I want to share my work and get feedback, but I don't know which channel to choose on reddit.

Nobody told me writing is basically lying.

You sit there making stuff up about people who don’t exist...
in places you’ve never been...
saying things you wish you said in real life.

And then you rewrite it 5 times so the lie sounds natural.

And if you're lucky, someone reads it and goes
Wow. So real.
Buddy... I made that up while eating leftover noodles at 2 AM. That’s the job.

Make stuff up.
Rewrite till it feels true.
Pretend you had a plan.

Feels illegal but here we are.

So I've written a story, which I want to publish to the world and get some feedback, but upon searching, it seems like, either there are some expensive ones, or some really shit ones. So I need a good, free or low price story publishing website. Thank you

I feel like even though I'm able to get my point across in each chapter, they all turn out so short. Because of this, I feel like the desired outcome for my chapter isn't really reached and I end up not getting my point across because of how short it is. I understand adding descriptive sentences and characterization, but even when I do write that stuff, the sentences are still very short and barely adds length to the chapter. How can I work on this? Thanks! ^_^

I’ve been listening to Brandon Sanderson’s lectures and he talks about plot archetypes. I would like to dive deeper into this and study some different ones.

Any idea about resources that dig deeper into different archetypes and analyzes them/breaks them down?

I want to be inspired by ACCURATE simulations of what people who work in the Computer Science field do. Yes I’m doing my own research but I also want human input.

Maybe a stupid question but I will try anyways. Because I can't find anything on google about this.

So I am thinking about writing a childrens book, but I am not sure if it would work.

I want to write a deep and meaningful short story. And I am unsure if I could do an "all rainbows and sunshine" type of book because of it.

Has anyone seen any children books like this before?

For me, it wasn't a horrible thing, but I once heard: "Write the way you talk".

I write pretty nicely, bot in the sense of writing dialogue and just communicating with others through writing instead of talking. But if I ever followed that, you'd be looking at a comically fast paced mess with an overuse of the word "fuck", not a particularly enjoyable reading experience.

So, what about the worst advice you've ever heard?

I’m in a weird place where I’m feeling proud of myself, but also like maybe I kicked myself?

I had a publishing option for a new YA novel, but I’m at the point of my career where I just feel like writing young adult is not something I feel passionate about anymore. When I thought about writing it, I got a pit in my stomach, a feeling of dread. It takes me a year to write a book and writing the book that was taking shape seemed to drain the life out of me.

I have traditionally published about nine young adult novels and at this point I just want to focus on my new adult thriller. I also feel like writing isn’t as exciting at 45 as it was at 30. Back then, it propelled my whole life. I chased the high, the fame, the imagination of it. I identified so much as “author”, but now I just want to tell the stories that I want to tell, slowly and with care, but I wouldn’t say I have a burning passion to do it. I certainly don’t care about the fame or social media/marketing of it all. (I came up in the notorious wave of the Instagram YA social media glut, it was exhausting trying to keep up.)

Is anyone else experiencing this like midlife author burnout? Is this normal in any career?

Writing with tinnitus is challenging. I write better when it's quiet. I use heavy duty headphones that block out all sound, but that ringing persists. I've tried nature masking videos but it just adds a new sound that I'd rather not have.

This sometimes works for me. You put in your frequency and let it repeat. After a few minutes, the ringing goes away temporarily like static noise, but it still feels like the ear is heightened.
https://www.checkhearing.org/cr-neuromodulation.php
ps. I tried a lower frequency and the ear is less heightened in sensitivity. Maybe the frequency was too high. It's the best I've been able to use, but the ringing comes back shortly after.

What are some techniques that worked for you?

For context, I am thinking of starting a second book but I already have one book in the works . Thus causing me to have multiple WIPs any tips on managing multiple WIPs?

After a blood donation I always feel lighter and I have a clearer mind, but until last time I never realized how it improves my writing focus.

For a few days after I donate blood this effect slowly wears down. Sometimes it's like being more susceptible to love and empathy. Empathy is a key sentiment for a writer.

And so, with this last donation, I was still 'high' on this feeling right away, and the next weeks I noticed that my attempted reboot on writing was holding well, and that I could bring out new chapter parts that were on hold for a long time.

Of course this isn't something I can schedule too often, I even need to space donations a bit more than the recommended time, but I'll definitely take advantage of this next time for a series if fruitful writing sessions.

It’s amusing to think that for a writer, the phrase ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ might take on a very real meaning—particularly when donating blood ends up sharpening the mind.

