Fiction Writing Advice and Discussion: Read. Write. Crit. Repeat.

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caspergers: Oct 1, 2021

I'm real real behind, is thunderdome just for flashfic?

# ? Dec 14, 2025 16:28

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# ? Jan 16, 2026 09:38

Uranium Phoenix: Jun 20, 2007; Boom.

caspergers posted:

I'm real real behind, is thunderdome just for flashfic?

Yes, though TD flashfic tend to be "stories crammed into a small wordcount", not what you see in typical published flash fiction. Wordcount varies per prompt, but is around 1k-2k most weeks. If you're interested in what that looks like, your question can also be answered by reading the thunderdome thread and just checking out what a week looks like, including prompt, stories, and critiques.

# ? Dec 14, 2025 17:10

caspergers: Oct 1, 2021

Thanks OP, i should have just looked into in the first place lol

E, does anyone know what the best magazines to publish short horror in?

# ? Dec 14, 2025 21:40

DurianGray: Dec 23, 2010; King of Fruits

caspergers posted:

Thanks OP, i should have just looked into in the first place lol

E, does anyone know what the best magazines to publish short horror in?

I would just look for markets in the Submission Grinder: https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/. They have an advanced search you can filter to horror. It'll tell you what's actually open and how much they pay (if anything), and a bunch of other stuff that's good to know.

# ? Dec 14, 2025 23:26

trapstar: Jun 30, 2012; Yo tengo un par de ideas.

Want to say, been practicing getting my voice back (Or Magpie's voice) and have been making progress. This thread has given me very good advice. Reading A Wizard of the Earthsea really really improved my writing ability and now I am rereading old excerpts I wrote of Magpie to retrain my voice and am finding a lot of my writing to be more coherent and better structured. I probably have to do a few more voice exercises until I move onto the next phase of practicing my writing.
edit: I feel I have fully recaptured my voice, but with more structure and durability.

trapstar fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Dec 19, 2025

# ? Dec 19, 2025 10:10

Waffle!: Aug 6, 2004; I Feel Pretty!

How do y'all feel about authors using onomatopoeia? I do it too, but there's a series I'm reading that has been using it a lot lately. I don't hate it, but too many bam, pow, wooshes start to sound like a kid describing their favorite cartoon after a while. It feels more like telling rather than showing.

# ? Dec 22, 2025 03:52

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Waffle! posted:

How do y'all feel about authors using onomatopoeia? I do it too, but there's a series I'm reading that has been using it a lot lately. I don't hate it, but too many bam, pow, wooshes start to sound like a kid describing their favorite cartoon after a while. It feels more like telling rather than showing.

it's like adverbs, do it but look at it real hard and maybe cut about half of them

# ? Dec 22, 2025 05:16

caspergers: Oct 1, 2021

All adverbs except for yesterday and tomorrow should be criminalized IMO.

# ? Dec 23, 2025 02:57

Stuporstar: May 5, 2008; Where do fists come from?

caspergers posted:

All adverbs except for yesterday and tomorrow should be criminalized IMO.

never

# ? Dec 23, 2025 03:27

BigFactory: Sep 17, 2002

caspergers posted:

All adverbs except for yesterday and tomorrow should be criminalized IMO.

How else are you supposed to describe how your MMC is skanking in your skarotica besides skankily

# ? Dec 23, 2025 22:40

cumpantry: Dec 18, 2020

tear this apart, would one of you? i'm trying to get back into writing, so here's something i wrote last week or so and revised today, like a chapter of something that doesn't have any others yet. it'd be good to know where i'm faltering, though hopefully the answer isn't... everything. the particular guiding influence may be extremely obvious lol

quote:

A familiar routine in motion, I descended rope. Above, the moon shrank and what little light it offered soon dissipated in darkness. My gloved hands began to chafe--I�ve been doing this job too long. But to call it a job is charitable... graverobbing is no noble profession.

I have to pay rent somehow.

The cavernous walls around me began to hug tighter, and I grew uncomfortable. That didn�t stop my shimmying, though--I was already this far down. A little further and my body was forced to contort to jagged rock and hard earth. I kicked something loose and heard the disturbance of air and a clattering after. So much for a quiet entrance, but it meant my climbing was coming to an end. As my feet found the floor, I examined my surroundings:

Gray slabs. Dark earth. Torches inexplicably lit God knows how long ago. A tomb alright. By my feet lay a shattered ribcage--if I knocked that loose, who knew how many more bones I�d stumble onto. I could only be thankful the broken pieces weren�t animated. The floor itself on which my wrapped soles and the bones rested upon was cold and hard, and a sarcophagus signaled me through the dim light. I took a long glance to ensure I was alone and mosied over, the leather across my palms soon against stone. I shoved against the lid and let it gently down, only the thinnest dust escaping from impact.

