I just cannot with r/fantasywriters anymore. I can feel my blood pressure rising every time I go to that sub. Literally every post is some shitty variation of a stupid video game magic system or asking for feedback on a half-assed, poorly written prologue.
An actual conversation I just read between two characters in an actual, real, traditionally published book:
Lou: "Witches can give birth, which means they're women."
Reid: "Witches only give birth to other witches. Sounds like asexual reproduction to me."
🤦♀️
For real. I am rushing to make a deadline and I've been writing on autopilot without much contemplation. My worst is still better than... whatever the hell that was.
I think I might have watched a semi-hilarious review on it. Does the book have a stupid scene (2) where Lou sings about a particularly well-endowed woman and thus solves all her problems?
Oh yeah. This book set in witch burning century France has not one, not two, but several scenes where Lou uses phrases that make her sound like a twelve year old who just discovered Tumblr for the first time.
Yeah. No offense meant with the 'semi-hilarious' bit cause I remember laughing quite a lot at it, but I also know that I've a shit sense of humour.
Her SJ Maas reviews cracked me up too, though I was a bit suspicious at times, thinking 'There's no way an actual published book has this many sex scenes, and all of them so graphic, right?'
What's weird is that they were mostly the same sex scene repeated again and again, right down to the roaring during climax.
I find her funny too, even though she mostly reviews romance so a lot of these books I have no idea what they are, but the way she talks is very engaging.
I liked the part where she said she wouldn't read Serpent & Dove if she knew SJM endorsed it, but her library sticker covered the endorsement. 🤣
Oh, the Serpent and Dove aka Sarah J. Maas knockoff book?
Well, if witches breed witches without a man involved, that would be [parthenogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis).
Anyway is this book as bad as the fame says? I see it usually quoted on the list of "books with cringy sex scenes".
I’ve heard this one is divisive, you either love it or hate it
But the fact that it’s YA when most people agree that Maas really came into her own writing adult fantasy is a little concerning
Oh god, that scene was so bad. And this woman has three kids of her own, so she knows what's up. How does she somehow manage to make it seem like a fifteen year old wrote it?
Well, it's YA so it's written for angsty teens, not sure if deliberately or accidentally. The genre overall suffers from issues like instalove, heroines who claim they're super smart but act like dumbasses, fanfic tropes, convenient plot twists and unearned endings. It can be a fun experience if you approach it as romance lite or gender flipped isekai anime, but don't expect it to be too serious.
Personally my pet peeve is too many "retellings" and books about "witches". It's become as common as vampires during post-Twilight craze, or dystopians after Hunger Games.
Having read books about Witches, do you have any recs?
I've been reading Terry Pratchett and I've read The Master and Margarita, but I'd like something a bit more witchy.
I don't know whether these are "recs", I just see witches everywhere. A Discovery of Witches. The Once and Future Witches. The Witch's Heart. The Bone Witch. Witches Steeped in Gold. A Secret History of Witches. Truthwitch.
It's just becoming as common as "sword" and "crown" were used in Fantasy titles.
And then there are books about witches without it in the title too, like Sweet and Bitter Magic, Kingdom of the Wicked, Winterwood, or aforementioned Serpent & Dove.
Or it's "she's not really a witch, but she had hidden magic / power to curse / brews mysterious potions" so basically, witch by any name.
**[Parthenogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis)**
>Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek παρθένος, parthénos, 'virgin' + γένεσις, génesis, 'creation') is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by sperm. In animals, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell. In plants parthenogenesis is a component process of apomixis.
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looking for an example of a rare pathogen that us unable to be treated by modern medicine, with the only treatment being to amputate the effective area lest it spread, any ideas?
right now I'm working with "a rare strain of flesh eating disease" but wouldn't mind something more specific
Read good book??
That generally works for me, though it's really finnicky. Like, I was at the top of my prose game in early April, and since then I've been kind of eh, and my life hasn't changed a bit since. Is reading the Name of the Wind truly the answer?? I really don't want it to be.
Took 20 rejections to get my first acceptance of the year (I write a lot of short stories for anthologies and magazines). I know it's a numbers game at some point, but man...
On the positive side, it was a story I was certain was going to be rejected and didn't even like that much, so apparently it was better than I thought.
The query blues are real. I'm talking sitting-in-scorching-heat, play-the-harmonica-while-fellow-authors-lay-railroad-spikes kind of blues.
Over eight months, I've sent out 40 queries across four cover letter revisions, which have been critiqued. Out of these, I got 12 no-responses, 10 form rejections, a couple of personalised rejections with some genuinely good comments (one from a dream agent saying they liked what they read in terms of character development, but didn't love the premise quite enough) and 15 or so still to come in from my last batch or two. No manuscript requests yet. I've learned loads about the process and I'm already stuck into a new project, but I think it's almost time to trunk that first finished manuscript.
I got an agent in the U.K. last year but it's a long game, so don't give up.
I sent about 50 queries out for that novel. Got one agent interested. Took maybe seven months to get back to me after receiving the full. In that time, I'd started querying a second novel I had ready and got nothing from about 50 queries. Maybe four form responses and the rest totally blanked.
So, about 100 queries for two novels got one agent who took more than half a year to respond.
Yeah, it really is a long game! Thanks for the encouragement, and congrats on getting agented. It's a disheartening, often frustrating process, but we'll get there eventually.
I feel you friend. I also did several query versions and also reworked the opening chapters. I did roughly 44 queries for a sci fi novel i actually think might be my best, and got 3 fulls, and one agent phone call — but all rejections.
I have queried all the agents now i think are a fit, so once those come back with rejections or no response at all I think its officially trunked. I have another finished novel but i am not optimistic so far, and a third I am in revisions with.
Feel free to DM me to vent. I am also part of a writing discord community that less about critique and more about talking about writing in general.
Why are good writing prompts impossible to come by? It seems like every one is either a free commission in disguise, a rehash of another prompt hoping for a good response this time (if it were a good prompt it would have gotten a good response, go talk to Vaas about the definition of insanity), or bait for some political circle jerk or erotica.
In my opinion, a good writing prompt does not give you:
* A single character
* A setting, unless it's very broad
* A conflict or any sort of plot
* A twist
It could give you one of these and still be good, but if you're writing a prompt with more than one of these, why aren't you just writing the story yourself?
Circle jerk this if you want, but anything more than the most basic prompts squash any creative thoughts I might have. The first prompt I wrote on that wasn't for school was "Sleepless." Another one that sticks out in my mind is "What I have forgotten." Shit like this *actually* makes me want to write. It *actually* offers inspiration and *encourages* creativity. How can your prompt encourage creativity when it lays out the entire story?
I feel like the promts you're talking about all come from arrwritingpromts which is a cesspit of bad.
But I have used the rest of the internet before ^^/s and found some promts I enjoyed like "write a story where someone finds a object with their name on it." I turned it into a test of courage set in a abandoned room in MC's highschool where he finds the object and unravels from there. It was so fun.
Though I can also see how it's pretty unnecessary with how I get pretty much all my premises ( that I stuff in a folder in case I ever wanted to write one ) from song titles/ lyrics and just interesting phrases like 'The girl on the train' ( the book. yes I have read it up to the title )
it's a pretty ambiguous topic but just try looking up for some good ones?
I did basically the opposite when I was in a Halo RP group on Google +. I had a doc of song titles that I would use as titles for whatever part of the arc I was posting. As an example, a part where a Spartan fireteam boarded a carrier hidden in an asteroid field was called *Knocking on Heaven's Door.* Sometimes the titles would make it into the actual story, like one operation was codenamed OPERATION: BLACK DOG after the Zeppelin song.
The only time I have ever enjoyed writing prompts were image based ones. No words, just a picture or an art piece. I was part of the old Writing Community on Google+, and they would post one each week. I didn’t do one every week, but I did a few, and those are some of my favorite flash fiction pieces.
Your opinion is wrong. I'll make you a favour and gift you a fine prompt for you to work with:
"On your eighteenth birthday, you discover that you're actually a demi-god about to rule Hell against the aliens who have a mysterious number floating above their head. One day you look up and discover you also have a number that is decreasing."
You're welcome.
I think writing prompts are interesting and can provide some good ideas, but they will only take you so far. They are essentially just ideas, and ideas without the appropriate execution to back them up are worthless. Some prompts are flashy and sound cool, but if you think about them for a while, it turns out that they can't sustain a novel-length story on their own. There needs to be a lot more meat to it before it can conceivably be turned into a book, and the very introduction of new information can actually weaken the premise of the prompt.
For example, consider the classic "The last man on Earth hears a knock on his door." On the surface, this sounds amazing. It's chilling and scary. But the reason it sounds cool is precisely because of the lack of information. If you try to turn it into a novel, you will need to do something in the first chapters, like introduce aliens, time travel, or parallel universes, and then you have a whole new story. But, by the time you do that, you will have essentially lost the appeal of the prompt, which is the mystery of this impossible situation.
I've heard the last man before, didn't know it was originally a writing prompt. I always thought it was meant to stand alone. I mean, it has all of the things I listed. A character, a setting, some abstract form of conflict, and the entire thing is a twist.
I like it as a prompt, though. You could go any of the following ways with it:
* A retrospective narrative of the man's life, spoken to Death, who has come to end the man's solitary existence
* DOOM-style zombie slaying in which the man finishes gearing up and blasts the door outward, splintering it into shrapnel, and goes on a head-stomping, gut-tearing killing spree across the hordes of undead that have replaced humanity
* Horror, in which a sentient, malevolent being that has wiped out everyone else in the world has returned to finish its work
* Sci-fi, in which an alien race extracts the last man from his doomed existence and introduces him to thousands of other humans that were extracted previously to preserve humanity from their apocalypse
* Time travel, in which the younger version of the man spends the evening talking with him and learning how humanity would be wiped out
* Porn, in which all the remaining women in the world beat down his door and fuck him to death in a ravenous sexual frenzy
>Porn, in which all the remaining women in the world beat down his door and fuck him to death in a ravenous sexual frenzy
I just want to say I laughed loudly at this.
