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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A lot of people here aren't professional writers, but write in their own free time or for their own pleasure. It's not uncommon, though, wanting (or dreaming) to make "something more" out of it, wh...
In the movie Prometheus, David 8 quotes a passage from "Paradise Lost" said by Lucifer. He tells Walter, Serve in Heaven or reign in Hell. One of the crew mate even insinuates he's the devil...
I am not sure what you call them exactly. I don't think it's a plot hole, because it's not related to the story itself. Let me give you an example: Let's say your novel is set in Italy, but every...
I often have a passage that sounds like this. I don't know why, but I always found these passages a bit odd sounding. A stranger was lying, face into the sands, belly down, on the beach all a...
There are a couple questions out there on How to ask a smart question and the FAQ has its own tips, but lets assume you know how to ask what you want. From a purely writing perspective, most of the...
When I try to do this, the description feels very dry, and I am not sure if it's possible to make it feel less dry while still being impersonal and super objective (because I am using a omniscient ...
The character in this story is a human-demon hybrid. He is good natured on a normal day, but because of the demon genes and blood coursing through him, as struggled with certain urges his entire li...
An example of the problem in an aggravated form surrounds the controversy of France changing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ in official paperwork - where the controversy suggest...
I have a title for a novel, however, it would lose its zeitgeist if I couldn't include the F-word. I can't go in to details without giving away the title. Would this limit the potential audience ...
I am wondering what are some guidelines when translating the lyrics of a song to another language, because lyrics depend a lot on musicality (rhymes, syllables), it's very hard to maintain the same...
For my Pathfinder campaign I write an update each session which I share with my players. The goal for these updates is: Provide a brief recap of the previous session Get people excited for the ne...
My tendency when writing is to give every character a name. Even the most minor ones. It says something about a nobleman when he knows every guard and stablehand by name, and it's something I want....
In one of my novels (it's a middle grade fantasy novel) the chapters average around 2,000 words. But the final climactic chapter is currently almost 7,000 words. I am considering splitting it into ...
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 my planned novel the main character is essentially from a less technologically advanced society and is learning about the "civilized world" beyond their village. He has above average intelligenc...
https://dgrayman.fandom.com/wiki/Innocence Well, I always thought that the name Innocence in D.Gray-Man never made much sense. It's not explained anywhere why it's called that, so I always thought...
So the problem I am having is that the protagonist of the novel I am writing is having a confrontation with another character, who starts panicking. Instead of saying "panic dripped from his face",...
I currently spend a good deal of time over at Code Review and I would love to improve the quality of the reviews I write. Can you give me any insight into the structure or approach you use when wri...
I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English. I have time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. None of the kids speak anything but English (aside from a few...
In my visual novel (an interactive, narrative-based video-game), I have a detective character who decides whether he believes interviewees controlled by the player. The detective doesn't explain ...
I have heard there can be an allegory inside another allegory (mise en abyme), but what about 2 concurrent allegories (at the same time) and how do you insure that people don't get confused by the ...
I am seriously wondering how to go about writing dialogues for characters whose native language isn't English and who aren't very fluent in English. It's very hard, because people have different le...
There are different types of time travel (they have different rules and constraints) throughout literature, so I was wondering if you could list some of them here, and which ones are best for drivi...
The line between science fiction and fantasy is often blurred. And that's okay. Genre is often more about marketing than anything else. As a general rule though: SciFi has science and technology...
My book was published by a now defunct publisher. They returned my records to me (locked, and I could not open any of the documents) and I've since re-published my title under my own name. Howeve...
I'm currently working on a short story with a dramatic "twist" ending. I use the quotation marks because, unlike a conventional plot twist aimed at surprising the reader, the intended target of the...
I'm writing a story where two lovers meet then I having one of them die at the end. I am curious to see how much imagery I should add.
I am reviewing some research reports and found myself diving into the black hole of technical writing style. My question is what is the best way to write numbers in millions? I am not writing a n...
I read a lot of YA fiction, a lot of which happens to take place in schools. Recently, an idea jumped into my head for a YA-ish story and told me that it was going to take place in a school. The i...
I used to write poems. I was in 4th grade, so I just wrote for fun. They didn't have any figurative language or symbols. My only goal was to make them rhyme. Here is an example of one of mine: ...
I am talking about writing a sequel to a novel that's in the public domain. For example, Wizard of Oz. As far as I know, this is completely legal; however, the issue is how to deal with the fandom ...
My name is Vinícius Morais, and I'm new to writing books. I have finished my first fantasy novel. But do I keep my name as the author or create a pen name? The main problem is there's a great poet ...
I am thinking of implementing multiple ending to one of my novels and it would be done the following way: There's a scene where the main character is about to do something, but I leave it to the re...
How can I describe an unconventionally part-humanoid character, so the reader knows clearly what they look like, while in a world where these people are normal and it's not unusual at all for chara...
Just to keep it short. One of my characters is sexually assaulted by her father. While not being descriptive of the act itself, the situation itself is quite an sad scene. This is relevant as the...
My character, Day, is the son of a dictator and the director of state-sanctioned and sponsored torture of mutated humans, one of whom is my MC. He killed his own sister to prove to his father that...
I hadn't thought about it before, but today I came across a writing prompt that involved hate. My mind kept running up against walls. It's not a skill I have ever worked at fostering. I can't think...
I understand this is a stupid question. I understand the answer should be obvious! I'm new to the writing scene, however, and I would like to know the proper process of going about it.
The novel I am writing is set in Europe. For the setting, I'd need to find the Latin names of places, e.g. villages and geographical features, in the regions corresponding to modern-day England and...
I have a hook. But my thesis seems to be more like a restated topic rather than a piece that encapsulates my topic with a claim. Any tips on how to fix this? I don't want a weak topic, but I also d...
I asked a question here on how to avoid political issues when I have a witch MC named Kem who is nonbinary, and a few people suggested that instead of including any kind of transphobia towards Kem,...
Say I have a possible title for a novel I am writing, and it's a word or phrase that has been used in the title of quite a large number of nonfictional works, sometimes as the whole of the title. B...
Let's suppose you can only write in English, and characters speak 2 different languages. How do you put it into writing. Consider 3 different situations: Person A speaks in language B, Person B re...
Warning: I have ADHD and this might be a little ramble-y, sorry. I'm completely stumped. I'm trying to get into writing fiction but I feel that I've hit a roadblock. My story is told from the firs...
(TW, depression related stuff?) In my AP Lang class, we've recently started an activity called Visiting Author, where a student does a cold read of a piece they wrote and the others give criticism...
I would like to quote a few lines of a lyric from St. Vincent's song "New York", for an 'in memoriam' I want to put in a newspaper on the anniversary day of my friend's death. Do I need to get perm...
Sometimes, video game development can go awry, so I want to add extra lines in case there's a decision to add generic questlines and new game mechanics. So how do you come up with a lot of lines th...
There is a writing technique where a writer would imagine in her mind's eye where her story should end and will write it 'backwards'. Writing the end and then writing the chapters leading to end, s...
We all know how Chekhov's gun works: in short, it's the "rule" that whatever is explicitly shown to the audience should be important later, otherwise you should get rid of it. Don't show us a gun i...
A.I. should have perfect English, but because they are mainly servants, they should be easily understood. Cyborgs, on the other hand, not necessarily, because they're augmented humans, but some cyb...
