Search results

Could I request a recipie for a nice warming steak and ale pie next please? It's really chilly up in north England :)

Yup, I have it to hand in fact: "Some nicely written dialogue and not a bad set of characters. Could've used a little bit more setup perhaps but interesting. I'll be keeping an eye on it." It was the first thing I ever wrote, and I remember being terrified when I clicked on the link, but...

Write it down and then slip it away into a folder somewhere. I think every writer should cultivate a folder of half-baked ideas. Eventually future works will be able to draw on a catalogue of semi-developed character ideas and story beats to help augment the main idea.

I think that bigger sites don't necessarily translate to more views. I've posted on small sites that only get about a dozen chapter uploads per day, and the upshot of that is that pretty much everyone lands between 500-5k views/chapter. On a site like this with hundreds of uploads per day...

Start doing a chore you find particularly tedious. Within ten minutes you will start daydreaming of something else you'd much rather be doing instead. Finish your chore, then do that other thing.

Probably about the time everyone decides to go back to the island :unsure:

Polish vodka, triple filtered, flavoured with the tears of an infant hummingbird and just a touch of saffron

I feel like the bar is gonna be a fair bit higher. Like, if I see a fantasy epic with a trans MC, odds are I'll give it quite a charitable go because there's not a massive amount of pro-level stuff out there. If it's not got that specific hook for me, I might still give it a try, see if it...

For C, I think the rythmn you use to describe a scene can convey a sense of the character's emotion. For example, I recently did a scene where the environment was described in really short, choppy sentences to give a sense that the MC was feeling anxious and restless, nothing was holding their...

Yeah I mean I admit in reality people would probably skim through it, sadly. I think we basically agree.

I'm tempted to say this is a false dilemma. An opening chapter that is more mundane doesn't mean it can't have a lot of dramatic tension. A skilled writer can have the guy's life feel like an awful inescapable prison; if the office line-manager is irredemably repulsive, the failing relationship...

Any time where fantastic writing gets switched out for mediocre writing midway through, but the story has enough of a hook in you that you feel compelled to see it out despite no longer being worth your time. Obvious example is late Game of Thrones, but happens suprisingly often.

I've made myself cry a couple of times while writing. I suppose the ultimate ideal is to become so effective at conveying that emotion through our writing that we can make our readers cry as well. Also the death of Toad in 'The Animals of Farthing Wood', my god that was horrible!

He stared at the grotesque thing, unwilling to look away as that single moment stretched out into aeons, until at last it wept no more.

The problem I have is reading and writing in parallel. I got halfway through Les Mis last year and dropped it cos I had a new story idea.

Maybe they're better when they fade into the background a bit. Aragorn and Rand al'Thor are well and good but they either are, or quickly become, pretty unknowable. Frodo and the Aes Sedai girls serve much better as main protagonists since they are relatable and the consumer can more easily...

My god, this baby has the strength of two babies!

A necromancer baby with a pair of undead snake minions... :unsure:

No invisibility? TBH a necromancer baby sounds badass as hell, but I'm not sure they'd have enough world experience to even know there were loads of potential playmates buried 6 feet under.