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'm writing a first person story and the main character will hear a number of odd names said. The odd names will be put into Google and her spelling will be corrected, but I was wondering how to ha...
How would you use "Show Don't Tell" imagery to portray a person who is watching something (an encounter) that makes him 'freeze' in his spot? All I can think of is: He is frozen in his spot as he w...
I am in the process of applying to several graduate school, so I need to write several Statements of Purpose (SOP). English is not my first language and my writing skills are average at best. Are t...
For some reason my writing is really boring. I think its because I write in the character's point of view and I suck at that. How can I fix this?
The main problem for someone moving from non-fiction to fiction is the development of a plot. It is especially frustrating to someone who already knows how to string words together and "write well"...
How does/can proper character development add to the suspense felt in the reader?
I have a friend who is a freelance editor and I was planning on employing her to look over my novel before shopping it out to publishers. However, I don't know if publishers like this or not. Do t...
I am a children's book illustrator. I am hired to illustrate a series of books by the author. The first book has already been illustrated by some other illustrator and published by a publishing hou...
I'm writing a grant in psychology/cognitive neuroscience. I am considering including a fragment of a book at the beginning, to illustrate the question. Regardless of whether this is a good idea, is...
I am writing a book about lions and other African predators. The main focus in the one I am working on is lions, but I do quite often refer to 2 big cats that aren't lions. Those are cheetahs and l...
I am creating a table of contents for a book, and there are 4 ways of splitting information up. The biggest zones are 'Chapters', those can span several pages; these are bold, underlined and in lar...
I've been working professionally as a part-time freelancer journalist for the past couple of years. Over that time I feel I've got a good grasp of how, technically, to construct an engaging piece o...
I've started uploading the books I've written to Kindle Direct Publishing. How can I promote them, on a shoe-string budget?
I'm about to self publish my 2nd book. I promote heavily to my small niche market and often buyers find it on Amazon. If I simply use CreateSpace as my printer, a few hundred at at time, do I HAVE ...
I have found that I've not been able to continue writing a diary on a regular basis. What tips and tricks are there to help improve and foster the habit of regular diary writing?
I am writing a third person story, the opening contains a short tram ride which the main character is on, how can I write such a scene without just writing; The tram moved forward another 100 metr...
A Quick Note I asked if this was an okay topic over on Meta, and they said it should be okay, as long as I "describe the writing-related context -- what you're writing, who (if anybody) you're col...
I am writing about main character, which have multiple personalities. I know how i want to write them, but for reader it can be really disturbing and hard to for orientation. At the same time i wi...
Example: "Exactly." John scratched the nape of his neck. It had a faint, purple blotch I hadn't noticed before. Probably sunburn. "Our lives began in the sea, and will probably end on land....
Hello there. I hope this is not a completely basic question, but I could not find the answer anywhere else. I have written content that a company wants to publish. We have signed a contract that g...
I have a passion for setting. I've heard you should write about what you're passionate about. Now when I say passion I mean I like to visualize the fantastic place the author is describing to form ...
Say I'm from the USA and I write a book and don't publish it yet. Then I send it to a friend in Russia for proof reading, but instead he publishes my book over there under his own name. Am I lega...
I have a homework task which is to write an interior monologue on the character of Syme. For those that have read 1984, I was just wondering if it would be plausible to make his character as someon...
Let's say you have a story about a fictional war on a futuristic world and you already have five chapters going on and you want to keep writing to get to the end but then, you're stuck because you ...
I want your opinion on this: For about half a year now I've researched my novel. Because of situating the story to the part of an original Earth's history, I made my research about history, demogr...
Where are good places to publish everything from flash-fiction to novels or how can I find them? And also, if someone knows about a place which buys fiction or where I can try to sell for a large m...
Examples from my own writing: She smiled kindly. “Maybe I can help you. What are you trying to find?” "Probably," he said apologetically, as if he were personally responsible for t...
How do I write an introduction paragraph when it comes to writing a simple essay for those who have no idea what to write about and I don't have a creative mind? Please explain to me step by step.
I never noticed this in my writing until one of my readers pointed it out: We were driving down the highway in Tom's Toyota 4Runner, dim streetlights passing by, the night city scene fading b...
Exaggeration is a device in humor. On the other hand, you need to care about believably in writing, especially in fiction writing. For example, I'm writing a story where the main character goes to...
What kind of problems (if any) might I have with copyright laws when keeping story notes and some or all of my writing on cloud based storage such as Google drive? How might this affect future publ...
When I was in primary school, I was told to use 1.0-line leading for papers; in secondary school, this jumped to 2.0 lines; in early tertiary school (i.e. college/university), I was told to use 1.5...
Someone told me that if I use my own ISBN on books I publish through Createspace that I would not be allowed to purchase copies of my own book. Though I think this is ludicrous, I would like to kno...
In the text, I have, e.g. "...a major role to play in role-playing (Smith et al., 1990)." But can I use the same abbreviation in the bibliography? Smith, K. et al. 1990. Playing major ro...
I know you can add dialogue to the same paragraph as an action to show who's talking, but what happens when a character is making a speech and it's broken up by actions (hand movements, looking at ...
A lifetime ago I learned about Rudyard Kipling's 5W1H framework: I have six honest serving men They taught me all I knew I call them What and Where and When And How and Why and Who ...
I'm not very sure if it's called "main noun" (sorry, I didn't pay attention in my grammar class). But anyway, here's an example: I decided to start my search at the library. Why? Well, it had m...
The book is being written in Portuguese, would it be bad if the name is in English? The name is just "The Awakening". I prefer the title in English because it sounds better than in Portuguese ("O...
When writing a script where you have two (or more) people talking at the same time, how is that formatted? Side-by-side columns? Some other vertical grouping? Notes? Does it vary? Examples would b...
In replying to this question I thought this would make a good question... This entire site is devoted to giving people advice on their writing, there are a near infinite number of books and magaz...
My first milestone in writing a story is to have a complete, start to finish description of the sequence of events and character actions that comprises the story. However, this isn't enough to get ...
This is how it starts.... Is it grammatically correct for MLA? "Religion" (I'm sure you've all heard of this before). Religion has.....
I have wanted for some time now to write and illustrate a children's book. How realistic is it to self publish? I have no business background in this at all, and would expect to make a loss initial...
So, I am writing a story. I have book 1 done, half of book 2 and of course the ending in book 3. I am not an English major, and I am not at all great with grammar, or using proper English. Which pr...
Okay, which is the proper way of a character asking a question? and why is it better one way vs the other? 1.) "Why is it you always show up when you are not wanted?" he asked. 2.) "Why is it you...
I find myself using these words all the time. Now (<-- there's one!), to be clear the context I'm using them is in conversational style writing, on social commentary, or in forum posts like th...
I'm currently writing a paper on the historical background of the Bond movies. I've found a very interesting piece of information that is only mentioned on Wikipedia. Here are the bibliography de...
Okay, here's the thing. I'll keep it simple. I use double quotes for general dialogues. Single quotes for flashback dialogues and italicized letters for monologues and emphasis words only. The do...
This question has been asked about paying markets, but does anyone know good places for putting up flash fiction just to build readership?
I am considering using the first person for a story I am developing. One of the main benefits of using the first person is the closeness with the reader it generates. However, I am not sure that ...
