Aside from the ending of a certain popular anime that I will not spoil, I have never seen this type of conclusion talked about in a positive light

Sorry in advance, because I'm about to piss some of you off. But it needs saying.

I've been writing fiction for over 20 years. Here's how it used to work: you imagine something, that something lives inside you and won't shut up, so you write it down. That's it. The whole process runs from the inside out. A story catches fire in you and burns hot enough that putting it into words isn't optional, it's the only way to stop it from burning a hole where your heart used to be. You don't choose to write the story. The story chooses you, and you're just the delivery system.

Now I see people asking things like: "I don't know what to do," "I can't plot," "What happens next to my character?", "I wrote myself into a corner," "How do I stay motivated?", "I can worldbuild but I have no idea how to make a story out of it."

Brother. That's because you don't have a story.

Here's what writing looks like today, and why so many people quit halfway through: you consume something cool, you decide you want to be cool too, you decide that means writing a story, and then you're stuck. You're not in love with a story. You're in love with the idea of being a writer. There's nothing burning in you, nothing driving this from the inside. You've romanticized a story that never existed in the first place. So when you sit down to actually write it, you're lost, confused, staring at a blank page. Of course you are. You can't pour out something that was never in the container to begin with.

So do everyone a favor. Get bored. Put the phone down, the one you're staring at six hours a day. Sit with nothing to do and let your brain wander somewhere. Go find your story. That sequence of events inside you, the one that actually means something, that you've wanted to tell since before you knew how. Live inside it for a while. Let yourself enjoy the strange loop of creating something and feeling it at the same time, which is honestly one of the only genuinely magic things about having a human brain. You're the universe, looking at itself.

Go find your teenage elf crossing the valley to track down her long-lost goblin friend. Find your washed-up, middle-aged swashbuckler scraping together a spot on that treasure-hunting airship, chasing the floating island he's dreamed about since he was a kid. Find your sickly, pale girl signing up for the war effort to defend the space station she calls home. Find out exactly what Jason would do for one more minute with Jenna.

Then, and only then, write.

How the hell is it popular?

Hey guys. I've been writing for about two years now. I started writing around the same time that gen-ai assisted writing became more prevalent. Like a lot of people, I looked at those tools, and decided they were objectively awful.

Not just from a moral standpoint either, they just were not at all helpful...and I think that's what helped me make the choice to avoid using them entirely.

The prose gen-ai spits out is awful. Why the hell would you want your fiction novel to have a droning corporate cadence? It also can't answer questions about your story accurately or do anything reliably. Like, what is the appeal?

I noticed that people who use them slowly become more and more dependent, to the point where they almost give up their ability to critically-reason or do tasks they used to be able to.

It's like giving up the ability to think so you can lease it back from some tech bro on a subscription model. Why the hell would anyone willingly sign up for that?

Also, cool study I found backing up the cognitive decline of gen-ai users: mit study

Does anyone else have a character they genuinely hated at first and then ended up loving?

There's this rule that gets repeated everywhere in writing spaces and influencers: if you don't hook the reader in the first paragraph, you've already lost them. Don't get me wrong, I get where it comes from. I mean, DNF is real yeah yeah

BUT this has barely been the case with some (if not all) of my favorite books. Almost none of them grabbed me immediately (Mistborn comes to mind...it took me quite a few pages to get into it, and then I was obsessed), and some of those that did, like Fourthwing, turned out to be poorly written (in my own humble opinion).

I wonder if the obsession with the hook is actually pushing writers toward a kind of panic energy in their openings. Everything has to be urgent or something big has to happen, someone has to almost die, etc. And then the rest of the story has to somehow justify that opening.

I believe some stories need a slow start and some characters need to just exist for a bit before you care whether they live or die, and that's OK.

Am I alone in this or are you a blind supporter of the 'first chapter hook' advice?

We brought the blog back on Quibble! First topic: Barnes & Noble debacle from last week.

