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.
Filters (None)
So in watching playthroughs of various video games, because I do that when I find something interesting, I had this strong urge to write some fluff. However, when I sat down to think of it, any kin...
The anti-adverb advice for English should be (and often is) stated as specific to -ly manner adverbs; Ben Blatt has found the more highly-regarded writers use just as many adverbs, but use fewer -l...
I am thinking about setting my story in a postapocalyptic world where all art and literature are gone, and people are mostly illiterate. People lost the ability to formulate deep thoughts, became i...
I am an engineering student trying to write a statement of purpose for graduate school and I am having trouble properly introducing in writing why I'm applying for a particular subject when most of...
In my story, there is a spot where there is a major shift in perspective as one point of view is supposed to be from someone writing in the first person to another point of view in the third person...
Are there good examples of the hero's journey that don't include any physical deaths within them? My hero has crisis and 'death' of self/ideals/psyche; hero prevails in the end, all good. But, I j...
Generally, I understand NaNoWriMo to have the goal of writing a complete novel (at least a first draft) during the month of November. To reach "novel" word count, this requires writing approximate...
How many pages and chapters should cover the Ordinary World also known as the normal world of the Protagonist? Ordinary World is the term used in the Hero's Journey for the ordinary world the hero ...
so I've been working on this story for about two years, and I have a whole world and set of characters built. I have extensive lore and descriptions on the world (it's a fantasy setting), and exten...
I decided to write a survival guide called "The neurotypical tyranny", for people with Asperger's syndrome. I want to write this book to help people like me. These are the following questions tha...
I am about to start my first novel set in a fantasy world I am designing, and am struggling deeply with my first scene. I have read in books on fantasy writing that the opening is the hook. I am co...
For my graphic novel I have 3 protagonists, each a different type of hero: action, guile, and science/rational. Although it's space opera my story is character-driven, and the heart of it is their ...
My main characters finally met. Officially... They still don't know who the others are, and are from different cultural backgrounds, too different for the others to seem normal. Although they ar...
My 26-chapter story alternates POV between the main woman and the main man. Early on, the characters are geographically separated and the 2 POV timelines are both progressing, roughly in sync. If I...
How hard is it to find a publisher for first time author? What are the risks of our story getting stolen and what are the ways to protect it? What are various ways of marketing so that the book ...
I'm looking for a list of the basics that successful published novel writers actually do. This list would also include specific things which they do not do. For example, I don't believe any succes...
I am in the middle of the painful process of buying a car. I am trying to do much of my legwork online before going into a dealership. One of the things I hate the most about purchasing a car is se...
I’m attempting to write some ‘difficult to read’ scenes such as violence, rape, trauma, etc. And I’m not talking about ‘good’ violence such as in Game of Thrones or a Quentin Tarantino film. The no...
This is related to my previous question. So, let's say I want the readers to not be sure of who my character really is. They'd know her as Olivia, but think she might be Beatrice, or maybe Helena....
One of my characters has two names, one she was given by her parents and is how the world/other characters know (of)her, another she likes and uses to "throw enemies off her scent" Is it OK to re...
I was wondering if there were any open source (free also works) writing software that includes version control (e.g. git). I'm thinking of writing my own but I don't want to create something that a...
Okay so I will get to the crux of it. I want to write. However that being said I have only a natural instinct as a native speaker and little technical experience in writing. Here are just some thin...
I have 2 characters that I want to have a romantic tension with. The feelings are unrequited. Can I have it so that 1 chapter basically introduces and then ends the conflicting feelings or is thi...
Traditionally, I've only written essays that have one thesis statement that are supposed to answer one question. Now I'm being asked to answer two separate prompts in one single essay. First promp...
While reviewing my story and notes about her, I realiyed that my main character doesn't have any major flaws. She is a hothead and she has to hide where she comes from, but that's it. She isn't god...
