Posts by sesquipedalias
I recently subscribed to notifications for new questions posted on the site, but as a result I'm being spammed with a daily list of questions that have any change, including very old questions with...
How can I minimise the "filler" text that I end up writing when fleshing out a scene with detail? An appropriate level of detail seems to me to be a fundamental requirement for good prose. Whateve...
Especially for a discovery writer, the first draft of a novel is often as much an exercise in planning the final version as it is an attempt to actually produce that final version. It may be best t...
One way to model the role of structure in storytelling is to think of "layers". For example, at some very-high-detail layers (which I would call the lowest layers) a story is made up of a sequence ...
There are different kinds of progress that you can make as you write. You can produce text that makes it into a specific draft. You obviously need to do this eventually, and perhaps you even do i...
Time is an illusion in storytelling--one that you, the author, create. You can skip millenia just by saying that they passed, and you can spend as many pages as you wish to describe a single moment...
"Dear SE, I don't even know how to express how disappointed I am in you--literally. Because I don't know all the facts. But all the indications I've seen make me fear that the full facts would only...
I think there are two dimensions to this. The first is: what makes a real-world person irredeemable? A fictional character with the same traits will then, presumably, also be irredeemable. I thin...
I understand your question as asking: is it possible for the reader to know that a certain character is evil, from that character's introduction, and before that character actually commits any evil...
These terms are very often used to mean magic, and I've never before encountered anybody discussing the ancient greek etymology. You are totally safe using the modern meanings. In general, words ...
When you present the story as a character experiences it, it's third person limited, or third person subjective PoV. When you don't do that (but still use 3rd person), it's third person omniscient...
You should definitely tell the story you want to tell, and not some backstory that leads up to it. You are not starting your story at the point that would make sense if you were writing a comprehen...
Don't detach yourself emotionally from the character. Rather, experience the character's death as a major part of their arc. This is not a real person who is gone once dead; this is a fictional ch...
I ask as somebody who loves Writing Excuses (https://writingexcuses.com), and relies on the podcast heavily as an educational resource. My writing ambitions are well aligned with their stated scope...
It seems to me you need to answer some more basic questions first. What do you want to write about? Why do you want to write about it? Who is your audience, and why will they read your book? The ...
You seem to suggest that a paragraph that has no other function whatsoever within the narrative, beyond providing an evocative pause, is somehow special, or maybe even "pure". Of course, such a pa...
I don't know of Artemis in ancient greek being used as a male name, but, for what it's worth, in modern greek Άρτεμις is the female name (same name as the godess) but there exists a male version to...
Your goal here is to engage your intuition in ways that will help you assess your own, written work. (Everything in this answer applies to your dialogue, but also to all your writing in general). ...
[This answer addresses the storytelling part of the question, not the webcomics-drawing part.] I've found Brandon Sanderson to be an excellent teacher. He focuses on: 1) "mainstream commercial ...
Adding a couple of points to @Mark Baker's answer (please read that one first). It is fine if the secondary characters exist solely for the purpose of supporting the main character, but don't let ...
As Pat Rothfuss said on Writing Excuses, there are things that can happen to characters that are "worse than death". The "existential threats", especially because they are such a cliché, are also j...
This answer to the question Averting Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses introduces a distinction between acts of patience and acts of daring. [...] when it comes to telling a story [...] acts of d...
You are letting the characters develop naturally, according to what feels right for them, rather than forcing them to conform to an abstract plot point. This is good, of course. Now, if you really ...
It would be nice to be a member of an online community of people who are knowledgeable about writing, willing to directly help eachother in a format such as Q&A (like here on SE), but also enga...
The reader only needs to be told how "G" sounds once. You can put the explanation in-story, e.g. the character says or thinks 'I hate it when Bob calls me G, I can just hear him thinking "Gee whiz"...
