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1500 questions
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7 answers

How can I make "acts of patience" exciting?

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 daring are easy to show, and acts of patience are not…
sesquipedalias
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Is there a name for the technique in songs/poems, where the rhyming pattern primes the listener for a certain line, which never comes?

Usually used for comedic purposes, for example in Shrek: Welcome to Duloc, such a perfect town Here we have some rules, let us lay them down Don't make waves, stay in line and we'll get along fine Duloc is a perfect place Please keep off the…
Sean
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11 answers

How to prevent "they're falling in love" trope

I have two characters, the male being sort of a jerk, but lightening up later in the story, and the female is...very hateful. But a person who read the first chapter asked me if they were going to get together. I mean, I planned that for way later,…
Kale Slade
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2 answers

How to make readers know that my work has used a hidden constraint?

According to this wikipedia article, Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern. The same link also provides examples of constrained writing. I will…
Karan Desai
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How do we objectively assess if a dialogue sounds unnatural or cringy?

By unnatural, I don't mean ungrammatical, but something people wouldn't really say. For example, in many fictions, you find yourself in very weird situations and it's hard to know how a person would react and what they would say in such situations.…
Sayaman
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6 answers

What keeps most authors writing after receiving multiple rejections?

Last year, I completed a heavily researched 95,000-word novel about an emerging pandemic that targets primarily children. I am a former scientist and current nurse and wanted to do teaching about what to expect if a serious pandemic emerges. My…
Richard Stanzak
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9 answers

What do you do when your message could be dangerous?

I've long believed that for a novel (or any kind of fiction) to have a certain weight or power behind it, there must be a message. I've been writing this why for many years, and it's lent my fiction direction and purpose. However, I am now faced…
Thomas Reinstate Monica Myron
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How to make characters more than the words on the page?

At the time of writing this question there are 5337 Harry Potter questions on SciFi and a further 165 on Movies. Many of these questions drill right into the character's motivations and emotions such as Why would Snape set his office password to…
Liath
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How can someone become a beta reader?

We have several questions on beta readers, including this one on how writers can find beta readers. How does it work from the other side? How can a non-beta reader make the "jump" and start beta reading? There is a question here on how someone who…
Robert Columbia
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9 answers

How do I find logical errors in my novel?

I have completed writing a novel and have revised it many times. I am very worried that I may have made some logical mistakes, like not revealing a secret, or using different hair colour for same character. How do people keep track of these things?…
Abhishek dot py
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What are widely-used UK-English style guides?

In the UK, what are the equivalents to Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press style guide, Yahoo, APA, MLA, etc? Most importantly, what are their intended audiences? (AP is used for journalists, Yahoo for the web, APA for academia, et…
Goodbye Stack Exchange
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Should all books have page numbers?

I am interested in whether there are any compelling reasons why print books should always have page numbers. In particular, I am thinking of books comprising many elements that are each typically smaller than a page and each entry is itself…
Daniel Austin
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22 answers

Can a book be written without an antagonist?

I have had this thought running through my head and wondered what your thoughts were on it. Can a book, a story I should say, be written without an antagonist or antagonistic theme? I have an idea to write a story which takes place in the…
Michael
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6 answers

Is there any point in learning to write in cursive?

I remember learning it as a child, and I remember I was told it was important and every kid in the class had to learn it. But now that I think about it, I haven't used cursive for years. What was the point of learning it in the first place? What…
stickman
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How does a new writer keep from getting scooped?

I'm looking for a literary agent. I've never published before. 1) What's to keep an agent from taking my manuscript and publishing it themselves, or handing it off to one of their writer friends? 2) What's to keep an agent from taking my original…
Ken - Enough about Monica
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