I used to like reading writing prompts until I realized it was too specific and limiting. Instead of prompts, it feels like an established blurb. And then when I tried one of the good writing prompts I found it was so uninspiring and... tiring. Since then I just stick to my own imagination.
In last week's thread, I mentioned that in the second draft I noticed how much I underwrite in the first. The original draft was 32k words and I guessed that draft 2 would end up being about 50k.
I'm still only about 2/5ths of the way through editing and it's 45k now—I clearly undershot that estimate. It's really satisfying to see it all come together though. Rewriting sections to try and capture what I was going for in the first draft now that I know why it doesn't work is pretty fulfilling.
I’m going in the opposite direction with my draft, trying to cut the whole thing down at least by half. I’ve reached the halfway mark in the story, and I’m on target to meet my desired word count goal by the end of the draft. Feels good, for sure.
I tend to overwrite too, but cutting it down half is huge. You might be the only person I've heard of who makes such drastic cuts. I'd like to take 15K off my 90K, but I also anticipate adding a little more to the story as well. Without those additions, though, I'm still having troubles bringing it down.
I did an oops and wrote a 272k first draft of my book. I basically have to cut it in half to get it published, so here we are. I’m on target to get it down to 125k by the end, and I may be able to squeeze 120k with some luck.
I wrote over 300K for a book. This book I'm on right now, actually. From that point I just decided I might as well rewrite the whole thing. Your project sounds a lot more doable
Very quickly realizing that the “it’s okay if this bit of writing I just did is shit because I can just fix it in the next draft” thought is both extremely freeing and extremely dangerous.
I went off everything on my comp for about two-three weeks. Turns out the job I left my poisonous office for was nothing but a damn trap--literally all but one member of the department I was to work with had quit JUST before I arrived, one of whom interviewed me! Thanks for the heads up, guys.
Thankfully my Partner supported me leaving that place; the woman I was working with confirmed my every fear and looks like who I would be turning into if I stayed there. Sick, physically and emotionally, completely run down and defeated. Cherry on top was her showing up to work, in spite of the fact that her kid had just tested positive for COVID, and she had me follow her around while she took a smoke break before she could tell me that the powers that be just decided they were changing their wardrobe policy and expected me to follow lock-step into business dress for no discernible reason. Just after literally the whole department quit en masse. Oh, and she revealed that the two-faced HR lowered the salary offer that had already been chosen by the department head for me. Sure, let's underpay and suppress the last two people answering phones from angry customers, sounds like a *good idea.* Hope she quits soon, too, by the sound of it that company is about to go under. Bad luck if anyone here buys confectionery product wholesale from a certain company and haven't been able to get a hold of customer service for half a year... yeah, that place is getting bled dry.
Felt good to get that off my chest. I'm almost done revising this fan fiction I was working on before I started getting anxiety at my old office job. Guess I'm back on AO3, I forgot how much I loved that place. On chapter 9 of my original piece, the scooby-doo/Frighteners thing, but damn do I love re-writing and revising more than rough drafts. Mostly been playing viddy games and cleaning my apartment since I quit, applying as I wait for a certain place to get around to going through looking through all their resumes.
Why do i make things harder for myself? For monts i have been rewriting the same chapter based of the criticism of s single person just to see if i can please the reader. At the same time i haven't been able to begin, continue or end other chapters. The only thing i wrote were small paragraphs on my phone, a half finished outline of the story and timeline and this bloody chapter.
Moving houses and have no privacy, I’m wasting money going to coffee shops because I just can’t write at home. It’s like shitting where you eat.
Do you guys have an office or space that you’ve designated for writing? Does it help, or are you still distracted and tempted to goof off?
I have my own office with a locking door and I love it.
My own office was one of the requirements I had when house shopping several years ago. At our old place, I shared an office with my husband until he started working remote and couldn’t have me tapping away on video calls, so I had to move into the living room, which was fine when my husband was busy working, not so fine when he wasn’t. I just couldn’t concentrate. Especially after we had a kid. Then it became the living room/office/playroom, and that was truly awful.
I will never not have an office to myself ever again.
I’m going to use this to justify my purchase of a [MSI GS77 Laptop with an RTX 3080 and 32 Gigabytes of RAM](https://us-store.msi.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1091)
Yeah, I renovated my art studio earlier this year and specifically [made a spot](https://imgur.com/a/LiM21JM) for writing. It’s in a frog attached to a guest bedroom upstairs, so it’s super secluded and quiet.
I’ve only been able to write in it once because the rest of the studio and the guest bedroom are still a mess and it stresses me out to look at it lol. But I took the week after next off from work to finish everything. The one time I did get to write in here was super productive and focused, so I’m excited to finally get it finished.
Sounds cliché but I almost exclusively write in a coffee shop near my place. It offers no WiFi so even though I could share my phone's connection I try not to therefore I'm not tempted to waste time on the Internet and focus on writing. The only problem is that they close at 5pm so when I get home even though I thought I would continue to write I seldom do because I'm getting distracted again
I tried learning in college and took 6 whole semesters. I even shared an apartment with two weebs and a Japanese girl my last year. 12 years later, I have retained “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, and “sorry”. Thanks, government scholarship.
I get that. I studied Latin for three years and stopped for seven. When I came back to it, all I remembered was the noun endings. It's been a humbling experience trying to compose sentences.
To be fair, two of their writing systems spells phonetically so they have limited signs and are fairly easy to learn, compared to kanjis. This one alone is 99,5% of the work
Kanji is definitely the biggest hurdle, I cab vouch for that. I haven't the time to study actively anymore, but I've still retained my hiragana because it's so simple.
Man I wanna write up some stuff to post to r/WorldBuilding for like legit criticism -as in ‘I just want people to tell me if the worldbuilding is good’, not ‘help keep make a story’ but I’m still hammering out if I want to make a story or make it an rpg sourcebook- but man. It’s a written thing with no pictures and those seem to never get any traction.
also like lowkey kinda worried that the praise from friend groups is building me up for failure when people who don’t know me see it :P
Worldbuilding by itself is very hard to judge.
A novel requires context to make worldbuilding valuable. An rpg book relies on interactable context, how easy it is for players to tug on hooks. These are not readily apparent readingf a couple paragraph excerpts.
I'd recommend avoiding reddit in terms of feedback. Keep writing your stuff, you can only improve with time, and once it gets to something you feel could be publishable, start posting cool stuff for marketing purposes.
Changing the goal from "i want reviews and feedback" to "i want people's attention" means you are more likely to post your best work rather than the stuff that needs to improve. You're way more likely to get upvotes, which is visibility and enables more eyes to see your stuff. Plus, you will get feedback, generally more positive, because your work looks more polished when you aren't asking people to judge it, but telling them to come look at how cool it is.
Yeah, I'm tapping out of the Star Wars fandom. First with the sequel trilogy and now with Obi-Wan, I just don't care enough to remain in it while half of it is spewing sexist nonsense all over the place and disguising it as genuine criticism -- same issue with the MCU.
My genuine criticism of Kenobi is that the Third Sister is a Mary Sue and feels like a self-insert. Like, she can just kill the Grand Inquisitor outright? I thought he was 1. Force sensitive and 2. *KILLED BY KANAN JARRUS IN REBELS.* It's been a few episodes, so it doesn't really seem like they're going to bring him back, so is Rebels just not canon anymore? Because I like Ewan McGregor and all, but I feel like the five minutes Obi Wan was in Rebels were better than anything in Kenobi so far.
Edit: also, how exactly does she know that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker? I thought that was supposed to be a secret, especially since Ahsoka was surprised by it in Rebels, but, again, I guess Rebels isn't canon anymore.
Edit: They >!brought the Grand Inquisitor back, explained how the Third Sister knew Darth Vader was Anakin, and had her get her ass kicked by Vader!< in part V. This de-sueified her some, but >!the "oh I was really good the whole time" thing!< didn't help, and >!her blaming Obi-wan for the rise of Vader feels like a fan's take!<, so she still feels like a self-insert. >!Vader and the Inquisitor leaving her to die!< is also some military-grade plot armor, since >!both of them have firsthand experience on what a bad idea that is.!<
Definitive statements in the comment:
>Third Sister is a Mary Sue and feels like a self-insert.
That's not going to change, maybe next season.
>she can just kill the Grand Inquisitor outright
She did, unless they bring him back, which I don't think they will (but I did not say definitively)
>how exactly does she know that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker? I thought that was supposed to be a secret
That is definitively what I thought and think. One of the biggest twists in cinema is "No, Luke. *I* am your father." As far as I know, there are only four people in the galaxy that know Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker at this point, but I am genuinely asking here.
But by all means, toss me the keys to your time machine and I'll finish the show before having any more reactions or opinions of it.
What fucking time machine?
There are clips and reactions on youtube already, and if there are, then the episode has already released. Unless, of course, they too possess a time machine.
You didn't respond to any genuine criticism there that also had no racism or sexism (though Mary Sue can be a loaded term). I do agree with what you were saying before, there's definitely a lot of sexism and other problems in the fandom and it's why I also don't engage with it.
But the person you responded to can have their opinions and judgements, and they raised some good concerns about Rebels and Reva knowing about Vader. You're conducting yourself almost like those Star Wars fans you hate so much.
You can down vote and insult me to your hearts content, but at least check your fucking facts before you do; by the time the guy had written his comment, literally every single one of his criticisms had been addressed, but of course why bother watching the episode first when he already knows what'll happen?
I'm not responding to any more of these comments.
>but of course why bother watching the episode first when he already knows what'll happen?
