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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My protagonist is an immortal person that’s powerful enough to end all with but a thought. She has amnesia due to overusing her power when she recreated the world. The amnesia part is very importa...
I don't understand the example emboldened below. Can't you add just a superscript number in the text, then in the footnotes cite that "minor case"? Unquestionably one superscript cannot "detract fr...
Arguments, discussions, disagreements In my script I have a lot of "arguments" – loose definition: long discussions where characters disagree about what to do. These arguments don't escalate to ...
I know Technical Writing is not supposed to have our personalities in it, but when I taught, I sought out educational videos/resources that had a bit of personality in them. Example: The Oatmeal's...
In my story the protagonist goes to live in a health resort. The receptionist presents her with a brochure of activities. At the moment I have written like this in a word document; After patien...
My intention is to write a novel that falls into the "contemporary fiction" genre. Also, maybe, the "family drama" subgenre, if such a thing exists. I have a plot point that puts one of my characte...
In the short passage I am writing, the starting point is that one character is being held at gunpoint, and the end point is that she now holds the gun, having disarmed the opponent. The idea is t...
Basically, all I want to know is how I can get my readers to root for a pairing where the difference in ages is about 15 years. I don't want them to spend the entirety of my novel pondering over th...
I'm a man. Working on my sci-fi novel. It's meant to be a light-hearted heist caper. My main character is a woman. She's a strong and sassy character based on the women in my life, and the story fo...
Edit: After reading the question I've asked again and the answers I've gotten, I feel I should say that the descriptions of the characters here are definitely the bare basic. There is a full word d...
I am trying to write a non-fiction book about summarizing core computer science concepts. I plan to self publish this book through the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing program. My target audience in...
Ok, so the hook for my novel is a quote from the future that my protagonist will eventually say. But I need a way for my novel to go back to present tense. In what way can I smooth my novel back to...
When you have your audience go through your work, whether it's written fiction, a movie, a video game or whatever, you want them to ask themselves certain questions, which you want to answer as the...
My POV character has been seriously injured and is bedridden for three months. But life stops for no one. In fact, a major epic battle is brewing and to delay it would be unrealistic. If anything,...
I constantly re-read my work before writing again. It helps me get in the proper mind set. But my biggest problem is that I make more changes on what's already there that I don't get further along ...
Conflict is one of the most important things in driving a story. I’ve been working on my particular story for a while now, and I finally seem to have worked out a good plot, and by that, I mean the...
I'm just trying to work around the whole "Adverbs are the devil" rule. Is there any difference between these two lines in regards to writing quality: He smiled patronisingly at them And H...
Word's grammar check tells me the second sentence below requires a semicolon rather than a comma “If you don’t accept your physical limitations, you will burn out.” Elena was analytical again, ...
Can someone please tell me what's the pen used here in the below URL called? It looks like a Gel pen, but the text written with it is so sharp: https://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Handwriting
I'm wondering if there is a English writing technique or style I can use to show that the result that appeared is contrary to the expectation of the first-person narrator? (I'm not using garden-sen...
I don't mean "sitting down to write", I mean the literal beginning. The story itself starts with my protagonist running. I need to get him to run, then I'll have the rest of it sorted. But won't st...
I currently have two books, both roughly the same length and at the same point in the editing/rewriting process, and while I would like to eventually publish them both, they are from two completely...
This question sounds similar to this but I am asking something different. It is said that Stephen Hawking removed all the formulas except one because with each use of a formula the readers of boo...
I have a main character that cannot die. I'm trying to convey this information to the reader, but since my character isn't aware of this, I've decided to leave hints throughout the adventure. This...
Changing is an important aspect of every character and is what makes them believable. Yet, if you remember the ending of Game of Thrones, people weren't too happy about Dany going from "don't...
I joined a writers group that meets every three weeks. I submitted the first eighteen pages of my work and also sent the same file to a publisher at AuthorHouse. The writers group had varied opin...
I am using, for action scenes, this three act format which allows me to control pacing and create order in hectic environment: Action - analysis - reaction Johann fired (action) his pistol and mi...
I am writing a movie where a character has an interview with a news reporter. The scenes segues into a character profile of the interviewee that features a voice over from the interviewer. How woul...
Within narration in past tense, should a statement of a universally true fact be in past tense or in present tense? For example, in the short text: It was late afternoon in Zubrin. The air was ...
I'm struggling trying to write a scene (fiction novel). I want to know if it would be confusing to write it this way: Paul shook his head, yanked away. “Sure it is, Mike. You left me there,” he...
My SO and I were discussing the following sentence in his writing: This is the tale how once the Septemi helped King Nicodemus subdue walking firestorms, how we hunted cultists and mongrelfolk i...
There are different types of time travel (they have different rules and constraints) throughout literature, so I was wondering if you could list some of them here, and which ones are best for drivi...
Like most kids, I went through the All Poetry Must Rhyme phase. Then a little later in school, rhyme was less essential (especially in English, a less rhyme-compatible language than many other ...
A substitution cipher is a method used in cryptography to encrypt the meaning of a text. In the most common form, a substitution cipher changes every letter in the target text with another, making...
Is it too distracting to include a major mystery subplot(s) in a fantasy story? I mean a complete subplot or subplots that the character solves. Perhaps the examples below do not qualify as mystery...
So far in my WIP, which is a “journey” story, the main characters have been struggling against the environment and the fact that they’re displaced and trying to return home. I’ve arrived at a poin...
What are the best ways you find to get out of your own habitual thought patterns, personality, dispositions, and culture when writing characters? For example, we are all familiar with the Myers-B...
My MC is in a dark line of work. He is an assassin. He is also someone with lines he does not cross. He has been duped or coerced to do things he would not, but still holds to some standards. I wa...
I'm currently writing a journey-focused plot arc, and I'm struggling a bit with the character interactions. To give you some background, the protagonist is a lone wolf of sorts whose job is akin to...
In my writing class, huge emphasis was placed on outlining the entire plot. Yet as I write it, things change dramatically, and I end up not following the outline. Is it bad to just go with the flow?
There are occasions where you basically just start a chapter with a short descriptive passage and go straight to dialogues, so in those situations I am not sure how to deal with acronyms in dialogu...
I subscribe to the school of writers who like to (and often must), outline their stories before writing them. For a long time however, I did not use the 3-act structure. My mentality on that has no...
I am writing a short story, about a particular field with multiple specific terms, none of which are in English. (Specifically, I'm writing about bullfighting, but the question could apply to other...
Increasingly often, if you Google for a recipe your search results will be full of long, image-rich blog posts that, somewhere in there, have the actual recipe you were looking for. Many of these ...
I am reviewing some research reports and found myself diving into the black hole of technical writing style. My question is what is the best way to write numbers in millions? I am not writing a n...
In the Bible, the apple is a symbol for knowledge, immortality, temptation, the fall of man and sin. The book itself gave the apple a symbolic meaning. How can you as an author give an object like ...
Do we have to introduce the character's name before using their names in a dialogue tag? I am wondering if we can use the names without saying it's a man or a woman, and then making the characters ...
I live in the publishing hinterlands. I was reading some query letters that worked and one thing they had in common was mention of attendance at a conference. What benefits could a membership give...
Recently I've stumbled across China Miéville's novels. Apparently, they fit in a genre called Weird Fiction, or to be even more specific New Weird, where the "new" is used to distinguish new writer...
What kind of humor do you find appropriate for your sci-fi stories? I realize that the question might seem so broad, but I think the target group for most sci-fi stories has a sense of humor that ...
