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 want to describe my first person perspective character who's narrating without doing the Wattpad "mirror scene." How would I go about this?
I start writing a short story, I'm loving it. If I didn't love it, if I didn't want to tell it, I wouldn't be writing it. I finish the first draft, I still love it, and am so proud of completing i...
One of the biggest obstacles I've encountered learning Chinese is the incredibly dull and boring textbooks. Yes, the grammar in them is important, but it's so boring! Typical writing reads like: ...
Faith is defined as a belief in God based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof. Religion and science can be seen to oppose one another due to conflicts between people of those practices. In ...
The Spy is a Netflix series about Israeli spy and hero Eli Cohen. In a recent interview, Eli's widow Nadia expresses great dissatisfaction with the series: a lot of changes were made, ostensibly to...
The person in question, though this is yet unknown, is not actually a person. Instead, they are some form of eldritch being of which we cannot comprehend. Though, they seem for all appearances and ...
When I write I often don't have any great meaningful moral to share. I don't have a message that I want to convey to the reader. I often don't write about the nature of the battle between good and ...
Every piece of writer's advice I see will include something about "building a following" online, so that a publisher will be more likely to pick you up. The problem is, I don't have any idea how to...
I've seen a few visual novels on Steam and Kickstarter that mentioned how many words they already contain and what they are planning for the final amount. The problem is: I have no idea how those n...
In one scene, I have a conversation between three characters: A, B and C. A's son and B are involved in something illegal. C isn't aware, and since A and B aren't entirely sure she can be trusted, ...
I am considering writing a "history" of the Morlocks (based on the characters in the H. G. Wells novel). Question: Is this allowed, or do I need permission from his descendants?
I find it very hard sometimes to describe a scenery, especially when the features are very bland, like you describe a city where all of the buildings are tall and look about the same or a plain wit...
I'm a self-published author, who is going to get a traditional publishing contract. They say it's my choice, but I have a doubt. I have published a thriller novel, two mystery short stories, and a...
I have just finished a short story, set in what is known as 20 Minutes into the Future - a time frame that's only a little into the future from our own. There is a change from modern times, but it ...
I am writing a visual novel and use a fictional country in "real-world" setting. Some cases have been bothering me and I'm not sure if it's legal to write this because it might be insulting(?): ...
I'm wondering if there is a English writing technique or style I can use to show that the result that appeared is contrary to the expectation of the first-person narrator? (I'm not using garden-sen...
Suppose A is a famous historical character with a known history of emotional attachment with a particular set of people. If I would want to write a fictional story about character A that might invo...
In both my last writing project and my current one, I have found an unexpected problem. Both tales are focused on a single character and their personal journey, but both tales are also set in the m...
Chuck Palahniuk is an author quite well known for writing first-person stories. He has a simple piece of advice for others who wish to do so as well: "Have your narrator say 'I' as little as possib...
I am looking for the representative references on writing style in English that would pre-date Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (possibly in the period between 1750 - 2000). I would like to...
I'm the adviser of a school newspaper that publishes exclusively online now. We have a page dedicated to revisiting the archives of our paper (60 years worth!). I cannot piece together how to prope...
For the last several months, I've had a a professional assignment writing an ongoing series for a well-known website. It was repurposed from a book I wasn't able to sell to a publisher. It's been ...
I am currently working on a story. I would like to publish this on a literary magazine website, and this website has only three categories - fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. My story is probably...
I need to write an opinion, narrative of only 80 words in length. Examples: write about your fondest childhood memory/comment: homework should be banned, etc. How are short-short pieces like this...
I'm writing some short stories that are all connected and are set in the same universe, because I planned to put them together into a novel later. My question is: If I publish those short stories, ...
I would love to have essays reviewed both in terms of quality writing and in terms of its content. I have researched a few sites but this service does not seem to exist.
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...
This question is about hiding from the reader the fact that I am skipping some steps. Worse, perhaps, I don't want to show them, and I may have no clue or intention of figuring out how these steps ...
Here's a critique I've received more than once: "your character talks like a character from a book. He's too eloquent, nobody really talks like that, unless they grew up in a library." Now, to som...
https://fireemblem.fandom.com/wiki/The_Edge_of_Dawn_(Seasons_of_Warfare) The following is the short version of "The Edge of Dawn". Reach for my hand, I'll soar away Into the dawn ...
Is there a better way to introduce acronyms through a dialogue? One way of doing it, is to mention what the acronym stands for at the beginning and then use the acronym afterward, but that's a bit ...
I’m confused about point of view. In my story—so far—I only reveal to the reader what the main character, a child, can see/hear. Not often, but at times, I write that the child “wondered” or he “no...
We all have seen at least one of these clickbaits (or some variation thereof): "single mom discovers the meaning of life with a simple trick" or "billionaires don't want you to know this...
I'm writing a scene in which four characters play a high-stakes poker game. So far my narrator has been an omniscient third person, who just does not wish to enter into the characters' heads. I st...
I'm writing a work which is bookended by a frame story with an unreliable narrator. How do I prevent confusion for the reader when the frame narrator interjects? In the framed story, the character...
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 missed my chance to write for About.Com when it was TheMiningCom and now it's DotDash and seems to be under different rules. Suite101 has become Suite.io (blocked from my work, so that's all I k...
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...
I used the name Primus and Primes for my book and these are from the transformers universe. My concept is totally different. Is this a copyright infringement? I introduced a secret society named ...
I'm going to write a book based on a true story. I want to know if for a book cover I could use real photos of the people who were in that story. They are dead but their pictures are published on ...
In the Bible, the apple is a symbol for knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man and sin. The book itself gave the apple a symbolic meaning. How can you as an author give an object like ...
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...
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...
I am a long time Dungeon Master of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. My games run in a custom world of my own making. However, I utilise a lot of the traditional lore and races of D&D. I'm ...
Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results will be full of long, image-rich blog posts that, somewhere in there, have the actual recipe you were looking for. Many of these ...
(This question is about reading but it pertains to writing as well). I write fantasy, and as a result, I've read a lot of fantasy books that are supposedly the "best," that are beloved by all fant...
English is a language invented by humans, for humans. Which means some words don't fit well when you're writing about characters who aren't human. For example: Suppose I write "The demon tiptoed a...
I was listening to an older episode (2012) of "The Audacity to Podcast", where the host is talking with a copyright/IP Lawyer: https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/tap077-copyright-laws-for-bloggers-an...
So I am trying to write a story for a game. I am more of a systems guy so this is uncharted territory. I try not to follow examples ("make terrible things happen to the characters") but rather the...
How can you write a book from the point of view of a character who is not the main character and introduce the main character later on, who you want the story to focus on? How do I do this in an or...
