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At the risk of trying to answer the unanswerable I will share with you something I have discovered over the course of my various writings. Writing is a bit like building a bridge from one side of ...
I don't have much hands-on experience with recommendations. Here's my thoughts from a writing perspective. The role of a great recommendation is to explain what makes a particular person stand out...
For the book I am currently writing, which is not written in docbook directly but is written in a markup that will be translated to DocBook for publishing, I use an XML file to capture metadata for...
You have several choices, and which one you use depends on the length of the document to be written, the subject matter, and your personal preferences. All sections here are examples of the techniq...
What good examples of fear/terror inducing techniques do you know? Off the top of my head I am thinking of: the Apache Indians scalping of dead enemies and hanging them in their horses/spears/be...
If you have a notion that something is wrong then your "block" is that the method you have chosen is frustrating you. Stop! You have found a way that you are not comfortable writing even if as you ...
Although these are useful suggestions and answers, I believe @MarkBaker's answer is key. I'm 26 with 3 younger siblings (very much in touch with my childish side) and I believe that there are 4 imp...
Take a look at creative nonfiction. This approach relies on facts like a journalist, but uses the literary techniques of a novelist. Lee Gutkind has promoted this genre extensively through Creativ...
I don't know if there's one solution. You may have to approach this from a few angles. First off, you do need to train your "typesetters," but in procedure as well as the program. (Someone who can...
I'm trying to write a summary of my book's plot for a query letter to literary agents, but my plot is extremely hard to summarize. The reason is that the plot is fast-paced, erratic, and constantl...
There are two general approaches, depending on the amount of detail you need from the "other" concept. If you don't need a lot, write about subject A, and when the first interaction with B hits ad...
I have about a hundred pages of a novel I wrote in high school, I like the concept behind the writing but I'm finding it extremely difficult to go back and read/edit it again. I last edited the doc...
Python has a useful module called doctest. It is commonly used to validate tutorial documentation and examples embedded as comments in the code. The doctest module searches for pieces of text t...
I agree with Lauren Ipsum's answer. Some additional points: The paragraph you posted for the cover letter talks about what you want to do, but you've actually done this. Call that out; lots of p...
One approach would be to record your story-telling sessions, particularly in a way that captures his reactions. You could then review those recordings to see what worked and what didn't (e.g. you ...
I'm a language teacher in my native country and I do teach how to write essays. The structure is always the same: Introduction Development Conclusion Within the development, one should present...
I made a proofreading app and I feel your pain. If you are the author, you can't proofread it right because your mind tends to skip things it already knows. The next step is to read it loud but th...
After reading the entire piece (from the link you posted), I'd say the story feels like it's all cut of the same material, so you don't have anything to worry about in terms of most of the dialog b...
I think for a writing competition, you need a theme or focus, and maybe - for that age - some guidelines. Are you after an imaginative story, or a factual-type report of a fictional situation, or i...
My experience is in software documentation (particularly programming interfaces), so I'll answer from that perspective. I think these principles are pretty general, but I've never written manuals ...
There are some different diagnoses that might be appropriate here. The Xander You've clearly established how the character came to be involved, but now that he is, he doesn't seem to actually b...
I am looking to write a book on Physics/Mathematics. Of course this book will need to include mathematical equations and diagrams. Are there any writing softwares that have devices such as TeX and...
I've been working for some time on a story about a detective who finds himself alienated, delusional and hopeless while trapped inside a dystopic, postmodern dream. This segment voices some of the ...
Flatten the scope - you are attributing personality to the people he sees, but the words imply they have none. Also focus on the self-obsession of the narrator ( as per @J.R. ). Just my suggestion ...
I do something similar to your ASCII implementation, but instead of an ASCII block I use compact bulleted lists (with sub-lists). File/directory names are still styled as they would be in running ...
