Questions from an aspiring writer

[HungrySheep]

• What's your average writing is speed? Are there ways you are able to write faster?
Honestly, that depends on the day. Some days I'm able to completely vomit out chapters within an hour or less, other days it takes me like seven hours to write 500 words. Turning off Discord and everything else helps me concentrate and write faster though.

• How are you able to better flesh out you character and the world?
I wish I knew. Making a separate document with paragraphs describing the character's personality seems to help a little. For series that have power systems/levels, I learned the hard way that it's probably better to make a whole document setting that stuff up before you actually start getting into it and realizing how overly complicated it is or how much it actually sucks.

• What are some early mistakes you did as an author?
Writing something for the masses instead of myself. I was at an all time high with Patrons during that period and had a decent viewcount per day, but I hated writing that novel. Always write stuff you want to write.

• How much detail is too much or too less?
Depends on the scene. If it's significant and you want the readers to slow down and parse everything that's happening, go for a slightly chunkier paragraph and more vivid descriptions. If it's not that significant, you can just write something like "Her flowing red dress left an almost fiery trail in its wake as she descended the steps." or something and then jump to the next segment.

• How are you able to create new names which fit the world perfectly?
Nothing is ever perfect :(

 

[NineHeadHeavenDevouringSerpent]

Cycling is when you write fast for 500 words, and then go back to the beginning of the chapter. Then you can easily set up everything to match with the words you have just written, which will make people think you have outlined when you have not done it. (But if you outline it can be useful too! To each his or her own.)
With this method, I am able to write a 1,5k chapter in three sprints with a small break to read the previous 500 words, and put in the foreshadowing.

Seems interesting, could you explain a bit more?

Is it just reading back every 500 words, or every 500 words you need to connect it back to the beginning?

"Lisa was writing a poem blablabla..500 words later the poem Lisa was writing..."

Like that? (Ik not literal repetition, but just for simplicity sake)

I'm finding it very hard to have consistent word count every chapter, some reach beyond 2k, some i can't even get to 1k.

 

[Deleted member 68927]

Seems interesting, could you explain a bit more?

Is it just reading back every 500 words, or every 500 words you need to connect it back to the beginning?

"Lisa was writing a poem blablabla..500 words later the poem Lisa was writing..."

Like that? (Ik not literal repetition, but just for simplicity sake)

I'm finding it very hard to have consistent word count every chapter, some reach beyond 2k, some i can't even get to 1k.

Well, what I do is write 500 words, go to the beginning, set everything up for 500 words, then read through the former 500 words, and when I find white space again, I write another 500 words. The point is to get unstuck in the timeline of your book. The reader reads your book from word 1 to the end. But you don't have to write that way. You can cycle where you want to cycle, even the beginning of your novel, if that is what you want. But I can only cycle in the chapter itself because I post as I finish the chapters, and I don't want to make corrections to chapters, which are already posted. If you have more questions, you should read Writing into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith. He speaks about cycling and pantsing in quite the detail.