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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The participants describe everything needed for the story to continue, within the conversation. The environment, the emotions, everything. The reader gets to "see" it all through their words. Has i...
Let's say that a novel consists of three parts: introduction, climax and conclusion. Is it ok if the conclusion is much shorter than the climax. For example, can the introduction be 20% of the nove...
We all have seen at least one of these clickbaits (or some variation thereof): "single mom discovers the meaning of life with a simple trick" or "billionaires don't want you to know this...
I just had this sentence off my head: A crown of fire spread through the country consuming everything on its way. What I mean by empty metaphor is a metaphor that doesn't really have any me...
I am working on my upcoming book's blurb. One of my characters is a leader inspired by Hitler. I have mentioned him as "Hitler like leader". But this seems weak in my blurb. What can I write to c...
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...
I am writing a story with a trans character (female to male) set in the 1990's. My main character's parents are supportive from the beginning, but did transpeople have access to hormone injections ...
I have recently started writing a fanfiction and I am posting it online as I write it. However, I often see in comments sayings 'This fanfiction gave me cancer','The writer of this crap should just...
Background: I'm creating a story for a video game--it's set in a cyberpunk, futuristic setting, and it has many flows, one of its flows is that the story is so complicated and novelized, that it b...
I’m a beginner writer planning on learning how to write webcomics. My main one is an adventure/fantasy webcomic and the other is a card battle webcomic (I draw a lot of inspiration from anime and m...
Besides becoming a garbageman, selling dumpster finds and curb furniture on eBay/Craigslist, or selling metal to scrapyards, what are some ways to make under-the-table money off of trash? Legally ...
When I study the style of Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, and other authors, I find that they use very simple language and simple words. But when I look at present day authors, such as Stephenie ...
My MC is a famous singer/songwriter who is bad at writing lyrics. Her goal is to write commercially successful, deep, serious songs. How do I design the character arc in relation to this goal? Also...
I have a character who is a refugee from another country. She comes to the protagonist, and they have a couple of scenes together, viewed from the protagonist. I read about how important it is to ...
I write my dialog in this format: Joe: Why are you wearing a shoe on your head? Sam: Mind your own damn business! What's annoying here is that it doesn't automatically capitalize the word follow...
For example, in the lines: Say what good really is a life, When so thoroughly deprived of joy Is my restless mind, Hurting constantly, in a dreadful strife? When it needs so many lies, ...
What format should I use when beginning a chapter with the time and location of the events? I was thinking to use: Nine pm. Sunday, in Los Angeles, CA, USA. but I don't think it looks good, ...
In almost all the LitRPG stories I read, the start of the stories is full of system messages, +1 here and there, even damage prompts saying "Goblin hits Hero for -8 HP". Classes, skills, experience...
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...
Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like to know more about how to "know" more about a true alived char...
I'm looking for ways to discover what others might think when they hear or see a metaphor used in a speech. I tend to think a certain way. I have certain prejudices. I think we all do. If I use a m...
According to Wikipedia, An epilogue is the final chapter at the end of a story that often serves to reveal the fates of the characters. Some epilogues may feature scenes only tangentially rela...
I searched on the FAQs on WattPadd, it doesn't mention anything about short writings, or poems, so my question is, Can we write short poems, stories on WattPad apart from their promoted way of crea...
As I am applying for an internship in research labs writing a cover letter is the most important part while applying. I have gone through many websites regarding this, but I can't find the perfec...
I've noticed that I use a lot of exclamation marks when my characters are talking. They appear a lot in action scenes. Is there any rule of thumb when using exclamation marks?
I've met a few of these but the most recent instance was two characters discussing buying a third character a drink when they all got home, on the first reading this is a simple moment of comradery...
Situation: I have spent almost all of my money due to my wrong decisions, and I need to ask a person to help. He knows that is my fault, so it is very embarrassing to ask him for help, but due to p...
As a writer who occasionally gets published in journals and anthologies, I get asked for an "author's bio," usually with a limit of 50 or 100 words. I have a few things that I include but always fe...
What punctuation is missing from English that might solve your writing issues? People may be able to come up with established ones that meet your criteria, such as the /s to indicate "that last...
Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning of the story. For the story it is very important that it was defeate...
It's common in stories for spectacle to build over time. Each story arc, the stakes get higher, the drama gets more intense, the villains get more dangerous, and so on. For a story with a fixed e...
I recently penned a 60k word account of the life of a former pet. He was a rather rude and uncouth tough little dog, and so his language, daily habits and adventures were of course likewise. Howev...
Because I enjoy reading Science Fiction, I'm thinking of writing a Sci-Fi novel myself. I'm interested in 'hard' (related to the engineering sciences) science fiction with a military bent (think Th...
In an article I'm co-authoring, I'm about to say the following: ... d is the number of articles authored by John Doe ... But then I thought this would be better: ... d is the number of ar...
For those of you who are unfamiliar with TV Tropes lingo, a Complete Monster is the worst kind of villain imaginable: one that is evil to the core and has little to no redeeming traits whatsoever. ...
Let's take for granted that the 3 acts structure is relevant and exists. This, of course, is an assumption. How the three acts relate with the length of the novel? In a standard book - let's say 5...
The more distractions you have in your narrative, the fresher the plot/character twist. They were used in ‘The Da Vinci Code’ and the Harry Potter series, to keep the audiences focussed on a differ...
This is an offshoot from a comment exchange on an unrelated question. What to submit when asked for "sample chapters"? I know a large percentage of traditionally published fiction authors, especi...
When discussing the life story (fictional/non-fictional) of an inanimate object (like a brick not AI), is it appropriate to claim this endeavor as an autobiography of an inanimate object, when it s...
I am a happy user of an Underwood 5, an old typewriter from the beginning of the XX century. I use it to type letters, short stories, greeting cards, and labels. I am now planning to try and type...
I come from an academic background. Writing has always been an easy thing to me, but almost all of my practice outside of poetry has been in academic writing. I'll find myself writing in the way ...
I would like to adapt a novel I wrote into a screenplay, and I was wondering if there are things to take into consideration before taking the dive. The novel doesn't have a lot of dialogue and I th...
I'm writing fantasy stories in different worlds which do not share any history with our own. I was thinking I wanted to move away from the classic 'all white cast' scenario in most games, by picki...
I'm currently in the beginning stages of writing a book. I'm not very far along (I have the lore for the universe written and about half of the outline) however I am genuinely pursuing this. I want...
I want to add a perverted character to my story (don't ask why), a bit like Master Roshi from Dragon Ball or Minoru Mineta from My Hero Academia. However, I want to make them more sympathetic and g...
My attempt at the current writing challenge features a flock of sparrows. Since the actual "dialogue" between two sparrows would sound like a bunch of cheeping, I need another way to show what the...
We all do it. We do it quite often. Some of us too often, to the chagrin of the mods who have to clean up after us. Many people out there have autocomments but I try not to. I find them impersonal ...
Eons ago, there was a war among gods that came close to destroying humanity and the mortal realm. Gods depend on humanity, and their destruction would inevitably hurt them as well. At the conclusio...
For context, I am writing a graphic novel. I always used to imagine I would have some characters (mainly protagonists) reveal their internal monologue while others (mainly the antagonists) don't. T...
My protagonist is an immortal person that’s powerful enough to end all with but a thought. She has amnesia due to overusing her power when she recreated the world. The amnesia part is very importa...