Take this example: scene 1: int. - day Bruce - Where am I? Wayne - In Gotham. (A bunch of scenes) Scene 11: int. - day Bruce - In Gotham, you say? How am I supposed to show that this scene...
I'm in talks with a publisher about my comic book. In it, the main character is a hunter who hunts monsters, but in a way inspired by how real hunters hunt. My editor suggests that the character we...
I have a friend who has almost completed a book. She belongs to a local writer's group, and has told me a person in this group that bills themselves as an editor says they can edit her work for $30...
I need a change ~ 80% of the way through my story. At the moment, I'm just throwing my characters into different combinations and seeing if they come up with anything interesting. Two of my charac...
There is a problem with reference jokes in general, and I just couldn't figure out a solution to them. Here's a demonstration: "Watch your step, there could be even more of these." "Mor...
How to write silent communication? Humans communicate in a lot of different ways, often concurrently. While writing dialogue I frequently find myself interrupting the lines to add stuff like the fo...
Example in my own writing: Kazumi didn't reply to her boyfriend---or rather ex-boyfriend's---message. Instead, she stayed at Burger King, reanalyzing Kouta's abandonment over a coffee. No, ...
I've done everything, from building a nice website, being active on social media, posting my work on numerous websites, but I just cannot seem to get readers/followers. Any advice? Here's my websit...
How close to that do I need to get? I’m sitting around 132. It can be cut, I think, but 120 would be losing major content. Would something in the range of 125-127 be okay?
In traditional story structure theory, the ACT 1 is made to set up the world and host the inciting incident, the ACT 2 is made for the main quest and sequence of obstacles, and ACT 3 is made for th...
As far as I understood from my readings, relatability seems to be one of the most important aspects of a good story. A relatable character is a character that makes the reader say "I know that feel...
I'm testreading a novel for somebody I know. It's an adventure novel targeted at teens, with ~60k words. At one point in the first quarter, one of our protagonists comes across some huts. The huts ...
Sometimes I have a great idea of sentence (usually for a dialogue) and it is just so nice, beautiful, epic, badass, powerful, or whatever other positive impression. However, sometimes I read it aga...
I'm struggling with how to present an antithesis in a setting. I understand the definition: NOUN 1.a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else: "love ...
I looked at a few questions regarding time lapse, but I didn't find one that helped. In my story I skip parts of the life of my main character, because they don't drive the plot, but of course wri...
I'm trying to flesh out a character in my book that is basically a "town rowdy" that takes sport in antagonizing people, especially the main character. At this point I'm having a hard time making h...
I have an idea for a story to write. As a matter of fact, I wrote the first few pages. I like to write the story as a movie script and hopefully sell it, and hopefully it becomes a movie. But I am ...
Just wondering if I sent a manuscript to an publisher based in lets say the states, would I need to live in the states for my manuscript to be considered?
My goal is to introduce the reader to a ‘wonderful’ fantasy world with an underdog main character full of panache…and delve into the constraints and debilitations of living in such a highly stratif...
My character is a female hive mind, She is a powerful witch that steals the bodies of young women and uses them as puppets. She can communicate with their bodies with a psychic link similar to the...
"The reason you suck speech" is a trope, that is described as: A character gives a speech on why someone or something is shit. And here's an example: Well done. Here come the test results: You...
A poem I am scanning has the word "in" stressed at one point in the poem, but just a few lines below it the "in" is not stressed. Is this because the poet sees it as said differently, with differen...
I write something between fantasy and sci-fi. But if someone would ask me what age group, target group I'm writing for I wouldn't know how to reply. I feel that if a six year old couldn't be all...
The title explains it. I'm looking for a place to post my writing and easily share it onto Facebook or Twitter. I know there are A LOT of websites, but it seems like there are too many. I'm look...
So, I knew my Chapter 1 would be tedious last night, but i was still surprised that everyone asked that it be, instead of a Chris McCandless-style solo exodus to the wilderness (which is how the th...