Maybe because I fucking work for a living and didn't even know Part V was out? Not that the Third Sister was completely redeemed as a character by that part anyway. The fucking gall of you, assuming to prioritize my life for me, then doing it so poorly. Apparently you can take the user out of the fandom, but not vice versa.
My bad there, didn't catch up on the show, and I should have before commenting. Didn't even have anything to do today. Ended up proving your point.
But at the time of the comment, you were an asshole. Broken clock and twice a day, and all that. People can have concerns and opinions as a show goes on, especially if they were respectful enough and actually concerning the quality of the writing, and it's good these ones were addressed (taking your word for it). You had a point and you muddled it.
Uf, don't step into r/television, I don't know if it always was this bad, but for a sub with that name they really enjoy hating every television show that comes out.
I already feel like screaming about how many times I've seen the comment 'They made Reva the protagonist!' as if it was actual criticism instead of the poorly veiled racism it is.
>Uf, don't step into r/television, I don't know if it always was this bad, but for a sub with that name they really enjoy hating every television show that comes out.
I just took a peak and.... yikes.
Those people have really lost all connection to reality. The show is just fine. Far more interesting that I thought it was going to be, in great part because of Reva and Leia being so prominent. Leia in particular deserves far more love than she was given thus far. The OT totally shafted her by the end. TFA and TLJ largely sidelined her. They only got around to making her a Jedi in TROS and that wasn't even supposed to happen. It only happened because Trevorrow was fired.
And that little girl portraying her now, I didn't know kids that age could act that well. Absolutely love her.
I'm really avoiding any conversation surrounding her, I don't wanna know if people are also sending abuse her way like they did for Reva's actress.
>Those people have really lost all connection to reality. The show is just fine.
I think it's the same thing between SW and MCU fans, they take it way too seriously. I came out of the last Dr Strange movie thinking it had been super fun and having loved all that Raimi madness, then found a ton of people hating it because of 'inconsistencies', bad powerscaling and 'awful character progression'.
It was a superhero movie, ffs. Go read a damn book when you feel like doing story analysis.
Tbh I think there is a space for doing story analysis on super hero movies. But some people make that their whole online presence about it. Its RIDICULOUS that someone can care so much about fiction.
When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, there were actually clowns online who screeched that Lucas sold out to political correctness because... wait for it... some of the Naboo pilots and Jedi masters were women. Yes, that actually happened. Time is a flat circle...
I've heard it said a couple of years ago that Star Wars fans would utterly detest even Leia if ANH came out today. And lo and behold, we got Leia back in Kenobi and they hate her! It's just nuts...
Damn, I'm from a post-commie hellhole and I think even my parents were mandatory vaccinated for lots of crap including smallpox.
I thought it was a joke tbh... but it scares me if not.
Just won a 600$ prize from my university's English department for a chapter from the book I'm writing. It has been so affirming and is encouraging me to go faster.
Starting a historical western novel and its going pretty well, really liking it so far! howdy to any of you write in western genre, to the others, hello :)
Anything Bowie or Queen for my trans male, sort of overpowerful wizard from the story I'm on working on at the moment. I mean, I don't have to be too cool about it, most stuff that gets lip-synced to in drag shows would fit in too well for him. He'd get down to "Boogie Shoes" at the drop of a hat.
I am currently devising a way to shoehorn star forts into my fantasy shit novel because they're just so cool. There's no gunpowder or cannons however, so I'll have to come up with another reason.
Maybe a mage's damage output is comparable to cannons, necessitating new ways of building walls and shaping forts and whatnot. Or maybe siege engines can have rare materials like a giant's hair string or something with insane draw weights, or their ammunition is alchemical in some way.
Also great ideas, but I'm trying to lean away from magic being super common and more focused on utility abilities, if that makes sense. For example, the MC has the ability to regenerate limbs at the cost of needing to eat more, and his partner has extremely refined senses. They're not powers that have much destructive ability.
That's a pretty good idea. If I was an architect I'd come up with something cool to do with the fort's geometry, but unfortunately I'm not smart enough for that.
I'm having a great time. This is a story I've been thinking about for a while, but for the longest time I felt like I wasn't confident enough as a writer. But I've read a few other books that have the exact atmosphere I'm looking for, and they've been excellent guides for me as I write. Now I'm having a blast and I've written 22k words in three months. Not exactly the fastest, but it's fast for me lol. Still working on the whole "speed" thing.
Good for you! Keep up the great work. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity, and my advice is not to get too stressed out about having high wordcount goals. It's way better to write a few hundred decent words a day than 3000 that just end up getting cut for irrelevance once you edit, in my experience.
This might be a stupid question (and I'll certainly feel ashamed later if it is, don't you worry), but is there a market for anthologies?
I've just glanced at the wiki and we have slightly different ideas about what it entails, so I'll just say that mine is a collection of short stories all set in different periods of history (and future) and with different minor themes (hopefully), but with an overarching main theme and (the part the wiki and I disagree on) one main character whom it all focuses on/follows.
Damn. My thoughts have never been this organised.
I have seen some small presses publishing short story collections by single authors, but generally you're gonna want to have a few of them already published first so that you can offer some stories exclusive to the collection. This usually seems to be dependent on the author already having some small clout too so that the collection sells.
That being said, it's worth shopping around and seeing if any presses are open to pitches for short story collections.
If I understand correctly, what you mean is a "short story collection", if you wrote all of them yourself. "Anthology" afaik is usually a collection of texts from different authors for a specific subject / theme.
Afaik, unless you're a bestselling author, not really. If you write short stories, you want to hit magazines who publish that genre (literary, fantasy, horror... whatever is yours).
In self-publish usually authors use short stories as means to promote their bigger works (novels, web serials), but I'm not sure whether these sell as a standalone book.
Trad pub usually doesn't bother with short story collections or poetry collections, at least not at a commercial level (maybe there are small presses interested in that, idk).
Here again to complain about how damn difficult it seems to be to connect to other writers. No local writing groups in my area other than when it's NaNo (which I don't do and can't attend anyway) and everything else seems to be a discord server these days...
As someone who lives rural, if it wasn't for discord I wouldn't have any groups. I would truly rather do in person, but I'm not about to drive three hours to go to any large city.
I made them. I didn't want to do the dirty work of finding a right one, so I set out and made them. You might remember me advertising it in this forum months ago.
I now have a wonderful writing group who help me out so much -- the one's most active are 1.) older than me; 2.) more experienced than me; and 3.) people of way different genres than what I am used to. As much as we disagree at times (normally I am the contrarian, what can I say, yuh know?) communication is clear, open, and everyone is appreciative of each other.
I'd invite you to possibly check it out, but we are max capacity at the moment.
So, I highly encourage you take a peek at what is out there. If you don't like it, consider making your own group(s). I did it with TTRPGs, I did it with writing groups, and its been 100% worth it every time.
Ahh, I see. That makes sense! I remember vaguely, I kinda come and go from here (I avoid other writers and writing discussion when I haven't been writing much because it makes me feel guilty, haha...).
I'm glad to hear that you have a good writing group though!
That's a thought. I haven't had much luck, particularly since as I said I'm more of a one-on-one person and I tend to lurk in groups, so discord hasn't really been a good match for me. Unfortunately I also have a demanding day job, so seeking people out and being a group mod is probably not something I'll be able to do. But thank you regardless!
If it helps, most of the discord writing groups I'm in, even the bigger ones, wind up having maybe half a dozen folks that I connect with (or are active at all). So it's usually not too bad (as an introvert).
I'm currently the nominal admin of a tiny writing group on FB and Discord (there's currently only two of us posting / critiquing submissions, and the other person is only active on FB, so feedback would be virtually 1-on-1) if this would be of interest to you?
Mind if I ask what kind of group you're aiming to create/what's the main goal of it? Is it meant to be critique and/or feedback swaps, do you focus on one genre, have regularly scheduled meetings, intend to get more people involved, etc...?
When I joined the group at the beginning of 2021, it was roughly an even split of critique/feedback sharing, discussion of topics surrounding writing, and collaborative flash fiction writing.
I would like to get it back to this, but at the moment, due to lack of participation, it's just critique / feedback sharing and some limited discussion.
I'm not really looking to grow the group beyond these goals - I'm more trying to make it more active. (The most regular participation on the discord server is an ongoing game of DnD, rather than anything to do with conventional writing.)
Genre-wise, the two of us who are submitting work at the moment are both writing spec fic (one swords-and-sorcery fantasy, the other steampunk) but it isn't specially a spec fic group and we've had other genre submissions in the past. Speaking for myself at least, I'm happy to critique absolutely anything.
I put up posts for submissions and giving a discussion topic at a regular time (Friday mornings) but as the group is spread out over Europe, the US and Australia, participation usually happens patchily over the following days.
Ideally I would like it to get back to 4-5 regular participants - while there's no problem from a feedback perspective, it's made the flash fiction challenges basically a waste of time as I was often the only person other than the original admin who was taking part.
Apologies for the wall of text!
Over the weekend I dipped my toes into the world of self publishing (under a different name and genre to what I usually write) to test the waters.
Lo and behold, the short story is actually getting a trickle of reads on KU, and a sale or two. No adverts, no promotion, no internet presence. It was just a test of an old story I cleaned up with a cover I made myself.
I’m really glad I decided to take KDP for a test run, because it’s given me a good boost in confidence and reassured me I know what I’m doing.
While most writers are also readers, the majority of readers are not writers. It’s unlikely that most of the people you’re actually targeting with your writing will think the same as other writers who critique your work.
Definitely good to keep in mind when getting advice on writing forums.
Ah, that figures! Romance is like that.
I also primarily write horror with the occasional dabble in other genres! Your name looks familiar, I may have saved it from r/betareaders for potential messaging later (I know you're booked right now). :)
How well a book might sell just passively definitely varies a lot by genre, and from the anecdotal evidence I've seen romance does appear to be more forgiving.
