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 feel bored to have this in my all mails 'Please let me know if any questions/comments', any best alternate sentence would be helpful for me
My project has an environmental theme. My characters eat meals, and because of the setting, this includes meat and eggs. Some environmentally - friendly friends find those scenes very distasteful...
Recently, I am trying to write my own novel, but I came across a problem that is hindering my progress greatly. I can't get into the mind of the protagonist even though I planned her character befo...
Someone I'm proofreading for has a protagonist that, for whatever reason, has a blanked out name. She writes it as '_____' which I feel disrupts the flow a little bit. What way can I recommend th...
I have recently completed a short story work of mine. I have published it on Wattpad, and I've sent the Google Docs link of it to several friends. I am kind of new to writing in general, and Wattpa...
I'm working through the Sanderson youtube classes on writing fantasy and he discusses the idea that conflict can arise between any two (or three) of the three legs of a story - plot, character, set...
I recently watched Aaron Sorkin's Masterclass on screenwriting. One frustrating section of it (overall it's quite good, IMHO) is about dialog, and Sorkin says that dialog is important, it can't be ...
This is an excerpt from a novel I have started writing. Penry laughed. His face changed instantly. His disbelief changed into happiness, into almost the serenity in my dreams. It seemed to b...
Edit: Perhaps a list of words prone to mis-use would serve the need, here. Is anyone aware of a resource that lists words with emotional baggage? Example: I use the expression 'enormity of...
I work with a software product that has over 10 major components. The administration of most of these is done with the root user with one notable exception where they use a less privileged user for...
I work on developer documentation at a tech startup. As of now, we implement the following feedback mechanisms: We have a thumbs-up/down feedback system on each page of the docs site. If a user c...
As technology advances and workflows are streamlined, some have turned to automated tools such as Doxygen, Sphinx, Swagger, etc. in order to generate technical documentation automatically. What ar...
In our documentation, we write binary numbers like this: 1010 But we write hexadecimal numbers like this: 0xABAB Now, according to the GCC compiler conventions: Numbers are normally written in...
Are they "if-else statements" or are they "if/else statements"? I'm partial to the latter, but I can see the logic of the former - both "if" and "else" are acting as a unit modifier for the noun "s...
Frequently, at least in the software world, it seems that terms get assigned a meaning over time that is more general than the original definition. REST is a good example of this. While REST refe...
It's well known that live presenters are often advised to add a dose of humour in order to engage the audience better. However, I very rarely see humour in written technical documentation; this de...
At this point, many languages have some "standard" format for writing documentation for individual methods. This includes, for example, Java Annotation and Microsoft's XML Documentation for .NET La...
When writing about technical topics it is often difficult to get across the complexity of a topic without getting "stuck in the weeds" and ultimately leaving the audience confused or disinterested....
Our tech comm team has a wide variety of time-consuming, repetitive tasks they we need to automate. We are mainly using Sphinx, reStructuredText, Adobe Illustrator, and Visio. Specific things we n...
We have a tool that we cannot replace that does not support single sourcing. As a result, with instructions that involve the same node, we either repeat the same dozen steps over and over, or refer...
Quickly communicating data lineage to other stakeholders in our organization has become increasingly difficult as we scale. What are effective strategies to address this and keep it maintained? A...
It seems like many manuals and technical documents prefer passive voice over active voice. Is this true, or is it just my perception? If so, why?
As part of some research I am doing on measuring documentation quality, I have come across the terms "accurate" and "believable" as two separate dimensions of information quality. But the differen...
THE ISSUE There must be a catch-phrase or soundbite to describe this scenario, but so far, I've been unsuccessful locating that term, and my efforts to answer this question have been flat as well....
I've written myself into a sci-fi cliche which I have never seen done well: two characters meet in virtual reality. The gist of my scene is one character has been in a pseudocoma, more aware of he...
I've had a few different ideas for an ending that I've narrowed down to two. They both fit the tone and they both fit the story. But they are also completely different. How do I pick? For example,...
I decided a few chapters into a book I'm writing that I dislike present tense, and that I would need to go back and make all instances of present tense past tense to maintain consistency. However, ...
" AVOID CIATATIONS IN TITLE" I just got this remark from an editor after 2 days of an article submission. He has said to avoid citations in title. I have not cited in any title, be it main title o...
I have this sentence: Rebecca lived in the building and was one of my wife's closest friends. One of mine too, I supposed. With "I supposed", I'm trying to convey that if you had asked the ...
I'm a bit stuck on what should be a straightforward plot issue but not sure what is actually realistic. The character is going away into tera incognita (effectively exile until a deadly enemy has ...
I feel I've got a huge obstacle, whenever I'm pretending" to be a character and trying to make out how he/she would react. I feel strongly that the mentality of the creator is reflected in his wor...
I have three protagonists working towards the same goal but with different motives. They are co-protagonists each with their own character arc and resolution. Circumstances bring them together but ...
Looking at another thread on tense, I realize that this one of mine may be misconstrued as me asking for help fixing a specific paragraph. Rather than that, I am asking for advice in general on dea...
Life doesn't happen in chapters — at least, not regular ones. Nor do movies. Homer didn't write in chapters. I can see what their purpose is in children's books ("I'll read to the end of the cha...
I have a story which has some controversial social problems, and my intention is to just show these issues (for drama) realistically and impartially (i.e. just showing the facts, without imposing a...
What is the basic path to getting a literary agent? I understand that going to a writing conference helps you find one, but where can I find writing conferences? I did a search for them and could o...
Summary Starting from the position that -- with modern web delivery -- the line between technical communication and marketing content is fading (as all the content is available to business and tec...
I am writing the release documentation for a software product and a design flaw has been discovered after the code has been frozen. Does the documentation describing this issue change if the produc...
The deadline is looming and someone realizes the product can't be shipped without documentation. Once the product leaves the remit of the software engineers (who obviously only ever write wonderful...
I am in the process of developing an online profile for my writing. Something marketable to future employers. I'm hung, though, on whether to use a domain name like "mynamewriter.com" or something ...
I have a Wordpress where I post short stories I write. It's not popular, mostly just family and a few random people follow it. Occasionally, I want decide I want to further work on something I post...
Free indirect discourse is a writing technique that makes the writing display the character's thoughts whilst still remaining in third-person narrative, with 'he' or 'she' as pronouns. As an exampl...
I'm not talking about if it's right to go like: "See you later, Mom!" Sierra grabbed an apple and ran out of the front door. I'm more concerned with something I remember seeing but can't remember ...
I want to have an underlying message in my writing but I really don't want it to come across as annoying or too preachy. Thanks!
My novel is developed in an East Asian environment (specifically Japan) and my main character is not Asian, she is from Central América and is Mixed Race. Now, my main character is going to refer t...
My story is a little bit weird because it starts in a Spanish speaking country and then moves to Japan where everybody speaks japanese and I don't know how to introduce this new language that will ...
Is it true that to slow down a story, you add descriptive words in place of an action? I feel like the pace my story is going at, I'll finish it in less than 200 pages. It just doesn't feel right ...
This time, I'm not really talking about the legal side (that has already been covered a few times here), but more about what the readers and the critics think. The Inheritance Cycle rips off Star ...
I actually posted this originally over in the Psychology and Neurology SE in hopes of getting specific, helpful, psych-related responses from people who were actually knowledgeable in the field, bu...
How much dialogue to use when novel writing? I find it so boring and unimaginative to write, but yet when I read I appreciate that it often provides key information for the story. How much is too ...
