: Re: Making modern references I'm working on a modern fiction drama in an urban setting. I'm trying to be real in terms of conversation threads--music, movies, drugs, etc. Here's my problem: I've

Legally, short quotes from someone else's work are almost always "fair use" and shouldn't cause you copyright trouble. If you are quoting an entire song, or many pages out of a book, then you can get into trouble. But having a character say "Wow, he looks like Darth Vader" is almost certainly not something you can be sued over.

As you and others note, having characters make pop culture references can certainly make a story sound more "real". And it can be a convenient shorthand. A reference to a well-known song or movie can bring all sorts of images to the reader's mind with one sentence or even a couple of words.

On the other hand, there are at least three drawbacks:

One: As others have mentioned, pop culture references get dated very quickly. Ten years ago Britney Spears was a huge sensation. Do kids today know who she is?

Two: References that are instantly recognizable to you and your friends will be totally unfamiliar to other people. I'm an old man. I have no idea what singers are popular with teenagers today. Rap fans probably couldn't name top country stars and vice versa. Etc. Maybe your potential readers will all be people with musical, cinematic, whatever tastes the same as yours. But you could be shutting out a lot of people who could have enjoyed your story, but who will give it up in frustration because the culture references make no sense to them.

Three: Personally, I find large numbers of cultural references tedious. I quickly find myself saying, "Yeah, yeah, I get it, you like horror movies. Are you trying to tell a story or just drop a bunch of lines from your favorite movies?" I don't know how many others feel the same way, maybe that's just me.

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: Re: Making modern references I'm working on a modern fiction drama in an urban setting. I'm trying to be real in terms of conversation threads--music, movies, drugs, etc. Here's my problem: I've

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: How Can You Include Public Stakes in a Character Novel? In Donald Maass's book Writing the Breakout Novel, he talks about stakes. He goes over how a breakout novel needs two kinds: personal

: Fantasy and Science Fiction - should I choose a separate publisher? I recall reading somewhere (I believe it was Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy) that you should

: I have seen both used. It does depend on the topic. Most academic articles I have read use the third person because the researcher isn't actually the topic. More popular texts tend to use

: Can Extensive Outlining Take the Place of the First Draft? Background: I've been writing fan fiction for five years now. I began when I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so my methods

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