Nathan Bransford - The Forums

What would be the best place to look for pictures of underground tunnels, nuclear bomb shelters, and things like this? There are some photos of bomb shelters on google, but its not exactly on the scale of an underground New York City like I'm currently looking for. Its suppose to be an underground t...

Actually for that matter, what is considered to many characters on a book by book basis? Does it depend on the size of the book?

I'm wondering, if I were selling a collection of connected novellettes (Stories between 5,000-17,500 words.) would I need to query for each story, even if each story is a sequel to the previous story? Anna has a story for age eight, for age ten, for age twelve, for age fourteen, for age sixteen, and...

By being compressed into one query letter, if your doing connected shorts? My only other option was to serialize it in a science fiction magazine.

I have not decided whether I'm going to do a nanowrimo this year. I have an outline, however I have a hard time just getting past 4,000 words. Of course what I'm planning is connected shorts anyway.

I have an outline currently of roughly 102 story arc questions about the plot for me now. And then usually it takes about roughly a day per question to fully answer each.

I guess I'm sort of subverting the adult/child relationship? Its one of those downer things where a YA is dependent on their parents, but their parents are dead. They are forced to because life is out of control, and they must choose between death or subservience. Its not a "Schools out forever...

How can you figure out of your story fits into a coming of age sort of thing? I know my character at some people grow up in military school.

Also, its not going to be a pure dystopian novel, or a pure post apocalypse novel. I'm going to try to write a believable and sympathetic religious character despite being not religious myself. Or rather more importantly her dad is religious. I have not decided if she's personally Catholic. The cou...

What generally distinguishes an adult novel written about kids, and a young adult novel written about young adults? I'm sort of wanting to learn how Young Adults lives work so I can write about them, but I don't exactly want the young adults to be the ones that solve the problems all the time. Somet...

Ok so its looking like the story is going to have around 19 characters for the first three timelines.

Well i was also briefly considering a thought driven method. I don't know. I guess I'll see when the draft is done. I went ahead and posted up some post it notes on a poster board, and jotted down character things like, name, age, gender, character role, motives, passions, quirks. Also, its not goin...

Then I don't really know what you call it then, when your not suppose to what the characters thoughts are. Only I'm suppose to know the characters thoughts. Edit: Ah here we go, Distant POV.

My goal for this year is complete roughly 20 pages of world development, about 85,000 words of character outlines, and character writing exercises to get into character. In the mean time I'm taking baby steps by jotting down character traits on colored post it notes, and lining them up by timeline: ...

Show and tell is something I can improve on though me thinks.<_< I used to be able to do it, I'm just a bit out of practice. Actually i guess showing, and not telling would be something your editor would help you with. I should be trying to show and not tell even if writing in first person.