Posts by Amadeus
Yes, but it is not too many if they are necessary. That said, you should strive to eliminate them when they are NOT necessary. The reader knows who the subject of the sentence is. For example, in y...
You have to do both at the same time. Here's the problem with World Building: It is engineering. Whether you are educated as an engineer or not; world building is devising a machine, an ecosystem,...
I haven't ever tried such a thing, so I am speaking from ignorance, but my instinct (for a game) would be one I don't think you have mentioned: lean away from the dominant subplot toward the weakes...
I'd say, Nowadays, there are a variety of ways to reach a mass audience that have been added to the traditional venues like theaters and DVD. For example, social networks and live video streams...
I think transitioning to screenwriting is quite difficult, and it is considerably MORE difficult to break into than novel writing. The competition is greater, the "need to be an insider" angle is v...
+1 Stephane. My own take is that if you are mentioning something like the weather, an emotional state, an article of clothing, a weapon, anything, it should have consequences in the story. So yes,...
The first approach is accurate, the second approach is wrong: 1a. Science helps us understand nature, vs. 1b. People who do science help us understand nature. Science, in general (I am a scientis...
There is no exact definition of "chapter", this is very much up to the author to decide. For myself, I consider it the first chunk of continuous time the reader will see, in the life of the main ch...
The hero fought the good fight, as best they could, and that fight is done. To me, for happy or sad endings (of a book or character within a book), and assuming the rest of the book makes the read...
Yes, agnostics and atheists can do anything they want with religious language! I am another atheist, and a practicing scientist at a university. I don't regard any entity in any religion as real o...
It doesn't sound like either to me; if your words are different they are different. Plagiarism is straight up copying text from another writer. Copyright too. Similar ideas are quite common; the no...
Write what you enjoy. Even professional authors have written first books they couldn't sell, and even when famous wouldn't sell without rewriting them from page 1. It is difficult to sell a first ...
I take the advice of Stephen King and Orson Scott Card; write every day. I have read of other professionals that, even with another job have treated writing as a job, writing for a specified amount...
I start on Page 1, Line 1, Word 1: The main character's name. If you know this much about the characters, the first scene introduces the main character and her status-quo world. You have 5% to 10%...
+1 to Neil, my thought was the same: When a replacement name risks breaking the reader's suspension of disbelief (SoD), you need to either circumvent the mention or use the real name. In the GGX c...
Using a real-life brand or famous name actually subtracts from your story. If you invent your own world-class practitioner, you can hype him as the world's best, better than your real life one, un...
And yet somehow, every year, new authors sell blockbusters and earn $millions. JK Rowling went from nobody to being worth nearly half $billion. So did Dan Brown, so did Stephen King, to name a few...
Make up anything you like (without violating copyrights and trademarks). Outside of intellectual property laws, the whole point of fiction is to exercise your imagination. That said, if you writ...
Are “non-readers” useful beta readers? I don't think so. People that don't read, don't enjoy reading. They don't like that kind of fiction, they don't know what is good and bad, it is all bad ...
The Rule of Three. In another context, this has been studied scientifically by psychologists. AKA the 80/20 rule, and the law of diminishing returns. Specifically the study of mentality suggests ...
I'm a discovery writer; meaning I write without a plot, and see what happens. I don't have written character histories, or back stories, or a laundry list of traits or descriptions. If I need a phy...
The Story Comes First. I think you are worrying too much about trivial points, and this can only make your story more difficult. When you want to portray a stereotype without seeming to do that, y...
Speaking as an American, I think this is a difficult task in the current culture. Your best bet is likely a setting where the characters are a bit drunk, and the woman initiates the kiss. That wil...
The only way this is permissible (in my view, of course) is if the main character or the narrator is actually a time traveler from the future. It isn't the setting you need to stay faithful to, it...
+1 Secespitus; I have little to add but to talk on writing mechanics. Game of Thrones is a saga, a long-format story with many main characters so the writers (7, led by George RR Martin) have ple...
