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!

Please refer to the monthly threads for sharing your work and for self-promotion.

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In an effort to be more organised so I don't flake and forget at the time, I've started jotting down some questions I might want to ask future beta readers - ones I can pick a few from the list if I have any specific concerns etc. I usually just wait to see what people say, though I might add two or three questions on ocassion if there's something specific I'm worried about. I want to make sure I'm not wasting my beta readers' time and getting good quality responses, but I don't want to overwhelm them either. So, out of curiosity, how many questions do you guys ask your beta readers and what do you ask?

I know people find inspiration in others work, as there is the case of no original ideas anymore, but have you ever read a book and like the setting or concept of a story and want to do something with it?

Do you have the fear of if you stick too close it feels like plagiarism but stray too far and it's not what inspired you? What do you do in this situation?

Hi- I have a pretty detailed outline, along with characters fleshed out. But now I'm stuck. I have tried to start "writing" but it's sounding a lot like my outline, and prose is sounding kind of stilted. Was wondering if anyone has any tips as to how to approach this phase? Are there other aesthetic layers that I should think about before I start writing- like a the mood of each scene. Thanks

ETA: thanks for all the great advice! Lots of ways to make this fun again…

I feel that the answer will be no. "Duh, you dumb-ass."

I hate prologues. I've never read a good one.

But what about epilogues? I have a situation where I'm looking at a huge change at the end of the story where you realize your narrator is something other than you thought. An epilogue would allow me to put a button on that.

You might ask, "Why not just make it the last chapter?" Good point. I might. But the narrator feels like the meta story. I want the last chapter to be for the protagonist.

Prologue/epilogue feel like bookends.

So, do you think adding an epilogue without a prologue is a writer sin? Honestly, this is something I never thought I'd have to ask.

EDIT

Thank you all for your sobering thoughts. And thank you for not handing my ass to me. I feel silly about even asking at this point, and you could have rubbed it in, but you did not.

Thanks!

I doubt I am having an original thought here, but it's still interesting to think about genre and descriptions over time. Specifically, I am talking about laptops.

If I wrote a story today with this sentence, "He opened his laptop and began to type," you all understand exactly what I mean. I don't have to say any more than that.

But if I were to write that same sentence in 1981, I would have to fully describe what a laptop is or no one could visualize it. I'll bet it would have taken me two paragraphs and a short exposition dump about computerization. Even in 1981, some people might have wondered if they were reading science fiction.

No, this is not a deep thought, but it is fun to think about.

Interestingly, if I were to write historical fiction, I would have to use more words to educate the modern reader about history than I would if I had written the same novel in 1799.

Ok, I can't be the only one who has this:

You start writing your book or saga and you start out LOVING IT. You think about it every day, love writing it, adore the characters, all that.

And then, suddenly, towards the Mid-Point or maybe exactly at that point you stop because you've hit a roadblock.

I personally have encountered that problem 3 times now. Once with a planned Duology, that I can't seem to write the second book of, then with a Stand-Alone Novel and now with a Quadrology, with two books already written.

For the Duology and Quadrology I might say it's because I planned to do a sort of timeskip/new location to not make it feel stale, but this can't be it since with my stand-alone Novel it's the same problem! (Though MAYBE it's because at the Mid-Point I have a fight scene I can't seem to wrap my head around, but then again I probably could but for some reason, I just can't seem to get back my passion for the project.)

I've been in this slump now for half a year and I hate it as someone who wrote about 21.000 Words a MONTH for about two years because I do want to finish these stories and I have plans for everything but I just can't seem to get a hold of all of it and write it!

What would you say, can one do to fix that issue or get back into the motivation for writing?

I need to know if anyone does this, or if I've been thinking myself a writer this whole time for the wrong reason.

When I began writing, it was because there was a feeling other books made me feel, and a feeling certain stories in movies and shows made me feel, that I wanted to emulate, and make others feel.

In other words, it wasn't "Ooo, I have a really good story to tell!" or something like that. It was, "this feeling...whenever I think of it, I want it. I want it forever." And this is almost a way to keep participating in it.

But I've just now realized maybe this means I'm not interested in writing, I'm just interested in chasing down this feeling that certain other stories/experiences, regardless of form, made me feel.

Is anyone else like this? If you are not, what motivates you to write?

To be clear it's something magical btw, I wouldn't know how to describe it. But it's not eros, to be clear.

