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.
Filters (None)
How can I write blog posts that are SEO (search engine optimization) friendly? I know there is lots of content available out there, but I want to know how to start writing the post as SEO friendly.
When answering questions on Stack Exchange, some of us challenge the assumptions of the author. These frame challenges can often be quite popular answers. This popularity, however, can simply be a ...
Should we avoid "nonsensical" or "unclear" metaphors? I am not sure if this is a case of "nonsensical" or "unclear" metaphor, but sometimes you have certain phrases that doesn't seem to be suited f...
I amended some of my chapters so that they're more intriguing and engaging for my readers. But there's one particular chapter in which one of my beta-readers stated, "It's intriguing, but it doesn'...
I sometimes write poetry. The creative process for the first draft can be summarized in these steps: I first choose a global structure (e.g. a ballad, a sonnet, a free-stanza-but-fixed-verse, etc...
I have an ambiguous script situation, 2 co-protagonists begin gaslighting the MC. They each have ulterior motives which they don't say. The reader is intended to infer the lies through contradictor...
In my story the protagonist hears, in a temple ceremony, the reading of a religious/mythological text. Now in the actual story, I don't need the text itself (the role of the text in context, and th...
I'm working on a post-apocalypse novel set all over the world. I'm fairly flexible on where some of the events take place, but there are often specific requirements on the look, layout, general reg...
I have been told by my friends that my writing seems a bit blunt in the sense of I rarely practice "Show, Don't Tell" (SDT) in my stories. However, I personally find SDT hard because...I just don't...
I have some material for a "world" (more fantasy than sci-fi at this point). I've noodled around with this world off-and-on for ages but have never had a story to put in the world. I have some brie...
I wrote a scene that I put my heart and soul into. It was received well by most of my readers, but I'm struggling with crafting a new scene for a book I'm currently writing. Here's some comments fr...
I'm currently planning a book series that is told from the first person perspective of 5 different characters. I have a different voice for all of the characters, but I think that 2 of the characte...
How do you quote a comic book strip? I have to state 75 words and I'm not sure if I should re-write the quote as a novel or not.
So, with the recent craze in waifu games, I've decided to try my hand at making one. I have a semi-intricate plot with twists, and some events planned with their own snippet of story. Problem is, I...
So, in a WW2-ish story featuring a co-ed military, I have a female soldier who is very kind and caring. I'm setting her up to be a mascot and somewhat of the postergirl. Trouble is, she dies furthe...
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...
People mostly say that the characters of a story have to be developed first, but I don't really understand why characters play such an active role. Can't the characters simply be classified as obje...
Would it be jarring if in an original (non-translated) story, the characters, who don't speak English in-universe, use "untranslatable" wordplay/puns that are specific to English? By "untranslatab...
I have just finished a short story, set in what is known as 20 Minutes into the Future - a time frame that's only a little into the future from our own. There is a change from modern times, but it ...
This may seem like an awkward scenario for a story's ending. My plot revolves around a constant struggle of the protagonist against the antagonist's forces, and eventually the antagonist himself. I...
A little info as to the story: 'Lily' was abandoned when she was young. She is a Deviant, a group of people who are born with powers, and across the universe either seen as either blasphemies, mi...
I’m putting together this story and its formative stages are almost complete. However, I am genuinely interested as to how the ending would appear to the reader. My protagonist is a skilled chara...
I am asking this from the point of a reader not a writer and just wondering why, so sorry if this is a bad place. I read loads of books to my kids and the construct always seems to go: "What a...
I have a very crudely written book that I self published through Amazon in 2013. I did not do any advertising for the book and it only sold about 80 copies. I am now in the process of a query let...
I want to write a short story (and maybe later a book) together with a colleague from work. Is there an online service which we can use to do this in a convenient way? Useful features would be (n...
I have read a couple romance books at most and so don’t claim to have very much experience with romance and clichés. But here are the ones I can think of: Something happens to make them hate eac...
We all have seen at least one of these clickbaits (or some variation thereof): "single mom discovers the meaning of life with a simple trick" or "billionaires don't want you to know this...
I am looking for the representative references on writing style in English that would pre-date Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (possibly in the period between 1750 - 2000). I would like to...
A caesura is a slight pause that's important in poetry, because for example alexandrines require a caesura in the middle. But the question is where can we put them. I know that we tend to put the...
My protagonist is finally meeting with the big boss of a mafia. At least, he thinks he is. The boss actually sends someone to pretend to be him. I'm writing from the protagonist's (limited) POV. I...
In an article I'm co-authoring, I'm about to say the following: ... d is the number of articles authored by John Doe ... But then I thought this would be better: ... d is the number of ar...
A section of a story I am writing is being told in third person from the perspective of a character who does not know anything about herself due to amnesia. The reader is also unaware of anything r...
I know that Bradbury was rejected about 800 times. I know the famous JK Rowling story. Yet the question is lurking in my mind, becoming stronger and clearer with each rejection: what if? What if I...
I'm stuck on a POV question in a short story I'm writing. The entire story is written in 3rd Person, but not omniscient - I guess it's either "distant limited" or "deep" (I'm not sure exactly the d...
I gave my latest book to my favorite beta readers, and they liked it except for the very ending, i.e. the last 20 pages, which they thought fell short and a bit rushed. I therefore decided to try a...
For instance, in my high school novel, I have the main characters attend a football game, the Homecoming Dance, the basketball game, other dances, the Prom, etc. Then I have the characters react to...
Being given a prompt makes me freeze up immediately. Let me clarify. I'm talking about high school writing prompts. You know. Those. The ones that ask you to write an essay about what you would c...
Here is what I mean. My character- Violet- started the play with a lofty attitude, but now her pride has been broken by her mother's death and betrayal of a friend. The scene begins with her reunit...
I started a story and published it online in 2016. And then I disappeared due to various unavoidable priorities in life. But now I want to restart. But I am not sure. There are already less views. ...
Here are a few examples of the narrator knowing more than he should. (A) In a humourous short story about Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, Bertie is talking about a situation involving two strangers and...
Software developers don't ever work in text editors, instead they use IDEs (integrated development environments) full of code assistance tools, etc. Why don't writers use similarly advanced writin...
Science fiction has been defined as a genre where the "incredible" elements are "recognizable as not-true, but also as not-unlike-true, not-flatly- (and in the current state of knowledge) impossibl...
I've read many books where the main protagonists are described as good looking people with Greek god looks, plenty of sex appeal, the perfect figure and all that. As a reader, how important would i...
I'm starting to write a book and I am considering to use the iBooks Author app since I tend to like Apple products. Through my research, I learned I can publish it into iBooks, export it for iBooks...
I'm getting ready to start submitting a book I've written. I copyrighted an earlier draft of it a few years ago (as in submitted it for official registered copyright). The final draft has not cha...
I'm wondering if I can publish a comic on the Kindle store! It's because me and my friends made a comic and I've now re-drawn everything on my computer and I've looked into this and it says I need ...
I seem to be having trouble finding any readers. I have my work in progress on Wattpad right now, but I only have 527 reads. I don't know what I'm doing wrong with my promotion. I post my story...
I was listening to an older episode (2012) of "The Audacity to Podcast", where the host is talking with a copyright/IP Lawyer: https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/tap077-copyright-laws-for-bloggers-an...
I'm compiling my first book. In this book I have translated several legends, fairytales and stories of my country (El Salvador). Most of them are loosely based on different books, blogs, newspaper...
I've written a book. My question is if it is in bad {taste, karma, policy} to use an analogy that is disrupting to the reader's stream of consciousness. The quote in question is this: Like a b...
