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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In my fiction writing, how do I create individual speaking styles for my characters? It is more than giving one or two of them an accent or dialect. What techniques do you use to vary the structur...
In writing a novel, I've noticed that there are different scenes. It's a compilation of different scenes. What truly signifies the start, and end of a scene. If they are in a room, is that one scen...
Can I copyright my Facebook status updates? In the terms and agreements I didn't see a clear statement stating that Facebook owns my material. Secondly, if I can't copyright the material I post on...
I'm specifically trying to cite two documents under United States v. 434 Main Street, Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Namely, this and this. The second is the actual ruling, but the first is a pertinent ...
I have a problem. I want to name a character (the main character's romantic interest) Tobias, but I feel like people would associate him with Tobias Eaton from Divergent, knowing how much I love th...
I attended a speech that was open to the general public and took my own very detailed notes of everything that the speaker said. I would like to publish my notes as a report of the speech. Does cop...
I want to indicate a dramatic pause in the narration of my fiction, but the rules I've read say that ellipses are reserved for "" quoted dialog. This would be the example I'm looking at: N...
Examples: "I've always been interested in marine biology, as far as I can remember. "As far as I can remember, I've always been interested in marine biology, Of course, we ...
I want to use the same initial small cap rule of The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell. But I still can't figure it out. Some examples: TALKING HEADS’ Fear of Music is on my record player, so I low...
Example: I gasped. Tom swallowed. He was also surprised by the maid's sudden appearance. In this case the narrator is directly talking about Tom's feelings. I gasped. Tom swallowed. He al...
I am part of a group starting an online, submissions-based journal of critical writing specific to my field. As the writing will be academic, we will need a formal citation process. We have decided...
We are working on a technical documentation project which includes the rewriting, modernization, restructuring, enrichment of the content. I'm doing the content rewriting and translation parts of t...
Is APA-certified editor an actual credential? If yes, is there a universally-accepted proof in the U.S. for that credential? I tried a web search on "how to become an APA-certified editor." I cli...
I've been thinking about this question for a while. This is my definition of what makes a sentence lyrical: 1. The use of metaphors: So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bu...
There's one thing in literature that no matter how cliche or over used it might be, I always find very compelling. For example, when a story unfolds as if there is a larger force at work moving all...
From what I understand, truth is a defense against a charge of libel. More to the point, I've been told that a statement need not be true if it represents a "fair comment" based on the underlying f...
I am an engineering student in a non-English speaking country and I'm writing my master's thesis in English, as well as all related articles. I can't use the country's language nor my first languag...
A quick side by side comparison of two layout styles: Left: no indent and with white space; right: indented, but no white space Recently, I'm seeing more and more academic-like documents which a...
I'm writing a novel, my first ever, and I hope to finally finish the story and get it published. I live in Mexico, but I am writing in English...could I get the book published here, or would I have...
I am in the process of querying agencies over a manuscript I have written. Some agencies' websites say something along the lines of "Please query agents directly", while others say "Please do NOT ...
I currently use Google Drive/Docs to pen all of my novels and short stories, but really feel that I could do with a management suite of sorts, such as Scrivener. However, as Scrivener costs actual...
I have not been able to find an existing question similar to mine, but apologies if I've missed one. I write an academic dissertation where I mention a lot of people. The first time someone is men...
I'm working on a project for company's upcoming book. We thought it would be cool for me to ccomment on blogs and forums as one of the lead child characters. Do you foresee that as being a problem,...
I would like to know which are the main article categories a journalist is expected to know how to write. Some classic and actual article types are similar. Others were born recently, such as smar...
By strong I mean causing some reaction on the reader (not necessarily goosebumps, maybe just a small wow). I'm having this problem right now. Example (the bolded part): "He told me about how s...
I'm writing an article that includes reference to an organization - let's say National Ecological Council of Concerned Citizens - which, instead of NECOCC, uses the acronym necocc, i.e. lower-case...
How many words may I copy from someone's work before I have to begin paraphrasing it?
Since a lot of what they say is by definition irrelevant to the plot should I just skim over it? I'm worried this might make their manner unclear to the reader and I don't want their impression of...
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were fictional, of course, but Lauren Ipsum has convinced me that if they were real people, a story about a "drug-using detective and his MD sidekick" might expose a ...
I'm planning a novel where the protagonist is an author and regularly writes short stories and shares them with other characters. I see this as a great opportunity to break out of the narrative an...
In a screenplay I'm writing, I want to use a rapid cut-together sequence of reaction shots from characters in several different locations already established earlier in the script. Is it still nece...
newcomer here, and I have a question. I have a story that starts with the sentence, 'the ocean is vast'. However, I'm actually going to write my story in past tense form but changing that 'is' to...
I'm not very sure if "weak" and "strong" are the right adjectives. Here's an example: Getting on my knees, I turned to the right. Crouching on my knees, I turned to the right. Does the "...
I am writing a story that has ten main characters, each chapter is a progression of the story but from the perspective of one of the ten. As you can imagine, this presents it's own unique challeng...
How do I do MLA citations for an anniversary edition, e.g. 30th anniversary Selfish Gene. Do I treat it as a normal edition or just ignore that it is a new edition?
Can you quote music lyrics in a book? Like this: Stuck in traffic, main character is blasting Rage Against the Machine, Testify [insert song lyrics excerpt here] Or is that a legal issue? Wh...
When I ask the Should I use hypophoras at the beginning of every paragraphs? question, Lauren Ipsum suggests me to organize things with headers while Kristina Adams advises me to avoid headers in o...
My novel starts with the character believing she is outside, naked, because she is delerious. After less than a page she realizes where she really is. She was delerious because she fainted and sh...
I am writing an an article to share knowledge, not novel. Usually, when you change the current topic, at the beginning of the new paragraph you would like to use some transition words such as Addit...
In writing procedural documentation, I have the choice of writing the complete step-by-step instructions with references to an appendix of illustrations, For instance: 1. Do task 1 (see Fig. 1) ...
For context, I am a forty-something male from the Great Lakes region of the United States. I work full-time as something other than a writer. About 25 years ago in high school, I was an almost-st...
According to Chuck Palahniuk you should avoid "Thought" verbs as much as you can. These include: knew, thought, realized, believed, etc. However, I've seen many of them in books that I read. And I...
I am working on an essay, and one of my sources is a film. (The Matrix) What would the in-text citation for the film look like, and would it include the time that the quote occured?
Tell: Andy looked angry Show: Andy scrunched his eyebrows together, he gritted his teeth and glared. His skin turned a bright red making him look like a raging demon. Are there other ...
Does anyone have any effective writing techniques or exercises that you use to help you focus more on showing the reader what you mean rather than just telling them about? I know I often find mysel...
As part of my self-education in my journey to become a writer / author - I would like to understand in detail - the different pov's - with good and numerous examples. Can you suggest a book - whic...
I am writing a book on English language. Which is bilingual book. So I would need some examples from dictionary. So can I use these examples in my book. I don't mind mentioning which dictionary ex...
My friend is writing a paper in Chicago style and she is citing multiple interviews. The citations keep switching back and forth between different interviewees. What's the correct way to cite the...
So the logic goes like this: the protagonist realized life was meaningless, decided to kill herself—but at the last moment her mom calls to tell her that the dog died (it "accidentally" hung itself...
Lots of articles/opinions on Kindle worlds out there. Not that much on actual numbers and facts that I can find. What I want to know is, if I produce some great content, how will my book be promote...
