Posts by Amadeus
I don't think there is anything wrong with your vocabulary; if YOU are worried about it, I'd suggest you consult an online thesaurus at times. Here is one I use, it's fine and extremely extensive (...
Yes, you should be able to 'feel' your outline. I admit I don't really outline in writing, although I do have well defined characters and a problem in my head before I begin writing, and I do feel...
The page turning effect can be for the long term, but it is much more important for it to be short term. The reader should always be wondering "what happens next", and this is much of what causes ...
It's not exactly lazy, it has the potential to be considered bad writing. If an agent asks you for the first five pages of your book (and many ask for just five), is that what you want to send them...
First, Ash's "drip-feed" is good advice. We are trying to avoid info-dumping, not information in general. As for technique, my personal favorite is through the thoughts and memories of the POV ch...
Generally, non-MC characters are killed to provide some sort of motivation or commitment to other characters, or to prove the lethality of the setting and raise the stakes of whatever the MC is doi...
Go long! Write about the custom, and the reader will get it. In a recent Writing Challenge here on SE, I had a short Human and Extraterrestrial exchange: Human: Where are you from? ET: Earth...
IMO it is the job of the author to guide the imagination of the reader, not force the imagination of the reader too specifically. So some details are important, but a blow by blow is seldom necessa...
You are writing a script (screenplay) for a visual display; I'd follow (roughly) the format of a script. For this particular question, you are looking for "Personal Direction" (of an actor) and the...
Although you have the right to tell the truth, that is not defined by what you just know must be true. The truth must be verifiable. What proof do you have to publish, or to back up what you publis...
Zoom out. Zoom in. A metaphor claims that one thing is another thing. For that to work, the salient feature you are describing about one thing must be THE most important feature shared and exagge...
I see no reason why not; agents have no bias against foreign writers, they want good stories. You seem to have a command of English, and you obviously have Internet access. The technical details ...
You don't try to be accurate, you anglicize it. If you are writing in English about a Korean family, the reader expects you to translate dialogue into understandable English that is not awkward. ...
You can write without any dialogue, or almost entirely dialogue. Zero dialogue would be plausible if you write about a character acting alone, or from the POV of an animal or machine that has no c...
It may cause the immersion to break. The rational response is, how do I know they are slaves? How do I know if I "free" them I am not sentencing them to certain death? Perhaps in this place, it ...
I'd introduce the build up first. The appearance of a DEM is difficult to overcome with subsequent explanations, IMO without a hint of what is happening, this taints your story, especially if the ...
Einstein's Razor. This is an opinion question. I write as simply as I can; but I also have a large vocabulary and I am a huge fan of word etymology (origins and derivations), and I detect or feel ...
Expressions: You can say something besides "angry", there are many flavors of anger, but no, do not describe the facial features. That is directing; do not try to do the director's job in your scr...
I would do the room first. This is a matter of your style. I personally write with very spare descriptions of what people LOOK like, and focus almost entirely on what they feel (or how my POV char...
+1 DPT. As a peer-reviewer for scientific articles, I would not use "dry" but I suspect it means you have no particular factual errors but the paper is a boring review anyway. For example, provid...
Yes, we are all murderers at heart. We are all killers at heart, for food. Some evolutionary scientists believe we would not have evolved brains without eating meat on a regular basis; regardless...
I admit I haven't thought much about this, as a discovery writer. However, I am following a character (or some) and I don't really have "odd things" happening. There are clear things happening the...
Characters can be based on real people. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Hitler: real life leaders, gangsters, royalty, heroes and villains. There are several p...
Absolutely document them and point them out to management. As Mark says, this is a business problem. As a coder myself with forty years of commercial experience, your problem is that almost any fl...
I think it is a bad idea and might be frustrating to play if it seems like you always lose and cannot ever find the combination that wins. However, you might be able to make some of those bad cho...
