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 developing a series of fantasy novels, and have discovered that I will likely be adding a second point of view in the second or third book (five books total in the series). Up until ...
I always feel that a book or movie has achieved something great when I have an emotional reaction to it. For a very brief moment, the protagonist's pain, drive, happiness, or shock becomes my own. ...
I'm writing my first series of novels, which will contain four books. As often happens, about half way through developing the books, I opened up the possibility for an entirely new series set in th...
I am not a published author, though I am nearing that stage. This is because I decided many years ago to learn all I could about writing, and hone my skill with practice, before actually writing my...
Here and there I've been hearing about what readers 'expect' from certain genres. Romance readers expect the hero and heroine to wind up together. Fantasy readers expect epic fantasy full of battle...
First off, 'platform' might not be the best word. I am talking about what you construct a website with, as in Wordpress, vbulletin, etc. I can't seem to find what these are called. I will use the w...
Background: I've been writing fan fiction for five years now. I began when I didn't have a clue what I was doing, so my methods have evolved during those years. By now I have a solid process that I...
I'm writing a speech on using symbols, and I've just made the statement that you should generally stick with one, maybe two, symbols that span the story (smaller symbols that arise and fade quickly...
In the second book of his Inheritence Cycle, Christopher Paolini makes the grievous error of landing his main character in the middle of a serene woodland where he must sit and talk with an old elf...
This question is slightly less straightforward than the title implies, and requires a little explanation. Firstly, I am an entirely self-taught writer. Because of this, my methods are probably a ...
If I have an idea for a novel (consisting, let's say, of a premise and a vague idea of characters), how can I tell if the idea will turn into a series or a stand-alone? I don't want to start develo...
I am an aspiring author, and I have recently just begun developing my first novel. It is a series, but I have engineered the first novel to be a standalone in case the series falls through. When ...
In Donald Maass's book Writing the Breakout Novel, he talks about stakes. He goes over how a breakout novel needs two kinds: personal stakes - what the hero could lose - and public stakes - what th...
I am considering writing a novel in which society has fallen into a perverse pit of debauchery. This is necessary to the novel, but it also presents some problems. I want the reader to know just ho...
As provided in this excellent answer by @what, there is a certain 'creative time,' for writing, when you can write the best. I've been aware of this for awhile, though I never really saw it for wha...
I've recently been having trouble with developing plots. The plots I created seemed heavily sequential. No matter how many twists or complications I put in, they always seemed dry, proceeding from ...
I recall reading somewhere (I believe it was Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy) that you should either stick with one genre or the other. The reason he gave is that if you...
Should I be a Novel Writer or a Screenwriter? This question is intended for the beginning writer, who is unsure if he should start with writing physical books, or with writing scripts for movie d...
In studying writing, I've learned that you need to give your protagonist something - usually a quality - that makes the reader want him to win. Without this quality, the reader doesn't care what ha...
In my current novel, the protagonist is driven forward throughout the plot by events that happened to him in the past. The reader needs to know these events, so I'd like to include them in a prolog...
One reading Harry Potter (and I'm sure they are in other books as well) will notice that J. K. Rowling utilizes several custom fonts, most commonly in letters and handwriting. There is the Hagrid f...
I've been writing for four years without knowledge of the three act structure. When I discovered it about a year ago, I therefore had no room for it in my writing process, mainly because I had diff...
I am making this question with the assumption in mind that specific genres attract certain types of people. How can I determine the target audience based off of genre alone? I'm looking for the r...
This question may seem rather broad based on the title, so allow me to elaborate. I am a self-taught author. I learned how to write, what works and what doesn't, all that good stuff. What I did n...
I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase the title, so if a better way to put it occurs to anyone, please feel free to edit it. Here's the situation: the goal of a novel is to get the main character ...
Note: I define 'setting' as where and when a novel takes place, as well as what the genre entails. It is the background to the picture of the story. I realize there are a lot of factors that cont...
Recent events have compelled me to study inner conflicts. Having arrived at this decision, I turned to one of my favorite books in an attempt to identify said conflict. However, upon opening Harry ...
My proofreader recently revealed to me the following, which I was wholly unaware of: ...when a number/code/serial or whatever is said in dialogue, you write the whole thing out... I had writ...
I am more of a fiction writer, so writing essays or nonfiction doesn't come as naturally to me. The need does occasionally arise, however. I normally wouldn't have much trouble with it, except that...
A novel that has a theme - that is, something to say, a message - has a weight to it that a novel without a theme cannot achieve. I'm sure there are those that might disagree with this, but I belie...
This question is very similar to this one. However, I felt it was different enough, and I also did not find an answer. In the tale I am currently writing, a girl, whose parents have both been lon...
In my style of writing, I often find that I lapse into relating what happens or has happened, usually via short, choppy, dead sentences. As far as I can tell, this is because the scene I am writing...
It is my understanding that novels should generally start right off with the protagonist. The story is about the protagonist, after all, not something else (This obviously changes a bit if the PoV ...
This question is similar to this one. However, it is different based on what I am looking for. I know what inner conflict is, and I know why I need it. I have tons of examples, and I can usually ...
My assumption here is that a novel set in the current time and world seems more realistic to a reader than a novel with a fictional setting. The reader has the ability to say, "that could be true."...
I am an aspiring author. I've often heard that you have to keep your 'target audience' in mind. It makes sense - certain genres attract certain crowds. Well... I want my books to reach as many peop...
I am an aspiring author, but I intend to start publishing soon. I have several ideas for potential books; however, they are all series. I am hesitant about starting my writing with a series. What i...
In the short passage I am writing, the starting point is that one character is being held at gunpoint, and the end point is that she now holds the gun, having disarmed the opponent. The idea is t...
Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results will be full of long, image-rich blog posts that, somewhere in there, have the actual recipe you were looking for. Many of these ...
Second Edit -- to try to expand the scope BEYOND W.SE and to cover any CreativeCommons work, not just here. Deleted part about the badges. -- Edit -- to clarify it's not quite a BLOG, more a portf...
When you are writing a story that is set in a fantasy world (maybe our world with just one made-up element, or a completely different world), what is a good way to come up with names for species th...
Summary: I'm looking for a way for reviewers to comment collaboratively as close to "inline" as possible on a large HTML project. The problem in detail I work on a team that documents a large pro...
I was recently editing a novel destined to be published primarily in e-book form, and made a list of pre-press instructions, to be followed when the final text is agreed upon. Some of these instruc...
Is Writer's Market a viable place for a freelance editor to find possible clients? As I understand it, the book is geared towards writers finding agents/publishers, but I've never even paged throug...
I know that Australian English has many spellings in common with British English, but (as with Canadian English) the two are not identical. Are there standard, authoritative dictionaries for Austra...
I was blogging about opening lines the other day, and looking for examples. I came across the opening to American Gods, and realized that it's neither flashy nor something that will grab the reader...
I need to revise a screenplay in Final Draft, and I'm finding that the revision features in the program are poor. Are there any ways to introduce revision features in to Final Draft, similar to Tra...
I'd like to learn the APA style guide, so that, in addition to the fiction and general non-fiction I work on currently, I can start accepting academic editing jobs. However, I know very little abou...
In the UK, what are the equivalents to Chicago Manual of Style, the Associated Press style guide, Yahoo, APA, MLA, etc? Most importantly, what are their intended audiences? (AP is used for journali...
Another stack site I use is currently having an election and I am considering nominating. There are two parts to the nomination process; the nomination itself and the questionnaire to candidates. T...
