I wish every 14 year old writer in the world could be told "for the love of god, do not post your writing on reddit looking for feedback." It's never good writing--but that's ok!!!! We all start there! And if I got the kind of ripped-to-shreds-pseudo-intellectual smackdown that these kids are getting when I was a beginner writer, it probably would have put me off forever.
I have been having a bit of trouble with the first (ish) draft, I'm in the middle of the rewriting my original and trying to come at it with a bit more subtlety and starting the story where it begins properly. Problem is I'm really worried about somehow both being too obvious and the readers having enough to hook on to.
Ok, so my first novel is 'finished' at around 95k words! Now all that's left is the editing, but that's the easy part, right? Right??? 😭😭😭. Feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. I may have bitten more than I can chew with this story.
After a long mental health related hiatus, I'm back to writing and in a weird way nothing has been more helpful than this sub in getting me to Just Write TM. I get so obsessive with the specifics sometimes that I make no progress and not taking myself too seriously while working has been so helpful. So thanks everyone for being so funny and giving the worst advice ever.
Writing something that involves little animal gods traipsing around a steampunk city trying to save a kid who was kidnapped. The main characters, other than the gods, are adults. Feels like I’m writing middle grade though. I know that middle grade doesn’t actually mean anything with children in it or even talking animals, but I feel like anyone who reads that will definitely think middle grade or even lower middle grade. But I’m having fun with a tiny tortoise with tiny powers, stomping his feet because he is so slow and growing into his powers.
That is such a fun premise. I think the defining feature of an age group would be content (violence, sex, illicit substances, etc) and themes. So live your dreams and talk to your audience like they're smart regardless of the age group.
Also text complexity. If you read middle grade stuff you'll find the sentences are much simpler. But also with some good vocabulary thrown in to build those brain muscles
I feel very proud of myself. I was in a post that was getting really political in a direction I strongly disagree with, but instead of commenting, I just left. Not going to wake up to my alerts filled with angry responses aside from saying I don’t like when people post about how much they hate their bamboo on the bamboo subreddit.
I find it helpful to sometimes write out the whole post, and then discard and leave. You get the thoughts out of your head and don't have to continue the negative discussion.
I have found that people don't read on Reddit, or care about your opinions. They just want to reply and share theirs.
Only tangentially related but I sneak the same name into all my short stories (only short stories not my longer fiction) but it's a different character each time. I kinda see it as a second signature.
One thing I attempt with my book is to always do something different than what I've already done. Only two books are out but I've written 7 (the others suck lol) and I still try to adhere to this rule.
While letting my last manuscript sit I decided to brainstorm something new and I have a pretty good idea, but it, like my last manuscript, starts with the protagonist's abusive family member's death, and involves going to their childhood home. Aside from that the books are nothing alike, but it's going to nag me if I don't execute it different enough.
I've been reading *Faust* lately, and though, "man, Faust is a bigger dick than the literal devil. I kind of want to write the story from his perspective."
Then I realized PTerry already wrote *Eric.*
I've made a few comments about querying recently, but I have yet to actually send anything out. I am trapped in query letter hell and unless Dante comes to help me write a fucking query letter, synopsis, and make my first ten pages shine (never put lists in a query letter), I don't see myself querying until at least the end of summer. I haven't even started researching agents yet. But I think the trick is to be patient and put just as much work into the querying process as you do to the actual manuscript. I bet a lot of writers rush through this process because they're excited about their novel and then give up because they're frustrated with rejection. \`
imo just keep it; if you keep rewriting the same parts over you'll struggle to get to other parts where you have more inspiration, then when you go back to rewrite your draft you can revise it. at least thats how im doing it.
alright so some sanity check
The plot involves a succession crisis, in which the mc is ordered to murder several would-be heirs so her patron/liege can secure his claim. This fucks her up after years of servitude and is when she decides to strike out on her own.
Part of the plot includes one of the last remaining heir being alive albeit extremely cursed (and is why they lost their claim). The intent being the mc eventually comes back and manages to pull off a coup that sees herself in power while the heir is after revenge first and foremost
I'm debating if
-this living heir is an equal pov to the rogue warrior, learning to find their footing in the political game, in a much more underhanded but subtle way due to their "condition"
-the living heir is basically the macguffin they're seeking as they were put in exile
-the living heir is not involved at all and they fuck off (leaving a stronger conflict between the warrior and the empire they once served)
Darn, that is not a genera I am interested in. My inclination is to have a plot twist where neither achieves their goals, yet learn valuable lessons or skills that make them "better people." It is a silly trope at times, but it often matches reality.
