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 reading a (proposed) novel for a friend, and they've used large chunks (as in, full paragraphs verbatim) from online sources within their text, usually sourcing from encyclopedias. The way they...
I'm writing a paper for IEEE using Microsoft office Word 2013. I want to use dynamic reference which is available in this version of Word. In a place of my article the references are similar to: ...
In a magazine where an individual author's name is not published with the article, it seems obvious to me that the article can be presumed to reflect the consensus of the entire editorial team on w...
What's the term or name of the literary device/technique employed when a novel is mostly written in first person from the protagonist's view, but events as yet unknown to the character are written ...
I am not asking you to tell me to keep my sentences less than 20 words long because I am determined to write some really long sentences. What I want to know is how to avoid sounding unnatural. Do I...
Some writings offend the current political mainstream, because they contradict the prevailing opinions and propose different values. Where can such writing be published? Samples of writing are htt...
I'm interested in putting together an anthology --a work containing some original material, but also lengthy excerpts and/or full text of previously published material by other authors, from a vari...
What would you do if you faced the same dilemma Sir Arthur Conan Doyle faced when he actually wanted to end "Sherlock Holmes" which was at it's peak of popularity with the public? What would you do...
I, like most writers, have a number of ideas about my current work in progress. I know how some chapters in the story will play out almost precisely (the ending / final chapter, for example) and h...
I have been searching for a Runbook / Operations Guide example and can't seem to find a useful one for my company. The current runbook they handed me contains use cases and requirements, which I k...
When writing a legal document, what is the proper way to replace and/or in a list with more than two terms to remove ambiguity? For example, if I just have two terms: deliver apples and/or ora...
Fantasy worlds are usually set in a separate world, time, and space from our own. Many are set in an alternate world and dimension. They feature medieval-like setting and technology. Yet some fant...
I've had a story developing inside my head for years (literally about 5 or 6 years now) but every time I try to put that story onto paper it never turns out how I wanted it. It feels like this is m...
I was critiquing a friend's novel and I noticed that all the characters seem to have the voice of my friend. Speech fillers, vocabulary, sentence structure all seems the same throughout. How c...
I'm writing a short story. In it, someone hires a professional assassin to kill a young woman. While the killer is investigating his target he unknowingly starts having feelings for her but he only...
I need both information about the material as well as about the time it requires to learn to write. What could be a comprehensive reading list of exemplary works for a solid base? And a good readi...
In the story I am writing, the main character is not in control of the events of the story, I did this to create a strong sense of powerlessness, but I have found a problem. I am having difficultie...
I feel like I'm using too many commas. I'm a pretty young writer and I didn't exactly pay attention in English class very often (I was too busy reading a shit load of books and passing with C+'s) a...
Say there is a small detail in the beginning of the book that has a big effect later on. The reader might've forgotten about that by the time they get to that part. How should I remind the reader a...
I'm not sure about how many words I should have in my chapters. My books genre is fantasy, and my target audience is 10-14 year olds. Does anyone know how many words a normal chapter in a book has?
I am looking for any type of oral literature (folktale, poem whatever), that would include an inserted story, however minor, that is in its content foreign to the primary poem, folktale... Let me ...
I would like to know how to write in accordance with the Oxbridge tradition. I would like to know more about their writing style and if possible get a book that teaches it, or something similar to ...
I'm a freelance writer. Sometimes people ask me to write samples as a test. I notice that sometimes the test itself takes too long and makes me suspicious. I've had a lot of disappointing engagemen...
Think of all the millions of dollars actors are paid, and all the thousands of people who scroll by in the credits. Surely the cost of a printed book can't be translated to an audio book. The conce...
So I've come across this little (but very annoying) problem when writing my first novel in the present tense: I'm second guessing my choice of tenses all the time, very much afraid to end up being ...
I myself do not have panic attacks, but I do know a few people who have had them. A few even while I'm around-- so I know what I'm doing for the most part, but.. There is a certain scene in the st...
I love writing, but I can never truly get past the first few pages of a story that I am attempting. Even if it is well planned out. I always get stuck on what should happen next or I get bored with...
Imagine a story in which the criminal is, from the very beginning, already known to the protagonist. Now the task is to find the criminal, but the target evades capture easily. This is clearly dif...
I've just recently finished building the setting and plot of a fantasy coming-of-age story. I'm happy with the way it turned out; the character arcs feel compelling and the setting supports the plo...
Does there exist an abstract system that can help plan overviews or approximations of a creative writing piece, by way of symbols, conceptual abstract components, etc? I want a system that can hel...
I'm writing an action/adventure in the same genre as Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider. I've reached the climax, where the heroes have saved their friend from death at the last moment, and the cave/tomb...
I'm thinking of somewhat of a poetic way to describe how time flows, via an hourglass. Does sand simply 'flow' through an hourglass? Drip doesn't sound applicable, and 'stream' is just basically fl...
I am planning to write a book about an open source software product. Should I contact the creator of that software and get their explicit permission for writing the book? Or can I continue without ...
I'm working on a plot-driven novel. The plot stands, and the changes the characters undergo, that is, the character arcs have been devised. What I need now is the lack or fault that makes my chara...
So a little while ago someone said that I'll never be able to write on a native level because I wasn't born in the UK or America. I did, however, go to elementary school in the US at the ages of 5-...
I'm writing a story and it is really hard to avoid putting my own speech patterns into my stories. Especially for the mean and dark types. My character is a deceiving, mischievous leader. He plays ...
I should start by saying that this question is not this question, How to decide if a plot twist worth doing despite how similar they sound. And, the answer I'm looking for was not at this question ...
I am writing a novel called "Kimberly Rose," but the thing is, I'm 12. I'm not sure if there is an age cap when it comes to publishing books. Please tell me if you know.
I'm writing a story in first person. There's a point in the story where two characters are having a dialogue, while the narrator is listening. The problem is that the narrator is also in pain while...
I've been meaning to write this for a while, nevertheless there some points that I would love to have clear before doing so.
Is there a singular form for the ideas behind the words 'them' and 'they'? You have 'he', 'she', and 'they' (which often implies more than one person, but can imply one). In another tense you have,...
In genre fiction, the antagonist is usually either known throughout the book or revealed before the end, so that protagonist and antagonist can battle it out during climax. What I am wondering is,...
At the time period of the story, certain names are different from the modern day language. An example of the "Japan" word in Portuguese: Portuguese 2016: Japão Portuguese 1506: Iapam The que...
The culture I have created needs some unifying phrases but I'm having trouble thinking of some that spur emotion but do not sound silly or too technical. Are there there any techniques for generat...
What is important to keep in mind when planning a book? Is it important to create every character and it's abilities before you start to write the actual book? How hard is it to start writing if yo...
Servus, I once again started wondering what might be the problem that keeps me from finishing most of my novels. To compare, there are two novels about 400 pages; one of these was really liked by...
I'm having trouble deciding if the manner I have decided to narrate my story is too complicated or not. I have a story set in a completely foreign and alien world (fiction story). I then uproot my...
In the novel (3rd person omniscient) that I'm writing, there is one character that has an overbearing presence all through the story but is never seen and no one interacts with him. What I'm trying...
It's a first person novel, and the main character has just overcome some emotional and mental barriers in order to unlock his telekinetic potential, under the training of his mentor. “Do it, A...
I have an older source that has no pagination. My question concerns the correct mode of multiple parenthetical in-text reference to the source according to MLA style. In the works cited section: ...