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Plagiarism: The act of plagiarizing: the copying of another person's ideas, text or other creative work, and presenting it as one's own, especially without permission. Technically, stealing an idea is plagiarism just as much as stealing their words. However, as another old adage goes, "There's nothing new under the sun." Everything you ever ...

I've read a lot of novels in my life and I cannot remember one, that uses bold for emphasizing. But maybe that's just my memory problem. I prefer italic, but honestly, that is a matter of taste and totally up to the writer. I prefer italic words, because they stand out without shouting at the reader. One bold word on a page is attracting the eye. It's ...

I find these sorts of formulas, well... formulaic. If I'm going to read about how to write, I want to read someone who HAS successfully written, a lot, and well. Someone like, say, Stephen King. And when I read his On Writing, I really don't see the craft being reduced to a math problem. I won't say that this sort of thing wouldn't help anybody, but I ...

I agree with the spirit of Kate's answer, but it glosses over an important point. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you are describing as long as it's interesting and adds to the story. If you are writing a romance and the characters' mundane setting is what they are trying to break away from with their affair, then it is important the reader understands ...

Though the question title mentions scene level, the start of the question is about fiction categories. To flesh out the list of categories in the original question, Laura Whitcomb, in Your First Novel, mentions these categories of fiction: Armchair Mystery - general mystery, but with less sex and violence and milder language Chick-Lit - not a traditional ...

...it looks rude? I have never heard of italics being called "rude." Your friend is full of it. Both your examples are perfect exactly as they are. The first one is a brief interior monologue, set off by formatting. The second uses italics for emphasis. Single quotes (or single inverted commas) are, as you correctly stated, used for nested quoted material ...

In this case I would say you have it pretty well balanced. The whole point of her checking the news is to see if anyone else noticed the Earthquake, so seeing what's on the news works well. There's just enough there to give us a feel for it and so we can all fill it in with the same old day-to-day news we're all familiar with. All in all, I think you've ...

I think it absolutely depends on the type of story, and on the writer's goals. If you're writing a romance, and it takes place in a mundane office building, why waste space on describing the cubicles? If the setting doesn't advance the characters or the plot, gloss over it. On the other hand, if you're writing something set in another world, and you want ...

When I'm writing well, I don't think deliberately about MRUs. They end up in my writing anyway, but I don't think explicitly about needing a motivation or needing a reaction. But when I'm stuck, I find MRUs really useful. I map out a few plausible "motivations" and a few plausible reactions, maybe a few more subsequent motivations and reactions. After a few ...

For starters, avoid getting into details. This is true generally, and even more so during battle. People are moving quickly! It is no time for details. I've read a battle-scene where the author described specific attacks, and the impression I had was that the fighting was happening in slow motion. With classical music in the background. Really slow music. ...

I found thinking about Scene/Sequel helpful in learning to avoid pointless scenes, both while revising and during outlining. If you want to read more about it, definitely check out the book he got it from, Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, and also Jack Bickham's Scene & Structure. It does seem formulaic, but that can be helpful when ...

I'm just an amateur writer, but a seasoned soldier. If I were to write a combat or battle scene, I think I would probably try to describe the calamity of battle. Confusion sets in very quickly when you lose the initiative in a fight. At that point, there is a good deal of sensory overload. Training kicks in and fighting become an instinctive struggle for ...

How do you explain anything vividly? Observe with all your senses, and add emotions and thoughts. Do the research. I will express hope that you have not personally been in a war scene, so you would have to find some other way of observing, or use your imagination. You could watch combat footage or news reports of war, you could interview veterans, you could ...

Mary lowered her eyes. Should she really look up again. She wasn‘t sure. Was she prepared for that? Her heart pulsed like crazy. She had to do it. Now! Or it would be too late. With all the braveness she has left, she looked up. And there she still saw it: His bright smile, his warmful eyes. Yes, he was looking at her. The best day of her life! Mary lowered ...

Gritty details go a long way, so I would recommend not dwelling on them too much. I feel like it would be more realistic for someone in a battle to be focused on fighting and staying alive, rather than witnessing all the atrocities happening around him. There's an old adage along the lines of "after the first shot is fired, all battle plans go out the ...

I am no expert, but I do not think it is a hard and fast rule. As far as I have noted, the Scene/Sequel structure is used with the sole intention of driving the novel forward. This subsequent following of a Proactive scene (Scene) by a Reactive Scene (Sequel) is most of the time used to raise stakes. In a thriller, the Reactive scenes are shorter because a ...

How did your education propose that you prepare a project before sitting down to write it? I mean rather than using notecards, how did you define the plot? Scenes obviously dominate screenwriting. So it's likely a crossover from that. Calling the events that happen in one time & place a "scene" is just a handy metaphor, and I'd be surprised if it had an ...

During college, with my professor's permission, I re-adapted a short story that I'd read to be from the point of view of another character, changing elements of the story. It was a great exercise for my writing skills and proved to be one of the best things I've ever written. Without substantially changing the story so that the original author couldn't ...