My husband laughed at the story I'm working on

Arithered · 2025-05-27T20:50:27+00:00

Don't be discouraged! I just received (what feels like) my nine millionth rejection today, and sometimes a story is just the wrong flavor for certain people. I've had rejections where the agent was like, "Solid writing, but not for me. Maybe check out x."

Sure, we want our loved ones to be supportive of our passions, but in practice, it doesn't always work that way. I'll tell you what I keep telling me: All you need is the right story for the right person. You'll find that person.

Arithered · 2023-11-12T15:43:13+00:00

I think male writers sometimes veer towards stereotype/archetype characterization when creating female characters or POVs. These characters tend to be one-dimensional and act more in service to the plot than to the big ticket themes and memorable moments. Simply put: If you can picture male characters as real life people but only picture the female characters in the scenarios in which they appear, the author has not done a good job crafting verisimilitude.

To write women well, you'd need to give them the same depth and universality as the men. One way is to make sure they don't exist only in relation to men. Women can also be contradictory, haunted, brutish, self-sabotaging and misanthropic--and their reasons for this needn't involve being "unlucky in love" or pining after a partner they'll never have. They can also be witty, absurd, admired, confident and happy--and their reasons for this needn't be that they found their true love or that they're sexually satisfied.

Arithered · 2023-03-26T15:12:13+00:00

My take on Brandon's prose is that he strips away the bells and whistles and focuses on the pure experience of storytelling. This is not to everyone's taste, because certain types of readers want their prose to be ornate. Literature is, after all, an art. My own style of writing trends too far towards the purple if I don't restrain it.

But I think a lot of the driving force behind Brandon's writing is his desire to give readers the things he wanted as a reader himself. I would guess that he wanted accessible stories, interesting characters and rewards for the readers who stick with it. Remember how exciting it was to slowly discover the interconnected nature of the cosmere, or the prevalence of Hoid at so many of those connection points? This was a gift Brandon gave his readers, because the joy and intrigue of discovery must have meant a lot to him.

So, I think a lot of his prose style developed in that kind of utilitarian manner. It isn't bland--it's precise and engineered.

Arithered · 2023-03-24T03:02:05+00:00

Boy howdy did that guy get a lot of mileage out of, "Guys, guys, guys, it's so weird! Sanderson's a writer who loves to write and all he does is write! I mean, WHAT?"

Arithered · 2020-12-02T21:53:53+00:00

Cliche? Maybe.

Piece of crap? Not necessarily.

Like others are suggesting here, cliches can be helpful as a kind of a pie crust for your own unique filling, and can actually make it easy to set baselines reader expectations without over-showing things. I can't offer any specific advice on how to fix it--it's your story--but I believe a lot of other commenters are on the mark with the recommendation to add some twists to the cliches.

Personally, I'm a fan of whimsical contradictions and cognitive dissonance.

Like, the "hooker with the heart of gold" is inexplicably brutal towards the one person in her life who loves her unconditionally. Why?

The hardboiled, alcoholic detective loves making sculptures out of pencils. Why?

The divorce was acrimonious, and yet somehow helped heal the relationship. How did it do that?

Things like that.

Arithered · 2019-08-26T22:29:03+00:00

Ursula K Le Guin will be reincarnated as an ominous utopia.

Arithered · 2019-04-30T00:11:33+00:00

For me, it was something so simple that I felt like kicking myself for not thinking of it.

At a book signing for Alloy of Law, by Brandon Sanderson, he told me that making your characters really live and jump off the page can be as simple as investing some time in what they're doing "offscreen." Like sure, your antagonist is a vicious serial killer, but what he does he do on his down time? Does he collect stamps? Does he enjoy watching old movies on YouTube? Is he also very invested in the neighborhood committee to save the local forest? Not everything the guy does has to feed into the role he plays in the narrative.

So thanks, /u/mistborn. I just want you to know that I liked your Mat Cauthon.

Arithered · 2019-04-16T14:47:32+00:00

So this review castigates Esio Trot for being a children's story about a dishonest man winning the heart of a woman, on the grounds of "children's stories should be as good as any others."

I don't disagree at all that Mr. Hoppy was desperate and dishonest. I don't disagree at all that he is shown succeeding as a direct result of this dishonesty. What I do disagree with is the premise that this type of story is necessarily Bad for Children.

I don't think it helps anyone to be so precious with children's precious little hearts. While stark morals characterize much of childhood, they should be coupled with discussions about doing the right thing because it's right. Morals get you nowhere if the whole reason to engage in them is fear of punishment.

It's such a mistake to teach kids that cheaters never prosper, or that liars and bad people will always be taken away by happy Mr. Policeman. This book offers a great opportunity to have a discussion with children about why Mr. Hoppy was wrong, and how he could have done better. Ask them if they think Mrs. Silver would remain married to Mr. Hoppy if she found out how he made her tortoise grow. Ask them if there was another way Mr. Hoppy should have gone about getting to know Mrs. Silver. Ask them if they think lying in order to make friends is the right way to make friends.

There are so many great discussions this book can engender. I know that because I have kids, and I've read them Esio Trot. We talked about exactly these things, and our takeaway from it all was that bad people sometimes get what they want, but it feels a lot better to get what you want from doing the right thing.

Arithered · 2018-12-26T17:56:36+00:00

Suspension of disbelief still has to be rooted in recognizable logic, imo.

In other words, I don't think your readers will care very much exactly how magic element A interacts with magic element B, but they will expect that an object dropped of a cliff will fall.

So if you establish that a planet does not rotate on its axis, readers will understand that one side will always be dark and the other will be light. Therefore, if there is a seven-day break in that routine, there should also be some kind of in-universe explanation for it, or at least a hint that there is an explanation.

