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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Usually used for comedic purposes, for example in Shrek: Welcome to Duloc, such a perfect town Here we have some rules, let us lay them down Don't make waves, stay in line and w...
My SO and I were discussing the following sentence in his writing: This is the tale how once the Septemi helped King Nicodemus subdue walking firestorms, how we hunted cultists and mongrelfolk i...
I wrote a passage where one of my characters heard beats, (i.e., the sound) then he found the beating object and, when he held it in his hand, it started throbbing like a heart, (i.e., the feeling)...
As much as I would like it, both in Worldbuilding and Writing, not every action is logical or "right". There are two types of this: Imperfect information: The character(s) lack vital informati...
In one chapter, the PoV character meets up with her sister. Her sister is supposed to be fairly stuck-up and thinks she's a complete lowlife, so she talks down to her the whole time. I have the Po...
There is a problem with a redemption arc: Anon is an incredibly powerful god with powers of mysterious origin. In the story, he starts out as bad but is supposed to be redeemed later. There is a p...
It's said that writers improve through writing. Maybe true, but I've discovered the first draft of any new piece I write is still really, really bad. The characters are flat, the descriptions lac...
Suppose then you have an story in your mind. Then, to write down this finite series of events, you have to translate your imagination into the paper. This process isn't trivial, of course and plot ...
I have completed my novellas first draft which is 32k words long. For all the reasons, I was doing research as to whether self-publish or try my luck getting a publisher. I should tell you that ...
How can I make a side character's tangibility open to interpretations so the audience is unsure if she's even real? My short story is about identity. My main character is being pressured by a frie...
I subscribe to the school of writers who like to (and often must), outline their stories before writing them. For a long time however, I did not use the 3-act structure. My mentality on that has no...
We use Madcap Flare for our documentation, and the project is checked into git. (In case this matters, this is a locally-hosted git server, not GitHub.) The project uses a .gitignore file to aver...
I am writing a textbook, in where, just for fun, I would like to present the concepts as if I were telling a story. Again, just for fun, I would like for the writing to sort of emulate an ancient w...
My main source of research about storytelling/screenwriting/how-to-write-a-book manual is [1]. But, the definition of "beat" given by [1] maybe can causing me some confusion. In [1] we have a def...
One of the biggest obstacles I've encountered learning Chinese is the incredibly dull and boring textbooks. Yes, the grammar in them is important, but it's so boring! Typical writing reads like: ...
Are there hard and fast rules for characters speaking to each other? As far as quotations, or without them? Are they hinged inside a paragraph or ruled to only be in a talking string?
I've set up styles so that my paragraphs under level 4 headings stick together. To this end, I've set "Widow/Orphan control", "Keep with next", and "Keep lines together" for both the 4th heading st...
So, I was doing a writing excersie, I came up with, to help me with sentence structuring and developing my style. One thing, I ran into, however, was that I couldn't describe pain very well. Th...
A significant antagonist in my trilogy is an omnicidal alien by the name of Loki, whose characterisation borrows from Griffith, Keizer Ghidorah, Randall Flagg, Saruman and Hastur. Throughout the se...
I'm proofreading a novel - the brief has instructed that I do not make any stylistic changes, and correct only the obvious errors that impede sense/clarity. There are several places where I feel a...
What are the ways to practice and improve basic writing, like content and creative writing? I am not planning to write or learn to write fictional stories. By creative writing, I mean the essentia...
Characters (and people) get angry at all sorts of things that might not make sense to the outside observer: Marty McFly and the word "chicken," words that are terrible slurs to one population but t...
I'm writing a story, it's not focused on romance, but that's an important part as well. The point is that I have two characters and I ended up ("accidentally") seeing chemistry between them, they h...
Inspired by this question, a more complex question: how can I have two simultaneous sequences of footnotes? For example, suppose I am translating a book. The book contains footnotes, numbered in s...
