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.
Filters (None)
First of all I'm completely against this idea but a few people who contribute to the technical documentation project constantly suggest that to attain a short, quick, economic, comprehensive messag...
Consider the following exchange: "Hello" "Hi" They were sitting on the bench. The dialogue lines are indented. Should the descriptive sentence also be indented? What if we had "Hel...
I am a beginning writer. I would like to write a science fiction / fantasy book that is critical of psychiatry, including diagnosis inflation, the influence of Big Pharma, and the field's de-empha...
My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning. It sets u...
I'm currently writing a story that is being told from 3rd person that switches perspectives frequently, but I'd like to focus on only one character's train of thought for a paragraph. The thoughts ...
When rotating POV between multiple characters, how long should a segment in one POV be? I'm writing ensemble 3rd person and tend to like to let the story dictate its own pace. However, I'm concern...
I have a question regarding sentence openings in English language. When I write most of my sentences start with determiners and pronouns (personal and posessive). This gets repetative quickly. F...
This might be a stupid question but I am trying to write a small novel, and my structure just doesn't seem right. The text just flows continuously until the end of the chapter (with dialog being ty...
When is it NOT appropriate to use the combined words of "they" and "are"? (e.g., They're) Is there a grammatical rule to only refer to people or can it also refer to things? Referring to printe...
I'm writing a war story, and it's dark. However, I find that every scene turns out to be depressing because of it. Readers will be overwhelmed. Are there ways I can induce hope/shine the light in t...
After I began writing my series, I decided to type some of the names into Google. I found that the name of one my characters (Trent Steele) was used in an episode of The Simpsons. I also found that...
"Hatha yoga is also a great form to use because it combines both spiritual and physical attributes which could help beginners find out what they like the most." I'm having a hard time trying to di...
I am currently writing a science fiction/fantasy quadrology and would like to eventually expand on it. I have an entire world built around it and I would like to know the best way to introduce it. ...
I am writing my first novel, which has gathered about 150000 words. I guess it will be around 170-180k words when it is finished. Assuming that it will loose 20% after the first draft, it will have...
I've written a novel and looking back the story line was good but the grammar wasn't great. I submitted the book to a few agents and received some constructive comments which I took on board. I hav...
I have always wanted to write a book but have never actually taken the time to do so. There are many things that hold me back but one of them is that I often come up with story lines in my mind. As...
I have an English high school exam in five days in which I will be given 2-3 prompts e.g. A story which includes the sentence, "I could not not believe when my neighbour walked right past me" or a ...
Do you think a role play can be good for publishing after some editing from the partners? Role Playing is my beloved hobby, but I am not sure what it takes to present it as decent literature.
Whether I am watching, reading, writing or telling a story, I always pay attention to internal coherence in the characters' behaviour (and of course I am not the only one). By writing and readin...
Let's say there are elements of good writing such as: Characters, Conflict, Dialogue, Ideas, Mood, Plot, Scene, Style and World You want to start focusing on one of them. Which do you think is th...
Does there always have to be a big, showy production about the revelation of a character's name? I was thinking that I'd just slide the name in quietly, in an off-hand manner. Probably the reader m...
The character in my book doesn't have a name. I mean, he probably does, but its not used by any other character in the book, including the character himself. He has a generic name, kind of like ...
I am writing a novel with an ensemble cast. Each chapter is told from a different person's point of view. Some of the chapters are about a non-sentient machine that communicates with the human char...
Many writers employ an interviewing technique in order to give characters depth and realism within a plot. This makes sense to me and is a solid practice for creating deep, meaningful characters th...
Edit: There have been a few very good answers and comments. The feedback I've got so far has made me question whether I'm even going into the right direction with my story. I felt like the themes ...
I'm writing a story that involves three main characters. They appear in linear form, each one's story leading to the other. So for example character A's story finishes leading to B's story which fi...
I'm asking this on Writing.SE because I'm doing a short presentation on "What is an anthology," and I'm not sure how to answer the question "Why is X an anthology and Y is not?" Merriam Webster de...
At what stage in writing do you ask for feedback on your new story? After writing a plot outline? After the first draft? After the second draft? After you polish it for the public? What kind of...
Is it a good idea, to make the protagonist pull themselves together at a point in a work of fiction. I've been writing a novel, and for practically the entire first half the main protagonist has be...
My novel contains emails, titles of news articles, parts of technical journals, and snippets of computer output in addition to regular dialogue and action. Is it common/acceptable to use one font ...
I've seemed to have a problem with getting this right and doubting myself. In regards to writing dialogue, do you follow up with capitalisation after punctuation marks? Can someone tell me which is...
I've been working on a quite large story for a while now, but going through my drafts I noticed one weakness: My villains are very underdeveloped / weakly characterized. I'll try to generalize the...
I've seen styles where writers end sentences with commas if it is inside double quotes and styles where writers end sentences with periods. For example: "She's late again." mumbled Jason. ...
Does the main character in a short story need a name? My story gives lots of other details about the character.
Consider the following technique for improving one's writing: at the end of every nth day, rip up all your work for that day and destroy it when you replace it, try to do something better, whethe...
I'm currently writing a story about a girl who was found by a couple in a magical isolated town, where everyone is named by the leader. I want her to not have a name because of two reasons: She d...
To help create descriptive differences in the way my characters talk I am looking for a list of how each language sounds. For example the German language has lots of clusters of consonants, and co...
Generally in fiction writing, you don't italicize company names (even though you would italicize the name of a newspaper). But what do you do if the company name is fictional, especially a name th...
Some fiction titles put a small block of text listing relevant setting details like the scene's time, date, and location between chapters' section headings and bodies. Heres an example: Chap...
I have noticed lately, that when I write letters describing things I've done recently, I default too often to sentences that look like "We did such-and-such, which was really great." I notice that ...
How might one go about creating character conflicts that intrigue people? As in, ones that are innovative/original that are not cliched (for example, the love triangle when it was brand new).
So let's say the story is about a ''anti-hero'' who uses harsh methods to kill/expose corrupt politicians and banksters. Now let's say that I'd want to write a romantic subplot happening between hi...
I have a dialog heavy scene in which one of the characters walks up to a door marked with a sign. I wrote A warning etched under the sign read “Electromagnetics strictly prohibited.” Is it co...
I learned early on (as most writers have) "show, don't tell," which I agree with for the most part. However, I've found many situations in writing when I'd start to write a statement in tell, catch...
Is there a word for when the last word of a line is the first word of a sentence, which creates a rhyme when combined with the preceding word? That might not be clear on its own; this excerpt from...
I have been looking for a writing software, but while I have seen a number of mentions about how this or that program helps you keep track of characters, I haven't seen any mentions of ones that ar...
How do I know, when I'm writing, which perspective I should write in? I almost always write with a 1st person narrative because it makes it easy to get great immersion in with the characters. Is i...
I'm writing a multi-faceted essay that will fill multiple pages (I suppose that it could be considered a collage of essays that build on each other to support one larger theme). This is something I...
I know the question seems pretty unclear, so let me try to explain it. So I'm writing my first book and already have big plans. I don't aim to publish. It's just for me. I want the book to be phi...
I'm just interested. Since there were many plot twist in books, movies, etc some critics say they're unbelievable. Now I'm asking myself, what makes a plot twist believable/unbelievable?
