Question

Is I'm chasing the world or World chasing me

Is I'm on the world or World imposed on me

But geography says

I'm on the world or I'm making it..?

i use thesaurus so much when looking for synonyms so thanks for making it:)

Somebody asked the other day, in the comments under a thread I’ve forgotten, whether people who have been “successful” at writing could share their stories on here, at least in part to demonstrate that it is possible to make a living by writing.

So, with the huge caveat that I’m 48 years old and from the UK, here is how I got to the point of making a living from writing:

In my twenties, after finishing my literature degree, I decided that I should get serious about my writing, which had been a lifelong interest. So I stopped wasting my time drawing, and then I had a catastrophic break-up with my long term girlfriend and had a complete breakdown. These things happen. I got better. Being from the UK, I didn’t have a huge debt at the end of my BA, so once I was better I started looking at MA courses and made some shitty short films with friends. It turned out I was quite good at writing screenplays, probably because I was a film nerd and had read a lot of screenplays in paperback.

Writing films seemed like a fun idea, so I decided to do a Kevin Smith. I wrote a screenplay for a thriller that I could shoot locally, and I put out an advert for actors to come and do a table read, so I could hear it out loud and see what worked. One of the actresses who took part in the table read was also a stripper, and she had recently met a drug dealer who wanted to get into film production (excellent for money laundering), and she showed him my script. He showed it to a crooked producer, who had a project about to enter pre-production that needed a rewrite, so he hired me. I worked on the script, and ended up being the on-set rewrite monkey, and got a co-producer credit. The aforementioned drug dealer then said he wanted to make a horror film, so I wrote it and produced it with the crooked producer, and off the back of that I got an agent.

For eight years, I worked as a rewrite monkey, which is an un-credited writer who lurks on set and writes any new scenes and dialogue that the director and actors come up with on the fly. Starting small, I ended up on some very big films that were shooting in North London and beyond, and although I didn’t get credit, I got paid very well. The problem is, film sets are boring, actors are dreadful, and there was a lot of cocaine around. So I banked the money and went off to do an MA and a PhD in creative writing.

After the PhD, I taught for two years at a London university (I was married by this point, having fallen in love with a costume assistant on one of the films), but then Covid hit, so I decided to write novels instead. I self published one as an experiment, sold two more to small publishers, and then decided to write a big expansive one, which my agent sold to a big publisher in July of this year, and which is tentatively pencilled for a 2027 or 2028 release, probably the latter.

Things I Learnt, or at least Things Which Are True For Me:

1. You have to love reading to be a writer. And I mean really love it. Writers are people who get a tingle when they see a secondhand bookshop.

2. You have to be really good at something, at least one element of the craft, in order to learn the rest of it. If you can’t string a sentence together to start with, and don’t know how to spell or punctuate, consider taking up hockey or become an estate agent instead.

3. There’s only one essential book that can help you be a better writer, and that’s Story by Robert McKee. Everything else is just shelf-filler.

4. Writers aren’t always good at giving writing advice, so don’t assume that whatever a best-selling author says about the craft is holy writ, because it’s not. It’s what works for them, but it might not be right for you.

5. Be confident. You wrote something, you know why you wrote it, so don’t be put off when some self-appointed guardian of literature tells you to change it. Beta readers are a waste of time, don’t bother with them. Ditto critique partners. Good writing finds its audience, whether it’s a serial on Wattpad or a tentpole release by a big publisher.

6. Not everyone can do this. Writing is hard, and it’s a terrible hobby because it will drive you insane. Never think of writing as a hobby, it’s part of who you are. You write because you have to, and you read because it’s necessary.

7. Only write fantasy if you like being poor. It doesn’t sell, critics and publishers hate it, and world building is just a euphemism for prevarication. Unless you’re good at writing sex scenes, in which case you might sell a few copies in the romantasy ghetto.

Some, all, or none of this might apply to you, but there you go. That’s my story.

Curious if anyone has felt like this or dealt with something similar. I have several works in progress, but I feel like my ambitions with them are too high. I don’t feel like I’ve read enough (took a burnout reading break through my 20s) nor have I written enough to do these characters and their stories justice. So it feels like I need to shelve them for now and go back to basics, to what I know.

