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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Example from my own writing: He wouldn't have guessed (that) there would be someone with diarrhea in the toilet. Or that the ferry's rail would be half his size. Or that the night would bec...
I wanted to have someone correct themselves mid-sentence, and I remembered some guides I read on the subject. They only seemed to allow only the most basic of stutters, but I want one where someon...
Good day everyone! Just a background, I am writing an essay that is formatted with APA styling. In my paper, I have the word "shit" in it; essentially in this part of the essay, I am discussing...
I recently started translating a book from Turkish into English, but I'm not sure how translations are usually carried out. So, for instance, if I encounter a sentence which sounds good in Turkish ...
I'm working on a technical manual project for industrial machines and the original documents have some warranty warnings and statements at the beginning. We decided to keep them on the new document...
When critiquing another's writing I find myself making suggestions that are clearly biased toward how I would write the work. This effect seems particularly prevent for poetry, where suggestions ar...
Example: Three months had passed since she started to avoid me. Three months had passed since she started avoiding me. Right now, what I do is to search for the phrase with the most resu...
The most commonly given advice for using direct thoughts seems to be to format them in italics. I am not really satisfied with that, however. I haven't seen this used anywhere (granted, I do not re...
How do I punctuate a statement that a character is ordered to say in a future scenario? I don't want to use speech marks because its not a quote or a dialogue. My thinking may be wrong though. It...
In my screenplay, I have my female protagonist wear Prada, and perhaps drop other hints of her character, but not act like Miranda Priestly for the first two acts, until she gets a promotion at the...
I am interested in creating slang or a vernacular for a particular group in my story. I want it to be distinctive and a definite marker for in-group/out-group, but not incomprehensible. I'm not loo...
I find myself seeking a lot of ideas for my alternate universes, novels, short stories, and so forth. Exactly what can be considered copyrighted, and what isn't? Let me give you some examples. S...
In writing a screenplay, I created a bunch of scenes, with about twice as much material in total as I needed. So the job was to cut things down to size. In so doing, I found that a number of scene...
One author considers this mathematical statement by LeRoy Gorman entitled “The Birth of Tragedy” as a form of minimalist poetry: (!+?)^2 Is this mathem...
Deputy is not capitalized when referred to as a position. “The sheriff had many deputies.” “A deputy, a sheriff, and a judge walked into a bar...” John is capitalized because it is a name. “T...
Note: This may be more suited to Worldbuilding SE. I believe it belongs here, because it is about how to write a conlang, but if not, please feel free to move it. I am constructing Elvish. In my ...
If I am writing an event invite for a [Company Name] Christmas Beach Party, should the Beach Party be capitalized?
In a novel I plan on writing soon, the main protagonist (and indeed nearly everyone else in the story as well) is an elf. Humans are present, but they are far in the mountains, living in disorganiz...
When writing, scenes come to my mind in different languages mixed together. For example in a single scene a description will be in French, some dialogues in English, with a few words of Spanish and...
My current work is in first person. Well, it's a début so I didn't compare the benefits of first vs. third when I started writing it. I just picked the first because it was easy. Now the plot line...
I wrote a novel called Animal Suicide. It's a mix of romance and dark humor. It's about a girl who, after a weird incident, postpones a pill overdose and starts researching about the topic of anima...
The title is a little vague, so allow me to explain my question in depth here. If someone can think of a better way to phrase the title, feel free to edit it. First off, my definition of Bridging...
I have a scene in my story where the main character (the story is told from his POV) opens a door and there is a monster in the room. I want a sudden introduction, to show how shocked the characte...
I have read that a lot of passive voice deadens the story to 2 dimensional even if you are just trying to show something that takes time when you use the passive voice. I quite often use passive v...
My story features two software developers who discuss computer-based things in the first chapter. It's not a significant part of the story, but it helps to establish who the characters are and what...
Example: It was located in the East Coast National Scenic Area, also known as China's Last Unspoiled Land. Is that how it should be written? Should I put it in quotes? Should I write it in ...
If I use a scientific name (Python regius) in a phrase that is already in italics, should the scientific name then be written normally or underlined? Does anybody know the rule?
I once wrote a short story that was around ninety pages. It encompassed approximately a month. Since it was a short story, there were necessarily parts of it where days, weeks even, went by without...
When is OK to omitting pronouns and possessive adjectives in fiction? Examples: She called me that weekend while I was cleaning my apartment. She called me that weekend while cleaning my a...
Disclaimer: This is a new question, not an extension of my other questions concerning twists. When I develop fiction, I start with a premise and a theme. I have a general idea of where I'm headed...
I'm teaching a problem solving course for engineering students (most around 19 years old) and want to increase their creativity levels. Any ideas for writing/ thinking exercises that could inspire...
Conversation is the thing I have most difficulties with while writing stories. How do I write a conversation so it will be clear who said what, and in a way that's not like a court transcript? Sho...
I am writing a novel in which characters do bad things to one another. For example, I have recently been struggling over a scene of domestic violence. Essentially, a husband hits his wife, after ...
I have always been puzzled by this, even when reading endless information about it on the internet. Why exactly is it called that, and what's the purpose? That's like saying, "No, you're not a wri...
Example: The cat was lying on a cat bed, barely visible under the blankets, an IV wrapped around one of her front legs. Judging by the triangular shape of her head, her black nose ears and ...
I am ending the conclusion of my PhD thesis by saying something like this (not even remotely in these words): There was a lot of work gone in the thesis, yada yada yada, however there is room f...
I am a fairly avid songwriter, and although I like writing meaningful lyrics, I am not particularly good at it. I tend to use a lot of metaphors in my lyrics, but they're always quite easy to unde...
An example comes from a cartoon where there is a woman talking to her boyfriend. There's a "cloud" that comes from her mouth, and the text inside reads: "You're so handsome." But there is another ...
The structure looks like this: Chapter 10 (...) And so Cath began telling me her tale. Which turned out to be grimmer than I'd expected. Chapter 11 "I've been suffering fr...
What I've found in most books I've read is that the protagonist is "normal" and/or "average" (at least in the beginning). I believe this is because most readers should be able to relate to the prot...
My story is of a fantasy world where the wars of several species have all been fought, lost, and the protagonist is writing his journal from inside a jail cell. The writing he does can't be erased....
Since I don't know how to make the title less ambiguous, I will explain myself with examples. Example 1: imagine that in a dialogue between two mathematicians, one reads aloud the following senten...
I'm currently writing a novel, in which two characters who are old friends are having an argument. I'm writing the argument to establish who the characters are and what their values are (the argum...
Would it be more interesting reading a book that switches between 3 character's points of view chapter to chapter or, staying in the main character's mind the whole time. All of the point of views ...
I am writing my first novel and this the very first confusion I would like to clarify. As I am not a native English speaker, I find it very hard to understand the punctuation scheme in direct speec...
I finally sat down and wrote the first chapter of my planned novel. Reading back through it, I realized that there is so much that happens in only 2000 words. People die, the protagonist is capture...
I keep on running into this problem. I will have a parenthetical phrase (which is something set off by parentheses, rather like this, for those of you that do not know), but I need to include multi...
I am currently writing a novel and am 25,000 words into it, but only about 10% of the way in total. My intention was to write a single novel, but as I write, it has clearly evolved into what I can...
Sometimes I don't know which one to use. For instance, what kind should I use when referring to the stamping on a t-shirt? Mark wore a t-shirt that said, SAVE WATER, DRINK BEER.
De-Shi was holding something that looked like a price tag. It had the numbers 024 written on it. "Isn't that what cows wear as earrings?" "Yeah," De-Shi said, still inspecting the ob...
