New answers tagged fiction
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I'm not at all sure what you mean with "a perverse pit of debauchery". Apocalyptic Mad Max/Dark Angel, or what a school teacher from 1850 would say about the sexual habits of millennials–or pretty much anyone from the 21st century?
But I hope my answer will be applicable regardless!
Even if society gets really bad, chances are your characters won't ...
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In my personal experience, it's more restrictive to try to NOT be what you are than to expand the horizons of what a YOU-type person can be. In the first scenario, you're constantly second-guessing everything you do, and judging it as "too Indian" or "not Western enough." The result can't help but be derivative and stifled. In the second case, you're ...
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Tough Love characters are tricky to write and can cross from loving but strict to abusive pretty quickly. Consider the family in Malcolm in the Middle, where Tough Love seems to drive the family more than anything (especially with Lois at the wheel). It's of course played as the ultimate dysfunctional family for humor, but there are some very sincere ...
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This is a difficult conundrum. Some sounds and ways of pronounciation are simply not made for paper. For example, the dragging of the vocal on the end of a word is impossible to onomatopoetically convey. You cannot write "wooord", that can be very misleading, takes the reader out of the reading and just looks goofy. Unless you're writing an absurd, goody ...
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Language you already mastered - your writing does not come across as too typically Indian, at least when you consciously address an international audience. Just stick to that.
Fantasy names in western fiction are only sometimes borrowed from the cultural background - and even then, more as a pun or a hint than as a norm. In many cases, especially in sci fi ...
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You are pretty much going to have to upend the master/salve relationship from its deepest core.
His slaves are actually pretty much free. Just not on paper.
As others have pointed out, slavery is a very deep rooted issue, especially in the US. One must be careful to not downplay this too much. It is generally accepted that if one is a slave, one cannot ...
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Stop being an Indian writer, and become a writer. There is an Elton John bio movie coming out. He was born Reginald Dwight and changed his name. In one of the preview clips somebody tells Reginald "You have to stop being the person you were born to be, and become the person you want to be."
Same thing for you. Being born Indian doesn't mean you have to ...
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Allow me to introduce you to a game-changing author who at age 19 wrote a morally complicated "pot boiler" about a privileged jerk who plays god then abandons his responsibility. This novel has everything: an anti-hero who fails his redemption arc, a villain who is articulate and sympathetic, and a heretical theme so aggressively feminist that Christianity ...
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You may benefit from taking a big breath and looking at the situation from outside.
You are Indian and you grew up in a society with richly pervasive traditions to which you feel bound.
A Japanese person has also grown up in a society with richly pervasive traditions to which they naturally feel bound and which will influence everything they write. An ...
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Play up the obstacle.
He is royalty, she is a slave. That is pretty good barrier. As long as you use it properly you can freely show the attraction between them. Just have them deny it often enough for it to be obvious there is something to deny. Have them make clear there is nothing improper between them often enough that it is obvious there really might ...
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This is very similar to your later question; I will copy part of my answer there. But you really shouldn't be posting basically the same question more than once; you can edit your questions if you think you have found a way to ask it better.
First, she can be disliked without being hated, and without being a physical bully. She can be intentionally mean, ...
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Tough Love requires Love. Bullying requires a disregard of the feelings or dignity of the victim; or even getting satisfaction out of causing pain, humiliation and distress.
However, I'm gathering you want her to be disliked but also redeemable: That is possible without resorting to "tough love."
First, she can be disliked without being hated, and without ...
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First of all, forget what the readers and characters think, or are supposed to think, about your Tough Love. Instead, think about what you want for it.
I think it's very easy for someone to see a tough character as an asshole, and it's tempting to paint an asshole as representing 'toughness'. Notice that 'tough love' is usually how a tough character ...
24
You can't
This is not a romance. This is a master having sex with his slave. Or wanting to have sex.
But he's going to free the slave! Is he now? But the person is still a slave when this all begins.
This is an unequal relationship of exploitation.
Is it possible for someone in a subordinate relationship to genuinely love someone above her/him? ...
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Look at her motives.
"Tough love" is someone making hard calls or asking difficult things for the right reasons. A parent making you get up at 6:00 a.m. to go to school no matter how tired you are, or insisting that you do all your chores before going out, because it teaches you responsibility. A drill instructor who goads trainees to finish a grueling ...
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I have seen, IRL, a solution to this problem.
I would say, make one (or both) of the characters unavailable; already coupled with or wanting a different romantic interest, and make it clear that to their future partner, at least, they seem unavailable.
Under those circumstances, make them increasingly good friends. And then something changes, the attached ...
