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'm writing a short story for an assignment at school - but I'm having trouble keep it short. I have a habit to go off on a tangent quite a bit, and this ends up making it a lot longer than it shou...
In the software we're developing, the user can 'allocate' a task to a person or group. Correspondingly he may also take a task away from them. What word should we use: unallocate the task or deall...
I am in the process of writing a novel, and I'm just trying to get some ideas and thought on this. I am not sure yet if I want to completely remove all dialogue, but at this point I feel that dialo...
I think I don't have problems establishing a rhythm in a "normal" paragraph. I usually just go: short, long, long, long, short, long or something like that. But when it comes to lists, I always ge...
In my case, I never use dialogue and action tags in the same unit of dialogue (sorry, I just call them units because I had no idea what they are called). So I would never write something like this...
I can get the data for ALL books. But can anyone direct me to regular/ebook purchasing data broken down by genre (specifically sci-fi)?
I am writing a paper and always want to find ways to write a punch opening for my paragraph. I'm not sure how to take an informative paragraph and find an exciting lead-in that will encourage the r...
There were a couple of other questions about this, but they were asked many years ago, so I thought I'd start a new one. For a long time, I used Wiki on a Stick to organise my worlds and allow for...
Here's the scenario. Person A may read a story in a non-English language. As time passes, he still remembers the story and passes it onto his offspring. His children ask him about the author, but t...
I'm currently designing a print flyer and I'm using quite a few statistics and a few quotes. Since space is at a minimum, and citing each individual statistic would require several lines of unsight...
A lot of writers I admire say: "I didn't know how long the story would be." Me too, I'm the kind of writer who don't know where (and when) the story is going to end. So I'm confused—is it better to...
I've been writing related short-stories for years, but around 10 months ago, I started to think about a novel based on these stories. The same universe, the same main characters but a longer story ...
I submitted an entry to a contest that requires the work not be published. I met that criterion. I have substantially rewritten the article - it's now six pages instead of two. Basically expanded a...
On the use of em dashes. Is it better to omit the spaces between the words and the dash, or is it preferable to separate them with spaces instead? For example: No spaces: It's time to take a nap...
My kindle ebook does not display properly on my pc and mac browsers. It appears fine on the kindle app for my android phone. Is it possibe to format an ebook so that it can show up in the same way...
I would like to improve my writing style, grammar, and vocabulary, but I'm having a hard time finding a good exemplary book. Most of books I find perfect at first, turn out to be full of flaws and/...
I'm answering a few questions based on Atlas Shrugged in the form of an essay, wherein I am required to discuss a particular character and relate his role to the theme of the story. Kind of cluele...
I am writing my thesis and using notes from different lectures on the topic as a source of sources. These notes cite other papers and present briefly the ideas, and I do use the lecture notes to fi...
How can I find a British agency to represent me as a writer in Russia in order to publish a book there (a book written originally in Russian)? Do such agencies exist? I understand that it does so...
I write a ton of magazine articles online. My editor tells me you do not need a works cited as you do in academic work. I am wondering what kind of citing you do need and what I should be doing for...
I'm writing a story in English but I want to have a character in there that speaks German in which I'm not fluent. Are they any online translation services for artistic pieces? All I see on Googl...
I am new to this forum and would like to share one of my short novel here. I would love to hear any comments and thoughts (e.g., how the story flows, any better way to describe the atmosphere? and ...
I'm organising a project in the near future and am emailing people, which profiles I found on Linkedin, that I would like to work with. What I'm trying to get across is that it's going to be an exc...
I'm writing a book – more as a hobby than anything else. As an amateur I often get lost regarding the extent I should include in the chapters. But the greatest problem for me is that I did not de...
I am writing a book and I've come to some roadblocks in the plot. Here is the basic storyline: A tribe of people live in a grand city deep inside the caves and large caverns in a mountain. Outs...
How do the techniques for writing for animated cartoons differ from the techniques for other script-writing? Is there a guide for writing for cartoons? I suddenly find myself writing for a flash ...
I wrote a short story long ago called The End of the World. I thought the title was too common so I renamed it to The Kid with the Gigaku Mask and the End of the World. But then, I found that title...
I have a descriptive paragraph, at the beginning of a scene: INT. VICTIM’S BASEMENT - NIGHT ------, a professional criminal, and serial killer, is hard at work in the basement of an unsus...
I am wondering if it is appropriate to include my email address on the title page of my short stories on Amazon Kindle. If so, is it wise to use one obtained from say Yahoo because it will not cha...
I'm looking for an adjective which essentially means "of or relating to the circus." My context is: As they stood in the doorway, taking in the circus-like activities around them... But "circ...
Qualifier/Disclaimer This may be a very atypical question for this site (of all those I've seen, this question on superuser seems most closely related to mine, but the question was closed as off-t...
Recently, I found a short story that I had written many years ago when computers were not that common. It is 25 pages of handwriting. Obviously, I don't want to spend hours typing it. My typing spe...
Even during a formal interview for a news article, people speak informally. They say "uhm", they cut off sentences half-way through, they interject phrases like "you know?", and they make innocent ...
I want to do in text citation of my "DK Handbook", In other words, I don't want put it's citation in 'work cited' section as it would be short and so obvious I searched internet and MLA handbook ...
To my knowledge step-by-step tutorials should have the form of a ladder, where you describe how to get to a place step by step– accomplishing a single task at the end. Is it possible to accomplish ...
I am self-publishing a free e-book which I will make available in several formats: EPUB, online HTML, PDF. What characteristics should the PDF e-book file have? What should the page size, font siz...
Can the following be considered plagiarized? I am interested in finding out the limit of words one is allowed to use. Java is a programming platform that's used for developing computer applicat...
I will be taking the GRE test, which is an exam for students from non-English speaking countries who want to go to the US for graduate study. The test basically tests your English ability and your ...
I'm trying to make my descriptions to look less like a bunch of bullet points. So I decided to use more senses and similes. This is something I wrote: The sun hung in the cloudless sky, like a...
My understanding is that the toughest standard regarding plagiarism is the "five (consecutive) word" rule, which holds that, if there are five consecutive words identical to someone else's writing...
I'm quoting lines from a dubbed TV series and I'm not sure how to reference it? I have looked everywhere and I only found how would you cite an original version. Help please :)
Why in some essays or articles there are words in the author's native language? (In other words, the essay is in English and there are some Spanish words spread out in the whole essay.) Does it ...
I have finished a fantasy novel I have been writing for the past few years and I am now in the process of meeting with representatives from publishing companies toward the goal of publishing my boo...
There are many translated Persian/Farsi poems in English like The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, the famous Iranian poet, philosopher, and mathematician, translated by Edward FitzGerald. Unfortunately ...
The question arises from this sentence in my story, which was originally written in Hebrew and later translated by me to English. In Hebrew I say: קמתי בבוקר והלכתי למוצב. היה זה יום בהיר של תח...
I currently have my book published on Amazon using createspace and Lulu (google weave of the ride). However, I am not happy with the quality of the product. I don't want a glossy cover, bleached ...
I'm preparing some briefing notes on various open licences and I'm looking for some clarification on legal aspects of standard practice in the UK. (If there is a better SE site for this question fe...
How can I cite multiple chapters from the same book? Do I have to use separate reference numbers, if they are by different authors?
So I feel I'm a pretty good programmer in my area of expertise. Whats the process for writing a book about my niche and getting it published?
In this question I asked about whether there was a standardized definition of the term "Mary Sue". However, a related question would be whether the repeated dilution of the use of the term has rid ...
