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I’ve never worked on an idea I haven’t loved, but I’ve written many drafts that will meet me in hell, however soft their spot in my heart is.

A Lull in the Ocean (depending on your tolerance for fantasy) or Planetes (depending on your tolerance for sci-fi) might be what you're looking for. Both are mostly concerned with the day-to-day romances between their main characters and the adventures that keep them apart (or bring them...

That’s true. I keep a copy on my laptop, my PC, and the thumb drive that moves between the two. And if I lose it, I lose it. Look upon my works ye mighty etc., etc. I’ll consider switching to Mega. Thanks for the tip!

I haven’t tried that, but I’d imagine it would work. Still, I prefer to have the whole manuscript in a single place. And I also prefer to have my documents local rather than relying on Google’s servers (my use of Dropbox is pretty limited).

I’ve found that Docs gets a bit clunky to use after a certain word count. LibreOffice is lightweight and easy to use and its autosave/backup feature has helped me out more than once. I still make backups of my files from time to time, either in Dropbox or on another computer.

I have this signed copy of Ministry for the Future. I was so excited when I got it—I really loved his Mars trilogy. Unfortunately, it it sucked :\

A lot of good points here about context. That said, I despise single-sentence paragraphs (which aren’t really paragraphs) and am always happy to read something long and meandering. I don’t really understand the sentiment that lots of folks seem to have when it comes to making things as short and...

Le Guin and McCarthy were probably the only ones whose style was immediately recognizable to me. The fantasy AI passage in particular didn’t necessarily feel like AI, but it felt very bland. It was reminiscent of much of the modern fantasy I’ve read, where authors seem to constantly be trying to...

That's really interesting. Would you say it was the content of the excerpts or the writing that made you feel bored?

So it's mostly the content for you in that one and less the actual prose? Or is the way Judge Holden speaks that got you to prefer the snippet about the church?

Can I ask which (if any) of the AI passages you chose? Ethical issues aside (big ask), I’m mostly interested in what parts of the prose itself either turns folks off of the human excerpts or makes them (in the moment, at least) prefer the LLM.

The science one almost got me too, but largely because I haven’t read any Carl Sagan in a hot minute. But I think, ultimately, the actual excerpt is just so obviously more complex (and therefore more interesting) that it becomes clear after a reread or two. It just feels like it’s actually...

I know most AI threads devolve into miserable little arguments, but the NYT put out this short quiz yesterday that puts AI writing side-by-side with excerpts from classic writing. I’m curious to hear which passages you preferred to read and why, or how you knew which was which (if you knew at...

I was so excited. It was all I wanted to do. Writing was the first thing I’d do in the morning and the last thing I’d do at night. That wore off after a while, and I found that the way to actually get going was to put aside all the big ideas I had and focus on smaller ones that—while still...

I find that Grain Into Gold, a resource for building a realistic, well-crafted fantasy economy within TTRPGs, works more than well enough for novels.

I’ve been tinkering with an idea for a story set on an ecumenopolis for so long that I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever actually be able to do it. At the moment, I still can’t get it to work.

There are plenty of military juntas and dictatorships that you can look at for inspiration, but it can be easy to write a paper-thin, uninteresting regime where everyone who isn’t in the regime hates it. For some extra depth, I’d encourage you to also look at militarized societies (especially...

All the time. I usually focus my best efforts on the story I want to tell and then write a junk story whenever I get writer's block. That said, everything I post online is 'junky,' including the ones I put effort into. The stuff I actually try to write for anything other than practice gets kept...

Certainly, and I didn't mean to imply that you wouldn't have an intentional thematic undertone to your work. What I meant to say was more along the lines of the second half of what you admit yourself: that this kind of framing, where religion is explicitly a tool of control, does imply something...

That's such a complicated question. It really depends on what I'm going for. Richard III? Paul Atreides? Dedra Meero, Ervin Burrell? Daniel Plainvew? Does the Green Knight count? Does Area X?