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 have been told by my friends that my writing seems a bit blunt in the sense of I rarely practice "Show, Don't Tell" (SDT) in my stories. However, I personally find SDT hard because...I just don't...
I don't have the financial resources to hire a scientific consultant to ask him whether my science-fiction plot is realistic, so I was wondering if there were any resource that teach Quantum Mechan...
Possibly related questions: Should I add racism in my book's world or have my world have no racism? Is accurate human nature required for good writing, even in fantasy scenarios, or with fictiona...
I have heard people say that ‘good stories are educational as well as entertaining’. But how much does it actually matter in the eyes of editors and publishers? For example, if one is writing a sto...
When I'm stumped for a planet name or an organization name or something, I usually search on Google for a free name generator. But are the names in random generators copyrighted? If I used a gene...
Being given a prompt makes me freeze up immediately. Let me clarify. I'm talking about high school writing prompts. You know. Those. The ones that ask you to write an essay about what you would c...
I'm not sure if I would "officially" classify as a discovery writer, but I usually write very freely. I get a bunch of ideas, write them down and try to put them together to create a compelling sto...
Karl is my detective protagonist. His girlfriend, Jenna, is with him. He is hospitalized, and his boss, Rob Tucker, shows up for a visit. Which example of dialogue is correct? In true first person,...
This is a problem I usually come across with my stories. I often worry about whether the plotlines I introduce are realistic or not, and it's usually something that can't be solved with a simple Go...
I've been writing an autobiography about sexual abuse that happened to me throughout my childhood. The abuser was the dad of a famous singer. Once I was old enough (18) to leave home and file charg...
I'm editing a short story that's been written in the past tense, however at some points I slip up and use a lot of present tense to describe some scenes. Thing is, it's happened often enough that I...
I'm writing a screenplay that incorporates various news shots. I plan to use various news shots as expositions. My story takes place in the future, and I want various news shots that display the to...
In my story the protagonist hears, in a temple ceremony, the reading of a religious/mythological text. Now in the actual story, I don't need the text itself (the role of the text in context, and th...
One of the four forms of love Greek philosophy recognised, Philia is usually translated as "brotherly love". It is the love between true friends. It was considered a "higher form" of love than Eros...
If you look up the exact definition for "pyromancy" or "necromancy" they refer to divination using fire and the dead, respectively. However, if you were to ask a layperson what those words mean, t...
I often see place or species names shortened in scientific journal articles and would like to know what the correct protocol is. Can I shorten "Gough Island" to just "Gough"? Or "leatherback turtle...
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 one of my novels (it's a middle grade fantasy novel) the chapters average around 2,000 words. But the final climactic chapter is currently almost 7,000 words. I am considering splitting it into ...
I have been communicating with three PoD companies. I was considering the first, it has been in business for years and provides a certain number of copies to the author, the rest are sold from th...
I understand that short sentences are a way to build tension. Do long sentences have a defined emotional impact in fiction writing?
A character's name starts with a hard G, as in Gary. Another character (dismissively) calls him by his first initial "G", said with a soft G, as in gee whiz. I've been using the letter G, but it'...
I'm proofreading a novel - the brief has instructed that I do not make any stylistic changes, and correct only the obvious errors that impede sense/clarity. There are several places where I feel a...
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've met a few of these but the most recent instance was two characters discussing buying a third character a drink when they all got home, on the first reading this is a simple moment of comradery...
I'm reading KM Weiland's Creating Character Arcs. In it, she lists: Questions to Ask About the Thing the Character Wants and the Thing the Character Needs How is the Lie holding your ch...
I have the following sentence: Once they realize they have no chance of defeating you, they'll end up joining you. I feel this sentence may come across as a bit "cocky" because I would want t...
everyone! I'm just an English learner now, but I intend to use English in my career. I suppose everyone knows requirements to pass one of common English tests. Also I wish I became a student of a ...
I would like to use the title of a TV sitcom in the title of my book. How do I find out if this is without legal ramifications?
What is the difference between "topic-based authoring" and "modular authoring"? As I know, there are two well-known authoring approaches: Narrative authoring; Topic-based authoring (see link abo...
When I have some personal problems in relationships or there are worrying issues about life in general and I am really upset about the situation, in order to “solve it”, or efficiently think about ...
I had started writing my novel in the first person. Later on, I planned some plot twists along the way. For these plot twists to happen, the protagonist shouldn't be aware of the consequences/int...
Currently, I'm running into an issue with constructing a scene in third person in which the POV character is having a conversation with his mother. Since it's third person, I can't just be like "Mo...
It feels to me like it is up to the author to choose what words will fit more properly. Does it become a paraphrase?
As I've already mentioned, I'm working on a sci-fi novel. One of the main feelings that I wanted to represent when I started is the sense of a vast, empty, artificial world, mostly cold and uncar...
If I were to describe Waterloo from Napoleon's point of view, it would be very different from that same battle from the point of view of a soldier, or even a cavalry lieutenant in the front ranks. ...
I have recently grown interested in the idea of writing a litRPG novel where each two days I will publish a chapter describing a single day of the main character and at the end of the day the reade...
Can someone please tell me what's the pen used here in the below URL called? It looks like a Gel pen, but the text written with it is so sharp: https://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Handwriting
I structured my plot, designed the path to the climax, listed my characters and even outlined some scenes. Then halfway through I got stuck: one minor transition scene just did not make sense. The ...
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...
I have a story I'm writing which has a villain that, in order to make him more human/developed, I gave him a relatable, tragic and/or disturbing life story, gave him plenty of reasons to be who he ...
I’m a beginner writer planning on learning how to write webcomics. My main one is an adventure/fantasy webcomic and the other is a card battle webcomic (I draw a lot of inspiration from anime and m...
A lot of people have been asking for some feedback about their poem/story. In an attempt to help find them a website, I couldn't. I googled feedback for writing however I didn't find any websites w...
Is it a large seamless novel chopped up into several parts, or is it a collection of independent novels with recurring characters?
English is not my native one, but I can talk and write with it, but maybe not as well as I would like to. Many readers have told me that my stories I wrote are really good, but still, I make some g...
I am writing a story but I am trying to indent the dialog because right now it looks like a chunk of text. My text is Then a figure under the box moved behind Professor to which John yelled “P...
I am writing a textbook, in where, just for fun, I would like to present the concepts as if I were telling a story. Again, just for fun, I would like for the writing to sort of emulate an ancient w...
I'm working on a novel which is based on a true story. I first thought of writing from the heroine's POV, but later changed my mind and introduced a pet in the plot as the narrator of the story. Wh...
As a writer who occasionally gets published in journals and anthologies, I get asked for an "author's bio," usually with a limit of 50 or 100 words. I have a few things that I include but always fe...
There is a problem as stories progress (especially in never-ending web novels) where the cast of characters keep growing. Some webnovels I follow are in the hundreds! Is there a technique for auth...
