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What are some examples of modern original plots?

In a comment on this answer, a valuable community contributor suggested that it is possible to be totally original in writing, despite the fact that other valuable community members have stated that it's not. Since the comment was in the context of…
justkt
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I want to write a Choose Your Own Adventure styled e-book, what's a good approach?

If you don't remember, Choose Your Own Adventure books had bits of a story, then options for the reader to give them more of a feeling of control in their adventure: "If you want to walk through the dark tunnel, turn to page 16. If you want to take…
jbnunn
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Is dialogue in a novel necessary, or just padding?

I can usually tell the story I want to in less than 10,000 words. I'd really like to accomplish writing a novel and I have a complex idea I want to use and explore, but I am worried I won't need 75,000 words to tell it. Most popular novels are chock…
johntait.org
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5 answers

Why Use Excessively Short Chapters?

Some of my favorite Frank Herbert books go 70 pages between chapters. All the James Patterson books go 2-3 pages between each chapter. I know non-fiction uses chapters to help navigate, which means chapters are dictated by the related content. What…
pblock
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How are multilingual scenes handled when the story's main language is translated into that of its minor one?

Say you have an English book in which there is a particular dialogue where one of a handful of participating characters is speaking French. In this dialogue the fact that he's speaking French is a central point of the scene, as none of the other…
temporary_user_name
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Writing about a subject on which you have no expertise?

So I signed up for a novel workshop, and within a month the first chapter will be due. Problem is I that want to use characters who are well-versed in mathematics, especially group theory or model theory, yet I have no expertise whatsoever in those…
Sniper Clown
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Is there any hope of a fictional short story being published?

I mean under 100k, probably less than 50k because it's a short story. Actually, I'm not sure how many words a short story has so I have two questions. How short is a short story and is it worth the effort to write a short story if your goal is to…
johnny
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Is this character generator useful?

After some feedback from this site and a training course, I developed a little tool to help with character generation. It's called "20 Questions" and works just like that: It picks 20 questions (or more) which you can then answer to build an image…
Aaron Digulla
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How can I make my book longer without it feeling like padding, while also not significantly changing the plot?

I'm writing the first draft of my first book. Lately, I have been working hard on it and reached about the 40k mark. At this point, I believe the main character arcs and main story events are done, with no room to add more without detracting from…
SmartBulbInc
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Is it better to slowly introduce a character's looks rather than describing it all in one paragraph?

I've been rewriting a book, and I've realised how blocky and kind of boring my character descriptions were in my first version of the book, and I thought that maybe instead of writing a character that is described with their physical looks all in…
HoomansRWe1rd
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How to continue someone else's story gracefully, with fan-fiction?

I've been juggling some ideas for NaNoWriMo and one of them is a Doctor Who story. Now I've not read a great deal of fan fiction but I've never read any that I'd say that compares to the original, and often I feel most fan fiction is a written…
ProseFerret
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How to write a character that has a speech disorder (stuttering)?

A friend and I are writing a manga, and there is this mc(main character) that is having the speech disorder - she stutters. Writing the question directly to avoid confusion. Afterwards providing some attempts to clarify both what the question is…
William Martens
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How do you make a story as sad as possible?

When I think of sad story, I think of Greek tragedies, so naturally they should have a sad ending, and the characters should not deserve what happens to them. So I was thinking that I simply need to make sure that the injustice is so great that it…
Sayaman
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Why does all scene writing advice insist on the scene lead having a clear goal when this is often not practiced in bestsellers?

I've been reading a lot of books on scene writing. One thing in common--found in every single book--is that the main character in the scene should have a goal. That goal should be made obvious as early as possible and repeated often to make sure the…
Steve L
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When is it too late to introduce major characters?

Would you consider it too late to introduce major characters at the midpoint of book 1 in a trilogy? By major characters I mean characters that aren’t the protagonist, don’t have POV chapters (my book is first person), but are with the protagonist…
a.m.d.
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