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)
This is something I've pondered before. I asked about one gesture on yahoo answers long ago. All I got was a guy saying that even he didn't know the term for it (it was the gesture where someone ho...
As mentioned elsewhere, it has been a stumbling block for my readers to understand what drives my characters. I had thought I had communicated character desires through showing, and action, but it ...
I intuit that hooks are things that hook. (I'm quite astute in this way.) They can be good prose, relatable characters, rich settings. Books must start with a 'hook.' This is a current truism. The...
I'm adding a qualifying question to the end of this question. So I have (let's say) two types of feedback in my beta critiques and real-life writing clubs. One is that I have floating heads syndr...
I know we need to show and not tell, but is it still okay to sometimes tell instead of having to show it? For example, I wanna let the reader know that humans in my story are actually the same spec...
Calling all gifted writers, would you tolerate 'modulate for' in this paragraph? "Dr. Tom wants the best for everybody who asks him for help. Despite his impressive skills and the physical interve...
Consider the following: During my year at UH Manoa, I felt prepared for my computer science courses given my previous experience with programming, but I wasn’t sure how I could apply myself...
I have trouble coming up with fantasy names. I've used random name generators but they weren't very helpful. Is there a website that would have fantasy names or Norse, or Celtic names?
Some media did an interview with me and published it - and I see a hyperlink inserted into my answer. I provided them the link separately but didn't expect to see it inside the quotation marks. Wh...
I have a text from the Nebonidus Harran inscriptions that I want to specifically reference in my paper. The quote looks like this: …(But) the sons of Babylon, Borsippa, 15. Nippur, Ur, Er...
My book is about a girl who is a compulsive gambler, and I'm trying to write a scene where she is playing a board game with an old dude who also has a gambling problem (eventually, she wins). My di...
I'm writing a company blog and want to update one of our recent posts about our product's feature. Should I add 2-3 paragraphs of update at the beginning or at the end of the post? Great exa...
Let's talk about butts, because butts are safe, but really this question is for other parts of the anatomy as well. There are 100s of words for butt. They seem to fall into one of a few categories...
It seems that writing style varies from author to author, and from work to work, but how does the English language allow for so many different writing styles? In English there is syntax and word c...
It appears that most "rules" regarding internal monologue advise restricting its use to one or two POV characters. My novel, however, will have five or six major (POV) characters, and I would like ...
So, I'm in the process on writing a hardening guide for Windows 10. Similar to http://hardenwindows10forsecurity.com/index.html, but different in scope and style. I wondered, if informing about "B...
I'm 22 year old and when I read myself, my writing style feels juvenile. By that, I mean that everything seems enveloped in a drape of purity, of carelessness and that whatever happens will end wel...
Is it legitimate (acceptable) to use a 3rd person POV approach with the narration intentionally being a bit wobbly? I'm using an alternating 3rd person POV structure. One character (Let's call he...
If you are trying to convince readers that women are an important part of war in an alternate world, is sticking them in costumes designed to titillate instead of protect damage the worldbuilding c...
I'm willing to introduce a new character who speaks a different English - he uses all the words with -ed in the past and past perfect tenses and he doesn't use the continuous tenses: "Eh, they ...
I've never been to a circus, and all the shows and videos I've seen about them don't give off the full effect. How does a person go about describing a place/experience that they never personally ...
I would like to know whether there are any tools that would help an author write a branching storyline. Usecases may for example be: campaigns for Pen and Paper games visual novels Choose Your O...
I recently started writing a blog. It's about many things: travel, food, my perspectives, photography, comics, movies and whatever thing I feel about writing. I'm using a WordPress blog. Since I'm ...
I’m writing a paper and I have these sentences that are a bit problematic. I feel they generalize a bit and could be rewritten in less words. I’m kindly seeking suggestions on how to improve the be...
Is it better to save each chapter in a separate word document or all in one document? ^ was my first question. I am 10 chapters into editing the book and I'm finding myself a loss of words to des...
