Posts by Amadeus
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...
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. ...
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 (...
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 ...
What the female reader expects to see is a good story without gender stereotypes or sexism. Lauren's advice applies. Female readers are going to be very sensitive to sexist tropes and female stere...
+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...
Without seeing your articles, we can only guess. My guess is that you don't bring anything new and exciting to the table. I am an atheist and will be one as long as I can think rationally (and when...
NO, do not go to college for that. I spent twelve years in college, I have five college degrees and the last is a PhD, I was a professor (and I am currently a research scientist at a university). ...
I think this is a "you can if you can" answer. If you have 500, put a billboard on your site that says "Looking for writers, editors, research, moderation. We want to crowd-source this site!...
Screenplays are rather short story, when you think about it. A typical screenplay is 120 pages double-spaced, and 25% dialogue and 50% action. That is 30 pages of dialogue, but the margins (2.9, 2....
I don't know Hebrew or gendered languages, but if the character does know who is behind the door, then perhaps rephrase the line to not USE the pronoun: "How is it going?" "Everything alright?"...
You have to work to play against stereotypes (without using another), because readers recognize stereotypes (even if they are not part of that group) and many of us are offended at the writing, on ...
I think it is tokenism, by virtue of the fact that tokenism is indeed your stated intent! In fact you may weaken the tokenism by saying the character is also fastidious; most of us consider a high ...
I misunderstood, rewriting. Yes, capitalize it; it is essentially their name if that is how people refer to the character.
You can try Japanese Transliteration which will take English words and *transliterate them into Hiragana, which you can hear spoken (lower right hand option). This means it will show you the Hiriga...