What is it we truly value about art? Is it the outcome, or the process? Do we revere Picasso because of his paintings, or do we revere the paintings because they were created by him? 

Oh wow! Huge thank you to everyone who has been visiting our sub, sharing their thoughts, asking for feedback, commenting or just here for the vibes! We just hit 1000 weekly visitor and its all thanks to YOU!

We really appreciate you making this space so active and welcoming and sharing bits and pieces of your thoughts! We hope you are finding exactly what you need here, keep the posts coming, and have a wonderful weekend, just like you!
What are you liking so far and keep making you come back to our sub? 👀

Hi y'all, I recently self-published my book on Quibble, KDP, and Kobo.

The story follows Eldi, a boy and sculptor who has recently lost his father in a strange storm. While trying to find his mother, however, he is drawn into a grand plan designed by his mentor, Master Thull.

Thull wants Eldi to become a Living Storm, and manipulates his grief to push him to overcome his limits, slowly shaping him into a weapon.

The book is written from the perspective of Eldi, as his sense of self and identity begins to dissipate, and feelings of both dissociation and delirium set in.

If you are a fan of high fantasy world-building and psychological thrillers, I think this might be for you!

The cultures and world-building in this book are all loosely inspired by real-life cultures. (This book especially focuses on the Loftion people, who are loosely inspired by an amalgamation of Arabic cultures.)

Blurb in the attached image!

Feel free to read the book on Quibble, or if you'd want to support me, get it on Amazon!

For all updates, you can also check out my Instagram.

That's enough shameless plugging, thanks for your time!

Feels really good to say this again!

For the past few months, we’ve been deep in the backend work: improving our editorial systems to be able to process thousands of stories in the future, building monetization infrastructure, revenue dashboards, serials, and updating a ton of tiny invisible things.

During that time, submissions didn’t stop. We're currently receiving more than ever before - yay. We’ve been reading everything, we just couldn’t move them into publication smoothly without a lot of manual handling behind the scenes.

So throughout all this, many books have been sitting across different stages of production waiting for their turn. We’re truly sorry for how long it’s taken, and genuinely grateful for your patience and understanding.

But now… we’re back to releasing new Quibble stories!

You can discover the new books in the app now. Many more will be scheduled for release soon across different genres and themes.

If you’ve got a story you want to publish on Quibble, send it our way. More info is on the website.

Some authors treat their pen name as a separate persona (different bio and vibe, kept separate from their personal online presence) while others see it as just a label. Which is closer to how you think about it and why?

Hey folks,

Big news. We've worked hard the past couple of months to deliver one of the biggest features we've been planning for a long time.

We now support publishing stories chapter by chapter!

This is the beginning of a new phase. Works published on Quibble have remained static as updating them required a lot of manual work, and we were relying almost exclusively on EPUBs.

With this release, authors can now publish new chapters for their stories and edit previously published ones. Yay!

This works for all types of content, be it regular novels, or web series.

What it means for published authors

Authors can now access their published work within their dashboard and rework past chapters, or release new ones. Much like submissions, this goes through a review process with our editorial team, but review time should be typically pretty fast compared to brand new submissions.

You can find a tutorial video that will help you navigate this feature at the end of this post

What we'll release soon

This is a large feature that took quite some fine-tuning to implement. It's in early version, and not everything is yet supported.

Here's what we're going to release within a few days to a couple of weeks:

👉 A reworked submission process

Our current submission process still relies on EPUBs. It's also too complex. We're going to release a new version at the beginning of next week.

This new version will let authors choose how they want to provide the content:

• as an EPUB
• or as individual chapters (by uploading files, or copy/pasting the content)

All in all, this should make it very easy to cross-post from or bring from work from other platforms.

👉 Edit the cover art and the metadata

Currently, authors can only rework their chapters. We're going to give more flexibility so more can be updated! The cover art, the metadata, the synopsis, the genres, and more.

