I'd recommend reading Dracula too. I think that novel works because it's about slow-building horror, not heart-pounding terror.
Silver earrings? Easy to find, and ongoing torture until the vampire speaks.
The "dots" are full stops or periods, depending on which dialect of English you speak. They tell us when a sentence ends (along with ! and ?, both...
People usually have two natural hands, so of course readers are going to default to that. Similarly, I won't picture the character in a wheelchair...
This has nothing to do with what's important to the story. If these physical characteristics are that unimportant, then don't mention them. My...
To my mind, every physical characteristic that is going to be mentioned later should be mentioned up front, because otherwise the reader may form...
I agree with your reader here. The problem isn't that the character is black. The problem is that you described them a bit, and from then on the...
It's the complete opposite of that; the more gender equality there is, the bigger the gap becomes:...
But, presumably, the writer is allowed to identify as whatever sexuality, race or sex they want? It reminds me of the "women in tech" event that...
That's not what it means at all, though. The establish part doesn't refer to the establishment in general, but to an established church, i.e. a...
If I paste together the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, changing all of the full stops to commas, do I win? Sentences should be the...
In any story, every word has to earn its place. What purpose would the technobabble serve? By all means have a character use technical terms to...
I recently watched Harold Lloyd's Safety Last with one of my daughters. I wondered whether a black-and-white film without sound would go down well...
Separate names with a comma.