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Writing Tips

Show vs Tell

To show not tell, you want to be purposeful in how much information you provide and how you provide that information.

  • Be purposeful in how much detail you provide
  • Be purposeful in how you provide details
  • Leave room for the reader’s imagination
  • Scatter information throughout the story
  • Avoid monologuing
  • Don't describe the way characters look too much
  • Don’t introduce new characters by having them tell their entire life story in one sitting.
  • Use the information you need to convey to brainstorm major and minor plot points.

Writing Women

Women are just people. If this comes as a surprise to you then you have no business writing women at all and need to go make friends with womankind first.

Women are not a special brand of the human species, they are not man-adjacent, man being the original "human."

All the failings of male authors writing female characters boil down to them seeing women as a subclass species of human beings and not just human beings. 

Differing experiences and being completely different animals are two vastly different conditions. A mouse experiences a much different life than I do, but that's not what makes a mouse different from me.

If you still have trouble understanding, give your female characters male names and write them as male characters. Then change their names at the end using the Find + Replace tool. Now you'll save yourself from subconsciously creating female characters that are so "other" they barely even qualify as supporting characters.