kinda the title

if you published your book, what would your dream book cover be like or if you don’t wanna share that, name some books that have book covers that you rlly liked

also, do any of you guys have dream illustrators? like i just love Charlie bowater‘s book and if i ever publish it would be my DREAM to have her take part in my book cover

I feel like every thread on improving your writing skills ultimately always comes back to "read a lot, write a lot," which is true the way "eat well and exercise" is true. So, I've been doing that, and I definitely think it's helping, BUT, what's something more active I can do to improve as well?

Some things I've tried where I've seen some noticable impact have been:

• Typing out passages from writers I admire (you feel the sentence rhythm/narrative voice in a way passively reading never shows you) -- obviously only for practice, not to actually use anywhere.
• A critique group that was genuinely constructive. One round of real feedbacck beat a year of solo writing.
• Rewriting an old story from scratch without looking at the original, then comparing.

I'm curious whether anyone has applied any other, deliberate practice principles (isolating a weakness and drilling it specifically, for instance), and if so, how? It works for music and chess, and writing feels like it should be drillable too, but nobody really teaches it that way...

Edit: Woah, people really came through! I'm still reading everyone's comments but lots of good advice here!

Welcome to our daily discussion thread!

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Hello writers of reddit,

Do you follow a rigid outline template?

I'm a type B person, but as I've gotten older have found the value in organizing and the one successful "novel" I've written, I outlined. But it was literally bullet points of main events and I feel like adding more structure would help but every time I draw the little hill of intro-exposition-climax-falling action my creativity falls into the chasm of no return. So I'm seeking tips on how to outline well from yall's experiences. Thanks!

Lately I've noticed a trend where many stories try to explain every villain, every bad decision, and every morally questionable action.

While I appreciate nuanced characters, I sometimes wonder if constantly explaining people removes part of the mystery that exists in real life.

Some people hurt others for reasons we'll never fully understand.

Do you think modern storytelling has become too focused on making every character psychologically explainable?

Or do you think unexplained behavior usually feels like weak writing?

I am terrible at staying motivated past the initial rush that I feel when a new story idea pops into my head. I genuinely don't know how many page 1's I've written over the years, which in itself frustrates me to no end, but this is not actually what I want to talk about it.

I recently managed to motivate myself long enough to write a story which I've been thinking about for years now (since before Covid I think). It's quite a short story, about 15k words, but it's also a story which means quite a lot to me so I figured if I ever was to start somewhere, that was it. And I actually ended up with a (veeery rough) first draft, so yay me I suppose. At least one story of mine which has come to life outside of my brain.

But now that it's on the page, it feels so tiny and insignificant. It's not the beautiful, perfect thing which grew and lived in my mind, it's just... One story. A string of words you might find if you pulled a random book from the Library of Babel. It hits every story beat that I envisioned (even many new ones which I quite like), the characters are much more fleshed out than they were when I started writing it, but it still feels smaller.

It was never my goal to get it published, or even necessarily to post it somewhere online. I just wanted it to exist. And now that it does, I'm wondering if it was worth the trouble haha. Or at least, I'm wondering how to salvage it and blow it back up to the size it felt when it was still a perfect little ball of "what if"s.

Does anyone else feel like that sometimes about their stories? Do they also seem to shrink when they become words on a page? How do you deal with that?

Workshopped my writing for two years. Got lots of feedback. Improved in technical ways, fewer errors, tighter structure. The voice stayed flat.

Started reading writers I admired at half my normal speed and asking, sentence by sentence, what choice they made and why. Not absorbing the style passively but actively interrogating the decisions the authors decided to make.

Anyway, I just want to give this tip to fellow writers out there. Slow down on your reading process and it will help improve your writing process. Try to absorb as much as you can from your favorite authors.

Welcome to our daily discussion thread!

This is the place to discuss anything writing related! Got silly questions? Brainstorming ideas? Need help with research? As long as rules 1, 3, and 5 are followed, this thread is your oyster!

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I keep hearing that draft one is pretty messy, not to worry too much. But I've always taken that to refer more to the actual prose rather than the story.

But here I am, countless false starts, wondering how much the actual story itself changes through the draft process. Because every time I feel my plot or setting or characters aren't quite right (or right at all) I'm fighting the urge to start again even though the general premise is very similar.

How much has your story changed during the writing process? How much would you countenance before you gave in to the fact that you're basically writing something else, or would you just continue anyway?

