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 have been spending time online since yesterday trying to understand the difference between analytical summary writing and critical writing. I intend to write an analytical summary essay on the t...
So looking at This Job and under "Your Checklist" it has 3 different uploads, Cover Letter, Resume and Statements addressing the Key Selection Criteria now to my understanding the Statements addre...
As I understand it, 'breaking into the business' is expensive in terms of time. If I have a decent product should I put in the effort, or is self-publishing (e.g. with Amazon) enough?
About a year ago I started developing something like an alternative world. About two months a go I finally found some time for more work on this theme and now I am collecting information from few s...
If I'm writing a paragraph that discusses a topic and the entire paragraph is based on the same source (assume the same page too). Do I need to footnote every sentence or would the first sentence ...
I recently discovered that a bookstore is offering my book for rental. Is it legal for the store to rent out my book? Is the store infringing on my copyright? What the store is charging people who ...
After the death of my cousin I have stopped writing for quite some time. However the stories ideas would persist in my mind. So I decided to try and write again, but whatever ideas I have. Turn int...
I am currently working on a super hero short story in which a hockey player (the protagonist) suffers a brain injury in the first scene which leaves him in eternal pain. In the quickest explanation...
Of course there are many answers to the question of how fast major publishers move their books after publication, but I am looking for something like the truism I once heard on the radio and cannot...
What is Content Testing? Are there content testing tools available, or is content simply tested manually for quality?
The question is pretty straightforward. Can a male writer write a first person story of a female protagonist? What limitations might he face in writing about the other gender? Should he just stick ...
I am writing a book. However, I can't quite wrap my head around making my character do bad things, while still making their actions and/or motivations for their actions believable. Here is an exa...
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...
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...
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) ...
