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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There are a nice plethora of "how do I create a name for my fictional country/area/character" but I can't see anything for band names or companies or hotels. Is there a good system to use to avoid...
Is it a good idea to “split” the action/setting to show actions of other characters elsewhere, or make it flow straight through? Example: My protagonist gets kidnapped. There’s a scene where she is...
So I'm building a character who works in a particular field of science and I found an e-mail for a scientist on the internet and emailed him. I described how I'm writing a sci-fi story and gave him...
I want to ask about a certain style on how to present a character. I know Jack Sparrow is from a movie (and I've only watched the movies too) but I want to integrate in my writing how he was presen...
I'm writing a first person novel and main character has highly controversial views, many of which the majority of people would probably consider immoral. Would a character with controversial attitu...
Everyone remembers the Death Star and how it was supposed to be the most potent superweapon in the Star Wars-verse. Then in the Expanded Universe, they needed to add tension to the series since the...
When a person/writer paraphrases published quotations or song lyrics, changing a few words of the original work for an attempt at a humorus effect purpose, should the writer paraphrasing put eve...
I know most readers don't like prologues, so I've tried to make it as simple as possible. I write the following knowing fully well how weird it’ll make me look. — A.B.G. A.B.G. Is the fi...
I would like to make it very clear that I'm very young (just graduated to a teen) and only an amateur writer. I have recently become seriously involved in writing in preparation for my IGCSE Englis...
Writing in hand gestures and non-verbal communication is kind of tricky. They are deeply cultural symbols, interpreted by a specific group of people. To outsiders, they seem like nonsense. But non-...
In my last question Does marvel accept new heroes by other people, people advised me to start creating my own comics. I wonder what kind of professions I need and how many people to start publishin...
The general consensus nowadays seems to be that being in the head of more than one character is bad. We should be "on the shoulders" or "in the head" of one character, and one character only, if no...
I want to create a believable conversation between a character who speaks Mandarin and English and a character who speaks English but does not speak Mandarin. Basically, the Mandarin speaker is sup...
As the title might suggest, I'm working on a horror video game, which happens to have a few sex scenes and a bit of nudity here and there - at least, that's what I planned to do. Just FYI: I don't ...
The source language in question is Standard Chinese. It is a gender-neutral language. One big thing that English speakers complain about English is the gendered pronoun, namely the third person sin...
I'm working on a story-heavy game with lots of different paths the player can choose from. Many times, players might also have to replay parts of the game in certain ways to see the true ending. As...
Good day everyone! I am currently writing my first fan-fiction. Here are some basic traits of one of my characters. He usually talks in normal English with a small infusion of 'moi' and 'thou/th...
If anybody has an answer to this question I'd love to hear it. And, yes, it is on topic because I've used the obsession in a story. Here's the thing . . . There's a difference between text and sp...
I started writing my novel and finished the first draft. I sent it to my dad who gave me some pointers so I started a new document to 'flesh it out' But that document has run away with me, and now ...
I'm working on a trilogy of YA novels that revolve around a group of teenagers (aged 15, though in the made-up world, 16 is adulthood) who set off to rescue someone who has been kidnapped. When t...
There is plenty of information on how to draft characters for a single story, or characters that follow an important arc throughout a (small) number of stories. Are there any techniques for design...
I've written enough to know the kind of writer I am, my voice, my style. I am often accused of making the reader work too hard to put the plot points together. In my latest story: a man experienci...
I know there are a lot of variance here, but are there any personalities/dynamics that a superhero team needs in order to work? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.
I'm writing a high school romance story. My story centers around two characters falling in love, but I can't find a way to make their romance seem real and believable. Here is the backstory: The m...
I'm writing a book series where most of the cast are highly anthropomorphized animals (or in some cases mythological creatures). Humans still exist in this universe, but are rare (only being found ...
I'm planning on shooting a documentary on a potentially important shift in a friend's life. In an attempt to educate myself a little bit before shooting the events, I'm reading about the classic st...
I am writing a thriller, but even though it is filled with exciting events, it is starting to feel boring to me. My Scenario: This girl (Freya) has amnesia and the doctor that is helping her(Lana)...
If I have a sentence such as this: Footsteps were heard coming down the alley. Can I use that in a first-person story? I don't think it's technically third-person, but it sort of feels like i...
I am developing a college-age female character and think that there may be a contradiction. This is an important secondary character, a good-natured girl, who is unfortunately quite promiscuous. T...
Deliberate Values Dissonance is when the morals of a character or culture in-story (whether historical or fictional) that modern people don't agree with are presented in-universe. Not because the a...
I get caught up a lot in what I'm writing and I'm interested in writing a particular scene, but the scene might be chapters away. I don't like writing it before I write the rest and go back to it l...
I've looked at a few other questions and answers but nothing that I was really looking for. The point of view is a little confusing at the beginning (and probably) throughout the novel. It starts w...
Writing fantasy and sci-fi, I grow a sizeable specialised vocabulary per story (names, locations, fantastical things, etc.) I grow tired of the autocorrect grumbling at this vocabulary, and would m...
The novel is overall very distressing and supposed to elicit emotion from the readers, it's practically dependent on it. A few of the characters in my novel will contain depressed and suicidal thou...
Dream twists just spoil our senses of disbelief. I can see how that can be excetuted carelessly, but if done for the need of showing what the main character wants or fears most then maybe it would ...
The hero in my story succeeds in destroying the villain, but not without paying a hefty prize. Not only will he die, he will stop existing and can't be brought back, at all. It's like he never exis...
The term is 妖精, which can be translated into English as "fairy", "elf", "goblin". As noted, the Japanese literature uses 妖精 to describe the European fairy. The English translation of 白骨精 in 西游记 (Jo...
Almost every day I come up with new titles and rough ideas for new books to write. I e-mail them to myself, happy and longing to write them down. I have published two books, and I know I can write....
I wish to describe strong physical attraction on first sight by a human towards an alien. A Human meets an Alien but the Alien is extremely beautiful (sorry Humans!) and would wipe the floor of the...
I have a scene I struggle with: it has potential for inherent drama, but it reads as an info dump. In a high-fantasy setting (more or less), character Alpha, a 14-year old daughter of a nobleman c...
My partner and I usually enjoy role-playing together in free-form. I was thinking perhaps we could convert one of our role-plays into a book and publish it online. I wanted to ask if there are any ...
Is there a general rule for past vs. present tense for a character's internal thoughts? Direct thoughts in present, while indirect thoughts in past? I'm thinking specifically of 1st person here. ...
I'm not writing erotica - I'm writing fantasy and sci-fi. But sometimes my characters make love, sometimes in ways I cannot be familiar with. In one story, it's two guys (I'm a girl). In another st...
In my novel, my protagonist joins a team with four other characters to go on a quest. Each character in the team is supposed to contribute to the journey in someway and all are mentioned in a proph...
Note: my story is for a video game, but that should hopefully be irrelevant to the question itself. Our heroes spent a long time fighting their way to the evil demon king. The hopes of all the peo...
What I’m trying to say is the first four chapters are about four different people by themselves, then they’re together the rest of the book and all die except one, but that one is very important an...
This is meant to be a canonical question, to which particular cases can be referred. We've had several particular instances of this question in the past - "is my story too similar to specific story...
I am looking for feedback on the idea of including pictures in a fantasy story e-book to be sold on Amazon. The book is not a graphic novel as it has over 60,000 words spread across 15 chapters. Th...
Every time a character is thinking something is it necessary to put “_____thought,” if there is italics, so shouldnt they already know that’s what the character was thinking not the narrator speaki...