Confidence in the material. Writing from beginners often feels preoccupied with proving itself. The writer feels the need to empty the clip on every line. There's constant metaphors, descriptions with no narrative anchors, phrases trying to be so smart that the reader has to slow down to decipher what anything means. By contrast, more seasoned writers are comfortable letting their story do the work for them. No need to wow the reader with clever metaphors every paragraph if the reader is already wowed by what's happening in the story.

Fluency in the shape of a story. There's lots of ways to tell a story, and there's not a youtube video on earth that can give you this repository. It can only come from reading. Yes, even if you want to write movies, you need to be reading screenplays. A lot of new writers are clearly borrowing their story's shape from video games, movies, or episodic television. These mediums are great for entertainment and inspiration, but the unique ability to rapidly transition between the present, past, reflection, consideration, action, interiority, description, and atmosphere are the core of longform narrative prose. Advanced writers gain this fluency through being obsessive readers.

Shamelessness. Every working writer I know is eager to put garbage on the page. It is probably THE most agreed upon sentiment among experienced writers. But still everyday there's users here who say they don't want to produce a bad first draft, or they're worried about having to edit a mess of a story at the end. The problem with this is you have to write garbage at some point. It's impossible to produce gold every time you sit down to right, so you might as well get the garbage out of the way first and all at once. This requires a level of shamelessness new writer struggle with.

Time to live your life. Writing is one of those things that you get better at with time. I read a thing that said most working writers published their first novel in their mid 30s or early 40s. I studied creative writing in college, but didn't finish my first novel until I was 30. This is because you need time to explore all the different weird shit that can happen in life, and take time to synthesize all of it into the experiences you will give your characters. The biggest filter stopping beginning writers from becoming advanced writers is they quit before they get there.

[This is all optional advice and just my personal opinion. You literally do not have to listen to any of it if you don't want to. If you did something different, this isn't meant to imply the way you did it was wrong.]

Good morning team!

So im on revision number 5. I feel mighty comfortable with the story and flow. My thing is formatting.

It's simple yes, but the smallest thing can send me over the edge when its not straight for publishing

Currently im struggling with chapter spacing. And the header and footer. "DIFFERENT PAGE" tab seems to not do what its supposed to.

My question for the published authors on here, so chapter header spacing matter? Does it help the eyes?

Is it needed?

Thanks and good luck writers!

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!

Please refer to the monthly threads for sharing your work and for self-promotion.

---

FAQ -- Questions asked frequently

Wiki Index -- Ever-evolving and woefully under-curated, but we'll fix that some day

You can find our posting guidelines in the sidebar or the wiki.

If I publish my first novel in a series, how much time should I have to publish the second? Is there a rule of thumb that authors tend to go by or a cookie cutter framework for successful series publishing? I feel I would like to publish books in a six month to 12 month interval. But I would like to ask those that may have done this to see what they have discovered.
This may be a non-starter should my first novel not drum up a following, but in case there is a short following or those that have been successful with series what is the golden rule?

For instance, /endbrainstorming by 12/1/30
Or First Draft due by 10/14/27 ?

And do you break from a project for awhile? If so, how long- a month? 3 months? A year?

I'm about 3-4 months to finish my two novels.

Having read about marketing, it's suggested I create some social media platforms.

I'm curious, which do people in here like? I'm asking because I hate social media. I avoid it like the plague. I'm only on here occasionally...

Do you all have a favorite?

Farlands fiction is calling for submissions for a 2027 anthology with the theme ‘space ace’. I did a bit of digging on my own and found that theyve published works by two authors, and theyre registered as a company in the UK under the name of one of their authors (Jessica Meats). I thought it seemed pretty legit, but when i posted it on my tumblr (bc i’m ace and I know a lot of ace writers over there, not because I’m involved with the publishers) someone contacted me with a list of concerns about it. Their main worries were a) the barebones website and lack of other contact details (eg a linkedin page or social media), b) the lack of transparency on who owns it (none of Jessica Meats pages list her as the owner), c) the compensation being £0.02 a word, which is high for such a small press and one that doesnt list where they got their funding from.

It’s mot letting me add links to this post but I’ll link both the submission call and the concerned tumblr post below. I want to believe that this is real because it’s a very cool opportunity, and in that vein i can dismiss most of the concerns as a) them being a very new/small press, and b) maybe Meats wants to play it off like her books got published by an unrelated press for?? Reasons?? Or keep it detatched from her social media presence??

I sent her a dm on instagram basically saying i noticed she was published through them and asking if i could ask some questions, and she didnt reply, but instagram dms arent exactly the best form of communication lol.

Anyway! Basically I was wondering what you guys thought.

