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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I couldn't find anything on this one, so maybe someone has a good idea on what would be considered good practice in a scholarly context. Background For a semester project, I have to observe an on...
Is it too distracting to include a major mystery subplot(s) in a fantasy story? I mean a complete subplot or subplots that the character solves. Perhaps the examples below do not qualify as mystery...
I want to write travel story novel. My plan is to have 4 characters (2 guys and 2 girls), which decided to visit 4 European cities (probably I will choose Frankfurt - Germany, Reykjavík - Iceland,...
I am guessing there are many options, but I would like to know how the industry does it and which methods are the most popular. I am writing a short novel with 3 other friends and we haven't yet di...
I have this Paragraph and I was wondering if it's possible to do what is underlined in the figure (RED), or if you know how to do this in another way, let me know. Basically the "DOM.Element" is a ...
Is there a way to make sure that what we write sounds consistent with the style adopted by the majority of editors? I am not sure how people do it, but almost all articles seems to have been writte...
I've edited the question for clarity following some unexpected comments in the first answer. I submitted my latest novel to a handful of agents, and had a request for a full manuscript. On almost...
In the writing practises guides, it is usually mentioned that use of ellipsis is a bad practice. But I have come across certain usages in professional writing. To give an example; In the novel ...
This may seem like a silly question (it definitely feels like it has one of those answers that I already know, but just can't dig up). And maybe this isn't the right place for it, but I am asking f...
I know it normally takes several months to get an agent and then a contract. But are there any shortcuts, any particular companies that one can submit to directly and get a much faster evaluation? ...
I recently came to know that wordpress.com and wordpress.org are two different platforms for publishing. But despite browsing on various links I am not able to fully understand the actual differenc...
Can one legally include a reference to, or an appearance of, a character from an existing work of fiction? How much of that character can be used? What makes this permitted or forbidden under US la...
My friends talk about a few phrases in a book we read recently, as personification. I don't understand what it is. What is personification?
This is a followup question to What language shall they sing in? I'm writing a middle-grade novel in English with time-traveling kids from 1995 America who go to Ancient Egypt to join the Exodus. ...
Situation: I have spent almost all of my money due to my wrong decisions, and I need to ask a person to help. He knows that is my fault, so it is very embarrassing to ask him for help, but due to p...
I am wondering how to do this in a novel. Do you write the song (lyrics) in its entirety in one single spurt, or do you spurt a verse at a time interspersed with descriptions of the surroundings/ac...
Are there any software tools available that will help me dissect my meter? I have always been extremely poor at scansion and while my writing doesn't suffer terribly for it, it makes writing strict...
Would it be a violation of copyright and/or plagiarism to “borrow” a character from another novel? For example, I have a short story and want to include as a side character Ender (of Ender’s Game)...
When writing there is one area I am not great at leveraging. That's rhythm or meter. I don't hear meter naturally like some people do so I have to really break down the meter in order to work on it...
As I already mentioned in my previous question, I'm writing a novel with personages both that I created and some already created by others (well, I wrote that when I was younger and now I just digi...
I often write short poems and quotes here: https://www.mirakee.com/atd, but I really want to hear from someone professional to give their valuable feedback on my work, so that I know where exactly ...
In a short story I am writing, I have this misogynistic character who keeps saying misogynistic stuff, and I thought it would be a bad idea to give him dialogue lines. I was thinking that, because ...
Spoilers for Green Book in the E.g. section I listen to a lot of music and when I come up with stories I often use songs as a source of inspiration. However what I was wondering is are songs and...
I recently noticed a trend to a few of my questions. I am attracted to writing in places with extreme brevity. This makes sense to me on a personal level. I've always been attracted to one-liners a...
What is the word commonly used in statistics when the thing that you want to measure cannot be (or was not) measured directly, so you assume that another thing that can be (or was) measured gives a...
