General Q&A about the craft of professional writing, editing, and publishing. Questions about all types of writing are welcome -- fiction, technical documentation, scholarly articles, poetry, scriptwriting, blogs, and more.
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I have seen many blog post authors who tend to write a short teaser to present to the reader and keep them keen on reading more about the topic. Some bloggers tend to write a teaser with respect to...
Always Chaotic Evil denotes an entire species in a fictional setting as outright evil - no matter how one treats them, they reward kindness with treachery and violence. Frequent recipients of this ...
A character looks at another character, skin colour creates certain associations. A character looks at himself, and associations would be shaped by society, and by what is "normal" in that society....
I would like to followup on this excellent question which outlined differences among works for children, middle-grade, and young-adult. What are some clear differences in theme/story between child...
When I first learned about the "show don't tell" guideline, I believe it applied to everything. I have now learned there are many grey areas, like for example exposition, and that the most importan...
It feels like there is something wrong with using impersonal descriptions in fiction. But what is it? As an example, I'm unhappy with the following passage I wrote, because the descriptions are...
I'm currently on the fourth draft of a novel I'm writing, which features two protagonists. One of them, is, in my mind, black. I say, "in my mind" because at no point in the story do I ever explici...
I'm working on a novel that will have at least three distinct sections in three distinct locations (the two main characters start in the first location, travel through the second location, and one ...
I have my first draft more-or-less complete, and I've been working on editing it now. There is one big problem: I hate editing I find editing to be so draining. I'll open up a chapter to edit and ...
When I'm reading something, I immediately pick up on typos, grammatical errors, misuse of punctuation, and the like, as well as better ways to phrase things. I have no formal education in any sort ...
I'm writing a script that shows a speaker interacting with their audience. The speaker finishes speaking and the audience reacts. I wrote it like this. Loud CHEERS from the audience. I'm wonderin...
I am currently writing a story about eleven college friends and a child. I don't want to just introduce them as "The Jock" or "The Delinquent," and I don't want to do a dry listing of "this is who...
I am contemplating writing a fictional character [nerd] who speaks in a pop culture references. I appreciate this question somewhat overlaps Referencing modern pop culture in science fiction The ...
I'm currently working on a team based story with a lot of characters and am looking for ways to really make their personalities stand out from one another. When I'm writing out their character pro...
My experience tells me that a disproportionate number of wannabe writers are prudes. I recently wrote a scene where a female character is watching TV. The build up is complicated so I'll have to ex...
I'm trying to understand the technical difference between DITA and S1000D. Yes, I know, the common wisdom is that if you need documentation for helicopter or submarine, you should use S1000D, and ...
Dark protagonists. Heroes who are evil, pure flaws, or exhibiting only weakness or darkness, rather than strength or light. There is one basic assumption I would like to make about such characters:...
I want to add a perverted character to my story (don't ask why), a bit like Master Roshi from Dragon Ball or Minoru Mineta from My Hero Academia. However, I want to make them more sympathetic and g...
I am writing a science fiction story (actually a screenplay for a film, but I imagine that for the purposes of this question the same rules apply) and I have been told that it isn't really science ...
I sometimes post photos on my blog, like when I'm blogging about food. I've been shrinking the huge pictures my phone takes down to a size that fits more reasonably in a browser window -- my brows...
I'm having trouble finding and sticking to one word to indicate whatever value the user intends to use with my instructions. For example: Select your preferred printer. I'm wondering what s...
In many works of genre-fiction (I'm talking mainly about fantasy and sci-fi, but others genres can apply), and across many forms of media, the main characters ends up being special in some ways. M...
The source language in question is Standard Chinese. It is a gender-neutral language. One big thing that English speakers complain about English is the gendered pronoun, namely the third person sin...
Related questions: Should an author have one website or two? As an new author, how important is to have a personal website? Pros and Cons: A blog to get feedback A possible duplicate of, even i...
I'm trying to correctly refer to several calls. Meaning, in a singular call, we invite several proposals. Therefore, it's a call for proposals. In the case I need assistance with, my gut tells me ...
