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'm looking for an exhaustive writing tracker, either software or a spreadsheet. ideally, the basic things it would need to track are word count per session, projects worked on, submission status, ...
"Write an elevator speech for prospective employers" is an action-item that's dogged me for weeks. Perhaps this is the place to reach out and admit-- I've got a bad case of writer's block on this. ...
Many of my characters, main, side, and recurring all have a suite of magic abilities. So will them constantly using magic be annoying? Will it make the magic stale? What tips should I follow and wh...
I'm writing a short story with androids and cybernetically enhanced humans who have access to neural interfaces. Essentially, they open up some kind of computer terminal, but it's via internal sens...
I wanted to know How Much Dialogue Is Too Much Dialogue ? I'm writing chapter and i can't really seem to trim my dialogues since my all 4 of my characters are to talk to each other and interact wit...
As per the title I compared my system against two other systems separately but I'm worried about it coming across as that it was a three way comparison. Neither of the below titles convey what I w...
I was directed to the writers stackexchange from the English/grammar forums. I'm writing a novel in present-tense. If all the actions are in the present-tense, e.g. as the character is experienci...
I am working on a long form fiction item. In this one of the characters will quote the first stanza from a poem. Normally with speech, one opens quotes, adds the text, and closes quotes. However I ...
Back in the day, good writing meant it was a goal to make sentences short. As I have grown older this rule has served me well, especially as it relates to technical writing. I am looking for a hu...
How joining a writers and a conscript creators (artifical language similar conlang). How put my alphabet into writers book? Many universums like StarWars, Bionicle ,Star Trek etc. have alphabet, l...
When quoting the spoken word, and if one particular word is difficult to distinguish, how does one properly indicate the uncertainty if that particular word has been quoted correctly? The followin...
I'm writing a trail guide about mountain bike trails in a little known Eastern European country. I have many maps and trails but I would like some advice about which software to use to write it u...
I'm writing an MLA formatted research paper and want to add the following into my paper. "Legislature The Legislative branch is Parliament, comprised of the Head of State and the Legislati...
What does this mean? If I have to SHOW more about a particular traumatic event which happened to me, I would probably not be able to recall the chain of events because I was in a panicked state of ...
So for example, in the Victorian era, the character Sexton Blake first appeared in a short story, and progressed (in the hands of many different writers) through novels, comic strips, stage plays, ...
I've often heard writers say they don't like using colons and semi-colons in dialogue specifically. I don't often see colons and semi-colons in dialogue, but sometimes it just seems like it's by fa...
So in my latest works I've decided to make my narrator, whom is my main character as well, pretty unreliable. How do I get this across to readers? I read a few short stories online that were pretty...
My mom says that my books are really good and that people will enjoy them. I know parents say things to their kids to keep their hopes and dreams alive, but I want to know: How do you know if your ...
In my story, the character has to learn a certain skill, with a mentor guiding him. I wrote the introduction and explained some principles regarding the discipline, but I don't want to bore the rea...
Examples: Using "could": I looked at the flyer again, and then back at Mark. Very strange---meeting someone who didn't see me as a weirdo. But could it be true? Could there be a club dedic...
I have been on the search (passively, that is) for some sort of database type tool to put characters in. I would want/need the basic stuff (height, birthdate, skin color, hair color, etc.) but I wo...
I read Leaf by Niggle, and I've ever since been recommending it to just about anyone who will listen to me. Now, I want to know how The Magician did it. I read over his essay On Faerie Stories, a...
In some style guides, I see this mention of putting a full-stop after an ellipsis when you are stopping the paused sentence and going onto another new sentence, but when reading several very well-k...
We're working on a software manual with several chapters and topics and, so far, these are mostly self-contained. This means we have a dedicated chapter for "connectivity" and do not mention connec...
Why did Grammarly suggest capitalizing the word 'dragon' in this sentence? It says it does not fit the context so needs to be capitalized: Small birds chattered and scooted about in the undergrow...
