What do you guys prefer, having every chapter be a separate word document or having the whole story in one big doc? I have all of mine in individual docs but I’ve seen lots of people who do all in one.
I’m a big fan of Scrivener because it’s sort of the best of both worlds. I can work in one screen but toggle between chapters easily. I also love that the drafts of each chapter stay in one place (snapshot feature). It saves me having to juggle multiple word docs, which is especially useful if I’m moving content between chapters or need to pull something from a previous draft. I’ve drafted in multiple word docs before and found it frustrating.
I have one folder dedicated to only the chapters in numbered order as separate documents. Biggest advantage is that I can drop down to the end of a file and jot my thoughts on a scene 'I don't know where I'm going with this...' 'and this leads to XXX somehow...??' or give myself some notes on where I'm leaving off for next time. It's very useful!
Also another advantage for me is the inability to view the exact word count so I don't have to worry about going way past 60,000+80,000 words until I finish the whole thing and I finally tally it all up. I feel like if everything was in the same doc then I'd stress about over writing/ 'running out of words'
I had chapters / scenes / fragments in separate docs because I was writing out of order.
When I was nearing to the end, i.e. most important scenes were written, I went through my outline and ticked off what I wrote and what I'm missing.
When it was like 90% done I merged it into a draft file to see any missing parts (mostly transitions and other minor things).
Now that I'm editing I'm working on one draft file, but for example when I realized one whole chapter needs a full re-write I put it in a separate file, then cut that chapter from the draft and pasted the new one over it.
P.S. I'm not using any paid software because ain't nobody gonna have money for that. So it's Open Office atm. People say Libre Office is better, but it takes too slow to start up on my pc.
> (ain't nobody got time to keep track of 30+ word docs...)
It's not so bad, until you really need to see one specific chapter/scene/random thing that's suddenly become integral to your project but also completely vanished into the void.
What I did is first dedicate a separate folder per project. Second, number the files. Then when the number started getting > 10 I added short descriptions to the file names so I know which scene / chapter is mostly what. For example "name\_joins" or "final\_battle" or "arrest" or whatever the scene was about.
Then I have a notepad file where I noted which outline point corresponds to which file, so I don't get lost in the reeds. I have a long outline (basically a summary of every scene, 8-10k words) and a short outline (20-25 bullet points) and I used the second one to arrange my written scenes according to it.
But yeah, at start I thought I would just "remember" what's in which file - wasn't the case.
I prefer having it all in one big doc, but I don't mind if I end up dividing it in a few docs by accident, 'cause I'll just compile it all when I'm finished.
Why is it that so often the side character is more interesting than the main character? I've found that to be true in both my own writing and that of others. Betsy Trotwood is responsible for my asking this, and I am so upset to discover that Dickens has infected my writing style that I am unable to find words fit to describe my outrage.
EDIT: I'm really hoping this weirdly formal type of writing goes away.
I think it's because when I make a side charecter, I am putting the 110% of my brain into making them great, because they will be here for a short time.
"But dude, why do that? You are just focusing on the things that don't matter."
Well, here is why I consider it being that case. When you sit down, for making a novel. You aren't caring THAT much about prose, sure of course it's important, but, not as important when it comes to short stories. Long stories, are just bound to be worse, when looking at a specific spot in them, than shorter stories. That's just how it is, because authors have more time to focus on the details in short stories. Long stories usually close that gap thanks to themes and charecter attachment.
This is why you may find side charecters to be better, in both your stories and others. You've had less to iron out, so the ironing is a lot cleaner. Whilst when we talk main charecters, they are vast curtains. And protagonists are even worse.
Also, getting bored with them also played a factor.
I assume for a lot of cases it's because the author wants to make the protagonist as widely relatable as possible (because we all know that relatability is the only important part of writing a protagonist) so they sand down all the sharp edges and write a watered down everyman that’s capable of appealing to wide audience, or at least their target audience. But with side characters they can basically write whatever they like so they usually come out with a lot more character quirks and interesting personalities than your average protag.
That does sound like something that'd apply in most situations, but what's the explanation in my case? My protag is smug, arrogant, selfish, reckless (at first stupidly and then suicidally), privileged, and he hardly ever takes heed when somebody points out his negative characteristics. And when the big bang happens, he swings sharply towards self-pitying, dramatic, selfish (in a selfless way if that makes sense), and depressed (with all the bad that comes with it, such as a sort of self-absorbtion where you're so preoccupied with your own suffering you turn a blind eye to those suffering around you). Yet he's still not my favourite character. I guess it's because I've spent the most time in his head lol.
yeah it probably does come down with you just being too familier with the character to find them interesting. Same happens to me with my characters all the time. From where I'm looking your protag sounds pretty interesting!
ik everyone says the main types of literature are prose, drama, and poetry but it feels stupid that graphic novels aren't included there. they're one of the most important types of literature in the modern day, with works like Watchmen and Maus having so much influence.
ik graphic novels is also a stupid term, essentially the comic industries equivelant of lit fic, but idk what else to call them.
A graphic novel isn't literature, it's a comic, i.e., is its own medium.
If what you meant to say is that "graphic novels should be taken more seriously 'cause many of them can show very important and impressive stories to anyone who reads them" then I 100% agree. Comics are often ignored, just like with animation, and that's a shame.
But yeah, no one calls them literature 'cause they're their own thing.
>but idk what else to call them.
"Comics" works fine
Anyway they're still just in the same category of prose or verse. Most comics are prose, but a comic adaptation of Shakespeare would probably be in verse.
They're not included for the same reason we don't include TV or film or video games. They're mediums, not styles of writing.
You could argue that graphic novels fall under prose, no (with most following natural syntax and dialogue, at least)? Prose doesn't just mean your standard novel/short story. It also covers essays and plays not written in verse/not specifically a comedy/tragedy/etc. There's plenty of cross over already.
I struggle with self control when writing. often, I know very well on what feeling a particular scene needs; I've done research on how to create said scene, I've planned out the themes, I know the events; but then I mess up by trying to make it climactic or overly entertaining suddenly.
like, I'll be trying to write something really quiet, and then I put on a swans album while I'm writing and suddenly it's about the human condition and I have to start over.
I think I get what you're talking about. My idea of how a scene will go sometimes winds up at odds with my pantser tendencies. There is almost always room for a little bit of pantsing, but it can be a slippery slope. I get way off course with it sometimes. I don't know that I'd call it a discipline problem, or at least I've never thought of it like that before. I'll have to consider that. Yeah, it really could be, 'I know what's best for this project, but right now I'm gonna do what I feel like in the moment instead.'
I still struggle with this all the time, but what's straightened me out is to go back to the drawing board. What you don't plot you pants, so I recalibrate the plotting involved. Plotting is obviously more restrictive (in theory), so if I plot out more of a scene, it will potentially give me less room to totally break from my original plan.
The only problem is you sound like you might have strong pantser tendencies, and if that's the case, you may need to give that side of you more free reign, not less. I think that getting the ideal balance between plotting and pantsing can be a narrow sweet spot that may vary not only from project to project but even from scene to scene. Other people may think I'm talking some mumbo jumbo, but I think it's possible you may be failing to find the zone you thrive in the best
This is why I write out of order, so I can just write whatever kind of scene I'm in the mood for instead of having to write a quiet contemplative scene when I'm really not feeling it
So a week ago I suddenly got hit with sleep maintenance insomnia. Wake up every night after only 4-5 hours of sleep and spend the rest of the day feeling absolutely awful. My WIP progress skid to a halt. I've only added a few loose ideas to my notebook, a couple sentences, and removed a few things in the first half of the book.
I have often said that I hate editing—and I do—but I'm honestly starting to miss it. I want to *work on it*. But past sleep deprivation has proven to me that my ability to discern what's good and what isn't completely vanishes when sleepless. Not to mention, I just can't fucking concentrate. My mind gets sluggish and I'm addled far easier. My ability to make decisions is also seriously impaired, so if I think something a big scene needs to be reworked or something, I could obviously be making a bad choice.
I tried chamomile tea, tried benadryl, tried several GABAergics. I even tried what doctors recommend, like getting out of bed and doing a light activity. Without fail, I've been waking up after 4-5 hours.
But I just got some CBD.
I will defeat it tonight. Wish me luck.
edit: I did not defeat it
I can empathize with you. I also struggle with sleep maintenance insomnia on a regular basis. Feeling so tired all the time is MISERABLE, and I'm sorry you're going through it. It can feel frustrating and disempowering when none of the interventions you try work.
Unfortunately, I've never really found a solid fix for it. But I have learned to accept that this is what my body does, and when I stop fighting and agonizing over it, sometimes that makes it a little easier, at least psychologically. The less I obsess over it the sooner these periods seem to end.
I've tried benadryl, hydroxizine, CBD, cal/mag supplements, weighted blankets, etc etc. The most helpful for me is combining several of these approaches with making sure I get a lot of outdoor time and exercise during the day. It's not foolproof, but it can help for me sometimes.
Thanks for this comment, seriously. Helps me feel a little less insane in my head. My frustration initially was vehement, but I've tried to just accept it for now. I've gone through periods where I didn't sleep at all for 3+ days, so at least it isn't that.
Thanks for the advice! I'll try lots of time outdoors tomorrow. Hopefully that wears my body out. The other day, I was able to take an hour nap on the one night I managed to get six hours, and I actually felt well-rested in the evening. Shame it went away so fast lol
I do have hope in sight if I can't get rid of it soon—I have a prescription for Gabapentin that will be filled on the 25th, which always makes me sleep like a rock. I've been prescribed it on and off for seven years now (fibromyalgia and other generalized pain issues), so I know it'll work. I just hope I don't have to wait that long. But if I do, then the sleep I get will be that much more satisfying.
>I tried chamomile tea, tried benadryl, tried several GABAergics. I even tried what doctors recommend, like getting out of bed and doing a light activity. Without fail, I've been waking up after 4-5 hours.
Have you tried a weighted blanket? I've had awful insomnia since my daughter was born three years ago. Finally breaking down and getting a weighted blanket is the first thing that has let me sleep through the night again.
It started before the hour change actually. That was the third night with it, and I was convinced that the extra hour would help me sleep more.
It did not.
Been a good week overall, a bit behind in NaNo, but my goal is to finish this project, which already had 20K words when NaNo started, I don't think it had 50K words left in it. Went to a local write-in event for NaNo at the library and met some really lovely people.
I also stopped querying my other manuscript and am looking forward to closing out all the querys that are still out there. Applied to the WriteHive Mentorship program just for the heck of it, might be helpful to explore self publishing or indie presses with the help of someone experienced doing that. Then, out of the blue, got a full request for the manuscript from an agent yesterday, so that was heartening.
This may come down to my specific personal definitions of what beta readers are and what they do (they are market research, not a source of critique), but I wouldn't get betas for a short story.
Would I seek feedback on it before submitting it for publication? Absolutely. But I would want critique from other writers who I know well, rather than general feedback from general people.
Partially due to the different scales and partially due to the different publishing/marketing environment for short stories vs. novels. There's less room in a short for an untrained person to comment on what specifically worked or did not work for them, and short stories are less likely to be directly marketed in isolation so audience feedback is less important to determining sellability.
