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I'm using Scrivener right now and the ability to split-panel your actual WIP and draft chapters in separate windows is really nice, as is the project and session target progress bars
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Jul 24, 2021 16:07
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General Battuta posted:My scenes are too long. My chapters are too long. My manuscript is too long. Help. How do I structure scenes so I can get in and get out quickly??? Reverse outline the thing, this is specifically what the technique is meant for
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Aug 21, 2021 16:54
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D34THROW posted:Anyone ever successfully written a short story (or short story series) or novel (or novel series) using an RPG system to determine the flow of things? Basically playing, say GURPS, against yourself. I'm thinking of doing so because I've tried collaborative writing before and I really like the unpredictability of it, so I'm thinking RPGs as a guide might be a way to incorporate that into my writing proper. Monster of Elendhaven, a book I very much enjoyed, started off as fanfiction about the author and her boyfriend's D&D campaign. So it's not totally impossible but I feel like only involving yourself in the process would by necessity shut you out of situations you might never encounter otherwise.
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Oct 27, 2021 16:46
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I am painfully plowing through my WIP, only 20k/100k words completed this year despite writing a 40,000-word outline, and even I recognize that getting too hung up on worldbuilding and minutiae will stop you from actually getting the thing written.
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Nov 19, 2021 17:52
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That includes worldbuilding stuff in the notes on each chapter and I'm not even really sticking to it too tightly in this draft except as a loose guide. That was just to get my preliminary thoughts down and winnow out the stuff that doesn't work storywise.
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Nov 19, 2021 19:50
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The secret is that you can deep dive as much as you want in your notes but unless it comes into play or your protagonist will see it (ie, will it ever actually come up in the book?), then you don't actually need to build out 2000 years of history beyond sketches or a basic timeline IMO. Obviously historical events influence current-day societies, religion, relationships between countries, etc, but don't kill yourself with it. It's all "forest for the trees" stuff, your characters should be the focus, not trade agreements.
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Nov 19, 2021 20:19
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kaom posted:Yeah I have the opposite problem. But in starting to write it out just now (there was a big war in the past 100-200 years, the divisions still need to be healed between multiple countries) I think I realized that I’m basically writing the establishment of the fantasy EU, so maybe the answer is just to research that. Beyond a rough timeframe and who fought who, I don’t even have solid reasons established for why the war happened—I kind of need something for characters to feel some kind of way about that’s deeper than “we hate country x for unspecified reasons” you know? I also have a fantasy EU in my WIP, and if you can't settle on a cause for the big war, why not have every country give their own irreconilable reasons for why it happened? Fantasy Germany considered it a war of self-defense as other countries had been pushing into their borders for too long, fantasy France thinks it was started over an economic dispute, etc. That could also provide a good shorthand into the national attitudes of each.
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Nov 19, 2021 21:02
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Nae posted:Now I know why they call grrm George Rail Road Martin GRR Martin has a team of assistants to keep his worldbuilding straight when he writes because he can't remember the minutiae from past books. Another strike against going whole hog on building thousands of years of mythology before you start writing, in my opinion
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Nov 21, 2021 23:57
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D34THROW posted:What the gently caress, why is that even an ethical question? There's a reason love potions have been banned from league play in D&D
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Nov 23, 2021 22:57
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General Battuta posted:Wait how the gently caress is there competitive D&D It's Adventurer's League, which is running through modules from WotC and keeping your character/items between them. So officially sanctioned group play, not competitive.
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Nov 23, 2021 23:17
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I will once again bang on my drum and shout that you should all read Lisa Cron's Story Genius for tips on how to avoid this in the first place
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Jan 2, 2022 06:40
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Constantly writing down avenues that don't work out and being forced to jump back and totally rework where you started from. Her method isn't perfect (obviously since no one approach will work for everyone), but writing out the inciting incidents for each main character and figuring out what the emotional and plot beats are and how they relate + her scene diagramming guide feel like they'd really help here specifically
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Jan 2, 2022 06:48
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:As I understood it, the NO LGBT+ thing was very strictly in reference to LitRPGs, which tend to have a younger male readership that has very specific trope expectations (read: there is one dude with a harem of women) and will review bomb if they're not catered to. Related: My current WIP is what I hope will be the first in a fantasy series and features a queer love triangle at its heart, with the main character (a young woman) ultimately deciding to risk the position of comfort she's striving for throughout the book for another lady. I know the trend in publishing has rapidly shifted towards Own Voices in recent years and I have friends in the industry who have griped to me about how fed up they are with straight cis white dudes writing gay stories—am I going to be hosed when I query? Or if I handle things well enough and hire sensitivity readers first (which I plan on doing anyways) should I be okay?
