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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In course of joining a friend of mine during her NaNoWriMo escapades, I tried myself at actually writing a story set in a world I'm building. I've found there are certain rules when writing a nove...
There is a prince. (Or some other person of high rank.) And there is that prince's good friend, who, naturally, holds a somewhat lower rank. There are two ways I could show the close relationship ...
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...
The title says it all: what is special in Application Programming Interface documentation compared to general technical writing? What aspects should I take care of?
I am not an American English native (I'm actually a German native speaker) but, when I write, I use the American style of words predominantly. However, I always use aluminium instead of aluminum, f...
I'm trying to write torture scenes but I'm not really all that confident about it since I've never written anything like it before and have never really witnessed anything violent. I know the metho...
I was putting together an instruction page (for setting up a game that my business created), which included a whole lot of various pointers, most of which were only a sentence or two long. These ex...
I've been struggling for a long time to tell a story. In any medium really. I've read a lot of writing tutorials and read lots of writing sites. I've also read a lot of books on writing. However in...
In my story the protagonist hears, in a temple ceremony, the reading of a religious/mythological text. Now in the actual story, I don't need the text itself (the role of the text in context, and th...
I am currently in the research phase of writing my first novel that is based on a true historical event. Having obtained a ton of sources in more than three different languages, I have come across ...
Say I have a possible title for a novel I am writing, and it's a word or phrase that has been used in the title of quite a large number of nonfictional works, sometimes as the whole of the title. B...
In my novel, at the point where the MC meets her would-be boyfriend, Rufus, I have added a small backstory about his job. Later on, the story is almost entirely focused on the MC and what happens t...
I'm currently writing a novel with 3-4 character POVs in it - two male, two female. Each have different upbringings, different cultural backgrounds, different professions, different motivators and ...
What are the recognizable tropes to a "train heist", or more broadly the action sequences where a protagonist boards a moving train in order to stop it? My protagonist is the unreliable guile her...
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?
I am having issues when it comes to how time passes in the book I'm writing. I usually find myself describing the day from start to finish, and that's just useless material since nothing relevant h...
I hear this advice a lot: "Treat your writing as a job." But it seems to me that this is easier said/done when it is actually paying off and, thus, one is encouraged to do it. But what if one is be...
How do you use the interjection for snorting? I was told that "snort" is an onomatopoeia, but I disagree. "Haha" and "Heh heh" would be onomatopoeia, because they are pronounced the way they are wr...
So I'm in the very early stages of plot development on a new story. It focuses on a (nonbinary, hence the they/them pronouns) witch named Kem who recently discovered their powers and met some frie...
I have this duo in my novel, they're always together in chapters. Usually the story alternates between them within their plot, though mostly leaning to one of the characters, as he's one of the MCs...
The world is surrounded by an alternate realm called the spirit world. Humans existed as separate physical entities, but maintain an attachment to the spirit realm due to their connection with god....
I recently asked about criticism regarding short pieces of fiction. What about longer works like novels? Surely no one can sit down and agonize over individual word choices in a larger work the way...
Recently, I started writing articles about different subjects I learn on my own (programming, logic ...etc). While writing, I have this tendency to overexplain, I know that readers are smart, but ...
Sometimes (as an intelligent species, and therefore creative, speculative about reality and so on...) we want to experience some situations which aren't possible at all. Then as a writer you can cr...
I missed my chance to write for About.Com when it was TheMiningCom and now it's DotDash and seems to be under different rules. Suite101 has become Suite.io (blocked from my work, so that's all I k...
I have given multiple things I have written to a friend of mine, who is something of a writer himself, to get feedback on them from him. One of these was a piece of mystery-style fiction, and the ...
This may seem like an awkward scenario for a story's ending. My plot revolves around a constant struggle of the protagonist against the antagonist's forces, and eventually the antagonist himself. I...
Which print-on-demand (PoD) services allow creating hardcover books of arbitrary dimensions (e.g., 115 × 157 mm)? I'm looking to print 60 copies.
We all have seen the headlines: "Touching Moment Where Autistic Boy is Asked to Prom", "Watch This Child With Downs Win Her Heat During a Swim Competition", etc., that are touching at first glance,...
My novel has been through multiple drafts and beta reads, and by and large is in good shape. I've learned how to cure a saggy middle, how to stay in point-of-view, how to keep the protagonist drivi...
Are there any other "times" for introducing new content into a final paragraph? Have any other famous writers substantiate this bombshell? I was flabbergasted to read this para. because mo...
Question : When writing my screenplay, I frequently find the urge to describe a character's emotion. However, I have read somewhere (I forget where) that this should be left to the actor to some ex...
The Context: I often write through a blog platform. However, sometimes I feel that the content is too long and deep and sometimes I feel the content is written only on a surface-level about a topic...
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 am writing a fiction story about a elite unit, SFD (Strike Force Delta), during the Third World War. The war is basically extremely variable, it lasts from 2025 to 2030. I like to call it the 'mi...
We all know how Chekhov's gun works: in short, it's the "rule" that whatever is explicitly shown to the audience should be important later, otherwise you should get rid of it. Don't show us a gun i...
(I previously asked a related question about projecting myself onto my characters.) I've read just few books where authors use their own life experience as the basis for the characters and plot (m...
I'm using online sources for an essay for my DE History course, and we're required to use in-text citations when we quote or paraphrase sources, with the format of author-page number, like (Johnson...
My characters are well read and some like to recite poetry. My MC is particularly fond of Paradise Lost and is known to quote a few lines here and there. In one scene he is thinking some of the li...
My novel is about a girl who is the heir to the throne of Helheim, the Norse world of the dead, but in order to claim the throne she has to pass a 3 part trial. I’m having a hard time coming up wi...
Hey, I'm having trouble editing my book. I have a crime novella but I can't edit that well. Does anyone have any tips to help? Thanks! ~Rosewood
Does the amount of pages and/or the number of copies printed determine the cost just as much as trim size? I was thinking of using KDP or possibly Advanced Print & Finishing (bestbookprinting.c...
The word 'and' is an indispensable conjoining tool in any form and discipline of writing. Although, a repetition of the word can make a paragraph too tedious to read, and it only lengthens a senten...
Just to keep it short. One of my characters is sexually assaulted by her father. While not being descriptive of the act itself, the situation itself is quite an sad scene. This is relevant as the...
I recently re-watched the Overwatch animated short "Honor and Glory". You can tell the writers were proud of the line "Live with Honor, Die with Glory", as the characters say it a fair few times fo...
Within the setting of my personal project (a hard science fiction) I need to be able to describe movement in zero-G extensively. Because I wish to write a whole narrative involving very little gra...
In my visual novel (an interactive, narrative-based video-game), I have a detective character who decides whether he believes interviewees controlled by the player. The detective doesn't explain ...
I think one of the challenges I have faced the most often in writing books has been where to start. I tend to do a lot of flash forwards to jump into the action and follow it up with a chapter or t...
So my character is a Neko, which is half human and half cat, and I use her a lot in fighting scenes and I was wondering if anyone really knows how one could write that out, I assume that the fighti...
I have two female characters, one who is lesbian, and the other bisexual. However, I am male. So not only am I to write the opposite gender, which I actually feel more comfortable doing, for some o...