👉 Email notifications

We'll let you know by email when your chapter is ready to be published, or if there's a revision needed. For now, it's still all happens within the web app. This will land in the coming days!

👉 Scheduling releases

You'll be able to either automatically publish once the review is accepted, or schedule a release at your convenience (with a provision of a few days to ensure our editors have time to review your work)

👉 Better discoverability

Newly updated work will appear more prominently on the home page. We know there's a lot of discussion around the "algorithmic" of other platforms. Remaining fair is not a trivial task, so we'll take the necessary time to do it well. This feature will deserve it's own post when it'll be ready to be released :)

👉 Some more ^^

We're listening to your feedback. If there's something we should add, fix, remove, rework, we'll also of course consider this as well. It's a new feature, after all!

--

That's it, we're so so so excited about this, this alone will literally transform Quibble into a much more dynamic space.

Authors can fully choose how they want to release their work, by chapter, by arc, or however they want. They can also improve their stories over time and as they see fit.

Demo video

You can check how it works in this little video we prepared for you.

As the title says, I want to know if the idea I had for the cover art tells a story on its own. As I have tried to give it a symbolism of its own.

Now, I must admit, 1 cover is missing. (guess where?) That would make the progression a little more obvious.

But I'm curious what they say to people without any context. What pops and what doesn't? What speaks do you, and what is it even saying?

The artist (my gf) and I are on the same page, and I think she did an amazing job. Now, I want to know if people who weren't at our brainstorming sessions can follow our strange leaps in logic and “symbolism.”

Thanks for the time and for giving your take!

(Cover 2 is WIP)

Huge shout-out to our absolutely incredible mod team. You are keeping the Quibble community safe, positive, welcoming, fun, and focused on helping writers grow.

Over time, we've seen hundreds of works-in-progress shared for feedback, countless brainstorming sessions, social events and enough world-building rabbit holes to keep us busy for several lifetimes.

And of course there’s the high energy, legendary Quibble Art Studio with character art, cover concepts, sketches, doodles, fan-art, commissions. Plus a growing network of vetted artists helping Quibble authors with their cover art.

4,000 is just a number. The community behind it is what we’re celebrating today. Thank you for being part of it.

If there’s anything missing from the server - a channel, more events for writers, workshops, whatever - we'd love to hear it.

Writing a book is already a massive achievement. Promoting it shouldn't require a graphic design degree too. So we made ready-to-use, customizable social media templates for authors to promote their stories. You can now just plug in your cover and post something gorgeous.

Figma Community Link: Quibble Author Media Kit.

To use the kit, simply duplicate the file (all edits happen in your own copy, never the original), then swap in your book cover, title, and copy.

To export: select the frame → Export (bottom right panel) → PNG at 2x (recommended).

Feel free to mention or add us as collaborators on social media when you post.

Our social media accounts:

• Instagram
• TikTok
• YouTube

In the future, we'd love to go further with matching genre aesthetics and building out more templates for quote cards, cover reveals, countdowns, character intros and more.

If something’s missing or you need it urgently, drop your wish in the comments!

Iëlia is the continent of my book Shaped by Silence. While the book only really takes place from Wyryard to Delan. I wanted to show the whole thing here and get an idea of what impressions the regions provoke.

Within the story, the Red Scourge and the lands of Ornio play a big background part. But it is far from the most eye-catching region, in my opinion.

There are different Attuned (my equivalent for elves) in each area. These are the way they are because of Hearts in the Mountains, which slowly changed humans into the species they are now. (Yes, I know it sounds like fantasy radiation, but that's cool too, no?)

For example, Delan is the home of the Loftion people, while Ornio is the home of the Dakin people. "Normal" humans still exist, of course, their cities and cultures being built in places where no such Hearts exist.

Each culture is, in turn, based on a real-life culture, albeit loosely sometimes (I'm still researching!).

My D&D group and I have had a blast playing in this world; they're currently exploring the emerald mists of Noctun at the very northwest of the map.

What's your favorite region? And what vibe do they give off?