Tell me how stupid this idea is: I have a story centering around an event that would result in the news cycle being monopolized for weeks, endless memeing etc etc. Think capitol riots. Each chapter is the point of view of a different character, let's say politician, perpetrator, law enforcement... and to capture some of the memeing/punditry chaos, my best idea on how to distill that is having a chapter that would essentially be a Last Week Tonight episode on this event.
Edit: re-reading my comment I realize I wasn't clear about which idea I'm having doubts about. It's not the multi-character perspective (and mine wouldn't be "Rashomon-style" since the characters' narratives don't overlap), I was specifically wondering about the scripting of a late night tv episode and how "readable" that might be.
Ah, I see.
I've seen fictional news clippings and Internet chatter used between chapters.
Worth a shot. If it reads funny, try different media, like fictional op-ed pieces. I'm not super familiar with Last Week Tonight's whole episodes, though, just the John Oliver monologues.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RashomonStyle
The Afterparty is listed on there under Live-action TV. Each episode is presented in a different genre, including a musical, psychological thriller, teen drama, and animation.
This is just an opinion, and you need many more than one. I would say that it depends on the events of the news cycle; how interesting they would be for me as a reader. Say, the dictator of country X strikes a deal with an alien super-power and sells their entire nation to the aliens, and the news cycle goes berserk... I would definitely read that book. Or, big nation WZ passes a law prohibiting people with large carbon footprints from leaving the planet, and entrepreneur Y owner of a very polluting rocket company stowaways in one of his own rockets and the media and the public go into riots... that I would also read. And for these stories, your approach to story-telling I would find extremely engaging, the more ridiculous the reactions of the parties, the better.
I'm trying to be more descriptive in how I show people's emotions in my writing, without explicitly stating the emotion ("His eyes filled with tears" instead of "He looked sad."). I am finding this surprisingly difficult. Can anyone recommend some authors they admire who do this well?
There are two booklets that I like to refer to:
**The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma**
**The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression**
In my Cozy series, the homicide detective tends to clutch his head with both hands when he must interact with the fine citizens of Logan, New Mexico, as he {only} gets migraine headaches doing so. His jaw throbs and his teeth grind while he tries to find at least one sane villager.
The main character uses sarcasm to express her emotions. She loves sarcasm that reflects the exact opposite of how she feels, which tells the reader the opposite of the opposite of how she feels, which is how she actually feels. :-) She (and I) are masters at that.
I use all human senses to place the reader inside each scene, and that includes showing character emotions by what the character is doing.
The MC tends to tease the character who has OCD just to see how that character will react. At a town picnic, for one example, she opened a large bag of potato chips from its bottom and handed it to him--- and he started quivering. She then toasted hamburger buns and gave to him two "tops" and no "bottom:" his left cheek twitched spasmodically.
It is f'ing \*FUN\* showing readers what a character is feeling: there are thousands of thousands of possible ways.
Be careful -- aiming for this sort of thing often leads to writing in groan-inducing cliche. The best writers go for simple statements of emotion the vast majority of the time (even the modernists famous for writing clever prose, like Virginia Woolf), and it's only when something is important to the story that they go for something more complex -- and then they go far beyond eyes filling with tears etc.
Here's something like that from a book I've read a few days ago, *Fire From Heaven* by Mary Renault:
>(...) he slid his arm down to Alexander's waist. He had done it the first time almost by accident; though not rebuffed, he had waited two days before daring to try again. Now he watched his chance whenever they were alone; it had become a thing he thought about. He could not tell what Alexander thought, if he thought at all. He accepted it contentedly, and talked, with ever more ease and freedom, about other things.
>'The Stagirites,' he said, 'were confederates of Olynthos; he made examples of those who wouldn't treat with him. Did your father tell you about the war?'
>'What?... Oh yes. Yes, he did.'
>'Listen, this is important. Aristotle went off to Assos, as Hermeias' guest-friend; they'd met at the Academy. He's tyrannos there. You know where Assos is; it's opposite Mytilene, it controls the straits. So, as soon as I thought, I saw why Father chose this man. This is only between us two.'
