Creative Writing - Topics

How much should I pay for a creative writing course before I know if I'm any good? My protagonist is boring and I can't say why — how do you fix a flat character? What separates a writing hobby from actually wanting to be an author? My best story ideas arrive at work and vanish by evening — how do you keep them? NaNoWriMo: 50k words in a month — does that pace actually produce anything readable? My ideas all come from other people's books — is that influence or just stealing? Does outlining kill the discovery draft? What do beta readers catch that a professional editor won't? Building a fictional world religion that readers accept without an info dump Does anyone really write every day — or is the daily word count advice mostly guilt? Why do the same journaling prompts show up on every blog and Pinterest board? Writing prompts feel like homework to me — how do other writers warm up? Where do I submit a short story when I have zero publication credits? Is there a real market for personal essays and memoir — or only genre fiction? How do you write dialogue that doesn't all sound like you talking? How long should a finished draft sit before you start editing it? How do you write an antagonist whose motive isn't cartoon villainy? How much worldbuilding belongs on the page vs in your own notes? How do you write a character whose voice sounds nothing like your own? Show don't tell gets repeated everywhere: what does it actually look like on the page? Cutting a beloved scene because the plot does not need it Free indirect speech vs first person: which one keeps a reader closer? Writing dialogue that still works when it is read aloud Revising a first draft: read it cold or start rewriting line by line? How much research does a historical novel need before the first page? The three-act structure keeps killing my short stories — what should I use instead? Stream of consciousness as a fiction technique vs a private morning exercise First person vs third limited: which makes an unreliable narrator easier? Where to find journaling prompts that are not recycled from the same twenty lists What makes a poem's line break feel inevitable? Workshop feedback said my protagonist is passive: how do I fix that without turning her into a fighter? Writing a place you have never visited without it reading like a travel brochure