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 want to give credit to a source without stating their full title again, because the full title is a mouthful. Earlier in the paper, I had quoted them saying: "So-and-so states...[direct quotati...
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...
I have the habit of using paired adjectives in my writing: The noise from the engine lulled her with its slow and monotonous rythim ... ... the lights on the ceiling filled the room in a s...
I thought about spreading a story across a video game, comic book and novel, but I am not sure if doing this will alienate my readers, because I don't believe people want to spend a ton of money to...
I am wondering how to do this in a novel. Do you write the song (lyrics) in its entirety in one single spurt, or do you spurt a verse at a time interspersed with descriptions of the surroundings/ac...
In this comments of How many elements can you focus on during worldbuilding? a conversation arose about the usefulness of non-genre savvy beta-readers. Another question Are "non-readers" useful be...
EDIT: Many people who are attempting to answer this question are severely misinterpreting the circumstances and setting of the book, so here is some information about Eris that I thought I had incl...
Are there any software tools available that will help me dissect my meter? I have always been extremely poor at scansion and while my writing doesn't suffer terribly for it, it makes writing strict...
Would it be a violation of copyright and/or plagiarism to “borrow” a character from another novel? For example, I have a short story and want to include as a side character Ender (of Ender’s Game)...
When writing there is one area I am not great at leveraging. That's rhythm or meter. I don't hear meter naturally like some people do so I have to really break down the meter in order to work on it...
I'm boring and just use Word and Excel for writing my novel and keeping track of stuff. I've tried a couple others, including Scrivener and Evernote, but never got into it. I like the idea of spe...
As I already mentioned in my previous question, I'm writing a novel with personages both that I created and some already created by others (well, I wrote that when I was younger and now I just digi...
I often write short poems and quotes here: https://www.mirakee.com/atd, but I really want to hear from someone professional to give their valuable feedback on my work, so that I know where exactly ...
In a short story I am writing, I have this misogynistic character who keeps saying misogynistic stuff, and I thought it would be a bad idea to give him dialogue lines. I was thinking that, because ...
Spoilers for Green Book in the E.g. section I listen to a lot of music and when I come up with stories I often use songs as a source of inspiration. However what I was wondering is are songs and...
My novel so far only contains female main characters. There are some male characters, but they are few and far between, and only play minor roles. Obviously it's hard to predict if any book is goi...
My middle-grade novel is third person with one primary and one secondary viewpoint character. Sometimes the narrator hovers a bit more, sometimes the narrator is more in the character's head. The...
Often reading analyses of books and films, I find that the analytics derive conclusions from the specific food or beverage that a character consumes. The food appears to always be symbolic of somet...
I'm looking for free software, preferably open-source, that would allow me to create maps for my story. I guess what I need is a tool that would allow some measure of 3D modeling. Features I would...
Two other friends and I have been writing a fan fiction and we basically write a chapter each one after another every week. Now that we're nearing the end of the project, we've noticed that the wr...
I recently noticed a trend to a few of my questions. I am attracted to writing in places with extreme brevity. This makes sense to me on a personal level. I've always been attracted to one-liners a...
I sometimes post photos on my blog, like when I'm blogging about food. I've been shrinking the huge pictures my phone takes down to a size that fits more reasonably in a browser window -- my brows...
Related questions: Should an author have one website or two? As an new author, how important is to have a personal website? Pros and Cons: A blog to get feedback A possible duplicate of, even i...
What is the word commonly used in statistics when the thing that you want to measure cannot be (or was not) measured directly, so you assume that another thing that can be (or was) measured gives a...
I recently asked about criticism regarding short pieces of fiction. What about longer works like novels? Surely no one can sit down and agonize over individual word choices in a larger work the way...
Possibly related: How can I get readers to accept more than 1 "buy" in worldbuilding? Worldbuilding is a tireless art; that's what our brother site Worldbuilding-SE is for, and why as a writer ...