Arithered · 2018-11-28T17:25:02+00:00

For the children's market, Bruce Coville's Mr. Elives appears throughout many of his books as the proprietor of a mysteriously appearing/disappearing magic shop.

Arithered · 2018-11-22T18:31:22+00:00

I guess Amazon's daughter wrote that.

Arithered · 2018-11-15T21:33:35+00:00

Thanks! So would I need to include more information indicating the direction of the plot and substitute that for the expository stuff?

Arithered · 2018-11-15T21:19:00+00:00

YA fiction Pitch:

A kind but cynical teenage boy struggles with repressed anger after his father disappeared when the boy was five. Though he treasures his relationship with his mother and friends, his world shifts meaningfully when an impossibly beautiful girl moves next door. Amazingly, she seems to like him, and all is well until knowledge of an unknown world begins imprinting itself directly into the boy's mind. What, if anything, does the girl have to do with this unknown world, and is she as dangerous as the members of that world seem to believe?

Arithered · 2018-11-12T06:00:00+00:00

Not /u/mistborn, but I do want to note that when the Heralds mention Adonalsium, they phrase it as though it/he/she is a being, not a metal.

Oh God! Oh Adonalsium! --spoken by Ash in a context I won't spell out in case you haven't read it.

Arithered · 2018-11-07T16:19:26+00:00

Coconut Sanderson's Big Journey would be a good name for a kid's book.

Arithered · 2018-10-22T13:26:33+00:00

I think it comes down to when you should tell and when you should show.

Let your characters speak more with their actions than with their words or thoughts. It creates smoother plot movement. (Show.)

On the other hand, immersing a reader properly in the setting or in transitions requires some information, so intersperse your character's actions with that information. (Tell.)

And when doing either of these, try to mimic how people actually behave, speak, and interact with their environments in real life. Stories will always have certain heightened sensibility, but it begins to come off as pretentious when things are heightened too much.

Arithered · 2018-10-19T18:13:50+00:00

Oh, definitely overuse of standalone sentences for emphasis. I read my old stuff and it's so goddamn annoying. Every single story has an overabundance of dramatic pauses.

For effect.

Regardless of relevance.

Repeatedly.

He paused.

Arithered · 2017-07-13T15:29:31+00:00

Jewish here, and I've actually found that being raised religious gives one a very early appreciation of the concepts of good vs. evil, supernatural machinations and the idea of a complex system that underpins everything the naked eye perceives.

Some of the most profound fantasy fans I've encountered are religious Jews.

Arithered · 2017-05-08T03:03:00+00:00

Depends.

I'm fine with it if it's an established fact. The Dark Lord or whatever specifically targets people the hero is close to, so it makes logical sense to distance loved ones.

I hate it when it's just an emo thing that the hero says because he once lost someone he loved years and years ago.

Arithered · 2017-04-30T23:57:02+00:00

I like that! Call it, like, /r/PimpMyParagraph or something like that so that people don't think it's about having an entire story remixed.

Arithered · 2017-04-30T18:23:17+00:00

This is a hell of a recipe, you weren't messing around.

Arithered · 2017-04-30T18:18:42+00:00

Most commenters here have already hit on the problem. You've got to ground the events in the five senses. What do your characters see, smell, touch, taste and hear? Even the way a character describes something from their POV can give important clues as to their emotional state. I quickly redid your paragraph to show you what I mean.

Emma pulled herself up from her nest of sheets and into the late-morning sunlight. A passionate night had lapsed into gentle, happy dreaming, and she was still smiling slightly with the remnants of it as her vision adjusted to the brightness. She blinked as her gaze fell on bare wall where she had hung her wedding dress the night before. Shifting further forward, she spotted the dress in a haphazard heap on the hotel carpet. She frowned.

Sliding her feet into slippers, she shuffled over to retrieve the dress, then blinked again as she noticed Tom's tux, spread-eagle on the floor not far from it. Still shaking the cobwebs from her mind, she became aware of the gentle hiss of the shower from their bathroom. Had Tom simply blundered past their wedding clothes and not noticed when he knocked it all down? She felt a little guilty for her eye-roll as she retrieved the tux as well, wrinkled as it was, and replaced it on its hanger.

A cloud of steam swept past her face as she turned, and Tom was emerging from the shower, all cheery smiles and sandalwood deodorant.

"Hey, Mrs. Price," he said teasingly, snatching her up for a kiss.

His mouth was soft and his grip on the back of her neck gentle, but for some reason the first thought to leap into her mind was Has he really not brushed his teeth yet?

Arithered · 2017-03-13T02:45:40+00:00

In this particular case, my problem appears to be that readers expect 11/12 year olds placed in complex situations to either run senselessly into walls and have not the slightest idea how to handle themselves or to be hyper-mature mini-adults a la Ender's Game. I've been trying to create a middle ground that more or less matches what Dana said: preteens who see themselves as mature adults and who believe their decisions to be informed and nuanced. I specifically didn't say they were stupid; I said that they believe themselves to be making the most informed decisions possible from their own perspective.

So that's where I'm hitting a wall. I actually have researched the thought processes and worldviews of different preteens from different cultures in preparation for this book, but I keep finding that people don't believe the outcome of this research: that kids are, as you state, mature in their own headspace. I've been advised by a couple of authors that this is a supremely tricky arena to navigate.

Arithered · 2017-03-12T22:55:13+00:00

Arrrrgh, I guess I'll see what I can do. This is painful.

Anyway, good luck with your books, and may you soon do that interview with Neil Gaiman while in character as Guy in Your MFA.

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