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 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 ...
So the annual play at my university is coming up and i wanted it to be on a novel i recently read. I'm ready to adopt it but the thing is that i wanted to know if i might encounter any trouble with...
Good evening, I'm in the process of writing a small research paper for my college and im facing the following dilemma. One of my sources has a typo. More specifically instead of the word "Christi...
I've just been struggling recently with this doubt that I could never think of ideas I've seen written on my own. If that sounds confusing to you, you aren't the only one. Of course, I could sit ...
My wife and I are working on a book that will contain photographs of paintings that were exhibited, with owner permission, in shows hung by wife or obtained from other photographs. All of the works...
I'm in the process of planning a story right now, without the intention of sharing it it with others, but I would like it to be comprehensible if I do. It's set in the 1880s and is formatted like a...
English is full of homophones that can cause confusion when speaking, but if the two similar sounding words are spelled differently they can be clarified as soon as they are written down. However, ...
I always read that good writers shouldn't use similitudes and metaphors. Also, a writer shouldn't use too many descriptions. Then, I read Raymond Chandler and my little stupid world of securities w...
How can a protagonist, being a writer himself, share a full short story he has written with the readers within a short story? What are the techniques he can use to separate the frame story from th...
People advise to keep description to a minimum, or to make it worthwhile to the audience. I'm talking about description that isn't really necessary/important to the plot but is necessary/important ...
Novelists seeking a literary agent's representation are advised to prepare a long list of carefully chosen agents (e.g. genre matches are important), but to only contact a few at a time. The respon...
Short version: In an essay that aims to persuade and leave an impact on the reader (which also involves making it flow logically), is it more effective to have the larger scale societal example in ...
This question rather stems from my last question about inspiration vs copying from another authors work. While the suggestions I got there haven't completed resolved my issues and doubts, they have...
I guess this is a question about inspiration versus copying. I recently came across a story that really gripped me both with the inspiration for an idea and at the same time a doubt I could ever wr...
I have two characters, Alice and Bob. They have just met and each is trying to deceive the other. But their thought processes and the nature of their deceptions are very different from one anothe...
Can you guys give a novice writer some advice on how to write good, frightening horror? I'm think more short story than novel, but anything that can give readers the creeps. I want to avoid being t...
I'm considering working in writing. I'd like to save myself some time in case I'm not up for the job. How do I go about evaluating myself as a professional writer? I was going to ask for a peer ...
I am currently working on a novel. currently two girls are the only active characters. I am curious if I need to separate the dialogue and action when one character is acting and another is actin...
My work presents proposals with information divided by numbered headings. Under these headings, the technical writers use a variety of paragraphs, numbered indentations, and indented bullet points....
I got the idea to write a book about my life story from my mother. At first I thought who would want to read about my life, then I thought back on my life and actually thought wow I have been thru ...
My friend and I are working on a story that we want to publish and share on the internet (kind of like what FictionPress does), but we have some formatting worked into our story that we would like ...
When writing a book, how does bibliography work? Can I just list all the resources used at the end in a "Bibliography" section? If so, do I need to put the exact pages that I used? Also, do I nee...
I needed some help with feedback with my writing. I am new to writing and would really appreciate if someone can read it and provide feedback. Any kind of tips and tricks or suggestion are welcome....
I found this freeware app, labytrinth, years ago. It allowed to create elements (characters, places, objects, etc) and detail information about them. Then you could drag these elements into a wide ...
For a new guidebook project (freelancing in IT) I wonder at which point I should evaluate the idea. I see these possibilities: Create a website with a newsletter subscription form and see if peop...
I suppose this is not really advisable but how do you report speech in a conversation with another person? Should standard reported speech rules apply or do I treat it as direct speech? "My home...
Background I've found that at the end of a lot of my chapters, the endings feel quite forced and abrupt. This is because I don't know where to go, I've done what I need to do. For example: Exc...
Some translations surpass the original texts, thanks to the translator. Can a text become more poetic by being re-written into more beautiful language by an open-source algorithm? The algorithm co...
The number one reason I unsubscribe from writer's newsletters is negative email headlines like Stop Procrastinating and Finally, You Can Finish Your Novel and 10 tips to focus better and finish in ...
I have a main character, I'm attempting to disguise this fact. But it is tricky. Out of nowhere, the character rises up as a successful military leader. The events that lead up to that are plausibl...
Remember the end of the Godfather, where they spliced all the different assassinations with the christening? Or any film with good cutting, where they swap between different characters and what the...
I began work A Long Time Ago(tm) on this particular book and only took it up again about eighteen months ago. Back in 2007, I checked around but didn't see anybody of note with the name of my prota...
