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I think someone who successfully appeals to a mass audience with a really simple or campy concept is way smarter than me lol If I had a friend who was fretting about whether or not their idea had any merit, I'd ignore them until they actually wrote something. e: what a stupid snipe. For the new page, I am replying to this post: Junpei posted:I've seen more than once this idea going around that if a buddy is going "God, my book/script idea is so stupid, nobody will buy it or be interested in it at all", bring up really stupid but inexplicably popular pieces of media (the big four I've seen are Twilight, Fifty Shades, Sharknado and that one book where sexy teenage Hannibal Lecter goes killing Nazis with a katana) that made money to reassure them and I'm starting to wonder if that's even that good of a reassurance. I sure wouldn't buy it if I thought what I was writing was kind of dumb. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 09:13
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there's nothing dumb about thinking something is really cool and going all in on it the only dumb ideas are the ones you think are dope as hell but refuse to work on out of fear you won't appeal to some dickhead who's too fuckin' stupid to stop trying to seem smart
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Apr 25, 2022 15:57
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Wungus posted:there's nothing dumb about thinking something is really cool and going all in on it This tbh Also a writer’s true enthusiasm for a subject often shows through and it can be infectious. Like, I know a lot of people consider Robin Sloan’s writing kinda “twee” but honestly gently caress the haters. He’s incredible at showing how his characters absolutely love whatever they get obsessed about. Like in Sourdough, the protagonist is just so damned excited about bread, it was an absolute joy to read, even if you’re not a total bread nerd (and ambiguously sentient bread yeast was icing on the cake). It’s an utterly ridiculous book, right down to the cover with a sourdough loaf in the sky like a UFO, but it’s the exact kinda ridiculous that made me go, “yes, I need this in my life rn”
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Apr 25, 2022 16:11
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I guess that's fair, though I think the quote was supposed to be kind of more of a "way to combat imposter syndrome in a friend" (I actually saw a more recent, script-focused version of the idea that made fun of "Somehow, Palpatine returned"). This is unrelated, but I'm kind of curious: There was a guy I knew, who had this weird... not quite explosion? There wasn't vitriol in it, but it was kind of an outburst when I mentioned something idly writing-related that I never quite understood why. He was a smart dude in other areas and I ended up taking a little of his advice in a few areas when working on Unsealed Shrine, but I still kind of threw me. Basically, I mentioned something idly about having characters make idle chatter while on a car ride, and he was like "NO. DO NOT DO THAT. IT WILL KILL YOUR WRITING."
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Apr 27, 2022 07:06
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Junpei posted:I guess that's fair, though I think the quote was supposed to be kind of more of a "way to combat imposter syndrome in a friend" (I actually saw a more recent, script-focused version of the idea that made fun of "Somehow, Palpatine returned"). He was a psychopath, and a murderer
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Apr 27, 2022 07:44
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Kinda hard to say on that one without making a lot of assumptions. My guess would be “idle” was the sticking point. Even in slice of life stories, the “idle chatter” is telling a story or imparting a feeling about the characters and the place and time. So it serves a purpose, it isn’t truly aimless.Junpei posted:"Somehow, Palpatine returned" I’m laughing all over again  a friendly penguin posted:Also, anyone interested in beta reading my 86k word, no-romance, new adult, second world fantasy novel? I can post the hook if anyone wants to know more or you can PM me. Always happy to crit anything in return of any length when I'm not flogging myself to meet my own writing goals and deadlines. So sorry for not jumping on other people's requests before. Sent you a PM. 
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Apr 28, 2022 02:31
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Finally done with structural revisions. Can't manage the willpower to go back and start line edits yet so I went back to retool my blurb some more. This is the cover. I'm tossing up between two options for pull quotes:  The first option is more consistent with the blurb, but I feel like it's too much text. However, it's also the only place anywhere that hints at the romance arc in the book.  The second option is cleaner visually, since there's less text, and also gives some context to the title. But I've reworked the blurb a lot to move away from the emphasis on the protagonist's family now, so it might feel inconsistent and therefore confusing. Latest iteration of the blurb: quote:In the Dominion of Aleznuaweite, anyone can rise to the greatest heights—if they are willing to pay the price.
