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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The response to this question makes it clear to me that I haven't quite asked the question I had intended, the answers are useful but not quite what I'm looking for. So different but related ques...
The modern world has few true mysteries, among them the fate of the Roanoke colonists and the crew of the Mary Celeste but do such happenings have a place in futuristic settings? In settings with ...
Karl is my detective protagonist. His girlfriend, Jenna, is with him. He is hospitalized, and his boss, Rob Tucker, shows up for a visit. Which example of dialogue is correct? In true first person,...
Recently, I came across one beautiful word 'Wynorrific', defined on Urban dictionary: Something being both beautiful and terrible at the same time. [The word "awesome" has lost its meaning on...
A while ago, I asked if there any possible way for my series to avoid causing Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. A well thought-out response stated that unless I give my readers a reason to care abo...
Readers have certain expectations about locations and time periods, things they "know". For example, people "know" that everybody in the Persian Empire was brown-skinned, that houses in Ancient Rom...
I began writing a fantasy novel as a "last week of vacation fun project", and it hit off very well. It is my first time writing. I'm publishing as a web novel in a popular webnovel site. And of co...
Back in college, I took a regular English course that was required for all majors. The teacher just happened to be a grad student in British Literature, so we read a lot of British literature. All ...
I'm wondering if translated works of ancient poems are in the public domain, or if they're copyrighted by the translators. It would seem like if the author on a given work is listed as "Basho", th...
I have heard people say that ‘good stories are educational as well as entertaining’. But how much does it actually matter in the eyes of editors and publishers? For example, if one is writing a sto...
I am plotting out a longish story, which would have the following number of characters: Main/ reasonably significant characters: Nine Characters still vital for the story to work:Thirteen Side c...
I’m writing a science fiction type short story set in Germany (actually Stuttgart). To some extent the location isn’t that important- it could be set anywhere but setting it there appeals to me and...
Many works of the High Fantasy genre are set in a pseudo-European fantasyland, in a rather amorphous time-period that mixes early-medieval and late-medieval arms and armour (but never gunpowder), l...
Most English speakers probably just care about You, Mom, Dad, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents and Ancestors, Children, Grandchildren, etc. That's great... as long as you ar...
In my book (fantasy novel), there's a character named Brad. Unfortunately, Brad has become synonymous with "douchebag". Now, when I first introduced him I just came up with a name. It needed to be...
I've recently been working on some stories written in the first person from the point of view of what, in the grand scheme of things, would be called minor characters. Examples include a junior bri...
I am currently trying to edit a one my most recent novel. Trying is the keyword. I asked a few people to read my book as beta readers, but all of them have been busy, so no progress on that front. ...
Note: I am not sure of which site this question belongs to: Writing SE or Literature SE. If this question is unfit for this site, I will happily migrate it there. So I am writing about the protago...
A novel's tone/atmosphere is typically established within the first few chapters of the book. So, let's say, we establish the story as a light-hearted, over-the-top fantasy deconstruction, with hu...
At the time of writing this question there are 5337 Harry Potter questions on SciFi and a further 165 on Movies. Many of these questions drill right into the character's motivations and emotions su...
When writing in first person, is it better to mention as little repetition of events as possible? Or can it improve writing in some cases to have a character duplicate previous events and have them...
So everyone should be familiar with contributing articles to a magazine (or another word submitting articles to magazine company). But most time, there will be editor in magazine company (or organi...
I have an idea for a story: My setting is reminiscent of some computer games, in that Player Characters (PCs) are essentially immortal - they reincarnate indefinitely, and can continue to kill the...
I'm working on a war novel (sci-fi). My initial plan was for my MC to start out with a very clean language, almost comically clean, and as the plot progresses and the situation gets more FUBAR, his...
Historically, most occidental cultures (and many other ones) were strongly biased against women. Women were effectively barred from the vast majority of occupations - sometimes actively, and someti...
