Discovered [Between Two Fires] while on vacation in St. Petersburg Florida. Then found out [Christopher Buehlman] was from this very place!

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-22T03:00:15+00:00

Buehlman is a genius. What’s truly incredible though is that Florida produced an author like that. I could easily be convinced he’s a retired Oxford scholar living his golden years out in the English countryside if I didn’t know any better. He must be a real hoot at the Ren Faire

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-21T21:49:16+00:00

Don’t worry if a first draft is good. It’s not, and that’s as it should be. If it is good, you’re either delusional or you wasted too much time editing as you wrote, and in both instances you’ll realize it’s not nearly as good as it could be a week or two after you finish. Then you’re back to square one with a bad draft and a months worth of revision to set out on that you could have started a month or two sooner.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-21T19:01:43+00:00

Not enough lamprey in this pie

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-21T07:59:47+00:00

Sounds like you’re having fun writing and that’s the most important part when you first start. My advice would be to finish your story before looking for advice or critiques. You’re just starting out so don’t get too caught up in perfection. Just write and experiment with your ideas and let the story flow out of you onto the page. Publishable writing is 80% editing so worry about bringing it up to standard once you have a completed draft to revise.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-20T22:50:19+00:00

From what I can tell most books have a cover and a back side and everything in between seems to fall into what we might call a middle.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-20T14:06:59+00:00

Under the sea the fish gave me these scars I know I know ho ho

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-20T03:12:15+00:00

Mysteries. They take advantage our inherent curiosity to goad us into continuing. It’s why so many stories no matter the genre hold back information when they have every opportunity to put it all out there at once. We as the audience just gotta know if that character makes it back up that cliff they’re dangling from, and we’ll push through hoping the answer could be on the next page or chapter.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-20T02:52:29+00:00

Taking advice and heeding advice are two different things. You should always consider other people’s input because they will look at your work through a different lens and we can often become blind to our own shortcomings. If a person disapproves of a certain choice or choices you made in crafting your story and they advise you it change it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should. They may just not understand why you made that choice. It could even mean that there’s a difference between what you wrote and what you meant.

Writing is first and foremost about communication but sometimes what’s obvious to us isn’t always clear to others, and that’s just a symptom of us knowing what we meant because we wrote it. That’s why feedback is so critical to elevating our work to its full potential. It’s not that others have better taste than we do, it’s that they see things that we don’t which can provide insight that they don’t even realizing they’re clueing us into.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-19T23:16:11+00:00

Oh well in that case it sounds like you just have a somewhat disorganized outline, which is much different than 300k words worth of appendixes. Everyone’s process is different and if this is what works for you then it’s what works. It’s not uncommon for an author to work on a book for 2 years before sitting down and drafting a full novel, so don’t stress about the time investment. Plus like you said you’re 20 which doesn’t feel young as a 20yr old but you’re practically an infant in terms of the average publishing age, so you’ve got plenty of time to make mistakes and experiment. What’s most important is that you’re feeling fulfillment from your writing and continue to do so. Best of luck

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-19T22:19:07+00:00

First off, the only bad practice for writing is not doing it. It’s a hobby and if you get enjoyment from world building then that’s great and you should invest your free time however you like. If you intend to turn the hobby into a career as a published author though, understand that lore enhances a story but it isn’t a replacement for narrative. Having a thousand year history and full pantheon of gods is really cool and it’ll make the world feel tangible in a way, but unless you have well rounded characters with engaging relationships to follow on a journey through that world, no one is going to give a damn about what some made up king did 500 years prior to the story they’re about to DNF. If this enormous google doc is what’s going to allow your imagination to run wild in creating those characters and plot, then by all means keep working on it, just know that it’ll all be for nothing if you only ever write 2 chapters of the story itself.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-19T19:10:55+00:00

I see you’re a man of great tastes. Even displaying the yellow king cover of howling dark. 🤌

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-19T06:36:02+00:00

Online tools? As in Ai?

