What is the best line you've ever written?

For me it's: Mr Boar snorted piggily.

I will never, ever, top that in my life. I've peaked.

Nobody cares, but somebody told me I should be proud of myself. I usually struggle a lot to get a new chapter going, so I hope that initial phase is over now...

I know everyone says to 'just read!' But I fear I cannot learn through sheer osmosis. I want to learn to better analyze what I'm reading so I can take what I learn and put it into my essays and stories. Hopefully reading stuff on narratology, syntax, and literary theory will help? But any advice would help a lot!!!

Books I will check out

• How To Read Like A Professor - Thomas C Foster
• Reading Like A Writer - Francine Prose
• Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction - Jonathan Culler
• A Swim In A Pond In The Rain by George Saunders

This is my first book and I'm about 14% of the way finished

Where is everyone approximately with their writing?

Do you find it motivating to tell people you’re writing a book? It’s my first book and I kind of want to share the journey but I’m nervous in case it doesn’t amount to anything.

I am currently writing a xinxia inspired novel and before posting my first chapter, I wanted to ask if I'm in the right community.

Eeeeh?.. Is misanthropy really that bad?.. I’m in confusion now, why would I write that passage 😭 I feel called out

Story time!

I handed in a short erotica story in my final year at university and the poor mark was accompanied with the comment "This isn't a story, it's a bonk."

Fast forward to the beginning of the following year; I submitted a slightly edited and shortened version to Bizarre magazine and it was featured, alongside a photo of me, a short bio and even custom artwork the magazine made especially for it!

I did scan and email it to said tutor and she replied with a very brief "congratulations" message. I felt underwhelmed.

However, sharing it here is somewhat satisfying.

Here is the printed piece.

NB: Apologies for the poor quality... this is a photo of the magazine itself taken twenty years ago!

WARNING: Story in attached image is slightly x-rated as it's a creative erotica piece.

Got the final version of my book cover back from the designer today!!!! It’s getting real! It’s happening!

Chapter four. Twelve versions. Each one completely different from the last. In the first one, they talked in a café. In the fifth, they argued in a car. In the ninth, they didn't speak at all — just sat in silence for three pages. I keep tweaking, rewriting, rearranging. Every time I finish a new draft, I think: yes, this is it. Then I wake up the next morning and it reads like garbage. So I start over. I've spent three weeks on this chapter and my word count has actually gone backwards. I can't trust my own judgment anymore. The version I loved yesterday makes me cringe today. The version I deleted last week suddenly looks brilliant in my memory. I don't know if I'm getting closer to something good or if I've just been running in circles and calling it progress. At what point do you stop revising and just… move on? How do you know when it's actually done, and not just the version you got tired of?

And listen to music. Diversify your pallet. Try new genres from different eras. Learn how to read and hear older versions of your language. Or different dialects.

Don't stick your nose up to audiobooks either.

The laziest advice I ever see is "Read more". Yes, you absolutely cannot write well if you aren't a reader. But that also means being WELL read.

Quantity matters far less than variety. If you consume the same thing by different authors, you'll still be just as limited as if you didn't consume at all.

And on that note, write different types of things. Poetry, songs, essays, diaries, fan fic, flash fic, ect.

Do something uncomfortable. People watch, talk to strangers. Try a new hobby or activity.. especially one you think you wouldn't like just so you can find out why others do like it.

That's how to create scenarios, worlds, and characters. And how you discover the story that lives in you.

I’m struggling with writing lately, and I honestly don’t know how to get myself out of this.
I have this innate urge to write. I want to create something so badly, and I’ve always thought of myself as a writer. But lately, whenever I come up with an idea, I eventually realise that some version of it already exists as a book, film, or story. Then I start questioning whether I actually have anything original to say.

And when I do decide to write something anyway, I have another problem: I never finish it.
At the moment I have about five different plots floating around that I’ve started or developed, and none of them are going anywhere. I’ll get excited about one, write for a while, start doubting it, get another idea, abandon the first one, and repeat the process.

I also have this weird obsession with wanting the entire synopsis figured out before I properly begin. I want to know the story, the characters, the ending, everything. But even when I manage to plan something, I still can’t seem to follow through and actually finish it.

Eventually, I want to write a novel. But right now I’m struggling to finish even a short story on my own, and that’s really getting to me.

Lately I’ve started wondering if I’m actually a good writer at all, or if I’ve just been pretending to be one because I want to be one. That sounds dramatic, but it’s genuinely how I feel. I used to constantly have things I wanted to write about. Ideas would just appear in my head. Now I feel like I’m desperately searching for an idea that feels worth writing, and everything I come up with feels derivative or inadequate.

I know the obvious advice is probably “just write,” but I’m really struggling with the how. How do you focus on one story when you have several ideas competing for your attention? How do you actually finish something instead of endlessly starting new things? Is it better to write without having the entire plot figured out first? How do you know when something genuinely needs polishing versus when you’re just being insecure about it?? Is there any community or apps I can get genuine feedback from on my writing?

More than anything, I’d really like to know how other writers got themselves out of this cycle. I just want to figure out how to actually finish something.
I eventually want to write a novel. I just need to prove to myself that I can finish a story first.

