Posts by Amadeus
From my POV, if I strive to make myself clear and unambiguous, and people take that the wrong way, that's on them. Not me. Virtually every revolution for the good has involved "illegal" acts, incl...
In Fiction, Write about them as unusual; or give people what they expect. Everybody expects unusual characteristics in their prominent fictional characters (protagonist, antagonist, mentors, sidek...
Six or seven is not too many on a team, for a story. The problem is making sure you can make them distinct and don't have two or more people doing basically the same job in the plot. The problem...
How much value do publishers and editors place on informative/educational content in fiction stories? No value at all. Consider a Romance; When Harry Met Sally. What did you learn there, that...
Just break the stereotype, hard. Perhaps don't make him a professional jazz musician, make him a popular, highly skilled amateur that likes to hang out at jazz clubs, and can pitch in when needed....
In my opinion, your story would be fine, and readers would be fine, if your characters exhibit a significant amount of agency once and early. If the hero (and sidekick or whatever) chooses to subj...
I believe genre is primarily determined by plot, setting, and "justifications"; i.e. SciFi justifies fantastical elements (like FTL drives) by hand-waving some futuristic technology (or some techno...
In general, bigotry is calling or assuming something inherent to a trait (gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, language spoken) that, even if it is true, does not have any rational basis for...
Is this a bad idea? It would be odd for the protagonist to suddenly dwell upon those past events himself, Yes, I think this is a bad idea. Non-POV characters that come and go are foils for th...
That is probably up to an editor or publisher. If by "short" you mean a few paragraphs that won't cost them printing any extra pages, it is possible they will not object. But they are profit driven...
A little background on introversion, to set the stage: Here is an article in Psychology Today that describes traits of an introvert (They are fully explained there; I took out the explanations for ...
Conflict does not have to be grand, and the stakes do not have to be enormous. Consider a romance, like "When Harry Met Sally" or "Sleepless In Seattle" or "You've Got Mail". I'm not saying you sho...
Skip the physical actions you find unrealistic (although most of them are metaphorical, not 'unrealistic'). Tears welling in eyes, trembling, etc are realistic enough. Also, go inside; physical sy...
"Conflict" should be present throughout the book on every page, in this sense: the reader wants to know what is about to happen next. Not for the entire book, but they want to read the next three m...
Pitch it as New Adult (18-30) or Adult. The age of the protagonist is not the whole decision, the real decision is which age group can find the story entertaining. Adults are willing to follow the ...
I use two approaches: First, like @ggx, I steer clear of metaphors and similes in describing anything about the physical parts. The characters think and use the words they are accustomed to using a...
Q10 is How does she relate to other female characters? I think you misunderstood the question. One form of a weak female character is one that exists for men; is portrayed as, and acts as if, her ...
Speaking as a former division manager of a public company that has hired dozens of programmers and engineers and read hundreds of resumes: Use "I". It is expected. Stick to the facts, do not enga...
When you ask a question, people assume you are asking for a reason, that you intend to use the answer to make some decision. There is no such thing as "just a question". The reason they read betwe...
I would not provide the consequences; those are detailed in the paper itself. If anything, you have an abstract at the front of the paper that will tend toward that, e.g. We will show that th...
Put it in Neutral. As if YOU did not write the paper, but must describe the action line by line. An example from your first linked example: I will also try to show that the unrelaxed differenc...
There are many names starting with B; here are 1000 most popular boys names. Do a CTL-F and search for "B" capitalized. I am sure you could google for others. Yes, Brad will have a frat-boy vibe f...
I don't have time to read your petition; but quickly here is a guideline. First, you should avoid saying the same thing in other words. Second, prioritize. For each thing you are talking about, ...
I know we don't like link-only answers, but pitching and finding agents in the film industry is far more than can be told in an answer on this forum. I highly recommend you look into the courses o...
I disagree with the premise -- Mostly I disagree. I think this is a matter of opinion. I think like the use of a pet word, using the dash can be overdone, but the error is in using it to the point...
