Recent content by goldhawk

In this case, the computer was wrong. Grammar correcting software often thinks all cases of "to be" are in the passive voice. They have a long, long way to go to match a good editor.

Yup, too often it is laziness. And children often give other children derogatory nicknames. It's not until they learn some manners do they stop. Choosing a character's name does involve knowing some of her background. Unless you just want a name that sounds right to you.

I'm sorry to say this but that's a cop out. Who decided they were outcasts? How did they find out? Were they called derogatory names every where they went? What were those names? Humans are social animals and seek each other out, especially children. Saying they were loners does not mean they...

First some advice on creativity: Strive for excellence, not perfection. Strive for distinctiveness, not originality. Both perfection and originality are far too rare to make a living on them. :) Stories are not about plot. They are not about characters. They are not about a world. They...

What's her shorten name? What did her parents call her? What did her siblings and friends call her? Did she have a nickname? Did she like it? Names are complicated by society. What people are call has as much to do with people around them as their formal name.

Or pregnant. BTW, male seahorses get pregnant.

I don't either...providing they fit into the story. I don't see that here. I see them as fitting into the setting but not the theme. And handing off the role of antagonist is tricky. It has to be done gracefully and smoothly or the reader will experience a WTF? moment.

Even more thoughts. It seems to me that there are 3 antagonists in the story: the pixies, the forest, and the monster. Since the struggle of the protagonists is about finding a balance of obligation, I can't see how a forest can act as an antagonist to that. As for having the pixies as the...

Why a fight? Isn't being lost in the woods enough? I'm thinking the protagonist should be the personification of the theme and the antagonist should be the personification of the counter-theme. But you have the two protagonists acting as the counter-theme to each other. So why do you need a...

Actually, you would measure heights with a knotted rope, each knot tied at one span. And people did build stable buildings using these methods. They just use the same rope for every measurement.

Long distances are measured in leagues, that is, how far a person (or a horse) can walk in an hour. Short distances in paces. Heights are measured in arm-spans, the distance between the outstretched arms of a person. Rope is also measured in spans. Cloth is measured in spans, the distance from...

Midsummer's Day is the Summer Equinox in Europe.

Getting calendar correct in our world is hard enough. You should research other calendar systems. Some interesting things about our world's calendars. Before the Julian calendar, dates were often recorded as the year from the start of the reign of the king. When a new king was coroneted, the...

In The Lord of the Rings, Sauron is never a active character. He works only behind the scenes. One does not need to introduce the Big Bad at all. In fact, he is scarier if he never makes an appearance.

Always start with a conflict of some type. For example, the first chapter of The Lord of the Rings is about a minor conflict between Bilbo and his neighbours. But because of the conflict, people don't realize it's an infodump on hobbits. The only part of the entire first chapter that has...