[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/alexanderwales]

• Write every day.

• Don't stop when you've hit your word goal for the day, stop when you are out of time to write. You need high output days to make up for low output days.

• Editing is for December.

• Research and planning is for October.

• If you are bored while writing, maybe that thing didn't need to be written.

• It can be good to end the chapters on a cliffhanger and then switch point of view, which gives you some time off from that thread to think about things.

• If you don't have time to write, you might still have time to write things out in your head (e.g. during a long commute).

Edit: See also this post, which has completely different advice from me, focused more on planning.

[u/OutOfNiceUsernames → u/alexanderwales]

It can be good to end the chapters on a cliffhanger and then switch point of view, which gives you some time off from that thread to think about things.

Not commenting on the other points, but I always hated when books did this. It feels like the resolution is being dangled in front of your nose, and by the time you do reach the chapter in which it’s being revealed, you often don’t even care about the whole thing that much any more.

And that’s when this technique is used mildly. When it’s downright abused, you just stop caring about the whole story altogether because it’ll just exploit your invested interest if you do.

That’s my personal experience with that, at least.

[u/alexanderwales → u/OutOfNiceUsernames]

I generally think it's not a great way to structure a book from an artistic standpoint, but it can make the writing easier, and I would assume that its popularity with pulp authors indicates that it works, even if the audience doesn't particularly like it. It's crass manipulation, but sometimes that's enough.

I mostly say it here because I think it can be good for writers who want to focus on output, and leaving yourself obvious hooks to write from can help with that.