I'm working on a novel of my own and, looking back at the bits of it I have so far brought into light, that almost everything in it is dialogue. Is this a bad thing? How could I fix this if it is?
While writing blog post mostly on technical articles, I often come to dilema that does my post is too detailed for reader eventually they will skip further reading due to complexity or is it too s...
I've written a book. My question is if it is in bad {taste, karma, policy} to use an analogy that is disrupting to the reader's stream of consciousness. The quote in question is this: Like a b...
You see this a lot in video games: a silent protagonist who can somehow communicate with the rest of the world with seemingly no or few words. Usually, it's hand-waved away by simply assuming from ...
I thrive off of formulas. I don't do well with brainstorming or figuring out how things in my stories should happen, but I can make a lot of progress if there's a one-size-fits-all formula which ca...
Say I create a copyrighted written work, is there a license I can apply to that same work that will allow a third party to create and copyright a derivative work? Is there an existing license or co...
Note: I'm primarily asking this question because while Surtsey, the original asker of the question didn't actually ask a thing (and instead copy-pasted an excerpt of a novel) I believe it's a worth...
Here's my question: can you pitch an outline of a novel to an agent? I.e. you have two to three chapters complete to a high standard and at full outline of the rest. Would any agents agree to re...
I'll explain my question by citing what was done on the TV show Dexter. Halfway through an episode (Season 4, episode 4, 'All in the Family') two established characters (one of them being Deborah)...
I struggle with forming full-fledged ideas. I'll come up with a snippet of an idea, have a hard time fleshing the idea out, and then lose interest before the idea becomes an actual story concept. ...
My story takes place in a relatively near future setting where gender stereotypes have become a thing of the past. Unlike a recent question on another site, physiological sex-specific traits are st...
I've read the answers to this question but they focus on getting ideas written down pretty much as they occur, that's not my issue, I have both digital and analog methods for doing so with me at al...
I want to write a very short book of 100 pages. I want to put into it what I've suffered throughout my life: Hardships, failures, disappointments.... as an inspiration that, despite hardships, I su...
When writing a series of fiction books in which characters, universe, and events are closely related, is it a common practice in English publications to provide a footnote kind of reference, for ex...
I'll start with a clear example. You are writing an essay about the film The Wizard of Oz. Following the rules of titles, you put the film title in italics whenever you use it. But then you use t...
Inspired by this question, a more complex question: how can I have two simultaneous sequences of footnotes? For example, suppose I am translating a book. The book contains footnotes, numbered in s...
I have found some similar questions here but they were about the difference between Abstract and Introduction without the Conclusion. So, what difference between Abstract, Introduction from one s...
What makes a battle scene tense and visceral is the immediate danger and the fast-paced action and reaction. For that, the human soldier needs to be on the battlefield, in the action. Here's the p...
I am writing a extra-terrestrial high fantasy novel. The story is completely set in an alien world. No visits from Earth and no visits to Earth. My characters are humanoids, who look like elves...
(EDITED TO MAKE IT LESS BROAD AND MORE CLEAR). I recently asked a question about if I really need to include scientific proof for my mostly-non-scientific post-apocalyptic novel, and the best answ...
Context: I'm among a growing number of people who are becoming dissatisfied with Stack Exchange. In some ways (not all, but some), Stack Exchange's behaviour is analogous to "curation without rep...
The novel I'm writing is third-person limited POV in style. This means that the narration's coverage is limited to what the POV character can observe, think, feel, while others' thoughts, feelings,...
I feel like the title is worded really bad, but I seem to be unable to find a better way. I am not a native speaker. Scenario A: A character is in an exceptional state of mind (i.e. drug use etc.)...
I would like to quote a few lines of a lyric from St. Vincent's song "New York", for an 'in memoriam' I want to put in a newspaper on the anniversary day of my friend's death. Do I need to get perm...
I try to write on various Q&A sites, but now I am thinking about having my own blog website. The main thing is that I don't know exactly what my niche topics would be for blogs. I write on vari...