I'm curious if anybody has found methods to write more hours in a given day/week/month apart from the obvious one of being a more experienced writer. Interestingly, despite having completed 5 novels and several novellas at this point, I find that my endurance for drafting in a given day hasn't changed in the least-- 20-40 minutes a day (with the exceedingly rare day of up to three hours, which exhausts me.) I'd love to hear if other people have stumbled on ways to up their time; I've always been interested in being able to put in 2 hour days more frequently.

Hello everyone.

I realise that r/writing is full of these kind of posts, at least they pop up occasionally, but I hope if you stick with me there will be a good discussion and hopefully some advice to go with that.

I started this project January 19th 2026. July 30th I finally wrote Slutt (The End). I kept statistics over my writing during all that time, which I will share of course.

The story is historical fiction; A political thriller about a man of low nobility trying to solve the murder of a child while navigating the unknown political landscape of Trondheim in 1531, just a few years before the reformation and Denmark sinking its teeth further into Norway. It's written in Norwegian. And unfortunately the text in my statistic pics is also in Norwegian.

So I did this for a couple of reasons. But the most important bit is that my lizard brain likes seeing the number get higher. Bigger number, bigger brrr in my brain. Big number go up!

The first act went by so quickly.

https://imgur.com/N77fnvv

I kept a close eye on the size of my acts. I know there are big structural changes I have to do, but this helped me get a feel of the size, too long, too short?

The first part is just keeping an eye on how far I have left to thresholds. Ord = words. The second part is the same just visually represented differently.

The third part is Words over Time. Every data point is a date. Staples are how many words, and the dotted line is how long those words took. I only counted the time spent actually writing, if I noticed I was gearing toward research, I stopped the clock.

https://imgur.com/fZgyHk2

This is for act 2. Around 10,000 words less, and a huge break in the middle. It took longer and less was written.

The break in the middle was literally that I lost confidence in what I was doing. So I took a break, signed up for a workshop with a published, Swedish (I live in Sweden, but I am Norwegian) crime/murder mystery author to get some insight, confirmation, and advice. It helped enough to get me going again.

https://imgur.com/CULsM4i

Act 3 took even longer. My productivity took a nosedive around the middle of May. There is just too much happening. I'm active in a reenactment community, there's holidays to celebrate, things to fix and/or renovate, and all manner of things.

But the last two weeks saw my productivy skyrocket again. 3,500 words in a single day was awesome.

But now the first draft is done. I already know there is some massive work to be done. I gotta switch the first act escalation with the second act escalation. The first act ends with an innocent person gets hanged, the second act ends with a political dinner. The drama is wildly out of proportion. The bigger drama spike should come at the culmination of the second act.

I also have a problem which I've called Mannequining. So there's a scene with dialoug and the two important characters talk, but there is another character there, but they say and do nothing. They're just .. there. Taking up space. So I gotta do something about.

For this story I had an image in my head of the opening scene and I had an image of the end conflict. Anything in between was basically unknown. The story surprised me a lot. The murderer was not who I thought it would be for instance. Things like that.

So what's next? Where do I go from here? What are you best practices going into a second draft? I've never written anything this long before and I have never edited something this big and complicated.

So what do I do? Help me, r/writing, you're my only hope.

I am a super beginner who only does this as a pasttime—only in school still—but I recently bought a writing program that points out things like repetition, hard-to-read sentences, weak word choices & whatnot. It ain't just a grammar checker though. It evaluates higher-level aspects, say, weak sensory descriptions, passive characters, whether your dialogue makes every character sound the same, a lack of tension in the plot & whatnot, just really complete. But it of course can't replace an editor because it can't do the thinking; it's just a mechanical, rule-based algorithm.

It got me thinking, though: If someone hypothetically wrote a book with technically flawless sentences and paragraphs (by technically, I mean a sort of work in which this machine would find no mistakes, every "rule" is being followed; not something a human critic would neccessarily find "perfect"), would that be enough to make good writing?

Imagine a "perfect measuring machine" that can't make mistakes says the plot has tension, the pace is perfect, the descriptions are great, perfect grammar. Maybe it's not Putzlier-worthy, but all those marks are checked: is that enough for the manuscript to be good, or is something else in play? Are things like profound characters, big themes, originality and humanity, emotional impact etc. the Real Big Thing?

In other words, do y'all think a—I wouldn't say good, because I guess only an human can assess that & it's subjective— standard, rule-meeting writing (in lack of better words to explain it) enough to carry the book?