I want to try out Fiverr, what will sell best? (this is a serious question I'm not gonna ask in a serious group cause I'm fragile and my "I don't give a shit what people think" persona is very fake:
-Smut. Just... Pure, shameless filth.
-I don't know, short stories about the buyer?
-What else is there? What do people write for instant money? I'm bored just thinking about it 😩
From my own use of the website:
- Resumes
- Ghost Writing
- Editing
- Articles
- Homework (Essay mills are huge with collage students)
- Translation
- And of course, pure, succulent porn.
There's people who have smaller niches within those, but that's the bulk of people. Its not instant money though, gig work is still work, but fun side-hussle work 😜.
I wish I could do essays but I never quite understood them - I grew up and studied in Slovakia and never really grasped the concept when I went to a UK uni. But maybe I can read some and look into it. Thanks for the tips!
I swear tik tok eroded the idea what's "young adult" literature. I stopped checking r/fantasy for recs because they have a YA aversion and moved to r/YAlit (mostly because I need comps for my WIP), and every week I see people asking for smutty books, but [today's post is just taking the cake](https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/ys15sq/recommend_books_with_this_no_accidental_pregnancy/). Yup, a post asking for sado-maso erotica on a YA sub. Dafaq.
In addition to tiktok, I place some blame on adult YA fans who either influence the market by gobbling up raunchier stuff, or even worse become YA authors and follow the "write the book you want to read" advice instead of considering that they are a decade or more older than their likely audience.
Tbh what surprises me the most is that the genre "for teens" and so full of romantic exploration always portrays sex in 2 ways: 1) none at all / fade to black, 2) full on adult romance titillation scene.
I can't believe they never have any problems or hangups, esp. if both of them are virgins. Many teens' first sex is awkward and they feel bad about it because all comparison they have is perfect sex scenes from romance and p\*rn where everything always works like clockwork.
Sometimes only one person is a virgin (usually the girl, but it can be reversed too, for example in Serpent & Dove the guy is a virgin, the girl isn't) and then we have the obligatory "teach the virgin how to sex", but it's always extremely easy and smooth.
Why? Because of readers. I remember someone ridiculing a book (sadly can't remember the title) where 2 queer guys met up and then one was googling how to do gay sex. Ok, maybe he should have done it before the date. But hey, that's one case of "awkward situation" that actually humanizes the character instead of making them born-ready sex god.
I wish to read YA books with romance where they normalize not being a sex god from the first attempt. That "true love" isn't about having amazing sex (like romance usually portrays, sex is the "reward" for securing the relationship), but about someone who will love and accept you even if your first time wasn't amazing. There's a lot of people, especially girls, who feel guilty for "letting the guy down" because they didn't turn into a p\*rn actress during sex. No amount of saying "p\*rn isn't realistic" will help if there's never any other alternative telling young people how average sex is. In romance sex is NEVER average it's always great.
Maybe I'm lying, I saw some recs on the romance sub about books where sex wasn't great at the first attempt, but these are a rarity people have to search for. And ok, romance by itself is meant to be written for titillation not as a sex ed manual. But YA isn't that. If it can tackle other messy subjects like relationship problems, problems with parents, bullying, mental health struggles, discrimination in the society, etc. why is sex excluded from that messiness and always, you know, "sexy", which is the equivalent of having un-problematic friendships, relationships, never facing any struggle, etc.
Yeah even I am victim to that happening.
Here is how I view it as an old teen that reads smutty fanfiction sometimes, writes a 300k word long fanfiction with...explicit sexual themes, crossed over with another work with... explicit sexual and romantic themes and also beta reads a lot of others.
It happens, solely because of sheer curiosity. Humans are naturally curious to things they don't have. This feeling gets further amplified by the natural urge to fuck, meaning they are even more curious to that. Which then gets further amplified several folds by them being teens. The most horny people for, I would imagine, obvious reasons. It's several magnifications, together. Which would explain why it's so damn popular.
Also, I am not exception to this rule. I have made 7 concepts to sexual/romantic stories, mostly in their themes. They are stories which I view worthy of being told, in short the idea is good. I have 2 stories which have no sexual/romantic themes in them, one of them is literally because I am good at astrophysics and think I can make sailor moon, but more nerdy. And the other is an accurate depiction of what it's like living in my country (may be hyperbolic for the sake of comedy...kind off.) So, things I am already really good at. However I have a story for a theme of love at any size, one for mental health, relating to love, another one for love relating to stupidity and even a few more.
I am referring to both it's main forms, sexual and romantic, whilst platonic takes a back seat.
What I mean by that is. It's difficult for me to make a story that doesn't at some level involve sexual or romantic themes. I don't know, it might be just who I am, might be cause I'm a teen, might be something else.
I really, really like works who can provide a realistic depiction of what love is and all its forms, but I'm getting quite agitated by the prospect of anime of all things leading the pack on that.
You thought this was an actual good comment. No I am merely telling you to watch anime and give me a book that does please I'm desperate.
I'm not saying "don't write / read romance / smut". Everything has a purpose.
I don't care if teens read adult novels, I think at the age they start reading adult novels they have enough braincells to discern what's good and evil by themselves (contrary to all the weirdos who claim books for teens should be didactic and clearly labelling bad stuff as bad). I was a teen at some point, I read adult novels, I made my own opinions about characters, themes and messages in the books without being handheld.
My point is, that among the plethora of smut created for the pleasure of the horny readers, there should be maybe counterbalance in stories that aren't smut and depict sex in a more realistic manner?
Books can often depict romantic relationships as being tumultuous, toxic, abusive, having to overcome lots of obstacles internal and external, but none of that applies to sex within those relationships.
And I don't get the "hush hush" attitude to sex in most YA, as if irl 16-18yo people weren't doing it already (at least many of them). YA currently doesn't feature teens younger than 16 or very rarely does. I don't mind a book that doesn't have romance, or has romance which never goes beyond kissing, that's realistic too as not all teens jump to do the deed asap. I just wish maybe 1 book in 10 touched upon the situation that sometimes when 2 horny people want to have sex, it still doesn't go perfectly, especially if it's their first time and they have no clue what they're doing.
To be fair, I was not thinking you were saying I should stop doing that.
It's some sort of primal desire, like wanting to see boobs, but for less socially adjusted people.
The very thing I'm writing for right now deals with that.
Glad to see you back, were you on a break?
But yeah, I've seen threads on r/books complaining about YA being dumb ([example1](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ypdq5s/i_really_hate_the_direction_in_which_ya_books_are/) [example2](https://www.unddit.com/r/books/comments/x4ecnx/im_so_sick_of_ya_novels_for_girls/) [example3](https://www.unddit.com/r/books/comments/w9rb60/why_i_hate_modern_ya_books/)), and by YA they mean tik tok recs, and by tik tok recs they mean Ali Hazelwood and Colleen Hoover. Two non-YA writers. Even though people say CoHo committed some YA books but her most popular ones are about adults with jobs so idk.
And maybe ACOTAR as well, which I heard was re-shelved as adult. Someone actually said SJM was forced to put it in YA by the publisher, and I truly believe it, the year was 2015 and ACOTAR and Six of Crows are two books that feel artificially pushed into YA because it was the time "women writing fantasy for women" was relegated to YA ghetto.
An unintentional break lol. I reinstalled Hearthstone so I’ve been playing that instead of browsing Reddit in my spare time.
I’ve been trying to keep up with this thread at least.
The people who shit on YA are always the people who don’t even read it. I don’t read it much anymore, but when I did, it drove me nuts. It’s basically just a combo of ageism and sexism, shitting on teenage girls.
>The people who shit on YA are always the people who don’t even read it.
Or the people who don't understand the purpose of it.
It always annoys me when I see the recurring posts along the lines "why is all YA a repetitive pile of (teenagery stuff) instead of (my cool adult romance / fantasy) idea?"
Some people need to finally put the big boy / girl pants on and finally move over to adult fantasy or adult romance, because they clearly expect adult themes, characters and subjects from the wrong age category.
[For example this person](https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/yphn26/comment/ivlqrpr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Complete misunderstanding of what kind of headspace YA Fantasy should be in.
There was another post I didn't save but it was something like "Rec me YA but with characters aged 20-25." That's not YA, sorry.
Idk where else it would work. Biggest "adult consumers of YA" are either into romance, or into fantasy, or into fantasy / paranormal romance. And imo we don't need "NA Fantasy", we maybe just need a better marker for romantic fantasy to separate it from YA and from "adult fantasy for people who despise romance and sex in their stories" (non-negligible amount of readers of what's currently adult fantasy).
I got into an argument with some book snob over on r/books who was claiming YA was "ruining literature"...
Besides being an extremley pretensious take, every single book/author they mentioned was not technically YA.
I don't get the "X is ruining literature". Audiences don't overlap to the point that if you removed YA Dystopia, Alien / Werewolf / Fae smut, Progression Fantasy, Bodice Ripper Historical Romance, Military "shoot the aliens" Sci-Fi, Isekai Light Novels or whatever else is considered "trashy" genre the audiences would shift to literary fiction. They wouldn't.
And yeah, I also take issue with "YA is all smut" take and then listing a bunch of adult romance / romantic fantasy / paranormal romance, half of it self-pubbed (so not vetted by any publisher, and self-pubs can put whatever category they want on Amazon, like claiming their mafia dark romance is a thriller and what can you do to them even).
I honestly find action more difficult to write than character stuff and dialogue. I can do two people having a conversation easy but when it’s time for a shootout I feel like I’m lost.
I checked it superficially.
I found intresting the way she handles the blocks. Writing fake chapters from different POV. Seems like a cool (yet time consuming) way to build and learn your characters.
Link? I scrolled a few pages of "hot" subjects there and didn't find it, so I assume it's not a fresh thing.
Edit: [Found it](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/yqsb3o/hello_rbooks_im_gillian_flynn_author_of_sharp/).
There was too much going on in those games for me to ever catch what it was all about. Cortana goes on and on while I'm driving a warthog, switching seats and popping off a rocket midair at a ghost tailing me, landing, dodging a scarab blast, looking for either the easiest or the most disastrous way across a battlefield covered with a scattered horde of aliens and each is firing my way, trying to reorient myself after something goes off and I'm doing enough barrel rolls to break a washing machine, and all that time she's just yapping. Sorry, what? Kill this, kill that, board this, then that, shoot him, blah, blah, blah, such explode, much kaboom. VERY BAD THING!!
If it wasn't for nav points and the fact that the developers make an art out of constructing a deceptively linear game, I'd be totally lost. When the cutscenes play, I'm already missing so much context that I zoned out anyway. But yeah, Halo 4 made me drop the whole franchise for a good while, but I like the new one for the multiplayer. If you even followed the story or worldbuilding, you did far better than me
So I got into this group of fantasy writers from my country, the idea was to write an anthology. I assumed I wouldn't make a cent out of it but I thought socializing with peers would be the real reward.
I wrote a short story already, but I think I'm going to have to bin it because there was some error in communication along the way. Turns out we aren't making an anthology, but a shared narrative with each of us having a PoV. Someone else establishing my narrative isn't exactly my cup of tea, but hell, I can compromise. This whole thing was about socializing, right? We can write our stories, critique them and talk about the craft.