I have recently written an action scene, and I am not satisfied with it. It sounded choppy and inconsistent, and I'd love to know how to write it so it makes sense, doesn't sound like a robotic des...
Or in other words, is the plot/story more important than how it is executed? I'll use as an example a fantasy I'm writing. If I boil it down in a few words, it would be "a kinda-typical-but-differ...
I'm thinking of putting a "straight plot twist" to my story. What I have in mind is putting in a similar situation that leads to a previous plot twist, but actually the plot is just going straight ...
I have to create a small world for my WIP game so I can submit it as my thesis. While I am aware I can use simple text editors (my usual choice) I want to be able to create a tree/web of my ideas, ...
I do soft cover books and laminate the top side, and therein lies the problem. The cover keeps curling up too much. I have tried Ningbo 350gsm which works perfect except that now it's too stiff and...
Consider a document structure like this: 1. First-Level-Heading Some text to give an overview about what I want to tell in this chapter. In LaTeX, this heading would be produced using the \sectio...
I have recently undertaken a personal project to translate my WIP novel into Japanese in parallel with writing it. I am managing both in LaTeX and editing them in vim, but the topic itself is too ...
I'm writing a descriptive essay about a bird, which is a metaphor of my cell phone. So far, I have been using the pronoun "it" when describing the bird/cell phone; however, it feels awkward as th...
I am currently writing a war story written from different perspectives on both sides of the conflict. Every primary character of the story has their own side story with a family, life, etc., yet th...
In my novel, I intend to have the protagonist eventually join the group that killed his family and of his antagonist, and this will set the plot for a more massive arc of what I hope will be multip...
I have been told before that when describing things in writing I should use different words, and not to repeat myself so it doesn't become redundant, but sometimes there are no other words that wor...
I am trying to write a character that speaks English poorly. I do not want to grossly misspell words for sounds or use bad grammar. I find those techniques to sound juvenile and the bad grammar i...
In my fantasy story, a new group of people come to this empire seemingly peacefully. But soon, they begin to blame these magical people for an assassination of the empire's empress, giving the cro...
I've found this website and could see huge number of poets and poetesses in it. Does anybody know about it? I would like to know more about this website.
I use Scrivener, and sometimes when I highlight a line or even just click the cursor, the font shrinks to tiny. When I check the font size on the computer, it hasn't changed (still size 12), but cl...
I have known gaps - voiceover artist, studio time, editing, distribution, but what are the unknown unknowns that I need to consider? Having read previous threads, there are some very wise answers,...
I've been reading a book about how to write from the really ground up, but this book doesn't teach how to compound a chapter. I wanna write for my own blog, but I wanna do it by posting chapters. W...
I have written a book about my math discoveries. The book is available as a PDF file and as LaTeX files published in a Git hosting under Creative Commons license. Will it increase readership of my...
So I have a bunch of gifs saved in my Research folder, but unfortunately, when I click on them, they don't play - I have to open them in an external editor to view them. Is there a way to make them...
In a copyright case, documents were released with portions redacted. The redaction was poorly done. Would it be generally considered ethical in most legitimate news organizations for a journalist ...
I'm using Scrivener for Windows (latest version). I set out to read my entire novel in Scrivenings mode. However, the text is a bit small for easy reading. I see a Zoom toolbar at the bottom of th...
http://canva.com appears to offer support for multiple formats including eBook (and also Kindle), but what I can't tell from the homepage is whether they offer direct support for creating a cover (...
Does the ulysses app have anything that is useful for creating placeholder text? For instance, if I didn't have a character name, or a place name I could do: {protagonist_first_name} or {placen...
I've been going round in ever decreasing circles over the setting up of the margins for my novel, which I hope to publish with Createspace. I know what the Top, Bottom, and Outside margins should b...
Say, I mention the following equation in a novel/short story: (Direct Cost / (100 - Desired Profit)) * 100 How should I format that in narration? In capital letters? Italics? First variab...
