Recent content by Karoly

I agree completely, and I didn't mean to give the impression that you should never use colorful words, but I failed to express myself by using a poor example. That scene was clearly a high-drama moment but in a more general sense, there's not always an interesting action to go with every line of...

There are two schools of thought on this: The old school is that using the same word too often is bad and your speech should be as colorful as possible. So get out a thesaurus and replace every instance of the word "said" with a description that precisely conveys the tone. "I'll get you you...

The golden rule: Always show, never lecture. Two characters in a room emotionlessly talking about what is happening = bad. Narrator telling audience about what is happening = bad Say you wanted to let the reader know that the kingdom has 6 provinces. You could have the narrator tell your...

If you have a goal (IE you are writing for a magazine, and it needs to be exactly 12 pages), well then that's how long it needs to be. Otherwise, it's just however long it takes to tell the story. Ernest Hemmingway was once asked to write a sad short story. This is what he came up with...

Honestly, the best way is not to have a prophesy. They are probably the most contrived of all plot devices and are the lazy man's version of foreshadowing. But if you must have a prophesy, you'd need to consider who made it. Was it found on an ancient tablet? It should sound vaguely poetic...

As social creatures, humans naturally think of selflessness as good and selfishness as evil, a detriment to the group. At the most elemental level, evil people only think of themselves. They think that they are smarter or stronger than everyone else so they should be respected and revered. No...