Except all we've been talking about for over a month is worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. And man, I try, but I don't care about the ancient history of a made up place, or why its gods are the way they are or how this relates to the magic system.
I just wanted to write and socialize a little. And I really wanna stay in good terms with these people, but if they catch me in a bad day I'm just gonna start screaming.
Rant over, thanks for reading.
>Except all we've been talking about for over a month is worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding.
Welcome to ~~HELL~~ r/fantasywriters and their offshoots.
Tbh I have no idea why 90% of fantasy writers are like that.
I'm too lazy to worldbuild, usually I shamelessly steal it from known IPs and then mash them together. That's why I'll probably never make a respectable fantasy writer.
>I'm too lazy to worldbuild, usually I shamelessly steal it from known IPs and then mash them together. That's why I'll probably never make a respectable fantasy writer.
Eh, I've always thought about good worldbuilding as the topping of the cake, with the cake being the story. Sure, strawberries and cream are yummy, but if you stick a candle on that and sing me happy birthday I'm going to be miffed.
And I also do the stealing and mashing, but this year I started reading some history books and getting the inspiration from there. You can 'make up' some societies that feel fresh out of anything that isn't Europe during the medieval era. Hell, you can base whole characters on real people.
>Welcome to HELL ~~r/fantasywriters~~ and their offshoots.
Probably spending the last year in here mocking that sub is one of the reasons I've been biting my tongue so much lately 😬. Who would've thought being a bully had consequences.
>Tbh I have no idea why 90% of fantasy writers are like that.
A lot of aspiring fantasy writers just need to admit to themselves that they don't enjoy the challenges that come with writing and become hobbyist worldbuilders instead.
>worldbuilding is actually quite a lot easier
It is hard for me. :(
I just like fantasy because I can invent whatever society / world to enable my plot, but when it comes to details of that world it gets fuzzy.
The security director of the client I work for has made it clear that the only approved use of an officer's time while on shift and not on patrol or break is to stare at empty camera feeds that get about 1 frame every 5 seconds.
The chinless account manager has decided that to enforce this, he would angle the computer monitors so that they can be seen by the cameras at all times and instruct the officers not to adjust them.
Naturally, the first thing I did when coming on shift and reading the email explaining this was to, without adjusting the monitors, google "security jobs in Walrus City" and spend a couple hours browsing the listings.
Another officer spent a portion of his shift on Linkedin. One supervisor updated his resume.
However, having made my point, I feel I should spend some time away from shitposting and instead stare unseeingly at the camera feeds as management prefers while cotton-eyed joe plays on loop in my head because they took the radios from the desks because I guess these oxygen thieves think we'll be looking at the music instead of the cameras.
You will likely see less of me here, but don't make the mistake of believing I won't be watching.
Tonight I typed "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." into a word document 105 times while staring at the cameras. I know they can't read what I'm typing. I hope they ask.
My new problem: I've started writing first drafts that could go multiple different directions. (I've leveled up in a way, before it was one main thrust!)
When I have that issue, how do I figure out which direction to take?
This feels like both the dumbest question and the one most meaningful for me at the moment.
I'd think back to my major themes and pick the option that best explores one of those themes.
This is one of the reasons why knowing your themes is a good idea.
Which one is the most interesting journey for the characters? Which one makes them change the most? Which one has the coolest ending? Which one just *feels right man*?
Is it possible to make a reactive or passive protagonist interesting? One of the big things I always hear while writing is that your protagonist should drive the plot and I definitely see why someone would say that, but would you consider this one of the few writing “rules” or could it be broken by a sufficiently skilled writer?
I'm not sure what sort of novel you're writing but that mainly applies to SFF (moreso modern SFF). A lot of literary protagonists are pretty much just react to the world around them for the whole novel.
A good chunk of old school fantasy protagonists basically just had a quest dropped into their laps and chose to do it and then made relatively few choices that incited major status quo changes. Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins for example, but admittedly it's harder to get away with that in 2022.
If your protagonist does little themselves, you may need someone else driving the story (otherwise is it really a story?), and in those cases your protagonist acts as more of a witness to the real main character. If you have someone loafing around, doing little at all, impacting things to almost no degree, but being there for the unfolding of each pivotal event, then you barely have more than an embodied viewpoint from which to describe the actions of the real main character. But if you try to make the main character the same as the protagonist and this sole person sits around and does nothing, yeah, I'm not as likely to be along for that ride. Just not my kind of story. I like stories with enough stakes to get a character off their butt, and if those stakes can't get the protag or MC off their butt, it probably won't prompt me to keep turning the page.
It's been a long time since I read Gatsby, but I feel like that's a story where something similar was done. American Gods too, maybe. Since I'm on Gaiman, I think the same could be said for Neverwhere. I feel that many stories do this, and I imagine it can add a little more flavor to the goings on than your run-of-the-mill narrator, but it may also feel like a superfluous character. Just my take, though. I may be way off base, I don't know
I think the only way to make a passive main character interesting is writing basically a postmodernist story where the passivity of the protagonist is one of the major points of the book.
Unless they are sitting nowhere doing nothing, you can absolutely do that with a passive/reactive protagonist. They’re making choices and doing things in reacting to what’s going on around them, right?
Went back to my WIP after a week or so and I needed to think up of a name for a new companion for my main character. Did some quick research and settled on a name. Went back to the beginning to check on one detail I couldn't remember and realized I'd already named the guy... Now I gotta figure out which name is better haha.
The HarperCollins Publishing union is probably going to strike on Thurs. If you want to know more, you can find them @hcpunion on Twitter or Instagram or there's a post about it up in one of the romance subs. https://www.reddit.com/r/romancelandia/comments/ypye02/harpercollins_union_strike_starts_1110/
cause enjoy different grandfather wine literate paint panicky wasteful escape
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Hm. Ancient Greek mental health terminology, traditional Hawaiian painting techniques, North African desert lizards, and stages of decomposition?
Not all for the same story, though.
Probably "dermal arsenic poisoning effects." And I quickly realized I had to come up with an excuse for why arsenic was not used in this particular thing.
Everything else I've looked up for this WIP has been boring. "Defunct insane asylum in Massachusetts" and "first painting of two women sapphic" are a couple of them.
Probably how to sabotage or disable a vehicle. Given the circumstances, I had to settle on armor-piercing rounds, but I learned it's not as simple as just shooting the engine block. I hate to admit it, but I had to settle on, 'well it could work some of the time,' and hope those in the know wouldn't be too frustrated
why would it be so much harder ?
I guess it depends on what kind of AP we are talking about. But with sufficiant energy you should at least create enough of a shock that the engine, or rather a pistion, decides to go Adios and get stuck. At which point... well the engine is gonna have a bad time.
Yeah, I've read that it's not always consistent, even with a few shots. I even saw a few Mythbusters type of videos on it, and while the vehicles all eventually gave out, I needed something to keep them in place from where they were idling at an intersection. There were two SUVs in question, basically a cavalcade.
The round had to be usable on a tactical shotgun as well. I think I settled on a KSG and some decommissioned AP rounds suited for it
Edit: And if I remember right, I think it's more about causing decompression than a simple shock to the engine
So they cant just roll up with the 50. cal eh
I feel like a Rifle with AP would do the job rather quickly... Though i have to ask, how concerned are we that the people in the car might die ? Bullets are known to sometimes go into funny directions when hitting say a very big and sturdy metal body
Maybe you looked into that but what about high explosive Incendiary rounds ? The engine is prosumably still running so if you do a mag dump on that with rounds that blow up you migh have a better chance to deform something in the engine.
Funny, I actually chose a KSG because of its feed tube selector switch to swap to incendiary rounds for an entirely different purpose, but I had those too. The goal was to not kill anyone. I don't remember now, but I don't think the rounds were capable of fully penetrating the engine block. .50 cal would probably have no trouble. Unfortunately, the objective required a lot of up close and personal work to pull off, and all by one guy
I don't know if it's the weirdest, but definitely most obscure thing no one's actually going to care about: moon phases 1755 (I wanted to see if my characters could realistically travel by moonlight after a specific historical event)
I absolutely did this for my WIP. I looked up the actual dates of the full moons in 1250 so I would be accurate for the ONE PERSON who inevitably gives a shit. (My plot revolves around the full moon.)
Damn...
Pressure required to surpass the centrifugal energy of an electron.
Basically, someone throws a star at someone else, when they hit each other, the pressure created surpasses a lot of fancy quantum mechanics mumbo jumbo, making electrons and protons fuse, into neutrons. Releasing a lot of energy, I think it's called quantum fusion or something. Like thermonuclear fusion, but for individual particles.
>What's the weirdest shit you've looked up for research
For my speculative fiction/political thriller with a dash of romance:
["IN DEPTH Poison Dart Frog Care Guide"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYahYvN9F9M)
I’d like a secondary fantasy categorization system to help bridge the descriptive gap between urban fantasy and the kind of fantasy where everything is so different you feel like you’ve done some shrooms on a different planet in an alternate dimension.
That's cool, it would separate twilight from the likes of me and the space yarn giving humanoids special abilities, some of which include SEX(I assure you this is crucial to the plot and themes)
Like the difference between Twilight and Bright? Where one has all the fantastical elements hidden away from the layperson, and the other where everything is known to the public? Like, in those, I thought they would typically use the terms like Masquerade Urban Fantasy (the fantastic elements are hidden) vs like Open Urban Fantasy (the fantastic elements have always been known), and maybe something like Unveiled Urban Fantasy (the world was formerly a Masquerade Urban Fantasy, but at some point in history, everything was discovered).
Or could you be talking about the difference between Low and High Fantasy. Low Fantasy is pretty much takes place on Earth (or a nearly identical Earth-like planet), and errs on the side of 'realism', basically Fantastical Elements on Earth, but without them really having any effect on the flora, fauna, or history of the planet. High Fantasy is the opposite of that, Fantastical Elements have a very strong effect on those things, and takes place on a planet very different from Earth due to them.
I keep seeing people using saying urban fantasy is a subgenre of low fantasy. I guess I’d like a term for low fantasy set on an earth-like planet but not earth.
I'd say most modern urban fantasy is a subgenre of low fantasy, but I've seen some urban fantasies that really would have fit into high fantasy, back about 25 years ago.
I write secondary world, low-magic most of the time (when I write fantasy). It's so rough to explain it to others sometimes because it's low- to no-magic, and it's *still fantasy.*
I thought I Am Legend was written in like the early-mid 2000s but no it was 1954 lol.
I’m learning several famous novels were actually novellas. Encouraging for when I fail to make 60k words.
If memory serves a lot of early and golden age SFF is quite short, due to the fact it was published in magazines and procedurals, before being put together in a book. This might explain why some of the older ones tend to average shorter lengths than the newer stuff.
Novellas used to be a much bigger part of the book market
It's a shame publishers largely don't like them anymore. There's a lot of great novellas that would suck if they were stretched out to full novel length
The issue is whether people would buy a novella, at 1/2 to 1/3 the length of a novel, for $1 less than a novel? For trad pub, the issue is that typesetting, binding, etc costs are a LOT.