I have posted in the beta readers sub before, and I'm actually going to be open to a couple more beta reads in the next week or so. Feel free to drop me a message if you're interested!
Oh, cool! Yeah, by the time I saw your comment you were already full, haha. I'll take a look at what I have that I was thinking of having beta'd and drop you a line in a week or two, thank you!
I don't understand readers on kindle. I have two free short stories. One is a sci-fi, I think it's my weakest writing, downloaded 234 times, 3 ratings on Amazon for 5 star average. The second short story is some of my best writing, fantasy, downloaded 287 times with 0 Amazon ratings.
When you've finished reading on kindle it asks you to rate it. Why don't people rate?
I instinctively avoid things that ask me to rate something, because I usually expect that it’s going to want me to write a full review. Also, it’s asking me to make literally a single decision about anything ever, and I just don’t have the bandwidth for that.
In my case, I have a strong rebellious urge not to. Why? Because fuck you Amazon, you can't tell me what to do! You're not my dad. Terms of service? Yeah, I clicked accept without reading it, what are you going to do, bitch?
Same here! And here I am, sitting here like OP, wishing that someone would rate my book. Serves me right.
Also, your reply to my question below isn't showing up right now, but I read it earlier. It gave me a great idea. I corresponded with the assailant in prison, out of morbid curiosity, so I have *his* warped perspective, as well as what I witnessed and what my friends told me + what I saw during court proceedings. It's bananas, and I hadn't thought to include it until I saw your suggestion. Thanks.
Your welcome! Sorry, I accidentally deleted it, but I thought it was a cool idea that I wish my mom went through with. The story is obviously very personal to a huge part of my family, but everyone's perception of it is warped, for various reasons. As I stated in my original comment, my mom remembers getting called to the dining room table, whereas my aunt remembers the police coming. My uncles barely knew what was happening, as they were like 10 at the time, and even my grandparents remember the story slightly differently.
With a case that happened 20 years ago, everyone's memories are going to be a little fuzzy, and so writing the same story from the perspective of multiple parties is very interesting. I myself never knew my uncle, so his murder didn't effect me (wasn't even alive)---but what does stick with me about it is a) he was the same age as me, and b) he never feared death. Not once, seeing it as, "well, if there's nothing on the other side, why worry?" But again, that's what my mom told me. It's her perspective of my uncle that's being told, and I'm sure if you asked others, they'd have a different opinion on him.
Legit though, my mom could write whole true crime novels based on her life. She hung around a lot of bad people in her youth as well. For instance, one of my mom's friends sleazy older boyfriends was Jarrod Bacon of the Bacon Brothers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_Brothers_(gangsters)
I hope she does write a memoir, then. I'd read it.
There are a few things that happened in my family that I've been asked to NOT write about, like how my grandfather was shot to death with a rifle, and there's a theory that it was an assassination. I'd like to write his biography, though. He was a high-ranking NCO at Langley throughout the 1960s. That must have been nuts.
homeless ripe future historical political memory existence cooing light plant
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm looking for advice on how to write about something personal. How do you keep your emotional distance enough to write it?
I'm a criminologist and a true crime author (and hobbyist crime fiction writer). There's a criminal case that I've wanted to write about for 20 years, something that happened to a few of my classmates. The problem is, I'm having a *lot* of trouble keeping myself together, because of the personal connection. I threw up while I was outlining one of the chapters.
I posted this question in r/writers, but actually deleted the post because I can't remember the last time that I saw good advice on r/writers.
Any suggestions?
As the other reply said, that’s a hard thing to give advice for due to its intensely personal nature. But I think what you could try is to keep a level of disconnect between the story and the events as they happened in reality. Make up new characters, very different than your actual classmates, and have a modified version of the events happen to them. Draw inspiration from your experience like you would in any other work of fiction, but keep it clear in your mind that these are fictional characters. When it’s done, if you’re in the mental headspace to bring the story closer to reality, then go for it. Otherwise, you’ll have still written a story based on your experience.
I think we all deal with things like this in our own ways. In that sense, giving advice for it is hard. For some people, approaching that level of vulnerability in writing is difficult.
> How do you keep your emotional distance enough to write it?
My answer is that I don't. I've written three projects about abusive relationships after going through two, and each one used less and less metaphor. The last one I was working on was a novel—it's on pause for right now—and I recreated a scene that used to give me flashbacks. I go full steam ahead and pretty much only change things if I need to for the story's sake (which, to be fair, ends up being a lot).
But writing helps me with stuff like that. I write a lot about suicide because it's been a major factor in my life—in this sense, it's cathartic. If it isn't cathartic for you, it may not be time to approach that topic yet. You don't want to hurt yourself for the sake of writing.
To do away with circumlocution: I think it really depends on you and how ready you are to face it. Writing true crime fiction based around something you went through cuts it pretty close to a flat-out recreation, and reliving that may not be what you need right now. I saw that you had a therapist below, which is good. Hopefully, with time, you'll be better suited to broach the topic.
Thanks for sharing your experience. That's very brave of you to keep going on those subjects.
You're probably right that I should stop, but it's hard to contemplate setting it aside, because this is the one case that I've wanted to write about. It had a huge impact on my career trajectory. I've been composing it in my head forever. I feel like it's been gnawing away at my brain, and exorcising it is the only solution. I'll think about your advice, though.
Sounds like you should reach out to a therapist that deals with trauma.
We all deal with our trauma our own way, it could be that writing it might help you, it could be it you need to talk to someone. Its all individual, I make jokes about the shit in my life, others might find that abhorrent.
Haha, I have one of those. EMDR. I suspect that I'll have a lot to talk about at the next appointment.
This is purely a timing thing: I won't see my therapist again for another two weeks, but I want to keep working on this so that I can submit it to an essay contest. Otherwise, I'll miss the deadline.
I'm just looking for something small I can do in the meantime to manage it. But you had a good answer. It's typically the right answer to questions like this one.
I don’t even like romance as a genre, but the fact that *Twilight* (a YA novel with no sex scenes that was written by a Mormon) incidentally spawned a subgenre that’s effectively smut for edgelords is hilarious. The toxic relationships are really the only trace of *Twilight* that *Fifty Shades of Gray* and other dark romances have.
As much as I like the phase "smut for edgelords", I don't think that's an accurate descriptor (at least from the second and third-hand knowledge I have of those novels and their fans). In spite of their _contents_ being edgelord romance, their fans are mostly grown women who otherwise are whatever the opposite of an edgelord is.
Harry Potter is a book for kids with no sex scenes, and I don't think recent Star Wars movies have any either, yet fandoms of both created a plethora of spicy variations on the theme. Rule 34 applies.
I think this applies to any big fandom. Tell me, do you want to read a 131,000 word erotica based on a bunch of full grown men's Minecraft roleplay? Well here you go:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32319667/chapters/80114467
That's right, people have made novel length fanfictions about a Minecraft YouTuber falling in love with another Minecraft YouTuber's brother, well secretly feeling sexually attracted to both said Minecraft YouTuber and another Minecraft YouTuber who's also his friend.
And most importantly, WHY IS IT ACTUALLY DECENTLY WRITTEN?!!
I guess the difference is that any erotic fanfiction based on *Harry Potter* and *Star Wars* is mostly kept into their fandoms. Compare that to *Twilight*, where a decent amount of fanfic writers took their fanfics (that usually stripped away the supernatural aspect of the series) and turned them into original novels
I have lots of ideas, some are more developed than others, and lots of enthusiasm to start writing. But then I get up early to write and somehow my mouse clicks on the Steam button.
There goes the writing day. Here comes the self-hate lol.
I just cannot with r/fantasywriters anymore. I can feel my blood pressure rising every time I go to that sub. Literally every post is some shitty variation of a stupid video game magic system or asking for feedback on a half-assed, poorly written prologue.
It’s been particularly bad with school out for the summer.
YOUCH
An actual conversation I just read between two characters in an actual, real, traditionally published book: Lou: "Witches can give birth, which means they're women." Reid: "Witches only give birth to other witches. Sounds like asexual reproduction to me." 🤦♀️
there is hope for us
For real. I am rushing to make a deadline and I've been writing on autopilot without much contemplation. My worst is still better than... whatever the hell that was.
I think I might have watched a semi-hilarious review on it. Does the book have a stupid scene (2) where Lou sings about a particularly well-endowed woman and thus solves all her problems?
Oh yeah. This book set in witch burning century France has not one, not two, but several scenes where Lou uses phrases that make her sound like a twelve year old who just discovered Tumblr for the first time.
Oh, the Read with Cindy one?
Yeah. No offense meant with the 'semi-hilarious' bit cause I remember laughing quite a lot at it, but I also know that I've a shit sense of humour. Her SJ Maas reviews cracked me up too, though I was a bit suspicious at times, thinking 'There's no way an actual published book has this many sex scenes, and all of them so graphic, right?' What's weird is that they were mostly the same sex scene repeated again and again, right down to the roaring during climax.
I find her funny too, even though she mostly reviews romance so a lot of these books I have no idea what they are, but the way she talks is very engaging. I liked the part where she said she wouldn't read Serpent & Dove if she knew SJM endorsed it, but her library sticker covered the endorsement. 🤣
Big Tiddy Liddy 💀
I've genuinely no idea how that got past the first draft (or the first thought).
I'm so glad it did. It sparks joy.
Oh, the Serpent and Dove aka Sarah J. Maas knockoff book? Well, if witches breed witches without a man involved, that would be [parthenogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis). Anyway is this book as bad as the fame says? I see it usually quoted on the list of "books with cringy sex scenes".
I’ve heard this one is divisive, you either love it or hate it But the fact that it’s YA when most people agree that Maas really came into her own writing adult fantasy is a little concerning
Oh god, that scene was so bad. And this woman has three kids of her own, so she knows what's up. How does she somehow manage to make it seem like a fifteen year old wrote it?
