Posts by Amadeus
I have characters in every chapter that have personalities, and often significant and lengthy communications with the main character. They don't appear again, they are basically in the place where ...
You can resolve the conflict as you want, and either Character A does not break his vow, or he breaks it but realizes the vow was in error. Character B is a "a pompous, selfish, power hungry, narc...
You can't do just "dumb." You can write a mentally impaired character, like Lenny in "Of Mice and Men," that does dumb things that cause complications out of an inability to understand. Stephen Kin...
Another alternative is to have other characters question the existing of the friend, accuse the MC of making up stuff, and the imaginary character is never there when the MC could prove their exist...
Picking an Alias, also for Picking a Character Name One approach is to use a common name as your alias. This doesn't have to be Smith or Jones, Here is a list of the Most Common Surnames in North ...
In your section (5), when A feels sympathy, it isn't enough to feel sympathy. You have to give A some reason to reject their previous life. Personally, I'd revise this: A is too much in charge. Fo...
What if they spend three nights (and three scenes) at the same pitstop, but the scenes greatly develop the relationship between two important characters? Yes, that would be fine, with one cave...
Yes, you can introduce a villain before a crime is committed. You don't need to use any clichés or tropes. The essence of villainy is, in general, selfishness to the point of not caring about the ...
As @ChrisSunami says, most non-fiction books are sold before they are written. Typically you have a synopsis, the Chapters and an outline for each, and for some books, a list of people you plan to...
I don't agree with McKee's definition of "Story", like many writers I think this difference between a "beat" and an "event" are contrived. I think the way McKee intends them to be used, "beats" are...
If the narrator is describing what a person said and thought, then the narrator can use their name. Typically direct thoughts of a character are in italics, while tags and words from the narrator a...
This sounds more like a man vs. environment story, as @Monica says. A simple MC vs. Nature Imagine, in the modern world, an arrogant multi-millionaire, thinks he is a self-reliant, self-made man....
It is natural for people to notice any physical feature that stands out, but some words such as "tall", "big", "fat", "short" etc are not that descriptive. Adding "very" doesn't help. If it is nec...
Many books follow a hero that does not really change; consider detective novels going back to Sherlock Holmes. What is essential for a story to be entertaining is that the book is spent on a hero...
I think there is a mixed use case. I think your Friend Frank can be smart enough to use formal addresses with Prince Peter if they might be overheard, and informal address when there seems no chanc...
I don't find this story credible. First, why in the world does the kid give up and kill himself after a few weeks on his own? He works at one job for a few weeks, gets fired, and kills himself? Th...
I don't think you HAVE to give a trigger warning, but if you want to give one, give it like we do on movies or television shows, up front, before the story even starts. This fiction contains s...
Hate is not just over-blown dislike. Hate is visceral, a wish that somebody else suffer harm, often for the harm they have actually done, in other cases for the harm the hater truly believes they h...
I would go with characters have dead siblings; but that happens off-screen. Showing it on-screen, and in-period-realistic, might be off-putting itself. Everything you are talking about is a stati...
This will be a matter of opinion. My opinion is no, it is not okay. I write in 3PL myself, exclusively, and everything I write is as if the MC is seeing it. You are doing nothing but saving space,...
(1) Don't use synonyms for said that describe tone or attitude. "said" is a word that disappears for readers, your worry about it is like self-consciousness: Only you care! Get over it, profession...
This is not a problem; get over your own prejudices. I know people married for thirty years with a 13 year age gap, and with the woman older than the man. They started dating when he was 28, and sh...
You need Karmic Justice. Great Pains = Great Rewards. Readers expect suffering of heroes to be rewarded by success, and suffering of victims to be revenged. If good guys die in war, they want the ...
In a modern setting, the prosecution may submit something like blogs or emails intended to prove the defendant was involved in some crime or had knowledge of it. But the judge, in reading these bl...
Along with Cyn's suggestion, another tool to introduce a cultural element is to present a conflict about it; somebody complaining that a death threat is being misused. Like being challenged to a d...
