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)
I have a world in which many characters live in. At first, I thought they all could be part of one novel (kind of like Sherwood Anderson's book Winesburg, Ohio or the movie Short Cuts (1993) by Ro...
I've asked the question a few times before about how to get published in newspapers and magazines, and the most common response has been, by far: "what are your qualifications to write about the pi...
I wonder if when talking about characters (in a book with a third perspective narrator) one can list their personality traits. I realize how that might be taking something away from the story, as I...
A reader of one of my works told me, "It was very interesting, the last two thirds of it anyway." Her fear was that I might lose my readers in the first one-third of the work. The above work was a...
Suppose I'm writing an essay on topic A. My view on A, however, requires the reader to be familiar with certain aspects of other, perhaps seemingly unrelated, topics say B, C, and D. It is not reas...
I said in a previous question that my protagonist "is a very shitty person that makes bad decisions for the wrong reasons". My antagonist, however, is a good person trying to do what they think is ...
I'm in a bit of a dilemma. At one point near the end of my story, I intentionally pulled a huge Deus Ex Machina that has no previous explanation, hint or even justification. In fact, I could (and ...
I've been working on my pet project a lot over the last six months, and I thought I had most of the kinks worked out- but I think I found a problem with my most important character. The story has ...
Leaving aside whether I ought to blog my book or not, I am doing just that. Each blog post will be a section, multiple sections will be a chapter, etc. Currently I'm looking for a good wordpress t...
I encountered a certain problem while building my world, one that will affect how the story is written: The protagonists never fight by themselves. There are always at least 15-60 military drones ...
Our heroes are (or a government is, for all I care) friends with a (seemingly) benevolent superhuman entity. This Entity is quite powerful and can provide various advancements that are used by the ...
In my fantasy novel, I have a species that is fully hermaphroditic: all individuals have both male and female reproductive organs. Like garden snails. Consequently, they have only one gender. They...
I have a story where the protagonist, who is a warrior meant to be the story's hero, has several unlikable traits. He is proud, kind of cold, has a hatred for the people of the enemy State (without...
Some of my beta comments fall under the category of 'I the reader am frustrated by what I do not know' - and I've gotten this comment in my real life group too. The reader wants information as s...
I'm a fairly prolific writer and have been published by several free publications and journals, and I want to try my hand at freelancing. The only problem is that none of the freelance platforms I ...
I have an Ancient Roman theme with the names of my characters, however someone pointed out to me Valerian is already a scifi character's name. Are the french comics (which spell it with an accent o...
When my protagonist is learning to use their magical skill, they must remain in hiding. Because they have not yet mastered their magical skill. My protagonist is bored from being holed up for so ...
Someone I'm proofreading for has a protagonist that, for whatever reason, has a blanked out name. She writes it as '_____' which I feel disrupts the flow a little bit. What way can I recommend th...
Recently, I am trying to write my own novel, but I came across a problem that is hindering my progress greatly. I can't get into the mind of the protagonist even though I planned her character befo...
Should I repeat character descriptions if a minor character reappears the second time too far into the story? For example, I have a minor character who is introduced and has a bit of involvement a...
I have recently completed a short story work of mine. I have published it on Wattpad, and I've sent the Google Docs link of it to several friends. I am kind of new to writing in general, and Wattpa...
I feel bored to have this in my all mails 'Please let me know if any questions/comments', any best alternate sentence would be helpful for me
I was just wondering if there was a restriction to the number of books a child can write? Is there?
My story begins with a little girl waking up in a creepy and probably very haunted house in the middle of nowhere. She has no memories of how she got there, what happened or what the place even is,...
I'm working through the Sanderson youtube classes on writing fantasy and he discusses the idea that conflict can arise between any two (or three) of the three legs of a story - plot, character, set...
I recently watched Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass on screenwriting. One frustrating section of it (overall it's quite good, IMHO) is about dialog, and Sorkin says that dialog is important, it can't be ...
I'm looking at my project through the lens of the 'scene-sequel' model now. Scene=Goal/Conflict/Disaster, Sequel=Reaction/Dilemma/Decision. My story has been through over a dozen various revisions...
Posting on a question about word frequency data, I read an excellent answer from @DPT about avoiding words that become so frequent, they're problematic. In a snippet of that answer, they wrote: ...
Would the line: "Peter!" cried his father. make grammatical sense? It seems to work intuitively, but I'm just not sure. It's also a tough question to google, as it turns out, so any reply wou...
I want to make a cartoon video describing my personal experience. Is it okay if I used the past tense to introduce the story first and then shift to the present tense to make it sound more realist...
When it comes to revising/reformatting a setting bible (for a video game) to make the setting more internally consistent and better organized, which place is the best part of a setting bible to loo...
I’m looking to eventually share my book online for others to read. I was paging through Wattpad and it just isn’t necessarily the place I’d like my work to be. Just reading through a few random sto...
Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is when the audience is put off by the incredibly dark nature of a fictional work and won't care what happens next, lose interest or want all the characters to die ...
A mystery with 3 subplots I'm writing a branching mystery novel. It's more Raymond Chandler than Agatha Christie: the mystery is a driver-of-plot rather than a puzzle for the reader to solve. Foll...
I'm currently struggling to write the first portion of my science fiction story that involves two characters traveling, and I was wondering if you guys had any writing resources to recommend. My go...
I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing and he's got quite a lot to say about the redraft phase. He explains his working method. Write with the door closed, just for him and create a 1st draf...
Will I get sued or something if I just mention/ reference something like that?
How do news companies find out that the government plans to pass a law in a couple of years, or that the president is about to sign an executive order? Do they contact the government workers and a...
When I use dialogue within the stories I write I have a bad habit of writing dialogue after dialogue without indication as to who is talking. An example is when I do this in a story “Arden! Dar...
Historically, most occidental cultures (and many other ones) were strongly biased against women. Women were effectively barred from the vast majority of occupations - sometimes actively, and someti...
I've written many stories and have received some good feedback but have never tried to compete with others. I've been thinking recently that it would be nice to enter a piece of my flash-fiction in...
When I think of a scene, I often think of little hints or gestures, to express certain things or thought processes. For example a character breaking eye contact, but quickly looking back to not sho...
When writing in first person, is it better to mention as little repetition of events as possible? Or can it improve writing in some cases to have a character duplicate previous events and have them...
I sometime express my personality too much in my more creative fiction. When I get going, I include slang words and phrases that sound fascinating and are comprehensible to me, but may not be inter...
I have this young character who grows up to be very strong and powerful but while he was young he was still discovering how strong he was. This incident happened to a friend he's protective of. W...
I have heard that the the editor of F&SF (Finlay) is the only one who reads all the submissions. Yet he always responds within a week! (With detailed comments on each story.) Clarkesworld is an...
Not unsimilar to myself, my protagonist potentially has too many goals. He's isn't a likeable character (which is how I intended him) so to keep reader interest, I would like them to become invest...
In a story set in a fantasy version of 5th century Persia, I've been told by a beta reader that a boy wouldn't call his father "dad", (would use "father" instead), wouldn't say "no spoilers", etc. ...
A character in my story is supposed to be falling apart, for many reasons: He's 16 and is killing people, in a gladiatorial setting, of a similar age. He already died (possibly a few times), but ...
