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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Once copyright registration has been filed, does a separate copyright need to be obtained if original book is reprinted by copyright owner in another language?
So, the character is an anti hero, he loses all his morals, and becomes the very thing he fights against. How can I make the downfall of this character more emotionally moving/impactful without m...
Is it acceptable practice to write a fiction novel set in an imaginary universe in first person plus have the main character be an alter ego of yourself? (The main character has my voice, essential...
As I was reading different stories, I came to wonder about what is better for the reader to identify with the character. Indeed, it is often unclear whether the MC (main character) is like the rea...
Can I use '14, '15, '16, etc., instead of the full four digits?
Are there any rules for proper indentation in thesis? I am physicist so my thesis includes number of images and equations. Now I think you should not indent first paragraph after: Title of cha...
One common setup for a story goes like this: We have the heroes on one side We have the villains on the other side The bad guy has an evil plot that will cause some undesirable result The heroes ...
I am currently writing a high fantasy novel. Writing this novel, which is set in a different world, I am having some trouble giving the Tolkien feel of a multi-cultured world. I have tried to use,...
cue Team America song Okay, now that you know I like to have fun with my writing... I'd like to write a montage in prose fiction. It would be a sort of a wizard training sequence, or something t...
So for the novel I'm writing, the main character is a college student living in Michigan. Is it okay for me to have her go to a college that really is in Michigan? I wouldn't be displaying it in...
I want to rewrite my sentence in technical writing style. Could you help me rewrite my sentence? Thank you in advance The proposed methods has 4 variables need to update in a optimization proce...
Let's say I have a 6 page document. (MS Word) I want the first 3 pages to be numbered i, ii, iii and the remaining 3 pages to be numbered 1, 2, 3 How can I achieve this? I tried the automatic n...
I would like feedback on if this portrayal of male emotion is unrealistic. I have been told (beta readers) that men don't cry in real life (already know this is not true), he is crying too much, to...
I have a scene that initially takes place in the padded room of a mental institution. A guard opens the door, the prisoner knocks him out and steals his gun and starts firing from the room into the...
I'm a newbie in the field of writing. After writing a book, I need to visit a number of publishers. So, how do I secure my written work from being stolen or copied before it's published? Is there a...
In a math book, is it OK to have a diagram wider than text width (so overriding the margins)? Also, how do I center a wide figure so that it occupies both the left margin and the right margin (not...
Let's say I'm writing a story that isn't a fantasy story, it's more of a realistic thriller. However, I want to include a character who has psychic powers like telepathy and psychokinesis. Is it ...
My style of writing is - I think - more investigative into characters and what drives them. I think however that this could be problematic for readers because nothing major happens in every single ...
My book starts at the end of my main characters research on a topic. And I wanted to give a feeling of him being neck deep in research. I thought of those stereotypical moments on tv shows where a...
I am in the beginning stages of writing my first book, and it is a true crime novel about something that happened down the street from my own home. My question is to anyone else who has written a n...
There are a few books that are at least 100 years old and without an audio book format. Is it legally possible to do the voice for it and sell it on audible?
I would like to start writing blog articles online as a guest writer. Most blogs have guidelines that have to be loosely followed; like what the niche should be, if it needs to be a list, and a bun...
For a character that whistles when pronouncing the "s" sound, how can I write in the lisp effectively? I tried using multiple "S"s, but it reads as a snake-like sound, which I don't want since the...
I am writing an email to my professor in hopes that I can make up an exam that I missed. I missed the exam under fairly extreme circumstances, catching the flu and not being aware it was on that d...
Paul McCartney, upon composing the melody for "Yesterday", felt certain that it was too good to be original, and that he must have heard it before and just couldn't remember it: McCartney compo...
I wrote a few short stories over the past few years, and I have shared a few of these with beta readers and asked for feedback. I have one that I decided was ready to go find a home, so I found a j...
I was wondering if anyone has used yWriter for Mac and has downloaded it from Softonic. I feel a little iffy about this site(pic attached). I suppose a better question would be: Is it safe to downl...
My question is similar to this one, but with (hopefully) a clearly defined use case: sharing and reviewing basic tech docs with a minimal, intuitive GUI. I'm producing technical documents using MS...
My story involves a government run program for the paranormal and the main protagonist is a demon. My problem is that I don't want people to think "Hey , you stole that from Hellboy".
I am writing fiction and considering using past tense by default but then switching to present tense for action scenes. This answer leads me to believe switching tense can be done. I assume that c...
If you are publishing erotic fiction in KDP, how do you avoid getting the "Adult" rating that will stop the book being easily searched for and stop it showing up in any suggested reading lists? I ...
I'm writing up a new story (which I've asked for help on in a few other places) which is a little outside my forte. The majority of my current work is saturday-morning cartoon stuff, light fantasy ...
In narrative essays, should I make all the paragraphs narrative? For example, the introduction, the body, and the conclusion are all narrative paragraphs. What if I started the introduction with ...
I'm searching for a tool that would make real-time suggestions based on "real world" text. The only corpus-based tool I know of is Writefull - does anybody know of any others?
I have written a picture text book for children and there will be around 20 books in the series. I have a publisher that has shown interest, and wants to know whether I want my books to be publishe...
Dear professor, The following is an online writing resource that could help learner to write the essay: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ . May I know If could I send it to the course...
I'm writing a paper for National History Day in my Social Studies class and am using MLA formatting. It occurred to me that I had a lot of differing information from some sources, such as a histori...
The language industry has a long tradition in the pursuit of correctness, based on manually drafted rules. However, the end goal has always been communicative efficiency, which is something that ca...
I am writing an email to my professor as a reminder to update my grade on a particular assignment. I had an assignment that is graded based on a written essay and a presentation. I submitted the wr...
I currently have the prospect of writing a considerable amount of technical documentation (describing interactions with an extremely complex online service). I consider myself a reasonably proficie...
I am about to self publish for the first time. Is it common to create a registered company when you self publish? I like the idea of separating my book revenue from my regular revenue and having my...
I am new to writing and I am trying to a write a novel. In the first chapter, my main character travels from her hometown to a different town far away. I want to use this time to give the reader a...
I'm in the early stages of a story with a large number of characters, a complex backstory and a long history. This is mostly because I crafted the world myself for months before deciding to write i...
It happens to most if not all of us. Something extremely emotional happens to us and we're just hysterical. Logic doesn't work. You contemplate punching a wall because that will help . . . somehow....
I gained a lot of momentum from the answers to my first question. I've read a couple of writing books and read a lot of articles online. Although I'm still quite 'green', I have a much better ide...
The protagonist of my new story is a young cyberterrorist, who mainly attacks corrupt governments and uses his hacking skills to harm corrupt leaders and high nobles in his country. How do I write...
I have a fairly large collection of titles on Amazon, and I'm wondering whether I should by my own efforts replace them with covers I've made myself by services like canva.com. I have an MFA friend...
I've written a story about anthropomorphic animals in a noirish setting solving murders. I came up with the concept and wrote the first draft about a year ago and am planning on releasing it soon. ...
The villain was, like the protagonist, a child soldier/mercenary, who served with him. The villain was captured, tortured, and snapped. He feels a burning hatred for the protagonist, believing that...
I'm about to start a new story, and I feel it would be better if I started in media res. (aka at some point in the middle.) I know this is a fairly common style used to hook readers into the story ...
