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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It has been a long time since I last tried to write a play, and I hated it, not the play (which became a short story), but writing one. The word processors made working with script layout a pain, a...
Let's say I'm creating a unique world for my book. New planet, maybe new species, complex society with complex rules, history, government, and so on. Some of these details are absolutely necessary ...
We are currently in the process of writing a debut novel. Although we are still in the early stages of writing, we both feel we have the creativity and perseverance to see this through. What we d...
I wrote a piece of poetry for one of my short stories (the main character, Eri, writes poems). It's the following: Eri, did you feel the earthquake last night? Are you really sure your ap...
My name is Richard Devine and I am currently working on a collaboration with Stephen King, (obviously NOT the original author himself). We currently act under the pseudo name 'KD Novels' (King/Devi...
I'm working on a short novel that has two main stories. These stories belong to relatives from different generations, but of the same age. So, although the book spans through 20-30 years, I'm more...
I find that my students are using a lot of these phrases at the beginning of their sentences: First... First of all... To begin with... All in all... The other reason is that... Above all... At l...
Basically, I have about 7 or 8 characters (excluding the antagonist) who each have important roles in the story. My problem is that my characters tend to develop themselves, so to speak. I have no ...
Sometimes I can't decide whether to use a semicolon or a em dash. Usually, I start with semicolons and, once I notice there are too many of them, I start replacing a few with em dashes (as I read s...
I have written a book. Well, actually, my mother-in-law told the story of her experiences as a German forced laborer in the Soviet Union after World War II. This was given in German and recorded ...
Eri kissed her dad on the cheek, and waved goodbye to him. He entered back into the car, and then drove off, disappearing gradually at the far end of the street. Once he was gone, Eri glance...
The core character in my current work-in-progress is an immortal goddess (of the minor kind), who goes increasingly desperate. In her desperation she's about to do something quite terrible, and the...
I've recently purchased a book from Amazon, and I was curious as to when it was printed. I looked at the copyright page, which looks like this: The biggest year number shown in this page is 19...
Following my question here I am still unsure if it is a 'hard and fast' rule to italicise thoughts. My preference is to use normal quotation marks, so that if a person is thinking in a dialogue si...
I have often come across stories where the author has described a particular scene or action of a character in minute details. e.g. If a character has to open a door, the description is about how ...
First, this question is not quite about writer's block or dealing with self-criticism. I find myself often in the following situation: I want to write a short piece of non-fiction and have plenty ...
In one of my stories, my main character was once able to speak, but after being alone for 3 or 4 years in his early 20's without speaking a word, he became mute, unable to speak at all. Is this si...
I was just writing a historical overview of a battle and decided I'd write the introduction in the present tense--the present tense being a narration of a specific event during the war. I just re...
A writer is doing blog coverage of an event which is time sensitive (happens annually). The writer uses present tense for the coverage posts. Should the writer go back and reformat the old posts ...
I've been working on a story idea for a few years now, during which I designed a world (fantasy-based) in which it would take place. The thing is that because this is a different planet, I thought ...
Since my childhood I have had a secret dream to write my own story or even a novel. I have always enjoyed reading books and writing compositions. However, I never had enough courage to start writin...
I am writing a romance novel. I have two main characters, Niranjan (male) and Jennifer. POV is Third Person Multiple (above two). I have a scene where they meet first time in a restaurant. While t...
In my story, I've decided to create some legends, myths, and prophecies for one of the species I used. I don't think there is any problem with this even if I haven't created this species. But one ...
When I first wrote "Gawain's Guilt-Girdle" (14 lines of verse) I introduced it with a short (modernized/translated) quotation from the Middle English work Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I think m...
Eri raised her eyes to the screen again. What a terrible thing it must be for an earthquake to hit right on your birthday. She wondered how often that happened. Maybe earthquakes are complet...
My (A)ntagonist (or antagonizing force) in my novel causes a nuclear disaster in a remote nuclear facility. I've decided on certain circumstantial plot points, such as the post-disaster coping of t...
I recently finished reading William Strunk's Elements of Style. The book mostly teaches how to write concise paragraphs (e.g. by removing, changing, and rearranging words). So I decided to apply t...
A friend of mine was gracious enough to let me write a story using a setting he has been using for his own novel. I finished my novella while he is still working. I am looking at indie publishing t...
So far I've been setting my stories in the country I live: Taiwan. Not because I love my country. In fact, I'm not fond of patriotism. I just figured out it would be easier to describe surroundings...
I've learned that variation in sentence length is good. How about paragraph length? I always end up with paragraphs like this: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed di...
Feedback from my writer's group tells me that my recent stories leave promises unfulfilled and important questions unanswered. So I've become interested in how stories make promises and raise quest...
I prefer writing short stories. Over the years, I have learnt many essential skills that I employ in my work. I believe (and this is my personal assessment) that my stories are of good quality (i.e...
When fiction is marketed, I often see them listed by genre, for e.g.: "fantasy", "science fiction", "mystery", "poetry", etc. Most bookstores and Web sites use essentially the same categories to cl...
I really love -- and most of time write in -- first person point of view. The novel I'm writing is somewhat different from what I'm used to. I have four main characters -- I don't see any of them ...
I would like to ask for any guidelines that could help to determine when a story can be considered "erotic". Is it based on the words, the number of scenes or on how detailed they are? Shortly, if ...
I read that bullet points have to be consistent when it comes to content and punctuation. For example, you can't mix full sentence bullet points with fragments. Is this true for hyphen points (if t...
I'm writing a book (travelogue) about Japan, comparing it to Sweden, where I'm from. During my travels I communicated mostly in Japanese but occasionally in English and Swedish. The book is in Engl...
I frequently have ideas for what could be called "optimistic" science-fiction premises - imaginary technological or social changes which I think would create an unusual and interesting setting, and...
In the following example, the character is a five-year-old: Saki stared at her side. Her cousin was right: she had indeed an extra digit on one hand. How come she hadn't notice it before? ...
Let's say, for example, that I want to post my favourite quote from Babylon 5 somewhere: "I'm not saying what I'm saying. I'm not saying what I'm thinking. As a matter of fact, I'm not thinking...
I was reading this thread, but it didn't quite the answer a question I had about creative writing and whether profanity should be used or not, in a way that is best for creative storytelling. Here...
I'm looking for a well balanced love triangle. The thought of a wrong-person-right-time rival seems to be weak because readers are most likely not to root for the him/her if the wrongness is obvious.
I found that many writers of magazines or novels say something in a way that is not straightforward and to the point. Like this: Dressed like a latter-day Steve Jobs in a tight black long-sleeve s...
Whether we like it or not, the "About the Author" description is a marketing tool. It contains selective personal and professional information which is deemed to have the potential to create a posi...
An example: Naomi's words hung in the air as I gazed out of the hotel window. The mountain lay quietly in the dark, like a calm, sleeping giant. A cluster of city lights glittered beyond. I...
My 9 to 5 job is in an office, which has made me very adept at using flow charts and graphs to plan out my projects. Are there any writing methods which employ charts, graphs, or other visual med...
A common problem I observe in student papers the use of source material in a sequential as opposed to an integrated fashion. For example, the first paragraph will be based on source 1, the secon...
A few days ago, I stumbled upon an issue of the type; meaning I had two characters talking between themselves and another character talking in the background; actually delivering a speech. What th...
In what case is it justifiable for your own story to differentiate its plot from another, similar plot? For instance, I'm writing a story with a serial killer who whose motive sounds akin to the Ji...
