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.
Filters (None)
A blogger with the name of Glen C. Strathy said the following: The first and most important element of any plot is the Story Goal or Problem. This is the organizing idea around which the enti...
I would like to use the title of a TV sitcom in the title of my book. How do I find out if this is without legal ramifications?
I have completed my novellas first draft which is 32k words long. For all the reasons, I was doing research as to whether self-publish or try my luck getting a publisher. I should tell you that ...
I have a character in my book named Jiolluav (with the correct accent, Zholl-you-of or /ʒōl-'yoo-äv/), and I've written my entire "novel" (it's a work in progress) using this name. When I asked a f...
This may be a very very stupid question but I need to ask it. I have written my dissertation in my mother tongue first, then began to translate it as I will submit it in English. While doing so I u...
If a post-graduate student has three unpublished studies, one of which is expected to have a high impact index, and the rest low impact, what should the student reserve his/her best work for, in or...
We use Madcap Flare for a large documentation set, with HTML output. (Flare source is a very HTML-y XML with some Flare-specific additions.) We use git for source control and new work is done on ...
I practice my writing skills by writing fan fiction. It's a great medium: no deadlines or word goals, and you get free feedback. The only problem is that as fan fiction, there are certain things yo...
So I've got this fantasy planet X, where humanoid peoples Y and Z are at war on an island nation about the size of England, and they've been at war with each other for hundreds of years. They are ...
Often reading analyses of books and films, I find that the analytics derive conclusions from the specific food or beverage that a character consumes. The food appears to always be symbolic of somet...
In my last question Does marvel accept new heroes by other people, people advised me to start creating my own comics. I wonder what kind of professions I need and how many people to start publishin...
I am writing a fiction story about a elite unit, SFD (Strike Force Delta), during the Third World War. The war is basically extremely variable, it lasts from 2025 to 2030. I like to call it the 'mi...
Considering the "story structure" proposed by Robert McKee; like: A story is a large structure composed by acts which are composed by sequences which are composed by scenes, which are composed by...
I'm working on a branching narrative kind of story, and the entire story focuses on the reader uncovering a mystery in the house that they're in. There's only one ending where they survive. In th...
I'm the adviser of a school newspaper that publishes exclusively online now. We have a page dedicated to revisiting the archives of our paper (60 years worth!). I cannot piece together how to prope...
I wrote the following: She invited him to look out the window, which he did. He looked out of the gray window and saw a field of green vegetables under a lush blue sky. Children were playin...
I'm an undergraduate student of psychology. My teachers assign writing assignments from time to time, and usually require some minimum of cited sources in APA format (as expected). When I start wr...
I am new to writing. I wrote a lot when I was a kid and teen. I wrote my first book at 6 and then again in high school. I was also in journalism. After high school, life happened. I took an almost ...
How does one write a story for a story-based videogame. Is it done in the form of a screenplay? Is it written as any normal prose? Is it written as documentation that goes with the other early desi...
Let's say you have completed a novel. Since you're not totally naive, you have also complete a few drafts, where with "few" I mean at least more than two. You are at a point that your book seems ...
There is a particular trope that became quite infamous across many media: the "it was just a dream" revelation, where, usually at the end of a important story arc, everything turns back to the star...
I’m trying to improve my writing skills, doing both original works and facfiction, but there is a peculiar limitation to what I achieve. Despite being male, I fail to write from a male perspective ...
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...
I am writing a novel with two stories simulatenously running alongside each other. That is, on each page there is a main story, taking the body of the page, and there is a 'side story' which runs a...
The woman said as she pulled a small coin out of a small wallet ... The woman said as she pulled a small coin out of a small box she opened/used earlier. I am wondering if "opened" or "use...
If you read names from popular novels you feel like the names define characters. They fit perfectly to the personality of character. For an e.g. Harry Potter, Robert Langdon, Jason Bourne, etc. I ...
My character is using a hardly legible accent, or simply an accent which is not comfortable for a reader to read. For example: “Ye've caught us in th' middle o' supper. Seein' as how yer no bleedi...
I watched a presentation called Your First 10k Readers. It explains a marketing course that will build an audience for your book prior to release - even prior to completion. It sounds sensible and ...
I'm writing a light fantasy book. I think it will end up falling into the YA genre. I'm considering making my own names up for the days of the week/months. The book is set in a fantasy world, so ...
Hey, I'm having trouble editing my book. I have a crime novella but I can't edit that well. Does anyone have any tips to help? Thanks! ~Rosewood
In our world, we consider human life to be precious and valuable. It is meant to be preserved, and a deliberate act of taking a life is considered deplorable by society. This is considered normal. ...
I'm reading Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron, where she writes the following about being vague or omitting information that the reader does not know: ...being vague is never a good idea... .....
I've read the answers to this question but they focus on getting ideas written down pretty much as they occur, that's not my issue, I have both digital and analog methods for doing so with me at al...
English is not my mother tongue. I am completely fluent in English though, and I write my fiction in English. Here's the problem: I live in neither the UK nor the US (nor any other English-speakin...
Here's a piece of writing I came up with: The rolling billows rocked the mighty galleon cradling it madly as if it were but a mere child. There are many seeming contradictions: When we thin...
Definition of simile : a figure of speech comparing two unlike things that is often introduced by like or as (as in cheeks like roses) Similes are nice tools that every narrator has (eve...
Context I am currently working on a fantasy novel in which one of the main characters is a nobleman and scholar, studying exotic languages as part of his higher education and translating documents...
I have read a few non-fiction works (mostly scientific) where there is a quote at the beginning of each new chapter. Sometimes the quote related to the chapter along with the title, sometimes it wa...
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...
In my novel, the protagonist is depressed. In the story which is in my mind... The autumn leaves were falling as I was sitting alone and Gary Jules' "Mad World" was ringing in my iPod. The s...
I'm having trouble with a particular sentence in my book. I had originally written: Monica’s group of friends was a diverse mixture of race, gender, and background. Having once been described as l...
For the last several months, I've had a a professional assignment writing an ongoing series for a well-known website. It was repurposed from a book I wasn't able to sell to a publisher. It's been ...
I'm working on a story which is focused on the conditions of its world and its society and I want to tell the story of its people as a collective, the problems they create and have together and the...
In my book series (more on that here), I am planning on including a bunch of Easter eggs and subtle references to things as an added treat for the reader. However, I just came up with one that I th...
I am writing a rather dark, grey fantasy story. It is supposed to feature a twist that turns the antagonist's goal to not to be evil at all (just misjudged) and really trivial (despite requiring la...
I'd like to write a story, in the third-person perspective, centering on a character who changes her name several times in the course of the story. She uses her birth name for the first couple of ...
In my interactive novel, I'm trying to keep the word count between choice prompts fairly short and consistent, but that means sometimes breaking up longer text into a few sections…. I've been usi...
Hello masters of geographic eloquence, A rock arch bridges across to a rock formation seen in the screen right of the image/photograph. It's not an independent 'island'. What word(s) best descr...
I have been intending to create a book for toddlers with basic scientific notions in it. Most books for this target readership that I have seen present whatever content in the form of a story, quit...
[Not a native english speaker] I am currently writing a novel, told from the 3rd-person POV, with several characters being followed in different scenes. Will the following confuse the readers? ...
