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.
Filters (None)
I am writing a non-fiction, somewhat historic, book and I want to dedicate it to a person who did pioneer work on Education in Science in Brazil. She has passed away recently and was professionall...
I'm writing my own fantasy novel and the way I want it to end is with the villain showing his humanity to the hero, begging for mercy, and when the hero is about to spare him the villains stabs him...
Good morning, This morning I have found an ad about a new TV serie, "See", which plot is quite similar (blind civilization with sighted-rare members, although environment and background is differe...
In my ongoing effort to weed out every beginner-related problem I might have before I write my novel (what do you mean? I'm not delaying at all), I have now come to a dreaded area: dark protagonist...
Please help me understand various approaches towards developing an essay about issues of society (like women's empowerment, child education, sanitation, Global Warming, etc.). Specifically, I want...
I am wondering if how we name a version of a spacecraft differs from how we name a version of a software. For software, I usually see things like "2.0.32.32" or something like that and sometimes th...
I think I read somewhere that when writing, you shouldn't describe characters by their characteristics i.e. The tall man walked across the room Is this true? Maybe I'm misremembering
I have a story in mind which I am confident will fit a three-act structure very well. However, I am uncertain about the exposition that I have been writing, as it feels a bit stifled, almost as tho...
Essentially, I want to change: Managing a lot of people is a very difficult problem to: Lot of people, difficult problem I understand that when you shorten a title, it will become more vagu...
I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English. I have time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. None of the kids speak anything but English (aside from a few...
One of the characters in my book feels the need to protect a woman she barely knows and later on it will be revealed that they have a magical which causes the character in question to want to prote...
The answers provided here are quite helpful, but they don't address a particular concern that I have. What if I'm not in the US? Where do I pay tax? Do I have to pay tax in the US and in my home co...
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...
In this answer, Mark Baker makes a statement about story: All story ideas are basically a variation on one thing. A man (or woman, or child, or small furry animal) has two desires, both of which h...
Is there a "right" way to interpret a novel? If so, how do we make sure our novel is interpreted correctly? I have been told that there's no way of interpreting the true meaning of a book written b...
Character POV My interactive novel has Old Cop, Young Cop protagonists with different skillsets, backgrounds, observation of details, etc. The POV switches between them using 3rd-person limited. B...
Suppose I'm a local publisher. If I want to translate a book, print it and sell translated copies, how much should I propose to pay to the copyright holder? Is there some acceptable percentage of b...
In my novel, the protagonist is divorced and moves from London to another city in Britain. The setting is 2013. The protagonist is depressed and stressed out; in real life, such a person would see...
Be it Mowgli and balu singing Bare Necessities or Enrique singing Somebody's Me, each song (or poem) has their way of being sung. Were such songs written after selection of musical note, tone, and ...
Recently I've stumbled across China Miéville's novels. Apparently, they fit in a genre called Weird Fiction, or to be even more specific New Weird, where the "new" is used to distinguish new writer...
How can I make a side character's tangibility open to interpretations so the audience is unsure if she's even real? My short story is about identity. My main character is being pressured by a frie...
I know it normally takes several months to get an agent and then a contract. But are there any shortcuts, any particular companies that one can submit to directly and get a much faster evaluation? ...
I'm writing a thesis about the Accords by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS). If I put a table exactly from the Accords, I write in the table note "Source: BCBS (year)". If I start...
I currently spend a good deal of time over at Code Review and I would love to improve the quality of the reviews I write. Can you give me any insight into the structure or approach you use when wri...
sorry if this has already been asked. But how are course or class names written in fiction (both prose and screenplay)? For example, if someone has a second-level algebra course on their schedule, ...
Argumentative paragraphs often contain a topic sentence that states the main point, and the main point tends to be supported by multiple arguments that are introduced throughout the paragraph as Fi...
I've got a story published in print with limited circulation. From what I can tell, my first publication rights are spent. I like this story and I want to make it available to more people, so I'm ...
I'm struggling trying to write a scene (fiction novel). I want to know if it would be confusing to write it this way: Paul shook his head, yanked away. “Sure it is, Mike. You left me there,” he...
So far in my WIP, which is a “journey” story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that they’re displaced and trying to return home. I’ve arrived at a poin...
Should a setting go into the gritty details of the horrible things that happen to show how awful they are? (Torture, brutal violence, rape, etc)? Or does grimdark work better when its subtle and le...
My partner and I usually enjoy role-playing together in free-form. I was thinking perhaps we could convert one of our role-plays into a book and publish it online. I wanted to ask if there are any ...
So I saw Over Plotting My Story this morning, and I thought "Am I making the same mistake?" If so I'd rather fix it soon than later. I then did a search for multiple plot branches and found Are sub...
I want to create a believable conversation between a character who speaks Mandarin and English and a character who speaks English but does not speak Mandarin. Basically, the Mandarin speaker is sup...
In my story, I have found myself in somewhat of a pickle: Although the hero is more than powerful enough to defeat a villain (which is your typical 'Dark Lord’) I don't think my protagonist is read...
I'm trying to write torture scenes but I'm not really all that confident about it since I've never written anything like it before and have never really witnessed anything violent. I know the metho...
A beta reader of sorts (cousin) mentioned he thought my MC2 rather brutal in her capture of MC1 - though justified. I have her dupe him into surrendering (believing himself outnumbered and outgun...
I was approached by a science magazine to write a long-form critical essay, and I gave them a 6000-word piece with extensive endnotes. After two months of being with the editorial team it comes bac...
Sometimes, I have trouble coming up with a way to end a description properly, especially one that's at the very end of a chapter. What are some of the things you can do, especially when the descrip...
This question is about genre and reader expectations. I'm not trying to change my story to fit a mainstream genre. I have already taken steps to broaden it's appeal, but it's too late to create an ...
My MC is a famous singer/songwriter who is bad at writing lyrics. Her goal is to write commercially successful, deep, serious songs. How do I design the character arc in relation to this goal? Also...
I often hear that a writer should not write something that is not tightly linked to the plot. "If you can narrate it without it, drop it from your story" - that's what I see. However, is it really...
In every country, some names are particularly common: 'John' in the UK, 'Juan' in Spain, 'Ivan' in Russia. Those names are common almost to the point of being stereotypical (consider 'John Doe'). ...
More specifically, how can one write a novel that examines or even argues against cultural moral values and laws without... dealing with legal fallout as the author? I realize this may be asking t...
Is selling individual chapters a valid marketing scheme? Is there anything against it or examples where it worked to sell a whole novel?
Sometimes exposition is just necessary. Although there's plenty of youtube videos with examples in films of exposition done right, I'm struggling to find good examples of written exposition. I te...
So, with the recent craze in waifu games, I've decided to try my hand at making one. I have a semi-intricate plot with twists, and some events planned with their own snippet of story. Problem is, I...
I want to be able to correctly categorise and identify different characters in a story, predominantly fiction. I have read a lot about different types of characters--flat, round, static, dynamic, p...
Note: This question deals exclusively with personal stakes (what the character could lose). It does not deal with public stakes (what the world of the novel could lose). In my mind, there are t...
I ask mostly out of curiosity. Obviously, a proper cookbook would involve real ingredients and not fantasy creatures. There's such a cookbook for Skyrim and Lord of the Rings. What I am curious abo...
I'm a chef. I'm also a writer. It's inevitable that I would want to write a cookbook. In fact I've probably started a dozen that I just never got around to finishing. Partly because I'm not sure ho...
