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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What sort of criteria should I consider when listing items in fiction? For example: He was wearing a knit cap, a flower-patterned shirt, and faded jeans. I ordered the items from top to botto...
What should I do about a story that has been in uneducated development for the past ten years? Should I delete the story and do something else with my life? Below I provided a quick summary of the ...
I'm writing the introduction to a story. The intro starts with a dream, then the main character wakes up, and then he and one of the secondary characters have a conversation while waiting for a bus...
I'm taking a CITI course and one of the sections dealt with authoring on manuscripts. The gist is that you don't add authors when no work has been done (such as adding a notable person for their r...
I've seen two main methods of writing a character's inner monologue One is to use italics Dean is being silly thought Sam Another is to quote the text "Dean is being silly" thought Sam Or you co...
I am currently leaning toward self-publishing my book via Amazon services. However, before I do, I am considering the pros and cons of searching for an agent or publisher. Please note that everythi...
A local bookstore has decided to charge $35 to stock my book for 6 months. For each book sold, they get 40% and I get 60%. The stocking charge is new. Is this common and reasonable?
I'm writing an essay (MLA style) for class and I am quoting a whole sentence within my sentence. For example: They published a “manifesto” proclaiming that “[a]ll are welcome to walk through our ...
Software products evolve more rapidly each day. Technical documentation for those products must also follow their evolution. One of the biggest challenges is to maintain screenshots when the graphi...
A common tactic for capturing attention is using a headline N something for something For example on Copyblogger some headlines: 10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work The 5 Things Every...
What is the name of the structure of a novel that is not in chronological order but moves between characters (viewing the same or different topic)?
Whilst writing technical documentation, there is commonly a section on troubleshooting or frequently asked questions. I know a FAQ should be real questions - not ones the publisher thinks might b...
I am writing about algorithms in a paper and I wonder how to best express increasing the speed of an algorithm. Is it clear when I write "The performance increased by doing X" or can this be ambigi...
I've recently written a screenplay about an alien invasion. A friend immediately commented that he found similarities (some general ideas, plot devices) with Half-Life 2: Ep 2, which I haven't even...
I have a couple of folders with artwork, maps etc. I would like to include this folders to my scrivener project but I don't know how. The furthest I've got is to drag files from folder to Scrivene...
I hear a lot of things about how one should give the name of their character early in the writing setting etc. My question is is it ok not to name your character, not to be specific about your sett...
I teach a course preparing students for college-level writing. In one writing task, the students need to read a passage written by one author, listen to an audio recording by another (who disagrees...
On the copyright pages in many books I find the following "countdown" numbers and I am wondering what the significance of this is? In a non-fiction book I have, "The Call of the Mild" it looks lik...
This came up when I was writing my thesis: Usually it is recommended that when writing a thesis, one sticks to passive voice and use sentences that read like "The study showed the effect that blah...
I'm making a poster of one of my favorite quotes from Almost Famous: You'll meet them all again on their long journey to the middle. The quote was spoken by the character of Lester Bangs, who...
I am learning to write better, and have read books such as The Lively art of writing and Element of Style. I realize what I am missing is the grammar books that teaches me the different ways to con...
My school requests a research question for a project. I came up with one like this: (different topic but very similar, due to NDA) What is the behavior of a bike, depending on speed, time in us...
I'm about to write a technical description for an industrial process. The description will follow logical blocks, or blocks from the PFD of the process. This a sales document aimed at engineers. Be...
My current style is: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerc...
Is it bad to use an Introduction and/or a Prologue in Middle Grade Fiction? I have a lot of information that is useful, but the information in dialogue will sound fake and way too much info-dump l...
I see tinyURL recommended for news or magazine-style writing where AP style prevails--but then I see online warnings that clicking a tinyURL may take readers to sites they do not (at all) want to v...
I just noticed I tend to use "but" and 'however" in almost every paragraph. Examples (all of them are from the same story): I almost let everything out. But, funny, I didn't. I didn't want him...
I will shortly be moving to another a role within the same organisation and was wondering if you could advise on how I could improve the language and structure of this farewell email. It seems a bi...
Can I put an old painting on the cover of my book without violating the law? AFAIK the copyright for a painting expires after 70 years. Hence, if a painting was created in 1874 and 70 years expire...
There are lists with YA bestsellers. What they don't tell me is which books are bought by girls, and which by boys. Are there any resources showing (YA) bestsellers by reader's gender?
There are several books that provide an excellent breakdown of the elements that make a good story or script. For example, The Writer's Journey by Christopher Volger identifies common archtypes and...
Supposing you're asked by a beginning writer which books he should read to improve his skills in writing fantasy, you might say Tolkien's, and similarly, you might say Asimov's for scifi, etc. I'd...
If I send a manuscript to a publisher, what should I put in the letter to them?
Background: Im working on a rather long instructional book, and have just started trying to use LaTeX. The book doesn't have any scientific notation in it, and most of the diagrams I made in other ...
I realized I tend to state directly the message/moral of the story in my stories (as dialogue in most of the cases). My plots are rather ambiguous, though. And I use a lot of metaphors/symbols so t...
I'm newbie in writing books. How can I learn to write thrillers? There are books to learn how to write, and other resources. But how can I learn to specifically write thrillers? What skills do I ...
Is there an official or unofficial source that ranks recent book releases (past 5 yrs) by number of copies sold? This would be a valuable tool to know what exactly readers prefer. Often I am tempt...
I am writing a paper on "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" and I need to include an allusion in my introduction paragraph. Can my allusion be a direct quote from Nelson Mandela that ...
NOT your personal favorites (subjective)! The best-sellers (objective). Group book series together. Anyone know? Educated guesses are OK, but documented answers are preferred. For example, I'm...
I'm trying to figure out whether I need to cite these poems or not. “Out, Out—” has its morbid description of a young boy bleeding out and its underlying theme of death. “Nothing Gold Can Sta...
Once again, I traveled three hours only to eat sushi, alone. Cars passed by and people streamed along the sidewalk. Hanging in the air, I could feel the faint scent of spring. Or maybe it was ju...
This is the draft of a story I'm writing (I removed the descriptions): “Sure they allow visitors?” I asked An-Mei as we headed to the pond. “It's OK,” she said. “It's not solitary confinem...
I realized I have the habit of adding small sentences that don't provide much information: Eri searched her memory, but came out blank. She couldn’t even remember what she was doing at that t...
I always thought there was a distinction between POV and narration. You can have 1st-person POV with either 1st-person narration or 3rd-person narration. So I think the discussions here (http://f...
My first two fiction books are with a top publishing house. They have had them for three months. Six weeks ago, they told me they were prioritising looking at them. How long on average does a major...
I'm currently brooding over good character names for a novel I want to write. I was looking at some of the books I read recently, trying to understand why the authors picked the names they gave the...
I'm planning to create a Facebook page where I can (hopefully) build a small fan base. I've seen many authors who have a personal websites. I'm not very sure, though, how important this is, and whe...
Suppose I have the following references to literature: Miller, H. (1999): … Referred to as: Miller (1999) Miller, F., & Smith, J. (2002): … Referred to as...
This is still all in the realm of the hypothetical, but given that it becomes closer to the reality, I'm very curious... Let's say you have two new, previously unpublished and unrepresented author...
I am not particularly experienced with using rhythm in creative writing so please note that I am only a beginner. By "rhythm" I am referring to anything along the lines of syllable count, sentence ...