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Apr 28, 2022 22:59
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looking really good! that cover is bangin', and the blurb is good too. both cover lines are good, probably the first one is more intriguing? 'resonance crystal legacy' and 'petition' are both a bit blah.
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Apr 28, 2022 23:05
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Yeah, I like the art, the first cover line a bit more than the second, and the blurb, but 'resonance crystal legacy' and 'petition' are a bit... ehhh.
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Apr 28, 2022 23:18
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Where does one commission cover art? I get “artists” but not sure beyond that.
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Apr 29, 2022 00:26
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The blurb is good. It comes across as fantasy, with magic and great houses/intrigue a foot. The "Tag" line is neat, gets my interest. I'm being nit picky but I don't get the 3rd section. It seems to be amping up that Altering Magic is forbidden. After reading the whole blurb, I don't understand what Rahelu can lose, as she has already casted Altering Fortune magic and apparently fixed the problem. By fixing it though it sounds like she has shifted the balance of fate which is super vague. Leng posted:In the Dominion of Aleznuaweite, anyone can rise to the greatest heights—if they are willing to pay the price.
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Apr 29, 2022 00:38
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sebmojo posted:looking really good! that cover is bangin', and the blurb is good too. both cover lines are good, probably the first one is more intriguing? Junpei posted:Yeah, I like the art, the first cover line a bit more than the second, and the blurb, but 'resonance crystal legacy' and 'petition' are a bit... ehhh. I personally like the first cover line more than second too, but am worried about the text being too tiny so I've gone with the second one. Maybe when I hit #1 for an hour in some obscure Amazon Kindle Store category I'll change it over to the second cover line at the same time I add "AMAZON BEST SELLING AUTHOR" in tiny white text underneath my pen name.  And yeah. I'm bad at naming things. Hopefully the awesome cover will be enough to at least convince people to click. REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:Where does one commission cover art? I get “artists” but not sure beyond that. Probably belongs more in the self-pub thread, but I'll reply here and then cross post over there. I got a modified pre-made cover from Damonza.com (one of the recommended cover designers in the OP of the self-pub thread). They do cover work for trad publishers as well, so they really know their stuff. I was lucky that I found a pre-made cover that I already liked. This is the original pre-made version they had:  They have several cover design packages and I asked if I could use their pre-made cover as the design concept for their budget ebook cover. In briefing them, I gave them the first iteration of my blurb (the terrible one, with nothing about what resonance magic is and lots of Fantasy Proper Nouns) and asked them to change a few things. I know some people go super overboard in briefing their cover artists/designers because they have very specific things in mind. I didn't. My request to them, verbatim: Character: replace one of the daggers with a spear (something simple). Spear does not have to be pointed up (i.e. she can hold it like she's holding the dagger). Background: instead of a mountain city, replace with harbour in a sheltered bay with ships (typical standard fantasy medieval sails ships are fine). The sky and the lighting/sun and the birds are all great. Foreground: could the rocky foreground be changed to something that looks like a seaside cliff. They came back with this:  I probably could have left it there. In fact, I sat on that for a month while I had my first round of beta readers go through the manuscript. After I was done with structural revisions and had a better sense of the final shape of the story, I gave them the two versions of the cover lines (just the words, no instructions as to where/how they would be placed on the cover) and got that added. I don't think I'll get so lucky with the covers for the sequels so I will probably have to pay the custom cover design prices. I hope I can break even by then. DropTheAnvil posted:The blurb is good. It comes across as fantasy, with magic and great houses/intrigue a foot. The "Tag" line is neat, gets my interest. Not a nitpick at all, these are great points! This is a thing that I changed in structural revisions. Gonna sit and think this over some more on how I can articulate it better...hopefully I can come up with something suitable by next week.