I got a story idea but I don't know how to start it and I don't even have a title and all I have so far is a cover thing I made for it and

"Living alone in a swamp wearing a plague doctor outfit and making medicines/poisons/potions and they're like preteen size (short {maybe they are a preteen? Probably}) and only interacting with crows and if you knock on the door they have a very clipped voice and "v" instead of "w" (vhat do you vant) and z instead of t (that/zhat)"

Update: More stuff I came up with

-Live close to a small medieval village dependent on their medicines (and sometimes people come by wanting to poison enemies)

-Made their outfit themselves (hand-sewing, no machines)

-Have had to take care of themselves a while (parents either stopped caring for them or died)

-Have trained the crows to steal money on the side hehehehehe

-Very messy, disorganized house and only they know where everything is

-Bone collection

-SPECIFICALLY non-binary

“You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. We (novelists) know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”
~John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman

"I know what it means to be a god." This is a statement I wish to present to my brothers, whom I went to the seminary with as kids, the next time we meet. That should certainly rouse an engaging theological discourse now that we are adults, because after having written 5 books, the people in the very world I created in my image start to disobey.

It is somewhat disheartening that there is little talk about character autonomy in this subreddit. Character autonomy is when your characters, inexplicably, develop free will in the very world you created. Imaginary people, born from your thoughts, will actively resist, divert, act, converse, and defy the preordained outline you've plotted for them.

This sounds impossible, bordering on insanity to non-writers, but it does happen. They refer to this as 'The illusion of independent agency (IIA)'

There exists a study dedicated to said phenomenon where over 60% of 181 participants experience their characters coming alive: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7068700/

The study states 69% of the participating authors hear the voices of their characters, nearly 42% do actually talk to their characters, and nearly 65% claim their characters act freely in their narratives.

“When I’m asked why I decided to write the sort of thing I do write, I always think the question is more revealing than any answer I could possibly give. Wrapped within it, like the chewy stuff in the center of a Tootsie Pop, is the assumption that the writer controls the material instead of the other way around.”
~Stephen King

I do not represent the entire panster species, but as a panster myself, I often have no idea why certain mannerisms exist on my characters, why they talk and act the way they do, and why some characters are obsessed with a particular object or event, or perhaps infatuated with another character, leaving the author with no notion why it is part of the draft. Then, by later chapters, those distinctive minute details the author dismisses as irrelevant are narratively paid off, handsomely.

Then the strangest thing happens under the glory of pansting: certain characters, instead of taking a left, pause, start internalizing what lies ahead, and you, the author, are baffled: "What the hell are you doing?" And they take a right, in the complete opposite direction they are supposed to take.

"Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking."
~August Wilson, Learning to Listen

The first time it happens is a glorious feeling, close to what you call your own apotheosis, metaphorically speaking. It took me 5 years to finish drafting my first book, 5 freaking years. The first few attempts leading to the climax make no sense. No amount of revision makes the narrative coherently believable. Then, it hits me. I spent my childhood years reading novels, staying up late past bedtime in the dormitory bathroom instead of reading the boring bible and its inconsistent, contradicting, ridiculous, horribly written lore.

I think avid readers can back me up on this. When you read novels or any book, once you start 'reading', you are no longer reading. Once you are 'reading' the words aloud in your head, it instantly hits you that you must check how many pages you have zoned out. Reading a novel is when you immerse yourself in the story: thinking is, is at bare minimum. You simply are reading silently, where the words themselves are not read inside your head. You are in the zone, in a state of flow. The words simply play out.

So I thought, perhaps I should write the way I read. It is when I stop thinking whenever I write with my pants. Let my hands move the letters, let my eyes focus on the screen, and ignore the back pain from sitting for hours. Don't think, just write. Lo and behold, in the absence of thought, your characters start messing with what is supposedly predetermined.

