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1500 questions
11
votes
8 answers
Dialogue writing practices?
First time novelist, long time writer here. I'm looking for creative writing exercises to help with my dialogue.
Any ideas?
TheIrishGuy
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4 answers
Should I care if my short story has the same title as someone else's book?
It appears to be a pretty obscure book. It's on Amazon, but there are no descriptions or reviews. From the cover, I'd say it was a kids book, which would put it in a different market.
Let's assume that this short story of mine is fit to publish,…
Shadow
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11
votes
4 answers
On copyright laws and plots
I was pondering a lot on the issue with copyrights on plots. Is having an identical plot infringing someone else's copyrighted work?
I am fully aware that the character names are copyrighted and cannot be copied. I am also fully aware that the…
Pacerier
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6 answers
How to make a character work for an idea?
One of the main rules for developing a good storyline is to make sure that the characters work for their achievements.
Perhaps before they can slay the dragon and rescue the princess the knight has to complete a quest for a scarecrow to get a magic…
Liath
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11
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8 answers
How do you escalate a story's plot after killing the Big Bad?
Everyone remembers the Death Star and how it was supposed to be the most potent superweapon in the Star Wars-verse. Then in the Expanded Universe, they needed to add tension to the series since the Emperor was gone and kept pumping out new…
Incognito
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11
votes
4 answers
Interviewing a person for a character
So I'm building a character who works in a particular field of science and I found an e-mail for a scientist on the internet and emailed him. I described how I'm writing a sci-fi story and gave him some details to get him interested in the project.…
Harshfi6
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11
votes
10 answers
How do I keep the plot interesting in a humorous book?
I am about to start writing a fantasy-comedy novel. A problem I found in 1-2 books of this genre is that the plot becomes weak, and the story starts to slow down.
The reason I believe this happens is that there is no big struggle or evil villain.…
Shantnu Tiwari
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11
votes
5 answers
Characterisation: What lines can an antihero cross while retaining reader sympathy?
Now, to clarify ahead of time; I'm quite aware that compelling doesn't necessary equal sympathetic and vice versa. That being said, here is the dilemma.
There's a character that I intend to write who is an antihero, both in the classical Greek sense…
Matthew Dave
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11
votes
6 answers
Third Person POV: What level of telling is acceptable for character motivation?
The novel I'm writing is third-person limited POV in style. This means that the narration's coverage is limited to what the POV character can observe, think, feel, while others' thoughts, feelings, and out-of-sight actions are naturally not…
Matthew Dave
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11
votes
8 answers
The stages of writing - what are they?
So, I'm likely finished with my idea in form of a novel, but now comes the difficult part with the rewriting.
That's when I thought: What are the general Stages of writing?
Of course I know the Outline and the Draft. This is where the story takes…
Pawana
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11
votes
5 answers
How does one add puns in another language?
Back in college, I took a regular English course that was required for all majors. The teacher just happened to be a grad student in British Literature, so we read a lot of British literature. All the books we read were 19th century British…
Double U
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11
votes
8 answers
How to think of a good beginning?
I've been thinking about my story for a while now and the problem I've run into is that I'm not sure how to start it. It isn't that I can't think of how to start it, I actually have a million ideas about how to do that, the problem is that I can't…
Allan Smithy
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11
votes
2 answers
Colloquial speech in pre-modern setting
Following this question, I'm struggling with writing the speech of pre-modern (in my case - 5th century) noble-born children among themselves.
Characters who are well-educated would not be making grammatical mistakes and would not be mispronouncing…
Galastel supports GoFundMonica
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11
votes
6 answers
Mentioning quickly repeated events in first person?
When writing in first person, is it better to mention as little repetition of events as possible? Or can it improve writing in some cases to have a character duplicate previous events and have them mentioned by the writer?
For example, would it be…
Jonathon D.
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11
votes
4 answers
Innovative Ways to Provide Background Information
Think action movie. Think two heavily-armed men - one chasing the other over rooftops, down through buildings and into the mean streets of a crowded city. Think big guns, explosions and other loud noises. Think danger. Think high-octane thrills.
The…
robertcday
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