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 writing the first draft of a story, I've found that increasingly, I'm writing sentences in a format (I don't know the technical name of this) similar to below - Coming to a stop at the foot...
I'm going through an editing something I wrote and am stuck on where to break paragraphs containing dialogue. I know I need to break when a new character speaks, but I'm not sure where to start a n...
There is a lot of advice on how to be a tech writer for software without a tech background. (That is, skills such as understanding end-users, investigative reporting-type skills to probe experts, e...
If I use certain elements of a culture or language, how different should they be compared to the original? How different should the language used to reference those elements be? Examples: Can I...
I'm writing a non-fiction business book and will self-publish first as an ebook and then as a hardcover. What are effective techniques I can use to have it reviewed in appropriate media, such as Th...
I am currently writing a character that isn't who they claim to be. This character's true identity and affiliation will become known in the ending chapters. This character can be closely associated...
I am currently writing a medieval (low fantasy) novel set in a society akin to that of Western Europe during the Middle Ages. One of my protagonists is raised poor in a small village, but early on ...
I have discovered that I am most definitely not a pantser, especially when writing longer pieces. The last couple of times I've tried to write a novel, I didn't feel like I was writing enough. I di...
I am writing a first person narrative with a character that is very similar to myself. As such I feel like the narrator should speak and think in language that I, personally, would use. Unfortunate...
This is a habit I have with my stories, and I think it's a bad practice. The story I'm writing isn't of the suspense genre, it's a mix of fantasy and realistic fiction, but a bit of "I wonder what/...
A very short question. I'm writing a trilogy. Book 1 was 88,000 words, but book 2 is probably only going to be 75,000 words. That's over 10,000 words less. Should I find a way to make it longe...
I've written a fictional story and the way my characters are coming together and forming a bond seems way too coincidental to me. A lady lives on the first floor while her tenant, a guy, lives ...
I always seem to struggle with finding enough information to write a 1500 word close reading essay, and it feels like I stretch my ideas so thin that my essay quality becomes poor. While only ref...
I have written several guest blog posts for a website with a large readership. I didn't ask for payment because the site is set up primarily as a public service in the special interest area. Now ...
I find it horribly irritating when I'm half way through a book and suddenly discover a character I imagined as skinny is now "folding his arms across his barrel chest" or a character I envisioned a...
I'm writing in third person because I want to express the standpoint of both of my characters. Everything's running smoothly except for the part where I want to describe their kiss. I'm in conflict...
I am writing the built-in help for a command line program. The exact name is irrelevant, so let's use foo as a placeholder. This utility can be called with some arguments (like foo -v) or without ...
Over the past year, I have written down a number of ideas for novels. I have attempted to focus on a sole idea, and tried to write my novel based on this idea. However, I have far too many times fo...
I have a guy that runs a very successful punk/oi! record label in LA. He has asked me if I'd be interested in writing a series of books for him. 60,000 to 80,000 words per book in the series. I am...
I want to write a simple textbook on standard high-school level algebra. Most of what we know about the field, we have known it for centuries. So I'm fairly certain the majority, if not the entire...
A comment on a recent question of mine claims Right, so that's [large unformatted text blocks scaring off some readers in certain contexts is] a myth. This is how I know: Harry Potter. Big lon...
I've recently asked a question about editing away text walls once I've already made the mistake of creating one, but it would probably be best not to have them in the first place. What writing tec...
If offered a percentage of profit for an ebook (e.g. after Amazon's cut), what is reasonable charge for proofreading a somewhat specialized non-fiction manuscript, written by someone whose first la...
I am familiar with the Monroe Motivated Sequence, which is used to persuade people to take an action. This may be utilized in a speech or a piece of writing. I am interested in learning about other...
Background I've had this question for a really long time. A lot of my work seems quite 'floaty' and 'old style' because I describe things in a very metaphorical and surreal way. For example: H...
I was wondering if anyone had any writing exercises that they use to help them get to know their characters better. I keep false-starting on my story because I have more of a hazy idea of who my ma...
I'm currently brainstorming a fantasy story, and I love the idea of my main character, but I'm having a hard time pinning down who she is as a person. I know her backstory, her family, her abilitie...
In a comment to an answer of mine Mark Baker has suggested that the common, dichotomous view of writers as either "plotters" or "pantsers" or something of both might not be complete and that there ...
My brain is probably just broken, but it has a question. It tends to invent odd scenarios that become quite interesting. It also knows that the story will only be interesting to others if it has ...
How can I get a reader profile for a publishing category i.e. criminal justice, social justice?
Is it possible to make a story (with a plot and characters) that has no worldbuilding or explanations for events? Like whenever anything happened in the story there was no background or explanation...
We've seen this character archetype before: A character despises being born into a well-off family. ("Well-off" can range from rich-to-anywhere-on-the-middle-class-spectrum, regardless of whether ...
I want to say: "Now I was on the plane with my best friend." But don't "Now" and "was" contradict each other? And I specifically want to phrase it this way because earlier on in my book I wrote: "I...
I used to call my novel a techno-thriller but most readers stated they wanted to see more action in the very first chapter. At first I thought of complying, but then realized why would I reveal mor...
Could I get some pointer as how to NOT write a Self-Insert/Mary Sue? What I mean: according to Urban Dictionary a Self-Insert is "A story in which the reader inserts himself or herself; this usual...
I am writing a short story that has very little action that focuses mainly on the main character's development. I have tried outlining some of the major interactions with characters, the important ...
Describing the faces that people are making during a conversation can be difficult. He nodded, she pursed her lips -- those are easy, but I'm talking about the more subtle expressions. In the cas...
When a character is referring back to dialogue (telling the story to the reader) and using the exact words, would you write... And then she said, "I saw the body on the driveway." And I said to...
How does one go about finding and joining a critique group for nonfiction? I'm writing two different non-fiction books: A collection of pieces written by a relative, collected and edited by me. ...
I have found two ways of formatting a script for a play. Character names go in the middle of the page, on a separate line. Example: http://filmschoolonline.com/sample_lessons/sample_script_page....
Specifically, with some kind of psychological subject, and some theories and philosophies. The book will have subjects people generally refer to as from people experienced in life, who have been t...
I have a character working in a short-term temporary position in an organisation and refer to her doing the work using the usual UK word, 'temping'. Will this be understood by readers in the US and...
I write occasional guest blog posts for a special interest blog with a very large readership. I don't get paid but that's okay, I have a strong interest in the special interest area, and it's very...
I do my writing in MS Word. I must incorporate some theater-like scenes into a book. In the theater-like scenes, there will be three to five characters speaking lines. Very, very occasionally a ...
I'm writing a somewhat depressive story that has no comic reliefs and no happy scenes/moments (except the ending and one or two in the beginning). The only scenes that aren't sad or negative are th...
My novel "A Chase After the Wind" was published by America Star Books and sold a few copies but they never marketed the book unless I paid them to do so. I did once but it did not result in any sal...
We all have read about the huge successes of self published authors. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2015/04/17/mark-dawson-made-750000-from-self-published-amazon-books/#611bdb2a35e3 http:/...
Is there a way to refer to different subpages of a website in text while only citing its main directory in the works cited? For example, the hypothetical webpage, www.example.com, has the followin...
I write mostly fictions. However, I am an apathetic-type narcissist, which means I cannot understand other people's feelings and thoughts easily, if at all. As a result, all my characters who are ...
