7
votes
Accepted
How Should We Implement the Given-before-New Principle in Fiction?
The two examples you give aren't equivalent. They tell different stories.
In your first example, we look on the scene from outside. The narrator is a witness that observes what happens. In your second ...
5
votes
How can I recognize and take constructive criticism?
There are stories that aren't written for the majority of people but for a small(er) subset of them. Not everyone likes steampunk, for example, and there are niches beside the larger mainstream genres ...
3
votes
How Should We Implement the Given-before-New Principle in Fiction?
We Shouldn't
"How should we implement the Given-Before-New Principle in Fiction?"
We shouldn't.
There are lots of rules of "proper English" that don't apply to Fiction. (e.g. ...
3
votes
How Should We Implement the Given-before-New Principle in Fiction?
James sat in his favourite chair, pondering the nature of his existence. Shadows darkened his features. After a short while, David entered the room with a discourteous thud.
As you write it, "...
2
votes
How can I recognize and take constructive criticism?
I think you don't understand the author's job.
The author of a story imagines the situation, the scenes, the characters, and their personalities, and does the engineering to turn this into a coherent ...
2
votes
How does one write a paper "in character?" I don't know how to begin
I'd personally love writing something like that
Anways, you're gonna have to do a lot of research. Maybe read some biographies and (if you can) watch the Oppenheimer movie. You need to learn what he's ...
1
vote
How does one write a paper "in character?" I don't know how to begin
I notice that the assignment does not require you to use a particular form of document. This gives you a lot of leeway. You could envision "what would Oppenheimer write for a historical ...
1
vote
How does one write a paper "in character?" I don't know how to begin
Think about how one of your friends would tell you what she did on the weekend. ("Yesterday me and my mom went to visit my grandparents.")
Now imagine you would write a story about what ...
1
vote
How Should We Implement the Given-before-New Principle in Fiction?
My observation is that there is a form of given-before-new guideline when writing fiction. But it is not at the sentence level. It's kind a transposition of of Chekov's Gun -- if there is a gun in the ...
1
vote
How to refer to alternate versions of a character in a non-sci-fi way?
The way you're doing now is perfectly fine. It isn't confusing if it's only two Alices at a time and using "this Alice" to refer to the alternate fates.
However, if more than once fate is ...
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