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Apr 30, 2022 02:41
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Taking inspiration mostly from this thread, I decided May of last year to start getting ‘serious’ about writing—I set aside an hour each day where I had to write. I was allowed to write beyond that, but that hour was firmly writing time. I’m glad to say that after nearly a year of this, I’ve only broken this rule a handful of times! I’d barely ever written before this, barring some small projects during my school years and some unfinished discovery writing. I also write ESL (for several reasons), so you’ll not be surprised to learn that my writing is utter trash… but it's my trash! And I’m definitely treating it as a hobby for now, anyway. The main reason I wanted to commit to an hour per day is that I wanted to actually produce something other than ideas and half-finished stories. And produce I did! So far I’ve written: A 76k words YA novel A 150k word fantasy novel And a 110k fantasy novel sequel And maybe 30k words in random junk. All of these are first drafts—I wanted to give myself an easy start without having to work on revisions etc. I’m planning on starting that soon, perhaps with an added hour per day in the schedule, if I can fit it in. The issue I have with the current schedule is that I work best with an outline, which takes up draft-writing time. Going through my Scrivener projects, I write about 1500 words of outline/brainstorming per 1k words of drafting. It would be much better if I had an hour specifically for outlining, so that I always have one to draft off of. Anyway, don’t really have any questions or stuff, just I dunno… appreciation for this thread, for getting me started. I wanted to commit to writing the progress I'd made. By the way you should’ve warned me not to jump into making a fantasy series—that poo poo is a clusterfuck and way too complicated!
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May 7, 2022 00:45
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Hey, that's awesome! That's a lot of words and if most of it is coherent to a single story, that's even better! Dedicating yourself is one of the biggest hurdles sometimes and it shouldn't be minimized. And every author works differently, but I find that I cannot do both generative writing and meta writing (like outlines and structure structuring) at the same time. Because one I do without a ton of thinking, allowing each sentence to lead to the next. So I have to carve out time to do the other which involves more thought first and then bursts of writing to copy down everything my brain worked out before I forget it. And the latter definitely makes me feel less productive because there's not as much product to show for it. If you find you don't have the time to add hours to your writing day, you can try alternating days or fitting it into small amounts of time you find yourself with consistently. I used to do a lot of thinking on my lunch breaks where I could jot down notes but couldn't really get in the mind space to do generative writing. And seconding the appreciation for the thread. It's great to read others' thoughts on writing even if I don't feel like I have a ton of stuff to say on my own. Everyone is doing good work.
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May 7, 2022 14:29
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Congrats on finishing so many drafts! That's amazing! I've been doing more outlining and chapter writing (based on some of the outlines) to try to refine outlining better and now have four outlines developed enough to turn into drafts. Right now the goal is to turn some of them into actual books and put them on Amazon, then use that writing experience to help with new drafts and edits on the stories I've been thinking about in my head for years. Despite outlines I'm constantly changing things as I write as some stuff just doesn't work and sometimes I get ideas when driving. I'm also keeping docs with lists of ideas/conversations/character types on google drive to pull from if I get stuck. Also doing Thunderdome when I can, which usually means weeks where my toddler hasn't exhausted me and goes to bed at a semi-reasonable time so I can work on it late night I don't want to commit to buying Scrivener yet but it sounds like it would be helpful if I ever write anything past book two or big fantasy epics
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May 7, 2022 18:54
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I would like to go to every elementary/middle school English classroom and remove all posters that give a bunch of synonyms for "said" and tell you to never use it.
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May 8, 2022 09:19
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"I agree," she burbled.
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May 8, 2022 09:35
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Junpei posted:I would like to go to every elementary/middle school English classroom and remove all posters that give a bunch of synonyms for "said" and tell you to never use it. Listen to audiobooks every day, and you'll want to go remove King's On Writing from libraries instead.
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May 8, 2022 09:53
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"What?!", Watson ejaculated.
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May 8, 2022 09:54
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The week before last I was searching through my second draft for words that are often unnecessary or indicative of hosed up sentences and I was curious what other people's lists look like. I know I've seen The 10% Solution recommended in this thread before. There's a lot of stuff that I used to check for until I discovered that I never actually do the thing, but here's mine (the first part is the regex I use, the last part of which is a negative lookahead for mostly ignoring text in dialogue tags):
Tars Tarkas posted:I don't want to commit to buying Scrivener yet but it sounds like it would be helpful if I ever write anything past book two or big fantasy epics Tars Tarkas posted:Despite outlines I'm constantly changing things as I write as some stuff just doesn't work... Wallet fucked around with this message at 13:50 on May 8, 2022 |
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May 8, 2022 13:47
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Megazver posted:Listen to audiobooks every day, and you'll want to go remove King's On Writing from libraries instead. I liked On Writing but if I see it recommended one more time I'll scream. There are other writing guides! Some are even better than On Writing!
