How is the question of describing suicide "in a literary way" off-topic?

Question

This question was migrated from english.stackexchange.com and apparently immediately closed and deleted as off-topic: https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5364/commit-suicide-in-a-literary-way

How in the world is that off-topic?

Answer 1

chaos, sorry that question didn't get an explanatory comment - as Neil explained, there's unfortunate technical issue.

Until that's resolved, here's what's what. Take a look at our critique guidelines - critique is a little fuzzy in that it's not entirely appropriate for the SE format, so we try to establish guidelines as to what works well and what doesn't. The overarching guideline is this: we'll happily accept specific goal-oriented questions about your own writing. Other major points are: we don't do proofreading; we avoid broad "how I can I make this better" questions; we aren't a place for telling people what to write (only how to write it themselves).

In the case of the suicide question, there's a phrase to critique, but it's hard to understand what the question is or what the question is trying to achieve. It provides two phrases that the asker doesn't like, and asks us for one that he will - that's not really a question.

If the question explained the context OP is writing in, what specific goal he's aiming for, and what he's been trying that hasn't worked - this might be an answerable question. At the moment, it'd only get a long list of five-word suggestions, which wouldn't be a very helpful resource for anybody.

Hope this is clear and helpful :)

Answer 2

I would say, I disagree that this is off topic. Maybe the question needs more clarification or details, but that is different from saying it is off topic.

It might be improved by making it more general, in terms of how do you deal with difficult or emotive issues in a sensitive way in writing, with some examples and why they don't fully work.

I think it is close to a good question. It is very difficult to deal with these types of issues in the appropriate style for a particular piece of writing, and this differs between, say, a police report, an academic study, a thriller story and a romance. So I think chaos needs to be more specific, as Standback says, but I want this question!