Posts by Amadeus
I think they have to more than balance the scales, in the reader's eyes. Anytime a soldier kills an enemy combatant, she may be depriving a parent of their child, a child of their father, a wife o...
IN GENERAL for the modern novel, the MC is the one with a problem to solve, the MC has to take the risks, and the MC has to solve the problem. One exception to this rule I can think of is Dr. Wats...
The easiest way to do this is have a character use it, and another character (like yourself, not knowing the word at that age) ask what it means, or look it up, or otherwise figure out what it mean...
I would not call it a redemption arc, I could see this as simple revenge for somebody taking some piece of property he was enjoying. In a redemption, the character realizes they have been wrong an...
Your story has to make sense, the plot has to make sense. It has to seem like the characters are making realistic decisions for their situation, with their goals. What they say and do cannot come ...
I believe that is incorrect. A single call is calling for multiple proposals for addressing a single task, hence "A call for proposals". If there are multiple tasks, you emit multiple calls, each a...
I disagree, they are better if they are not exclamatory. It is like saying "Spare me." in response to an unfunny joke. An exclamation point changes the meaning, it is intended to be bored cynicism...
...shout-outs by the main character to those other stories, as well as celebrities. The hope is that any readers of similar fiction will find the references and shoutouts funny. However, I don...
I don't think it's a good idea; when a reader opens a book they expect to learn some things about the characters in their normal world. If you open with a VR, the reader will assume that IS the nor...
You don't have to diagnose it as "PTSD" or whatever name WE use for it, but you can have a character call it out as a real thing: They are an expert, they have seen many soldiers with a similar col...
I peer review many papers; half a dozen this year. If it is defined before the first use (e.g. "For brevity we use 'randvar' to specify random variables, 'logvar' to specify logical variables.") t...
The fourth chapter is too late. You need to do this within the first 10% of the story (by page count), anything more is too late. If your MC does violent things for good reason, you need to give t...
Does using unexplained spiritual elements (soul, "spiritual"/non-physical beings, afterlife, God, etc.) in a story with a futuristic setting make it science fantasy rather than science fiction? ...
I don't think your diversity is a problem, however, from a writing perspective, I DO think that any special quality of a character should have some impact on the plot or the character. So my answe...
I think it is pretty easy, even as a true story. Pick your story, and try Intro, Complication, Try, Resolution. One or two sentences each. Here are two 80 word solutions. When I was ten, my all...
As Mark says, not without a track record of one bestseller after another. But if you got that, you should be pretty rich, so why bother? Rowling and Stephen King probably don't worry about stuff li...
The problem with an act of patience is that it is just waiting for something else to happen. One way I can think of to make that "exciting" is by making the wait a progression, so incrementally it...
Is this considered a bad writing habit, or is it all a matter of opinion? I consider it mediocre writing. I don't think it is possible to write actual taste experiences, at best you can refer ...
The abstract is a short description of the paper as a whole: e.g. with one or two sentences each: The specific area of interest your problem lies in The specific problem in that area your paper w...
OP: Can all three of these character flaws be resolved? Probably. OP: Is there a general rule to determine how many character flaws can be fixed? No, it all depends on how clever you are in ...
Build yourself an excuse for knowing what you wish to reveal; the story you are currently telling was related to you by others. When Rodrick first told Geoffrey's tale, he tells us, on this jou...
I think the problem here (and the reason the OP feels it "tastes artificial") is too much coincidence: First, we have deer in the forest, but for some unexplained reason the dragon cannot find a ...
I don't think the "unauthenticated" part is necessary, but a legend is a story told about somebody else, a traditional story, and it can't be a "tradition" if it is being told for the first time by...
I think you don't have to show her USING the dagger, you can hide the skill in plain sight: She knows about daggers, she knows about dagger-fighting, the terminology, the stances, the holds, the mo...
You can create a character that is a fraud, and seems to have inherent weaknesses, but once in a while they act out of character and against their supposed weakness, in some situation that is criti...