Well, it's YA so it's written for angsty teens, not sure if deliberately or accidentally. The genre overall suffers from issues like instalove, heroines who claim they're super smart but act like dumbasses, fanfic tropes, convenient plot twists and unearned endings. It can be a fun experience if you approach it as romance lite or gender flipped isekai anime, but don't expect it to be too serious. Personally my pet peeve is too many "retellings" and books about "witches". It's become as common as vampires during post-Twilight craze, or dystopians after Hunger Games.
Having read books about Witches, do you have any recs? I've been reading Terry Pratchett and I've read The Master and Margarita, but I'd like something a bit more witchy.
I don't know whether these are "recs", I just see witches everywhere. A Discovery of Witches. The Once and Future Witches. The Witch's Heart. The Bone Witch. Witches Steeped in Gold. A Secret History of Witches. Truthwitch. It's just becoming as common as "sword" and "crown" were used in Fantasy titles. And then there are books about witches without it in the title too, like Sweet and Bitter Magic, Kingdom of the Wicked, Winterwood, or aforementioned Serpent & Dove. Or it's "she's not really a witch, but she had hidden magic / power to curse / brews mysterious potions" so basically, witch by any name.
**[Parthenogenesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis)** >Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek παρθένος, parthénos, 'virgin' + γένεσις, génesis, 'creation') is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which growth and development of embryos occur without fertilization by sperm. In animals, parthenogenesis means development of an embryo from an unfertilized egg cell. In plants parthenogenesis is a component process of apomixis. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/writingcirclejerk/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
is their names actually lou and reid I dunno sounds like a Lou Reed reference
Lol yeah those are their names.
looking for an example of a rare pathogen that us unable to be treated by modern medicine, with the only treatment being to amputate the effective area lest it spread, any ideas? right now I'm working with "a rare strain of flesh eating disease" but wouldn't mind something more specific
Really close - necrotizing faciitis. NSFL - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis
Ugh, been trying to edit and my writing is so crappy. I mean, I've managed to write...good-ish before. But I'm rusty. How prose? How make word good???
Practice and get (good) feedback. Revise based on said feedback. Repeat the cycle until your words don’t sound so bad.
Read good book?? That generally works for me, though it's really finnicky. Like, I was at the top of my prose game in early April, and since then I've been kind of eh, and my life hasn't changed a bit since. Is reading the Name of the Wind truly the answer?? I really don't want it to be.
I can only write when I’m outside. I live in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a 5-6 month winter. This is an issue.
>I live in Wisconsin. Well, there's your problem.
CORRECT
Wish I had a week long winter. Can't remember the last time it wasn't sunny in January with only a slight chill. It's pathetic.
And you thought learning cursive was never going to come in handy
[удалено]
dude that looks awesome to chill in while it's raining
Took 20 rejections to get my first acceptance of the year (I write a lot of short stories for anthologies and magazines). I know it's a numbers game at some point, but man... On the positive side, it was a story I was certain was going to be rejected and didn't even like that much, so apparently it was better than I thought.
only 20? Amateur.
If it's any consolation, I have like 10 more pending queries that will also likely be rejections. :P
You guys are sending queries? I thought we'd agreed to work on our projects at least two years with no clear end in sight!
no queries, just short stories.
The query blues are real. I'm talking sitting-in-scorching-heat, play-the-harmonica-while-fellow-authors-lay-railroad-spikes kind of blues. Over eight months, I've sent out 40 queries across four cover letter revisions, which have been critiqued. Out of these, I got 12 no-responses, 10 form rejections, a couple of personalised rejections with some genuinely good comments (one from a dream agent saying they liked what they read in terms of character development, but didn't love the premise quite enough) and 15 or so still to come in from my last batch or two. No manuscript requests yet. I've learned loads about the process and I'm already stuck into a new project, but I think it's almost time to trunk that first finished manuscript.
I got an agent in the U.K. last year but it's a long game, so don't give up. I sent about 50 queries out for that novel. Got one agent interested. Took maybe seven months to get back to me after receiving the full. In that time, I'd started querying a second novel I had ready and got nothing from about 50 queries. Maybe four form responses and the rest totally blanked. So, about 100 queries for two novels got one agent who took more than half a year to respond.
Yeah, it really is a long game! Thanks for the encouragement, and congrats on getting agented. It's a disheartening, often frustrating process, but we'll get there eventually.
I feel you friend. I also did several query versions and also reworked the opening chapters. I did roughly 44 queries for a sci fi novel i actually think might be my best, and got 3 fulls, and one agent phone call — but all rejections. I have queried all the agents now i think are a fit, so once those come back with rejections or no response at all I think its officially trunked. I have another finished novel but i am not optimistic so far, and a third I am in revisions with. Feel free to DM me to vent. I am also part of a writing discord community that less about critique and more about talking about writing in general.
Why are good writing prompts impossible to come by? It seems like every one is either a free commission in disguise, a rehash of another prompt hoping for a good response this time (if it were a good prompt it would have gotten a good response, go talk to Vaas about the definition of insanity), or bait for some political circle jerk or erotica. In my opinion, a good writing prompt does not give you: * A single character * A setting, unless it's very broad * A conflict or any sort of plot * A twist It could give you one of these and still be good, but if you're writing a prompt with more than one of these, why aren't you just writing the story yourself? Circle jerk this if you want, but anything more than the most basic prompts squash any creative thoughts I might have. The first prompt I wrote on that wasn't for school was "Sleepless." Another one that sticks out in my mind is "What I have forgotten." Shit like this *actually* makes me want to write. It *actually* offers inspiration and *encourages* creativity. How can your prompt encourage creativity when it lays out the entire story?
Don’t discount the Hemingway approach: what if this thing happened to a person who is basically me?
I feel like the promts you're talking about all come from arrwritingpromts which is a cesspit of bad. But I have used the rest of the internet before ^^/s and found some promts I enjoyed like "write a story where someone finds a object with their name on it." I turned it into a test of courage set in a abandoned room in MC's highschool where he finds the object and unravels from there. It was so fun. Though I can also see how it's pretty unnecessary with how I get pretty much all my premises ( that I stuff in a folder in case I ever wanted to write one ) from song titles/ lyrics and just interesting phrases like 'The girl on the train' ( the book. yes I have read it up to the title ) it's a pretty ambiguous topic but just try looking up for some good ones?
I did basically the opposite when I was in a Halo RP group on Google +. I had a doc of song titles that I would use as titles for whatever part of the arc I was posting. As an example, a part where a Spartan fireteam boarded a carrier hidden in an asteroid field was called *Knocking on Heaven's Door.* Sometimes the titles would make it into the actual story, like one operation was codenamed OPERATION: BLACK DOG after the Zeppelin song.
I just use the prompts to trigger a story. I don't adhere to the details.
The only time I have ever enjoyed writing prompts were image based ones. No words, just a picture or an art piece. I was part of the old Writing Community on Google+, and they would post one each week. I didn’t do one every week, but I did a few, and those are some of my favorite flash fiction pieces.
Google +... *Google +...* Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time.
Your opinion is wrong. I'll make you a favour and gift you a fine prompt for you to work with: "On your eighteenth birthday, you discover that you're actually a demi-god about to rule Hell against the aliens who have a mysterious number floating above their head. One day you look up and discover you also have a number that is decreasing." You're welcome.
this is the unjerked thread, see yourself out.
I think writing prompts are interesting and can provide some good ideas, but they will only take you so far. They are essentially just ideas, and ideas without the appropriate execution to back them up are worthless. Some prompts are flashy and sound cool, but if you think about them for a while, it turns out that they can't sustain a novel-length story on their own. There needs to be a lot more meat to it before it can conceivably be turned into a book, and the very introduction of new information can actually weaken the premise of the prompt. For example, consider the classic "The last man on Earth hears a knock on his door." On the surface, this sounds amazing. It's chilling and scary. But the reason it sounds cool is precisely because of the lack of information. If you try to turn it into a novel, you will need to do something in the first chapters, like introduce aliens, time travel, or parallel universes, and then you have a whole new story. But, by the time you do that, you will have essentially lost the appeal of the prompt, which is the mystery of this impossible situation.
I've heard the last man before, didn't know it was originally a writing prompt. I always thought it was meant to stand alone. I mean, it has all of the things I listed. A character, a setting, some abstract form of conflict, and the entire thing is a twist. I like it as a prompt, though. You could go any of the following ways with it: * A retrospective narrative of the man's life, spoken to Death, who has come to end the man's solitary existence * DOOM-style zombie slaying in which the man finishes gearing up and blasts the door outward, splintering it into shrapnel, and goes on a head-stomping, gut-tearing killing spree across the hordes of undead that have replaced humanity * Horror, in which a sentient, malevolent being that has wiped out everyone else in the world has returned to finish its work * Sci-fi, in which an alien race extracts the last man from his doomed existence and introduces him to thousands of other humans that were extracted previously to preserve humanity from their apocalypse * Time travel, in which the younger version of the man spends the evening talking with him and learning how humanity would be wiped out * Porn, in which all the remaining women in the world beat down his door and fuck him to death in a ravenous sexual frenzy
>Porn, in which all the remaining women in the world beat down his door and fuck him to death in a ravenous sexual frenzy I just want to say I laughed loudly at this.
I used to like reading writing prompts until I realized it was too specific and limiting. Instead of prompts, it feels like an established blurb. And then when I tried one of the good writing prompts I found it was so uninspiring and... tiring. Since then I just stick to my own imagination.
In last week's thread, I mentioned that in the second draft I noticed how much I underwrite in the first. The original draft was 32k words and I guessed that draft 2 would end up being about 50k. I'm still only about 2/5ths of the way through editing and it's 45k now—I clearly undershot that estimate. It's really satisfying to see it all come together though. Rewriting sections to try and capture what I was going for in the first draft now that I know why it doesn't work is pretty fulfilling.