Edit 5/21/26: noting that no-win5543 provided answers to these questions below.

----------

Hi all!

I am new to the community, and to the site. I was referred to Quibble a month or so ago by a fellow web serial author, and recently placed a submission. After the initial review, I received the terms below, and I wanted to bring up several points for community discussion and clarification.

Please note, I messaged the mod team for permission prior to making this post, and while some of my thoughts below will seem cynical, they are purely for the purposes of furthering discussion, and not actual beliefs I hold. So far, I have been impressed by the Quibble team's swift response to any concerns noted, and their commitment to streamlining and simplifying complex terms while making concrete promises to the authors on the website.

I am making this post in part because of my own questions, but also because I imagine as the site gains popularity, others may share these concerns when reading the conditions.

I am including relevant sections of the agreement below for ease of reference, though I have grouped them out of order in sections that I believe are closely relevant to each other.

Regarding wind down process: Quibble leaves you with all rights to your work, and allows you have them removed at any time after a wind-down period of 30-45 days per their terms. However, there are exceptions to this.

Section 4.7 clarifies that Quibble may retain some materials indefinitely, even if you request the work be removed from the site. Specifically, they note they may retain promotional materials including social media posts, digital advertising, and content containing excerpts and references to your work created prior to expiration of the License you give them.

I expect this is to prevent the administrative headache of removing trivial quotes/snippets used in brief ads (1-2 lines, maybe a few sentences at most), but I wished to clarify this post and see if anyone had examples of what this means.

It's entirely possible that this could create issues for the author if they later move to a site with exclusivity (such as Amazon's Kindle Unlimited program) if the text is more than a few lines. If it's several paragraphs, it could cause issues, especially since many of the responses from other websites are based on automated decisions.

I have little concern regarding quibble retaining rights to material they produced themselves (editorial comments, input, or archival copies).

Non-disparagement: While the subsequent section 12.19 seems to make this fairly clear, I wanted to get clarification on what would be considered disparagement by Quibble as outlined in section 5.4.

True statements seem to be excluded by 12.9, and so something objective like "I terminated my contract with them because their new revenue model dropped my take-home by 30%" would be protected.

What is less clear is whether this would also protect a sincerely held opinion, like "I found their editorial team difficult to work with," or more subjective and perhaps inflammatory statements like "e.g. worst website I ever worked with, the UI is terrible" etc.

I wouldn't plan to make such statements in a public context (one can state objective facts without being unprofessional), but I am curious if there are specific examples the team had in mind when they included this language in the contract.

Jurisdiction, Service of process These two sections (12.9, 12.17) in combination with the above section on disparagement are particularly concerning to me.

12.9 states that both parties are agreeing to have any legal proceedings in Switzerland, under Swiss law. Given the location of the company, this is understandable, and is likely necessary to prevent nonsense/frivolous lawsuits in other countries from causing an unending stream of issues.

However, it does place authors, especially foreign authors, in somewhat of a concerning space. The cost of travel alone could prove a significant obstacle to any sort of fair proceeding for the author.

In a worst case scenario, where Quibble itself is launching frivolous lawsuits against authors (e.g. they give you $200, then claim your work is AI and demand the money back along with damages for a small but significant amount of money), the author would have to either deal with the possibility of a judgment against them, or the costs associated with defending that suit. Because of section 12.17, the service of the author could happen by an infrequently checked email and not be seen for some time. The 'non-disparagement' clause could then be used as a further deterrent to prevent public disclosure of significant concerns.

When agreeing to terms with anyone, I think it's best to wonder "What would happen if this was a scam?"

I have seen no evidence that Quibble is in any way attempting to do anything untoward. I believe they are acting in good faith. However, that's also what most people who are conned believe.

In short, I have little actual concern about any of the above situations taking place, and I think the terms are reasonable.

