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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My goal is to introduce the reader to a ‘wonderful’ fantasy world with an underdog main character full of panache…and delve into the constraints and debilitations of living in such a highly stratif...
Just wondering if I sent a manuscript to an publisher based in lets say the states, would I need to live in the states for my manuscript to be considered?
I'm trying to flesh out a character in my book that is basically a "town rowdy" that takes sport in antagonizing people, especially the main character. At this point I'm having a hard time making h...
I looked at a few questions regarding time lapse, but I didn't find one that helped. In my story I skip parts of the life of my main character, because they don't drive the plot, but of course wri...
I am currently writing a war story written from different perspectives on both sides of the conflict. Every primary character of the story has their own side story with a family, life, etc., yet th...
I'm struggling with how to present an antithesis in a setting. I understand the definition: NOUN 1.a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else: "love ...
As far as I understood from my readings, relatability seems to be one of the most important aspects of a good story. A relatable character is a character that makes the reader say "I know that feel...
In traditional story structure theory, the ACT 1 is made to set up the world and host the inciting incident, the ACT 2 is made for the main quest and sequence of obstacles, and ACT 3 is made for th...
How close to that do I need to get? I’m sitting around 132. It can be cut, I think, but 120 would be losing major content. Would something in the range of 125-127 be okay?
Example in my own writing: Kazumi didn't reply to her boyfriend---or rather ex-boyfriend's---message. Instead, she stayed at Burger King, reanalyzing Kouta's abandonment over a coffee. No, ...
I enjoy writing short stories very much, even though it is only a hobby for me, and I never gave thought towards publishing anything. I find that it's a good way to be productive with my time. The...
I use Latex for writing articles/papers/longer documents. Most of these documents are scientific in nature, and therefore it is often useful to add an index of the most important terms at the end o...
I am not certain of convention. Is one of the two of these correct? Or are they equivalent? Jane said, "Let's chase the ball." Jack looked at her in disbelief. "We always chase the bal...
My chapters are usually 10 or so pages long, but I've been reading this one book with chapters as small as 2 pages. Does this affect the story progression at all?
I've decided that this novel would work best as a first person POV, and I generally wouldn't like to give that up. However, toward the end of the book, there's a series of scenes where the main cha...
I have a friend who has almost completed a book. She belongs to a local writer's group, and has told me a person in this group that bills themselves as an editor says they can edit her work for $30...
Take this example: scene 1: int. - day Bruce - Where am I? Wayne - In Gotham. (A bunch of scenes) Scene 11: int. - day Bruce - In Gotham, you say? How am I supposed to show that this scene...
I have 2 characters that I want to have a romantic tension with. The feelings are unrequited. Can I have it so that 1 chapter basically introduces and then ends the conflicting feelings or is thi...
Okay so I will get to the crux of it. I want to write. However that being said I have only a natural instinct as a native speaker and little technical experience in writing. Here are just some thin...
One of my secondary characters is going to play an important part, more important than at present, in the story. Is it OK to introduce him, make the reader love him, and then leave him behind til ...
One of my characters has two names, one she was given by her parents and is how the world/other characters know (of)her, another she likes and uses to "throw enemies off her scent" Is it OK to re...
This is related to my previous question. So, let's say I want the readers to not be sure of who my character really is. They'd know her as Olivia, but think she might be Beatrice, or maybe Helena....
I'm looking for a list of the basics that successful published novel writers actually do. This list would also include specific things which they do not do. For example, I don't believe any succes...
I want to submit fiction to magazines. Some of them say they do not accept reprints. What exactly do they mean by this? Does it just mean my fiction should not have been officially published, or sh...
My 26-chapter story alternates POV between the main woman and the main man. Early on, the characters are geographically separated and the 2 POV timelines are both progressing, roughly in sync. If I...
My main characters finally met. Officially... They still don't know who the others are, and are from different cultural backgrounds, too different for the others to seem normal. Although they ar...
I intend to write an extensive fantasy series. There is a plethora of different languages and cultures in the series, and I've developed language systems and alphabets for some of those cultures, i...
I decided to write a survival guide called "The neurotypical tyranny", for people with Asperger's syndrome. I want to write this book to help people like me. These are the following questions tha...
How many pages and chapters should cover the Ordinary World also known as the normal world of the Protagonist? Ordinary World is the term used in the Hero's Journey for the ordinary world the hero ...
In my novel, I intend to have the protagonist eventually join the group that killed his family and of his antagonist, and this will set the plot for a more massive arc of what I hope will be multip...
Are there good examples of the hero's journey that don't include any physical deaths within them? My hero has crisis and 'death' of self/ideals/psyche; hero prevails in the end, all good. But, I j...
This question is based on this question. It is different, however. While that question deals with the safest way to create a custom font (or have someone else create it), this question assumes you'...
In my story, there is a spot where there is a major shift in perspective as one point of view is supposed to be from someone writing in the first person to another point of view in the third person...
I've signed up for a short story contest where the word limit is 5000 words. In show-don't tell, one invariably uses more words showing than telling. I'm worried about the word limit: What if I use...
I am trying to write a character that speaks English poorly. I do not want to grossly misspell words for sounds or use bad grammar. I find those techniques to sound juvenile and the bad grammar i...
I'm thinking of putting a "straight plot twist" to my story. What I have in mind is putting in a similar situation that leads to a previous plot twist, but actually the plot is just going straight ...
So in watching playthroughs of various video games, because I do that when I find something interesting, I had this strong urge to write some fluff. However, when I sat down to think of it, any kin...
Which of these is correct? I showed him the woman. “Blood loss is a problem. She needs the wound cauterized.” His eyes widened, “I can’t do that! Her face—” “—is half scraped off. ...
This is one of the tics I've noticed in my writing recently, and it's starting to bug me. Almost every single one of my paragraphs, particularly during dialogue sequences, starts with "The characte...
How do I avoid being wordy? Do you know of any exercises or something similar to help with that? I feel, when reading my own writing, that I use "expensive" language, as we say in Portuguese, wa...
Back in highschool in the 90s we had an assignment to write an extra chapter for a book. After some discussion the teacher told us that under no circumstances can we kill the protagonist as the boo...
I've just released a fiction novel last year. Unfortunately, I have found several grammatical errors within the manuscript. In addition, I've also extended a few of the 'lacking' chapters of the st...
When I write I usually only want to tell the reader the important stuff, but that tends to be a small scene every couple of hours. Too much of the time, the scene is only a page or so. That leads t...
How do I describe the sound of a low growl in a low technological culture context? All that comes to mind as possible descriptions are the sounds of rolling logs, or the wheels of a wagon. Note...
I read many articles on-line, but cannot understand where to draw the line between expository and argumentative writing. According to many articles, expository writing presents information. Argumen...
I'm asking this because I haven't yet come across a similar discussion on the internet or anywhere else. My design scheme for my debut novel is to title major sections within the chapters. These a...
I was just wondering if anybody had some tips on how to avoid repetitively describing characters' actions in the same way? Here is an example which I'm struggling to reform, mostly because I keep u...
In one of my wanderings through the interwebs, I stumbled upon the idea that "neutral stories are boring". A neutral story is a story that doesn't support any side, i.e. an impartial story that jus...
I'm writing a story where the main character makes and detonates bombs. The character could be considered a terrorist. I want to portray the character as an expert, but I don't know a way to obtain...
Many of us have written/ are interested in writing a book. However, I've seen that all books, whether digital or printed, contain a legal disclaimer and some kind of copyright notice. Something lik...