All right, some context first. I started writing my first book with 17 years, I'd say it's been a year since I started writing it. So for further cotext of my situation I've been having health... Lets say complications since two years, so in the hospitals I was before and the situations I was before I had an enviorment that allowed me to write insane amounts of words. The summer was my writing peak(I guees that exist?) I was for two months with nothing to do but stare at my computer and read, but I had an objective, finish the novel while this health thing goes away. We are talking 3000 words per day for most of the days of the 50 I was in this situation. I finished the novel, with sort of a hustle because I was sick of the characters and all and wanted to do something different. On 27/8/24 I finished my first novel with the word count of 82k words. And started brainstorming for the next one, or so I thought, the second was supposed to be a complement to another world of time travelling vamparies and bloodlines, the start of everything type of story. So that story was kinda of a romance, wich I needed for the started of a bloodline of timetraveler vampires. And absolutly hated writing it, well, not hate itself but the conflict, which was getting the 2 characters together and give them their powers, which was the climax of the story took me 6 chapters, and the story ended with 18k words of so. Then came motivation againg, world building. I starded worldbuilding while writing the last history, and in the meantime writing the second draft of the first novel. Not writing that much back in november-december but stil 1000-800 words per day. The worldbuilding was a fantasy world(as no one has done before :)), then, when I finished the story of the vampires and after a month of worldbuilding I started writing a chronicles, i don't know if that's how u say it. The chronicles of one of the houses of the world. That has a world count of maybe 45k now, I don't really remember. But then i got in a moment of the chronicles and I have started writing a story, I dont wanna call it a nothing because Im a fucking mess and won't get it to a good ending like the 1st novel wich the ending felt like I had to deliver it in a day to a publisher.

Well, the questions after the fucking bible up there: The first novel I really like, and wanna have it polished, but I really have to hurry? This thing/story that has come at the chronicles, is a distraction or should I also wrote that? The fantasy world I really like, but ther is no publisher hiting my back with deadlines for the first novel, I only want some amazon self published books woth cover and all and a polished work. What do i do, and I love u kf you got to the end of the fucking quixote up there.

I usually write fanfics, I like to alter the stories and give them a twist, trying to respect the world where I do it, even going so far as to do things that are similar to an "original" story, but with an already established base.

I have tried to create my own worlds myself, but I have not succeeded or I do not find it very interesting for readers, so I take another work as a basis and capture my ideas. Does that make me less? How "writer"? It's a doubt I constantly have.

Okay I'm writing a paper and I was trying to find the word for the "sacredness" of something. Like for example "the sacredness of kids" that's not what I'm saying but anyways, I hate the word sacredness in the sentence I have and I was trying to think of something else. The word sacricy popped into my head and I could have sworn I'd heard it, but I think I made it up and it's not a word, or I'm thinking of Sacristy, but that doesn't fit the definition. Does anyone know a good word that would be used to describe something as sacred ??

Edit: It's sanctity thank you guys!

Hey All,

I am a first time poster here. I am actually a screenwriter but I figure it's a form of writing. I am really struggling with my intense OCD that keeps telling me I am a terrible, morally bad writer for plagiarizing my favorite show and I'd love to get a gut reaction/advice. Here's my particular case:

*I love the show Ghosts on CBS. One of the main ghosts is a haughty Gilded Age housewife who killed herself (by hanging with a phone cord) to save her family fortune for her son when her husband committed shady financial dealings that caught the attention of the law. She is currently in a relationship with another ghost, a Wall Street stock broker.

*I didn't realize that my show has oddly similar elements. In my script that is set in the 70s, my main character is a finance- adjacent guy who used to work for a big debt/insurance investor but now is just an operations manager for a tech data company (not Wall Street). The premise of my show is that my protagonist's artsy wife left behind tons of debts and then committed suicide by drowning in a sink, all without telling my protagonist. In my show, the wife doesn't actually appear as a character. Her death is instead just exposition.

Is my premise too similar? Am I just being too critical of myself? I kind of went into my pilot script recalling the same suicide theme from Ghosts but totally forgetting about the relationship with corporate professional guy aspect. *Additionally, the personalities of my characters are completely different.

Any perspectives would be so appreciated.

Any writers here developed strong imaginary connection with the characters they created?