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May 8, 2022 19:45
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The more I think about it, the more I feel like maybe you want a different manuscript for the audio version of your book? It was a distant consideration for me until Google’s autonarration stuff, because there was no way I could afford it for a debut self-pub novel, but now… I totally could. But I think it will suck! A lot of my dialogue isn’t tagged because it’s obvious who’s speaking. I’m not much of an audiobook person but I assume this is usually handled by the actor doing slightly different voices or something?
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May 8, 2022 20:11
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Wallet posted:The week before last I was searching through my second draft for words that are often unnecessary or indicative of hosed up sentences and I was curious what other people's lists look like. Mine's similar, plus a bunch of the usual filler words ("immediately", "just", "actually", etc). Though I am not always convinced that things like felt/heard/etc should be eliminated, especially if you want to convey the POV character being super conscious of something. My biggest problem is over-description and very long, complex sentences with fifty clauses in them, so usually I just look for the giant walls of text. kaom posted:The more I think about it, the more I feel like maybe you want a different manuscript for the audio version of your book? Yeah, this is my understanding. The Google auto-narration only allows you to choose one voice, but there are other auto-narration solutions where you could combine different voices (and I'd guess that feature might be added later to the Google's auto-narration service).
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May 9, 2022 01:44
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Junpei posted:I would like to go to every elementary/middle school English classroom and remove all posters that give a bunch of synonyms for "said" and tell you to never use it. I, too, am unable to understand that the learning activities I had in elementary school are not necessarily accurate when considering the act of writing as an adult. Come the gently caress on.
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May 9, 2022 14:18
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:I, too, am unable to understand that the learning activities I had in elementary school are not necessarily accurate when considering the act of writing as an adult. They are also bad advice for children.
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May 9, 2022 15:57
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Chairchucker posted:They are also bad advice for children. No they're not. Kids need to be encouraged to play with language. Personally I hate the restriction for professional writers. And obviously the really good ones ignore it anyway. But putting limits on kids who need more opportunities to just go hog wild while they're also learning the conventions of a language do not need to then be further limited by the expectations of an arbitrary decision in an industry they may never be a part of.
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May 9, 2022 16:43
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a friendly penguin posted:But putting limits on kids who need more opportunities to just go hog wild while they're also learning the conventions of a language do not need to then be further limited by the expectations of an arbitrary decision in an industry they may never be a part of. I feel like the convention of avoiding word repetition that drives people to thesaurasing all of their "he saids" and "she saids" is at least equally arbitrary and counter productive, especially for children.
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May 9, 2022 17:22
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I’m glad we all found our way to these forums where going hog wild is not only accepted, it’s encouraged!
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May 9, 2022 17:59
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Every high school student should read Bullet in the Brain.
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May 9, 2022 18:27
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REMEMBER SPONGE MONKEYS posted:I’m glad we all found our way to these forums where going hog wild is not only accepted, it’s encouraged! Going hog wild is writing’s greatest joy, and I won’t deter anyone Until maybe the editing process And only if their hog-wild poo poo isn’t working for anyone Otherwise hell ya, keep going hog wild
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May 9, 2022 20:03
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Wallet posted:What helps me not end up rewriting huge sections is going from outline to draft incrementally. I might start with a set of bullet points per PoV character, then plot beats, then brief scene descriptions, etc etc. It makes it easy to see issues before I've put a lot of words on top of them. It also provides opportunities that are only obvious at various points along that continuum; e.g. when I've got all of the scenes briefly described and ordered per PoV it's easy to see which ones might be worth lining up for resonance, or where I can have two PoV characters cross paths, or where I can merge secondary characters, and so on. Yeah, the first outlines I made were more loose, but I've been making them more and more complex as I go, along with a second second that is a character list and their arcs and things about them (family names, hair colors, stuff you need to keep consistent) I agree writing short scenes or scene roughs help spot problems and even develop solutions, all of my outlines now have chunks of writing to try to set up key things or just see how things sound as a few paragraphs. Some stuff that seems cool in your head translates to boring fluff that adds nothing to the plot or characters, like you said it is easier to wipe it out before you've written three pages of it. When doing the bigger first draft I have a rule about only going back and rewriting things from the past 2-3 pages, anything else I just write a note in all caps that things need to get changed.