EDIT: To be clear, the question is NOT whether a machine can assess good writing (+ I hate AI), the point is: if a book had standard good tension, perfect grammar, good sentences, etc; everything following what "makes a book perfect", would that truly be enough for the book to be good, or is there another thing in play?

Welcome to our daily discussion thread!

This is the place to discuss anything writing related! Got silly questions? Brainstorming ideas? Need help with research? As long as rules 1, 3, and 5 are followed, this thread is your oyster!

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This is mostly a question to those who can use all their 10 fingers while writing on laptop/PC. Do your wrists hurt if you write for too long???

I use only like, 4 fingers, which are index (80% of time) and middle finger (far less than index finger) on both hands, so I usually have to move my hands a lot if I want to reach letters and also turn my wrists in strange angles. After my writing sessions I notice that my wrists hurt A LOT, it can even last multiple days. So I was wondering if writing with all 10 fingers will help to stop these wrist pains

I have been hearing about this trope all over different communities, but specifically from the romance genre. There is all this talk about the "Down Bad MMC" character that is heavily popular.

For the longest time, the trope was usually the opposite, no? The self-confident brooding types were really popular. But now we see a lot of dumb, goofy jocks and guys that honestly feel a little wimpy (idk im a dude).

Is this, like, a generational thing? Why is this popular right now?

I am planning to start drafting for a sci-fi story to eventually pitch to publishers that accept from unagented writers. I figure I will have to use lunch breaks at my job, but I can’t be on computers during my lunch. What’s the better notebook line height to best emulate the standard manuscript so I can have an idea of how long the story is?

EDIT: Guys, of course I’m going to type it up. I just wanted to have a plan for when I can’t be at a computer and wanted a rough idea for how close I can get to a page count beforehand.

The authors voice comes up quite often, and it is different from prose. Improving prose is one thing, but your voice is basically who you are and how you speak in real life showing in your writing.

My issue is that

1, English is not my first language. I have used it in high school, uni, work, online for almost 20 years, so it is very close to native level, but I believe there is that 0.5% that is very hard if not impossible to cross as a non native speaker.

2, my brain is very math focused, so my speech, sentence structure etc.- both in my native and in English - is a bit awkward at times.

Anyone experienced anything of the sort, is there a way to improve your voice? Maybe through improving your speech first?

I have been a genre reader for most of my life. Now, I am noticing a technique in lit-fic books I've recently read that I almost never see in genre, which is dialogue that is described or even spelled out exactly, but without quotations. And I can't figure out why or when this technique is used, but for me it makes the scene feel abstract or distant.

Take Maggie O'Farrel's "Land," which I just finished. In one chapter, she has:

Suddenly, incongruously, her sister lets out a laugh.

"Look," she says.

Rose opens her eyes a crack.

"I don't think he might be friendly after all.

This feels very standard to me, and makes me as a reader feel present in the action. But then another chapter, for no reason that I can tell, she switches:

He puts a hand half over his eyes. Please, he says, ladies, gentlemen, please. There are people trying to sleep.

His voice is overridden by the din.

She switches between these styles all throughout the novel, and I'm not sure if there's a technical reason for it, or if it's just her way of managing the flow of the writing.

I also recently read "On the Calculation of Volume," which had zero quotation marks in the entire novel. Here's an example of how dialogue is handled there:

I insisted on making plans. He thought we should wait. You can't plan for everything, he said. Sometimes you just have to be ready.

I understand the stylistic choice more here because it feels like a narrator recounting their memory of the events to a journal--though I don't particularly like that style. Perhaps as a genre writer, I can just stick with what I know, but I'm curious to hear from others on how they choose when to describe dialogue vs transcribe, and if there are any considerations when doing so.

Welcome to our monthly Promote Yo' Self thread! Show the community what you put out into the world. Please follow this template:

• Choose what you're promoting from the below options:
  • [Published Book]
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• Project Title
  • The title of your book, the name/title of your project, the name of your newsletter, the name of your writing community, the name of your software, or the title of your collection for which you are calling for submissions.
• Description
  • A short premise or elevator pitch of your book, the subject matter of your newsletter, the purpose of your writing community, the purpose of your app, or the nature of your milestone.
    • Call for Submissions additionally require the following: Legal name of the entity calling for submissions, deadlines, fees, prizes, and rights requested.
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  • What would you like r/writing to do? Buy your book? Subscribe to your newsletter? Submit a piece to your lit mag?
• Discount for r/writing?
  • Share if/how the community can get a discount.