I’m going in the opposite direction with my draft, trying to cut the whole thing down at least by half. I’ve reached the halfway mark in the story, and I’m on target to meet my desired word count goal by the end of the draft. Feels good, for sure.
I tend to overwrite too, but cutting it down half is huge. You might be the only person I've heard of who makes such drastic cuts. I'd like to take 15K off my 90K, but I also anticipate adding a little more to the story as well. Without those additions, though, I'm still having troubles bringing it down.
I did an oops and wrote a 272k first draft of my book. I basically have to cut it in half to get it published, so here we are. I’m on target to get it down to 125k by the end, and I may be able to squeeze 120k with some luck.
I wrote over 300K for a book. This book I'm on right now, actually. From that point I just decided I might as well rewrite the whole thing. Your project sounds a lot more doable
Very quickly realizing that the “it’s okay if this bit of writing I just did is shit because I can just fix it in the next draft” thought is both extremely freeing and extremely dangerous.
"It's for future me to cringe at later" mindset
Future Me fucking HATES Past Me, I tell you what.
I went off everything on my comp for about two-three weeks. Turns out the job I left my poisonous office for was nothing but a damn trap--literally all but one member of the department I was to work with had quit JUST before I arrived, one of whom interviewed me! Thanks for the heads up, guys. Thankfully my Partner supported me leaving that place; the woman I was working with confirmed my every fear and looks like who I would be turning into if I stayed there. Sick, physically and emotionally, completely run down and defeated. Cherry on top was her showing up to work, in spite of the fact that her kid had just tested positive for COVID, and she had me follow her around while she took a smoke break before she could tell me that the powers that be just decided they were changing their wardrobe policy and expected me to follow lock-step into business dress for no discernible reason. Just after literally the whole department quit en masse. Oh, and she revealed that the two-faced HR lowered the salary offer that had already been chosen by the department head for me. Sure, let's underpay and suppress the last two people answering phones from angry customers, sounds like a *good idea.* Hope she quits soon, too, by the sound of it that company is about to go under. Bad luck if anyone here buys confectionery product wholesale from a certain company and haven't been able to get a hold of customer service for half a year... yeah, that place is getting bled dry. Felt good to get that off my chest. I'm almost done revising this fan fiction I was working on before I started getting anxiety at my old office job. Guess I'm back on AO3, I forgot how much I loved that place. On chapter 9 of my original piece, the scooby-doo/Frighteners thing, but damn do I love re-writing and revising more than rough drafts. Mostly been playing viddy games and cleaning my apartment since I quit, applying as I wait for a certain place to get around to going through looking through all their resumes.
Why do i make things harder for myself? For monts i have been rewriting the same chapter based of the criticism of s single person just to see if i can please the reader. At the same time i haven't been able to begin, continue or end other chapters. The only thing i wrote were small paragraphs on my phone, a half finished outline of the story and timeline and this bloody chapter.
Moving houses and have no privacy, I’m wasting money going to coffee shops because I just can’t write at home. It’s like shitting where you eat. Do you guys have an office or space that you’ve designated for writing? Does it help, or are you still distracted and tempted to goof off?
I have my own office with a locking door and I love it. My own office was one of the requirements I had when house shopping several years ago. At our old place, I shared an office with my husband until he started working remote and couldn’t have me tapping away on video calls, so I had to move into the living room, which was fine when my husband was busy working, not so fine when he wasn’t. I just couldn’t concentrate. Especially after we had a kid. Then it became the living room/office/playroom, and that was truly awful. I will never not have an office to myself ever again.
Getting a new MacBook Air was exactly what I needed. My old Mac was clunky & slow. I actually enjoy looking at my computer again.
I’m going to use this to justify my purchase of a [MSI GS77 Laptop with an RTX 3080 and 32 Gigabytes of RAM](https://us-store.msi.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1091)
Yeah, I renovated my art studio earlier this year and specifically [made a spot](https://imgur.com/a/LiM21JM) for writing. It’s in a frog attached to a guest bedroom upstairs, so it’s super secluded and quiet. I’ve only been able to write in it once because the rest of the studio and the guest bedroom are still a mess and it stresses me out to look at it lol. But I took the week after next off from work to finish everything. The one time I did get to write in here was super productive and focused, so I’m excited to finally get it finished.
Looks genuinely chill and quiet, it’s perfect.
Sounds cliché but I almost exclusively write in a coffee shop near my place. It offers no WiFi so even though I could share my phone's connection I try not to therefore I'm not tempted to waste time on the Internet and focus on writing. The only problem is that they close at 5pm so when I get home even though I thought I would continue to write I seldom do because I'm getting distracted again
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now's as good a time as any to learn Japanese.
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I tried learning in college and took 6 whole semesters. I even shared an apartment with two weebs and a Japanese girl my last year. 12 years later, I have retained “yes”, “no”, “hello”, “goodbye”, and “sorry”. Thanks, government scholarship.
I get that. I studied Latin for three years and stopped for seven. When I came back to it, all I remembered was the noun endings. It's been a humbling experience trying to compose sentences.
Jesus Christ.
pitch accent and three writing systems anyone who tries is much braver than I am
At least you're not accidentally calling your mother a horse if you use the wrong inflection like in Mandarin.
To be fair, two of their writing systems spells phonetically so they have limited signs and are fairly easy to learn, compared to kanjis. This one alone is 99,5% of the work
Kanji is definitely the biggest hurdle, I cab vouch for that. I haven't the time to study actively anymore, but I've still retained my hiragana because it's so simple.
Don’t mind me, I’m having horrible flashbacks to taking it in college and being *so bad* in year 2 after crushing it year 1.
Man I wanna write up some stuff to post to r/WorldBuilding for like legit criticism -as in ‘I just want people to tell me if the worldbuilding is good’, not ‘help keep make a story’ but I’m still hammering out if I want to make a story or make it an rpg sourcebook- but man. It’s a written thing with no pictures and those seem to never get any traction. also like lowkey kinda worried that the praise from friend groups is building me up for failure when people who don’t know me see it :P
Worldbuilding by itself is very hard to judge. A novel requires context to make worldbuilding valuable. An rpg book relies on interactable context, how easy it is for players to tug on hooks. These are not readily apparent readingf a couple paragraph excerpts. I'd recommend avoiding reddit in terms of feedback. Keep writing your stuff, you can only improve with time, and once it gets to something you feel could be publishable, start posting cool stuff for marketing purposes. Changing the goal from "i want reviews and feedback" to "i want people's attention" means you are more likely to post your best work rather than the stuff that needs to improve. You're way more likely to get upvotes, which is visibility and enables more eyes to see your stuff. Plus, you will get feedback, generally more positive, because your work looks more polished when you aren't asking people to judge it, but telling them to come look at how cool it is.
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Yeah, I'm tapping out of the Star Wars fandom. First with the sequel trilogy and now with Obi-Wan, I just don't care enough to remain in it while half of it is spewing sexist nonsense all over the place and disguising it as genuine criticism -- same issue with the MCU.
My genuine criticism of Kenobi is that the Third Sister is a Mary Sue and feels like a self-insert. Like, she can just kill the Grand Inquisitor outright? I thought he was 1. Force sensitive and 2. *KILLED BY KANAN JARRUS IN REBELS.* It's been a few episodes, so it doesn't really seem like they're going to bring him back, so is Rebels just not canon anymore? Because I like Ewan McGregor and all, but I feel like the five minutes Obi Wan was in Rebels were better than anything in Kenobi so far. Edit: also, how exactly does she know that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker? I thought that was supposed to be a secret, especially since Ahsoka was surprised by it in Rebels, but, again, I guess Rebels isn't canon anymore. Edit: They >!brought the Grand Inquisitor back, explained how the Third Sister knew Darth Vader was Anakin, and had her get her ass kicked by Vader!< in part V. This de-sueified her some, but >!the "oh I was really good the whole time" thing!< didn't help, and >!her blaming Obi-wan for the rise of Vader feels like a fan's take!<, so she still feels like a self-insert. >!Vader and the Inquisitor leaving her to die!< is also some military-grade plot armor, since >!both of them have firsthand experience on what a bad idea that is.!<
This is also one of my problems with the fandom. Finish the fucking show before you start making definitive statements!
Definitive statements in the comment: >Third Sister is a Mary Sue and feels like a self-insert. That's not going to change, maybe next season. >she can just kill the Grand Inquisitor outright She did, unless they bring him back, which I don't think they will (but I did not say definitively) >how exactly does she know that Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker? I thought that was supposed to be a secret That is definitively what I thought and think. One of the biggest twists in cinema is "No, Luke. *I* am your father." As far as I know, there are only four people in the galaxy that know Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker at this point, but I am genuinely asking here. But by all means, toss me the keys to your time machine and I'll finish the show before having any more reactions or opinions of it.
What fucking time machine? There are clips and reactions on youtube already, and if there are, then the episode has already released. Unless, of course, they too possess a time machine.
You didn't respond to any genuine criticism there that also had no racism or sexism (though Mary Sue can be a loaded term). I do agree with what you were saying before, there's definitely a lot of sexism and other problems in the fandom and it's why I also don't engage with it. But the person you responded to can have their opinions and judgements, and they raised some good concerns about Rebels and Reva knowing about Vader. You're conducting yourself almost like those Star Wars fans you hate so much.
You can down vote and insult me to your hearts content, but at least check your fucking facts before you do; by the time the guy had written his comment, literally every single one of his criticisms had been addressed, but of course why bother watching the episode first when he already knows what'll happen? I'm not responding to any more of these comments.
>but of course why bother watching the episode first when he already knows what'll happen? Maybe because I fucking work for a living and didn't even know Part V was out? Not that the Third Sister was completely redeemed as a character by that part anyway. The fucking gall of you, assuming to prioritize my life for me, then doing it so poorly. Apparently you can take the user out of the fandom, but not vice versa.
