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 is a problem as stories progress (especially in never-ending web novels) where the cast of characters keep growing. Some webnovels I follow are in the hundreds! Is there a technique for auth...
Suppose I'm a local publisher. If I want to translate a book, print it and sell translated copies, how much should I propose to pay to the copyright holder? Is there some acceptable percentage of b...
In the first discussion of the concept of "plot" given by [1] I, maybe, understood two different, but complementary, concepts of plot. Mckee gives us a definition of Plot as: To PLOT mean to n...
I'm writing a story which requires frequent switching between languages, sometimes in the same sentence. I thought about writing the foreign language in italics, but the problem is that I already ...
So, I finally began writing my sixtieth or so first draft. And I noticed a small thing: As sunset came the sky became a river of orange and gold. Maybe like a lava stream? Gyvaris might have be...
I want to do a story revolving around the inverse of the Christian tale in the bible. In it, the savior sent by God is tempted by the adversary, similar to how Jesus is tempted by the devil in the ...
Is there a good reference book on allegories used in literature? I am looking for a reference book that gives references to use of allegories in the creative literature. For example: If a novel use...
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 "right" way to interpret a novel? If so, how do we make sure our novel is interpreted correctly? I have been told that there's no way of interpreting the true meaning of a book written b...
So, let's say the main characters enter a building, a really big laboratory of sorts. They don't know what was being worked on here, because no one is still there, it's been abandoned recently. But...
I’m a beginner writer planning on learning how to write webcomics. My main one is an adventure/fantasy webcomic and the other is a card battle webcomic (I draw a lot of inspiration from anime and m...
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 ...
I've recently started getting into horror lately and trying to learn how all of the genre works so that maybe I myself can write good horror. But there's been one thing on my mind that's been bothe...
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...
Most erotica today is written by and for women, and bestselling erotica is narrated from a female point of view. The "male pornographic gaze" that sexualizes the female body has been considered off...
I have three variations of the same storyline and cannot decide which one I want to write: erotic story turning dark and dangerous A young adult man and woman fall in love. It is the woman's fir...
I wrote a novel and it is Science fiction based novel. Almost every close friend of mine read the novel and none of them gave a negative response. What are the possibilities that I need to assume, ...
I'm the adviser of a school newspaper that publishes exclusively online now. We have a page dedicated to revisiting the archives of our paper (60 years worth!). I cannot piece together how to prope...
I'm just trying to work around the whole "Adverbs are the devil" rule. Is there any difference between these two lines in regards to writing quality: He smiled patronisingly at them And H...
I'm writing a story in English but I'm not a native. I’m a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. It bothers me how repetitive and ambiguous pronouns can be. In my language we can use the equivalent to ‘th...
It's not so much that I dislike my real name, but I have a few issues that make me uncomfortable with using it. This is mainly due to the fact that it's quite unique, and while that is an advantag...
For example: I sensed as if he became sad from the way he spoke after telling him that I would go with her.
I'm an actress but I also want to start writing my own stuff for good so I can develop them into film or play. I've been writing but something keeps missing! So what are the main aspects to write ...
I've spent a year writing a book and still probably have a year to go. And all of this work may be wasted, if I don't get published. Should I contact agents/publishers now to garner their interest ...
Losely related with my latest question: Should one invest in a professional editor before querying? I've finished - not without sweat - my second draft. While I'm satisfied with the overall result...
Let's say you have completed a novel. Since you're not totally naive, you have also complete a few drafts, where with "few" I mean at least more than two. You are at a point that your book seems ...
Often while writing a software requirement/change-request documentation, I need to include the quoted requirements descriptively, the impacted modules, the changes provided both in UI and in logic....
My question is simple: do writers need a business bank account? Or can they use a regular account for saving and declaring tax on their earnings? Further, do writers need to declares themselves a...
I wrote a dialogue, but I am not sure if it sounds natural. I try to keep dialogue super simple so that it doesn't feel unnatural, but aside from that, I am not sure if there's any golden rule I ca...
Sometimes, I have trouble coming up with a way to end a description properly, especially one that's at the very end of a chapter. What are some of the things you can do, especially when the descrip...
I am writing a textbook, in where, just for fun, I would like to present the concepts as if I were telling a story. Again, just for fun, I would like for the writing to sort of emulate an ancient w...
I want to say that the author uses Character A's "character development" to explore Character B. In other words, the author builds on the personality of A to exemplify the nature of B. What is an...
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...
Following the answer of @Cyn and my comment (on Doubt about a particular point of view on how to do character creation ): I would like to know more about how to "know" more about a true alived char...
Note: This question deals exclusively with personal stakes (what the character could lose). It does not deal with public stakes (what the world of the novel could lose). In my mind, there are t...
Of course developing a character is quite an intimate process. But still, like a story, you can in fact have some tools that give you some sort of axiomatic path on "how-to". There is a TV writer ...
At one point in my story, the characters are addressed by a god. In the ensuing dialogue, this god has a more archaic way of speaking, but even so, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to visua...
Imagine a fantasy hero with a 'time reset' ability like the protagonists of Groundhog Day or Edge of Tomorrow: they can 'rewind time' up to a few hours, resetting their own physical state and the r...
A story I am currently working on contains a scene where a figure with a certain character quite unexpectedly has a change of heart, and I am having difficulty finding a way of smoothing the transi...
For example, let’s say the main plot is that the characters are on a quest to go find something. Can an author spend three scenes in a row detailing what happens on their journey there, even if the...
I am writing a story in which at some point two characters with the same name interact each other. I can't use their last name to differentiate because it's necessary for them to have no last name....
Every piece of writer's advice I see will include something about "building a following" online, so that a publisher will be more likely to pick you up. The problem is, I don't have any idea how to...
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. ...
How does a person get an entry on Britannica, Encyclopedia.com etc. ? The person has a Wikipedia page and news references. Thanks!
This question is about hiding from the reader the fact that I am skipping some steps. Worse, perhaps, I don't want to show them, and I may have no clue or intention of figuring out how these steps ...
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...
I'm planning out a long series (more than five books as is). It's very optimistic, I know. But I'm just wondering: Would it be better to plan out my series as a trilogy, leaving room to expand if...
In the ever swinging tone of a novel, one may wish to show a moment of peace amidst all the chaos. In my novel it happens a few times, most notably when characters are travelling across vast natura...
I used the name Primus and Primes for my book and these are from the transformers universe. My concept is totally different. Is this a copyright infringement? I introduced a secret society named ...