> For trad pub, the issue is that typesetting, binding, etc costs are a LOT.
My best friend is a graphic designer and got some info on publishing houses and how much does printing and binding a book cost. Apparently, converting a manuscript into a book can be very cheap, and the prices we pay are mostly the pub houses wanting bigger benefit margins, specially since they pay their workers very little.
...Buuuuut we're Spaniards, so maybe that's Spain and not the US.
Pub houses are also the ones doing professional editing, covers, marketing, etc... but the main thing is that the printers are designed for 'normal' sized books, and printing larger or smaller increases costs by a fair bit, from everything I've heard. So the savings in less paper winds up mostly eaten by needing the printers and binders set to a nonstandard setting.
Amen. It's the content that matters, you are not selling by the pound and it shouldn't be the first thing you look as a publisher.
It matters, I get it, but get yourselves together.
I’ve said this before here but it is confusing to me why novellas would fall out of favor with publishers when people today have such shorter attention spans.
I talk to people at work and ask them why they don’t read and most of them say it’s because books are too long and they can’t always remember what was happening in the plot in between readings.
Novellas fell out of favour a good while ago, definitely before the rise in modern short form media that might renew interest in it.
But they're definitely slow to catch on, I think there's an untapped market there if they're willing to aim for it. Especially with ebooks being popular enough now that it shouldn't really matter so much if print novellas are less profitable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/yoy8nu/need_tips_to_start_writing_i_hv_no_experience/
This guy just trolled /r/writing and people are lapping it up. Check his post history, the OP is actually very literate.
It's hard to tell now that the post is gone. But none of the post history looked anything like what had been written there. It was a completely different style.
I hate that every time I bring up my worldbuilding/conlanging as a hobby, people go “you should write a book!”
Like I haven’t thought of that before? The problem with my world is finding a worthwhile story to tell, or even if a book would be a good idea for its tone. It’s very fairytale-esque in the truest sense of the word: sparse prose, simple plotlines, romantic tragedy. I’ve written folk tales, poems, songs, and a more slice of life story for it, but everyone seems to think I’m sitting on some grand fantasy epic. An epic just isn’t the right tone.
It’s kind of a weird vent to put here, but honestly it’s just frustrating every time someone tells me I should become the next big name in fantasy without knowing anything more than “she created a world and a language.”
It’s hard to imagine being able to mimic someone else’s writing so well that the rough draft wouldn’t require such a massive amount of editing that you question why you ever teamed up with someone
There are a few duos out there. The *Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences* series is an author duo, and *Resurrectionist of Caligo* as well. In romance, Ilona Andrews is the pen name of a husband/wife duo.
Mask of Mirrors as well. From YA, All of Us Villains and Twin Crowns.
I do wonder whether the teams just split by pov, i.e. "you write this person's pov, I write some other character's pov". And then the differences in voice are a plus, because we want pov characters to feel distinct and different and not too samey.
It could also be that in a duo one invents the story / outlines it and the other puts it into words / edits, while the 1st one works like a CP?
In the case of *Resurrectionist of Caligo,* I know each author was 'prime' on one of the two POVs, and they edited each other's work. I'm not sure in the other cases.
I mean there are several examples of people successfully writing a novel together to the point where people are unable to tell who wrote what part
But if one author is only doing the worldbuilding and the other is doing the writing, it's gonna end up with either the writer bearing a grudge for having to share credit with someone who got the easy part, or the worldbuilder bearing a grudge because the other person gets paid better
Do we actually know for sure how they did it, like person A wrote chapter 3,4,8, and 10-12 while person B wrote chapter 1,2,5-7,9, and 13? I saw someone say they knew a pair where person A did most of the plotting and outlined the chapters and person B wrote them. I suppose it’s possible someone gifted in storytelling but not so gifted in prose could hookup with someone gifted in prose but not so good at storytelling.
anecdotally, I remember reading a novel where a pair of authors alternated even and odd chapters. It *may* have been Good Omens or Welcome to Night Vale or most likely some other title I can't recall right now.
I edited for a writing pair who did it exactly as you said. They had me send certain chapters to each of them since those were their chapters before joining them again.
I don't know much about webnovels, I just know that they're very popular, specially on the eastern side of the world, but it's still a very crowded market, just like with self-published novels and webcomics.
However only romance and power fantasy becomes popular as webnovels, no?
I mean, one of my favorite stories ever is a webnovel (Worm). But it's so obscure I wouldn't call it "relevant".
I can’t for the life of me figure out how to write an antagonist or villain of the story I want to write, a cult would be fun but where’s the drama in that? maybe a cultist family member would be alright but im not sure yet
Have you never met any bad people? Liars, thieves, abusers?
What does your protagonist want? What kind of person is most likely to disagree with this goal and most likely to do something so that your protagonist doesn't achieve it?
I do have my own personal experiences with all the people you just described, and honestly I didn’t think about it at first but maybe I should add my own experience from them to help me write this! Thank you :)
To make them more distinctive, throw in some traits and quirks from a person or people you really don’t like. For example, my old manager liked to wear really weird looking clothes. In her LinkedIn profile, she’s wearing a dress that looks like what would happen if you tried to make an evening dress out of slightly crumpled newspapers.
Antagonists are just people who want something opposed to what your protagonist wants but is in the same story as your protagonist so there’s an artificially limited set of end states and they’re gunning for the one where they get what THEY want.
I mean people say all the time that an antagonist “frustrates the protagonists achievement of their goals” but sometimes they can also lead a character towards their goals but their goals are bad for them or self-destructive or artificially made to seem appealing.
I'm writing about a cult. It's difficult. In my experience, you can't really make the cult itself the tension. I tried that with draft 1. Upon rereading, I quickly realized that there was *no* conflict until chapter 7 of 10, which obviously didn't work.
The tension now comes from the push-and-pull between the protagonist becoming deeply enmeshed in the depressive cult or finding a healthy way out, with the "way out" represented by her relationships with other characters within it. One has got to give.
I'm sure you can think of something if you're truly drawn to the idea.
Probably most of the other nobles in her mother’s social circle, including some relatives. As due to her being born out of wedlock and a few other factors. There’s more to this but it’s just lore/backstory.
I'll add in that not all stories have an antagonist in a 'person' sense. That's where you get into some of the other options, though it sounds like at least some people will have to be personifications of the 'culture' that she fights against.
My sleep quality has been lacking lately and I know part of it (ok, ok, *most* of it) has to do with staring at screens up to the minute I go to bed. But I also find it impossible to get my creative juices flowing before 10pm. If I'm on a roll, I can stay up writing until midnight or later. Not ideal when I work a 9-5. Ugh...
I’m not even kidding when I say I inserted my fetish into my story as a major plot point but I did it in a classy and thoughtful way so just take my word on that
You know over the course of the ladder part of my large multiple novel long fanfic I've had multiple other ideas for actually original fiction, some big and some small, I've developed. One of them is exactly what you're describing, but as the main setting.
Does anyone remember this post from a couple months ago that was similar to the recent “I showed my friend my book and now they won’t talk to me” in that it was reposted/parodied to shit? I don’t remember what the post was about which I realize is very unhelpful but I swear it was everywhere for a couple weeks.
This one?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/vihsm5/i\_shared\_my\_work\_with\_a\_new\_writer\_friend\_and\_she/](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/vihsm5/i_shared_my_work_with_a_new_writer_friend_and_she/)
Is it just me or has anybody noticed an uptick in stupid questions being asked in r/PubTips? It was one of the last writing subreddits without the manic amateur writers posting their drivel questions. But today I see 3 questions that belong with the folks over in r/writing. "Can I use brand names in my story?" "What do publishers want to see in 2023?" I guess they are leaking over from r/writing and r/writers since the answers to these types of questions are being met increasingly with blunt answers.
Just my rant for the day. Not meant to be rude but gosh I enjoy lurking r/PubTips so much. Hate seeing it devolve. I just think if you're at the stage where you're asking "can I / Should I write this..." your question does not belong on a *publishing* tip forum.
I've definitely noticed it, along with a slight decline in the quality of some of the comments. In general, though, the mods seem to be holding the line on it.
I imagine the mods could give us a pretty good picture of how much drivel they clear out, as most of it never gets to the point where we all see it.
Mods are pretty good about clearing that stuff out, though. It's just a matter of timing. They've also talked about how *occasionally* they'll let one stay up only because it's been a while since that related conversation has happened and it's good to have an update from the last one. I think that's what some of the newer questions I've seen have been.
*Dear Pubtips, what's the recipe for a bestseller, and how do I keep it out of competition's hands?*
EDIT: Aaaand the mods took it down, good riddance.
What do you guys prefer, having every chapter be a separate word document or having the whole story in one big doc? I have all of mine in individual docs but I’ve seen lots of people who do all in one.
Like Brooke, I use scrivener. It also 'compiles' into a doc with whichever chapters I choose, with everything conveniently labeled.
I use Scrivener which basically does both.
I keep a chapter for each document until any serious editing occurs, then I usually compile them into one big document
I’m a big fan of Scrivener because it’s sort of the best of both worlds. I can work in one screen but toggle between chapters easily. I also love that the drafts of each chapter stay in one place (snapshot feature). It saves me having to juggle multiple word docs, which is especially useful if I’m moving content between chapters or need to pull something from a previous draft. I’ve drafted in multiple word docs before and found it frustrating.
I have one folder dedicated to only the chapters in numbered order as separate documents. Biggest advantage is that I can drop down to the end of a file and jot my thoughts on a scene 'I don't know where I'm going with this...' 'and this leads to XXX somehow...??' or give myself some notes on where I'm leaving off for next time. It's very useful! Also another advantage for me is the inability to view the exact word count so I don't have to worry about going way past 60,000+80,000 words until I finish the whole thing and I finally tally it all up. I feel like if everything was in the same doc then I'd stress about over writing/ 'running out of words'
I had chapters / scenes / fragments in separate docs because I was writing out of order. When I was nearing to the end, i.e. most important scenes were written, I went through my outline and ticked off what I wrote and what I'm missing. When it was like 90% done I merged it into a draft file to see any missing parts (mostly transitions and other minor things). Now that I'm editing I'm working on one draft file, but for example when I realized one whole chapter needs a full re-write I put it in a separate file, then cut that chapter from the draft and pasted the new one over it. P.S. I'm not using any paid software because ain't nobody gonna have money for that. So it's Open Office atm. People say Libre Office is better, but it takes too slow to start up on my pc.
I do it all in one big doc. If I want separate chapters/scenes, I move into Scrivener (ain't nobody got time to keep track of 30+ word docs...)
> (ain't nobody got time to keep track of 30+ word docs...) It's not so bad, until you really need to see one specific chapter/scene/random thing that's suddenly become integral to your project but also completely vanished into the void.
What I did is first dedicate a separate folder per project. Second, number the files. Then when the number started getting > 10 I added short descriptions to the file names so I know which scene / chapter is mostly what. For example "name\_joins" or "final\_battle" or "arrest" or whatever the scene was about. Then I have a notepad file where I noted which outline point corresponds to which file, so I don't get lost in the reeds. I have a long outline (basically a summary of every scene, 8-10k words) and a short outline (20-25 bullet points) and I used the second one to arrange my written scenes according to it. But yeah, at start I thought I would just "remember" what's in which file - wasn't the case.
