New answers tagged technique
1
Third person unlimited!
If your character is empathic (mind reader or just emotions?) you can have something very close to omniscient while maintaining limited omniscience - because your character has near omniscience when it comes to other people. I did something similar, where my MC could read minds. I treated the thoughts of others like a one-way ...
0
If you do not want your character to feel special, do not make them special.
From reading your description, there should be no reason they should succeed at surviving in this place. If they do survive, seeing their struggle and seeing them overcome obstacles will automatically make them sympathetic to the audience. Their victories, however small, will end up ...
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Your question could be interpreted in many different ways (not knowing the content of your essay), but these are my thoughts:
Is there a certain way I should structure my essay?
In an essay or article, these are the best ways to structure an essay in order to win an argument:
Use facts, quotes, and citations to support your idea or opinion. This will help ...
-1
You should describe the characters, setting, and action more. I will focus on writing regular descriptions and taking the extra step - showing not telling.
Start with the characters
Before you even write the scene, imagine the characters externally. Ask yourself
What clothes are they wearing?
Describe what clothes they have on and what their clothes look ...
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I think most authors (and other creatives) use life as inspiration... and dreams are part of life...
So what creatives usually do is to pay attention to their imagination, in dreams
or reality, note it down and enjoy it as a gift from their unconscious/muses/gods/whathaveyou's, then the strangest thing happens and the unconscious/etc starts giving you more ...
4
More Normal People
Here's the thing, if your protagonist is the only normal person in a world full of non-humans, that immediately makes them stick out as unusual to the audience. By definition they are not normal, because they are the only ordinary human present in the setting. That will immediately make the character stick out to your human audience, and ...
-1
It is true that your chapter should be as long as it needs to be and no longer.
However, I believe what you're really asking is:
How do I write my story so it "shows" the reader instead of "telling" the reader.
Show Don't Tell
bad / tell:
He felt sad that he had been rejected by the beautiful woman.
The author has told you how he felt. ...
2
A chapter should be exactly as long as it needs to be, no longer, no shorter. I’ve seen chapters as long as a single word. Proust has blocks of text that run for a hundred pages or more without so much as a paragraph break.
So the question is, what’s happening in your writing? The very first thing that you need to be doing is reading, and reading with an eye ...
4
I don't believe there are many authors who do this on a regular basis, but it's certainly not unknown for authors to base stories on dreams. TV Tropes (obligatory warning: massive time sink!) has an entire page dedicated to works known to have been based on dreams.
Arguably the most famous example is that of The Terminator. James Cameron was inspired to ...
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