An alternative "Occult Universe" I open my occult detective novel in what is ostensibly a "noir" style, but through worldbuilding I attempt to show that the story is set in an alternate occult uni...
In a piece I am writing, I want to turn an antagonist into a protagonist. I know that numerous ways to accomplish this are somewhere out there, but none of the help with a smooth transformation. Is...
How do you deal with frustration over a publisher's choices? All the stories and art for an anthology are in the publisher's hands—camera ready in digital form—and approved (deadline was 4 months...
I've always loved humor stories, and relish the idea of making one. But the thing I cannot grasp is the key elements of one. Are the key elements the same as a normal story (Problem, Solution, etc....
In the movie Prometheus, David 8 quotes a passage from "Paradise Lost" said by Lucifer. He tells Walter, Serve in Heaven or reign in Hell. One of the crew mate even insinuates he's the devil...
What is a reasonable scholarly approach to breaking down short pieces of prose? Is it word choice? Is it structure? Is it themes, and how well they are used? Use of symbolism and its efficacy? Mete...
I often have a passage that sounds like this. I don't know why, but I always found these passages a bit odd sounding. A stranger was lying, face into the sands, belly down, on the beach all a...
When I try to do this, the description feels very dry, and I am not sure if it's possible to make it feel less dry while still being impersonal and super objective (because I am using a omniscient ...
One of my friends passed away about a year ago and left me some manuscripts. A rough draft and without a proper ending. I was wondering if I should finish it and how. Should I take the draft and j...
I'm a self-published author, who is going to get a traditional publishing contract. They say it's my choice, but I have a doubt. I have published a thriller novel, two mystery short stories, and a...
I have a title for a novel, however, it would lose its zeitgeist if I couldn't include the F-word. I can't go in to details without giving away the title. Would this limit the potential audience ...
For my Pathfinder campaign I write an update each session which I share with my players. The goal for these updates is: Provide a brief recap of the previous session Get people excited for the ne...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_count#In_fiction This Wikipedia page tells you under which classification a fictional work falls under depending on its length, so we have 3 I am most interested...
The amount of research I'm doing for my novel is staggering. To the point where my spouse says I need to write a companion book (or a blog) just talking about the research! Sometimes I research f...
A lot of people use Google's n-gram to see if something is idiomatic, but for a lot of non-native English speakers even that doesn't really help, so what would you suggest non-native speakers to do...
https://dgrayman.fandom.com/wiki/Innocence Well, I always thought that the name Innocence in D.Gray-Man never made much sense. It's not explained anywhere why it's called that, so I always thought...
I am writing a story these days and I want to introduce a character who is similar to a king. This character is introduced with heavy announcements by his minions who scream out words of admiration...
So the problem I am having is that the protagonist of the novel I am writing is having a confrontation with another character, who starts panicking. Instead of saying "panic dripped from his face",...
A recent question got me thinking about how to criticize poetry well and I realized I am not very good at it. I can do themes, and that's about it. And I'm not even sure that should be covered unle...
I just had this sentence off my head: A crown of fire spread through the country consuming everything on its way. What I mean by empty metaphor is a metaphor that doesn't really have any me...
I'm writing a novel, and the plotline has military terminology and insignias. The basic plot is that there are two continents in my world: one capitalist and allegorically like the US and NATO, and...
So, I thankfully own a video-game history book which I anticipate using to write, rather, a Christian, family-friendly account of this subject. To be clear, I'm not going to be rephrasing from the...
This is inspired by this question, but taking it in a non-fiction direction: Is there a benefit to publishing non-fiction ebooks on Amazon as opposed to just putting them on your blog? Let's assu...
We all do it. We do it quite often. Some of us too often, to the chagrin of the mods who have to clean up after us. Many people out there have autocomments but I try not to. I find them impersonal ...
At least 40% of the characters in my novel appear for only 2-3 chapters and I don't really have the chance to develop them. Is this too many? How can you determine you have too many characters appe...