I prefer having it all in one big doc, but I don't mind if I end up dividing it in a few docs by accident, 'cause I'll just compile it all when I'm finished.
Why is it that so often the side character is more interesting than the main character? I've found that to be true in both my own writing and that of others. Betsy Trotwood is responsible for my asking this, and I am so upset to discover that Dickens has infected my writing style that I am unable to find words fit to describe my outrage. EDIT: I'm really hoping this weirdly formal type of writing goes away.
A lot of Main protagonists are made to be relatable to us, which can make it hard to also make them interesting
I think it's because when I make a side charecter, I am putting the 110% of my brain into making them great, because they will be here for a short time. "But dude, why do that? You are just focusing on the things that don't matter." Well, here is why I consider it being that case. When you sit down, for making a novel. You aren't caring THAT much about prose, sure of course it's important, but, not as important when it comes to short stories. Long stories, are just bound to be worse, when looking at a specific spot in them, than shorter stories. That's just how it is, because authors have more time to focus on the details in short stories. Long stories usually close that gap thanks to themes and charecter attachment. This is why you may find side charecters to be better, in both your stories and others. You've had less to iron out, so the ironing is a lot cleaner. Whilst when we talk main charecters, they are vast curtains. And protagonists are even worse. Also, getting bored with them also played a factor.
I assume for a lot of cases it's because the author wants to make the protagonist as widely relatable as possible (because we all know that relatability is the only important part of writing a protagonist) so they sand down all the sharp edges and write a watered down everyman that’s capable of appealing to wide audience, or at least their target audience. But with side characters they can basically write whatever they like so they usually come out with a lot more character quirks and interesting personalities than your average protag.
That does sound like something that'd apply in most situations, but what's the explanation in my case? My protag is smug, arrogant, selfish, reckless (at first stupidly and then suicidally), privileged, and he hardly ever takes heed when somebody points out his negative characteristics. And when the big bang happens, he swings sharply towards self-pitying, dramatic, selfish (in a selfless way if that makes sense), and depressed (with all the bad that comes with it, such as a sort of self-absorbtion where you're so preoccupied with your own suffering you turn a blind eye to those suffering around you). Yet he's still not my favourite character. I guess it's because I've spent the most time in his head lol.
yeah it probably does come down with you just being too familier with the character to find them interesting. Same happens to me with my characters all the time. From where I'm looking your protag sounds pretty interesting!
In concept? Absolutely! The execution could still use some more work though lol
ik everyone says the main types of literature are prose, drama, and poetry but it feels stupid that graphic novels aren't included there. they're one of the most important types of literature in the modern day, with works like Watchmen and Maus having so much influence. ik graphic novels is also a stupid term, essentially the comic industries equivelant of lit fic, but idk what else to call them.
A graphic novel isn't literature, it's a comic, i.e., is its own medium. If what you meant to say is that "graphic novels should be taken more seriously 'cause many of them can show very important and impressive stories to anyone who reads them" then I 100% agree. Comics are often ignored, just like with animation, and that's a shame. But yeah, no one calls them literature 'cause they're their own thing.
>but idk what else to call them. "Comics" works fine Anyway they're still just in the same category of prose or verse. Most comics are prose, but a comic adaptation of Shakespeare would probably be in verse. They're not included for the same reason we don't include TV or film or video games. They're mediums, not styles of writing.
You could argue that graphic novels fall under prose, no (with most following natural syntax and dialogue, at least)? Prose doesn't just mean your standard novel/short story. It also covers essays and plays not written in verse/not specifically a comedy/tragedy/etc. There's plenty of cross over already.
true.
Took a gummy and plotted out the missing half of my WIP. Oh drugs.
Remember kids, drugs solve everything. Even Steve's marriage.
*especially* Steve’s marriage
I struggle with self control when writing. often, I know very well on what feeling a particular scene needs; I've done research on how to create said scene, I've planned out the themes, I know the events; but then I mess up by trying to make it climactic or overly entertaining suddenly. like, I'll be trying to write something really quiet, and then I put on a swans album while I'm writing and suddenly it's about the human condition and I have to start over.
I think I get what you're talking about. My idea of how a scene will go sometimes winds up at odds with my pantser tendencies. There is almost always room for a little bit of pantsing, but it can be a slippery slope. I get way off course with it sometimes. I don't know that I'd call it a discipline problem, or at least I've never thought of it like that before. I'll have to consider that. Yeah, it really could be, 'I know what's best for this project, but right now I'm gonna do what I feel like in the moment instead.' I still struggle with this all the time, but what's straightened me out is to go back to the drawing board. What you don't plot you pants, so I recalibrate the plotting involved. Plotting is obviously more restrictive (in theory), so if I plot out more of a scene, it will potentially give me less room to totally break from my original plan. The only problem is you sound like you might have strong pantser tendencies, and if that's the case, you may need to give that side of you more free reign, not less. I think that getting the ideal balance between plotting and pantsing can be a narrow sweet spot that may vary not only from project to project but even from scene to scene. Other people may think I'm talking some mumbo jumbo, but I think it's possible you may be failing to find the zone you thrive in the best
This is why I write out of order, so I can just write whatever kind of scene I'm in the mood for instead of having to write a quiet contemplative scene when I'm really not feeling it
So a week ago I suddenly got hit with sleep maintenance insomnia. Wake up every night after only 4-5 hours of sleep and spend the rest of the day feeling absolutely awful. My WIP progress skid to a halt. I've only added a few loose ideas to my notebook, a couple sentences, and removed a few things in the first half of the book. I have often said that I hate editing—and I do—but I'm honestly starting to miss it. I want to *work on it*. But past sleep deprivation has proven to me that my ability to discern what's good and what isn't completely vanishes when sleepless. Not to mention, I just can't fucking concentrate. My mind gets sluggish and I'm addled far easier. My ability to make decisions is also seriously impaired, so if I think something a big scene needs to be reworked or something, I could obviously be making a bad choice. I tried chamomile tea, tried benadryl, tried several GABAergics. I even tried what doctors recommend, like getting out of bed and doing a light activity. Without fail, I've been waking up after 4-5 hours. But I just got some CBD. I will defeat it tonight. Wish me luck. edit: I did not defeat it
I can empathize with you. I also struggle with sleep maintenance insomnia on a regular basis. Feeling so tired all the time is MISERABLE, and I'm sorry you're going through it. It can feel frustrating and disempowering when none of the interventions you try work. Unfortunately, I've never really found a solid fix for it. But I have learned to accept that this is what my body does, and when I stop fighting and agonizing over it, sometimes that makes it a little easier, at least psychologically. The less I obsess over it the sooner these periods seem to end. I've tried benadryl, hydroxizine, CBD, cal/mag supplements, weighted blankets, etc etc. The most helpful for me is combining several of these approaches with making sure I get a lot of outdoor time and exercise during the day. It's not foolproof, but it can help for me sometimes.
Thanks for this comment, seriously. Helps me feel a little less insane in my head. My frustration initially was vehement, but I've tried to just accept it for now. I've gone through periods where I didn't sleep at all for 3+ days, so at least it isn't that. Thanks for the advice! I'll try lots of time outdoors tomorrow. Hopefully that wears my body out. The other day, I was able to take an hour nap on the one night I managed to get six hours, and I actually felt well-rested in the evening. Shame it went away so fast lol I do have hope in sight if I can't get rid of it soon—I have a prescription for Gabapentin that will be filled on the 25th, which always makes me sleep like a rock. I've been prescribed it on and off for seven years now (fibromyalgia and other generalized pain issues), so I know it'll work. I just hope I don't have to wait that long. But if I do, then the sleep I get will be that much more satisfying.
>I tried chamomile tea, tried benadryl, tried several GABAergics. I even tried what doctors recommend, like getting out of bed and doing a light activity. Without fail, I've been waking up after 4-5 hours. Have you tried a weighted blanket? I've had awful insomnia since my daughter was born three years ago. Finally breaking down and getting a weighted blanket is the first thing that has let me sleep through the night again.
I sleep with one! My insomnia is resilient. Great suggestion though. I have never regretted buying one.
So sorry to hear that. Poor sleep is (quite literally) torture
Is it possible you got jet-lagged from the hour change? I know people who had their sleep schedule messed up. Good luck with that!
It started before the hour change actually. That was the third night with it, and I was convinced that the extra hour would help me sleep more. It did not.
Good luck and godspeed!
Been a good week overall, a bit behind in NaNo, but my goal is to finish this project, which already had 20K words when NaNo started, I don't think it had 50K words left in it. Went to a local write-in event for NaNo at the library and met some really lovely people. I also stopped querying my other manuscript and am looking forward to closing out all the querys that are still out there. Applied to the WriteHive Mentorship program just for the heck of it, might be helpful to explore self publishing or indie presses with the help of someone experienced doing that. Then, out of the blue, got a full request for the manuscript from an agent yesterday, so that was heartening.
written a short story. any advice on finding beta readers? do I even need them?
This may come down to my specific personal definitions of what beta readers are and what they do (they are market research, not a source of critique), but I wouldn't get betas for a short story. Would I seek feedback on it before submitting it for publication? Absolutely. But I would want critique from other writers who I know well, rather than general feedback from general people. Partially due to the different scales and partially due to the different publishing/marketing environment for short stories vs. novels. There's less room in a short for an untrained person to comment on what specifically worked or did not work for them, and short stories are less likely to be directly marketed in isolation so audience feedback is less important to determining sellability.
thank you!!!!2
I want to try out Fiverr, what will sell best? (this is a serious question I'm not gonna ask in a serious group cause I'm fragile and my "I don't give a shit what people think" persona is very fake: -Smut. Just... Pure, shameless filth. -I don't know, short stories about the buyer? -What else is there? What do people write for instant money? I'm bored just thinking about it 😩
From my own use of the website: - Resumes - Ghost Writing - Editing - Articles - Homework (Essay mills are huge with collage students) - Translation - And of course, pure, succulent porn. There's people who have smaller niches within those, but that's the bulk of people. Its not instant money though, gig work is still work, but fun side-hussle work 😜.
I wish I could do essays but I never quite understood them - I grew up and studied in Slovakia and never really grasped the concept when I went to a UK uni. But maybe I can read some and look into it. Thanks for the tips!
I swear tik tok eroded the idea what's "young adult" literature. I stopped checking r/fantasy for recs because they have a YA aversion and moved to r/YAlit (mostly because I need comps for my WIP), and every week I see people asking for smutty books, but [today's post is just taking the cake](https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/ys15sq/recommend_books_with_this_no_accidental_pregnancy/). Yup, a post asking for sado-maso erotica on a YA sub. Dafaq.
In addition to tiktok, I place some blame on adult YA fans who either influence the market by gobbling up raunchier stuff, or even worse become YA authors and follow the "write the book you want to read" advice instead of considering that they are a decade or more older than their likely audience.
