Posts by Jay
Most stories in English are written in the past tense. If it happened five seconds ago, it's still past. Occasionally writers put a story in the present tense with the idea that this will give a s...
A story does not have to have a profound message that will change the life of everyone who reads it for it to be worth writing. There are many things that can make a story worthwhile. Sure, if you...
Are you copying material from this textbook into your book? Or do you mean that you are just writing, "See page 42 of Such-and-such book"? Usual disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. But as I understand ...
"with all the details included" If you mean that literally, then your book will be teaching the reader Japanese. Which probably won't make for an interesting novel. If you can really merge together...
In my humble opinion, it's a good idea in a persuasive essay to at least acknowledge counter-arguments. If you simply ignore counter-arguments, and a reader is aware of them, his response is likely...
Several thoughts: In general, adapting a myth or a classic story is something that is done all the time. Many, many stories are described as "an updated version of Romeo and Juliet" or "the myth o...
In general, for a popular work it is bad style to include quotes in a foreign language. Most of your readers will not understand them. An old enough flavor of English is a "foreign language" for al...
Is the point of the story to realistically discuss how this person became mute, in some clinical sense, or to spin a story around the initial premise that he is mute? If the story is intended to b...
I think the general rule should be, Will the reader care? I heard a speech once by an American who was a reporter in Nazi Germany during World War 2. When I saw the advertisement for his lecture I...
This surely depends on the specific tool that you are using. The only tool that I am familiar with that meets your description is Javadoc, so I want to be cautious not to make assumption about how ...
Yes, you should try to be consistent. It is very distracting if you have bullet points with wildly inconsistent text. This looks silly: Include an invoice with the package. Free shipping; ...
If you're not knowledgeable in the field, then it is unlikely that anything you write will be convincing to someone who is. But as several have said, if you're writing a novel, then by definition i...
Bear in mind that a compact numerical date format like 01/02/2013 uses a different convention in the US than in Europe. In the US it's interpreted as month/day/year, while in Europe it's day/month/...
"I'm having trouble portraying religious, devout characters as protagonists or viewpoint characters. When I try, I get the sense that the reader - not sharing the characters' beliefs - will have tr...
I'd say first, can you just translate the words in the text and not give the original? Like in the example you give in the comments on Fortiter's post, why not just write, "Toward the beach, there ...
I haven't heard this five-word rule. But I can easily think of many sequences of five words that no one would seriously consider plagiarism. I think that I will was the first time that ...
I just checked my copy of MLA Handbook and I find no guidance on this case. The only example it gives has a single name. (I'll readily yield to someone who can point out that I missed something.) G...
We surely all have little quirks to our speech. Like my daughter once criticized my writing for using the word "surely" too much. (See, I used it on this post.) So how do you keep all your charact...
For something book-length, just don't do your re-read immediately. Don't Write chapter 1, re-read and update chapter 1, write chapter 2, re-read and update chapter 2, etc. Instead, write chapter 1,...
I'm not familiar with this "domain" level in taxonomy. That must be a new idea since I was in school. Of course Linnaeus originally defined the kingdom as the highest level, and he identified three...
On the flip side, let me comment that one thing I really dislike in many works of fiction is when we are told that someone is a villian, but he never actually does anything evil. To take a well-kno...
That's a question of definitions that one could debate endlessly. Definitions are invented by people, often indirectly by simply using words with a certain meaning in mind without necessarily spell...
Several good answers and I don't want to repeat what they said, but let me add: I think you can almost always get away with ONE coincidence that gets the story rolling. Like suppose the story begi...
I don't read romance novels, but I've seen a few romance movies. It seems to me that finding some odd way to get the characters together is pretty typical of such movies. Having two people meet thr...
Reasons that I've heard of: (I'm overlapping other posters here somewhat but I'm trying to be complete.) The author doesn't want family, friends, or business associates to know that he is writing...
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