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 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...
It seems a simple enough question,
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...
Hey Guys I was researching on a assignment I have to submit to my university. When i was about to copy certain information i went under the "Terms of Use" seeing if i could copy the said informatio...
I need to know because all of the anime that I watch have at least one character or more from another planet, and they're not usually friendly. I don't want to come off as one of those who "follow ...
About five years ago I self-published a novella "The Spoils of War". In the middle there's a section where the MC is packed of to Pakistan because the family don't want to face the embarrassment of...
I found a previous post about introducing terms, but it doesn't quite answer my question. I have a more specific question about the punctuation used when introducing a term, and not how to stylisti...
I have begun writing a story about two city-states in the year 2307 in an arms race to create a time machine. The protagonist must regain the confidence of his old "sim stealing" gang whom he sold...
I'm ready to enter the final act, Act 3, of my (first big) story and by now I'm pretty sure I'll have to rewrite 50-70% in ACT 1 and 2. I outlined the whole story but it is clear that my main her...
I don't know if other people wanting to be writers experience this, but I get driven by my obsession. It used to be Hunger Games, then Star Wars, Maze Runner, and finally Guardians of the Galaxy. ...
So I'm writing a story, a fanfiction to be specific, and a main character is an aggressive, emotionless, constantly angry man, who swears a lot and doesn't care much about anything. I want him to d...
I am beginning to write original novels after writing fanfictions and posting them online for about six years. My usual process is: write chapter, edit chapter, post chapter, repeat. This means tha...
Most stories carry some element of realisation. Whether that realisation is the best sort of fireball for defeating the Dark Overlord, or how I can lessen my pride to make my marriage work, the cha...
In my story, there is a group of four characters that are called upon a classic macguffin hunt. The characters know that the macguffin is important, but they do not know all the details as why it ...
I'm in a dilemma: I don't want my characters to have flawless, limitless and bad-consequence-less powers, but I also don't want to have my creativity limited by such rules and limits. In my case, i...
I'm wondering what are the basic ways that accent marks should be used when coming up with fantasy names of people, places, etc. Sorry if this might be a little vague of a question.
When creating a figure caption related to a software screenshot, can I use title case or should I match the case that is in the application? For Example, "Figure 1-1. New Virtual Machine – Select ...
I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. I'm basically working on an idea I had a few years back. It's fiction, has a lot to do with fae...
For some time now, the matter of classical versus modern writing has weighed heavily in the discussion of my mind-congress. Here is my thought: given the sheer reverence that is given to classical ...
So basically I'm writing a story set in a magical world where there are separate covens, each with different mission statements (there is one for those who want to be healers, one for those who wan...
A series I am working on deals with an underlying storyline that progresses through each book. I'm afraid of confusing a reader if they decide to start reading a book somewhere in the middle of the...
Say I want to quote from the bible in something I'm writing (think the famous passage in Pulp Fiction). What bible version should I quote from? I've done some research but only ended up more confu...
While an unreliable narrator is someone who is deceiving the reader (or possibly himself), there are plenty of stories where the narrator is truthfully relaying what happened, but does not fully un...
I'm writing a sci-fi novel with more than one main character. Since I'm not an experienced writer, I still struggle with some basic "rules" within writing that may or may not exist. This issue ...
In the novel I'm planning the human characters that inhabit the world are all clones of each other. Man and woman. They aren't given names when born, instead they are given serial numbers that also...
I'm writing a short story From what I understand, the theme is the message that I want to send across. Akin to Beauty and the Beast's "Don't judge a book by its cover" theme, or "Opposites attract...
I seem to have this problem where I know a lot of words but can't always seem to think them up when I write an article or a story. I know the meaning of most of these words, but when I write, some ...
Here's an example from my own writing: Watching the ceiling fan stir my thoughts, I said, “His favorite thing was to tell me about his day.” Mrs. Saeki gawked at me behind her square gla...
I've been writing a mystery story recently, but I've run into a problem concerning the major plot twist, and was hoping for some guidance from more experienced writers. Here's the scenario: Perso...
A character speaks two languages throughout the whole plot. How to insert the translation of the other language without ruining the layout of the story or text? For example: "Guten tag, Herr X...
If a book is not returnable, has a wholesaler discount of 45% and costs £10.99, does a book store sell this book if a customer comes into a store and wants to order it? In short: Is a book still a...
When building a twist into the ending, should I leak enough information such that astute readers could predict the twist if they stopped and mulled it over or should I withhold key elements to guar...
I have a premise, which I think is funny/clever. I want to write this as a comedy sketch, to be acted out or shot on video. I have three "scenes" which are basically three different re-capitulatio...
I've created a manipulative sort of protagonist, one who enjoys mind games, blackmail, systematically destroying people who've wronged her, that sort of thing. I personally find her very interesti...
I was considering naming my book "Cherry on Top." However, because this may be hard to search for on Google, I was going to add a subtitle. Perhaps make the full title/subtitle "Cherry on Top: Not ...
I'm writing a short story structured like this: Character A's POV * * * Character B's POV * * * Character B's POV * * * Character A's POV * * * Character B's POV * * * Based on the firs...
I've finally committed to writing my first novel. I've been listening to things like Writing Excuses which encourages first time writers to finish their works, but I'm definitely writing an old dar...
Looking at this question, I was trying to figure out how to format a small family of novels and short stories that use a number of languages. My original approach went with the above question's sty...
I'm currently learning about story structure and there's not much consensus on the "black moment" or "all is lost lull" that happens around Act 2. Is this moment of defeat before or after the secon...
The following is a paraphrased snippet of something I wrote, it is a conversation between the protagonist--a nihilist teenage boy--and an alien sociologist who communicates to him via telepathy, so...
While inside the weatherbeaten maternity hut lit by a single candle, out of the dark shadow of its mother's womb, the most unusual child ever seen in the village was delivered; and while the...
Let's say the character has over the years grown to dislike humans because he had many negative experiences with them, and is disappointed in humanity itself. How does one write such a character wi...
I am working on a story in which the characters must solve a mystery. It's a "team-building exercise" at school, in which they must work together. They are graded on how well they work together and...
When I write answers to questions on the stack exchange network my end result is often quite lengthy. While length itself isn't a problem for me, sometimes my answers end up like this. This happens...
I am producing a comic in which a fictional language is frequently spoken. This language (and which characters are able to speak it) is significant to the plot, so it's important that the reader ...
I've come across some answers and questions on this site which have gotten me thinking about re-readability. It isn't something that I think about much, but now that I consider it, I think it could...
I saw this question being asked and it lead me to wonder something.... It seems that self inserting your.... person is not considered good practice or should be kept to a minimal. So my question p...
There is currently a dearth of Asian American writers on U.S. library bookshelves, and those few authors who are Asian Americans tend to write about things associated with Asian culture. Think of A...
So I have a quote that has double quotation marks inside it. Would I leave those in? Or replace them with single quotes? In Carolyn Gregoire’s article “What Your 'Life Story' Really Says About...
I'm definitely poor at English and I always have grammatical errors. After posting a question about what apps can I use to start writing my stories, I searched in this site if how can I improve my...