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May 10, 2022 00:17
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 Made me laugh, figured you would appreciate this.
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May 11, 2022 12:47
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When do you feel a story is done being edited? Is it a time thing or something else?
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May 11, 2022 20:28
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When nothing about it annoys you
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May 11, 2022 20:49
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sephiRoth IRA posted:When do you feel a story is done being edited? Is it a time thing or something else? Both. I self-publish so I follow Will Wight's rule of thumb. I'm not trying to write the best book that I can. I'm trying to write the best six-month book that I can. So basically, I aim to release at least 1 book a year, ideally 2 (  I don't think that will happen this year), and the book is done when I've taken it as far as I can with my current skill level as a writer.I ask my beta readers to give me feedback on character, plot/structure, pacing, world building and continuity along the following scale:
Major issues are story breaking things that require wholesale rewrites. I use Sanderson's promise/progress/payoff model, so these really have to do with whether I've kept the tone/character/plot promises I've made in the opening chapters. As an example, my current novel had a major structural issue because the first half (magical challenges) and the second half (murder mystery) felt like two different books. Minor issues are things that don't break the story but feel off or wrong. Usually plotholes I didn't spot, unclear/inconsistent character motivations, missing important world building details, jarring tone, etc. Fixing them requires rewrites too, but at a smaller scale. It could be keeping the same beats/dialogues in the scene but rewriting most of the prose so the tone is different, or keeping most of the prose, but adding or deleting a few lines/paragraphs to change how it reads, or adding smaller scenes to bridge gaps. Stuff that's "Ok, but could be better" I leave until line edits. For me, these issues are usually where I've gone overboard with description or introspection and I need to pull back the details. I go through the feedback and synthesize it for common themes. My rule of thumb is, if 3 or more people have issues (even if they disagree on what the issue is), then something is definitely broken (9/10 times the fix that works is not the fix they suggest, even if I really like their suggestion). If it's 2 people, I will give the feedback serious consideration (in most cases, they'll be right). If it's just 1 person, I will look to the other feedback to see how that moment landed for the other readers. If it did, then I leave it. If nobody else commented, then I'll decide based on how I feel personally. With my current novel, I've done:
I could spend more time polishing the book, but it's diminishing returns from here. It's better to just publish, learn from it, then move on to try and make the next book better.
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May 12, 2022 00:00
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Writing gay scenes? Here's some advice on how to make sure everything makes sense:
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May 12, 2022 03:46
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I refuse to believe that your average reader has more then 3 brain-cells, frictionlessly sliding on their vast, smooth, cerebellum.
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May 12, 2022 03:52
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He, Cromwell, said
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May 12, 2022 03:55
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How do people feel about epithets generally? I slip into using them sometimes and find myself removing them later, unless the epithet reveals something interesting about the narrator’s opinions (e.g. “the little creep” vs “the older man”). I guess they feel a little stilted or old fashioned to me?sephiRoth IRA posted:When do you feel a story is done being edited? Is it a time thing or something else? It depends on your goals and what feedback you’re hearing. I’m hobby writing and I’m happy to spend money on my hobby. I’m fixing issues from alpha feedback and things that annoy me (flow, filter words, repetition), basically trying to bring the manuscript up to my current level of skill across the board. Then I’ll fix anything that confuses or annoys beta readers. Finally, I’m going to pay a professional to carry it over the line, which I’m hoping will teach me more skills that I can incorporate into my next piece. I’m not trying to produce a masterpiece, so I’m not going to agonize about it from there. I know in another 100k words of practice I’ll have grown as a writer and look back to find all kinds of things that annoy me about my current project, but that’s life.
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May 12, 2022 04:23
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kaom posted:How do people feel about epithets generally? I slip into using them sometimes and find myself removing them later, unless the epithet reveals something interesting about the narrator’s opinions (e.g. “the little creep” vs “the older man”). I guess they feel a little stilted or old fashioned to me? I tend to lean heavily on epithets to show my narrator’s opinions, as well as secret nicknames they give people. For walk-on characters even boring epithets will do in a pinch Really depends on the tone you’re going for. I’ve read stories where everyone’s given an epithet rather than name and it lends an interesting distance to the narrative
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May 12, 2022 05:42
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