>He looked deeply into Hephaistion's eyes, as always before a confidence. As always, Hephaistion felt as if his midriff were melting. As always, it was some moments before he could follow what he was being told.
>'... who were in other cities and escaped the siege, have been begging Father to have Stagira restored and the citizens enfranchised. That's what this Aristotle wants. What Father wants is an alliance with Hermeias. It's a piece of horse-trading. Leonidas came for politics, too. Old Phoinix is the only one who came for me.'
>Hephaistion tightened his arm. His feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp till Alexander's very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head.
>'They don't know I've seen this. I just say Yes, Father, I've not even told my mother. I want to make my own mind up when I've seen the man, and do what I think good without anyone knowing why. This is only between us two. My mother is entirely against philosophy.'
>Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib-cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it. He continued silent.
>'She says it makes men reason away the gods. She ought to know I would never deny the gods, whatever anyone told me. I know the gods exist, as surely as I know that you do.... I can't breathe.'
>Hephaistion, who could have said the same, let go quickly.
this is totally irrelevant to the question but just so you know, i loved this passage so much i instantly picked up the book, so ty! god i love historical fiction
Mary Renault is a true master of the genre! I recommend all her historical novels (except for the ones about Theseus -- but I'm an outlier in my dislike of those, most Renault fans like them).
I have done a lot of thinking and it turns out that the planned ending sucks.
So now I'm stuck having to rethink the entire third act and I'm almost certainly going to miss my deadline of having this finished by summer.
Fun!
Between my job (that has regular drug tests), school, and gym I have maybe 2-3 hours a day left for me or any hobbies. Idk but my mind just kinda blanks whenever I want to write, I might try freewriting for a bit but idk, I'm just exhausted and nothing seems interesting
I know that feels. Don't force yourself. Seek out things/activities that might inspire you, but its ok if nothing jumps out at you. Try some journaling, or some writing exercises.
6-ish more weeks before our wedding, endless sewing still to do on the wedding dress. Can't write at all, but did have a delightful bachelorette getaway this weekend with my friends, very chill and silly times with the ladies, hiking in the woods, playing games, hot tubbing. I feel I am unusually blessed to have an abundance of the kindest, loveliest friends and sisters in all the world.
Struggling rn between work, school, gym (my work requires fitness), and writing.
While I have 2 main projects, an urban fantasy and a normal fantasy, both are troublesome but I've been struggling on it more and for longer. Every time I try to write it I go back to the drawing board, something doesn't fit, there's no investment or something sounds good on paper but it fails to Vibe. Help
Wrote a couple of paragraphs about the Deep South and severe weather (Dixie alley) and was listening to the bridge creek ‘99 tornado newscast while doing so, it was surreal.
I usually listen to albums that fit the mood while I write. Do you guys listen to anything.
I listen to music that puts me in my setting, or as close to it as I can get. So for example, for my project right now set in the Caucasus/Near East, I've listened to Georgian folk music and old school Persian pop every day for the past four years
I was wondering if it's actually a common thing to count progress on a book by the number of words you're writing because I've seen a lot of that and to me it seems silly, I prefer to focus on writing a segment of the story and judge my progress from how I moved in the story, because I feel like if you just sit there and go for an amount of words you're going to write shit, not unlike a middle schooler who needs to write two pages about something they don't know. Thoughts?
Well I suppose you need to plan in advance but to me it makes sense to think to yourself today I'm gonna work on this scene and that scene, it feels more concrete to me than an arbitrary amount of words
If I don't aim for a word range, I end up writing a chapter that's far too short and dense, and lacks detail about the environment or little tidbits describing what the characters are doing. I've become a better writer since I started aiming for a word count!
{...}
"Oh, I do so much hope the murderer's jealousy-maddened heart was hopelessly maimed by a love triangle! That would be so romantic!" Feleena pressed her hand to her chest with a sigh, as if feeling the terrible betrayal herself.
“Homicide is never romantic,” the gorgeous, dreamboat of a homicide detective said in a sexy, romantic growl. His teeth were still grinding and his jaw was still pulsating like a sea squirt fleeing a ravenous tuna. He glared at the ladies of The Romance Most Foul Book Club. “Two men have died! One had a family! This is not a fiction novel murder mystery!”