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Jan 5, 2022 15:47
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newts posted:It’s really disheartening to me that you’re getting this kind of response. I understand the need for the Own Voices movement, but does that mean every character you write must match your own identity? Seconding, that sucks rear end and I'm sorry to hear it. My book takes place in a turn of the 20th century-like fantasy Germany that's on the brink of war after just recovering from one a decade ago, and the main character is captured and forced into an arranged marriage with a haughty rear end in a top hat who's heir to an important family. She sort-of-kind-of falls for him even though he's abrasive, self-centered, and doesn't think about her feelings when he speaks, but eventually she falls in love with another woman who's trying to help her escape (and who's black). But drat, that "why is this necessary to your story?" thing is so well worn at this point as a classic barrier to increasing diversity in books. Nae posted:There are millions of talented writers out there, and millions more got time to write when COVID forced them to stay home. Your writing doesn't have to match your identity, but publishers have no incentive to take it when they can take one of the thousands of other stellar submissions from people whose identities and manuscripts match up. Fair point too. change my name fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jan 5, 2022 |
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Jan 5, 2022 22:39
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:My debut comes out in June and I have a Twitter Presence that I feel obligated to keep up for the sake of publicity and also this is absolutely true and I have been making GBS threads bricks about it for over a year. Run the script/service that deletes all of your tweets up until a certain period (the last year?) Also don't get discouraged when crazy people come after you either on social media or Goodreads, just ignore their likely unfounded complaints
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Jan 5, 2022 22:59
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Leng posted:
It's super useful as you can gamify your sessions (and not have it include writing outside of whatever parameters you choose, so you can write in a scratchpad or background section and not have it count if you're trying to get your main manuscript word count up). Setting out to tackle one 500 word chunk often leads to another once you've filled the bar up.
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Jan 11, 2022 22:10
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I'd been drafting in Calibri until someone on twitter suggested Garamond, it definitely makes your work feel more professional.
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Jan 19, 2022 23:51
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Some easy short hand for fantasy naming from GRR Martin: Just assume the reader understands that everything takes place in a fantasy language and is being translated into English. You don't necessarily need to have unique terms for every single thing if there's a real-world analogue unless there's a good reason for it
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Jun 23, 2022 17:29
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SimonChris posted:https://familieretshuset.dk/navne/navne/godkendte-fornavne What a great premise for a hard fantasy setting where knowing someone's true name gives you power over them. Of course a totalitarian government would tightly regulate and track its citizens' names.
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Jun 29, 2022 18:13
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I'm going with Shadow and Bone meets the Traitor Baru Cormorant, so great minds and all (or maybe this thread is just more likely to attract people writing genre fiction?)
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Jul 11, 2022 03:24
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General Battuta posted:Lots of spicy affairs and breakups too If you want to date your way through the publishing industry, just move to NYC
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Jul 28, 2022 02:07
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Speaking of, what’s everyone’s pace like? I write for a living so I often feel like all of my words are “used up” at the end of the day. This year I’ve only written 30,000 words of the first draft of my WIP
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Jul 28, 2022 05:01
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Published authors: how did you go about asking for blurbs? I know a few authors personally who have put out well regarded work (and some of them have hit best seller status) but god drat do I hate asking people for things. I’d feel insanely self conscious about coming off as transactional
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Jul 31, 2022 17:32
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Yeah this was just curiosity/speculative
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Jul 31, 2022 22:53
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thehandtruck posted:What software are you guys using for novels? Some of the links in the OP are dead. I like the general layout and functionality of yWriter6 but is there anything more...modern? Scrivener, having a progress bar that fills up as you type is a god send
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Sep 14, 2022 20:16
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thehandtruck posted:Is that like a writing motivation thing? I'm not into that kinda stuff. I meant more how yWriter has a way to organize the chapters and scenes. Yeah. You can pop out a progress bar with both your total word count and session word count. It also has great chapter and scene organization as well as hyperlinking back to other sections (good for characters and places), multiple panes, and a bunch of other stuff. I actually use it to draft my articles for work now instead of Word too.