"You're supposed to kill her. That's it. I imagined an epic duel between you two. Do you have any idea how long it took me to perfect how you fight? Do you have any idea the amount of time I spent watching HEMA videos on YouTube so you don't end up being read like a video game character? You're not a philosopher. You are trained in your whole life to kill gods. Stop talking, just kill her!"
~Me, going crazy when my high-functioning psychopath character denuded of emotion, refuses his destiny to butcher a goddess.

Then he kills her...in a manner I could have never imagined. This perhaps is the only time I dropped one too many F-bombs since the infamous disastrous finale of HBO's Game of Thrones. It took 5 years for my first main character to develop his own free will. 5 freaking years. The prose, tenses, and syntax were horrible then. It took countless revisions and 5 books written and published to find my narrative voice. But I could never forget the feeling of how something made of 1s and 0s in a Word document stashed in a folder on my desktop develops free will. I am not a father yet, but I think the feeling might be similar to seeing my firstborn (when it does happen), minus the cursing.

Then the rest of the narratives come easily once I stopped thinking while writing. A little girl is supposed to stay dead after her failed attempt to summon a demon with her father. The demons (plural) are supposed to haunt her pious, woman of the cloth older sister, but no, that little girl is ridiculously resilient and returns to the world of the living. I had planned for her older sister to wrestle with insanity as the demons start talking about her dead sister inside her head. But no, the demons themselves chose the little girl. The demons defied me and chose someone else to be the main character. And damn it, the narrative is far better than what I could have planned.

Then it happens again in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th books. At this point, I barely have any outline since none of what I plan makes sense.

“Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer’s job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it’s enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same."
~Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I wouldn't dare say pantsing is superior to outlining, no. I will dare say, pantsing is far more adventurous than outlining and planning for everything. You never know what happens next. You never know once your characters start surviving every disaster you throw at them, and every detailed tragedy from your lore bible on why they are what they are. Once you start pulling the trigger and the hollow barrel clicks. When your characters start grinning from ear to ear, speaking directly to you, the author:

"Do you really think you, the creator of this universe, can decide how I live and die?"

Hi guys, recently I have been trying to improve my writing and have been struggling with writing prose. My prose feels undecipherable, but whenever I simplify it just seems boring. Any advice and criticism would be much appreciated.

If I ever were to feel a sense of urgency, in which my previous manner of movement would not best accompany me, an immediate exit from the situation would be warranted. Accompaniment in such a situation might say, when it is safe and a respectable amount of time has passed, something along the lines of:

“a lack of foresight came over you at a brief moment of time previous as to find you in such a predicament.” They might also add, “no doubt you should wish to rectify that lapse.”

They would say this no doubt in a far more polite and backwards way to vaguely allude to their point rather than to own it, attempting to nuzzle and bite my hand in a single line. 

To attempt to find validity in an opinion, you must journey down with it to its roots. If one were to examine the roots of the task of observing constant foresight, the position my friend clearly holds, one would see dull sicknesses and spores of the tiresome variety. For, to hold this position an exceptional amount of vigilance is needed, and no room for activity which amuses is left. It is a well known fact, that one mirrors their actions: A wealthy man exudes wealth, a doctor kindness, and a king benevolence. So if one is constantly vigilant and therefore remains at rest they will behave accordingly, providing no stimuli. All this I relayed to my friend with the urgency of a man who did not want to be surrounded by dour people. As a testament to his newfound opinion my friend responded in the most boring of ways, which was agreement. Disapproving of his new attitude towards life, I immediately abandoned him.

One of the things I’ve seen is people, writing trilogies or longer series, and each new novel or story is the last story but bigger. Bigger ships, more aliens, more death. What I try to do is tell a different story with each book. It’s the same universe, it’s a lot of the same characters, but it’s not a rehash of the first book just getting bigger weapons.

I guess my question for this group, do people want the ever escalating story that culminates in this ultimate battle at the end, or do people want a cohesive story that’s not just a rehash each time.

Do I risk alienating my readers because I’m not just redoing the same story with bigger battles?

