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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When rotating POV between multiple characters, how long should a segment in one POV be? I'm writing ensemble 3rd person and tend to like to let the story dictate its own pace. However, I'm concern...
I'm currently writing a story that is being told from 3rd person that switches perspectives frequently, but I'd like to focus on only one character's train of thought for a paragraph. The thoughts ...
My story involves a kind of plot-twist towards the end. The problem is that the one of the sources of the misdirection comes from a kind of "Story so far" chapter towards the beginning. It sets u...
I am a beginning writer. I would like to write a science fiction / fantasy book that is critical of psychiatry, including diagnosis inflation, the influence of Big Pharma, and the field's de-empha...
Consider the following exchange: "Hello" "Hi" They were sitting on the bench. The dialogue lines are indented. Should the descriptive sentence also be indented? What if we had "Hel...
First of all I'm completely against this idea but a few people who contribute to the technical documentation project constantly suggest that to attain a short, quick, economic, comprehensive messag...
For my own needs I write fantasy. But at this time I am not sure what genre it is. Base of that world is probably classic fantasy, because there are: unicorns dragons gods magic lycanthrops othe...
I have a character that I want to give a huge slap across the face to. If I absolutely hate this character, does that mean my reader will hate him too? Is it good to purposely include a character ...
I was thinking about my own style of writing. Turn out, in every role play I've written, I have a good writing style when I use the first person pov. I'll add some "voices" to the main character. (...
I'm writing a fantasy novel, in which the story progresses over a number of years. Throughout the story, I want to display an evolution of the magic, much like technology evolves in our world. The...
I had a discussion with someone who claimed she'd once read (though she couldn't remember the source) that men can identify and empathize with male as well as female protagonists, while women ident...
I'm a newbie reader and often find myself needing to open the dictionary at least once every few pages. Although I'm a newbie, my vocabulary is at least of an average proficiency so I wonder what i...
In my setting, a city was founded by people from all over the world, and developed in almost complete isolation (long version here). The story in itself starts several generations after the foundat...
I am writing a story from a 3rd person perspective as the omniscient narrator. When my antagonist is revealed first, people believe him to be a certain person - X, not that any one says that to him...
So I was thinking, and I've been wondering if some ideas are so overused readers don't get the 'thrill' of reading them anymore. I'm really into last-man-standing type novels, I love them. I've wr...
I'm writing a story that has a character telling a story in this story, they mention a label from a statue they remember vividly, can I write the label in a separate paragraph. I've noticed other b...
Generally in fiction writing, you don't italicize company names (even though you would italicize the name of a newspaper). But what do you do if the company name is fictional, especially a name th...
To help create descriptive differences in the way my characters talk I am looking for a list of how each language sounds. For example the German language has lots of clusters of consonants, and co...
I'm currently writing a story about a girl who was found by a couple in a magical isolated town, where everyone is named by the leader. I want her to not have a name because of two reasons: She d...
Consider the following technique for improving one's writing: at the end of every nth day, rip up all your work for that day and destroy it when you replace it, try to do something better, whethe...
Does the main character in a short story need a name? My story gives lots of other details about the character.
I've seen styles where writers end sentences with commas if it is inside double quotes and styles where writers end sentences with periods. For example: "She's late again." mumbled Jason. ...
I've been working on a quite large story for a while now, but going through my drafts I noticed one weakness: My villains are very underdeveloped / weakly characterized. I'll try to generalize the...
I've seemed to have a problem with getting this right and doubting myself. In regards to writing dialogue, do you follow up with capitalisation after punctuation marks? Can someone tell me which is...
My novel contains emails, titles of news articles, parts of technical journals, and snippets of computer output in addition to regular dialogue and action. Is it common/acceptable to use one font ...
Is it a good idea, to make the protagonist pull themselves together at a point in a work of fiction. I've been writing a novel, and for practically the entire first half the main protagonist has be...
At what stage in writing do you ask for feedback on your new story? After writing a plot outline? After the first draft? After the second draft? After you polish it for the public? What kind of...
I'm asking this on Writing.SE because I'm doing a short presentation on "What is an anthology," and I'm not sure how to answer the question "Why is X an anthology and Y is not?" Merriam Webster de...
I'm writing a story that involves three main characters. They appear in linear form, each one's story leading to the other. So for example character A's story finishes leading to B's story which fi...
Edit: There have been a few very good answers and comments. The feedback I've got so far has made me question whether I'm even going into the right direction with my story. I felt like the themes ...
Many writers employ an interviewing technique in order to give characters depth and realism within a plot. This makes sense to me and is a solid practice for creating deep, meaningful characters th...
I am writing a novel with an ensemble cast. Each chapter is told from a different person's point of view. Some of the chapters are about a non-sentient machine that communicates with the human char...
The character in my book doesn't have a name. I mean, he probably does, but its not used by any other character in the book, including the character himself. He has a generic name, kind of like ...
Does there always have to be a big, showy production about the revelation of a character's name? I was thinking that I'd just slide the name in quietly, in an off-hand manner. Probably the reader m...
Let's say there are elements of good writing such as: Characters, Conflict, Dialogue, Ideas, Mood, Plot, Scene, Style and World You want to start focusing on one of them. Which do you think is th...
Whether I am watching, reading, writing or telling a story, I always pay attention to internal coherence in the characters' behaviour (and of course I am not the only one). By writing and readin...
Do you think a role play can be good for publishing after some editing from the partners? Role Playing is my beloved hobby, but I am not sure what it takes to present it as decent literature.
I have an English high school exam in five days in which I will be given 2-3 prompts e.g. A story which includes the sentence, "I could not not believe when my neighbour walked right past me" or a ...
I have always wanted to write a book but have never actually taken the time to do so. There are many things that hold me back but one of them is that I often come up with story lines in my mind. As...
I've written a novel and looking back the story line was good but the grammar wasn't great. I submitted the book to a few agents and received some constructive comments which I took on board. I hav...
I have a dialog heavy scene in which one of the characters walks up to a door marked with a sign. I wrote A warning etched under the sign read “Electromagnetics strictly prohibited.” Is it co...
So let's say the story is about a ''anti-hero'' who uses harsh methods to kill/expose corrupt politicians and banksters. Now let's say that I'd want to write a romantic subplot happening between hi...
How might one go about creating character conflicts that intrigue people? As in, ones that are innovative/original that are not cliched (for example, the love triangle when it was brand new).
I have noticed lately, that when I write letters describing things I've done recently, I default too often to sentences that look like "We did such-and-such, which was really great." I notice that ...
Some fiction titles put a small block of text listing relevant setting details like the scene's time, date, and location between chapters' section headings and bodies. Heres an example: Chap...
My protagonist is an anti-hero. He's manipulative, cunning, kills, and sacrifices others for the greater good, which is to destroy an oppressive regime. I'm at the point where he has destroyed the...
I was wondering if you could help me with this: I'm starting to write a book, but I don't really know how to describe the physic of the main character (in 1st person). I heard some techniques like,...
I have two characters who don't get along and are sniping at each other from the moment they meet in the book. Throughout the story, they keep ramping it up. At a certain point, one character is st...
I have to write a simple introduction on the topic HTTP and its audience will be high tech. I am having a bit of problem in how to describe it in high tech audience? Can any one would suggest me h...
I am writing a fantasy story in a medieval-like time. There is a lot of information I want to share with my readers, but I feel if I incorporate it all in the main story it will make it to long and...
