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 find that when I write, I'm not always sure how to refer to the character of focus. You can only say "he/she" so many times before it feels choppy and repetitive. Constantly referring to characte...
I'm writing a story that constantly shows what the characters are writing. I would like to know how to format that. Right now I'm doing it like this (please ignore the grammar, it is a rough draft)...
I am currently working on a novel and I was having some trouble finding the best solution for this question. I understand that both dialogues and conflicts are needed in a good proportion to cook a...
I often work on lessons for ESL students - texts, dialogues, etc. I'm not a native speaker and I don't have any friends abroad. I often need copyeditors for my lessons, but I seem to have trouble f...
I understand that this question relates more to wikipedia than it does writing but... If I was going to use wikipedia for a source for a research project (for example) would the information be cor...
It was in Writer's Digest, probably the early 1980s, when I saw this. One of the regular columnists (or was it an irregular columnist?) went on a brief rant about careless writers overusing the wo...
In the movie "Stranger Than Fiction" the professor of literature makes quite a big deal about the phrase "little did he know." I've written papers on "Little did he know." I've taught classes o...
I'm having difficulty with the research aspect of my historical novel. This question was originally going to be "how much research should one do to write a historical novel?" to which, answering m...
I have the following website page that I need to reference using Harvard style: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/what-is-genetic-engineering.html Is this a co...
For example I wrote this: !Paying! for exams, and also books to pass them is only a small price / to give poor people the opportunity / ...to contribute for the MANSIONS of the people in ...
I wrote a blog post a long time back. For this post I chose a writing style very different from what I'd read or what I'd seen before. Some guys did criticize me and others did acknowledge me for t...
Sometimes, I get confused as I add more and more ideas and scenes in a plot, is there any way of arranging these?
Possible Duplicate: How should dialog be formatted? Writing dialogue has been a challenge. From the punctuations to the tags, it all still very confusing for me. Some stuff I want to kn...
I've recently composed a blog post about World of Warcraft Authenticators and would love for some feedback as per the quality of writing. Obviously no matter how many times I read it there's no su...
Everyone once in a while while I'm out I come up with something I want to add to my story. Are there any good writing apps for Android phones and tablets? Most places that recommend mobile writing ...
This is a very general question that I want to throw out there just to get some insight into different approaches used. I have my own, but am intrigued to know what others might try. I'm wondering...
I have a question regarding the art of letter writing. I believe in the old-fashioned way of maintaining pen friendships (not necessarily a relationship, but could be) through hand-written letters...
Over the years, my English professors seem to have agreed on one thing: that I'm a superb technical writer, but terrible at eliciting emotional response in something like a story or an argumentativ...
I'm curious. After reading some other questions, I've been pondering about the frequency and reason for happy endings. That is, a positive and/or hopeful ending, even if not everything went right, ...
I write erotica, it started out as an amusement to see how far I could go, but it became a real passion after three or four stories. I have even published a few online and those stories have become...
What are some good examples of urban erotica? I am looking for a less explicit version of 9 and half weeks. The reason for my interest is that I am very interested to take apart the elements of ...
I've taken some classes at Mediabistro.com -- both nonfiction -- and while the teachers have been pretty good (one gave me some excellent advice that led to publication in national magazines) ... t...
While studying in my first term as EPIR student I had to prepare several papers. I gave those to my family and friends, to read and comment upon. I was surprised when they advised me to publish the...
In technical writings are good established standards for formatting literature references. But that doesn't work this well for URLs. How should these references be formatted?
I don't mean writer's circles, or "auditioning sites", although some of these have forums tacked on as a by the by. Usually places to talk about the beardy philosophy of writing are moribund places...
Robert Darnton, an accomplished scholar and important name in the open access movement, has a piece in the current New York Review of Books, The Library: Three Jeremiads, where he mentions that ...
I absolutely loved Joshua Ferris's debut novel Then We Came to the End. Critics highly praised his use for the first person plural as a narrator. The work is set in an office and the "we" used re...
In a comment on this answer, a valuable community contributor suggested that it is possible to be totally original in writing, despite the fact that other valuable community members have stated tha...
I have a bachelors and masters degree in Civil Engineering(Final yr Master's student). My hobby is playwriting. Now, I would like to pursue a career in arts. So, I'm looking for some universities w...
Do you think a writing can always benefit from the use of a visual illustration? If so, how to find for free or buy an appropriate picture, photo, drawing etc.? What are practical recommendations?
What are specific requirements, a writer should follow, when writing something that is going to be (or just can possibly be) not only read but listened as well?
I need a checker and some kind of beta-test editor and critic. Is there a resource out in the web, where I can find myself one?
I've read loads of books where the reaction and development of characters seems to extreme for the events that effect them in the story. However not having any development makes the character bori...
Are names of characters copyrighted by authors? For example, the character "Eragon" from the Inheritance Cycle series, or a name that you've generated using an online name generator that you'd like...
I've got a Flip Dictionary, a Thesaurus, my trusty Strunk&White, and I use the almighty GOOG(le) should I ever be unsure of the definition of a word. What does everyone else use? Is there some ...
I am writing a novel wherein there are many characters whose thoughts are key to telling it properly. In an earlier draft, I attempted to have any given chapter told from the point of view of exac...
Can you recommend a good reference book about the basics of English writing?
I find it hard to name my characters. Every normal name sounds funny if applied to a product of my fantasy. If I take a common name, I may get the image of someone I know into my head. And that may...
As a very visual person, I have always considered plotting a story to be somewhat like knitting or macrame. How do series authors handle multi novel story arcs? Do they just keep throwing out lin...
Is it too late to jump on the zombie bandwagon? There are loads of stories about the possible popular outcome of an apocalypse, is it possible to squeeze anything more out of it? Or, maybe it wou...
I have to write a synopsis to submit to an agent. Are there any guidelines for writing a good synopsis?
I want my short story to have a specific point, to highlight a certain truth. But I wonder in which order I should proceed: make the plot, characters etc. first and worry about fitting my theme int...
I am writing a book of short stories. I am planning to self-publish the stories as an e-book but would like to keep my anonymity - I will use a pseudonym. Obviously, I would like to sell the e-boo...
I have heard that I can use calibre to create a cloud with all my books, not just ones from a specific vendor. How would I do it?
The question If a book doesn't have DRM does that mean it is OK to give a copy to my friend to read? has answers implying that without permission there are legal and ethical hurdles in giving away ...
If I publish an eBook, distribute it and later I want to edit or add to the information, is there is a way to push those updates to the already distributed copies of the eBook?
Some kindle models come with a text to speech software that has several optional settings. There is both male and female, as well as 3 speeds, which gives 6 different combinations. In theory, a l...
A recent answer here indicates Amazon has a pretty restrictive payment policy. So minor authors selling books in multiple countries could have hundreds of dollars due them that have not yet hit the...
I have tried to publish a book permanently free on Amazon but I couldn't. I have seen many books on Kindle that seems to be permanently free. How do I publish a book on Kindle and keep it free fore...
I downloaded a .mobi file format book from Baen it opens fine on Calibre, and on my Kindle keyboard. When I try to open it on my Kindle Paperwhite I get this message Error An error occurred...