Awaiting my intrusion inside the coffin were three tomes and a snow covered elixir. Bones, too, obviously, but those aren�t worth much. I took one of the books into my hands, shot some breath out, and opened it. The condition was surprisingly good--collectors aren�t too concerned about yellowed or frayed pages so long as they�re still bound and legible, and even then that wasn�t a necessary requisite to a payday. I set the book down and picked up the potion, gazing at its warm green color through hazy glass: mage made alcohol. While I�d leave the books for the return trip, I generally pocket such finds as this: you never know.

Coming up to one of the walls of stone, I thumbed indents and pressure points. It wasn�t long before my bare fingers traced loose masonry and, following some grunting, I managed an entranceway into a hall. From here, rows of torches stretched out east and west into eventual darkness. I realized I stood above a dip--the hall was much like a canal, its base carpeted with mold. I appreciated my luck--nothing softens footsteps better but an actual rolled out rug. I turned my attention, then, to the sealed entrances to other tombs... just what else could I get open tonight?

Jamming a chisel into a wide crack, I forced another tomb open, its door of stone laid carefully after to the side. Before stepping in, my ears pricked at an unknown series of noises--sounds close. I didn�t want to stick around in the open while lit by torches on either side, so I proceeded into my newly made entrance and entered a room similar to what I�d just been in. Two sarcophaguses awaited me in here as well as a few more torches and some inscriptions carved into the walls I didn�t bother appreciating. What mattered was first dampening two of the torches to minimize some light--if those noises came any closer, I wasn�t interested in sticking out. The third torch I removed from its sconce and laid behind one of the caskets. Then I crept back to the tomb�s entrance and waited, listening.

... Nothing.

With enough time having passed--or I was just anxious--I got back to work. The lid of one coffin moved easily enough, and I set it down simply. Inside was but ash and dust. A typical find, but that doesn�t mean it wasn�t disappointing. I moved onto the next coffin and met with some unexpected resistance. Taking my chisel, I managed to spring the lid loose, but my attempt after at setting it down carefully was thwarted by disgruntled rattling--the top of the coffin crashed and I stepped back. Bony fingers rose from within the coffin and raised an angered form up and out: a skeleton. The dark holes in its head where once eyes rested stared back at me, and I drew a club from my side. It was a blackjack actually, a little less cumbersome to carry than the real deal but by no means a painless tool. I raised the thing ready to strike just as I�d done many times before but found my swing stifled--a hand grasped my arm. I turned to face two more inquisitive, animated bones, no doubt the origin of the hall�s earlier noise.

I fell to the ground, pulling the accoster down with me, its grip still iron. Wrestling myself atop the skeleton, my free hand shot out and gripped its skull, drawing it back and slamming it into the cold stone beneath us. That was enough of a shock: its grip loosened and I rolled away as its comrades descended onto me. My back against the wall, I got myself up into a fighting stance and surveyed the two erect skeletons before me, their third rubbing its temples as it too rose. I crossed over to behind the coffin and grabbed the stowed torch from off the ground, fire still glowing. The way out was blocked by these three, and I needed a solution. So while we all maintained our stand off, I reached into my pack and produced the green dusty bottle of magic ale. Uncorking it, I splashed the skeletons and whipped one with the torch--fire took hold and the bones shrieked. I swung at another and it too ignited. A strike at the third was stopped by its sudden grip on the torch, but no matter--its attempt to stop the attack led it too to fire. With all three howling inhuman cries, I kicked one clear from the entrance and burst out into the hall, turning quickly and resealing the tomb.

I could still hear their muffled shrieks through the cracks. And I hoped no one else did. I took a swig.

# ? Dec 29, 2025 14:30

BigFactory: Sep 17, 2002

cumpantry posted:

tear this apart, would one of you? i'm trying to get back into writing, so here's something i wrote last week or so and revised today, like a chapter of something that doesn't have any others yet. it'd be good to know where i'm faltering, though hopefully the answer isn't... everything. the particular guiding influence may be extremely obvious lol

I didn�t get the guiding influence, so maybe I�m really missing something, but here�s my take: this would be good if it was 2nd person and a dungeon master was reading it to me. Otherwise it�s a lot of minutia and descriptions and no stakes, no investment in the character. The �I did this, I looked at that, I picked this up, I did another thing� narrative with nothing to break it up isn�t particularly interesting (the MC doesn�t have a unique or passionate voice and it makes 1st person ineffective) and it doesn�t build any tension for the monster attack. You need to take the reader out of the scene with some kind of an aside before that, otherwise you�re just waiting for it to happen� and then it happens. Give me something interesting, human, emotional to grab onto so I care about MC when he�s attacked.