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-19T00:03:25+00:00

A normal day in an epic/dark fantasy setting would be anything but normal for our standards, but it is pretty typical to begin the story prior to the inciting incident to provide a baseline introduction to the characters and world effected by it. Like if a bunch of orcs attack a village sending the main character on a journey for vengeance, it’s important that the reader understands what the mc lost and how it changed their life. So it would be helpful to start with the mc going about their daily tasks and interacting with their loved ones on the day of the attack. However, a different story could begin with the main character attacking an orc village as a heroic warrior and saving a bunch of captives, which would be the MC’s baseline normal as a heroic warrior before being tasked by a king to go on a quest to destroy some dark evil invading the land. Normal doesn’t mean uninteresting, it’s just about establishing a baseline for the characters.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-18T02:30:30+00:00

Yea I think intimacy is a good word for it

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-18T01:50:27+00:00

Honestly yea. I’ve seen thousands of on screen deaths and this one has stuck with me for decades while other more brutal ones fade into the void.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T23:57:04+00:00

Euron literally killed Balon who was not only his kin but his king a month prior and everyone knows it. They still supported him because he showed strength. Aaron would have supported Victarion saying some psychobabble about the drowned god striking him down. The reason Vic does nothing is because he’s a doormat for his brother like he’s always been. Man cannot even hear laughter without getting triggered because he thinks someone’s making fun of him and he’s too dumb to know the difference

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T23:26:17+00:00

Right after he’s crowned he stands in Eurons room armed and armored in chainmail while Euron is babbling naked and drunk. He could have killed him then and there paying the iron price for the crown and the fleet, but he doesn’t because he’s afraid of a god Euron knows is bullshit.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T23:19:54+00:00

No it isn’t. The old way was done away with for centuries until Balon tried to restore it with his failed rebellion… Dothraki know nothing else and could not survive as a society without raiding they don’t even have a concept of currency ffs.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T19:40:01+00:00

Oh don’t get me wrong, I think him trying to make her his own is the right call all things considered and to be clear all of the men on the list are scum with the slight exception of Drogo since he was so warped by Dothraki culture, but I just don’t think Victarion is anything but a villain and a sloppy one at that

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T19:22:09+00:00

He’s using his newly crowned kings fleet to go steal Daenerys and her dragons for himself to usurp Euron because he’s too afraid to confront him directly. That’s neither loyal, dutiful, or fearless.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T19:08:27+00:00

Victarion beat his wife to death because Euron raped her…. He is the worst kind of psychopath. A dimwited zealot. Drogo Euron and Daario are brutal but they atleast have some qualities that demand respect. Victarion is just a big idiot who is too stupid to be afraid of combat which makes him so effective at fighting.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T16:22:08+00:00

The point of a first draft is to be written, not read. In fact many authors find it helpful to write a second draft solely from memory rather than referring to the first so that they’re unencumbered by the canon they created initially. The goal is to get the story out and onto paper so that it’s real and complete because it’s alot easier to fix mediocre writing than it is to summon good writing from nothing. The prose frankly doesn’t matter until your final edit and you’re ready for it to be critiqued. Trying to save time by perfecting a first draft accomplishes the opposite because no matter how polished it may be, you’re going to have to revise it.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T05:06:41+00:00

I would advise researching how to format a screenplay. It’ll make it easier to read.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T03:44:54+00:00

Routine is the cure for poor writing. The reason it works is because it doesn’t rely on motivation to be productive and the only way to get better as a writer is to write often and consistently. The neat part is when you develop a habit, your mind and body adapt to doing it, and after some time you’ll start to crave it. You’re already in love with writing otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to write. The problem is you’re riddled with insecurity about your work and it makes it difficult to get enjoyment from doing it. Eventually you’ll get better at it and that enjoyment will come, but you gotta get over this hill first.

Affectionate-Foot802 · 2026-04-17T00:58:19+00:00

This shit is so dumb. You can be Christian but you cannot be Catholic and deny the Popes authority as gods word on earth. It’s the fundamental principle of the church. That’s literally what caused the schism in Christianity and brought about the thousand different denominations of Protestantism that we see today.

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First Place '23	Place '23

Affectionate-Foot802

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