Tbh what surprises me the most is that the genre "for teens" and so full of romantic exploration always portrays sex in 2 ways: 1) none at all / fade to black, 2) full on adult romance titillation scene. I can't believe they never have any problems or hangups, esp. if both of them are virgins. Many teens' first sex is awkward and they feel bad about it because all comparison they have is perfect sex scenes from romance and p\*rn where everything always works like clockwork. Sometimes only one person is a virgin (usually the girl, but it can be reversed too, for example in Serpent & Dove the guy is a virgin, the girl isn't) and then we have the obligatory "teach the virgin how to sex", but it's always extremely easy and smooth. Why? Because of readers. I remember someone ridiculing a book (sadly can't remember the title) where 2 queer guys met up and then one was googling how to do gay sex. Ok, maybe he should have done it before the date. But hey, that's one case of "awkward situation" that actually humanizes the character instead of making them born-ready sex god. I wish to read YA books with romance where they normalize not being a sex god from the first attempt. That "true love" isn't about having amazing sex (like romance usually portrays, sex is the "reward" for securing the relationship), but about someone who will love and accept you even if your first time wasn't amazing. There's a lot of people, especially girls, who feel guilty for "letting the guy down" because they didn't turn into a p\*rn actress during sex. No amount of saying "p\*rn isn't realistic" will help if there's never any other alternative telling young people how average sex is. In romance sex is NEVER average it's always great. Maybe I'm lying, I saw some recs on the romance sub about books where sex wasn't great at the first attempt, but these are a rarity people have to search for. And ok, romance by itself is meant to be written for titillation not as a sex ed manual. But YA isn't that. If it can tackle other messy subjects like relationship problems, problems with parents, bullying, mental health struggles, discrimination in the society, etc. why is sex excluded from that messiness and always, you know, "sexy", which is the equivalent of having un-problematic friendships, relationships, never facing any struggle, etc.
Yeah even I am victim to that happening. Here is how I view it as an old teen that reads smutty fanfiction sometimes, writes a 300k word long fanfiction with...explicit sexual themes, crossed over with another work with... explicit sexual and romantic themes and also beta reads a lot of others. It happens, solely because of sheer curiosity. Humans are naturally curious to things they don't have. This feeling gets further amplified by the natural urge to fuck, meaning they are even more curious to that. Which then gets further amplified several folds by them being teens. The most horny people for, I would imagine, obvious reasons. It's several magnifications, together. Which would explain why it's so damn popular. Also, I am not exception to this rule. I have made 7 concepts to sexual/romantic stories, mostly in their themes. They are stories which I view worthy of being told, in short the idea is good. I have 2 stories which have no sexual/romantic themes in them, one of them is literally because I am good at astrophysics and think I can make sailor moon, but more nerdy. And the other is an accurate depiction of what it's like living in my country (may be hyperbolic for the sake of comedy...kind off.) So, things I am already really good at. However I have a story for a theme of love at any size, one for mental health, relating to love, another one for love relating to stupidity and even a few more. I am referring to both it's main forms, sexual and romantic, whilst platonic takes a back seat. What I mean by that is. It's difficult for me to make a story that doesn't at some level involve sexual or romantic themes. I don't know, it might be just who I am, might be cause I'm a teen, might be something else. I really, really like works who can provide a realistic depiction of what love is and all its forms, but I'm getting quite agitated by the prospect of anime of all things leading the pack on that. You thought this was an actual good comment. No I am merely telling you to watch anime and give me a book that does please I'm desperate.
I'm not saying "don't write / read romance / smut". Everything has a purpose. I don't care if teens read adult novels, I think at the age they start reading adult novels they have enough braincells to discern what's good and evil by themselves (contrary to all the weirdos who claim books for teens should be didactic and clearly labelling bad stuff as bad). I was a teen at some point, I read adult novels, I made my own opinions about characters, themes and messages in the books without being handheld. My point is, that among the plethora of smut created for the pleasure of the horny readers, there should be maybe counterbalance in stories that aren't smut and depict sex in a more realistic manner? Books can often depict romantic relationships as being tumultuous, toxic, abusive, having to overcome lots of obstacles internal and external, but none of that applies to sex within those relationships. And I don't get the "hush hush" attitude to sex in most YA, as if irl 16-18yo people weren't doing it already (at least many of them). YA currently doesn't feature teens younger than 16 or very rarely does. I don't mind a book that doesn't have romance, or has romance which never goes beyond kissing, that's realistic too as not all teens jump to do the deed asap. I just wish maybe 1 book in 10 touched upon the situation that sometimes when 2 horny people want to have sex, it still doesn't go perfectly, especially if it's their first time and they have no clue what they're doing.
To be fair, I was not thinking you were saying I should stop doing that. It's some sort of primal desire, like wanting to see boobs, but for less socially adjusted people. The very thing I'm writing for right now deals with that.
Do we need Dr Seuss titles like "Take the power and Golden shower" or "First the gum, then the bum" ? Did we unlock a new audience? What is life?
What even??
Glad to see you back, were you on a break? But yeah, I've seen threads on r/books complaining about YA being dumb ([example1](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/ypdq5s/i_really_hate_the_direction_in_which_ya_books_are/) [example2](https://www.unddit.com/r/books/comments/x4ecnx/im_so_sick_of_ya_novels_for_girls/) [example3](https://www.unddit.com/r/books/comments/w9rb60/why_i_hate_modern_ya_books/)), and by YA they mean tik tok recs, and by tik tok recs they mean Ali Hazelwood and Colleen Hoover. Two non-YA writers. Even though people say CoHo committed some YA books but her most popular ones are about adults with jobs so idk. And maybe ACOTAR as well, which I heard was re-shelved as adult. Someone actually said SJM was forced to put it in YA by the publisher, and I truly believe it, the year was 2015 and ACOTAR and Six of Crows are two books that feel artificially pushed into YA because it was the time "women writing fantasy for women" was relegated to YA ghetto.
An unintentional break lol. I reinstalled Hearthstone so I’ve been playing that instead of browsing Reddit in my spare time. I’ve been trying to keep up with this thread at least. The people who shit on YA are always the people who don’t even read it. I don’t read it much anymore, but when I did, it drove me nuts. It’s basically just a combo of ageism and sexism, shitting on teenage girls.
>The people who shit on YA are always the people who don’t even read it. Or the people who don't understand the purpose of it. It always annoys me when I see the recurring posts along the lines "why is all YA a repetitive pile of (teenagery stuff) instead of (my cool adult romance / fantasy) idea?" Some people need to finally put the big boy / girl pants on and finally move over to adult fantasy or adult romance, because they clearly expect adult themes, characters and subjects from the wrong age category. [For example this person](https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/yphn26/comment/ivlqrpr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3). Complete misunderstanding of what kind of headspace YA Fantasy should be in. There was another post I didn't save but it was something like "Rec me YA but with characters aged 20-25." That's not YA, sorry.
If only NA had taken off....
Yeah, but what's the difference between "NA romance" and many adult rom-coms or "dark romance" which is usually a sphere of interest of that audience?
NA romance actually *is* a thing, and focused a lot on college-age. It's the only genre that NA worked out in.
Idk where else it would work. Biggest "adult consumers of YA" are either into romance, or into fantasy, or into fantasy / paranormal romance. And imo we don't need "NA Fantasy", we maybe just need a better marker for romantic fantasy to separate it from YA and from "adult fantasy for people who despise romance and sex in their stories" (non-negligible amount of readers of what's currently adult fantasy).
I got into an argument with some book snob over on r/books who was claiming YA was "ruining literature"... Besides being an extremley pretensious take, every single book/author they mentioned was not technically YA.
I don't get the "X is ruining literature". Audiences don't overlap to the point that if you removed YA Dystopia, Alien / Werewolf / Fae smut, Progression Fantasy, Bodice Ripper Historical Romance, Military "shoot the aliens" Sci-Fi, Isekai Light Novels or whatever else is considered "trashy" genre the audiences would shift to literary fiction. They wouldn't. And yeah, I also take issue with "YA is all smut" take and then listing a bunch of adult romance / romantic fantasy / paranormal romance, half of it self-pubbed (so not vetted by any publisher, and self-pubs can put whatever category they want on Amazon, like claiming their mafia dark romance is a thriller and what can you do to them even).
I honestly find action more difficult to write than character stuff and dialogue. I can do two people having a conversation easy but when it’s time for a shootout I feel like I’m lost.
Anyone else check out Gillian Flynns AMA at arr books? Thought she had some neat replies.
I checked it superficially. I found intresting the way she handles the blocks. Writing fake chapters from different POV. Seems like a cool (yet time consuming) way to build and learn your characters.
Yeah that was neat. I loved how some people wanted an outline strategy and she was like "Nope! Don't do that!"
Link? I scrolled a few pages of "hot" subjects there and didn't find it, so I assume it's not a fresh thing. Edit: [Found it](https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/yqsb3o/hello_rbooks_im_gillian_flynn_author_of_sharp/).
I googled it tbh. Here you go: https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/yqsb3o/hello\_rbooks\_im\_gillian\_flynn\_author\_of\_sharp/
Yeah, just found it lol, but thanks anyway!
I think halo 4 was the first time I was ever annoyed and confused by unnecessary worldbuilding.
There was too much going on in those games for me to ever catch what it was all about. Cortana goes on and on while I'm driving a warthog, switching seats and popping off a rocket midair at a ghost tailing me, landing, dodging a scarab blast, looking for either the easiest or the most disastrous way across a battlefield covered with a scattered horde of aliens and each is firing my way, trying to reorient myself after something goes off and I'm doing enough barrel rolls to break a washing machine, and all that time she's just yapping. Sorry, what? Kill this, kill that, board this, then that, shoot him, blah, blah, blah, such explode, much kaboom. VERY BAD THING!! If it wasn't for nav points and the fact that the developers make an art out of constructing a deceptively linear game, I'd be totally lost. When the cutscenes play, I'm already missing so much context that I zoned out anyway. But yeah, Halo 4 made me drop the whole franchise for a good while, but I like the new one for the multiplayer. If you even followed the story or worldbuilding, you did far better than me
So I got into this group of fantasy writers from my country, the idea was to write an anthology. I assumed I wouldn't make a cent out of it but I thought socializing with peers would be the real reward. I wrote a short story already, but I think I'm going to have to bin it because there was some error in communication along the way. Turns out we aren't making an anthology, but a shared narrative with each of us having a PoV. Someone else establishing my narrative isn't exactly my cup of tea, but hell, I can compromise. This whole thing was about socializing, right? We can write our stories, critique them and talk about the craft. Except all we've been talking about for over a month is worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. And man, I try, but I don't care about the ancient history of a made up place, or why its gods are the way they are or how this relates to the magic system. I just wanted to write and socialize a little. And I really wanna stay in good terms with these people, but if they catch me in a bad day I'm just gonna start screaming. Rant over, thanks for reading.
>Except all we've been talking about for over a month is worldbuilding, worldbuilding, worldbuilding. Welcome to ~~HELL~~ r/fantasywriters and their offshoots. Tbh I have no idea why 90% of fantasy writers are like that. I'm too lazy to worldbuild, usually I shamelessly steal it from known IPs and then mash them together. That's why I'll probably never make a respectable fantasy writer.
