Recent content by Derin Edala

I am not a marketing expert or web designer. I'd appreciate any feedback on my website, especially on the ease/difficulty of navigation. https://derinstories.com/

In my experience these are useless if you're fluent in English. If you're still learning basic English, things like Grammarly can help, but if you know the language then you know more than those programs do. They'll only throw up false flags and stifle your writing. As for AI, they generally...

You can always put in something and change it later. In general I call my locations stuff like "Land of [People]" or "Between the Rivers" in whatever an older version of the native language is. Or you can name it after a heroic founder of the kingdom. This is how most places get their names in...

Isn't your food shortage the basis of your conflict? Finding a way to solve/deal with the shortage itself, or characters feeling their allotments are unfair, or characters being driven to steal through desperation (esp. if they have dependents who are sick/injured and can't work), are all...

If your website is free (there are plenty of places that'll offer you a free website), there's no reason not to build it as soon as possible. Even if you're not using it much now, it'll give you experience in making and managing it. It works as a hub to put all your work in one place where...

It depends entirely on how these chapters are written. If option A is just "check out this dramatic shocking thing!" with no context, it's boring; the reader has no reason to care. If it's given in a way that gives context and gives us reason to be interested in this guy, it works as an opener...

Different writers work differently, but i find I have to suck it up and push through those bits I don't know. If I skip them, I'll never come back to them. The bits I do know act as motivation. The bridges, as I write them, tend to become fertile ground for subplots. If that's not working, it's...

You might want to look at some superhero stories. They're good at pulling this specific thing off. Especially older superhero cartoons like the DCAU, where story arcs are very slow (if they exist at all) and the heroes are essentially the same characters every episode (so they can be shown on TV...

The drama and hardship you put them through has a purpose -- everything they go through should reveal more of them to themselves and to the readers. By letting them fulfil their purpose in your story, you can get to know them even better. You can't see the beauty of a geode if you won't break it...