I am a programmer and in the middle of developing a TBS (turn based strategy) computer video game. Those kind of games have a flow of what is commonly known to gamer as 4X, that is, explore, expand...
When someone says that writing is good or bad, better or worse, is it merely a way to talk about whether something is popular, or interesting to you? Or is there more to it than that? Compare the...
There are some words and phrases in my manuscript that I think are used in America. However, a beta reader tells me my character sounds British. Are there any online sources I can use to check the ...
The Spy is a Netflix series about Israeli spy and hero Eli Cohen. In a recent interview, Eli's widow Nadia expresses great dissatisfaction with the series: a lot of changes were made, ostensibly to...
Real Women Don’t Wear Dresses is when writers portray female characters possessing traditional feminine qualities as being less desirable, competent and reliable instead of their tomboy foils. They...
I am sorry. Its a bit longer than necessary. So as not to put one entire page here, I cut a piece of the paragraph. Ian had difficulty expressing himself, so Lavi squat down in front of him, holdin...
I had started writing my novel in the first person. Later on, I planned some plot twists along the way. For these plot twists to happen, the protagonist shouldn't be aware of the consequences/int...
I wonder if someone can tell me whether there is a convention when laying out a lyric to show different parts (or even a chorus). In my novel, there are a number of poems and lyrics. They are set i...
If I'm going to face down a dragon, Mob boss, evil corporation, or a demon from the 7 circles of hell or dystopian dictator, etc, it's not going to be to rescue my buddy Herbert, or cousin Jimmy. T...
Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning of the story. For the story it is very important that it was defeate...
In my post-apocalyptic novel, there are two "twists", but they're mostly tied up in each other. The first is that humans have developed different kinds of kineses, like hydrokinesis, telekinesis, ...
Most erotica today is written by and for women, and bestselling erotica is narrated from a female point of view. The "male pornographic gaze" that sexualizes the female body has been considered off...
How do we follow up a description within a descriptive text with another description? Let's say you mention A and B in the first sentence, and then follow up with a long description of B, how do yo...
I'm working on a longish short story (I expect to hit somewhere around 5,000 - 6,000 words by the time I'm through) that starts out in third person omniscient POV, mostly because that allows me to ...
I'm a contractor who has been working on a project (a developer guide website) for months with another contractor writer. We spent a lot of time: Interviewing end users Designing the deliverable...
I put work into making up my own names for spells. However, I feel like they come across as childish when I read over my writing This was also my impression when re-reading Harry Potter. It really...
In my story the protagonist goes to live in a health resort. The receptionist presents her with a brochure of activities. At the moment I have written like this in a word document; After patien...
I have an idea for an anti-heroic sci-fi character whose character arc runs from spoilt rich girl, to a refugee in the rubble of human civilisation after an alien invasion, to crewmember and then c...
What kind of humor do you find appropriate for your sci-fi stories? I realize that the question might seem so broad, but I think the target group for most sci-fi stories has a sense of humor that ...
everyone! I'm just an English learner now, but I intend to use English in my career. I suppose everyone knows requirements to pass one of common English tests. Also I wish I became a student of a ...
In the short passage I am writing, the starting point is that one character is being held at gunpoint, and the end point is that she now holds the gun, having disarmed the opponent. The idea is t...
In the pilot episode of "The Americans" Elizabeth has a flashback to something that happened twenty years earlier. Seeing her reflection triggers the flashback, but a reflection seems to have no e...
How can I write blog posts that are SEO (search engine optimization) friendly? I know there is lots of content available out there, but I want to know how to start writing the post as SEO friendly.
I admire the writing style of many other writers and I try to emulate them, but most of the time it doesn't turn out how I want it to. Is this because it's not uniquely my own style, but rather for...
I began an assignment to write a short story for a Creative Writing submission to a publication and although it was accepted, I found that I struggled with the addition of dialogue to this first-pe...
I've recently begun investigating the publishing process, and what I as an author need to do to get my book read. I'm aware of the self-publishing option, but as I have not studied any options exte...
