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'm citing several podcasts in an MLA 8 bibliography for a PhD student. Many have authors/hosts with names such as "FriedPapita and Myte" (2 authors), or just "Jaime" (first name only). I've don...
I've once heard in a youtube channel that only games could do things such as: getting the player into a flux state (something like getting into a meditation while doing something) and when that hap...
Is directly showing a characters inner thoughts and conversations with themselves too telly or cheesy?
Imagine you're a protagonist in a story and you find a dead body, you go up to the corpse and find it's bloody face to be beautiful. How would you describe the corpse's face? Is there a specific wo...
If I have a long scene in a cafe with a couple arguing (comedy) can I split the scene up by changing the camera angle to a couple in another corner? It is technically the same scene, but it could b...
Re: editing a cookbook Other than trademarked names, should ingredients in the recipe lists be capitalized? Thank you in advance.
A book that I'm currently writing called Surge features an enemy faction called the Degenerates that are heavily inspired by the Scythians (Indo-Iranian horse nomads that ruled the Eurasian Steppe ...
I am an adoptee writing a story about meeting my biological mother. I had to get on a plane to meet my mother. A couple of days before the trip I met with members of my adoptive family and other ...
I'm a journalist, and my writing work often involves writing reviews. Similar work in the field often focuses down on the mechanical, objective qualities of the thing being reviewed and that's been...
Do you know a good way to describe a female character's figure? I'm writing a fairly serious story, but the only way I know how to describe this is from comedy stories, where they work out some jo...
Whether or not it develops to sex with some or all of them, what should you remember to do when writing a harem-type scenario where multiple girls are interested in the same guy. I know some of the...
I'm writing a story and I need to describe the character's appearance. My character is wearing a football jersey and running on the field, so how can I describe this better? This is what I came up...
I actually do not have any plans to use any characters from another book in any of my books (either as fan fiction, a joke, or a reference). Out of interest, though, would it be legal to pull in a ...
There are some works that have a certain kind of voice, which is due to their rhythm. But is this due only to word order and like things, or do their authors actually choose synonyms to achieve rhy...
I don't want to straight up say that the dust/ ash was blown away, I want it to have a creepy vibe to it so it's more interesting. So is there any way to show (not tell) ashes being blown away by ...
I've recently got a crushing critique. The critic pointed out I was obviously unfamiliar with the basic tools of the trade and that my style was non-existent. She insisted that "everybody can inven...
In a procedure, when describing a UI component, we use the bold font to represent UI components. We also match the text with the letter case of the UI component. But do we need to match the font st...
I was wondering if using length in this sentence would add to take away from the message. Also am I constructing the sentence correctly. A sudden outburst drew my gaze from lazy sky to chalk dr...
Aside from the obvious difference of a movie script been one complete story and a tv series been a continuing story across several episodes. Is anyone aware of anything you would do differently bef...
I feel like it’s a great tool for transitioning scenes. Off the Sargent’s grimacing face— Off the dead cheerleader’s tramp stamp— But is this considered camera direction? Is this too specific ...
By definition TL;DR, short for "too long; didn't read", is Internet slang to say that some text being replied to has been ignored because of its length. In slang it can also stand for "Too lazy...
I'm writing my first novel and I wanted to try and write around 12-15 chapters about 10k-ish (give or take a thousand or two) words each. The idea behind it being each chapter covers a very large a...
In my story, I have 8 characters I really want to focus on, which is already a pretty large cast to begin with. At the beginning of the book, something important happens to each of the 8 that kicks...
I’m wanting to know how to enter dates that will be shown in text on the screen in a screenplay, I’ve see. Several ways to do it so I wanted clarification, thx for any help
I'm writing a story with a world that has different physics, alchemy rather than chemistry, and biology that relies somewhat on magic. The protagonist is not of this world, however he is not of ou...
I've read that leaving your character alone for too long can spell death for your novel. That you should put them out there in the world so they can interact with other characters. That you shouldn...
I'm currently writing an essay for a school assignment. My teacher's—and Google's—answers as to where to find examples of real life situations and counter-arguments to support my arguments in an es...
Can you help me find a suitable title for my book? I'll tell you the main idea so that you guys can help. It is a romance highschool story that revolves around a vampire boy and a human girl. Due ...
So about halfway through the story I'm writing, the main characters discover that they're actually AI whose entire lives have been simulated in order to create an AI with human-level emotional skil...
This is a broad and subjective question. However, I think it can be answered with advice such as: Don't include car chases, train accidents or other things that require special effects that can't b...
I've been writing a friendly tutorial series for a small art software community. Somehow I decided to write it in first person plural, so the entire tutorial is "First, let's do this..." and "Now w...
Question For those who have been published or are in the publishing industry: Can a new author get a longer work published these days? (near 200,000 words) Would it be smarter of me to try and ...
How do you use adverbs properly in fiction writing? In a related question, a reply states: When to use [adverbs]? When your alternative would be pretentious. There are strong nouns and verbs, ...
I’m currently working on a novel that I’m remodelling from an old fanfiction novel I wrote around 6 years ago. That was the first thing I’ve ever fully planned, written, edited, and completed. I’ve...
I have the following sentence: Pocket squares are a standout amongst the most vital apparatuses for a man of style. It's important to have the correct pocket square for the correct event. ...
When writing dialogue I usually just make one character say whatever I want them to say and then write "said" at the end, but I feel like I'm doing it wrong. What is the correct way to write dial...
Writing is rewriting. The first draft of a novel is commonly riddled with mistakes: the beginning doesn't grip, the characters aren't consistent, the plot has holes, the story lacks suspense, turns...
I am almost finished up writing my first novel--a fiction-- and I am considering posting it on sites like fictionpress to see if I get any advice and constructive criticism on things to fix. I real...
If teacher asks you to paraphrase a paragraph which is like "I went there etc" then how will we paraphrase it? Will it be like "The writer made his way to that place" or I'll be like it's me who is...
I’ve been a writer for fifteen years, five as a full-time writer, and still haven’t figured out how to get the people in my life to view it as a job. Right now, I’m editing a novel to a very tight ...
I am writing a story about a character that travels as an ESL teacher and am wondering how you can explain scenery without getting to much into it.
65 pages? 70 pages??? I’ve got almost 80 and need to know how much I have to cut
Two characters of opposite sex meet in a blank room (nothing remarkable about the setting) for the first time and the reader isn't familiar with either of them. Since genre would sway the answer t...
Following the first answer for this question What does Show don't Tell actually mean I followed to the Chuck Palahniuk exercise and tried applying it to my current work. From this point forwar...
In first person narrative, would it be acceptable to use a period in place of a question mark when the narrator is asking a rhetorical question? example: My car broke down again. Why does this alw...
I'm now analyzing the scenes in my manuscript. I broke my manuscript into scenes using the definition that a new scene begins when a person, place, or time point shifts. This means whenever...
I am writing my first chapter books for an older audience around 18+ and I need a little help with knowing when one characters point of view should end and the next begin. Can anyone help me?
I am just about finished with the first draft of a novel I've been working on. I've been writing novels for about ten years and I've self-published a couple, but I'm looking to peek into the world ...
Me and my professor will meet tomorrow. Since it's been a long time after we last talked about the meeting,I'm thinking about sending her an email reminder. But I'm not sure about how to write this...
I am working on a commentary on Ethics of the Fathers and I want readers to be able to read sources I'm quoting in their original Hebrew. I am getting most of my sources from sefaria.org and unfort...