I originally posted this question on the main English forum, but someone suggested it might be better posted here. Apologies if I have broken any forum rules. As I home in on the end of my first n...
What is the best program (or programs) for layout, typesetting, and then printing (at home, or taking files to a printing shop) a book? It would need to be one which takes into account the way page...
In my action/adventure story, the two main protagonists are rescuing the injured victim and escaping the dungeon. (Or jail cell. Or whatever.) Once the protagonists have rescued the victim, I want ...
Nobody in my story knows the actual name of one of the characters. She calls herself 'tina. She always writes it 'tina and gets irritated if people write it Tina - it's short for something, but nob...
In my current writing, I've been having some trouble with the plot, specifically with going from an outline detailing what I need, to an outline detailing how I get there. I think the problem (or a...
I've played with the idea of a multi-book fantasy story for years, where a female and male protagonists' lives intertwine with one another, the series running from 12-22 years old for them. There...
I wasn't sure how to phrase the title, so it may be a bit confusing. Feel free to edit it if you can phrase it better. This question may be better suited for Worldbuilding SE. However, it is abou...
In my latest novel, I have created a fantasy world and would like to create a custom map of said world. However, I do not know how realms, kingdoms, cities, towns and villages all fit into it. M...
The story: Centuries ago, humanity have been incorporated into an alien hive mind, spread by a bacterial-like infection. The "bacteria" infects the blood and brain and allows the infected to join ...
This question isn't about a case that I have a problem with; it's just a purely hypothetical thing that I've been thinking about. Suppose you are writing a book or maybe an article for a journal. ...
In my novel, there's something that the characters refer to as "darkness". It symbolizes the bad thoughts of depressed/suicidal people. A short silence. I imagined Joel nodding his head in the ...
I have created a picture book and already have it designed and have a local printer who is going to handle the print-on-demand. I can not find a self publishing website that does not dictate the l...
Okay so say is my story scene order is in this order in the book. Future scene (insight) --> past scene (flashback) --> present day. What do you think? Will this order be confusing for my r...
One bad habit I have when writing sentences is that I make them too long and have to use commas. Problem: I get confused on where to put them to maintain the smooth structured balance of the senten...
I know there's 3rd person etc... but can a story be told from a secondary character's POV? or does that never happen and would be useless? I want the story from the girl's view, but i really want t...
I've given some thought to this, and I decided that I want to either make or find a theme to my fantasy novel before I really get into it (as I have started a couple pages already). I did some rese...
Sometimes I have inspiration for a story. In random pieces of spare time I daydream more and more details until I am satisfied with the concept and then I don't take it any farther. In my head, the...
Does Game of Thrones get any unpleasant when a whole bunch of characters die every season, for example? Leaving hooking elements aside, at what point does exploration of uncomfortable aspects fro...
I have a story with several characters. I've decided that I won't give them names, but refer to them as their titles. For example, the grocer. The cleaner. The officer. Currently I capitalize ...
What if a chapter is incredibly depressive, dark, with intense language. And the next reads almost like a dialogue from a Seth MacFarlane comedy. Or even better, what if the tone switches occur bet...
I have a book I am writing, and every time I go into a grammar fixing program, I get a lot of "Fragmented Sentences." Can some one explain to me how to fix these with out losing any part of the sen...
I'm embarking on writing my first popular science book on a controversial subject. For sure the writing must be rational, coherent with a clear train of thought and littered with references to be c...
For a long time I would edit chapters as I wrote them, to make them as complete as possible. Unfortunately this often resulted in me running out of steam and never actually finishing them. I've r...
Similar to this question, I am slowly coming to realize that my writing is getting choppy. Unlike that question however, my problem does not lie within sentences, or even paragraphs. It lies within...
My understanding is that a "reflection character" is someone who acts as a "foil" for the hero(ine). This is someone the main character fights with, or at least interacts with, a lot. How is this...
