: Re: Building empathy with a character and interest in a story I've written several chapters of a (fiction) story. I wasn't happy so I spent some time reading about fiction, and trying to figure

First of all, the hero should hate his "small, isolated town," for being a "backwater." (Think Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, or the following from "Spoon River Anthology").

"I LOATHED you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,
I was ashamed of you. I despised you
As the place of my nativity."

You show the hero's "want" in the opening scene. Which turns into "desperation" when a killing takes place, putting the hero at risk for what little he had.

But the key is that the hero had a "want" BEFORE the killing. Then the killing only makes it more "urgent."

One other thing: A person isn't "in danger" without a reason. There should be a connection between your protagonist, and the person who was actually killed. They could be related, friends, went to the same school, or even coincidentally look alike. There should be a "rational" reason why the killer who killed the first person would want to kill the second, and the protagonist should have a reasonable fear of this.

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: Speaking of Living Rooms Would you rather have the bulk of your play's action staged in the atrium or in the peristylium? That's not the question, actually. The difference between a movie and

: Seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long Back in the day, good writing meant it was a goal to make sentences short. As I have grown older this rule has served

: Can I add Drop Caps to my manuscript in the Storyist program? I have a manuscript that I'd like to add Drop Caps to at the beginning of each chapter. I currently have it loaded into my

: Avoiding repeating "I" and "you" in an epistolary piece I've had two recent ideas for short stories that I feel would be best written as epistolary pieces where the main character is basically

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