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  1. C

    What is a standard/acceptable amount of chapters to have backlogged?

    When I started here, I wouldn't post until I had at least ten chapters down. Then it dropped to five and I posted new chapters whenever I had a five chapter backlog. Then I entered a contest (didn't win) on HoneyFeed, and pretty much posted live. Then I got involved with Pocket FM and...
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    As a reader, what kind of protagonist do you like?

    The best protagonist is grilled to medium rare, served on a bun with barbecue sauce, some hot peppers and a pickle.
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    Is it acceptable to shift from third to first person?

    It is really tough to do WELL. I've seen a few authors do it - Peter David did it in Howling Mad - sometimes he followed the wolfwere in first person, sometimes the love interest, sometimes the guy interviewing them - and then he'd step back and have a third person chapter or two (with a break...
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    Besides writing, what's the best way to improve as a writer?

    The advice I've been given over the years can be boiled down to: 1. If you aren't writing, read. Or sleep. 2. If you aren't reading, go outside, or spend time with friends and family and just observe people. 3. If you need a break from people, consume other media (TV, movies, comics). 4. When...
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    As an author, which character would you want to possess if you transmigrated into your fiction?

    Tempted to say David West (Between Earth and Pyrroth) but... I know his fate, He was what I kind of expected to become, but I graduated at the wrong time - two years eariler or four years later, I might have landed that UI designer job and been successful (also able to do about half of what...
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    Is it even Possible for AI assistants like ChatGPT to generate entire long Novels?

    Most of the "AI written" novels are human-edited (and poorly at that), so you get moments where character names change, where actions just don't make sense, scenes change inexplicably, and character names become somewhat fluid. For example, I have a story I've been following on Pocket FM (The...
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    Can we put the knowledge into our novel?

    Knowing is Half the Battle[TM]
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    Point shop cost?

    Unless you plan to make this a game too, you only need to show the parts of the list he requests. Just keep a note of what you've included (probably a spreadsheet) to keep things consistent and add to it as either he needs stuff or you think of stuff.
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    As a reader, what kind of protagonist do you like?

    No IPityDaFus? Those can be the best kind!
  10. C

    For the readers

    For a book cover? Not at all. I've done so myself, both by choice (Strange Awakening) and by platform requirement (my stuff on PocketFM). Throughout? Depends on how well it fits with the content it appears with.
  11. C

    Can we put the knowledge into our novel?

    Tae Kwon Do is the Okinawan combat style often taught as "karate" in the United States (can't speak for other countries) - generally, unless they give a prefix (Shotokan Karate or Isshinryu Karate), an American karate studio is teaching Tae Kwon Do (most of the very few exceptions teach Wu Shu...
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    Opinion on ai?

    Oh yes. Check out some stories on Pocket FM for example - though a lot of those are MTL of original work and not fully AI generated, the overuse of certain names (Ethan, Adriana, Peter Chen) or expressions ("it was none other than..." "...brow furrowed" "in that very moment") are all tell-tale...
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    Can we put the knowledge into our novel?

    Depends on how clearly you present it, how common it might be, and how critical the knowledge is to the audience. For example, most audiences will know little or nothing about capoeira, or the dance form it evolved from, so at least a casual mention of its history and how the move impacts the...
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    To Those Who Write Fight Scenes...

    Maintaining scope and scale without drawing things out too far. Sometimes it's easy to get lost in minutiae of maneuvers and positioning and the specific effects of each blow, but that can quickly bore about 2/3 of your audience (the other third will want MOAR). Sometimes its easy to FORGET...
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    How do you grow an audience?

    First you till the soil. Then you buy only the finest of Audience Seeds, plant them carefully, provide some fertilizer and other nutrients, read them bedtime stories and maybe even sing to them if you have a decent voice, and they'll start growing like weeds.
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    Would this kind of story interest you?

    For a piece of short fiction, this could be cool (would be similar to a sci fi version of some of Robert E. Howard's sports stories, I think). For a longer piece? This could be a single arc or a recurring thing (my wife was listening to an audionovel that did this a few months ago - The Golden...
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    Reader Poll — Chapter Format

    A chapter should be as long - or short - as it needs to be to advance the plot (if there is one) or provide a proper snapshot of a situation if doing Slice of Life stuff. Sometimes you can do that in under 750 words (in the novel Howling Mad, Peter A. David managed to succeed at this with a...
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    What's your fearest genres you ever read?

    So you're his girlfriend?
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    What's your fearest genres you ever read?

    Don't fear the Cryptkeeper...
  20. C

    What's your fearest genres you ever read?

    Gump. Mine is Fearest Gump. Momma always said life is like a box of shock-lates.
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