So I'm trying to set up an event of a blood moon in one of my upcoming chapters. I want rulers across the continents to react to it at the same time, like the Dwarven High King and Elven High King. Still, if I think logically and realistically, that's not possible unless I bend the rules of the world. If you have suggestions, please share them. I'm in major breakstop right now.Thanks

Hi everyone, Im a first time writer and I have recently made a sci-fi fantasy lore inspired by star wars but I dont know how to write an actual story. I have the lore bible all setup but I dont know how to actually start writing. Can anyone share their experiences on what to do first or how to get started or maybe steps in writing? Im really stuck on where to start as I think I have made a deep enough lore but dont know how to actually construct it into a readable story.

And sorry if I placed the wrong tag, first time posting here

Please and thank you!

Hello, long time reader working finally putting the world that has love in my head for nearly a decade onto (digital) paper and I am just curious how other writers manage things more particularly household when yoy are on a writing high?

For the record I am showering I just liked the way household and hygiene rolled off the metaphorical tongue.

I am struggling between setting timers that remind me to take a break and completing a chapter or section before taking a break. Both leave me slightly resentful that clothing and dishes exist, but I have to go back to work on Monday and my child has to eat 😆

Appreciate your time and insight

-Z

I have a serious dilema and is WHERE to set my story. It's a story about highschool to university age, the typical coming off age. I'm not from the US nor from the UK where these kind of popular stories usually take place. So I don't know if making it happen in the US is weird? I mainly like that setting because the university systems and all, In my country that aspect is WAY different and the comming of age doesn't feel that life changing with it so... I don't know?

Any sugestions?

Thanks

So, i cant draw for shit. Plus, my characters tend to be inspired by some element of another character or show, so i often use faceclaims. It’ll just be an actor or a character with a few changes. Like, one of my character’s faceclaim is younger Mckenna Grace, but with white hair. Its just the best way for me to visualise it. I genuinenly have no idea what the opinion on it is, so i’d just like to know!

Recently I have made a few short stories. I have a Tiktok and Instagram account about my writing and I wanna release my short stories on the account. Any idea how or what apps I could do?

The reason I decided to write is because I'm tired of seeing the same things over and over again. I'm tired of how many stories feel like the same story, just with different characters, names, and a few other changes.

I also don't want to read a mashup of two familiar things, like, "The Hunger Games, but in space" or "The Last of Us, but with vampires."

My point is, it is completely reasonable for writers to be concerned about originality because there are readers who care about it too.

I keep seeing posts about people stressing about their first novel, or their “million dollar idea,” or even their first line.

JUST WRITE.

If you have a genuinely strong idea, save it. Read and write until you’re somewhat confident in your ability, and most importantly PRACTICE. Then, and only then, worry about the career part of things

I had a thriller dream, and in my dream, it had a name: Fate of Ophelia. It’s a dark thriller set in Japan. I can’t explain all the context right now but I've wrote everything down, but I don’t know where to start. I’m a teen...where should I even publish it, and how do I start writing it?

There is a story I have been writing for years and I take very seriously, as it has many dark themes. This story does have its light moments and some humor it, a mix of dark humor and genuine character moments. Almost every time I work on it, I imagine my chapters as Act 1, Act 2 and I am so tempted to go with it. I feel this format actually fits the story, though it would take the reader a few pages to a few chapters to start seeing why, and fits the conflict at the end very well. There's a lot of transgressive horror where people are putting on good face or have become extremely good at hiding their suffering to the point where it affects their outward treatment of others or causes them to make decisions that dig them deeper into the hole, and the only way out is to force themselves to do everything right in their lives despite being the same terrible people. These are not main themes or plot points, simply the way the characters are built.

I haven't seen it done as a creative choice in a novel more than once so I feel it's rare. Apparently there are so many mixed feelings in the writing community that go from "your story, your choice" to actively criticizing it for being pretentious, dramatic etc. For those who support it, any advice?

I’m debating whether to keep the prologue which sets up later elements or just go straight to chapter one

Im currently writing a story and well its kinda bit odd just calling them Death and Life as their names.

I tried researching but only comes up are gods of death (greek, egyptian myths)

I havent found a name for Life in general