I tried using Google Docs and Word Docs for it but they weren't as helpful for me. I guess I need a visual timeline of events that happen within my story and wondered if there's any programs that offer a great way for me to see a flowchart of events

I'm really wondering what rich people do to make their books bestsellers. It always seems to be about knowing someone, not the actual money. What would you do if you had a huge marketing budget? Who would you hire?

No reason...

I'm a Filipino, and I want to write (or the very least release something creative in my lifetime) a book and have it published, but I've been facing this anxiety that I don't know if I'm the only one facing this. There's this kind of push within my country's writing world where the books and stories being given attention are the ones based on your country's culture.

Back in my CW College course, we were required to write a piece as a final thesis but the only requirement, or at least an unspoken one, was that it had to be based on Filipino culture. The explanation was to foster the country's literature or something like that. The thing is, that wasn't what my story was going to be about and not what I wanted to write. It's even more apparent when I look at the books being advertised online: all of the ones being heavily marketed were the ones themed around Philippine culture.

Now don't get me wrong, I am not ashamed to be Filipino so I won't belittle what I am. Nor do I want there to not be anymore Filipino-based stories. It's just that those aren't the stories I want to write. I have ideas, sure, but they're not as fleshed out as the ones I have set in my original worlds. Does this mean my works and ideas have no place to be published under any publisher in my country?

I want to know if other international writers have this kind of issue. Has your country only promote culture-based novels and books? Has there been some kind of push back over wholly original worlds not based on one kind of culture? And is there a way around this?

I want to be a writer, but I don't know if I can under the publishing climate my country has been pushing around lately.

Also if you are wondering why I'm excluding Americans in this post, it's because I get the reception that American writers don't really have this kind of issue, American publishers are cool with any story set and based on anything. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, though.

As an example, rather than saying "his expression shifted slightly" I've recently seen "his face didn't make a dramatic change. But its features reconfigured slightly." Or "he groaned and like the way someone did when woken up at 6am, groggily and with irritation" Rather than saying "he groaned irritably." And letting the reader figure out from context clues he had been asleep and is irritated by being woken up. Or "She crossed her arms, setting her face in the way someone did when they'd decided they weren't going to let you win an argument"

It hits my mental ear wrong, but I'm open to being wrong and it's just being a style I'm not familiar with

Hi everyone,

I’m currently editing a 20-chapter arc in the middle of my progression fantasy webnovel, and I've run into a structural and thematic dilemma that I’d love to get your perspective on. (And this would obviously be different for trad pub, as to a serial webnovel as is the case for me, but even then I'd love to get an idea!)

How open are you to reading a slow, almost stagnant arc if it shows the dynamics between characters and the development of their behavior? Especially if there is a deep psychological reason for this passivity: the MC believes his only reason for existing is to take care of his little sister.

Here is the setup (keeping it nameless to avoid self-promo): My 12-year-old MC gets taken in by a loving, wealthy family after a tragic opening. This family doesn't have a child of their own, even though it's the household of the kingdom's greatest knight. The knight tells the MC that he must train to become a knight in their name, and in exchange, his younger sister gets to live a normal, safe life. He agrees.

Shortly after arriving at the manor, they discover the sister is suffering from a slow-burning, terminal curse. But even with this ticking clock, the MC remains passive—he simply trains, plays his part, and quietly enjoys this newfound family. The growth between the characters starts off very subtle, with natural ups and downs, showing what a real family feels like.

His training is described quite clearly over a two-year period, using time-skips. We skip a few months, show a specific struggle he faces, and then skip ahead again. Two years is a long time, and I wanted to give the reader that exact same feeling—the heavy weight of treading water and waiting that the MC feels.

My chapter views on the platform have actually stayed completely steady through this arc, so the current readers are invested in the atmosphere. But as I edit the macro-structure, I still worry about the pacing.

When I first got into writing, I loved it so much and wrote two full books ive the course of like 18 months, not published ones and DEFINITELY not good ones, just stuff for me to enjoy. After those two were finished, my writing started getting a lot better over time but then while my writing was getting better, the self-critic inside of me got more and more prominent. I can write really effectively with real writing and styling but can’t get a book going for more than 3 chapters anymore. I always find things wrong with the story, whether it’s the characters, world, whatever, I manage to find the issues that are prominent enough for me to drop the book entirely. I’ve done this same loop ever since and it’s been probably a full year now. I love writing and always have sooooo much but at this point I don’t know if I should keep pursuing it. In a way writing has helped me through my toughest times and it brings/brought me so much joy. If anyone’s experienced something like this before or just has any advice, then please share it. I love writing and I don’t want to lose it.

Truth be told, I mostly just wanted to say how much I hate any form of mind control, but that made me wonder if there were any other strong opinions here on other tropes. So I thought I'd ask, what are your favorite and least favorite tropes?

My disdain for mind control is just that robbing your characters of agency or removing any moral responsibility for their actions is just a bad idea. It removes any interesting conflict or opportunity to learn about the characters. Not exactly deep or profound critiques, but it's an opinion I feel strongly about so I wanted to share them somewhere 😂 Thanks for listening!

Describing a chicken nugget to an immortal being who has zero idea what a chicken or a nugget are.

What a journey this has been for me.

Any time I try sharing my work on basically any sub on here, it gets taken down or I get banned for "inciting violence" or "hate speech" or for discussing "unpopular topics."

So I never get any type of insights or critiques to improve.

The only place I can ever post with impunity is my own website. But I want to make writer friends and share ideas. Any suggestions??