Posts by Amadeus
Plodding discovery. The hero is investigating many persons or places connected to the bad guys, and at one place happens to learn some big deal is supposed to be delivered on Day X. He doesn't know...
I think you need logic to support that claim, it is not the type of thing that can be studied. (Or you might find that kind of logic in academic philosophy.) The logic is, you find it self-evident...
The only way I can think of solving this puzzle is if the protagonist was never really interested in foiling a plot in the first place, but gets their revenge, and from their point of view justice ...
My question is does this invalidate the previous events of the story and make them somehow inconsequential and do you think this is a good or bad twist overall? I offer a possible out below, b...
You can also switch, the "we" dynamic establishes you and another person, you can also address them individually, or impersonally, as a teacher might. I've done this in highly technical instruction...
Yes, but as you said it also depends on the genre. Here is an article, why a first author should write to word count. Basically, science fiction and fantasy (your main genre) is 110,000 words, and...
Naturally in dialogue or thoughts, sparingly in exposition. Adverbs are communication shortcuts, the reason they are disdained is that they are usually vague and do not evoke an image or experienc...
I am analytical by nature, even as I am writing new stuff. My recommendation would be to make a copy and actually go analytical, as if it were written by somebody else (and it really was, you are ...
Don't abandon it, just put it aside. There is a difference between abandoning it and putting it aside to work on something else. At the point when you cannot stand working on it anymore, and stil...
I don't know how that specific site works, but technically I would consider it published, you have made it available to the public. By doing so, you have potentially damaged their sales and their ...
I have worked from home for over fifteen years, I treat it like a job, with minor laxities (but not in my schedule). I have a separate cell phone which is the only number I give for work colleagues...
+1 Henry, those are possible problems. It is hard to diagnose, but you've told us the problem: The reader has stopped caring how the story turns out. Even if the ending is great. Which likely mea...
Readers are not really interested in getting to know characters "physically". Readers are primarily interested in whatever it is about the character that makes the most difference to what the char...
Flashbacks are fine and used all the time. In film in particular, this is part of "show don't tell" the story, and what that phrase originally meant: Anything you want to say, try to put in action ...
I think you are still TELLING and not showing. I think you must have intended a paragraph break before "Jack talks too much," if that is supposed to be a thought of the narrator. With that assumpti...
I am not a lawyer; but copyright law is clear: Everything is copyrighted, including individual stories within your work. Read about Fair Use, but everybody is subjected to that. The same link, fro...
I would call them by their proper names. Normally in a story, you should describe the dress when it matters in the story, the pants or the collar get in the way of the character wearing this garb d...
Turn the infodump into an investigation, revealing the owner of the space. I think one technique is to be NOT just looking. +1 DPT for lengthening to personal connections, so I will talk about see...
Personally, I would write a great deal before I ever read somebody else's work, specifically to ensure that what I write is NOT derivative or copied from somebody else. I do not mean to finish a n...
Obviously this is 100% my opinion, there is no hard and fast rule. Consider how many scenes are in King's epic book The Stand: I bought it when it first came out and I couldn't put it down. What is...
This is a Buyer's Market. +1 'Friday Night in Frankfurt'. If you send query letters and they respond, you do not have long to send in a manuscript, you are going to leave yourself with about a wee...
I write in third person limited, meaning my narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of only one character in the book (the hero). Everybody is still referred to as "he", "she", "they", etc, (never...
If she really does have intellectual superiority and knows it, then it is not pompous to tell the truth, and in fact would be deceptive to deny it. Nor is it "condescending" for a highly intelligen...
Take your pick from the online power thesaurus: F**k S**t The most common upvoted items are "screw" and "crap", respectively.
Write your sales pitch to Yourself. For a diary or anything else that requires a long or daily commitment (like writing a novel or exercise or jokes), I would start by writing WHY you want to do i...
