How should I make it easy for the reader to know who else is thinking...anything at the moment aside from something blatant like "X character is thinking," considering how most of the "thinking" is from the main character, in first person?
If people learned from their mistakes, there wouldn't be this thing called bad habits.You can write dialogue explicitly telling the reader what that character is thinking, you can write dialogue implicitly (giving hints) about what they are thinking, you can use the narration, or you can do it with actions. For example, if the character is scared of bugs:
- Explicit dialogue: "I'm scared of bugs!" said Nancy.
- Implicit dialogue: "I'm not scared of bugs. Why would I be scared of bugs? Just because they have six legs and no skeleton and huge eyes and there are millions of billions of them running around on the planet doesn't mean I should be scared of bugs."
- Narration: A bug crawled on Nancy's leg. She's not gonna like that, I thought. Nancy had a fear of bugs.
- Action: A bug crawled on Nancy's leg. She froze and started hyperventilating.
- Mix and match:
A bug crawled on Nancy's leg. She froze and started hyperventilating. "You okay?" I asked, although I knew she wasn't.
"Who, me? Yeah, I'm fine." Her hands were shaking. "Couldn't be better."
So, in one story I'm working on there is a four way polyamory relationship. One of the girls parents let her live her life as long as she prominences that getting engaged is a cut off point for new loves. Long story short she did not keep her word. First off the new girl came in to the relationship thru someone else. Also since it happiness on vacation she could lie and say they found her before hand. What should she do?
With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill.I want to Rename the Mummy in my Ben10 fan fiction. Also I need names for his Vampire and Mermaid forms. Got Ideas?
edited 1st May '11 4:31:57 AM by RandomChaos
With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill.I don't know anything about Ben10, so this is just brainstorming. Maybe the mummy could have an Egyptian name; this is a list of Egyptian pharaohs
, who were the most likely candidates to get mummified. As for mermaids, maybe something relating to the sea, like Marina? Or even a name from the Oceanids
, the daughters of Oceanus, ancient Greek Titan who represented the sea. The vampire is trickier, 'cause it easier to get Narmy. Maybe something from an old vampire story, like Ruthven
, Varney
, or Orlok
?
Or like the German "ü" if you're really pretentious...
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I would rhyme it with dish or wish.
I have a similiar problem with pronunciation and spelling actually. The world my graphic novel is set in is called Seirre, which approximately rhymes with beret. I know it has a weird spelling (which came about when I mentioned to my sister that I was having problems coming up with a name for my world, and she started spelling 'strawberries' backwards after seeing a box of them on the table), and you can't tell how it is pronounced from just reading the word, but I haven't been able to come up with an alternate name or spelling that I like as much as the current one.
Another thing I'm stuck with at the moment is an early scene in said graphic novel, where the main character, a corporal in the City Guard, specifically in a unit which is an analogue of a real-world SWAT team, is just starting his shift. In the scene I need to establish his profession, and his main character trait (for now) of being very withdrawn and not interacting socially with people, and I just can't seem to get anywhere with it.
edited 6th May '11 2:48:34 PM by artfulscruff
I'm pretty good with making pronouncable words. Usually, the worst of it is stressing which accent, and whether it's A as in apple or A as in army.
Read my stories!Okay, I just wanted some advice. I'm planning on writing a story that's very A Scanner Darkly-esque that takes place in 2015 and follows a drug user that is succumbing to severe paranoia, insomnia, and susceptible to memory loss and uncharacteristic changes in personality as a side-effect of the drug, which is left, intentionally, unnamed in the story. I was going to write it as a first-person narrative with some interesting, well, I'll face it, their gimmicks, that include breaking the fourth wall at certain points, chapters being placed in a disjointed manner, not in chronological order, and also internal-conflicts with the protagonist's thoughts and narration present in the writing as his addiction becomes more severe.
Before I go on developing the story further, I'd like some criticism from my fellow tropers first.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.It sounds like a bunch of random traits that tell us nothing.
Execution is what matters.
Not traits.
Read my stories!You could be the shittiest writer in the world, and even the most interesting of stories will squander and perish under your horrible hand.
Or you could be the most brilliant writer in the world and make even the most cliché and badly thought up premises come alive with your wonderful words.
Or you could be somewhere in between.
And that is what will make your premise work. Not the actual premise. How you CARRY the premise.
Read my stories!ninja'd twice
edited 6th May '11 8:19:25 PM by snowfoxofdeath
Warm hugs and morally questionable advice given here. Prosey BitchfestI see, I'll keep that in mind. I'm gonna try my hand at writing a few paragraphs and get back to you with the results, hopefully to improve from there.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

OK I want Harley or Ivy in my batman story they are going to say something like Arkham is worse then hell and what they are going to do is worse than both. But I can't make it sound both bad ass and in character.
If it helps the reason for this is there about to go Mama Bear on some pore guy. I'm scared just thinking about it.
With the power of a dragon I can make up for my inability to spill.