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The last time I felt this way, I pushed myself to keep going. When I was done, I couldn't write anything for months--the idea of it was too exhausting. Take a break. Read a good book, watch a good movie. Feed your brain. Tinker with other ideas you've been excited about to stay in practice, but...

I've actually been thinking about this since I last responded and went back to check on my most complex draft. In an early chapter, I introduced four new characters using two existing characters and had them discuss five other characters not yet seen in the novel. That's a total of eleven...

I don’t think I’ve ever really thought about it consciously, but I generally operate on the principle of staying focused on just a handful of characters (max three to five), mostly to make sure they all get some solid characterization beyond, ‘I am also in this scene.’ I’m sure I’ve done more...

You don’t have much aside from dialogue here. It reads more like a script than a novel. I’d recommend finding an author you really enjoy and trying to emulate the structure of a scene they’ve written using your own characters and story, just an an exercise to see how you might improve what...

I've had success both ways. I finished a story once in part because of my devotion to it alone and the desire to get through it so that I could start on the next idea, but I've also burned myself out trying to do the same thing for another story that remains unfinished. At the moment, I'm...

I’ve seen from a few of your posts that you’re really interested in finding a way to make money off your writing. As most folks have pointed out, that’s not really feasible from a webnovel perspective. The best way to really start making money from writing fiction is to write short stories and...

I’ve taken opening lines a bit literally here. Here’re the opening paragraphs of two of my favorites. - Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation I don’t know if it’s necessarily my favorite, but it certainly is the most dramatic of my favorites. Or maybe, From Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.

The best way to improve sentence structure is to read traditionally published fiction. Pay attention to how the authors you read put their ideas together. See how they introduce characters and events. If you’re reading enough, you’ll get the hang of it without even thinking that much about it...

I was maybe 6? I’d just learned how to write and spell and was thrilled at the idea of telling a story of my very own (just like the ones I read in class or before bed). My grandfather gave me an old laptop of his that could really only run MS Word a year or two later, and I still have a bunch...

I’ve read your prologue and your first chapter. It’s hard to give you any big-picture notes from such a small sample, but I’ve noticed that you’ve got some especially big issues on the ground level. First and foremost, your tenses are inconsistent. Overwhelmingly, you write in the present...

I think that, ultimately, there isn’t too much of a difference between these scenes. The structural difference (the repeated use of ‘she’ and the continual re-anchoring of the narrative around Errie) can serve to put a ‘filter’ between the reader and your character, as you point out, but that...

I’ve always found it best to hit the ground running. Your characters and the conflict they face should be in the first chapter. Worldbuilding is always best conveyed naturally, where readers learn about a place through a character living in it. Even then, I’m often continuously surprised at how...

I think I’m halfway decent at making a setting feel real and lived-in. The actual characters that supposedly live there are another story. But I think I’ve got ‘sense of place’ down.

I'm sure you could. My inspirations have made me as much as the food I've eaten (as Emerson says, kinda). But I think there's a pretty clear difference between using genre conventions and writing fanfiction, which is typically bound to another author's interpretation of those conventions. For...

Your pacing is the number one issue here. I understand your desire to outline a growing, worldwide tension by touching a little bit on numerous rulers and nobles from around your world, but I think there are better ways to achieve that. As it is, you move too quickly from one character to the...

These days, to prevent burnout and to declutter my mind, I’ll write one story I'm especially invested in and do my best to make it something I’m proud of, and when the effort involved in that makes me struggle to stay motivated, I’ll spend a few days writing junk.

Finish the novel first. Then you'll know who deserves to own it.

Finding meaning in a fleeting life and embracing the change that comes with the death of the old.

I've previously aimed for upwards of 3k/chapter, but more recently, I've been putting aside the word count. If a chapter's fewer than 1500 words, I'll go back and see if I've moved to quickly, but even if I have, I'm unlikely to stretch it all the way to 3000. I might not even touch it at all...

I've never really been able to get into fanfiction, for some reason. Even about stories I really enjoy and want more of. Maybe I just haven't read the right fanfiction yet. Either way, I've always been more interested in writing my own stories than expanding someone else's. I take plenty of...