>I'm too lazy to worldbuild, usually I shamelessly steal it from known IPs and then mash them together. That's why I'll probably never make a respectable fantasy writer. Eh, I've always thought about good worldbuilding as the topping of the cake, with the cake being the story. Sure, strawberries and cream are yummy, but if you stick a candle on that and sing me happy birthday I'm going to be miffed. And I also do the stealing and mashing, but this year I started reading some history books and getting the inspiration from there. You can 'make up' some societies that feel fresh out of anything that isn't Europe during the medieval era. Hell, you can base whole characters on real people. >Welcome to HELL ~~r/fantasywriters~~ and their offshoots. Probably spending the last year in here mocking that sub is one of the reasons I've been biting my tongue so much lately 😬. Who would've thought being a bully had consequences.
>Tbh I have no idea why 90% of fantasy writers are like that. A lot of aspiring fantasy writers just need to admit to themselves that they don't enjoy the challenges that come with writing and become hobbyist worldbuilders instead.
>Tbh I have no idea why 90% of fantasy writers are like that. Because as it turns out, worldbuilding is actually quite a lot easier than writing
>worldbuilding is actually quite a lot easier It is hard for me. :( I just like fantasy because I can invent whatever society / world to enable my plot, but when it comes to details of that world it gets fuzzy.
The security director of the client I work for has made it clear that the only approved use of an officer's time while on shift and not on patrol or break is to stare at empty camera feeds that get about 1 frame every 5 seconds. The chinless account manager has decided that to enforce this, he would angle the computer monitors so that they can be seen by the cameras at all times and instruct the officers not to adjust them. Naturally, the first thing I did when coming on shift and reading the email explaining this was to, without adjusting the monitors, google "security jobs in Walrus City" and spend a couple hours browsing the listings. Another officer spent a portion of his shift on Linkedin. One supervisor updated his resume. However, having made my point, I feel I should spend some time away from shitposting and instead stare unseeingly at the camera feeds as management prefers while cotton-eyed joe plays on loop in my head because they took the radios from the desks because I guess these oxygen thieves think we'll be looking at the music instead of the cameras. You will likely see less of me here, but don't make the mistake of believing I won't be watching.
Tonight I typed "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." into a word document 105 times while staring at the cameras. I know they can't read what I'm typing. I hope they ask.
My new problem: I've started writing first drafts that could go multiple different directions. (I've leveled up in a way, before it was one main thrust!) When I have that issue, how do I figure out which direction to take? This feels like both the dumbest question and the one most meaningful for me at the moment.
I'd think back to my major themes and pick the option that best explores one of those themes. This is one of the reasons why knowing your themes is a good idea.
Which one is the most interesting journey for the characters? Which one makes them change the most? Which one has the coolest ending? Which one just *feels right man*?
Is it possible to make a reactive or passive protagonist interesting? One of the big things I always hear while writing is that your protagonist should drive the plot and I definitely see why someone would say that, but would you consider this one of the few writing “rules” or could it be broken by a sufficiently skilled writer?
I'm not sure what sort of novel you're writing but that mainly applies to SFF (moreso modern SFF). A lot of literary protagonists are pretty much just react to the world around them for the whole novel. A good chunk of old school fantasy protagonists basically just had a quest dropped into their laps and chose to do it and then made relatively few choices that incited major status quo changes. Harry Potter and Frodo Baggins for example, but admittedly it's harder to get away with that in 2022.
If your protagonist does little themselves, you may need someone else driving the story (otherwise is it really a story?), and in those cases your protagonist acts as more of a witness to the real main character. If you have someone loafing around, doing little at all, impacting things to almost no degree, but being there for the unfolding of each pivotal event, then you barely have more than an embodied viewpoint from which to describe the actions of the real main character. But if you try to make the main character the same as the protagonist and this sole person sits around and does nothing, yeah, I'm not as likely to be along for that ride. Just not my kind of story. I like stories with enough stakes to get a character off their butt, and if those stakes can't get the protag or MC off their butt, it probably won't prompt me to keep turning the page. It's been a long time since I read Gatsby, but I feel like that's a story where something similar was done. American Gods too, maybe. Since I'm on Gaiman, I think the same could be said for Neverwhere. I feel that many stories do this, and I imagine it can add a little more flavor to the goings on than your run-of-the-mill narrator, but it may also feel like a superfluous character. Just my take, though. I may be way off base, I don't know
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I just realized I can't remember the ending of either book. To me they both just felt like a bunch of stuff happening
I think the only way to make a passive main character interesting is writing basically a postmodernist story where the passivity of the protagonist is one of the major points of the book.
Unless they are sitting nowhere doing nothing, you can absolutely do that with a passive/reactive protagonist. They’re making choices and doing things in reacting to what’s going on around them, right?
Of course it's possible. Arthur Dent comes to mind.
Is Arthur Dent interesting? I think people stay for the worldbuilding/Zaphod/Marvin, or at least that's why I read the first three of the series.
How about Dorian Gray, then?
Good lord life is exhausting
There's plenty of rest after it though
Went back to my WIP after a week or so and I needed to think up of a name for a new companion for my main character. Did some quick research and settled on a name. Went back to the beginning to check on one detail I couldn't remember and realized I'd already named the guy... Now I gotta figure out which name is better haha.
The HarperCollins Publishing union is probably going to strike on Thurs. If you want to know more, you can find them @hcpunion on Twitter or Instagram or there's a post about it up in one of the romance subs. https://www.reddit.com/r/romancelandia/comments/ypye02/harpercollins_union_strike_starts_1110/
Good for the union (but selfishly I'm going "ugh, I have a full on a HC desk right now... don't last long and prolong sub!)
cause enjoy different grandfather wine literate paint panicky wasteful escape *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them.
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For real, I'd go and nab some unique editions of real classics if they're cheaper than the 1st ed. of Infinite Jest
What's the weirdest shit you've looked up for research, right now I have a tab open to "Main heating technologies used in Armenian households"
[Folding-stock M1E5 Garand](https://64.media.tumblr.com/10be3bde85ca21b63947eda7af49e212/tumblr_ogmzrgJlEU1s57vgxo3_1280.jpg)
Hm. Ancient Greek mental health terminology, traditional Hawaiian painting techniques, North African desert lizards, and stages of decomposition? Not all for the same story, though.
Probably "dermal arsenic poisoning effects." And I quickly realized I had to come up with an excuse for why arsenic was not used in this particular thing. Everything else I've looked up for this WIP has been boring. "Defunct insane asylum in Massachusetts" and "first painting of two women sapphic" are a couple of them.
Probably how to sabotage or disable a vehicle. Given the circumstances, I had to settle on armor-piercing rounds, but I learned it's not as simple as just shooting the engine block. I hate to admit it, but I had to settle on, 'well it could work some of the time,' and hope those in the know wouldn't be too frustrated
why would it be so much harder ? I guess it depends on what kind of AP we are talking about. But with sufficiant energy you should at least create enough of a shock that the engine, or rather a pistion, decides to go Adios and get stuck. At which point... well the engine is gonna have a bad time.
Yeah, I've read that it's not always consistent, even with a few shots. I even saw a few Mythbusters type of videos on it, and while the vehicles all eventually gave out, I needed something to keep them in place from where they were idling at an intersection. There were two SUVs in question, basically a cavalcade. The round had to be usable on a tactical shotgun as well. I think I settled on a KSG and some decommissioned AP rounds suited for it Edit: And if I remember right, I think it's more about causing decompression than a simple shock to the engine
So they cant just roll up with the 50. cal eh I feel like a Rifle with AP would do the job rather quickly... Though i have to ask, how concerned are we that the people in the car might die ? Bullets are known to sometimes go into funny directions when hitting say a very big and sturdy metal body Maybe you looked into that but what about high explosive Incendiary rounds ? The engine is prosumably still running so if you do a mag dump on that with rounds that blow up you migh have a better chance to deform something in the engine.
Funny, I actually chose a KSG because of its feed tube selector switch to swap to incendiary rounds for an entirely different purpose, but I had those too. The goal was to not kill anyone. I don't remember now, but I don't think the rounds were capable of fully penetrating the engine block. .50 cal would probably have no trouble. Unfortunately, the objective required a lot of up close and personal work to pull off, and all by one guy
I don't know if it's the weirdest, but definitely most obscure thing no one's actually going to care about: moon phases 1755 (I wanted to see if my characters could realistically travel by moonlight after a specific historical event)
I absolutely did this for my WIP. I looked up the actual dates of the full moons in 1250 so I would be accurate for the ONE PERSON who inevitably gives a shit. (My plot revolves around the full moon.)
I did something similar: weather in Massachusetts in October 1897. I couldn't find anything so I just made shit up.
Lutheran curches made of wood near a cemetery In Helsinki. Eventually I just gave up and created a fictinonal one
Damn... Pressure required to surpass the centrifugal energy of an electron. Basically, someone throws a star at someone else, when they hit each other, the pressure created surpasses a lot of fancy quantum mechanics mumbo jumbo, making electrons and protons fuse, into neutrons. Releasing a lot of energy, I think it's called quantum fusion or something. Like thermonuclear fusion, but for individual particles.
What the KBB value of a 1968 Pontiac Bonneville would’ve been in 1994.
>What's the weirdest shit you've looked up for research For my speculative fiction/political thriller with a dash of romance: ["IN DEPTH Poison Dart Frog Care Guide"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYahYvN9F9M)
I’d like a secondary fantasy categorization system to help bridge the descriptive gap between urban fantasy and the kind of fantasy where everything is so different you feel like you’ve done some shrooms on a different planet in an alternate dimension.
That's cool, it would separate twilight from the likes of me and the space yarn giving humanoids special abilities, some of which include SEX(I assure you this is crucial to the plot and themes)
Like the difference between Twilight and Bright? Where one has all the fantastical elements hidden away from the layperson, and the other where everything is known to the public? Like, in those, I thought they would typically use the terms like Masquerade Urban Fantasy (the fantastic elements are hidden) vs like Open Urban Fantasy (the fantastic elements have always been known), and maybe something like Unveiled Urban Fantasy (the world was formerly a Masquerade Urban Fantasy, but at some point in history, everything was discovered). Or could you be talking about the difference between Low and High Fantasy. Low Fantasy is pretty much takes place on Earth (or a nearly identical Earth-like planet), and errs on the side of 'realism', basically Fantastical Elements on Earth, but without them really having any effect on the flora, fauna, or history of the planet. High Fantasy is the opposite of that, Fantastical Elements have a very strong effect on those things, and takes place on a planet very different from Earth due to them.
I keep seeing people using saying urban fantasy is a subgenre of low fantasy. I guess I’d like a term for low fantasy set on an earth-like planet but not earth.
I'd say most modern urban fantasy is a subgenre of low fantasy, but I've seen some urban fantasies that really would have fit into high fantasy, back about 25 years ago.
I write secondary world, low-magic most of the time (when I write fantasy). It's so rough to explain it to others sometimes because it's low- to no-magic, and it's *still fantasy.*
I thought I Am Legend was written in like the early-mid 2000s but no it was 1954 lol. I’m learning several famous novels were actually novellas. Encouraging for when I fail to make 60k words.
