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've never been to a circus, and all the shows and videos I've seen about them don't give off the full effect. How does a person go about describing a place/experience that they never personally ...
I would like to know whether there are any tools that would help an author write a branching storyline. Usecases may for example be: campaigns for Pen and Paper games visual novels Choose Your O...
I’m writing a paper and I have these sentences that are a bit problematic. I feel they generalize a bit and could be rewritten in less words. I’m kindly seeking suggestions on how to improve the be...
Me and my professor will meet tomorrow. Since it's been a long time after we last talked about the meeting,I'm thinking about sending her an email reminder. But I'm not sure about how to write this...
Is it better to save each chapter in a separate word document or all in one document? ^ was my first question. I am 10 chapters into editing the book and I'm finding myself a loss of words to des...
I am just about finished with the first draft of a novel I've been working on. I've been writing novels for about ten years and I've self-published a couple, but I'm looking to peek into the world ...
I am writing my first chapter books for an older audience around 18+ and I need a little help with knowing when one characters point of view should end and the next begin. Can anyone help me?
In first person narrative, would it be acceptable to use a period in place of a question mark when the narrator is asking a rhetorical question? example: My car broke down again. Why does this alw...
I was thinking if is better or worst to read other works that share similar ideas to the story you want to write before you start it or while doing it. Two quick answers comes to my mind: Yes...
I'm writing a story in a fantasy setting, where there are characters who dress with ancient Egyptian type clothing - such as haram pant and usekh collars. Since the story is a fantasy and not set i...
I am writing a story for a comic book and at this point I am stuck. I want my protagonist to learn that a delivery of a key item by the bad guys will occur. I already thought about the possibility...
Two characters of opposite sex meet in a blank room (nothing remarkable about the setting) for the first time and the reader isn't familiar with either of them. Since genre would sway the answer t...
Below are four alternate dialogues that I am confused between. I'd like to know which is the correctly punctuated one. Also please explain how to use ellipses in a dialogue which is interrupted by ...
I see a pattern among my readers, specifically where they tend to stop reading - it is about 2/3 through the story, during "Act 2." A few readers push through to the end and say they are glad they ...
65 pages? 70 pages??? I’ve got almost 80 and need to know how much I have to cut
I am writing a story about a character that travels as an ESL teacher and am wondering how you can explain scenery without getting to much into it.
If teacher asks you to paraphrase a paragraph which is like "I went there etc" then how will we paraphrase it? Will it be like "The writer made his way to that place" or I'll be like it's me who is...
Writing is rewriting. The first draft of a novel is commonly riddled with mistakes: the beginning doesn't grip, the characters aren't consistent, the plot has holes, the story lacks suspense, turns...
This is a sentence from a current writing project detailing how people in jail feel about reading. It provides an escape from the reality of what lies before them: time. Should "time" be capitali...
I have the following sentence: Pocket squares are a standout amongst the most vital apparatuses for a man of style. It's important to have the correct pocket square for the correct event. ...
I’m currently working on a novel that I’m remodelling from an old fanfiction novel I wrote around 6 years ago. That was the first thing I’ve ever fully planned, written, edited, and completed. I’ve...
I've been writing a friendly tutorial series for a small art software community. Somehow I decided to write it in first person plural, so the entire tutorial is "First, let's do this..." and "Now w...
This is a broad and subjective question. However, I think it can be answered with advice such as: Don't include car chases, train accidents or other things that require special effects that can't b...
So about halfway through the story I'm writing, the main characters discover that they're actually AI whose entire lives have been simulated in order to create an AI with human-level emotional skil...
Usually, at the end of a crime, thriller, horror, fantasy, science fiction, or other action genre novel, the identity of the antagonist is uncovered and the riddle that drives the plot is resolved:...
I'm currently writing an essay for a school assignment. My teacher's—and Google's—answers as to where to find examples of real life situations and counter-arguments to support my arguments in an es...
I've read that leaving your character alone for too long can spell death for your novel. That you should put them out there in the world so they can interact with other characters. That you shouldn...
I'm writing a story with a world that has different physics, alchemy rather than chemistry, and biology that relies somewhat on magic. The protagonist is not of this world, however he is not of ou...
In my story, I have 8 characters I really want to focus on, which is already a pretty large cast to begin with. At the beginning of the book, something important happens to each of the 8 that kicks...
I have read/played quite a few visual novels and am interested in the process of creating one. Where can I find (preferrably free) online resources, such as How-To-Write or styleguide articles and...
I'm writing my first novel and I wanted to try and write around 12-15 chapters about 10k-ish (give or take a thousand or two) words each. The idea behind it being each chapter covers a very large a...
I watched a semi-popular movie called deadpool, in which the "hero" comes across this dilemma while fighting female assassins, and we are not shown the results of his introspection. Here is the pr...
Aside from the obvious difference of a movie script been one complete story and a tv series been a continuing story across several episodes. Is anyone aware of anything you would do differently bef...
I was wondering if using length in this sentence would add to take away from the message. Also am I constructing the sentence correctly. A sudden outburst drew my gaze from lazy sky to chalk dr...
In a procedure, when describing a UI component, we use the bold font to represent UI components. We also match the text with the letter case of the UI component. But do we need to match the font st...
I have a gender-neutral name, so people often assume I'm a man. However, a portion of the writing I do is for tech companies. Because of the lack of diversity in the tech industry, many of these c...
I've recently got a crushing critique. The critic pointed out I was obviously unfamiliar with the basic tools of the trade and that my style was non-existent. She insisted that "everybody can inven...
I don't want to straight up say that the dust/ ash was blown away, I want it to have a creepy vibe to it so it's more interesting. So is there any way to show (not tell) ashes being blown away by ...
There are some works that have a certain kind of voice, which is due to their rhythm. But is this due only to word order and like things, or do their authors actually choose synonyms to achieve rhy...
I actually do not have any plans to use any characters from another book in any of my books (either as fan fiction, a joke, or a reference). Out of interest, though, would it be legal to pull in a ...
I'm a journalist, and my writing work often involves writing reviews. Similar work in the field often focuses down on the mechanical, objective qualities of the thing being reviewed and that's been...
I am an adoptee writing a story about meeting my biological mother. I had to get on a plane to meet my mother. A couple of days before the trip I met with members of my adoptive family and other ...
I intuit that hooks are things that hook. (I'm quite astute in this way.) They can be good prose, relatable characters, rich settings. Books must start with a 'hook.' This is a current truism. The...
As mentioned elsewhere, it has been a stumbling block for my readers to understand what drives my characters. I had thought I had communicated character desires through showing, and action, but it ...
I am writing a book a about a normal girl investigating her friend's murder. I wanted to ask if it's possible that a normal person who is not a detective could actually solve a murder?
I'm proofreading a novel - the brief has instructed that I do not make any stylistic changes, and correct only the obvious errors that impede sense/clarity. There are several places where I feel a...
I put work into making up my own names for spells. However, I feel like they come across as childish when I read over my writing This was also my impression when re-reading Harry Potter. It really...
Basically, when dealing with non-fiction topics like business or security or Information Technology or any other factual topic, there is really only so many ways you can write the facts using the E...
Images, as I call them, are an important part of your prose. Now, let's look at examples of bad images: From Onision's (from now on, Onii-san) book, Reaper's Creek : Maybe that current lead h...
Are there any other "times" for introducing new content into a final paragraph? Have any other famous writers substantiate this bombshell? I was flabbergasted to read this para. because mo...