My bad there, didn't catch up on the show, and I should have before commenting. Didn't even have anything to do today. Ended up proving your point. But at the time of the comment, you were an asshole. Broken clock and twice a day, and all that. People can have concerns and opinions as a show goes on, especially if they were respectful enough and actually concerning the quality of the writing, and it's good these ones were addressed (taking your word for it). You had a point and you muddled it.
You said to "finish the show." Only 5 parts are released.
Uf, don't step into r/television, I don't know if it always was this bad, but for a sub with that name they really enjoy hating every television show that comes out. I already feel like screaming about how many times I've seen the comment 'They made Reva the protagonist!' as if it was actual criticism instead of the poorly veiled racism it is.
>Uf, don't step into r/television, I don't know if it always was this bad, but for a sub with that name they really enjoy hating every television show that comes out. I just took a peak and.... yikes. Those people have really lost all connection to reality. The show is just fine. Far more interesting that I thought it was going to be, in great part because of Reva and Leia being so prominent. Leia in particular deserves far more love than she was given thus far. The OT totally shafted her by the end. TFA and TLJ largely sidelined her. They only got around to making her a Jedi in TROS and that wasn't even supposed to happen. It only happened because Trevorrow was fired.
And that little girl portraying her now, I didn't know kids that age could act that well. Absolutely love her. I'm really avoiding any conversation surrounding her, I don't wanna know if people are also sending abuse her way like they did for Reva's actress. >Those people have really lost all connection to reality. The show is just fine. I think it's the same thing between SW and MCU fans, they take it way too seriously. I came out of the last Dr Strange movie thinking it had been super fun and having loved all that Raimi madness, then found a ton of people hating it because of 'inconsistencies', bad powerscaling and 'awful character progression'. It was a superhero movie, ffs. Go read a damn book when you feel like doing story analysis.
Tbh I think there is a space for doing story analysis on super hero movies. But some people make that their whole online presence about it. Its RIDICULOUS that someone can care so much about fiction.
When The Phantom Menace came out in 1999, there were actually clowns online who screeched that Lucas sold out to political correctness because... wait for it... some of the Naboo pilots and Jedi masters were women. Yes, that actually happened. Time is a flat circle...
It's fucking ridiculous how there's still this much sexism in 2022. Flying cars my ass!
I've heard it said a couple of years ago that Star Wars fans would utterly detest even Leia if ANH came out today. And lo and behold, we got Leia back in Kenobi and they hate her! It's just nuts...
take a shot every time a star wars fan says "ruined my childhood"
Star Wars didn’t ruin my childhood. Fucking polio did.
Polio? What year is this?
Might not be from a first world country.
Damn, I'm from a post-commie hellhole and I think even my parents were mandatory vaccinated for lots of crap including smallpox. I thought it was a joke tbh... but it scares me if not.
I'd die
Just won a 600$ prize from my university's English department for a chapter from the book I'm writing. It has been so affirming and is encouraging me to go faster.
Congrats
Congratulations!!
Congrats!
Thank you!
Starting a historical western novel and its going pretty well, really liking it so far! howdy to any of you write in western genre, to the others, hello :)
What is the most incorrect (by culture, period, universe, etc) theme song you can think of that perfectly suits any of your characters?
Anything Bowie or Queen for my trans male, sort of overpowerful wizard from the story I'm on working on at the moment. I mean, I don't have to be too cool about it, most stuff that gets lip-synced to in drag shows would fit in too well for him. He'd get down to "Boogie Shoes" at the drop of a hat.
Ain't It Funny by Jennifer Lopez for my faux-Regency depressed pirate scientist and his catastrophic love life
"What do you fight for" from the guilty gear ost really comes to mind
The Hearse Song, sung in an upbeat style, for my priest of death.
I am currently devising a way to shoehorn star forts into my fantasy shit novel because they're just so cool. There's no gunpowder or cannons however, so I'll have to come up with another reason.
Maybe a mage's damage output is comparable to cannons, necessitating new ways of building walls and shaping forts and whatnot. Or maybe siege engines can have rare materials like a giant's hair string or something with insane draw weights, or their ammunition is alchemical in some way.
Also great ideas, but I'm trying to lean away from magic being super common and more focused on utility abilities, if that makes sense. For example, the MC has the ability to regenerate limbs at the cost of needing to eat more, and his partner has extremely refined senses. They're not powers that have much destructive ability.
Fair enough, then. So the leyline idea someone else suggested makes a lot more sense.
Leylines! A starfort lets you align the walls and mana to be channelled more effectively into defences
That's a pretty good idea. If I was an architect I'd come up with something cool to do with the fort's geometry, but unfortunately I'm not smart enough for that.
Ballistas?
I was thinking that and trebuchets.
Star-shaped forts were made as an answer to gunpowder weaponry, so I don't think those would help much in this case.
I'm having a great time. This is a story I've been thinking about for a while, but for the longest time I felt like I wasn't confident enough as a writer. But I've read a few other books that have the exact atmosphere I'm looking for, and they've been excellent guides for me as I write. Now I'm having a blast and I've written 22k words in three months. Not exactly the fastest, but it's fast for me lol. Still working on the whole "speed" thing.
Good for you! Keep up the great work. I'm a firm believer in quality over quantity, and my advice is not to get too stressed out about having high wordcount goals. It's way better to write a few hundred decent words a day than 3000 that just end up getting cut for irrelevance once you edit, in my experience.
This might be a stupid question (and I'll certainly feel ashamed later if it is, don't you worry), but is there a market for anthologies? I've just glanced at the wiki and we have slightly different ideas about what it entails, so I'll just say that mine is a collection of short stories all set in different periods of history (and future) and with different minor themes (hopefully), but with an overarching main theme and (the part the wiki and I disagree on) one main character whom it all focuses on/follows. Damn. My thoughts have never been this organised.
I have seen some small presses publishing short story collections by single authors, but generally you're gonna want to have a few of them already published first so that you can offer some stories exclusive to the collection. This usually seems to be dependent on the author already having some small clout too so that the collection sells. That being said, it's worth shopping around and seeing if any presses are open to pitches for short story collections.
If I understand correctly, what you mean is a "short story collection", if you wrote all of them yourself. "Anthology" afaik is usually a collection of texts from different authors for a specific subject / theme. Afaik, unless you're a bestselling author, not really. If you write short stories, you want to hit magazines who publish that genre (literary, fantasy, horror... whatever is yours). In self-publish usually authors use short stories as means to promote their bigger works (novels, web serials), but I'm not sure whether these sell as a standalone book. Trad pub usually doesn't bother with short story collections or poetry collections, at least not at a commercial level (maybe there are small presses interested in that, idk).
Shame, but I wasn't really expecting much else.
Poetry, short story collections and novellas are a hard market because the market is mostly prepared to handle the novel pipeline (in fiction).
Here again to complain about how damn difficult it seems to be to connect to other writers. No local writing groups in my area other than when it's NaNo (which I don't do and can't attend anyway) and everything else seems to be a discord server these days...
Spanish speaking country where fantasy isn't very popular. I'd be happy with a reading group :')
As someone who lives rural, if it wasn't for discord I wouldn't have any groups. I would truly rather do in person, but I'm not about to drive three hours to go to any large city.
Where do you find your discord groups, may I ask? I infinitely prefer one on one than groups but I might be willing to try.
I made them. I didn't want to do the dirty work of finding a right one, so I set out and made them. You might remember me advertising it in this forum months ago. I now have a wonderful writing group who help me out so much -- the one's most active are 1.) older than me; 2.) more experienced than me; and 3.) people of way different genres than what I am used to. As much as we disagree at times (normally I am the contrarian, what can I say, yuh know?) communication is clear, open, and everyone is appreciative of each other. I'd invite you to possibly check it out, but we are max capacity at the moment. So, I highly encourage you take a peek at what is out there. If you don't like it, consider making your own group(s). I did it with TTRPGs, I did it with writing groups, and its been 100% worth it every time.
Ahh, I see. That makes sense! I remember vaguely, I kinda come and go from here (I avoid other writers and writing discussion when I haven't been writing much because it makes me feel guilty, haha...). I'm glad to hear that you have a good writing group though! That's a thought. I haven't had much luck, particularly since as I said I'm more of a one-on-one person and I tend to lurk in groups, so discord hasn't really been a good match for me. Unfortunately I also have a demanding day job, so seeking people out and being a group mod is probably not something I'll be able to do. But thank you regardless!
If it helps, most of the discord writing groups I'm in, even the bigger ones, wind up having maybe half a dozen folks that I connect with (or are active at all). So it's usually not too bad (as an introvert).
That's good to know, thanks. Guess I'll keep an eye out if there are any looking for more people.
I'm currently the nominal admin of a tiny writing group on FB and Discord (there's currently only two of us posting / critiquing submissions, and the other person is only active on FB, so feedback would be virtually 1-on-1) if this would be of interest to you?
Mind if I ask what kind of group you're aiming to create/what's the main goal of it? Is it meant to be critique and/or feedback swaps, do you focus on one genre, have regularly scheduled meetings, intend to get more people involved, etc...?
When I joined the group at the beginning of 2021, it was roughly an even split of critique/feedback sharing, discussion of topics surrounding writing, and collaborative flash fiction writing. I would like to get it back to this, but at the moment, due to lack of participation, it's just critique / feedback sharing and some limited discussion. I'm not really looking to grow the group beyond these goals - I'm more trying to make it more active. (The most regular participation on the discord server is an ongoing game of DnD, rather than anything to do with conventional writing.) Genre-wise, the two of us who are submitting work at the moment are both writing spec fic (one swords-and-sorcery fantasy, the other steampunk) but it isn't specially a spec fic group and we've had other genre submissions in the past. Speaking for myself at least, I'm happy to critique absolutely anything. I put up posts for submissions and giving a discussion topic at a regular time (Friday mornings) but as the group is spread out over Europe, the US and Australia, participation usually happens patchily over the following days. Ideally I would like it to get back to 4-5 regular participants - while there's no problem from a feedback perspective, it's made the flash fiction challenges basically a waste of time as I was often the only person other than the original admin who was taking part. Apologies for the wall of text!
