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 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...
My friend and I are writing a book in English in the Electrical Engineering field. At this stage, we need someone to proofread our texts and also to design the layout of the book, so we will need t...
Stories that are told by an "all seeing" narrator are told in the "third person." Stories that are told by the main character, based on what s/he sees, are told in the "first person." Suppose a s...
Recently, on a school test, I was given a poem comprehension. One of the questions was : What is the figure of speech in "...the trees start whispering among themselves? (A) Metaphor (B) S...
In a hypertext document, when the title of a short work (which is enclosed in quotation marks) is a link should the quotation marks be included as part of the link text? Do common style guides gene...
When the final chapter of "The Legend of the Sword of the Day and the Sword of the Night" was translated to English I kept hearing on the chatroom where it was posted that we had best read it now b...
Sometimes it's clear to me. But other times I get kind of confused. Example: After returning the materials back to their shelves, I turned—as were the others—the chair upside down on the tabl...
First question I've asked on here so hopefully it isn't a silly one. I am a little confused about a certain paragraph/dialogue convention I am using in something I am writing. Occasionally I have ...
Here's an example: Not finding anything useful, I went to check the maple. Four times my size, it was the biggest tree in the yard. I mean, it was. A typhoon tore it down three years ago, a...
Exhausted, I continued lying on my back. A cloud drifted lazily in the sky, heart-shaped, its curves flawlessly outlined as if drawn with a compass. Or should I write this instead? Exh...
I'm in need of an idea to advance my fictional crime plot where the protagonists of a larger (~30) group realize that the murderer (of a single murder) must be one of them, someone hiding in the gr...
I know you can write stuff like this: Head on pillow, I glanced at the clock. My mind made up, I went over to the counter. How about following: And with that he put on the climbing s...
For a long time now, I have been writing fan fictions based off of the storyline of a board game. I have posted these fan fictions on a website dedicated to the same board game. I am not the only w...
Let's say I have a document with a list like this: aaaa bbbb cccc dddd Should I put nothing, a semicolon, a full stop or what at the end of each line? This is for an academic paper. We don't ...
Should I use the former or the latter in a story written in first-person past tense? Example: My heart started to race, my adrenaline to spike, and that's when the thought hit me: I had to f...
This is a question that'd been bothering me for a while. Here's an example: My heart racing, I wriggled to the edge of the bed and fumbled for Travis' hand. Just make sure to hold onto it, he...
I have been writing a book, and often times I feel like a lot of the elements in my story are just Freudian slips. I'm not plagiarizing or anything, but sometimes I will go back and read through my...
I was posting my story on another site. After a while it sunk to the bottom. Not a big deal. But soon it seemed like everyone began to ignore it. So I cancelled it because I couldn't keep posting b...
Hypophora is a figure of speech in which a writer raises a question and then immediately provides an answer to that question. I am about to write a Statement of Purpose. In the SOP, I need to...
In one of my novels, I took two "contemporary" real life people, and sent them back to the 18th century to fight the American Revolution. (Yours truly is one of them.) My current understanding of ...
I want to convey the pause between the "then" and the rest of the sentence. But I'm not sure a comma is the correct punctuation to use. Then, when the smoke had cleared Jane Or is an ellipsis...
I almost drowned in the this ocean of tenses. Anyhow, did I make any mistake? It was almost two, so I said goodnight to Mom and went back to my room. Once on my bed, I took the gold tooth out...
An example from my own writing (Mother and daughter are burying their deceased dog): As planned that Friday, Mom and I underwent Choco’s burial at my home in __ (yes, she kept him in a garbag...
I am writing the first novel which will be part of a trilogy. For plot reasons, I am considering to change the main character in the other two parts (will be the same in the last two books). But ...
After submitting my manuscript the publisher responded with this: "Thank you so much for your interest in publishing with XXXXXXXXXXXX. The publishing industry, however, is very competitive and a ...
I'm aware that some fictional work is loosely based on others, consciously or not. For instance, Lord of the Rings has some common elements with the Saga of Nibelung from the old Norse traditions. ...
It seems to me that formal writing has many practices that at best seem arbitrary and at worst seem harmful. Here are some examples: It discourages using contractions, even though they make writi...
I am about to start writing a science-fiction novel, and having only ever written technical documents before, I have very little experience in the finer details of creative writing. In particular, ...
I have completed my book. But I'm stuck writing the prologue. I've written the story with narration by the writer (not from the point of view of any of the characters). But I don't feel like that...
I’m writing a short story. I am using the past tense, but I have sections where I describe people and places that are supposed to still be in existence. Should I continue to refer to them in the ...
Consider the following sentence: Huego becomes fuego by discarding its "h" in favor of "f". Do not omit the trailing "s", which is key to the overall meaning here. Nueve comes from the Latin wor...
I write non fiction books about computer science and security (Zzz) but with the security bits in particular, do I really need to put a disclaimer saying "hey don't go hack the government" on my eb...
"Show, don't tell" is a popular ethos amongst writers, and one that is very important to writing engaging stories. However, I'm in a situation whereby my protagonist is recounting an event from a p...
I am a guy whose passion has always been fiction writing but in college I decided to go into software engineering because my parents were in a bind and they needed help financially. Now I am decent...
I'm looking for software that will permit me to write articles of various sizes, with a title and tags for each article. The program should store the content, and then allow me to browse (whether f...
Sometimes, when I write my stories, I may include a very long sentence but it can be desrcibe eith a short sentence. i.e: What I write: " When I went into the room of darkness, the light that surr...
I have come across examples supporting both spaced as well as non-spaced examples and that's what confuses me. I want to understand what the standard practice is as endorsed by any of the major sty...
Those of you who like to just sit down and write what comes out, you all are known as pantsless writers. — KitFox We have a question on preparing for NaNoWriMo, but what if you start a NaNoWr...
So for first year students what would they call the initial courses (prerequisites) they have to take to take to courses they want to take the next semester/year. Is is intro to or 101 or both? How...
Suppose a source text says: 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God desires all people to be saved. Now suppose I want to quote it like this: It is possible for God to "desire all people to be saved....
In a lot of detective or mystery novels, the detective is the POV character and the protagonist, but the initial hook has little to do with him. Some crime has been committed, and the detective is ...
I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A—gold tooth? I flipped open its latch and peered inside. A ... gold tooth? Was it an elephant? No, elephants didn't frequent beaches....
I want to write: Our higher-profile projects include the delivery and erection of large exhibition stands for --company name-- at --redacted-- Championship; The emphasis is only to highlight ...
So the protagonist's boyfriend committed suicide. He left a suicide note. And now the detective is showing it to the protagonist: "So I'm the one who made him do it? "We read the letter. (...
I am an aspiring author, but I have written several short 'test novels.' With each of those, it became increasingly clear how you have to develop the main character, the protagonist. After all, the...