I recently read the Blood on the Stars series by Jay Allan and really enjoyed the idea of a post-Golden Age human civilization that has splintered into factions and is now at war with itself. I re...
I've been reading Stephen King's On Writing and he's got quite a lot to say about the redraft phase. He explains his working method. Write with the door closed, just for him and create a 1st draf...
Death as a person is commonly known to any reader of the "Discworld" series from Terry Pratchett. Also death appears in the series "Supernatural" as one of the apocalyptic riders. Another approach ...
We are used to stories being about conflict. There can be an antagonist, or a hostile environment, or even an internal problem (like depression), but conflict is there. The story arc involves deali...
Do I have to make everything apply to logic, physics, science, etc? The Harry Potter series has been a major hit, and it is nowhere near to being scientifically possible. But I've noticed that I c...
In short I'd like to write a story from the point-of-view of a character who ultimately dies within the narrative without the story being either A. a ghost story or B. a life/after-life retrospecti...
My antagonist is a "strategic mastermind", similar to the one discussed in How to prevent seeming like a Marty Stu-ish villain is cheating? Proceeding from this kind of antagonist, my question is h...
Similies are like the Reddit 50/50 challenge: you either get something very good, or your eyes will melt off. I mean, you can ruin the mood with a bad one and make yourself a laughing stock. Metaph...
I have a character who is a refugee from another country. She comes to the protagonist, and they have a couple of scenes together, viewed from the protagonist. I read about how important it is to ...
The story takes place in a fictional country I created. There are 6 main characters, 3 girls and 3 boys. They are all "gifted" which are people with special abilities. There are 3 types of gifte...
Every now and again I think to myself how nice it would be to give up my staid life as a Software Developer and start an exciting new career as a Novelist. But then I think to myself that there ar...
In a story set in a fantasy version of 5th century Persia, I've been told by a beta reader that a boy wouldn't call his father "dad", (would use "father" instead), wouldn't say "no spoilers", etc. ...
Even though English is not my first language, I have completed writing a fiction book in English. I have been in the US for over 40 years and I believe that I have a good command of the language....
Seems like a broad question, but hear me out. A while ago, I asked how you could verify information, which was mostly reserved about things that actually exist and/or happen in the real world. This...
Because I enjoy reading Science Fiction, I'm thinking of writing a Sci-Fi novel myself. I'm interested in 'hard' (related to the engineering sciences) science fiction with a military bent (think Th...
Following this question, I'm struggling with writing the speech of pre-modern (in my case - 5th century) noble-born children among themselves. Characters who are well-educated would not be making ...
I hope this question is not mainly opinion based, I'm really just looking for a writer's handbook/source/acclaimed author saying this is either good, okay or bad. I think it might not be so good, w...
So I'm writing an urban fantasy story about the modern day after a mysterious unknown entity suddenly imbues humans with the ability to use magic powers. While the story initially starts out as a m...
I'm trying to write a story with characters that I already designed long ago and also have planned the world for them a bit, but I cannot come up with an interesting plot. What do you suggest I can...
Her clothes screamed bohemia, with a prominent cleavage, leather bands running up her arms and nails painted black. In my book there is a romance between two 15-year-olds, and the book is from...
For Latin-based languages, the foreign term may be expressed in italics. Gracias. However, what about non-Latin-based languages and non-alphabetic languages? Okay, what if something happens, and ...
The main character, and the person whose viewpoint the story is told from, is a scientist and subscribes to agnosticism. And there are sentences in my story like: "Trees stretched into the sk...
I'm reading The Book of Human Emotions by Tiffany Watt Smith (good stuff if you want to inform the use of emotion in your writing), and I've just come across Overwhelmed (feeling). It talks about t...
In my opinion, the best beta readers are fellow writers, partly because they may have insight others don't, but partly also because you can agree to trade beta-reading responsibilities. (This is fa...
Let's say you're writing a story about magic. Does it have to be based on real facts and real magic or can you just make up everything and it doesn't have to be based on real facts?
