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1500 questions
28
votes
9 answers

Do readers need to identify with fictional characters?

On the modern day many people complain about how models, actors are damaging to society because people can't identify with them. Males actors or models which are ''too'' muscular are considered ''unrealistic'' and not relatable to normal people…
user33870
28
votes
11 answers

How to make the villain relatable/human without making the hero seem like a monster for killing him?

I have a story I'm writing which has a villain that, in order to make him more human/developed, I gave him a relatable, tragic and/or disturbing life story, gave him plenty of reasons to be who he is and do what he does (understandable or almost),…
Yuuza
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28
votes
14 answers

Can a writer joke with the reader without breaking the fourth wall?

Can I, for example, write a whole new storyline inside my novel, and then say something, for example such as: "just kidding"? Or is that breaking the fourth wall?
David Doyle
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28
votes
10 answers

Using colloquialisms the reader may not be familiar with

I'm from Ireland, most of my stories take place in Ireland, and many of my characters will speak with Irish accents and/or dialects to varying degrees. For the most part I think this is OK, and can often be endearing to non-Irish readers. However I…
sudowoodo
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28
votes
6 answers

How much humour is effective in technical documentation?

It's well known that live presenters are often advised to add a dose of humour in order to engage the audience better. However, I very rarely see humour in written technical documentation; this despite it also being widely known that most people…
DVK
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28
votes
11 answers

Is it wrong if I kill off a black character?

He is one of two supporting characters that die in my screenplay. My wife says I shouldn’t make him black if he’s going to die. Would it be politically incorrect?
Marcus Meier
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27
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4 answers

How does one implement effective foreshadowing?

I am a "reread reader" - that is, I like to read the same book more than once. The books I have the most fun reading again are the ones that effectively foreshadow what comes later in the book. This is something I'm terrible at doing, unfortunately.…
Nathan Fischer
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27
votes
7 answers

Outlining the climax made me lose interest in writing the actual story

I am a discovery writer. I wrote more than 50% of my first novel's first draft. I got really confuse about some aspects of writing, so I took a break and analysed my plot. I've started developing my world much better and made an outline for the…
Sangeetha
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27
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10 answers

Any Technique to See if Your Idea is Original?

I usually get quite a lot of ideas for stories, but every time I want to develop them into a full fledged story, I get paranoid about how it might not be an original idea, and how it might be dismissed by people as a copy and not worth spending time…
JFW
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27
votes
13 answers

Can I conceal an antihero's insanity - and should I?

I have an idea for an anti-heroic sci-fi character whose character arc runs from spoilt rich girl, to a refugee in the rubble of human civilisation after an alien invasion, to crewmember and then captain of a pirate spacecraft, and ultimately to…
Monty Wild
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27
votes
5 answers

How can I hint that my character isn't real?

How can I make a side character's tangibility open to interpretations so the audience is unsure if she's even real? My short story is about identity. My main character is being pressured by a friend to do something. I don't want to reveal anything…
AyanaLuna
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27
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11 answers

How do I stop my characters falling in love?

So I'm writing a short story based in a WW2 American military base camp stationed in Germany. It's about A Jewish Soviet soldier that, with the help of an American soldier and a series of coincidences, switches his identity and slips into the…
brandi
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27
votes
8 answers

Is an easily guessed plot twist a good plot twist?

In my post-apocalyptic novel, there are two "twists", but they're mostly tied up in each other. The first is that humans have developed different kinds of kineses, like hydrokinesis, telekinesis, and so on. The second is that the MC, Eris, has…
user34214
27
votes
4 answers

How do we handle pauses in a dialogue?

How do we handle pauses in a dialogue? Let's say that character A speaks and then after a pause character A speaks again. How should we separate the two moments, should we write two lines of dialogues or should we cut the two lines of dialogues with…
Sayaman
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27
votes
10 answers

If I wouldn't want to read the story, is writing it still a good idea?

I struggle with forming full-fledged ideas. I'll come up with a snippet of an idea, have a hard time fleshing the idea out, and then lose interest before the idea becomes an actual story concept. Sometimes, I'll begin forming an idea, and then…
Alexis Strain
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