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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As I've mentioned multiple times, I'm writing a military sci-fi novel. The focus of the story is war, and that happens far away from Earth. However, I'm starting with my MC's "normal", on Earth. It...
My book was published by a now defunct publisher. They returned my records to me (locked, and I could not open any of the documents) and I've since re-published my title under my own name. Howeve...
As I understand it, when considering the Three-Act Structure, the first half of Act One prior to the Inciting Incident is used to show the reader the 'Ordinary World'. In the story I am working on...
I’m currently writing a story and one of my characters is a butterfly. In one of the scenes, she manages to run away from a bunch of hungry lizards and hides into a flower; let’s say a Zinnia. Wh...
I am considering uploading a trio of related short stories to Dropbox as a quick way to share them with potential beta readers. Before I actually link them elsewhere, I feel I should have at least ...
When writing a story, how do you find a good balance between the significance of different elements, such as plot, themes, and bold settings and characters, and the character arcs? In my case I ha...
I've edited the question for clarity following some unexpected comments in the first answer. I submitted my latest novel to a handful of agents, and had a request for a full manuscript. On almost...
Background: I'm helping a friend edit their fiction. I'm frequently left confused on anything related to dialogue tags. “Yes, but I mean no,” Steve stumbles over his words. “Not the come hom...
This is inspired by a few things that have been breaking my immersion when reading Worm. The main protagonist is a teen, and most chapters are first-person POV, so grammatical casualness fits. I ...
I won't get into all the details, but my book is about four characters that realise that the universe isn't what it seems. They fight for power against someone who has held a long-standing dictator...
I asked my friends this question, they say being a plotter is better for a beginner, then once you get good you transition to pantser. I ask here because I hope to get advice from professional (or ...
I love alternate history scenarios; however, I just want to start writing. Should I do research or just start writing and go with it with some research along the way?
As a spinoff to this question: Incorporating research and background: How much is too much? I'm writing a middle-grade fantasy novel with a historical fiction component based in Ancient Egypt. I'm...
TLDR: Tips and Tricks for storyboarding a novel? For someone who can't draw well enough to do the "Draw and describe method" Hello, having read the "Storyboard a Novel?" as well as some sources ...
I'm currently working on a fanfiction/ comic, and a more recent scene I've been working on is a specific character re-awaking in the middle of the night to an Owl's call, and, unrelatedly, describi...
I was wondering if there were other uses for metaphors other than forming an allegory and for stylistic effect, that is, adding more flair to a description that would be otherwise dull. I've done s...
I’m writing a book and these first 20 pages are mostly just action so my question is if a book is like mad max fury road, (almost nothing but action) will it be annoying or not be exciting anymore ...
My first question on the site was How do I stop using 'the' to start sentences so much? , One of the answers said: I would suggest reading more English poetry to pick up some techniques. I co...
One of my characters has a flashback to when he was 5 years old. At the time, he didn't have a name (he goes by a physical description instead). What's the correct way to refer to him in this flash...
I was approached by a science magazine to write a long-form critical essay, and I gave them a 6000-word piece with extensive endnotes. After two months of being with the editorial team it comes bac...
If so, how? Intuitively, it would seem like being skilled in one automatically entails being skilled in the other. Why is that not necessarily the case?
I was wondering if "Spear" or "The Spear" could be the name of a planet. But I can't find a single reason to name a planet that way, and even if there were it just sounds horribly stupid. What are ...
I'm currently writing my bachelor thesis, which will involve citing the Angular docs. Angular is a web framework developed by both community developers and employees of Google LLC (Google is the pr...
I'm writing a satirical novella of sorts, based on the current American political climate. I'm exploring themes of race, political polarity, and youth. I do want to finish and possibly publish th...
I wrote a piece of flash fiction as a mental exercise. I happened to listen to Glen Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” and happened to watch an episode of “Samurai Jack.” “Moonlight Serenade” is a so...
I have been working on a fantasy novel for the past twelve years, during which time there have been drastic changes. The most drastic being that I decided to cut out the first third of the story, a...
How do you show the softer side of a rough person without loosing the gruffness? I have a character that was the antagonist in one story and will be the protagonist in another where he will fall i...
A story I am currently working on contains a scene where a figure with a certain character quite unexpectedly has a change of heart, and I am having difficulty finding a way of smoothing the transi...
I have some material for a "world" (more fantasy than sci-fi at this point). I've noodled around with this world off-and-on for ages but have never had a story to put in the world. I have some brie...
Should we avoid repeating redundant information after a dialogue and is there a way around this? Sometimes, you feel prompted to write the description of an action that follows a line, but that als...
I'm trying to correctly refer to several calls. Meaning, in a singular call, we invite several proposals. Therefore, it's a call for proposals. In the case I need assistance with, my gut tells me ...
I am writing a detective novel and wanted to include two best friends who are working together. Eventually they fall in love but one of my readers said it's too boring and cliché. Is that true? S...
Many writers eventually come to a point in their writing where they don't know what to write. They have a certain status or state of affairs that the narration has reached and another state that th...
Two other friends and I have been writing a fan fiction and we basically write a chapter each one after another every week. Now that we're nearing the end of the project, we've noticed that the wr...
Is anyone aware of a plugin for MS Word that allows me to keep my documents in a git repository (gitlab compatibility would be even better)? I'm aware that git diffs won't be very meaningful, merge...
Sorry if I use the wrong terms or make a wrong assumption. I consider myself a beginner, and I know that I still have to learn a lot in the field. I write as a hobby. I do it when I have the tim...
For a few of my imaginary worlds, my characters write letters to each other. These letters are never intended to be surfaced in the main story, they are my exploration of the characters' feelings a...
I am currently editing an original work of fiction, and one of the things I'm having the most trouble with is dialogue and paragraphs after certain character's actions. I know it sounds a little co...
Suppose you are part of a development team working on a fighting game, and you're given the role of creating about 30 or 40 unique characters from many different backgrounds from the ground up. It'...
I'm writing fantasy stories in different worlds which do not share any history with our own. I was thinking I wanted to move away from the classic 'all white cast' scenario in most games, by picki...
How do we distinguish how a character pronounces a word and how it is spelled in a dialogue? For example, some people pronounce words in a different way than they should, how do you show that in a ...
As a writer, I sometimes have trouble seeing a project to the end. Sometimes it is because I reach an impasse. Sometimes it is because I choose to scrap it for whatever personal reason. And sometim...
I have a powerful antagonist perform important functions within my story. At the midpoint, he just leaves. Several Plot developments depend on this character. I tried replacing him with other char...
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...
In a piece I am writing, I want to turn an antagonist into a protagonist. I know that numerous ways to accomplish this are somewhere out there, but none of the help with a smooth transformation. Is...
My novel is written in the third person. When changing POV between different scenes (or chapters), is it OK if the parts for different POV characters use different tenses: some - the past tense, an...
I don't know if this is out of the scope of this website. I'm a student in software engineering deparment and I am supposed to make a project for a course during the semester. The first step of it ...
Beginner here. So, I have tons of ideas for a novel, and in fact I want to write one (even a series), but I'm struggling a lot in actually starting writing the story. I have ideas for characters an...
My MC is focused on his profession; barely giving his personal life a thought. His last serious romantic relationship with a woman was when he was 22. Time for that later, he believes. Retire at 45...
I'm an actress but I also want to start writing my own stuff for good so I can develop them into film or play. I've been writing but something keeps missing! So what are the main aspects to write ...
