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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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...
A CEO moves next door to a 3rd year college student who babysits and tutors for a rich family to keep the rent paid in her expensive apartment. It seems strange for a CEO, who probably has a ton of...
I have learned over the past fifteen months of writing fiction that every scene needs to have tension and advance the plot. This is good. But, I find that as I read my novel (again and again) to ...
My protagonist is an immortal person that’s powerful enough to end all with but a thought. She has amnesia due to overusing her power when she recreated the world. The amnesia part is very importa...
I'm a big fan of ongoing stories and longer series. But one thing I've noticed about my writing (and a lot of the works I read/watch) is that as a story goes on, the tone gets progressively darker...
The world is surrounded by an alternate realm called the spirit world. Humans existed as separate physical entities, but maintain an attachment to the spirit realm due to their connection with god....
This is what I keep hearing but no one seems to be able to provide an explanation. Is it because 2.99 is high enough to be make the book respectable while 0.99 is low enough to make it easy for peo...
I’ve heard from some authors that setting your book at a low price without making it clear that it is a sales/giveaway price tends to devalue your work and makes people assume that it is of low qua...
I have a character who is a seasoned CIA agent and is part of the task force that is bringing in my MC. I have another character, a semi retired assassin who was one of my MC’s instructors. I wan...
In my story, I have four important people (1 Protagonist and his friends). All four play a major part in dealing with the main conflict. Initially they do not know each other. They meet after a ser...
I have a problem; my natural writing style is very high-brow. It often utilizes complex, flowery language. Much of the time, however, I find that it gives the impression that I am but taking a simp...
I'm writing a fantasy novel. The story takes place in England (1900's) No matter how much I research I'm unable to move forward in naming my characters. For example, When we look at all the charact...
My characters are well read and some like to recite poetry. My MC is particularly fond of Paradise Lost and is known to quote a few lines here and there. In one scene he is thinking some of the li...
In my story, I have this world that is referred to as the chaos realm. A quick Google search gives me results for World of Warcraft (although only in the form of a mod apparently), War Hammer and M...
My good guys murder people. They slowly carve runes onto them to help defeat the bad guys. Sure they try to use "society's worst" people for the rituals, but realistically that doesn't always happe...
OK; I'm obsessed with Toonami and their event Trapped in Hyperspace features the computer virus antagonist Swayzak, who I base almost all my computer virus characters on. Swayzak behaves like a on...
I'm using an unknown primary source quote in my document. Harvey references it in this book: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=a2hnAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y However does not cite it. How do I cit...
I am a new-ish author. I've written a lot of books, but they've never been published. Anyway, for this new book I'm about to write the first scene is a flash-forward to the end of the book. I reall...
In my story, Tsidia is a slave who managed to inspire people into making slavery illegal, thus setting her free. Is there a word I can use to describe her status in a way that highlights she was th...
I use a pseudonym and was wondering what the decorum is for setting up a book signing or for signing some in-store copies if I happened to stumble across them. I assume the stores have some minor ...
My MC is an assassin by trade and has a military background - sniper, Special Ops, etc. He was raised partly by his sister after their parents died in a car accident. He normally listens to her as ...
This might sound silly, but I am trying to make one of my characters British and I have a hard time portraying that idea on paper. My novel is set in a fantasy land, nothing like this world and I a...
I don't mean "sitting down to write", I mean the literal beginning. The story itself starts with my protagonist running. I need to get him to run, then I'll have the rest of it sorted. But won't st...
I hate listening to silence while I write, so I usually end up listening to music, but then I lose my focus. I don't really like classical or lo-fi that much and they don't help me concentrate on ...
I am writing a novel with two stories simulatenously running alongside each other. That is, on each page there is a main story, taking the body of the page, and there is a 'side story' which runs a...
I won't get into all the details, but my book is about four characters that realise that the universe isn't what it seems. They fight for power against someone who has held a long-standing dictator...
I want to write a fantasy novel. I have the story(Only the main conflict) but I'm unable to make any progress. My question is in novel writing what are all the things you do before literally start ...
This statement is an introduction to the review of related literature chapter for my case study at school. Maybe presents is a better word for accounts, but that's it? The style is OK for a formal...
My question is, are there any good rules on how to vary your sentence length/structure to keep your writing interesting? Eg. start out with shorter sentences and then start to lengthen the sentenc...
I am new to this group but not new to writing in many forms... I have a great story that flows from my fingers -- got it to about 1500 words - but it must be 1000 for a competition. This has take...
In my book I've made up a card game where I've already thought out the rules. Now I want some of the characters playing this game. My questions are: Should the reader know the rules? If I want t...
In course of joining a friend of mine during her NaNoWriMo escapades, I tried myself at actually writing a story set in a world I'm building. I've found there are certain rules when writing a nove...
I am holding a book (novel) which I wish to cite, and I believe it has a typo. I do not know whether the typo was a spelling mistake in the original manuscript, or introduced during print. Other ed...
When you have your audience go through your work, whether it's written fiction, a movie, a video game or whatever, you want them to ask themselves certain questions, which you want to answer as the...
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'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...
Lots of writers give writing advice -- but why do they so often contradict each other? For example, some say that "good writing is rewriting", while others (like Dean Wesley Smith) say that rewrit...
Ok, so I currently have a visual novel (For those who do not know, it's a video game that's almost all story. The character may have a few choices in the matter, but most of it is about watching th...
I've been writing a story, and recently someone came to me and said the characters are very similar to a couple of the ones in Leigh Bardugo's Six of Crows, I myself read the series which inspired ...
I am making a dramatic monologue for a school project in this my character has committed a murder and during talking to his brother lets it slip but in a no direct way (straight up saying I killed ...
So I'm wondering if this supporting character, who I use for exposition purposes, can be made more vital in some way. When does a supporting character become necessary for the plot? What criteria d...
I have already searched any tips about writing essay and paper, and it still abstract tips like researching, creating your own thesis statement, and so on. I even cannot create a good paragraph. So...
When writing a novel, authors generally don't want the reader to know how things will end. This is especially true of mystery novels, but obviously applies to any creative story. (A few stories sho...
Hi more experienced writers than I, I have been struggling to figure out how to outline a story (script) I am writing to put all my ideas together. I would like to make an Anthology where it start...
My novel has approximately a dozen women in it, but they don’t tend to talk to each other. Most of them are separated geographically or philosophically and sitting down for a chat does not seem som...
Writing a book is only half the job. Selling it is the other half. So I was curious, what are good practices to sell your book? To sell all your copies. To make a demand higher than supply. Many w...
Writing an answer to another question, I stumbled upon a quote from The Hobbit: Bilbo rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered - this was the most awkward ...
I work full time as a writer and a friend and long time collaborator of mine has asked whether I can help co author their book. This job would entail two or three evenings a week on top of my job....
Style is a manner of address, an honorific that comes with a noble title. For example, HM Elizabeth II is addressed "Your Majesty". In a fantasy setting that does not pretend to be Europe, I have ...