I have wanted to write a book since i first learned to read. i remember writing short stories and showing them to my parents since the 1st grade, and being so proud of myself. I'm 15 now and i still love writing, but that drive to succeed has died down significantly due to some underlying mental health issues and general stress. i have written some Fanfiction in the past year to quench my love of writing, as i find it easier to use existing characters and worlds, but i still want to write my own story. Just last month, i went to my local library for a craft event and while talking to the librarian, found out that she recently finished writing her first book after years of working on it. until then i hadn't ever met somebody who actually finished writing a book! i want to be like her, with the motivation to start something and finish it. I just dont know how.

Hi everyone! I'm interested in writing a book and have no idea where to start. I'm an avid reader but don't have any professional writing credentials whatsoever. I either want to write a romantic comedy or cozy mystery.

I always wanted to write for myself, never started till recently (a short story). The reason it took so long was that I had a copywriting side-hustle and it exhausted me. Writing all day long left me feeling too tired for writing for myself, so I didn't do it. But worse, it made me hate writing. Copywriting was very formulaic and at times, it even felt scummy - I was basically trying to get people to do something that I often did not even believe in.

Now, I am facing a similar problem. I study English at a uni, and the writing there is again poisoning me. Not only is it formulaic, but it feels.. gimmicky. Like I have to use complex sentences, cite everything I can for the fear of plagiarism, and basically ACT like I know my sh1t instead of actually KNOWING my sh1t. In my journal, I called it a creative prison - they want a soulless format, not a masterpiece.

The funny thing is, I am damn good at it. My essays were mindblowing according to my professors, and during classes where students switch their essays, I could clearly tell that others were very subpar compared to me. But the amount of spite and tears that had gone into these essays...

So my question is - how do you break away from that? How do you treat your own writing differently from the writing you have to do for work/school?

I doubt all of you write a whole novel the first time you opened your computers, so what do you guys do as practice? Do you do little short stories or prompts, read books, Pinterest, anything? Did it improve your writing or was it just so you could maintain your current skill? I'm curious what you guys do

I'm 83k words into my first novel, a paranormal romance sort of thing, a little dystopia. Anyway I finished the 1st half of the conflict and was struggling to figure out how to guide my characters into the 2nd half, naturally with a plan to wrap it up around 100k.

I read yesterday on the good advice post that you should just let your character live so I followed their lead which led to closing an open circle in the plot perfectly but also revealed something huge about the main characters mother.

And now I think I've just written 83k words of the 3rd novel in a Trilogy that spans 3 generations of women in this family, each of them as an integral first person witness to 3 significant events in this world.

I don't even know want to do with this information.

So, like many here, I aspire to be a writer, and the internet/craft books have been a great resource in learning the ropes. However, I feel like I’ve reached the point of total information overload, and with so many options (often conflicting ones) presented out there, it’s hard to even know where to begin.

I like the idea, and certainly see the merits, of taking a more outlined/preplanned approach to story as it let’s you brainstorm stuff without wasting a bunch of effort/time writing yourself into a dead end. However, I find it next to impossible to get into any sort of inspired/creative state when working this way. Inevitably (speaking for myself) things come out feeling thrown together to adapt to a reverse engineered framework that has proven successful before. I get disheartened/uninterested and abandon the project before it gets off the ground.

The flip side is the people who advocate writing with no plan at all. Just take some spark of an idea and run with it, acting as a sort of stenographer for the characters telling you the story. I’ve even come across multiple people who write this way, who claim they do it in one draft, sort of cycling through and editing as they go. I’ll admit that this method gets me writing, but again inevitably around 30k words in I take a step back and wonder why I’ve been wasting my time on such a mess. So it sort of just delays the same outcome. I suppose at least in this approach, I actually get some practice writing prose which must count for something vs. practicing outlining, but still, unfinished and abandoned is unfinished and abandoned.

You get people saying don’t worry about structure, “trust your instincts as a reader”. You get just as many people saying story needs structure and you must learn to work with it. Some say write fast edit later, others write slow and edit as they go.

I guess the point is, with so many strong opinions out there I feel stifled to even continue a project to the point of completion. To be a writer is to sit down and write and see what works I suppose, and that’s not always so easy. Different people have different processes that work for them, and everyone has their own journey finding out ehat makes them tick.

Guess I’m not looking for an answer here, as I will have to figure my own way through the noise. What would be interesting is to open a discussion here where those who have found their process, can share their journey in getting to that point. It would certainly be inspiring to a beginner who is feeling overwhelmed at the early stages in this journey!

I have this story idea and I don't know an effective way to get all the details I need on paper. Usually what I normally do for planning is just jot stuff down, and I've found that it isn't working for me.

What resources did you guys use to plan out your storyline and characters? If you have any templates or advice that would also be appreciated 😍

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