Recent content by Malik

He won awards for writing in school and had a degree in English Literature from Cambridge. I guarantee you this was done consciously--at least to the point where he knew exactly what he needed to do to make the voice and framing consistent over five novels. Also, his other books have a similar...

The omniscient narrator knows the entire story; they know what everyone is thinking and doing and feeling. (There's also an unreliable narrator, who may not know key pieces of information. An author might use an unreliable narrator to let you come to "your own" conclusions about the theme and...

CONTINUED: As soon as Mr. Prosser realized that he was substantially the loser after all, it was as if a weight lifted itself off his shoulders: this was more like the world as he knew it. He sighed. “In return for which you will take Mr. Dent with you down to the pub?” “That’s it,” said...

Excerpt from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, without equal the greatest sci-fi portal fantasy series ever written. I've italicized the POV shifts and added the character names in parentheses. Watch the ball and the cups. Ready? Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did...

Nobody else was writing the books I wanted to read.

And if you don't understand these delineations--if you don't know that there are this many First Person voices and at least as many voices in Third Person, probably more--and you switch between them willy-nilly? Your readers are going to know you're an amateur. They won't know why--no reader is...

Thank you. And to reiterate: there are SO MANY DIFFERENT VERSIONS OF FIRST AND THIRD PERSON. You don't just pick one and go. The POV and narrative voice that you choose--because once you choose, you're stuck with it (unless your skills are God-like)--determines the information that your reader...

So, hey, y'all. For those of you who don't know me, I've been here for a minute or two. I have an English degree with a dual concentration in sociolinguistics and the philosophy of language. Also, I had, at the time, the best-selling independent fantasy debut novel in history. I may still hold...

All my books are in Omniscient Third Subjective. The narrator is a character, who either witnessed the story or had it told to them and is now relaying it to you. This means the writing style has to have its own voice separate from the other characters. Done right, Omniscient Third Subjective...

I just plotted an entire series to cover a plot hole in my first series. Worldbuilding IS storytelling. How much worldbuilding is too much? If your readers get bored and tell you so, that's too much. Beta readers are your friends, here.

I forget where I read it, but the quote to live by is, "Reading is breathing in. Writing is breathing out."

My series has a country with gryphons as mounted aerial assets. Recommended reading if I say so myself. ;)

I haven't heard this. It's possible, but the trick is to get exactly the right amount of carbon in your iron for the task at hand. 0.50-0.65% is widely considered ideal; however, the characteristics of 0.50% carbon steel (mild steel) and 0.65% carbon steel (surgical steel) is considerable...

"Always do whatever's next."

And again--please read my earlier (years earlier) posts on this--if there was some kind of super-steel, you wouldn't have medieval martial arts in any form that we'd recognize today. Literally nothing that soldiers developed throughout history would work. You'd need to invent an entirely new...