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As the story unfolds, slowly reveal her past. Make the reader empathize with her.
All of us are a bit of a pill sometimes. We just don't like to think of ourselves that way. But if the reader can start to identify with her, the reader will slowly change their opinions of her.
Make her slowly open up and share her past and why she is the way she is. Make ...
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I would not write the history. The history is background and setting; some of that will necessarily come out in the first ACT (about 25% of the story) and more can be revealed in the rest of the book as you go along.
You also don't need a complete history of your main character, or the other characters. You need enough so you feel like you know the MC and ...
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Human learning is like a mobile (the baby toy)
We start with our core ideas of knowledge, and then hang new ideas from them. These new ideas then give us spots to attach even more new ideas. It's kind of like an upside down bush. When teaching someone for this reason it is very important to teach things in this order. If you give someone ideas that they don'...
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Use the name others use for her.
It's pretty standard that, if a patient can't be identified, a placeholder name gets assigned. Jane Doe (in the US anyway) is a very common one (John Doe for males).
If this continues longer than a few days, the hospital staff (or the people wherever she finds herself) will come up with a nickname for her. Or your main ...
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A non-cheesy happy ending is generally a mixed bag; the hero may not get everything they wanted, but they did get what was most important to them.
For example, they didn't get the treasure, but they found true love, and nobody else got the treasure.
Or they succeeded in sending the CEO to prison, but they lost their job, or also got convicted and had to ...
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You can associate your character with something else, thats easier to remember. For 7 you could use the 7 colours of the rainbow or the 7 weekdays. This is only appropriate for some storys though ,probably fantasy. Because the characters are either linked by destiny or some organization or a preordained plan, or because they all found connected artifacts...
...
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I would advise against it as it's not natural and seems to force the language where it isn't forced. I generally subscribe to translator chip theory of fiction, based on the concept used in Star Trek... Basically most of the space fairing peoples have a device hidden in their ear that instantly translates a speaker's words into the listener's language... ...
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Observing other people will teach you a lot about the people you are observing. The more you observe the same person (or people), the more you'll learn about them. Looking from afar means you can think about what you are witnessing, whereas when you're participating, your mind is more focused on what to say and do, rather than fully grasp what the other is ...
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Any time you're using a first person narrative the story is a continuous introspective irregardless of the level of soul-searching that your characters do, the very way they view the events of the narrative tells the reader who they are and how they think. Inter-character interactions are also important but they need not be lengthy or involved. For example ...
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There is a lot the supplied description does NOT tell us about this character. It does not tell us how old he is. It does not tell us his race. It does say whether or not he has a handicap. It doesn't tell us if he is living now, in the past, or in the future. It doesn't say what kind of clothes he likes to wear. It doesn't tell us if he is short or ...
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1) unusually smart,
I presume by "smart" you are not saying the same thing as "clever", "insightful" or "thoughtful", which IMO leaves an academic understanding of how things work. You show this by finding an opportunity to have the character explain something others (including the reader) may not understand very well. Of course as an author you can "cheat"...
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This is the beauty of the Oracle scene in the Matrix and the Beauty of Breaking the Vase (Upon entering the Oracle's kitchen, the Oracle tells Neo not to worry about the vase. Neo looks around for the Vase, and ends up knocking it to the ground, shattering it. As Neo appologizes, she sums up your noodle baker... er, paradox: If she had said nothing, would ...
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I've read several stories that do this and I've always appreciated it, personally. Many stories will simply end and leave the reader to fill in the details, but for me this has always just been lazy. If someone wanted to fill in the details, why write the story at all? They can just fill in all of the details.
That's all just opinion, though. You ask ...
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You can, but it's self-indulgent and kind of sloppy --a bunch of disconnected scenes outside the body of your story. Typically an epilogue helps put a cap on a story, and bring it closure. But this effect is diluted by multiple epilogues.
Of course, you want your reader to desire to hold on to your characters and your world after the story ends. Even in ...
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Ask his wife
Either you're so much inside his head that you're not seeing him the way others do, or you're an outsider suffering from hero worship. You need to get into other people's heads and see him from different angles.
His wife knows (mostly) all his flaws. She may love him anyway, but she'll know what he's like to live with.
His kids (if any) ...
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Try it as dialog... and then you'll also realize the situation could be seen as very prejudiced (code smell?) Let me show you:
Groff: I'm leaving before those Grobschookas get here.
Doff: Why? I mean, they seem a bit violent, but who isn't?
Groff: You don't get it, they are horrible.
Doff: In what way?
Groff: They eat babies.
Doff:...
