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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Is it a large seamless novel chopped up into several parts, or is it a collection of independent novels with recurring characters?
I have been working on a poem for some time now. It is divided into various "Parts" and it will be a long one when completed. Due to the very nature of what I am writing, I just let my thoughts a...
There has been a story in me for quite a while. It is of two girls, set in a feudal/medieval era. They met as children. One is a antisocial bookworm, highly opinionated with a quiet steely composu...
I come from an academic background. Writing has always been an easy thing to me, but almost all of my practice outside of poetry has been in academic writing. I'll find myself writing in the way ...
Sometimes job listings use slashes and hyphens in the title of the job to specify specialties or other job characteristics. For instance, here are two listings on stack exchange: Data Scientist - D...
I'm making a manual that references a product that is not mine. What would be the correct way to note this? I'll give an example of a common product (this isn't mine, but it's a similar idea). Ex....
In a story I'm working on, I'm adding a side character to travel with the two main characters because I realized I didn't have very much planned for actually showing who the main characters are and...
In my novel, the MC is a woman from London who gets divorced and moves to Wales. Here she meets a Buddhist master with whom she has philosophical conversations about Life, Love, Relationships, etc....
Dystopian fiction is a big thing right now, and YA books like The Hunger Games and Divergent are pretty individual and subsequently are bestsellers. But a lot of stuff is also really cheesy and tr...
I have a character Joe who leads the task force hunting my MC. His reputation is known to the MC and he is well aware of how effective he is. Joe is also a good friend of another character, Fred, a...
Regularly I find myself writing emails to my colleagues which include some form of "column explanation". Which is the best way to format a HTML email for readability? Example: I send out a link to...
My MC is a woman who is shy, introverted, has a strong sense of right and wrong but also a doormat personality - basically, even if she sees a wrong done she would rather stay unhappy than speak up...
I'm going to submit a request for a Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number (PCN). One of the questions on the form is: Is this title intended for children or young adults? Because of ...
I am confused about what should I add in the place of conference in the Chicago manual of style? Place of the publisher or the location of the conference? I just want to cite the conference paper...
In Robert McKee's book STORY, he says that a whole life story of a character must become a story well-told. So, it seems that the concept of "story told" is a representation of a "life story" tha...
My previous question was "Are paragraph spacing used for emphasis?" and that got me thinking even deeper about emphasizing. I'd like to emphasize to create tension and make the reader continue rea...
I am writing a story and I have these 3 sentences that elaborate on the ending of a first page. This way the reader will continue to read my story. My question is, am I allowed to place paragraph ...
I understand that short sentences are a way to build tension. Do long sentences have a defined emotional impact in fiction writing?
A lot of people have been asking for some feedback about their poem/story. In an attempt to help find them a website, I couldn't. I googled feedback for writing however I didn't find any websites w...
Or should I dumb down my writing and pander to what I think most people like to read? (Note: This isn't necessarily about me. It's a general question for many writers facing such a dilemma.) NB: ...
I have a scenario where my main character, who has considerable training and situational awareness has been captured. He has faith that his people will rescue him when the time is right. He learns...
In spirit I have struggled long to find A manner fit to hold my roiling thoughts; A way to slowly pour them to a mold - And happily that manner has been found. A writer long, inclined to stories...
I recently wrote an application to get into a different program for high school. Now I feel like I could have done better with being more formal and get my message across that this program is suita...
At the moment I'm writing my master-thesis in the area of information systems. Because I developed some code to demonstrate my approach, I also mention some software tools in my proof-of-concept se...
(By 'chapter timestamp' I mean the text at the beginning of a chapter indicating when it is taking place). Here is a basic summary of the story so you understand what I'm working with: A man name...
I currently have two books, both roughly the same length and at the same point in the editing/rewriting process, and while I would like to eventually publish them both, they are from two completely...
I’ve written a few stories now just at home, however I haven’t seemed to crack one thing. I always write in 1st person as I enjoy the intimacy between protagonist and reader, however what if I want...
So I want to write a fictional book based on Borges' Library of Babel idea. The only thing I would preserve is the setting. However, I am unsure of the legality of it. Is the setting copyrightable...
I can not recall the book, but one of Isaac Asimov's novels ends with an article on muon-catalyzed fusion. I remember that because it was so impressive to find out that such a thing was real. I've...
So I've got a bit: Alta blinked. She pushed on, smiling, “—the argument. When the argument succeeds, which I still don’t fully deem, even after that—it looks to me like you’ve still got to do a...
My brother wrote and it was published in 2003. Not a novel but it was published and can find even in amazon.He has never recieved 1 penny. he asked me many times to find out what I could His name a...
I am writing a fantasy novella that ends up using a lot of internal monologues, often mixed with dialogue, descriptions, and other character's monologues. For example, this excerpt from the first c...
A CEO moves next door to a 3rd year college student who babysits and tutors for a rich family to keep the rent paid in her expensive apartment. It seems strange for a CEO, who probably has a ton of...
I have learned over the past fifteen months of writing fiction that every scene needs to have tension and advance the plot. This is good. But, I find that as I read my novel (again and again) to ...
I stumbled across the question on Writing Beta about "How do you write a stack exchange answer?". The best answer says use headings. What would the headings be for? The main idea/topic of each para...
English is not my native one, but I can talk and write with it, but maybe not as well as I would like to. Many readers have told me that my stories I wrote are really good, but still, I make some g...
I know there are already questions about cliched phrases, but are there resources to help identify plot and characters that are cliches? I found some (like this), but they weren't very helpful for...
My protagonist is an immortal person that’s powerful enough to end all with but a thought. She has amnesia due to overusing her power when she recreated the world. The amnesia part is very importa...
I have been writing on and off, without really paying attention to it, almost impulsively, since I was sixteen. It's been mostly therapeutic, for me. I found recently that putting dreams to paper h...
I have a non-fiction book about language learning, entrepreneurship, productivity and personal growth in general. The problem is: I have published this book using a pen name (pseudonym). I would pr...
So I'm facing an issue after many years of writing, and several unsuccessful novels. In my own estimation, all my books contain a "handful of gems" --wonderful scenes that really come to life. Bu...
This is what I keep hearing but no one seems to be able to provide an explanation. Is it because 2.99 is high enough to be make the book respectable while 0.99 is low enough to make it easy for peo...
I’ve heard from some authors that setting your book at a low price without making it clear that it is a sales/giveaway price tends to devalue your work and makes people assume that it is of low qua...
I have a character who is a seasoned CIA agent and is part of the task force that is bringing in my MC. I have another character, a semi retired assassin who was one of my MC’s instructors. I wan...
As a Uber driver, I did not earn much. Uber cut down the pay to drivers recently, it hurt a lot. I want to write a sign to remind people to pay tips. I want to be a bit creative to remind the rid...
I have a problem; my natural writing style is very high-brow. It often utilizes complex, flowery language. Much of the time, however, I find that it gives the impression that I am but taking a simp...
I would like to describe the beautiful brown eyes of a character, much like a real-life friend of mine. Are there good techniques for describing eyes? How does one go about describing eyes in writi...
In my story, I have this world that is referred to as the chaos realm. A quick Google search gives me results for World of Warcraft (although only in the form of a mod apparently), War Hammer and M...
My good guys murder people. They slowly carve runes onto them to help defeat the bad guys. Sure they try to use "society's worst" people for the rituals, but realistically that doesn't always happe...
I have an assignment that requires one academic journal source, and I found the records for a journal. The article in question is from a previously published book, but was published in the journal ...