A lot of people here aren't professional writers, but write in their own free time or for their own pleasure. It's not uncommon, though, wanting (or dreaming) to make "something more" out of it, wh...
An alternative "Occult Universe" I open my occult detective novel in what is ostensibly a "noir" style, but through worldbuilding I attempt to show that the story is set in an alternate occult uni...
I have recently joined the Puzzling.SE site and I am excited to ask few puzzles there. However, I am stuck, rather confused as to how a puzzle qualifies as good and precise. I want to ensure its cl...
In a piece I am writing, I want to turn an antagonist into a protagonist. I know that numerous ways to accomplish this are somewhere out there, but none of the help with a smooth transformation. Is...
How do you deal with frustration over a publisher's choices? All the stories and art for an anthology are in the publisher's hands—camera ready in digital form—and approved (deadline was 4 months...
I've always loved humor stories, and relish the idea of making one. But the thing I cannot grasp is the key elements of one. Are the key elements the same as a normal story (Problem, Solution, etc....
In the movie Prometheus, David 8 quotes a passage from "Paradise Lost" said by Lucifer. He tells Walter, Serve in Heaven or reign in Hell. One of the crew mate even insinuates he's the devil...
What is a reasonable scholarly approach to breaking down short pieces of prose? Is it word choice? Is it structure? Is it themes, and how well they are used? Use of symbolism and its efficacy? Mete...
I am writing a short story, and the boxing match which comes after 2/3 of the story is likely to exceed the length of the entire story, so how do you cut the action short? Do you describe the match...
I've noticed a quirk with the narrator voice of one of the two novels I'm working on. This narrator only describes the beautiful aspects of every character's features. You might think the women are...
When writing about food, be it a cookbook or a food blog, as long as the media supports it, the use of pictures is going to make a difference in the quality of the work. So when I am writing about ...
I am not sure what you call them exactly. I don't think it's a plot hole, because it's not related to the story itself. Let me give you an example: Let's say your novel is set in Italy, but every...
In a story I'm working on, humanity had sometime in the past reached a very advanced technological level (far higher than ours), but then had a devastating global war, and afterwards technology had...
I often have a passage that sounds like this. I don't know why, but I always found these passages a bit odd sounding. A stranger was lying, face into the sands, belly down, on the beach all a...
I'm not well versed in technical writing. I'm probably not going to be in a position to give anyone feedback for some time, but I would like to know how to approach it when I get there. I would als...
There are a couple questions out there on How to ask a smart question and the FAQ has its own tips, but lets assume you know how to ask what you want. From a purely writing perspective, most of the...
When I try to do this, the description feels very dry, and I am not sure if it's possible to make it feel less dry while still being impersonal and super objective (because I am using a omniscient ...
One of my friends passed away about a year ago and left me some manuscripts. A rough draft and without a proper ending. I was wondering if I should finish it and how. Should I take the draft and j...
As a spinoff to this question: Incorporating research and background: How much is too much? I'm writing a middle-grade fantasy novel with a historical fiction component based in Ancient Egypt. I'm...
The character in this story is a human-demon hybrid. He is good natured on a normal day, but because of the demon genes and blood coursing through him, as struggled with certain urges his entire li...
An example of the problem in an aggravated form surrounds the controversy of France changing ‘mother’ and ‘father’ to ‘parent 1’ and ‘parent 2’ in official paperwork - where the controversy suggest...
I'm a self-published author, who is going to get a traditional publishing contract. They say it's my choice, but I have a doubt. I have published a thriller novel, two mystery short stories, and a...
I have a title for a novel, however, it would lose its zeitgeist if I couldn't include the F-word. I can't go in to details without giving away the title. Would this limit the potential audience ...
I am wondering what are some guidelines when translating the lyrics of a song to another language, because lyrics depend a lot on musicality (rhymes, syllables), it's very hard to maintain the same...