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Sep 14, 2022 21:06
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thehandtruck posted:Is there a way to sync a document from device to another in Scrivener? Like if I write on my laptop I want it to sync on my desktop. I use Dropbox for this
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Sep 15, 2022 21:33
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Comic sans trick, dawg: make a copy of the doc, switch it into comic sans, print it off and read it like that. It'll instantly feel like a book written by somebody else. I use it to clear those post-draft editing humps all the time, no idea why it works but it does, try it if you don't believe me. This is why I draft in Garamond, it makes me feel way more professional
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Sep 27, 2022 20:56
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One of my favorite recent fantasy novellas uses marks, I don’t know if obsessing that much over minor details instead of broader world building helps that much? That is, if it doesn’t actually figure into the story
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Oct 22, 2022 20:31
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Admiralty Flag posted:I'll probably come across like a scold here, but the idea that you need to be a tortured artist continually altering yourself with substances (whether alcohol, drugs, or both) to be a good writer is simply a terrible stereotype. Plus, getting high or drunk has never worked for me. In those cases I'd rather play a videogame than stare at an empty Scrivener page (or just fall asleep).
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Nov 15, 2022 18:49
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Write your draft 0 and reverse outline if you're worried it won't be good. It's a great way to winnow your story down to see what works and figure out what should connect where.
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Nov 15, 2022 23:22
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SimonChris posted:Happy new year, everyone! I only wrote 42K of my WIP (but think I can get to revisions this year) and 5K on a short story I had wanted to pitch but haven't edited yet. Writing on your own time is hard when you do it for a living, IME
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Jan 1, 2023 16:29
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General Battuta posted:Don't learn prose from Brandon Sanderson imo This is the same reaction my friend who works at Tor had when I told him I was watching Sanderson's worldbuilding lectures, but he wouldn't elaborate on why (I haven't read any of his stuff)
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Jan 16, 2023 00:09
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Leng posted:
This is very helpful. I'm working on a scene for a worldbuilding class right now, and the prose isn't the point, but I'd like to present something that won't make me feel like crap to see read out loud. change my name fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Jan 16, 2023 |
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Jan 16, 2023 17:32
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newts posted:Is it ableist to have one character call another character ‘crazy’? I think he also calls her ‘nutty’ later. The character in question isn’t mentally ill or anything, just a religious fanatic type. And even if it is ableist, is it something I should avoid? Is the character’s voice my voice? Your character is not you. They can hold views you don't hold. Showing something in text doesn't mean you're endorsing it.
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Mar 21, 2023 15:37
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newts posted:
Even if the book is written in the first person and your character is supposed to be sympathetic, no one is perfect. A character without flaws is flat and boring! Personally, I'd take your beta reader's feedback to heart and be sensitive about it, but also acknowledge that it's your character's point of view, not your own
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Mar 21, 2023 16:03
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General Battuta posted:This conversation always turns into a giant fuckfest but I'll keep it brief. Thanks for this. As someone nearly at the end of my fantasy novel WIP, it was super reassuring to hear
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Apr 4, 2023 23:24
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Waxing plot and waning plot
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Apr 11, 2023 13:45
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SimonChris posted:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOMUfql2Smc This is great, thanks
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Apr 13, 2023 13:46
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Junpei posted:https://twitter.com/Peter_Wartman/status/1661080885989453824?t=LeeTbrUooQ6gcOhkUjmReQ&s=33 Or just get high (but remember to write down whatever you figure out about connective tissue in your WIP)
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May 24, 2023 01:36
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