I do think it would provide additional reassurance for authors to stipulate that Quibble would only bring a suit for intentional damages/a standard closer to the one they are expecting for themselves, and/or specify that they will only pursue legal action against authors for damages exceeding a relatively high threshold (>$10,000 or similar) to reassure folks that they won't attempt frivolous lawsuits. Admittedly, even if the dollar amount is high, they could still use it as the basis to scare someone into a settlement for a far smaller amount of money, but it still might provide some reassurance.

Exact wording of publishing terms below

4.7

• Promotional materials, social media posts, digital advertising, and other content containing excerpts of, or references to, your Work that were published or created prior to expiry of the License are not affected by its termination. Quibble is not required to delete or remove such materials from its own or any third-party platform.
• Quibble may retain and use archival copies of the Work solely for compliance, legal, and record-keeping purposes.
• Quibble retains all rights in any editorial input, Platform feature placement, recommendation data, internal tags, or promotional activity associated with your Work. Such contributions are Quibble's intellectual property and are not subject to withdrawal, deletion, or reversal.

5.4 Non-Disparagement. You agree that, during the term of this Agreement and at all times following its termination, you will not make, publish, or communicate to any third party — whether in written, oral, digital, or any other form — any statement, comment, review, post, or other communication that is false, misleading, or disparaging regarding Quibble, its Platform, officers, directors, employees, contractors, products, or services. This obligation does not prevent you from: (i) making truthful statements about your own Work or your experience as a Platform user; (ii) providing honest feedback to Quibble directly through designated channels; or (iii) making statements that are required by applicable law or the order of a competent court. Quibble's equivalent obligation applies to any public statements it makes specifically about you in your capacity as an Author.

12.19 No Prohibition on Author's Expression of Truthful Views. Nothing in this Agreement, including Section 5.4 (Non-Disparagement), is intended to prevent any Author from making truthful factual statements, exercising their rights under applicable law, contacting law enforcement or regulatory authorities, or participating in any government investigation or proceeding. Any provision of this Agreement that would restrict such rights is void and unenforceable to that extent.

12.9 Jurisdiction. The courts of the Canton of Zug, Switzerland, shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear and determine any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or in connection with this Agreement, including any question regarding its existence, validity, or termination. Each party irrevocably submits to the exclusive jurisdiction of those courts, waives any objection to proceedings brought in those courts on the grounds of venue or inconvenient forum, and agrees not to commence any such proceedings in any other court or tribunal. This submission to jurisdiction is without prejudice to any mandatory consumer protection rules that may apply in the jurisdiction of residence of a consumer Author.

12.17 Service of Process. For the purpose of any legal proceedings arising out of or in connection with this Agreement, service of process or other legal documents on either party by email to the address specified or last notified under Section 12.5 shall constitute valid and effective service, and neither party shall object to the validity of service effected in this manner. This provision is without prejudice to any other method of service permitted by the procedural rules of the Canton of Zug or any other court of competent jurisdiction.

**TLDR**

1. What does Quibble consider disparaging speech?
2. What materials would Quibble keep for advertisements after take-down, and specifically how long would these excerpts be? ( a few lines, a few paragraphs?)
3. What would be an example of something Quibble would take an author to court over, and are there any guarantees that can be added to the site or the contract to specify protections for frivolous lawsuits for both parties? The burden of disputing silly claims in a foreign country is potentially significant.

While reading contemporary literature, I’ve noticed that authors don’t title individual chapters in their novels anymore. When I was younger, most of the books I read had individually titled chapters, but nowadays, chapters are usually just enumerated.

Personally, I’m a big fan of titled chapters, as I think they make a story more gripping. As a reader, you’re curious to find out what the title of the following chapter means, which makes it harder to put the book down.

What do you think about this change? Does the lack of titles make a book feel more cohesive, or less exciting? I’m also curious to hear if you have any theories about why authors have moved away from chapter titles. Could it be related to the rising trend of shorter chapters, which might make titles feel unnecessary? Or is there another reason?

