Chris Sunami
This user was automatically created as the author of content sourced from Stack Exchange.
The original profile on Stack Exchange can be found here: https://writers.stackexchange.com/u/10479.
Posts
See all 184 »It's perfectly fine to leave details up to the reader's imagination. But those comparisons are neither doing work for you nor for the reader. They have the look and feel of descriptions, but they ...
posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
Writing can be a very difficult, frustrating, stressful and effortful process. It can also be very isolating to the writer. Given that writing is a form of communication, what is the point of writi...
7 answers · posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami · edited 6y ago by ArtOfCode
As a long-time blogger, I can say from experience: It's much harder to get any traction with an audience if you don't have a specific topic or theme. But it depends on what your goals for the blog...
posted 7y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
I'm largely not a discovery writer myself, but many --perhaps most --of my favorite authors are discovery writers. It seems like discovery writers almost universally struggle with endings --for obv...
posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
As I mentioned in my other recent question, my novel in progress has three main locations. I feel those three settings are strong, fully imagined places, with interesting storylines. However, the...
4 answers · posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by Mark Baker
The initial problem was that writers (mostly, we assume, male) were writing female characters that were thinly imagined, stereotypical, and largely there only to reflect glory at the male protagoni...
posted 6y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
If you are not primarily an "exploration writer" (or even if you are), there is a lot of advance work that can make your first draft better. This includes worldbuilding --coming up with rich and e...
posted 8y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
It's worth noting that "Choose Your Own Adventure" is a specific brand of children's novelty "gamebooks," and that nearly all books written in this format are released under that brand. It's not -...
posted 8y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
You have made a common mistake about world-building: believing that it all has to go on the page. World-building is for you, the author, to help you craft a story in a setting that feels real and ...
posted 8y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
Realism is just another style, fiction is never reality. With that said, unrealistic characters can make it harder to suspend disbelief, identify with the characters or care about them, regardless...
posted 10y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
I think the answer has to come from who your characters are, and why they are using slang. Essentially slang is an in-group word-game. It's a way of distinguishing insiders from outsiders. It ca...
posted 11y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
At least part of why we read is to learn something --that doesn't mean the characters in the story need to learn something, and it doesn't necessarily mean a moral lesson. You might simply learn w...
posted 11y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
(I thought @what gave a great answer, which I upvoted, but it also made me want to look for counterexamples.) In Remains of the Day the main character is a repressed butler who devotes his life to...
posted 11y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
In this example, just move the word in question outside the quotation marks: It is possible for God to desire "all people to be saved." It's more difficult in the case that the word in questi...
posted 11y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
I've been told that, when acting the part of a drunk, a good approach is to make it appear as though you are trying to present yourself as sober and failing. Similarly, the insane person believes ...
posted 8y ago by Chris Sunami · last activity 6y ago by System
