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1500 questions
14
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5 answers
Using profanity
I'm working on a war novel (sci-fi). My initial plan was for my MC to start out with a very clean language, almost comically clean, and as the plot progresses and the situation gets more FUBAR, his language would get more colourful. Other characters…
Galastel supports GoFundMonica
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My views on the central theme of my book have changed - how do I bring in that nuance?
I've been working on a fantasy story that explores the creation and evolution of religion. But I'm struggling with what I'm fundamentally trying to say regarding religion.
When I first began, I was much more militantly atheist than I am now, and my…
ani ben
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6 answers
Should I focus on ideas which the market enjoys, or ideas which I enjoy?
Two approaches to writing:
Writing about ideas that are currently 'hot' in the market (a bit like when the Hunger Games came out, many authors quickly released books which incorporated the same set of ideas)
Writing about ideas that you would enjoy…
Adi219
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14
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5 answers
Editing tools on the go
I've just started editing my novel.
For the drafting I had done most of the work on a phone, as I wanted to make the most of the daily commute. This worked well enough and the first rough draft is done.
However, I'm finding the same approach just…
peanut
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7 answers
Arousing Emotion in Readers
Last Christmas my sister bought me a tome called The Book of Human Emotions (by Tiffany Watt Smith). I just started reading it and it got me thinking about how a writer might arouse emotion in a reader (and not in terms of provoking them to throw…
robertcday
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votes
10 answers
Dealing with inability to sustain interest in an idea
I frequently have the problem of starting a story with an idea—either one recently conceived or one held in mind for months, even years—only to find it bland or boring after a day or so and abandoning it.
I have developed two partially effective…
user289661
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votes
3 answers
How to create space
Recently, a few snippets of my fiction have received critiques along the lines of 'Does not give a sense of space'. Or 'needs more description, sights and sounds'.
I think where I am going wrong is that in any given scene I am focusing too hard on…
M.A
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14
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7 answers
Breaking up a talky piece of writing
Dialogue is my favorite thing to write. I tend to use a lot of dialogue in my writing, which sometimes results in long, talky passages -- a bit similar to this question about breaking up exposition. The dialogue I'm talking about isn't necessarily…
Chris Sunami
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14
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8 answers
Do Short Stories Need Definitive Endings?
I'm looking to create a few short stories that are in a shared universe of sorts and I'm curious whether or not I need to have a definitive ending to a story. I'm thinking that the "end" would be more of a cliffhanger or something along the lines of…
Dylan Beck
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6 answers
What new plots are available to writers?
I read The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker (yes, it was so heavy that I had to cut into two books just to be able to carry it around) and I just can't believe that the number of plots we have available to us has been set in stone and never…
robertcday
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I am overplotting my story - how can I figure out what is necessary and cut out what isn't?
I have recently discovered that the plot and cast of characters of my novel is so unbelievably complex that I am the only one who can actually understand it. I have too many characters, with too many subplots, and so many different events involved…
EmmieCG
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6 answers
Why is character lifetime proportional to character development so often?
Hollywood movies are a good example of this, but also many books feature the rule.
When the plot revolves around life and death situations, the first to die are the characters with least development. Those are the Non Player Characters in role…
Vorac
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14
votes
2 answers
What are methods to refer to something that happened but did not make it onto the page?
As writers we're supposed to know more about our stories than the words that make it onto the page. Can a character refer to something that happened, but happened off-page? As the writer, I know that it in fact happened, and there's nothing to…
SFWriter
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8 answers
What are the limits to description in story writing? How do I know if I have crossed them?
Time and time again, I have been told that my unfounded focus on description distracts from the main story line.
I mostly write stories in English, which doesn't happen to be my first language but I'm fairly good in it. My native tongue is a very…
Soha Farhin Pine
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12 answers
How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating?
In a story I'm writing, there's a villain who is a genius strategist that can get anything he wants, whatever it is, by developing perfect strategies that can have only two possible outcomes: 1, success, or 2, success. His plans never fail because…
Yuuza
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