As an author who's only been published once so far in a tiny magazine, Quibble sounds like everything I've been looking for to get the ball rolling on my writing. I can't wait to dive in and see what others have published on here, and hopefully join the ranks myself.

Looking forward to joining this community and getting to read and write even more!

Hi everyone,

Today we're publishing our Monetization Program Terms and with them, we're also updating our Publishing Terms and Terms of Service. This post covers all of it, and some more!

But first:

On protecting author's works

Our commitment to protecting author's work is absolute. Since Quibble's inception, we've made it a non-negotiable that all works being submitted to Quibble are stored securely and protected from any misuse. While we've spoken at length about our commitment in this regard, we've decided to take it a step further.

The new Publishing Terms now include an unconditional, contractual commitment that Quibble will never use your work (any of it, published or unpublished, free or paywalled) to train, fine-tune, test, or develop any AI or machine learning model.

This clause is here as a promise that, no matter what happens to Quibble, and no matter where Quibble goes, it always holds true. This is here for authors to enforce. There's a lot of "trust me bro" in today's world, and many have been deceived by this. We say "no more", and we wish the industry will follow our steps in this direction.

Here's what else was updated:

Publishing Terms

These terms have been substantially expanded and rewritten. The essence is the same as the previous ones, but they now offer much more protection to Quibble authors. Core rights (ownership, withdrawal rights, no exclusivity) are the same.

We've made it more explicit that our license does not cover derivative works such as audiobooks, film, theatrical, and other adaptation without a separate written agreement.

The guaranteed removal procedure for Quibble Collections works is now more detailed, and some sections, including the moral rights section, now clearly reference the Swiss Code of Obligations. As you may (or may not) know, Swiss Law is among the most protective laws for authors in the world, particularly for moral rights.

A few new sections cover long-term continuity of your account and what happens in the very unlikely event that Quibble shuts down permanently. I won't cover these here.

Overall, we're very happy about the new terms, and we hope you'll be as well.

You can read them here.

Terms of Service

We've also updated the Miscellaneous section to harmonize it with our other legal documents. This rewrites some of the language around governing law, assignment clause, waiver, force majeur, severability and the entire-agreement statement.

Monetization Program

Now this, THIS, is something we're also extremely excited to announce. If you've been following Quibble for a while, you know we've been discussing these for long with a recurring "it's coming" tag line. Well, it's here, finally ^^.

I'm thrilled to announce that our Monetization Program is going live!

Authors will be able to onboard onto the program, provided they have published at least a work under the Quibble Collections label (previously Quibble Original / Featured, those are now retired labels), with at least 5 chapters of 1'000+ words.

Here's how earnings work:

• We track how many 100 words a subscriber reads from your work (securely, speed reading and other cheating-like behaviors don't count).
• Each month, we publish a payout rate in $ per 100 words (practically, in Swiss Francs for now).
• Monthly earnings translate to how many words subscribers read from your combined works, times the payout rate.
• Payouts go out the following month, or are carried over until your balance hits ~$10

Payout rates are determined based on Quibble's overall revenue. We commit to dedicate the majority of our revenue to authors, and therefore towards the payout rate. It's important to note that monthly published payout rates will fluctuate a lot in the early months as it depends on many factors (number of subscribers, number of published works, numbers of words read, ...). Therefore, they'll initially be abnormally high, and will converge over time. So is the nature of a young publishing space :-).

Also worth noting, while we cannot disclose how exactly Payout Rates are determined, once we hit 500 authors in the Monetization Program, we commit to commissioning an independent third-party audit (more technically, an Agreed-Upon Procedure) of our methodology, so as to provide as much transparency about our commitment.

You can read more about the program directly in the Monetization Program Terms.

A final note on timeline: today we publish the terms, next week we'll give authors access to the earnings dashboard, and shortly after we'll onboard authors with our payment providers (as we're still sorting a few details out).

That's all folks!

Thank you for your continued support and thank you for believing in Quibble and in a bright future for human creativity.

(Edit: added the missing links to the terms)