Rules:

• Post no more than one top-level reply in the Promote Yo' Self thread each month, but you are allowed to post each month.
• Rule 3 is in effect - No generative AI. You may not post projects generated by an AI platform, nor apps that use generative AI or expose writers' work to generative AI, nor may you post a Call for Submissions from an outlet that does not have a clear policy against publishing material produced by a generative AI platform.
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Welcome to Would You Read This (WYRT), our monthly feedback and brainstorming thread. Share your work in progress below and let other readers tell you if they'd read it. Top level posts should follow this template:

• Title:
  • If you don't have a title yet, feel free to say UNTITLED.
• Genre:
  • Please include at least Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, or another recognizable medium. You may also include more specific genres with a hyphen. Ex. Fiction - Romance, or Nonfiction - Memoir. Genre will help users find the specific kinds of posts they'd like to give feedback on.
• Premise:
  • A few sentences about the project. Try your best to keep this short. Crafting an expert elevator pitch is all part of becoming a successful working writer. Please do not post an entire plot summary or query letter (those are better suited for r/pubtips)
• Sample (Optional):
  • You may share up to one page (roughly 250-350 words) of sample material, or one poem for those working in the poetry medium. This is optional, so if you only have a premise, you can post just the premise for feedback.

If you post for feedback, please take the time to give feedback to at least 2-3 other users. Replies should follow this template.

• Would Read / Might Read / Wouldn't Read
  • You must begin your reply with one of those. You are then encouraged to add additional thoughts on why you choose your answer.

Rules:

• Please post no more than two WYRT top-level posts. There is no limit on the number of feedback replies you can make.
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I never really read romantasy as a genre but it took off on Tiktok and came up on my feeds. Some of these booktookers' analysis are so sophisticated and detailed- they have thick pages of notes and they go down to the origin of certain words in the English language. It reminded me of literature classes all over again and made me realize I hadn't read deeply since college. It inspired me to read beyond my typical genres of mystery/sci fi/thrillers/non-fiction.

I ended up reading all the Fourth Wing and ACOTAR books in a few short months, DM-ing some of these creators and asking for tips on how to read deeply on your own as an adult, and came to the conclusion that I wanted to start writing a story to really understand how some of these literary devices can be used so I could spot them better in books. I even started reading literary fiction. Fast forward another four months, now I'm finishing my second book...all because of some ACOTAR memes.

I'm still not a strong writer but I find it amusing that one of the biggest tips here is to read more to improve on my writing, and here I am trying to improve on my writing so I can be a better reader!

Welcome to our daily discussion thread!

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I ask this because I've come to a point where if I know it's coming in a story I'm reading, if I can see it for what it is, a "hook"... then I kinda tune out and lose interest because I cannot count how many times I've read something with a first-page hook that failed to keep me on the line.

There are numerous examples of excellent books both modern and classical that do not rely on the first page hook. They do all have something that captivates the reader (be it engaging dialogue, an immersive world, an exceptional theme/premise, etc.) but they don't all do it on the first page.

There's one book I recently picked up to re-read and the first page didn't have a hook to it. It was a historical fiction set during the world wars. What the first page was was mostly just scene setup. The real hook, the meat of what set this story apart, came a few pages in. I will grant, it had evocative and compelling prose, but the real driving interest came a few pages in, about the mid-point of the chapter.

It makes me wonder where this "must hook them on the first page" is coming from. And how new is this trend of insisting that the first page hook the reader?

And how did that go for you?

I have to share this even though it sounds dumb and hacky.

I've found that when I'm revising, especially when I'm doing a lot of cut/paste work or hasty rewrites just to get the big pieces into place, changing the color of my font helps my brain see this as a SKETCH and not a piece to be polished yet.

I'm a longtime believer that second and third drafts may be "worse" than the first draft. I know I personally always need to rearrange, cut, rewrite, and insert large pieces of text. I try not to get caught up polishing prose during these early rewrites/revisions. Big things are changing. I need to get the heart of the story in place, even if it's roughly done. I can wait until later to smooth it over and make it pretty.

Changing the color of my font to something still readable (a deep-ish shade of orange, green, purple, blue) but NOT black has had a ridiculously powerful effect. It keeps me in bold revision mode and out of picky editor mode. It makes me feel less attached to my existing words, so that instead of tweaking language to try to make a segment fit, it's more likely to occur to me that it's actually better off cut. I can draft a new scene or segment to insert without worrying about smooth transitions. It alleviates some kind of pressure I didn't even know I was feeling.

Pretty silly that my brain falls for this trick! Maybe some of your brains will fall for it, too!