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 often hear the word thrown around, but I don't have any idea of what it is, or how can it be avoided. So, what does "juvenile tone" mean and how can I prevent it?
I'm writing a short story and I find a character is more compelling if I ask those that have been through similar experiences what said experience was like. I need to know what it feels like to lo...
The rule is simple in general: use the present tenses when discussing events in literary works. One situation where this gets more complicated is where you have to switch timelines because, for exa...
I wrote a blog post about a certain feature(in testing) of our online product. We finished the testing and changed a couple of things and added some improvements to this feature. So, I was thin...
The novel I am writing hinges on an orphan boy, who is not evil, but merely frustrated and angry with the world and how it is treating him. I need him to do something or cause something to happen t...
Would you say that there are postulates, or presumptions that lie on the basis of any literary piece? What could they be?
I have heard people telling that they have read so many books and have a mini library at their houses. I did not read many books (I am 17 and do not have much time as I balance school, special clas...
The Chicago Manual of Style: When a word or term is not used functionally but is referred to as the word or term itself, it is either italicized or enclosed in quotation marks. Proper nouns...
TL;DR How should I (if at all) develop the personality, character trait, character development and motivation of a character in a core trio whose role in the story is (thus far) only to be a mech...
I have read this similar question but it does not really address my question. What if I want to write a novel or a short story that is inspired by (or outright a retelling of) a popular poem writt...
Of course, there aren't any rules in writing. But when something is used in exaggeration (or even Isn't used at all!) without prudence, it can ruins everything. A voice is like a guide to see the ...
I have a scene where my character sits down to read a court summons and I want the shots to show various parts of the document like his name, then his codefendants name, then the charge and then th...
Hold Your Hippogriffs: A (more often than not) cringeworthy version of a saying (though can be invented on the spot), that is prone to cause Fatal Death in most readers. But it sounds fun, who wou...
I'm a part-time writer, still working on my novel (with a long term goal to make a living as a writer). My partner is also a writer, full time, with a couple dozen novels in ebook format, who make...
I once came across a set of brand guidelines and, in the tone of voice section, there was a list of 'brand statements'. Multiple brand statements as examples of what the company could pick and choo...
Often told as "Third Person Objective" or "Third Person Camera" it is some kind of mixture between cinema and writing. (Crazy stuff, I know.) What is this Third Person Dramatic? What are his pr...
This kind of thing comes up a lot in my engineering job. We're writing a document that is a Plan for something we'll be doing in the future. For instance, a Test Plan that describes who will partic...
When analysing a book and speaking of a character that dies, do you still you present tense as you are still analysing a book? If I were to make up a quick example: "Despite Anna's death, the plot...
What do I mean? Well, teleporters: "Every room resets. Remember I told you that? Every room reverts to its original condition. Logically, the teleporter should do the same. Teleporter. Fanc...
I have a vast series of scenes, characters, and stories coming together in my head, which I have yet to transcribe to an actual story on paper. I have notes, and many of them, but I cannot seem to ...
The Hero's journey is very individualistic. I want to know how writers build the book's structure for multiple characters. Do they make one for each character of for a whole? If it is for a whole, ...
There is an answer here from FraEnrico which is the cause for my question: What is the difference between character-driven stories and plot-driven stories?. Here he explains a bit of what an "arena...
I used to be able to write spontaneously. What I mean to say is that I would get this feelings in my stomach, usually during bouts of anxiety and I'd put pen to paper and rarely be disappointed wit...
I'm hoping for guidance on several very similar situations, which I suspect are all meant to be punctuated and spaced differently. Stuttering How would you write someone stuttering out the word "...
I am writing a story about a war, and there is this particular character whom they are a traitor to their own side. The traitor's identity is to be unknown until the Resolution part of the story in...
Something I always get stuck with is how to describe a first date. E.g. I have a story where 2 characters are on a blind date, so they have to get to know each other. How much of the date should be...
There's no justification set in my document, and in Edit Compile Format I've turned off justification in body text and all other styles. Yet the PDF continues to output with justification. How ca...
The LONG road to publishing a novel is nearing an end. But writing a novel is actually only the beginning; editing, formatting, compiling and marketing the novel makes the initial task of writing s...
I believe it is a time-honored tradition, in fiction, to bend rules for a literary effect. I'm printing a short story for my critique group tonight. One critique-er is a very by-the-book kind of pe...
“One should try to invite people from this world to eternity, from sin to obedience, from greediness to asceticism, from jealousness to generosity, from duplicity to honesty, from insolence to mode...
I'm writing a story about a creature that takes the shape of a human and travels seeing the world. This character has no clue about this new reality, as he had no body before this incarnation, and ...
If I have a hard time dissecting showing directly, then I just simply ask about the end result: What showing wishes to create in the readers?
I just want to make sure everyone knows, English is not my native language, so if there are any spelling errors or similar, that's the reason. I'm a 20 year old student who writes novels during my...
I'm curious as to whether or not there was one story seen as the 'first' example of the Hero's Journey. Most Googling returns academic theory (Campbell's steps) rather than examples. But I'm curi...
In my screenplay, I have a character that’s a 20 year old college student. He lives at home. His name is Brett. Another character pulls up to Brett’s house. Should the scene heading read: EXT....
I have this organization in my working book called NOVA. And it means National Occupation Variation Association. they basically take people from their homes and families and force them to work o...
I’m writing a non linear drama and my question is: do I have to notate what will be seen literally in the film, like age differences and such because the film won’t require much if any scene cues l...
I often get confused in writing about whether or not something is showing or telling. For example, if my character wears a mask through which he can’t see, and I as the all-knowing narrator/writer ...
I see sentence fragments all the time in online scripts, so I assume it’s okay. But there are a number of articles emphasizing the importance of grammar in screenwriting. So, which ones is it? ...
I’ve written a plot for a long story. But it’s not easy for anybody to review because my characters’ dialogue and goals are all over the place, it’s often usually mixed up and I struggle to structu...
I want to write a religion similar to Christianity but with God represented as feminine. It is meant to highlight the differences between the sexes and emphasise traits associated with women over m...
Who we are, where we came from and how we came to be what we are This sentence was flagged as plagiarized by Grammarly. So I looked up the cite that Grammarly says I am plagiarizing, and the ...
I want to make my art, to express with no limits. However, I also need to profit with it. If I sell my art purely, the readers might not understand, like or be interested in it, and thus resulting ...
I have a few questions about the page numbering of the last few pages of my book. I have a section with further resources. It contains one page with information about a site and three more pages ...
So I'm writing a story and there is a character that is a male that I want to name Artemis. The reason, simply put, is that he has a sister with a name I really like that is TECHNICALLY a boy's nam...
I am now editing for adverbs, as silly as that may sound to some people. :-) I have learned, 'by ear', that the advice to 'avoid adverbs' is actually not bad advice. But I am also learning that cer...
I seem to have several ideas for fanfiction novels. I'm working on a long fanfiction at the moment that's quite complex and I'm trying to practice editing. I would like to write some original sh...
What's behind: the reader feels invested in the characters, the reader likes the tone so far, the reader likes the premise. What's ahead: how is this story going to finish, who killed his wife, wh...
I have googled this question several times but I'm just not clear on the answers I'm getting. For example, I know that screenplays/plays/books such as A Streetcar Named Desire, Enough Said, The Spa...
I write fiction, I guess you could say experimental fiction, but I just feel I am more of a stylist. Every story of mine that's been accepted was taken as is. Now, for the first time, I am dealing ...
