Posts by Amadeus
After death experience. IRL many people with stopped hearts or that have clinically died, or been very close to death, report after-death experiences. Floating above their body, hearing (and repor...
how do I write colloquial speech, without jarring too-modern colloquialisms? Fictionalize it. Just avoid the clichés that people would recognize; catch-phrases or gestures or accents, give the...
I think a reasonable response to this scenario is revolt. He kills himself the second they put a weapon in his hand. He refuses to fight at all, if that means he dies, so be it. He makes repeated a...
Indirect Research. It is difficult to investigate compound events; so break them into two events and invent your way out of the rest. One of your events is amnesia, the other is childbirth. Resea...
It's dangerous. It can be done well, but there is literary danger in beginning with "An Important Scene", as opposed to an unimportant or even forgettable scene. The danger is in the utter lack of...
If you use Spanish for the dialogue, the vast majority of readers won't be able to follow it. Any publisher or agent (real ones, not the frauds charging you fees) will read your novel cover to cove...
One character cannot explain their actions to the other without admitting a terrible crime, or without endangering the other. You can put even friends on the opposite side of a chasm; for example ...
I will presume you mean that you can write and get paid for it, and could actually choose a life as a professional writer, without starving. If that is the case (and this answer is tailored to you...
You can manage four goals, but they must be useful to the plot. So your overall arc is "growing up", selfish kid to mature adult, along with "coming of age" (sexual maturity). The examples you ha...
I would chalk this up to common human nature, and F&SF and Clarkesworld as uncommon expertise and/or resources. On the common side, without being pejorative, what is not punished (financially...
Given Joan of Arc and Loki on the stage, your setting is modern-day magical, you have a 600+ year old woman and a God. The reader will consider it a rip-off, a bait-and-switch if you don't reveal t...
It isn't what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you know that ain't so. --Mark Twain. I think the best way to defeat a mastermind is to plant a seed and do it early; no matter how smart som...
I think you must motivate him. For all I know, he is a villain, and you might be trying to save that as a surprise ending -- I've been rooting against one monster that is just following his nature ...
Although I am a fan of King's instruction and I am also a discovery writer, I do not wait before the first draft and the second, for a very specific reason. At the end of the first draft is when I...
I agree with Galastel; to the point I almost did not answer! What I can add is that my main characters, perhaps like Harry Potter, have something special about them, a rare talent or natural abili...
I'll agree with Ash, but it depends on the situation. In this one, the events/actions are not a foregone conclusion. If your character is sawing wood or tightening a bolt or having sex or doing any...
Ditch the cliché altogether. Stop talking about recovery or pain, stop any worry of the character not recovering, even if they are screaming don't let that affect the other characters. Treat it lik...
Speaking as a professor, I have frequently been a judge (one of five for my field) for our annual poster contest (all sciences) in which students produce a poster describing their research, suitabl...
How can I write a male-dominated culture without implicitly supporting it? As I often say here in Writing, it is important for nearly all of what you write to have consequences, some effect on...
I don't think it is fair. Writing the thoughts of several characters in a single scene is generally called "third person omniscient", writing the thoughts of ONE person only is "third person limite...
I don't think you need any resource other than your own intelligence and self-awareness. We know when our slang is not "standard", just don't use it. Plus, it is ephemeral anyway, the 1920's "bee...
Don't steal the plot, Don't steal their made-up words or made-up references, don't steal their (imaginative) tech, don't steal their characters or their unique combination of characteristics that m...
Inarticulate speech or sounds is an instance where I tell, I do not show. Shriek, Screech, Scream, Howl ... It can help if it startles somebody that comes bursting into the room to protect her, or...
As a discovery writer, I echo the sentiment that I absolutely control the direction of the story. I personally write with an end in mind; which I record as notes (not prose) about what finally hap...
This is my opinion; the first option, capcase run together, is preferable. But sites vary, some let you use spaces in your name, some won't let you mix cases, etc. Edit: I skimmed over the fact th...
