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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In my ongoing effort to weed out every beginner-related problem I might have before I write my novel (what do you mean? I'm not delaying at all), I have now come to a dreaded area: dark protagonist...
I have a growing non-fiction blog about challenging existing dogmas in my culture, and it has been attracting a good amount of readers. However its growth is still not optimal, as they just read or...
Some of my characters have little to no education, and I'm looking for ways to show that through their dialogue. (They're uneducated, but not necessarily stupid.) Here's what I've tried so far: ...
Context: I'm among a growing number of people who are becoming dissatisfied with Stack Exchange. In some ways (not all, but some), Stack Exchange's behaviour is analogous to "curation without rep...
Last year, I worked for an organization that published a weekly blog on its website. The blog was also published as a newspaper column and was included in a weekly e-newsletter. One day, the owner...
Every time I write and read the 'she's and the 'he's especially in the same paragraph it confuses me and that worries me if the readers will get confused. Obviously through different actions and d...
Is writing fantasy novel with no mages, witches, wizards or anything remotely magical a waste of time? Can it still be classified as fantasy?
I am writing a detective novel and wanted to include two best friends who are working together. Eventually they fall in love but one of my readers said it's too boring and cliché. Is that true? S...
can anyone tell me whether the written Chinese name should be in the order of "surname + given name", or another way around? And of course, in academic writing. I am a PhD student in Bristol, I rec...
As a writer, I used to write short stories and poems. As a reader, fantasy is my favorite genre. I created some what of a language for my (first ) novel. It's phoneme, pronunciation, rules and ...
I am looking to get a better understanding of different categories of material written in a newspaper. I had assumed two main types: 1) News (i.e. reporting of facts) -> objective (not debatabl...
I'm working on a scene in a high-fantasy setting where the main characters greet each other for the first time. Part of the greeting is also a definition of what each of the characters mean to each...
I would love to have essays reviewed both in terms of quality writing and in terms of its content. I have researched a few sites but this service does not seem to exist.
I have been doing some research on citations and haven't been able to get a clear answer on this. When writing a project report, in which sections is it appropriate to include citations? In this...
So, I understand that ancient mythologies and their characters such as Zeus etc are part of the public domain. However, what happens to individual interpretations of ancient texts? For example, a...
I wish to write an intercut scene for a novel, where two very contrasting things are happening at the same time. The technique works really well on the screen, but I think we can use the same techn...
For example: "Move!" I immediately side stepped him. OR "Move!" I immediately side stepped him. I know a new line of paragraph is needed for each speaker, but does the same rule apply in this...
While writing blog post mostly on technical articles, I often come to dilema that does my post is too detailed for reader eventually they will skip further reading due to complexity or is it too s...
A personal point of view on the necessity of a new culture in fiction "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away", "Pandora", "Dune", "Middle Earth". All quite different worlds compared to ours, b...
In my fantasy story that I'm slowly getting into, my MC Sirena is an apprentice witch. Her two fellow apprentices, Aster and Keeva, study alongside her under their High Priestess, and they all som...
I'm a professional writer, but I've never written a memoir. I've been asked to submit a proposal to ghostwrite a memoir. The person whose memoir I would write knows I've not written a memoir before...
Is it ever acceptable to use an exclamation mark following a question mark? I am proofreading a novel and have been instructed to make no stylistic changes, only errors that impede sense/clarity. ...
I have some character stuff im trying to figure out for an AI antagonist. In a game development project that I am part of, there is an artificial intelligence that speaks to the player character t...
In light of recent events, I intended to write a simple letter of complaint to StackExchange. The obvious thing to do would be to write an opening with the fact such as It came to my knowledge ...
I am working on a novel inspired by the Shahnameh - a Persian epic poem by Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi. The Shahnameh (the title means "The Book of Kings") is structured as a series of interconnected tales...
Let's look at two characters who are generally considered to be iredeemable: The Diamond Authority (from Steven Universe): The extremely childish leaders of the race of spacefaring lesbian magical...
We have written a custom software framework and it has grown to the point where we are ready for documentation. This documentation will be used by other developers to share knowledge. I am concerne...
In our local area, there are many new publishers that claims to publish our writeups. The time frame of submission review is less. Also, they are cheaper than the renowned publishers. Is it a good ...
I'm using Microsoft Word 2016 for formatting my paper. I'm trying to use different footnote numbering sequences for the title page and main body. More specifically, I want to use special characters...
In my story, the MC goes through a number of events with a common theme, each told in separate scenes. At the end of the story, he tells a friend about the things he experienced. Both the events an...
I am a reader more than a writer, and fantasy is my favorite genre. I used to write short stories and poems. Some of them are published in magazines and get good reviews. In 2018 January, I read ...
A is a special snowflake, though for all the wrong reasons. You see, he was born with a special ability that allowed him to see premonitions of his and his loved ones' future in the form of still i...
Should you only use colons and full stops in dialogues? I thought about using a semi-colon in one of my dialogues, but I had second thought about it, because when we talk, we don't really different...
When writing a bibliography entry, if I want to cite pages 1 up to 10, including both 1 and 10 (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10) should I write 1-10 or 1-11?
In the Bible, the apple is a symbol for knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man and sin. The book itself gave the apple a symbolic meaning. How can you as an author give an object like ...
Is there a better way to introduce acronyms through a dialogue? One way of doing it, is to mention what the acronym stands for at the beginning and then use the acronym afterward, but that's a bit ...
In this answer, Amadeus makes the case for happy endings based on their far greater popularity compared to unhappy endings. This leads me to wonder, what exactly makes an ending "happy"? Before I...
How can I make a side character's tangibility open to interpretations so the audience is unsure if she's even real? My short story is about identity. My main character is being pressured by a frie...
I am writing a book mostly about the history of my local airport. This will include the changes from the earliest airlines and airports til today. What I want to know, for example, I write about th...
I've just started noticing this word a lot in books. Something about it rubs me the wrong way. For example, I read a book where the following happened I stumbled to the ground and hit my head. ...
I feel there is a common audience trend in favoring the side characters more than the MC. And I believe "literary science" backs that up, in regards to character focus. That even though the MC's ch...
My main source of research about storytelling/screenwriting/how-to-write-a-book manual is [1]. But, the definition of "beat" given by [1] maybe can causing me some confusion. In [1] we have a def...
As I mentioned in my other recent question, my novel in progress has three main locations. I feel those three settings are strong, fully imagined places, with interesting storylines. However, the...
As a novice writer to improve my writing I have taken one online course. I want to ask, what are good ways to improve as a writer other than writing courses?
I'm wondering if there's a technical writing term for when an author uses purposefully misspelled words to mimic the sound of the speaker? This has the effect of "forcing" the reader to hear the d...
As I've already mentioned, I'm working on a sci-fi novel. One of the main feelings that I wanted to represent when I started is the sense of a vast, empty, artificial world, mostly cold and uncar...
One of my characters has a flashback to when he was 5 years old. At the time, he didn't have a name (he goes by a physical description instead). What's the correct way to refer to him in this flash...
This question is about genre and reader expectations. I'm not trying to change my story to fit a mainstream genre. I have already taken steps to broaden it's appeal, but it's too late to create an ...
I'm not expecting $$ for any of my podcasts -- I think The Audacity to Podcast guy had a great explanation when he said the reason to Podcast is PROFIT: Publicity, Relationships, Opportunities, Fun...
Question : How many blank lines should be before scene headings and secondary scene headings in a screenplay? Note that I am using Amazon Storywriter. Detail : I am writing a screenplay with Amazo...
