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One easy way to go about portioning humor is picking a comical character (or two) and peppering the story with their wit, ineptitude, craziness, grave pessimism, or whichever other approach that ma...
As I understand, this is done all the time for television scripts. For instance, when Star Trek characters are discussing new aliens or territories, their discussions go over some basic facts. Ma...
In the absence of a style guide saying otherwise, your approach is fine. (So is abbreviating to "Fig.", though I prefer to spend the extra three letters and use the full word. It's also consisten...
I've seen this done with a "watermark" that says (usually) "sample data" (kind of like this, from here, though that's a table rather than a chart). Think of the "draft" watermark you sometimes see...
Both phrasings refer to an action that occurred in the past (his going). The additional nuance you need to consider here is whether the question itself sounds like it occurred in the past. A ques...
I will be creating a blog article that talks about Illuminati in our local country. I will be talking about the "organization's" role in making specific artists popular (for a duration) and in retu...
This depends in part on how recognizable the landmark is to readers. On the one hand, if your scene is set in Times Square, it's hard to change anything -- enough people know the place that if you...
I'm not clear on whether you see this is a pitch session (i.e., with the explicit goal of interesting the publisher in your novel), or simply an opportunity for a one-on-one conversation. Either wa...
What's the general approach to using parenthesis (the grammatical construct, not the punctuation mark) in fiction? I have an internal "ranking" of them: Comma-delineated parenthesis, like this, ...
I am writing a story in which one of the main characters is Deaf, and therefore communicates with other leads using sign language. Not being a native speaker of English, I am having trouble with co...
A common approach is to give the detail, but to disguise its significance. Mystery writers are masters of this. One trick is to insert the relevant detail in the middle of a long list. Readers ten...
The main con is fear of corporate lawyers if they think you're portraying them negatively. I am not a lawyer (nor a writer or publisher of fiction), but my impression as a reader is that minor men...
I'm writing a short film that has the vast majority scenes set in a pub, with the main male character about to approach a woman, and he imagines/projects some of the possibilities of this - it goes...
I can plan all sorts of specific aspects in a novel such as characters, locations, and the plot in general, The short version of the below: Plan the first chapter, plan the first scene, and e...
While this question may be a little nit-picky I realize chapters do help the flow of a book, and, since I'm now plotting a novel, I figured it's a good time to ask. In a non-lineary storyline, I'v...
If this is user-facing documentation, then make up a data dictionary that describes the tables and columns with supplementary blurbs about the meaning of the data (e.g. the meanings of specific val...
I'm currently writing some fiction about a lord and I'm struggling with when I should capitalise his title. There are a number of circumstances. When someone is referring to him or about him usin...
An example is "Miley Cyrus transformation - a marketing approach" I wont use their stuff inside. No copyrighted material, for example, pictures So for my previous example, i would write how mile...
It depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell, and the experience you want the reader to have. I think that in your case, since you are creating characters which are meant to be read as a...
I've been told that, when acting the part of a drunk, a good approach is to make it appear as though you are trying to present yourself as sober and failing. Similarly, the insane person believes ...
I have this problem - I generally dislike fantasy worlds and science fiction set up in space or different planets. So I don't want to write about such things. I always loved more grounded stories a...
I am thinking of adding a sub-plot to my story where we have say, Adam and Eve. They do not quite like each other but one thing leads to another and they have sex. After that, Adam wonders if he s...
You can't know that you will be until you try Unfortunately, the way you know you can be John Grisham (short of a DNA test) is by dedicating yourself, and years of effort, to getting published; at...
While it's possible to expand a short story into a novel (c.f. Ender's Game), what seems more common in my experience (citation needed) is for the short story to become one part of a larger novel. ...
Another good way to approach your question is to consider what a short story is in terms of substance (not just length). The definition can certainly be nebulous, since it varies from writer to wri...
