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 got an idea for a short story recently following a traumatized boy who has developed antisocial tendencies and lack of empathy, and ends up in a psych ward. I want this protagonist to have a me...
I've recently been researching and discussing characters and character roles, mostly off the back of feedback on a romance story that described the "love interest" (if that is the correct literary ...
I was having a discussion over coffee with an aspiring author friend of mine and we had an interestingly productive but annoying argument about in-novel crushes. He said that he had never had roma...
Does including your age, if you are a young author, give you a disadvantage?
If description displays emotion, but they cant feel certain emotion, then what is a way one can write that without creating too boring of a piece and still display what they are going through?
This question was asked in 2011: Do editors still expect Courier font in book submissions for publication? A couple people said they found a monospace font helpful to have space to insert editing ...
I would like to self-publish a book and sell it through Amazon, and also make it available in a variety of electronic formats. I recently bought a book for $35 as an electronic download from the a...
I want to talk about a fiction book I'm working on but can't find what to call the intro. A 'foreword' is generally written by someone other than the author, and I read that an 'introduction' is us...
When my book is ready to give to some volunteer readers/reviewers: Suppose some of the reviewers want a hard copy. What's the best way to prepare the hard copy for them? Is this the same as the ...
I would like to self-publish a book with a binding that allows for the book to stay open if you put it down on a desk. What would be an affordable way of accomplishing this? Perhaps you need to k...
Are there any authors who went down in history as "masters of descriptions" (either of characters or of locations) or similar? Of course, there are many different aspects one can use to regard a w...
I used to write a lot when I was younger, and I like to think that I was even decent at it. It's been years since I've tried to write anything other than code, though. I'm quite out of practice, an...
Background So I recently had my first ever issue with the spelling of places in my novel. Someone pronounced a rather illustrious city, Ethil, incorrectly. Ethil is not pronounced with a 'f' sound...
I wonder, when I hear JFK, Obama, Lincoln, Gandhi, Modi. The sentences, phrases in their speeches are so impressive. The content of their speeches are wonderful. I desire to be a successful orator ...
I wasn't entirely sure how to phrase this in the question box, so it may seem like a duplicate. But, I did look at these questions (What are the tricks to avoid repetition in writing?, How to avoid...
I'm only 12, and I've been writing seriously since last year. I tried writing a novel before (I wrote only 5 chapters; I gave up later due to time constraints). I've written a couple of short stori...
I've got a book that I think is interesting and action packed - a traumatic scene begins right in the prologue, but chapter one is a bit slow while I introduce characters, the setting, and weave hi...
I emailed the manuscript and everything the guidelines said, and then realised the next morning I forgot to attatch the synopsis with it. I looked over the guidelines while I did the email. This is...
The American standard is to use double quotation marks ("example") and the British standard is to use single quotation marks ('example'). Style guides insist that you should be consistent regarding...
Is it possible to write a good story without any dialogue? I'm working on a short story, and trying to keep it within 2000 words, but preferably 1000-1500 words. I'm trying to write it as if the n...
I struggle with writing an awful lot and would like to improve. One of my main problems (and the reason why writing seems to take me a very long time) is that I seem to be unable to write in shorte...
When I write, I find some obstacles in forming well-structured ideas and my writing does not sound natural because of overusing connectors. How can I overcome this issue?
I've noticed that successful detective stories are, nearly always, not written in the point of view of the detective himself. The protagonist (i.e. the ingenious detective at the heart of the story...
I have tried to write a couple of stories, but all of them sounded like a two-year-old wrote them (no offence to two-year-olds). My grammar and spelling are pretty good, but the big problem is tha...
I have compiled specific Scriptures on a particular subject and am going to publish it on Amazon.com. I personally wrote a short introduction. Do I have to list my book as public domain or do I r...
This may seem like an odd question, and perhaps I am over analyzing this a bit too much, as I usually do when it comes to my writing, but here is my concern. The novel I'm writing is in its last ...
I realise people like me are probably many, i.e., amateurs who want to write a book and then get frustrated by having to learn all this very intricate grammar just to please the odd poindexter who ...
I was asking myself this question while writing a novel that don't imply any death or even really dramatic event ! The novel tells about the main character's strugglings and conflictuous relationsh...
Is there a way to identify content of a document based on the date it was typed in Office Writer? @Mark Baker - yes that is my question. I did find a revision option under file. If you choose it,...
The more I research places to hire an editor, the deeper the rabbit hole goes. I see that previous responses to this question are either, "Ask friends and family for a reference" (I'll pass),or "S...
At first I was going to tell my story told from my main character's point of view, but now I'm wondering if I should make it coming from the point of view of a third-person narrator. I wanted the...
I'm working on one of the final scenes of my novel. The President is a kind, intelligent, fatherly man. Sara is a high-ranking NSA official and has been through months of intense pressure that has ...
Generally speaking, English once used 'you' as the second person plural (equivalent to 'vous' and 'vós') and 'thou' as the second person singular (equivalent to 'tu'). When talking to a person in a...
I'm in the process of editing my novel, and realized that it would be much better when narrated in third person. i was a much better person when it comes to writing in third person. Is there a good...
One of the problem areas that I face while writing my novel is that I often get stuck when writing descriptions. I do well when writing action sequences, when writing dialogues, when showing charac...
I am currently co-writing a novel. It is written one chapter in Greek and one chapter in English. We are planning to translate the whole text in both languages, and when we are finished there will ...
I'm working on a revision of my novel and noticed that I mark the passage of a very brief time, of a hesitation, using a small number of descriptions that become repetitive, e.g. variations of ...
I have come across some documents (not publicly viewable) that state that footnotes (for the purposes of adding further information) are not permitted in an academic text writen using in-text citat...
I'm writing a story which starts with the birth of the MC; the scene just shows the parents talking with the doctor. The MC enters the picture in third person limited in the following scene (and th...
I'm confused about proper punctuation, spacing, and capitalization when a character is speaking and is interrupted by actions without continuing dialogue. "Maybe we could—" My phone rang. "Maybe ...
I'm using Google Docs to both write a story and to create a dictionary of sorts for ease of writing. I'm trying to figure out a way that I can either have a word suggestion box pop up on Google Doc...
I have a primary source whose editor often has editorial comments in his footnotes. There are occasions when I would like to quote these remarks, but I cannot understand how to correctly do this fr...
I'm working on a book right now, and I want to add something that the reader really has to search for, such as symbolism or motifs. What are some ways to implement those, or such like it, into any ...
I have the following sentence that I am thinking of using as headline ` Shop online. Locally. ` However, I am not sure if this headline connects well with it sub-headline. Pick up the g...
I'm reading daily crime stories in newspapers, just to have an idea to write a detective story. But the crimes I read about aren't helpful to create a plot. I mean, they are really boring and all ...
I would like to put the following code in an article that is written in AP Style: puts 'Hello, world!' How do I do this? If I were to put the code (C++, Ruby, whatever) in an article that was wr...
In a story I use the Japanese words konnichiwa and kawaii: "Konnichiwa!" greeted a voice. "Wanna cuddle with a cutie for a couple of minutes?" She beamed a kittenish kawaii smile. I t...
"You have to excite yourself to excite others" Starting with this quote, that I listened to a conference, I really would know the "magic formula" (even I imagin there isn't) to excite readers with...
I am writing a fiction. I start in first person(I) and then because I had to describe emotions of other characters simultaneously I switched to third person, (referring as she, they or the name of ...
What genre best describes my novel about the life of a character whose entirely fictional history includes many realistically humorous interludes as well as some serious, even tragic incidents? It ...
