Recent content by Michael K. Eidson

Q: Can ChatGPT make an actually good story? ChatGPT: Absolutely, I'd love to write a story for you! To make it tailored to your preferences, could you please provide some details? Here are a few questions to guide us: What genre do you prefer (e.g., fantasy, science fiction, mystery...

If it stands separate from the rest of the story at large, then that's a good reason to make it a prologue, yeah? If it's well-written and can pull the reader along to chapter one, then it's serving its purpose well, and it doesn't matter much how long it is. But for those of us who are...

The January/February 2024 issue of Writer's Digest features an article on prologues. If you use one, they recommend keeping it brief, stating that a length of one to two pages is typical these days. They also go into reasons why one would consider using a prologue, and many more reasons as to...

A reader of one of my novels inquired as to why I hadn't used chapter titles. I concluded it was laziness on my part. Since then, I've been making more of an effort to use them.

It might even verge on arrogance for someone, like me, to think they can write books without taking any formal training. :) It's tough, and I can see it being easy for newbies to be put off. I put words on the page for decades before finally trying to publish a book, and even then, when I got to...

So... I wrote a story one way. I then wrote the story another way. Both versions of the story had the same main events, and by the dictionary I use, plot equates to the main events of the story. So both versions of the story had the same plot. But I also claim that one version of the story had...

I've enjoyed this discussion on story structure, and have something to add. Many years ago I put out a call for short stories for a couple of anthologies. I received a goodly number of submissions, but not so many I couldn't read them all from beginning to end. The stories I could easily reject...

For sex scenes, read the same books as your target audience to understand the kinds of scenes they expect, and write those kinds of scenes for your characters. If your target audience isn't expecting an erotic story, you can add some steamy scenes if you want, but then you run the risk of making...

Different basic ways of becoming trapped in a game world, some already mentioned: 1. MC dies and discovers the afterlife is a game world. 2. Living MC's consciousness enters game world, leaving unconscious physical body in real world. 3. Living MC is physically transported to game world...

I'm a straight male who loves writing and reading female characters, lead or otherwise. I've played many female characters in face-to-face roleplaying games over the years. When I watch American Ninja Warrior, I'm always rooting the hardest for the female competitors. When I watch Survivor, I...

I write GameLit. I have a variety of ways the characters communicate--private chat, party chat, territorial chat, global chat, telepathy, inner dialogue between two personae of a single individual, and more. I thought about using something like chat logs for some of the communications, italics...

I've had an LLC and found it not worth what I paid for it, so dropped it and went with a DBA to have my business name registered. Having an LLC is all about protecting your assets. A single-person LLC is less efficient at providing that protection than a multiple-person LLC. Research about...

Some big name authors have used pen names, and some of them have used multiple pen names in addition to their most-well-known by-line. Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, for starters, each used a pen name in addition to their main by-lines, and Michael Crichton has used a couple. Plenty of...

My first novel was published in 2020, and my second in 2021. My third book is up for pre-order, with a release date temporarily set for the end of 2022. The first draft of book 3 is written, and I'm a third of the way through the first draft of book 4. My "co-author" helps primarily with story...

Some people say you only get one shot to make a good first impression. That doesn't have to be the case with writing. You can always publish under multiple pen names. To test the waters, you might consider writing some relatively short books under a pen name, self-editing, self-proofreading...