Posts by Neil
Is there a way to see a list of tags? When I want to answer questions, it'd be helpful if I can zero in on areas of interest.
I was recently editing a novel destined to be published primarily in e-book form, and made a list of pre-press instructions, to be followed when the final text is agreed upon. Some of these instruc...
This is a good question. Unfortunately, outside of the programming realm, there's no system for tracking changes at the character level that I'm aware of. (If there is one, I'd love to know about i...
There's no single standard about this. Whether you engage your readers is up to you, in some cases up to your editor at the publication in question (or perhaps their policies). Barring that kind o...
Art is obsession, and how well (or badly) it's dealt with seems to fascinate artists. Ernest Hemingway was the focus of Dan Simmons's The Crook Factory, a faux-historical novel set mostly in Cuba...
Your English writing skills could use a little smoothing out, if the question above is representative. However, that will improve in time with practice and the help of a good editor. If you have th...
A map can be a nice touch, or it can be a hindrance. Are there are particular scenes where a map would let you snip out several paragraphs of tedious explanation? If there are only one or two such ...
What's the most important thing that your readers need to know right way? What's the scene that will drag them into your story? The answers to those questions will tell you what should come first. ...
On the test, I'm in the "slight" category on three out of the four axes, which includes the judging - perceiving one that you're concerned with. I tend to work with outlines, but if the story takes...
The best you can do, I think, is to try and pick up on the tone of the work that the original writer was trying to convey. Since your profile indicates that you're an Indonesian/English translato...
I think this passage works brilliantly to set the mood. The transition from the bolded paragraph back to the story is a little abrupt, but this may be smoothed over by the momentum of reading this ...
As far as I can tell, no. Use normal sentence case, where you capitalize the first word of a headline only. The exceptions are proper nouns, or other capitalized words listed in the style guide's s...
INT. STARBUCKS, LOS ANGELES People are sitting at tables and on couches, some on smartphones, many typing away on laptops. We pan to a man in his 40's, with a ponytail and reading glasses. He is c...
I agree with hildred's answer that a review of the basics is in order here: Sentence structure, grammar, and so on. There are no standards for general-interest articles, but academic papers do ha...
I agree with Lauren's answer; there's no sense in "balancing" things for the sake of one scene. There are a few ways I can see to handle this: You can encapsulate narrators to keep a single viewp...
There's no one answer to this, and there might have been many reasons for the author tot write the article like she did. My guess is that it's an attempt to make the Dropbox CEO seem innovative and...
The best date formats are the ones that are (1) clear and (2) familiar to your audience. You want your readers to focus on the content of your resume/CV, and this will be difficult if they have to ...
I agree with Lauren's answer: You need highs and lows in any story. As long as you're not boring the reader, maybe these excerpts are just low points. But momentum counts for an awful lot, and it...
Yes, research is worthwhile - to a point. This is difficult to answer because you're asking people to make a value judgment about how worthwhile research is. My opinion is that if your story is ba...
You're essentially asking if it's possible for a human being to be unbiased. The answer is no, it's not. Even in the case of professional manuscript evaluators working for total strangers, there is...
While I don't know of any straight dictionaries that organize words by number of syllables, many rhyming dictionaries will organize rhymes by how many syllables they contain, or by how many syllabl...
General in-text citations like Lauren suggests will almost certainly be sufficient, particularly for a short, informal paper. However, if your paper is longer or a more formal paper (for example, a...
(I'm answering this from a point-of-view of readability. If your corporate communications are subject to any internal style sheets or style guide such as AP or Chicago - since you have a policy on ...
The issue here is that you want to avoid an identity disconnect between the reader and this character. If the reader is connecting to this character only through their name, then this is not only a...
With the disclaimer that I'm neither a tech writer or tech editor: Scientific and academic books are generally organized by function. Unlike a narrative book where the chapters are broken down by ...
