Nathan Bransford - The Forums

1) Classic misdirection: "Hi, I'm Sergeant Mc*cough**cough* from *Cough*PD. We're following up on a case that has similar circustances to your Wife's death....if you have 5 mins....... 2) Classic Misdirection 2: "Hi, I'm John Mc*cough**cough* from *Cough*News. We're running an article abou...

Simple rules: If one person says it, discard it. If 3 people say the same thing, pay attention. Brandon Sanderson (I think) said he discarded 3 out of 4 things the betas said - until he found a brilliant writing group with multiple published authors in it....now he throws away about 2 in 3. Look up ...

Wilderness absolutely nailed it. From there it's just tweaking flow and character voice to eliminate some of the pronouns, reinforce the emotional connection..... "It made him think of his father. Dad hated the rain almost as much as he hated him. Wouldn't amount to nothing, Dad said, and backe...

Writing excuses, series 1, Episode 19, about 12 mins in....there's a mention of it there...I know there's another one (dan wells talked about it and I can't for the life of me remember the episode...) Anyway the exact quote is: "You should mention something 3 times before you use it" - que...

Me: Bad writing is an oxymoron... You: Wha-? You mean all writing is good? Me: Yes. Bad writing - literally - does not exist. You: You've read 50 shades, right? Me: No, actually. I've heard it's awful for anyone not female and/or slightly snobbish about writing. You: See! Bad writing.... Me: That's...

Yeah - fell across this and landed straight onto one of those epiphanetic (?) moments when you peer into your past and make one of those long, drawn out, "oooooh"'s usually delivered while clasping your forehead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4qBSrLe19k The actual bit in question stradle...

Do I write to be Published??....No, I think I could happily do this as a hobby without any financial reward Do I write to be read??....Yeah. And for me, that's largely the reason I don't write as much as I should. The first novel I wrote wasn't like that - it was a task in and of itself. I wanted to...

Do I need to do anything to this so people know it's a quote from a song? The absolute furthest I'd go is putting quotation marks round it...and even that is really going out of your way to spoonfeed (HA!) the reader. The more you supply explanations for the reader that the character wouldn't consi...

There are only two reasons I can think of for this is. One is that the writer thinks that the reader will understand the metaphor better.Perhaps this is so, but the people reading your book have already demonstrated imagination and determination. They will be ok. The other is that it's lazy writing...

Well guys - thanks for al the replies. OK - well, in summary, the censensus seems to be: The concept of trying to "hide in plain sight" is fine, the method of doing so is...workable. But the important thing is to make sure the characters motivations, backstory and capabilities are consiste...

A-ha! I have you in my semantic Trap! Squirm, my unfortunate prey!!!!! Not "How do you make action seem realistic?" but rather "Does the following Action seem realistic?" So I'm stuck - I'm pretty sure I *want* this to happen and I think it works in terms of defining and developi...

Worst feedback.....err...guess that was when I was first starting and a friend of my - probably the only friend I have who reads voraciously AND reads fantasy/Sci-Fi....she'd had the first 30 pages for a while and when I brought it up in conversaion she said "Yeah - couldn't get past page 3. It...

Short answer: It's not necessary unless you want either their feedback or their support. Long answer: OK - going slightly cerebral and wanky...Jean Paul Satre said something like "you know the answer you get by who you ask". Basically, that means that you'll largely get the response you c...

Could use it as an opportunity for character work/defining....what would be your character's favourite (or worst) film....then just mash it up with however she sees her surroundings...hopefully this'd tie surroundings and character closer together e.g. Say she's a huge, say, Catherine Zeta Jones fan...

Man I'm gonna look like that pedantic arse everyone knows at work, but...... Actually by definition, 3rd person limited is actually the opposite in this scenario. The "Limited" aspect of it actually refers to the READERS view into the world, and is counterpoint to Omniscient. In Omniscient...