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 admit to finding this an insurmountable task. My novel has dozens of characters. My first problem wasn't keeping track of them, but creating them. Modern Day: My 20th century characters were ...
I heard that people who appreciate dark humor are more intelligent on average. I also read the following: Willinger and her team said their findings suggested black humour processing is a “c...
I have trouble imagining things. With me everything is blurred, as if I were almost blind. That's why I find it hard to describe things. For example, the protagonists enter a castle. I have a very ...
I'm writing a psychological novel about different characters finding the meaning of their lives. But the ending reveals it was all part of an experiment (properly foreshadowed). Someone was trying ...
I get confused with this whole indie-publishing thing in terms of the advice I keep hearing from experts. On one hand, people say that no matter how great your book is, no one is going to read it o...
I don't have the financial resources to hire a scientific consultant to ask him whether my science-fiction plot is realistic, so I was wondering if there were any resource that teach Quantum Mechan...
Would this small paragraph in my short story be considered as imagery? (Rose is looking for a painting) Rose and Mr. Howard stepped inside. There were cobwebs everywhere. Lots and lots of old...
I'm writing a technical book (step-by-step sort of book) and noticed that all my summaries start with 'In this chapter we ...'. What would be some other sentence starters that I could use to make t...
Something that always bothers me in my writing is how often I start sentences with the word "the". A terrible nonsensical example: The dog ran through the rain-swept streets, chasing a ball he...
I recently decided to make a long delayed return to a genre where I had early publishing success, upper-level picture books. Given that I now have school-aged children, I have a number of stories ...
The English language evolves from the English people, and the English people live way up there, away from the equator. So, it is no wonder that the English language will reflect this. He was a t...
I translate fanfiction stories from Russian into English as a hobby and I'm a bit confused about tenses. In Russian, it's normal to mix past and present tenses in generally past narration, but I re...
Long story short: I default to simple words like "Said" in dialogue much too often. I'm hesitant to abuse the thesaurus due to advice I've been given, as well. Slightly longer version: When I'm wr...
What I mean by "cinematographic metaphor" is that, instead of expressing metaphors using words, you use images that are imprinted in your mind through descriptions in a novel. Here's what I mean: ...
I just read an article online and thought "this is great, I should forward the link to Phoebe." Phoebe is one of my characters. I've already had characters tell me how they would speak or dress...
I am an author who wrote a biography on a singer. I want to turn the book into a screenplay. Do I have to get permission from the singer to do this?
I have a story that I wish to write. I like my story and genuinely believe it to be interesting. My issue is that I have never really written anything before. When I have read advice in the past, I...
I am thinking of writing a short story which starts with a character narrating then ends up being narrated by an omniscient character. What are the best ways of making this transition? I can't thin...
I have a specific way of writing when it comes to describing things in a visual medium, like video games, movies, or shows. I'm not a prose writer; I always wanted to write for visual media, not no...
I heard from someone that in English, sentences with a long subject are considered confusing and hard to read. Is it true? An example for such a sentence: ...(Some statements about how mathem...
"The ship sailed through the billowing winds and the petulant waves." Is it redundant? Because, if I say billowing, the reader would probably think petulant waves is too redundant. What do you...
Basically, all I want to know is how I can get my readers to root for a pairing where the difference in ages is about 15 years. I don't want them to spend the entirety of my novel pondering over th...
So far, I've only written one short story but I wish to write a novella. I'm worried, however, about the enormous work of marketing and contacting agents and publishers. I just want to focus on my ...
I am writing a scientific research paper and one of the sources I am using introduced a concept which I am using within the paper. The source I read (published in 1969) credits this concept as bein...
My MC is a famous singer/songwriter who is bad at writing lyrics. Her goal is to write commercially successful, deep, serious songs. How do I design the character arc in relation to this goal? Also...
I am not an American English native (I'm actually a German native speaker) but, when I write, I use the American style of words predominantly. However, I always use aluminium instead of aluminum, f...
I know that this idea is not totally 'revolutionary' as this type of narration has been used in Breakfast of champions, for example. But, Unlike Vonnegut, I want the 'Narrator talks to the characte...
I'm currently writing a book about a government that designs its citizens' DNA and assigns them each to a job or purpose in life best suited to improve the society as a whole. My main character doe...
Someone told me that it's incorrect or outdated punctuation to put a comma after "said" in dialogue tags such as the following (from an old book we're reprinting): “I shouldn’t wonder if you co...
Supposing a character or characters are watching a show on TV (news maybe) how should that be formatted in the text? I've found some explanations on how to format TV broadcasts in a screenplay (in...
What are the properties a generic main character from a character-driven/psychological novel should have? E.g. relations, motives, personality, knowledge.
Not sure if this is a worldbuilding or writing question, but here it goes. In this setting, gods of humanity are beings of absolute order that exist in another plane of existence. They are consta...
I have a scene where a character is applying to be released from prison pending trial. I want an arbitrary / unfair reason for the judge to dislike him. It has to be something that is not justified...
In our world, we consider human life to be precious and valuable. It is meant to be preserved, and a deliberate act of taking a life is considered deplorable by society. This is considered normal. ...
Say I create a copyrighted written work, is there a license I can apply to that same work that will allow a third party to create and copyright a derivative work? Is there an existing license or co...
NECESSARY INFORMATION Recently I saw someone on the internet say that Revenge Of The Sith was so powerful because of an effect called "Emotional Projection." This means that when you see the movie...
Where can I publish my work online and get paid for it? I'm just new to this and this is my first work and it's still chapter 1. It's a fantasy and mythical story.
I have been looking through various books with a dungeon being the main character. Regardless of the book, however, the character had to gain a physical body in order to forward the plot, which I ...
It is common to omit end-dots in lists with very short items: Shop list: * Milk * Bread * Probably eggs It is common to use end-dots in lists with long descriptive items: Things which should b...
I'm writing a Star Wars fanfiction because I wanted to practice my writing on something I love, and I decided to make a character named Alexander Ray Rullero. He's not the main character, as in he ...
(Question about my hacker (hacking??) novel.) Just an FYI, I am a woman. Edward is a cyber spy and works with an organization named Vox Populi to curate and release all data online, especially t...
I'm formatting a play using Pages on macOS. I cannot figure out how to get character names to be associated with their dialogue. I'm formatting like [centered] JOHN [\centered] Yes, that’s me...
In several third person (usually limited) stories that I've read, there comes a time when one character shares some of their backstory to one or more other characters. This backstory is always (or...
I am currently editing an original work of fiction, and one of the things I'm having the most trouble with is dialogue and paragraphs after certain character's actions. I know it sounds a little co...
I have a low quantity book project that will need a book sized A3 with 1000-1500 pages. Is there a print on demand provider out there that could possibly handle that?
I have a writing tendency where I get straight to the point, especially when I already have an amazing storyline. The ending goes especially quick. I need to figure out how to move the story along,...
This story includes a select group of individuals who contain superpowers and the main character is obviously one of those few. I don't want to throw it out there straight away and am trying to hin...
So can I write like this: Example: Exercising (Goodman, J. 2010), laughing (Wilson, A. 2009) and studying (Mann, 2000) have all health benefits that may have positive effect on your life ex...
I did an install of Scrivener Version: 1.9.9.0 - 03 Oct 2018 on a Windows 10 computer. In the paste, I know I used to be able to copy formatted text from any source and paste it as plain text into...
I belong to a terrific critique group (writing group) that has dealt with a lot of attrition. We started with 6 people and currently have 4, one who joined after the first month or two. We also h...
