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All else being equal, is a positive desire/goal/motivation (of the main character) more 'hooky' for the reader than a negative desire/etc? …

Yes, we are all murderers at heart. We are all killers at heart, for food. Some evolutionary scientists believe we would not have evolved brains without eating meat on a regular basis; regardless we a …

I do not think desires should be communicated directly in exposition, and only rarely in thoughts, but they can often be communicated somewhat directly through dialogue, especially dialogue with new c …

In a modern setting, the prosecution may submit something like blogs or emails intended to prove the defendant was involved in some crime or had knowledge of it. But the judge, in reading these blogs …

Persistence. That is the only personality trait that seems essential to a main character. They don't give up; at least not permanently. Their goals may change, they may face the inevitable and even di …

For me, my main characters want a dozen things; but the story is about them pursuing one thing that is important to them for one reason or another. Often this is a semi-existential reason. By "semi- …

I'd say, make sure her central dilemma is NOT exactly about where her brother is, but about what her brother does for her. A good analogy would be Dorothy in the movie The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. She …

Let's talk about the Three Act Structure (3AS). This is not a dictum passed down by the Story Telling Gods, it was actually derived as an outline of how many thousands of successful stories have worke …

I guess this depends on your definition of "trust", so I will offer two takes on that. First, trust is most easily earned when it is least necessary: The more open and transparent one side can be, th …

A love interest is not the only reason to risk life and limb. IRL there are many stories of people risking life and limb to save children, sometimes losing their life. In psychology there is a real ph …

I write my antagonists to truly believe they are doing the right thing. They just begin with different beliefs about the world than my protagonists, that also truly believe they are doing the right th …

Although the Olympians had some super-powers, and were immortal, the Greeks considered them to be just like people in their emotional make-up. They fell in love (with humans), got horny, made mistakes …

I don't find this story credible. First, why in the world does the kid give up and kill himself after a few weeks on his own? He works at one job for a few weeks, gets fired, and kills himself? That i …

I think an abstract goal needs to be more useful as a life philosophy than you can make "vengeance." If that is my life goal, what do I do on idle Sundays, ask neighbors if I can take some vengeance o …

Can a fight scene, component-wise, be too complex and complicated? In general I don't think so. If what you mean by "component-wise" you mean the motivations and back-stories of the people fighti …