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 am currently editing an original work of fiction, and one of the things I'm having the most trouble with is dialogue and paragraphs after certain character's actions. I know it sounds a little co...
Imagine a fantasy hero with a 'time reset' ability like the protagonists of Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow: they can 'rewind time' up to a few hours, resetting their own physical state and the r...
Basically, I am writing a story and I want to know if the characters are diverse enough or too diverse. If I just state the characters' races, sexualities, etc, it might seem forced but I didn't re...
I'm identifying my target audience based on the experiment explained in the Snowflake Method book. The narrator describes it as follows: “Now I want you to imagine that you’ve published your no...
Should a comma be used after a dialogue tag and before the word ”as”. For example: ”I don’t like this at all, ” he said, as the door closed behind them. Or ”I don’t like this at all, ” he s...
I'm a chef. I'm also a writer. It's inevitable that I would want to write a cookbook. In fact I've probably started a dozen that I just never got around to finishing. Partly because I'm not sure ho...
In the writing practises guides, it is usually mentioned that use of ellipsis is a bad practice. But I have come across certain usages in professional writing. To give an example; In the novel ...
I am in the process of editing a short story. It is science fiction of the "if this goes on" kind: I take a social trend I see, and paint its event horizon - a troubling future. 1984 and Fahrenheit...
I'm trying to write a shriek, something like "AHHHHH!" or "AAAAH!". However, I don't really want to use all caps and repeated letters. Does anyone know any other techniques of showing a scream oc...
I'm writing a Star Wars fanfiction because I wanted to practice my writing on something I love, and I decided to make a character named Alexander Ray Rullero. He's not the main character, as in he ...
Is it ever acceptable to use an exclamation mark following a question mark? I am proofreading a novel and have been instructed to make no stylistic changes, only errors that impede sense/clarity. ...
I sometimes post photos on my blog, like when I'm blogging about food. I've been shrinking the huge pictures my phone takes down to a size that fits more reasonably in a browser window -- my brows...
I've heard a lot of people saying they skip descriptions if they are written as one bulk list, but others say it's important that we let the reader know what the character looks like and include al...
I am at the free-writing stages of writing my high fantasy novel. I am looking at or experimenting with different methods for hooking the reader and driving their attention towards the rest of my s...
In my trilogy, the protagonist and deuteragonist share a mental link, allowing them to communicate with each other telepathically. A side effect of this telepathy is that they enable the duo to obs...
I’ve seen it done in Harry Potter I just don’t understand when its okay to do it, like can I say something like “John walked away from the house and was now walking along the road” or not? When is ...
I use a pseudonym and was wondering what the decorum is for setting up a book signing or for signing some in-store copies if I happened to stumble across them. I assume the stores have some minor ...
In my text, I have a footnote (6 or 7 lines) that is meant to be an extra insight. It does seem, however, to be a bit large for a footnote. On the other hand, if I try to place it inside the text...
My main character is injured, having been shot earlier. This injury renders him much slower to respond and reduces his agility. Because of this, two of his colleagues are with him to protect him. ...
I have read a few non-fiction works (mostly scientific) where there is a quote at the beginning of each new chapter. Sometimes the quote related to the chapter along with the title, sometimes it wa...
I was seriously wondering if it's a problem to use the antecedent, which is "Mr Spooner", after the possessive pronoun "his". Also, I am wondering if we can use "his" without ever using an antecede...
I am developing a college-age female character and think that there may be a contradiction. This is an important secondary character, a good-natured girl, who is unfortunately quite promiscuous. T...
My main character gets shot and survives. One thing that bothers me is a character who is injured and keeps going like the energizer bunny. I try to set up for a rapid recovery, mentioning traini...
I'm a self-taught programmer which means I started writing software by sitting down at an IDE and hammering out some code. When my decisions ultimately coded me into a corner I would refactor and r...
Some of my fiction sci fi characters are ESP sensitive and the term is used a lot. Capitalized ESP stands out in my sentences like yelling so I am using esp,lower case. Is that acceptable? Will a p...
I've edited the question for clarity following some unexpected comments in the first answer. I submitted my latest novel to a handful of agents, and had a request for a full manuscript. On almost...
A popular writing theory states that any story worth telling describes the movement from one status quo to another, and that major uncertainties in the inception and conclusion should be avoided. ...
When answering questions on Stack Exchange, some of us challenge the assumptions of the author. These frame challenges can often be quite popular answers. This popularity, however, can simply be a ...
I know it normally takes several months to get an agent and then a contract. But are there any shortcuts, any particular companies that one can submit to directly and get a much faster evaluation? ...
When writing there is one area I am not great at leveraging. That's rhythm or meter. I don't hear meter naturally like some people do so I have to really break down the meter in order to work on it...
I have a book published by Kindle Direct Publishing. Most of my sales are to bookstores and up until now I have been ordering books (author copies) from KDP then shipping them to bookstores myself...
The crawling chaos, Nyalathothep, has formed a cult on the mortal plane devoted to his cause which worships him as a god. This cult has been operating in secret for thousands of years, sowing destr...
Sure, I understand the characters, but that's because I've been thinking about them. But how do I transfer that knowledge to the reader without taking the time and space to flesh them out further?...
There are a nice plethora of "how do I create a name for my fictional country/area/character" but I can't see anything for band names or companies or hotels. Is there a good system to use to avoid...
It is very important that my protagonist is mute. A lot of this character's motivations are informed by - though not entirely focused on - him having suffered laryngeal cancer and recovered due to ...
A personal point of view on the necessity of a new culture in fiction "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away", "Pandora", "Dune", "Middle Earth". All quite different worlds compared to ours, b...
If you are starting a freelance product description writing business, do you generalize or specialize? In other words, do you offer writing in an area like "product descriptions for tech companies"...
I am a reader more than a writer, and fantasy is my favorite genre. I used to write short stories and poems. Some of them are published in magazines and get good reviews. In 2018 January, I read ...
Let's say I have a character in my story simply called "Slime Monster". With every instance of these two words, I want both words to be capitalized and to be corrected as a pair, so if I mistype it...
One thing that often annoys me in historical fiction or fantasy books is the dissonance between the writing style and the events and historical period described in the book. The writing is usually ...
In both my last writing project and my current one, I have found an unexpected problem. Both tales are focused on a single character and their personal journey, but both tales are also set in the m...
I have an ambiguous script situation, 2 co-protagonists begin gaslighting the MC. They each have ulterior motives which they don't say. The reader is intended to infer the lies through contradictor...
How does one write a story for a story-based videogame. Is it done in the form of a screenplay? Is it written as any normal prose? Is it written as documentation that goes with the other early desi...
Good time of the day, community! Hope, that my post won't irritate too much, but rather will be helpful for someone in future. I already made some progress myself (I mean some raw unfinished vers...
Let us suppose an unmarried female author. She publishes something. Then she gets married, and chooses to change her surname to her husband's. Obviously, she can choose not to change her surname. ...
Question : When writing my screenplay, I frequently find the urge to describe a character's emotion. However, I have read somewhere (I forget where) that this should be left to the actor to some ex...
In spirit I have struggled long to find A manner fit to hold my roiling thoughts; A way to slowly pour them to a mold - And happily that manner has been found. A writer long, inclined to stories...
Here is my situation: I am Egyptian, my native language is Arabic but I don't want to write in Arabic I want to write in English. Would a literary agent from an English speaking country agree to w...
In my opinion, the best beta readers are fellow writers, partly because they may have insight others don't, but partly also because you can agree to trade beta-reading responsibilities. (This is fa...
