plus side, however, ...
I guess this depends on your definition of "trust", so I will offer two takes on that. First, trust is most easily earned when it is least necessary: The more open and transparent one side can be,...