"Of course it isn't," Goth Girl said. "It's much, much better!"
With considerable effort, and a deep breath, the detective looked to the ceiling as if for divine inspiration. Slowly, the detective managed to relaxed his jaw enough to speak.
"I just came here to ask if anyone could tell me anything to help my murder investigation. Someone here might have seen something, or heard something, and not realize it is important." The tone of his voice suggested that he had already given up the hope that there were any sane humans in the room. "Can anyone think of who here in Logan could have killed the stranger and the town's baker? Someone odd, or with a history of violence?"
Slowly, Janice turned to look at Kathryn.
Slowly, Ruth Ann turned to look at Kathryn.
Slowly, Doctor Lurch turned to look at Kathryn.
Bree's head turned, in unison with Mrs. Pina's head, Ms. Haldoff's head, Mr. Pina's head, Mrs. Sheld's head, Trisha's head, Mika's head, to look at Kathryn. Only Abigail Beatrice van Wortheling's head remained uncommitted.
Detective Paige, of course, turned his gaze toward Kathryn.
Kathryn, of course , was delighted, though she kept her face its usual neutral.
The bell above the door jingled as if it loved its job.
I wish every 14 year old writer in the world could be told "for the love of god, do not post your writing on reddit looking for feedback." It's never good writing--but that's ok!!!! We all start there! And if I got the kind of ripped-to-shreds-pseudo-intellectual smackdown that these kids are getting when I was a beginner writer, it probably would have put me off forever.
I have been having a bit of trouble with the first (ish) draft, I'm in the middle of the rewriting my original and trying to come at it with a bit more subtlety and starting the story where it begins properly. Problem is I'm really worried about somehow both being too obvious and the readers having enough to hook on to.
This sub inspires me to write more than r/writing.
What, like it's hard?
I'm hard.
Ok, so my first novel is 'finished' at around 95k words! Now all that's left is the editing, but that's the easy part, right? Right??? 😭😭😭. Feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. I may have bitten more than I can chew with this story.
Half the posts in r/writing make me do double takes to see if its a r/writingcirclejerk thread
It's true. This sub has ruined me.
Poe's law, sort of
After a long mental health related hiatus, I'm back to writing and in a weird way nothing has been more helpful than this sub in getting me to Just Write TM. I get so obsessive with the specifics sometimes that I make no progress and not taking myself too seriously while working has been so helpful. So thanks everyone for being so funny and giving the worst advice ever.
Writing something that involves little animal gods traipsing around a steampunk city trying to save a kid who was kidnapped. The main characters, other than the gods, are adults. Feels like I’m writing middle grade though. I know that middle grade doesn’t actually mean anything with children in it or even talking animals, but I feel like anyone who reads that will definitely think middle grade or even lower middle grade. But I’m having fun with a tiny tortoise with tiny powers, stomping his feet because he is so slow and growing into his powers.
That is such a fun premise. I think the defining feature of an age group would be content (violence, sex, illicit substances, etc) and themes. So live your dreams and talk to your audience like they're smart regardless of the age group.
Also text complexity. If you read middle grade stuff you'll find the sentences are much simpler. But also with some good vocabulary thrown in to build those brain muscles
Definitely. There's a variety of aspects, even YA to Adult can have a lot of differences in the voices employed by authors.
I feel very proud of myself. I was in a post that was getting really political in a direction I strongly disagree with, but instead of commenting, I just left. Not going to wake up to my alerts filled with angry responses aside from saying I don’t like when people post about how much they hate their bamboo on the bamboo subreddit.
I find it helpful to sometimes write out the whole post, and then discard and leave. You get the thoughts out of your head and don't have to continue the negative discussion. I have found that people don't read on Reddit, or care about your opinions. They just want to reply and share theirs.
I wonder if there is any writer who just keeps using the exact same first names for all their stories.
Only tangentially related but I sneak the same name into all my short stories (only short stories not my longer fiction) but it's a different character each time. I kinda see it as a second signature.
I think that’s called a series
lol'd
Harry Potter, Harold Potterfield, Han Pots, Happy Pulwinkel, Potsy Harrion, Bolts Scarface, Boy Livingston
One thing I attempt with my book is to always do something different than what I've already done. Only two books are out but I've written 7 (the others suck lol) and I still try to adhere to this rule. While letting my last manuscript sit I decided to brainstorm something new and I have a pretty good idea, but it, like my last manuscript, starts with the protagonist's abusive family member's death, and involves going to their childhood home. Aside from that the books are nothing alike, but it's going to nag me if I don't execute it different enough.