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A main reason to choose a first person narrator in the first place is to limit the scope of the narrator (and to get deeply into that one character's head).
So, no, the narrator should not be privy to information that the character does not know.
With two exceptions:
1. If it's information the character learned later on, the narration can include it.
...
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(A) In a humourous short story about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Bertie is talking about a situation involving two strangers and Jeeves suggests referring to them as A & B. When another stranger enters that situation, Jeeves suggests "We will call him C, sir" and Bertie says, "Caesar is a good name".
Bertie can write this because he's relaying a story ...
1
Indirection is only a problem when reader can't tell which layer of the story they are on
Using a narrator that is retelling events from their life is a common literary technique. Many books do it well. In these books is it not uncommon for the narrator to then retell a story that was told to them. This is exactly what you have here. The trick to making it ...
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It's all about how you handle it.
You're describing a flashback to hearing a third-hand story about a distant tribe. It's far in time, far in relationship (i.e. degrees of separation), and far in geography. You have to make it relevant, intense, and short.
Are you using indirection in the coding sense?
I would say don't think of it that way, because you ...
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A person's growth as a person does not end when they come of age. I am a very different person now (at 53) than I was at 21, to the point that I am abjectly ashamed of my younger self.
It is true that when a person comes of age, they no longer have to deal with the struggles of a person who is coming of age. Once you've gotten the girl or guy of your dreams ...
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In a series, I expect to find one of three approaches:
a) One single plot that covers the entire series and which is divided into smaller parts in order to give each book some level of closure
b) One plot that covers the entire series, and smaller plots that start and end in each book.
c) small plots that start and end in each book, with the unifying line ...
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People live their lives. Once they come of age people take up the responsibilities of their adult role in society. This need not represent a major shift in tone/style, "people grow or they die, or rather they grow until they die" sorry you'll have to look up who said it first but the principle is that people, real people, are always growing and changing. A ...
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Coming of Age is about becoming an adult. This is often for young adults the transition to a sexualized person; being interested in sex and romance, knowing what it is about, perhaps experiencing sexual attraction for the first time.
Anthropologically speaking, we see the same story in apes and other animals: The young reach an age where they rebel against ...
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It's rare, but not unheard of for a series to shift genres as it progresses --with Harry Potter perhaps being the most notable example. As the protagonists grow up, the style and content of the books shift to follow them. Far from being a detriment, this was arguably a key reason for the series' success. And, of course, we're used to seeing this in more ...
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It depends on the genre you're writing. A whimsical fantasy story would depict a drunken dwarf blacksmith's manner of speech in the dialog:
"Aye stringbean, Oi'll sharpen 'nat old stabber yeh got there fer a couple 'a silver. Whaddaya shay?"
Overuse of this style can become obnoxious really quick, especially if the reader has to slow down or strain to ...
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I had a similar issue in a story of mine; a letter is the catalyst for the action that is basically the whole story.
The way I approach this (and many other writing problems) is to remember the person reading the letter is processing the letter, mentally responding to claims in the letter, realizing things and interrupting their reading to think about them. ...
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If you format the email as separate from the narration, that will take care of most of the transition between the narrator and the text of the email. Set it aside in its own paragraph and do one or more of the following: indent, italicize, change the font type, change the font size, or place in a box.
You might be thinking of the email as internal dialogue,...
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I came to this article for help on this myself, (as a new writer), but I figured I might as well post. Parentheses I generally use in a non-fiction context. I used to never use them at all, but then somebody challenged me to use them. I still find them generally not useful in a fiction context, but I do use them sometimes. Normally only when a character is ...
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I think the best idea would be to simply tell the story within the story. Something like this:
He opened the email and began to read it aloud
A long time ago there was a man...(story here)...the end
After he finished reading the email (next part happens)
When telling the sub-story, the narrator should be that of the sub-story.
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In life, we all absorb a huge number of cultural influences, and integrating those into our own work is an important part of the artist's journey. But our instincts can sometimes play us false. If your intuitions lead you to recreate a carbon copy of something popular and well-known, then that could be a symptom that you're only regurgitating someone else'...
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Welcome to writing SE.
I like both answers you've so far received.
I'll add in a suggestion. When the species is introduced, do so with a couple distracting and strongly memorable details (language, physical, cultural, naming) that are wholly unlike the existing aliens you don't want us to think of. Throw the reader off the scent up front. Because we ...
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First off, copyright is not an issue. Or at least, it is an easily avoidable issue. Copyright does not protect general ideas, like "what this alien race is like". It protects the specific words used to describe those ideas. If you copied ten pages out of a Star Trek script word for word, that would be copyright violation. If you liked the general idea of a ...
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