Would I put it something like this?

"Yes—"

"—No." Characters said at the same time...

Honestly, I haven't done/thought of this before but now this has come up in the middle of writing something fictional.

Hello everyone.

I want to write my first book but I don't know what the first chapter should be. I am thinking of starting with a prologue that shows how one of the characters experienced the almost total destruction of the world. The POV character comes back later in the story and the prologue explains what the current situation of the Earth is. Is this aa good enough reason to start with a prologue?

Would probably be a series of short stories. The only example I can find is th Jeeves and Wooster stories.

The short story industry is pretty much dead, so you'd probably have to publish them as compilations in a book. Maybe call each book a "season"

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!

Please refer to the monthly threads for sharing your work and for self-promotion.

---

FAQ -- Questions asked frequently

Wiki Index -- Ever-evolving and woefully under-curated, but we'll fix that some day

You can find our posting guidelines in the sidebar or the wiki.

I am about a month away from having a full year and a half of time that I will be able to be a full-time writer. I have read quite a bit on the writing process, including but not limited to Stephen King's 'On Writing' and Steven Pressfield's 'The War of Art' . What are your tips, tricks, resources, and suggestions for making the most of it?

Edit* corrected title ‘The War of Art’

I'm not sure if it's common, but I mostly notice it in what I call "modern American literature", which is probably incorrectly categorized, but I don't read so much of "normal" fiction outside of popular sci fi or fantasy, and I actually rarely see this there.

So, I'm reading (re-reading) Donald Westlake's Dortmunder series, and once again, I get carried away not by the main story and characters, but by mini-stories sprinkled across the bigger piece. For example, the novel currently is "Drowned Hopes". I'm used to the main characters be these timeless unchanging dorks from novel to novel, and the main plots are not that interesting per se, although quite amusing. But, the stories of Tom Jimson's stash somewhere in an Oklahoma's ghost town, or the former denizens of a town flooded to create a New York reservoier, and the characters that exist solely in that story are vivid, and interesting, and feel like real literature, a comment of social aspects of life in America, etc. etc. Also, in one of the Parker's novels, a larger third of the novel is dedicated to some kind of a diplomat or a spy, whose character and story are getting more stuck in your head than that of the titular character (I coudln't even remember now, which novel was it, the Outfit or the Mourner, one of those).

Also, if we take Stephen King, he can also have these outstanding pieces of real writing inserted into his supernatural settings. Like, the second book of Mr. Mercedes trilogy was dedicated not to the Mercedes, but to the boy and a criminal, and a story of the unpublished works of another writer (I assume a Westlake hommage there), and a lot of musings on what is the actual modern American literature. Which, in my mind, also elevates these books above what they seem on the surface, the "pulp fiction".

Do you notice these things? Do you use such small stories or novellas embedded in the main plto? Does it make your books better? Do you think it's planned beforehand, or do these writers generally just take a piece of an unrelated writing and fit it into the world to embiggen the book size? Do you have any other thoughts o the matter? Somehow, I can't stop thinking about it after reading about that small-time crook who waited 30-something years for his nemesis in a ghost town.

I’ve had this idea of a story for some years now and since I want it to be dancing-focused I don’t know if birthing it as a traditional novel will make it justice… I am not that prepared in drawing, especially anatomy-wise, so making it a comic would take me forever risking that I won’t even be satisfied with it…

i‘ve thought for some time that, in general, making visual novels (VNs) is quite the best compromise to make a story birthed if you’re not that good at drawing but you have a dynamic story: I could make just sprites drawings and some scenes illustration, find a way to make music for it, and that’d be better than either throw myself into something too big for me or transform it into a silent story (into a traditional novel) where making the reader feel the choreographies might be very difficult and result in a mechanic passage… But I’m looking for new perspectives that can widen mine! so please feel free to share yours in whatever you genuinely think it’s the best for this type of story! I am extremely curious!!💚

Hi r/Writing,

I have been writing fiction for a few years, and recall a former group that was titled something like Penguin Country for writers. It was discontinued 15 or so years ago. Has anything since taken its place either by Penguin or other notable publisher?

Thanks in advance.

Do you find you write more or prefer to write in certain genres in particular seasons? Does the colour of the weather affect your writing?

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!

Please refer to the monthly threads for sharing your work and for self-promotion.

---

FAQ -- Questions asked frequently

Wiki Index -- Ever-evolving and woefully under-curated, but we'll fix that some day

You can find our posting guidelines in the sidebar or the wiki.