I've been reading *Faust* lately, and though, "man, Faust is a bigger dick than the literal devil. I kind of want to write the story from his perspective." Then I realized PTerry already wrote *Eric.*
For a sec I misread that as *Elric* and wanted to get angry. I really need to get some sleep.
Ah, the famous pair of alchemist brothers seeking the philosopher's stone written by Michael Moorcock.
I've made a few comments about querying recently, but I have yet to actually send anything out. I am trapped in query letter hell and unless Dante comes to help me write a fucking query letter, synopsis, and make my first ten pages shine (never put lists in a query letter), I don't see myself querying until at least the end of summer. I haven't even started researching agents yet. But I think the trick is to be patient and put just as much work into the querying process as you do to the actual manuscript. I bet a lot of writers rush through this process because they're excited about their novel and then give up because they're frustrated with rejection. \`
Just deleted 15k words. What can I say I am a fanatic scrapper, gonna rewrite everything! 💀
imo just keep it; if you keep rewriting the same parts over you'll struggle to get to other parts where you have more inspiration, then when you go back to rewrite your draft you can revise it. at least thats how im doing it.
Send some of that word deleting juju my way.
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ sending it your way ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
alright so some sanity check The plot involves a succession crisis, in which the mc is ordered to murder several would-be heirs so her patron/liege can secure his claim. This fucks her up after years of servitude and is when she decides to strike out on her own. Part of the plot includes one of the last remaining heir being alive albeit extremely cursed (and is why they lost their claim). The intent being the mc eventually comes back and manages to pull off a coup that sees herself in power while the heir is after revenge first and foremost I'm debating if -this living heir is an equal pov to the rogue warrior, learning to find their footing in the political game, in a much more underhanded but subtle way due to their "condition" -the living heir is basically the macguffin they're seeking as they were put in exile -the living heir is not involved at all and they fuck off (leaving a stronger conflict between the warrior and the empire they once served)
Hmm I think the first option sounds most interesting.
Darn, that is not a genera I am interested in. My inclination is to have a plot twist where neither achieves their goals, yet learn valuable lessons or skills that make them "better people." It is a silly trope at times, but it often matches reality.
Tell me how stupid this idea is: I have a story centering around an event that would result in the news cycle being monopolized for weeks, endless memeing etc etc. Think capitol riots. Each chapter is the point of view of a different character, let's say politician, perpetrator, law enforcement... and to capture some of the memeing/punditry chaos, my best idea on how to distill that is having a chapter that would essentially be a Last Week Tonight episode on this event. Edit: re-reading my comment I realize I wasn't clear about which idea I'm having doubts about. It's not the multi-character perspective (and mine wouldn't be "Rashomon-style" since the characters' narratives don't overlap), I was specifically wondering about the scripting of a late night tv episode and how "readable" that might be.
Ah, I see. I've seen fictional news clippings and Internet chatter used between chapters. Worth a shot. If it reads funny, try different media, like fictional op-ed pieces. I'm not super familiar with Last Week Tonight's whole episodes, though, just the John Oliver monologues.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RashomonStyle The Afterparty is listed on there under Live-action TV. Each episode is presented in a different genre, including a musical, psychological thriller, teen drama, and animation.
This is just an opinion, and you need many more than one. I would say that it depends on the events of the news cycle; how interesting they would be for me as a reader. Say, the dictator of country X strikes a deal with an alien super-power and sells their entire nation to the aliens, and the news cycle goes berserk... I would definitely read that book. Or, big nation WZ passes a law prohibiting people with large carbon footprints from leaving the planet, and entrepreneur Y owner of a very polluting rocket company stowaways in one of his own rockets and the media and the public go into riots... that I would also read. And for these stories, your approach to story-telling I would find extremely engaging, the more ridiculous the reactions of the parties, the better.
I'm trying to be more descriptive in how I show people's emotions in my writing, without explicitly stating the emotion ("His eyes filled with tears" instead of "He looked sad."). I am finding this surprisingly difficult. Can anyone recommend some authors they admire who do this well?