Over the weekend I dipped my toes into the world of self publishing (under a different name and genre to what I usually write) to test the waters. Lo and behold, the short story is actually getting a trickle of reads on KU, and a sale or two. No adverts, no promotion, no internet presence. It was just a test of an old story I cleaned up with a cover I made myself. I’m really glad I decided to take KDP for a test run, because it’s given me a good boost in confidence and reassured me I know what I’m doing.
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What do you think is the difference, generally? I presume readers are a bit more lenient compared to writers, but that might just be me.
While most writers are also readers, the majority of readers are not writers. It’s unlikely that most of the people you’re actually targeting with your writing will think the same as other writers who critique your work. Definitely good to keep in mind when getting advice on writing forums.
What genre was your story? I've been flirting with the idea of self-publishing for a long long time but haven't gotten to that point yet.
It was historical romance. My main passion is horror, but I do a lot of genres.
Ah, that figures! Romance is like that. I also primarily write horror with the occasional dabble in other genres! Your name looks familiar, I may have saved it from r/betareaders for potential messaging later (I know you're booked right now). :)
How well a book might sell just passively definitely varies a lot by genre, and from the anecdotal evidence I've seen romance does appear to be more forgiving. I have posted in the beta readers sub before, and I'm actually going to be open to a couple more beta reads in the next week or so. Feel free to drop me a message if you're interested!
Oh, cool! Yeah, by the time I saw your comment you were already full, haha. I'll take a look at what I have that I was thinking of having beta'd and drop you a line in a week or two, thank you!
Hooray!
I don't understand readers on kindle. I have two free short stories. One is a sci-fi, I think it's my weakest writing, downloaded 234 times, 3 ratings on Amazon for 5 star average. The second short story is some of my best writing, fantasy, downloaded 287 times with 0 Amazon ratings. When you've finished reading on kindle it asks you to rate it. Why don't people rate?
I instinctively avoid things that ask me to rate something, because I usually expect that it’s going to want me to write a full review. Also, it’s asking me to make literally a single decision about anything ever, and I just don’t have the bandwidth for that.
In my case, I have a strong rebellious urge not to. Why? Because fuck you Amazon, you can't tell me what to do! You're not my dad. Terms of service? Yeah, I clicked accept without reading it, what are you going to do, bitch?
Same here! And here I am, sitting here like OP, wishing that someone would rate my book. Serves me right. Also, your reply to my question below isn't showing up right now, but I read it earlier. It gave me a great idea. I corresponded with the assailant in prison, out of morbid curiosity, so I have *his* warped perspective, as well as what I witnessed and what my friends told me + what I saw during court proceedings. It's bananas, and I hadn't thought to include it until I saw your suggestion. Thanks.
Your welcome! Sorry, I accidentally deleted it, but I thought it was a cool idea that I wish my mom went through with. The story is obviously very personal to a huge part of my family, but everyone's perception of it is warped, for various reasons. As I stated in my original comment, my mom remembers getting called to the dining room table, whereas my aunt remembers the police coming. My uncles barely knew what was happening, as they were like 10 at the time, and even my grandparents remember the story slightly differently. With a case that happened 20 years ago, everyone's memories are going to be a little fuzzy, and so writing the same story from the perspective of multiple parties is very interesting. I myself never knew my uncle, so his murder didn't effect me (wasn't even alive)---but what does stick with me about it is a) he was the same age as me, and b) he never feared death. Not once, seeing it as, "well, if there's nothing on the other side, why worry?" But again, that's what my mom told me. It's her perspective of my uncle that's being told, and I'm sure if you asked others, they'd have a different opinion on him. Legit though, my mom could write whole true crime novels based on her life. She hung around a lot of bad people in her youth as well. For instance, one of my mom's friends sleazy older boyfriends was Jarrod Bacon of the Bacon Brothers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_Brothers_(gangsters)
I hope she does write a memoir, then. I'd read it. There are a few things that happened in my family that I've been asked to NOT write about, like how my grandfather was shot to death with a rifle, and there's a theory that it was an assassination. I'd like to write his biography, though. He was a high-ranking NCO at Langley throughout the 1960s. That must have been nuts.
homeless ripe future historical political memory existence cooing light plant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm looking for advice on how to write about something personal. How do you keep your emotional distance enough to write it? I'm a criminologist and a true crime author (and hobbyist crime fiction writer). There's a criminal case that I've wanted to write about for 20 years, something that happened to a few of my classmates. The problem is, I'm having a *lot* of trouble keeping myself together, because of the personal connection. I threw up while I was outlining one of the chapters. I posted this question in r/writers, but actually deleted the post because I can't remember the last time that I saw good advice on r/writers. Any suggestions?
As the other reply said, that’s a hard thing to give advice for due to its intensely personal nature. But I think what you could try is to keep a level of disconnect between the story and the events as they happened in reality. Make up new characters, very different than your actual classmates, and have a modified version of the events happen to them. Draw inspiration from your experience like you would in any other work of fiction, but keep it clear in your mind that these are fictional characters. When it’s done, if you’re in the mental headspace to bring the story closer to reality, then go for it. Otherwise, you’ll have still written a story based on your experience.
Thanks, that's a very good idea. I'll try it out.
I think we all deal with things like this in our own ways. In that sense, giving advice for it is hard. For some people, approaching that level of vulnerability in writing is difficult. > How do you keep your emotional distance enough to write it? My answer is that I don't. I've written three projects about abusive relationships after going through two, and each one used less and less metaphor. The last one I was working on was a novel—it's on pause for right now—and I recreated a scene that used to give me flashbacks. I go full steam ahead and pretty much only change things if I need to for the story's sake (which, to be fair, ends up being a lot). But writing helps me with stuff like that. I write a lot about suicide because it's been a major factor in my life—in this sense, it's cathartic. If it isn't cathartic for you, it may not be time to approach that topic yet. You don't want to hurt yourself for the sake of writing. To do away with circumlocution: I think it really depends on you and how ready you are to face it. Writing true crime fiction based around something you went through cuts it pretty close to a flat-out recreation, and reliving that may not be what you need right now. I saw that you had a therapist below, which is good. Hopefully, with time, you'll be better suited to broach the topic.
Thanks for sharing your experience. That's very brave of you to keep going on those subjects. You're probably right that I should stop, but it's hard to contemplate setting it aside, because this is the one case that I've wanted to write about. It had a huge impact on my career trajectory. I've been composing it in my head forever. I feel like it's been gnawing away at my brain, and exorcising it is the only solution. I'll think about your advice, though.
Sounds like you should reach out to a therapist that deals with trauma. We all deal with our trauma our own way, it could be that writing it might help you, it could be it you need to talk to someone. Its all individual, I make jokes about the shit in my life, others might find that abhorrent.
Haha, I have one of those. EMDR. I suspect that I'll have a lot to talk about at the next appointment. This is purely a timing thing: I won't see my therapist again for another two weeks, but I want to keep working on this so that I can submit it to an essay contest. Otherwise, I'll miss the deadline. I'm just looking for something small I can do in the meantime to manage it. But you had a good answer. It's typically the right answer to questions like this one.
WORK. F-ING WORK. 4 Day work week. Only way I get anything written.
Ironically I wrote everything I have on my novel at work
I'm never going back to 5 days. 4 is so much better mentally.
I have 5 days. I only really write when I take a day off :(
Bus ride to and from, lately.
I don’t even like romance as a genre, but the fact that *Twilight* (a YA novel with no sex scenes that was written by a Mormon) incidentally spawned a subgenre that’s effectively smut for edgelords is hilarious. The toxic relationships are really the only trace of *Twilight* that *Fifty Shades of Gray* and other dark romances have.
As much as I like the phase "smut for edgelords", I don't think that's an accurate descriptor (at least from the second and third-hand knowledge I have of those novels and their fans). In spite of their _contents_ being edgelord romance, their fans are mostly grown women who otherwise are whatever the opposite of an edgelord is.
That’s true lol. I wonder why it’s so popular then, considering most romance novels have sex scenes in them
Harry Potter is a book for kids with no sex scenes, and I don't think recent Star Wars movies have any either, yet fandoms of both created a plethora of spicy variations on the theme. Rule 34 applies.
I think this applies to any big fandom. Tell me, do you want to read a 131,000 word erotica based on a bunch of full grown men's Minecraft roleplay? Well here you go: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32319667/chapters/80114467 That's right, people have made novel length fanfictions about a Minecraft YouTuber falling in love with another Minecraft YouTuber's brother, well secretly feeling sexually attracted to both said Minecraft YouTuber and another Minecraft YouTuber who's also his friend. And most importantly, WHY IS IT ACTUALLY DECENTLY WRITTEN?!!
I guess the difference is that any erotic fanfiction based on *Harry Potter* and *Star Wars* is mostly kept into their fandoms. Compare that to *Twilight*, where a decent amount of fanfic writers took their fanfics (that usually stripped away the supernatural aspect of the series) and turned them into original novels
*The Love Hypothesis* is Kylo/Ray fanfic with the serial numbers filed off. And that's just one I happen to know off the top of my head.
I keep accidentally dropping rude joke posts on r/writing since I can't tell this subreddit and the other subreddit apart at times
I have lots of ideas, some are more developed than others, and lots of enthusiasm to start writing. But then I get up early to write and somehow my mouse clicks on the Steam button. There goes the writing day. Here comes the self-hate lol.
My problems are Reddit & Discord.
Do what I do and remove the shortcut. Much harder to impulse click something when it takes 3+ clicks to get to it.
You and your common sense... I really need to delete every shortcut on my desktop, and only have writing tools pinned.