# ? Dec 29, 2025 17:50

Celot: Jan 14, 2007

cumpantry posted:

tear this apart, would one of you?

okey dokey

Clarity/grammar/style: Did not like it. Comes across like an exercise in trying to describe stuff without repeating words, or using a thesaurus to build vocab or something.

Weird grammar and diction issues. For example: "A little further and my body was forced to contort to jagged rock and hard earth." I think you would contort around jagged rock? As a second example: "The floor itself on which my wrapped soles and the bones rested upon" is redundant, like "In this ever-changing world in which we live in" from Live and Let Die. Many such examples.

"By my feet lay a shattered ribcage--if I knocked that loose, who knew how many more bones I�d stumble onto." Did you knock it loose? I don't think that's mentioned.

"I shoved against the lid and let it gently down, only the thinnest dust escaping from impact." What does that mean? Like, the thinnest dust got kicked up, so the lid landed on all the thick dust?

"I took one of the books into my hands, shot some breath out, and opened it." Is this like a reverse gasp? I don't get it, why are you shooting breath out.

"necessary requisite" is groce

"It wasn�t long before my bare fingers traced loose masonry" so you took off your gloves? You'd been mentioning your gloves a lot.

"I turned to face two more inquisitive, animated bones, no doubt the origin of the hall�s earlier noise." You're describing a jump scare, but as though the narrator isn't scared.

Overall plot/enjoyability/substance: At first it seems like you're just saying random poo poo, like fantasy novel mad libs, but then I get the idea that someone is after you, and that is at least mildly interesting. Then it's like, why is anything happening and what are the consequences of anything that happens? No idea.

Positive poo poo:

"the hall was much like a canal, its base carpeted with mold." I like that, I can picture that, and the analogy makes sense.

I guess burning the skeletons with the mage-made alcohol is good, it's like a chekov's gun thing. Or wait, was it the mage made alcohol or was it different magic ale?

Something I don't think i ever seen before:

"I drew a club from my side. It was a blackjack actually." I am not used to seeing an internal monologue correct itself about something it already knew. Some sort of weird combo of first and second person.

anyhow, I have let you have it. if you don't mind scrolling up and letting me have it too please. e: link here: Here's a short story I wrote: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MoFUyvawsHF7I1KfJ8wANx0lH176TQfF9zxQwT-G25U/edit?usp=drive_link

Celot fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jan 7, 2026

# ? Jan 7, 2026 04:28

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

I hosed up y'all

My project is a graphic novel and one of the big tentpole scenes near the beginning, which brings several characters together and sets up many thematic elements for later, is a class-clown type character capering around in a crowd and singing a Tom Lehrer song.

It has come to my attention that song lyrics, in fictional text, require royalties to be paid.

All I can say is I hope it isn't much because I'm either not changing it or not publishing it anywhere

# ? Jan 7, 2026 12:17

Volcano: Apr 10, 2008

Data Graham posted:

I hosed up y'all

My project is a graphic novel and one of the big tentpole scenes near the beginning, which brings several characters together and sets up many thematic elements for later, is a class-clown type character capering around in a crowd and singing a Tom Lehrer song.

It has come to my attention that song lyrics, in fictional text, require royalties to be paid.

All I can say is I hope it isn't much because I'm either not changing it or not publishing it anywhere

You're actually in luck specifically because you picked Tom Lehrer. He put all his songs into the public domain before he died: https://tomlehrersongs.com/

# ? Jan 7, 2026 12:32

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Holy poo poo

It crismas :blessed:

# ? Jan 7, 2026 12:48

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Another Fiction Writing and Discussion success story

# ? Jan 7, 2026 21:53

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# ? Jan 16, 2026 09:38

caspergers: Oct 1, 2021

Data Graham posted:

I hosed up y'all

My project is a graphic novel and one of the big tentpole scenes near the beginning, which brings several characters together and sets up many thematic elements for later, is a class-clown type character capering around in a crowd and singing a Tom Lehrer song.

It has come to my attention that song lyrics, in fictional text, require royalties to be paid.

All I can say is I hope it isn't much because I'm either not changing it or not publishing it anywhere

I wrote a story loosely based on As I Lay Dying and used a character's name and a line for the title. That book became public domain this year lmao

I better iron it tf out and try to publish before somebody buys the rights

# ? Jan 7, 2026 22:03

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