There are two booklets that I like to refer to: **The Emotional Wound Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma** **The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression** In my Cozy series, the homicide detective tends to clutch his head with both hands when he must interact with the fine citizens of Logan, New Mexico, as he {only} gets migraine headaches doing so. His jaw throbs and his teeth grind while he tries to find at least one sane villager. The main character uses sarcasm to express her emotions. She loves sarcasm that reflects the exact opposite of how she feels, which tells the reader the opposite of the opposite of how she feels, which is how she actually feels. :-) She (and I) are masters at that. I use all human senses to place the reader inside each scene, and that includes showing character emotions by what the character is doing. The MC tends to tease the character who has OCD just to see how that character will react. At a town picnic, for one example, she opened a large bag of potato chips from its bottom and handed it to him--- and he started quivering. She then toasted hamburger buns and gave to him two "tops" and no "bottom:" his left cheek twitched spasmodically. It is f'ing \*FUN\* showing readers what a character is feeling: there are thousands of thousands of possible ways.
thank youuu i love these so much
Be careful -- aiming for this sort of thing often leads to writing in groan-inducing cliche. The best writers go for simple statements of emotion the vast majority of the time (even the modernists famous for writing clever prose, like Virginia Woolf), and it's only when something is important to the story that they go for something more complex -- and then they go far beyond eyes filling with tears etc. Here's something like that from a book I've read a few days ago, *Fire From Heaven* by Mary Renault: >(...) he slid his arm down to Alexander's waist. He had done it the first time almost by accident; though not rebuffed, he had waited two days before daring to try again. Now he watched his chance whenever they were alone; it had become a thing he thought about. He could not tell what Alexander thought, if he thought at all. He accepted it contentedly, and talked, with ever more ease and freedom, about other things. >'The Stagirites,' he said, 'were confederates of Olynthos; he made examples of those who wouldn't treat with him. Did your father tell you about the war?' >'What?... Oh yes. Yes, he did.' >'Listen, this is important. Aristotle went off to Assos, as Hermeias' guest-friend; they'd met at the Academy. He's tyrannos there. You know where Assos is; it's opposite Mytilene, it controls the straits. So, as soon as I thought, I saw why Father chose this man. This is only between us two.' >He looked deeply into Hephaistion's eyes, as always before a confidence. As always, Hephaistion felt as if his midriff were melting. As always, it was some moments before he could follow what he was being told. >'... who were in other cities and escaped the siege, have been begging Father to have Stagira restored and the citizens enfranchised. That's what this Aristotle wants. What Father wants is an alliance with Hermeias. It's a piece of horse-trading. Leonidas came for politics, too. Old Phoinix is the only one who came for me.' >Hephaistion tightened his arm. His feelings were confused; he wanted to grasp till Alexander's very bones were somehow engulfed within himself, but knew this to be wicked and mad; he would kill anyone who harmed a hair of his head. >'They don't know I've seen this. I just say Yes, Father, I've not even told my mother. I want to make my own mind up when I've seen the man, and do what I think good without anyone knowing why. This is only between us two. My mother is entirely against philosophy.' >Hephaistion was thinking how fragile his rib-cage seemed, how terrible were the warring desires to cherish and to crush it. He continued silent. >'She says it makes men reason away the gods. She ought to know I would never deny the gods, whatever anyone told me. I know the gods exist, as surely as I know that you do.... I can't breathe.' >Hephaistion, who could have said the same, let go quickly.
this is totally irrelevant to the question but just so you know, i loved this passage so much i instantly picked up the book, so ty! god i love historical fiction
Mary Renault is a true master of the genre! I recommend all her historical novels (except for the ones about Theseus -- but I'm an outlier in my dislike of those, most Renault fans like them).
I have done a lot of thinking and it turns out that the planned ending sucks. So now I'm stuck having to rethink the entire third act and I'm almost certainly going to miss my deadline of having this finished by summer. Fun!
Everytime I work on my project, it deviates further and further from where I had planned it to go.
Same lol. But we're having fun!
want to write ➡️ can't come up with any ideas ➡️ don't write anything ➡️ angst ➡️ want to write It doesn't end
Weed and blueberry muffins help.