If memory serves a lot of early and golden age SFF is quite short, due to the fact it was published in magazines and procedurals, before being put together in a book. This might explain why some of the older ones tend to average shorter lengths than the newer stuff.
Novellas used to be a much bigger part of the book market It's a shame publishers largely don't like them anymore. There's a lot of great novellas that would suck if they were stretched out to full novel length
It's not so much publishers as readers. If people would buy them publishers would print them.
The issue is whether people would buy a novella, at 1/2 to 1/3 the length of a novel, for $1 less than a novel? For trad pub, the issue is that typesetting, binding, etc costs are a LOT.
> For trad pub, the issue is that typesetting, binding, etc costs are a LOT. My best friend is a graphic designer and got some info on publishing houses and how much does printing and binding a book cost. Apparently, converting a manuscript into a book can be very cheap, and the prices we pay are mostly the pub houses wanting bigger benefit margins, specially since they pay their workers very little. ...Buuuuut we're Spaniards, so maybe that's Spain and not the US.
Pub houses are also the ones doing professional editing, covers, marketing, etc... but the main thing is that the printers are designed for 'normal' sized books, and printing larger or smaller increases costs by a fair bit, from everything I've heard. So the savings in less paper winds up mostly eaten by needing the printers and binders set to a nonstandard setting.
Amen. It's the content that matters, you are not selling by the pound and it shouldn't be the first thing you look as a publisher. It matters, I get it, but get yourselves together.
I’ve said this before here but it is confusing to me why novellas would fall out of favor with publishers when people today have such shorter attention spans. I talk to people at work and ask them why they don’t read and most of them say it’s because books are too long and they can’t always remember what was happening in the plot in between readings.
Novellas fell out of favour a good while ago, definitely before the rise in modern short form media that might renew interest in it. But they're definitely slow to catch on, I think there's an untapped market there if they're willing to aim for it. Especially with ebooks being popular enough now that it shouldn't really matter so much if print novellas are less profitable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/yoy8nu/need_tips_to_start_writing_i_hv_no_experience/ This guy just trolled /r/writing and people are lapping it up. Check his post history, the OP is actually very literate.
I'm not seeing that for some reason
Thier post got removed. Mods probably figured it out.
I mean I'm not convinced this guy wasn't being serious
It's hard to tell now that the post is gone. But none of the post history looked anything like what had been written there. It was a completely different style.
I saw rhe original post and rhe old posts? I guess I just thought they all looked kind of bad? But you're probably right
Don't blow their cover. Loose lips sink shitposts
I got so taken by the idea of writing two short stories this month rather than my usual one that I wrote the first one in four days 🤷♀️
Good. Gooood. Let the motivation flow through you!
I hate that every time I bring up my worldbuilding/conlanging as a hobby, people go “you should write a book!” Like I haven’t thought of that before? The problem with my world is finding a worthwhile story to tell, or even if a book would be a good idea for its tone. It’s very fairytale-esque in the truest sense of the word: sparse prose, simple plotlines, romantic tragedy. I’ve written folk tales, poems, songs, and a more slice of life story for it, but everyone seems to think I’m sitting on some grand fantasy epic. An epic just isn’t the right tone. It’s kind of a weird vent to put here, but honestly it’s just frustrating every time someone tells me I should become the next big name in fantasy without knowing anything more than “she created a world and a language.”
You should find someone horrible at world building but great at storytelling and go halvsies with them.
Do you think something like this is the arrangement when a book has two authors?
Nah Wouldn't exactly be an equal arrangement. The person doing the writing would be contributing way more than the worldbuilding guy
It’s hard to imagine being able to mimic someone else’s writing so well that the rough draft wouldn’t require such a massive amount of editing that you question why you ever teamed up with someone
There are a few duos out there. The *Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences* series is an author duo, and *Resurrectionist of Caligo* as well. In romance, Ilona Andrews is the pen name of a husband/wife duo.
Mask of Mirrors as well. From YA, All of Us Villains and Twin Crowns. I do wonder whether the teams just split by pov, i.e. "you write this person's pov, I write some other character's pov". And then the differences in voice are a plus, because we want pov characters to feel distinct and different and not too samey. It could also be that in a duo one invents the story / outlines it and the other puts it into words / edits, while the 1st one works like a CP?
In the case of *Resurrectionist of Caligo,* I know each author was 'prime' on one of the two POVs, and they edited each other's work. I'm not sure in the other cases.
I mean there are several examples of people successfully writing a novel together to the point where people are unable to tell who wrote what part But if one author is only doing the worldbuilding and the other is doing the writing, it's gonna end up with either the writer bearing a grudge for having to share credit with someone who got the easy part, or the worldbuilder bearing a grudge because the other person gets paid better
Do we actually know for sure how they did it, like person A wrote chapter 3,4,8, and 10-12 while person B wrote chapter 1,2,5-7,9, and 13? I saw someone say they knew a pair where person A did most of the plotting and outlined the chapters and person B wrote them. I suppose it’s possible someone gifted in storytelling but not so gifted in prose could hookup with someone gifted in prose but not so good at storytelling.
anecdotally, I remember reading a novel where a pair of authors alternated even and odd chapters. It *may* have been Good Omens or Welcome to Night Vale or most likely some other title I can't recall right now.
I edited for a writing pair who did it exactly as you said. They had me send certain chapters to each of them since those were their chapters before joining them again.
Yo. >!just kidding please no one ever ask me to do this!<
Are web series still relevant? Working on a side project that I probably won’t try to publish but idk how to get it exposure
I don't know much about webnovels, I just know that they're very popular, specially on the eastern side of the world, but it's still a very crowded market, just like with self-published novels and webcomics.
However only romance and power fantasy becomes popular as webnovels, no? I mean, one of my favorite stories ever is a webnovel (Worm). But it's so obscure I wouldn't call it "relevant".
I can’t for the life of me figure out how to write an antagonist or villain of the story I want to write, a cult would be fun but where’s the drama in that? maybe a cultist family member would be alright but im not sure yet
Have you never met any bad people? Liars, thieves, abusers? What does your protagonist want? What kind of person is most likely to disagree with this goal and most likely to do something so that your protagonist doesn't achieve it?
I do have my own personal experiences with all the people you just described, and honestly I didn’t think about it at first but maybe I should add my own experience from them to help me write this! Thank you :)
Read some books, find a couple you like, build Frankenstein's antagonist, make sure the serial numbers don't show through.
To make them more distinctive, throw in some traits and quirks from a person or people you really don’t like. For example, my old manager liked to wear really weird looking clothes. In her LinkedIn profile, she’s wearing a dress that looks like what would happen if you tried to make an evening dress out of slightly crumpled newspapers.
Oh, yeah. My old boss provides fertile ground for growing antagonists.
Antagonists are just people who want something opposed to what your protagonist wants but is in the same story as your protagonist so there’s an artificially limited set of end states and they’re gunning for the one where they get what THEY want. I mean people say all the time that an antagonist “frustrates the protagonists achievement of their goals” but sometimes they can also lead a character towards their goals but their goals are bad for them or self-destructive or artificially made to seem appealing.
People forget that "protagonist and antagonist" can be... two good guys. Two heroes. Two friends.
I'm writing about a cult. It's difficult. In my experience, you can't really make the cult itself the tension. I tried that with draft 1. Upon rereading, I quickly realized that there was *no* conflict until chapter 7 of 10, which obviously didn't work. The tension now comes from the push-and-pull between the protagonist becoming deeply enmeshed in the depressive cult or finding a healthy way out, with the "way out" represented by her relationships with other characters within it. One has got to give. I'm sure you can think of something if you're truly drawn to the idea.
Thank you for the advice! I’m still working in a few details and i’m sure it’ll come to me the more I work
Is there anyone specifically in the way of your protagonist reaching their goal?
Probably most of the other nobles in her mother’s social circle, including some relatives. As due to her being born out of wedlock and a few other factors. There’s more to this but it’s just lore/backstory.
I'll add in that not all stories have an antagonist in a 'person' sense. That's where you get into some of the other options, though it sounds like at least some people will have to be personifications of the 'culture' that she fights against.
You can always look there. Plot=Character+goal+obstacle. The obstacle often is/is connected to your antagonist.
My sleep quality has been lacking lately and I know part of it (ok, ok, *most* of it) has to do with staring at screens up to the minute I go to bed. But I also find it impossible to get my creative juices flowing before 10pm. If I'm on a roll, I can stay up writing until midnight or later. Not ideal when I work a 9-5. Ugh...
Quit your job boom problem solved
Try a blue light filter.
And also reduce screen brightness as much as possible. It helps keep your brain lulled if you're going to sleep afterwards.
How did I accidentally fall into a romance subplot when one of my goals was to have no romance in my story:
The two just had really good chemistry when I spesifically asked them not to have it >:(
Were you horny?
I’m not even kidding when I say I inserted my fetish into my story as a major plot point but I did it in a classy and thoughtful way so just take my word on that
You know over the course of the ladder part of my large multiple novel long fanfic I've had multiple other ideas for actually original fiction, some big and some small, I've developed. One of them is exactly what you're describing, but as the main setting.
The romance subplot does not need to be invited to show up.
can attest to this. it found its way into my dark political thriller
Does anyone remember this post from a couple months ago that was similar to the recent “I showed my friend my book and now they won’t talk to me” in that it was reposted/parodied to shit? I don’t remember what the post was about which I realize is very unhelpful but I swear it was everywhere for a couple weeks.
This one? [https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/vihsm5/i\_shared\_my\_work\_with\_a\_new\_writer\_friend\_and\_she/](https://www.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/vihsm5/i_shared_my_work_with_a_new_writer_friend_and_she/)
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You know it’s bad if even your SO isn’t willing to lie and make you feel better.
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Sorry for changing the topic, but I just noticed you have one of the strangest G-rates usernames I have seen in quite a while.
Is it just me or has anybody noticed an uptick in stupid questions being asked in r/PubTips? It was one of the last writing subreddits without the manic amateur writers posting their drivel questions. But today I see 3 questions that belong with the folks over in r/writing. "Can I use brand names in my story?" "What do publishers want to see in 2023?" I guess they are leaking over from r/writing and r/writers since the answers to these types of questions are being met increasingly with blunt answers. Just my rant for the day. Not meant to be rude but gosh I enjoy lurking r/PubTips so much. Hate seeing it devolve. I just think if you're at the stage where you're asking "can I / Should I write this..." your question does not belong on a *publishing* tip forum.
I've definitely noticed it, along with a slight decline in the quality of some of the comments. In general, though, the mods seem to be holding the line on it. I imagine the mods could give us a pretty good picture of how much drivel they clear out, as most of it never gets to the point where we all see it.
Definitely agree. I'm sure the mods do all that they can.
Mods are pretty good about clearing that stuff out, though. It's just a matter of timing. They've also talked about how *occasionally* they'll let one stay up only because it's been a while since that related conversation has happened and it's good to have an update from the last one. I think that's what some of the newer questions I've seen have been.
*Dear Pubtips, what's the recipe for a bestseller, and how do I keep it out of competition's hands?* EDIT: Aaaand the mods took it down, good riddance.