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 screenplay, I have a character that’s a 20 year old college student. He lives at home. His name is Brett. Another character pulls up to Brett’s house. Should the scene heading read: EXT....
If I have a hard time dissecting showing directly, then I just simply ask about the end result: What showing wishes to create in the readers?
I'm writing a story about a creature that takes the shape of a human and travels seeing the world. This character has no clue about this new reality, as he had no body before this incarnation, and ...
“One should try to invite people from this world to eternity, from sin to obedience, from greediness to asceticism, from jealousness to generosity, from duplicity to honesty, from insolence to mode...
Something I always get stuck with is how to describe a first date. E.g. I have a story where 2 characters are on a blind date, so they have to get to know each other. How much of the date should be...
I am writing a story about a war, and there is this particular character whom they are a traitor to their own side. The traitor's identity is to be unknown until the Resolution part of the story in...
I used to be able to write spontaneously. What I mean to say is that I would get this feelings in my stomach, usually during bouts of anxiety and I'd put pen to paper and rarely be disappointed wit...
How can I properly cite an Oracle's documentation of the usage of certain APIs? For instance HashMap - Oracle Documentation I need to cite/reference this in my research paper, what is the best w...
There is an answer here from FraEnrico which is the cause for my question: What is the difference between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories?. Here he explains a bit of what an "arena...
I have a vast series of scenes, characters, and stories coming together in my head, which I have yet to transcribe to an actual story on paper. I have notes, and many of them, but I cannot seem to ...
I have a text from the Nebonidus Harran inscriptions that I want to specifically reference in my paper. The quote looks like this: …(But) the sons of Babylon, Borsippa, 15. Nippur, Ur, Er...
When analysing a book and speaking of a character that dies, do you still you present tense as you are still analysing a book? If I were to make up a quick example: "Despite Anna's death, the plot...
This kind of thing comes up a lot in my engineering job. We're writing a document that is a Plan for something we'll be doing in the future. For instance, a Test Plan that describes who will partic...
Often told as "Third Person Objective" or "Third Person Camera" it is some kind of mixture between cinema and writing. (Crazy stuff, I know.) What is this Third Person Dramatic? What are his pr...
Hold Your Hippogriffs: A (more often than not) cringeworthy version of a saying (though can be invented on the spot), that is prone to cause Fatal Death in most readers. But it sounds fun, who wou...
I have a scene where my character sits down to read a court summons and I want the shots to show various parts of the document like his name, then his codefendants name, then the charge and then th...
I have read this similar question but it does not really address my question. What if I want to write a novel or a short story that is inspired by (or outright a retelling of) a popular poem writt...
TL;DR How should I (if at all) develop the personality, character trait, character development and motivation of a character in a core trio whose role in the story is (thus far) only to be a mech...
I have heard people telling that they have read so many books and have a mini library at their houses. I did not read many books (I am 17 and do not have much time as I balance school, special clas...
My book is about a girl who is a compulsive gambler, and I'm trying to write a scene where she is playing a board game with an old dude who also has a gambling problem (eventually, she wins). My di...
The novel I am writing hinges on an orphan boy, who is not evil, but merely frustrated and angry with the world and how it is treating him. I need him to do something or cause something to happen t...
I wrote a blog post about a certain feature(in testing) of our online product. We finished the testing and changed a couple of things and added some improvements to this feature. So, I was thin...
I completed my novel and an editor friend graciously offered to assist me with formatting. As a former scientist, I am more familiar with technical or academic writing, so formatting fiction can be...
I often hear the word thrown around, but I don't have any idea of what it is, or how can it be avoided. So, what does "juvenile tone" mean and how can I prevent it?
I'm writing a company blog and want to update one of our recent posts about our product's feature. Should I add 2-3 paragraphs of update at the beginning or at the end of the post? Great exa...
In my script, there is an AI chatbot character - ANNIE - that real characters communicate with via text. ANNIE has animated reactions and has an artificial speaking voice. Would I write ANNIE’S...
My question is pretty much summed up in the title. My story includes a lot of narration. Narrating events, narrating character's thoughts. There are several intervals in each chapter where the char...
I’m not sure if this has been answered yet, but I always have people tell me that self publishing might not be safe. What are the dangers of self publishing? Also, a question to the published write...
I was told to ask this question here. There’s a saying in writing to “show; don’t tell”. For example instead of saying: “She was angry”, you would write: “Steam started coming out of her ears”, or:...
I saw the question about books published by more than one publisher, but it doesn't entirely answer my particular inquiry, which is this: If I publish a book through CreateSpace and Kindle, can I ...
So, I was writing a test story to see if my tools can work together in the way intended. Few paragraphs into the first chapter and there is a problem: Character A is a scaredy-cat, and I based the...
How can one establish the nature of a person/group to the reader without relying on actions to 'show' it? For example, if I have a group which is evil, how could I convey that to the reader without...
I’m writing a fictional drama/crime/mystery sceenplay. In my script, college kids go missing from a REAL University. I like the realism and academic profile of an actual University, but would th...
In my novel my protagonist speaks to a man while being held at gun point. She (protagonist) tried to kill him. He was her boss, was involved in her best friend's death and wants the protagonist dea...
I'm looking for methods of planning chapters for books. I always saw structures and scripting in the macro level, but never in the micro level.
I'm starting to wrap up the gestation period of my first book - right now I have a notebook filled with a lot of observations of life and topics I want to deal with in my book. I'm now starting to ...
I am trying to show the confusion my character feels (first person narrative) but am not sure what techniques to use. I have tried to achieve this using questions that arose through my character's ...
I'm a contemporary romance author writing a romance Christmas book. The hero in my story has a six year old girl. There are lots of conversations with the six year old, but when I read my story bac...
I have several completed short stories, and I'm considering having them line-edited before I submit them. But I have no idea where to look for editors. How do I know who's any good? Where do I loo...
I wanted to write something for a long time. But what I think is, in writing the choice of words plays a very significant role. From where I can learn this thing? I think I don't have enough words ...
It seems like in some stories, you can feel the theme pervading through every element. In other stories, you don't know what you're reading about until the very last line. I'd guess I lean on the ...
Ideas keep popping into my head while I walk, so I have a tiny memo book to jot down my thoughts. However, there's no room for my writing hand to use all the available space, I write really messily...
How should you end a business letter? If you are writing a letter to your grandparents, I would use With Love from 'name' However, if you are writing a professional letter to someone impor...
The vast majority of fictional books are one continuous story, which are closer in style to what films are in a visual medium. I was thinking about why we don't see more books that would be closer...
The original "kick ass" government operative was James Bond. Since then we've had Jason Bourne and Jack Bauer. James Bond Jason Bourne Jack Bauer Seriously? Of course we all know "Hannibal" rh...
Here is my haiku I wrote it for this question Is it any good? I understand the mechanical basics of a haiku being the three line syllable pattern of 5-7-5, the contrast of two images with a "cutti...
I'm writing a book (only a hobby, but I hope I can publish it one day). I've started writing a while ago and setting was somewhat of a near-future of an alternative reality. In my book, political ...
When writing stories in past tense (which is majority of the time) whether it be an essay for class or an unassembled essay for home and in my own time, I often find myself writing some of my sente...
I wrote and self-published a MG fantasy book that did relatively well locally: It's in elementary school libraries, at the local public libraries, and as a student teacher I enjoy giving lessons on...
In Bad Webcomics Wiki, a place for reviews of bad webcomics, there's a common phrase: the "VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS". The novelists who endeavor to enforce what they are pleased to call "moral t...