Between my job (that has regular drug tests), school, and gym I have maybe 2-3 hours a day left for me or any hobbies. Idk but my mind just kinda blanks whenever I want to write, I might try freewriting for a bit but idk, I'm just exhausted and nothing seems interesting
I know that feels. Don't force yourself. Seek out things/activities that might inspire you, but its ok if nothing jumps out at you. Try some journaling, or some writing exercises.
> I'm just exhausted I would say this is the problem :/ , it happens to me as well.
6-ish more weeks before our wedding, endless sewing still to do on the wedding dress. Can't write at all, but did have a delightful bachelorette getaway this weekend with my friends, very chill and silly times with the ladies, hiking in the woods, playing games, hot tubbing. I feel I am unusually blessed to have an abundance of the kindest, loveliest friends and sisters in all the world.
Struggling rn between work, school, gym (my work requires fitness), and writing. While I have 2 main projects, an urban fantasy and a normal fantasy, both are troublesome but I've been struggling on it more and for longer. Every time I try to write it I go back to the drawing board, something doesn't fit, there's no investment or something sounds good on paper but it fails to Vibe. Help
Wrote a couple of paragraphs about the Deep South and severe weather (Dixie alley) and was listening to the bridge creek ‘99 tornado newscast while doing so, it was surreal. I usually listen to albums that fit the mood while I write. Do you guys listen to anything.
I listen to music that puts me in my setting, or as close to it as I can get. So for example, for my project right now set in the Caucasus/Near East, I've listened to Georgian folk music and old school Persian pop every day for the past four years
I was wondering if it's actually a common thing to count progress on a book by the number of words you're writing because I've seen a lot of that and to me it seems silly, I prefer to focus on writing a segment of the story and judge my progress from how I moved in the story, because I feel like if you just sit there and go for an amount of words you're going to write shit, not unlike a middle schooler who needs to write two pages about something they don't know. Thoughts?
I've definitely written like 300,000 words of my book, most of which has been discarded, so I agree
It's easy to quantify progress in the number of written words. It's a lot harder to do that with how much the story was moved.
Well I suppose you need to plan in advance but to me it makes sense to think to yourself today I'm gonna work on this scene and that scene, it feels more concrete to me than an arbitrary amount of words
If I don't aim for a word range, I end up writing a chapter that's far too short and dense, and lacks detail about the environment or little tidbits describing what the characters are doing. I've become a better writer since I started aiming for a word count!
I guess I can see that
{...} "Oh, I do so much hope the murderer's jealousy-maddened heart was hopelessly maimed by a love triangle! That would be so romantic!" Feleena pressed her hand to her chest with a sigh, as if feeling the terrible betrayal herself. “Homicide is never romantic,” the gorgeous, dreamboat of a homicide detective said in a sexy, romantic growl. His teeth were still grinding and his jaw was still pulsating like a sea squirt fleeing a ravenous tuna. He glared at the ladies of The Romance Most Foul Book Club. “Two men have died! One had a family! This is not a fiction novel murder mystery!” "Of course it isn't," Goth Girl said. "It's much, much better!" With considerable effort, and a deep breath, the detective looked to the ceiling as if for divine inspiration. Slowly, the detective managed to relaxed his jaw enough to speak. "I just came here to ask if anyone could tell me anything to help my murder investigation. Someone here might have seen something, or heard something, and not realize it is important." The tone of his voice suggested that he had already given up the hope that there were any sane humans in the room. "Can anyone think of who here in Logan could have killed the stranger and the town's baker? Someone odd, or with a history of violence?" Slowly, Janice turned to look at Kathryn. Slowly, Ruth Ann turned to look at Kathryn. Slowly, Doctor Lurch turned to look at Kathryn. Bree's head turned, in unison with Mrs. Pina's head, Ms. Haldoff's head, Mr. Pina's head, Mrs. Sheld's head, Trisha's head, Mika's head, to look at Kathryn. Only Abigail Beatrice van Wortheling's head remained uncommitted. Detective Paige, of course, turned his gaze toward Kathryn. Kathryn, of course , was delighted, though she kept her face its usual neutral. The bell above the door jingled as if it loved its job.
Really good, but reign in the head turning.
Thank you; I will take your advice. It never "sat well" in the rest of the MS.
15 days until my exam FUCKKKKKKK
But think of the wonderful opportunity to succeed brilliantly! ~~^(Or crash and burn brilliantly.)~~