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 are definite advantages to writing comprehensive character maps, but one downside that I've found is that when a character is fully fleshed out, she/he tries to take on a life of her/his own ...
I have a story I'm writing which has a villain that, in order to make him more human/developed, I gave him a relatable, tragic and/or disturbing life story, gave him plenty of reasons to be who he ...
Oh, this one's a classic. You have a character with an ego so large, it's on the verge of collapsing into an intellectual black hole. You want to make it into a comic relief but instead, end up wit...
I was reviewing my first draft and realized: I need a better antagonist. I have a flat, unspecified, weak organization with a stereotypically evil guy who are absolutely easy to defeat. I need an...
The novel is in past tense and the character is recounting things that happened before the novel began. Should I be using the past participle? Everything I read says that using the word "had" is a ...
In a story I'm writing, there's a villain who is a genius strategist that can get anything he wants, whatever it is, by developing perfect strategies that can have only two possible outcomes: 1, su...
I'm writing a short essay on gender undercurrents of conversations, i.e. how do different people approach communication and problem-solving in their relationships. One way to phrase this is in term...
In Sabriel by Garth Nix, near the beginning of Chapter Two, there is the following sentence: Anything powerful enough to cross the Wall usually retained enough magic to assume the shape of a soldi...
I am writing a story but I am trying to indent the dialog because right now it looks like a chunk of text. My text is Then a figure under the box moved behind Professor to which John yelled “P...
I have a world in which many characters live in. At first, I thought they all could be part of one novel (kind of like Sherwood Anderson's book Winesburg, Ohio or the movie Short Cuts (1993) by Ro...
Now I know, that this question could be tagged too broad or opinion based, and that it might even be closed down. But I have been struggling over this for quite some time now and I want to get an a...
Do you use a question mark in hand when you use a colon, if yes how? I Will Fix Any Error Or Bug is the title of the service. Should I place the order in: I Will Fix Any Error Or Bug Sho...
I'm writing from a third person viewpoint. I have a character who does not have a name. He is simply known as "The Sentinel". In fact, that is the only introduction he gives for himself. So when I'...
I want to write a fantasy novel with a female protagonist, and I want to familiarize myself with reader expectations. Is there still a tradition of (medieval-type) fantasy by and for women, and wha...
It's commonly said, mainly here on Writing SE and mainly by Mark Baker's answers, that "a story is a promise". The beginning of the story sets the promise and the ending fulfills it. A story that d...
I have an idea for the beginning of a story. I have the setting, the protagonist, and the events that set the story in motion, including the inciting incident and the first plot point. I have, in s...
I have a gender-neutral name, so people often assume I'm a man. However, a portion of the writing I do is for tech companies. Because of the lack of diversity in the tech industry, many of these c...
I realise that this question can fall in the scope of personal opinion but I am looking for something concrete. Very often, not only on this site but other writing related sites, I find people con...
This is a sentence from a current writing project detailing how people in jail feel about reading. It provides an escape from the reality of what lies before them: time. Should "time" be capitali...
Below are four alternate dialogues that I am confused between. I'd like to know which is the correctly punctuated one. Also please explain how to use ellipses in a dialogue which is interrupted by ...
I was thinking about paying someone to type up the handwritten pages of my novel, so that I can go straight to the editing process. (I prefer first drafts to be with pencil.). This way I can juggle...
I saw the question about books published by more than one publisher, but it doesn't entirely answer my particular inquiry, which is this: If I publish a book through CreateSpace and Kindle, can I ...
this is my first time here. At the moment I'm writing on a little Novel and now I am at the point: My character has a hidden power ( in a World where everyone has a Unique Power, he has two). No...
I am unwilling to draft without editing as I go because I worry I won't be able to translate my thoughts into cumulative sentences. For instance let's take the sentence: "He walked to the store, an...
At a writer's critique group, one piece of feedback to me was: people didn't understand where I was going until the very end. They suggested stating something explicit at the very beginning so the...
Does anyone with experience have suggestions on how best to go back, edit, and rearrange scenes and details? You know, without me dying in the process? The whole book needs to be restructured.
I'm currently working on a piece which has characters coming and going. Basically, sometimes a side character is near the main (also point-of-view) character, and sometimes that same side character...
We know what I'm talking about. The feeling when the legal side of a story doesn't bothers us too much because we want to see Joffrey getting strangled with a string of sausages. So basically we ...
I'm interested in the elements of how a good story is compiled. When in high school, I was exposed to Shakespeare plays where the stories were divided into different acts. While I was reading thr...
Well, I finally managed to put pen to paper and start writing my first couple paragraphs. I have an issue though. I noticed that the word "the" comes up often. Well actually it was pointed out t...
I have a 200 page manuscript which I need to translate from English to Portuguese. I am looking for the best software application authors use for this purpose.
TL;DR: How much time and development is necessary for a character I intend to kill off and replace with a second character so that both feel important to the narrative? I've looked over this a bit...
Example from my own writing: One time, I sent letters, pretending to be a god. I spent last week sending letters, pretending to be a god. The recipient of these letters was Aiko Kobayashi...
I can't find a standard, is the most common use to have the abbreviation followed by the defintion? Example NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
I want to achieve the following: To produce a work that is well-organized and full of substance. To produce a work in which each thought flows smoothly to the next. To produce a work that is perf...
I am an editor having difficulties dealing with the representative of an author's literary estate about an unpublished manuscript by a deceased author. We have a polite (and friendly) disagreement...
I see that the 3 Act structure can be applied over almost any story, from Hamlet to Mulholland Drive, from The Matrix to Rocky. Story structures like 3 Acts, or 4-5 Acts, always feature a Character...
When I read people's manuscripts to provide feedback, I can easily identify areas worth improving. However, feedback isn't all that helpful if it makes the writer give up, so good news needs to be ...
Found myself in a bit of a logical pickle in regard to the below piece: The number nine growled sleepily from around the corner that morning, the night’s virgin snow crunching beneath its multi...
I am in the process of revising my book and I started reading a little about marketing. I got this wonderful e-mail by Jeff Bullas, who explained to me the basics of selling: It is not trying to c...
I'm writing a story where a secondary story-line (it's about a companion of the main character) is basically about a fire mage and an ice mage. It fits well in the story and the fire/ice elements a...
Primary characters would normally include the protagonist, antagonist, and maybe one or two "fellow travelers" of these. Secondary characters would consist of non-trivial characters that are not pr...
I'm currently in the process of writing my first novel, and I'm a little unsure about one of the main features of my writing process. To summarise quickly, what i intend to do is have a short sec...
Okay everybody. When is the proper time to stop the actual story and move on to a different part of the "world"? I need to know about what is going to be the proper way to end this story and move ...
I've been starting something really interesting lately, which is writing each of my main character's back story before writing the main book (If anyone is having the dreaded block or is looking for...
Background Woohoo! I literally just finished right now my masterpiece trilogy that I have worked on for what seems like, ages... I'm a bit vexed as to where I should write 'the end'. The epilogu...
My work has Validation Engineers I, Validation Engineers II, Compliance Consultant I, Compliance Consultant II, etc. When discussing more than one person, do you write Validation Engineers II, Val...
I am currently sketching a novel about people at the end of time, some months or years before the Big Crunch: There is a space station full of people who can only sit and watch as their final momen...
I've been writing for a while now, and everyday I feel I'm getting more serious about it. But the quality of my fiction stories are straightforward and blah. I notice I'm not using enough descript...
