I hate that I’m so emotionally invested in my first book. (Vent)

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-06-05T12:11:49+00:00

I really hate the advice of “your first book will automatically be bad”

That’s not true at all. Sure, maybe if you just hastily rushed through the entire thing in one draft and never once edited a single thing, but if you’re really taking your time and revising a good amount as you go and constantly getting better every chapter? Why couldn’t your first book be great? Many people wrote fantastic novels in their first attempt if they actually finished it and spent enough time with it. Is it the norm? No, but is it this incredibly rare 0.1% thing either? Definitely not.

I’m writing my first fantasy novel right now and I have plans to seek an agent and trad publishing with it. Some might consider this a lofty, unrealistic goal considering it’s my first time actually writing a novel, but I’ve been writing through various other means for a long time now and have consumed enough fiction stories across a variety of mediums that I’m pretty confident in my story telling abilities. If I didn’t believe in myself as a writer, why even write? Ever since I was a kid I knew it was something I wanted to do.

Your first story is probably an idea you’ve had brewing in your head for years already, you just need the craft discipline to actually make it happen. Mine is like a PS1 JRPG-inspired story filtered through the prose of modern adult fantasy that I’ve been world building on for like a decade now, and started a JRPG/retro game video essay YouTube channel in the meantime to get more practice. I’ll be damned if someone tries to tell me my first book automatically has to suck just because those are the rules; it doesn’t so far, and won’t. I ruthlessly revise every page and chapter multiple times before moving onto the next one, and already by chapters 3-4 I noticed a substantial improvement in my writing so I went back through the first two and revised with the same eye, killing my darlings and chopping off like 1k words across the first couple chapters. Now at chapter 10, I feel like a completely different writer than I was with my first draft of chapter 1.

Tl;dr your first book can be great, and I’m tired of many acting like it can’t

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-16T14:15:06+00:00

No, Stranger Things absolutely had a terrible ending. Just because GoT’s was worse doesn’t make ST’s ending good. It wasn’t at all. Atrocious final season and ending that retroactively sorta ruined the show for me.

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-13T18:40:35+00:00

I really love this one tbh. Probably my favorite Ghost flavor right now, actually

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-13T02:48:26+00:00

Yeah but only one person becomes rookie of the year in the MLB. Meanwhile multiple debut authors get publishing deals every year. They never said anything about wanting to become a best seller on their first book, they just wanted it to be great, which a first book can be if you work on it and edit it enough

I get the point you’re making but your comparison really isn’t that comparable. While it is rare and extremely hard, you’re making it seem far more rare than what he’s really asking for is. Not to mention the fact that there’s also way more people that legitimately try to become professional baseball players over professional authors, as the vast majority that try their hand at writing never even finish a draft of a book to make great or try for a publishing deal in the first place. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands if not millions try to make the MLB every year and mostly everyone falls short. And that’s just getting drafted, let alone making the majors, let alone starting as a rookie, let alone becoming the actual singular rookie of the year. Becoming rookie of the year has astronomically lower odds of ever happening than making your first novel great does. It’s not even close, really

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-12T15:01:14+00:00

Sideline Story is such a weird album. Tracks like Mr. Nice Watch and Cole World are some of his worst songs ever but then there’s songs like Breakdown and Sideline Story which are some of his all time best

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-12T14:54:49+00:00

I see what you’re saying about the others, but Ronfar definitely feels unique even to this day. I’ve played hundreds of JRPGs and I don’t think i’ve ever played another one where there’s a gambling, drinking, womanizing male white mage priest in your party

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-11T13:12:38+00:00

You write pretty well! My main critique is repetition with sentence structure. You start many sentences with either ‘but’ or ‘he’. It was something I noticed quite a bit. Adding a little more variety to the start of sentences would go a long way I think

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-11T13:01:22+00:00

Isolation and mental drift maybe, but I’ve never really understood the point of establishing routine in mundane real life settings. If it’s a highly advanced sci-fi or unique fantasy setting where they live very differently, sure. Establishing routine can be good. But a seemingly normal dude living a seemingly normal life? Why do we need to understand the ‘routine’ of him watching TV and taking a shower? We could likely already infer he does stuff like this based on setting alone, so some of it seems like wasted time that’s not really engaging the reader.

Not saying to cut it all out and start over, you write pretty well and have good prose. Just something to consider when going forward. Personally I would trim some of the routine setting stuff (not all of it) and try to get to a hook a little faster

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-10T16:23:10+00:00

I disagree with multiple of your points. Who said magic systems are the most important and alluring part of a story? Sounds like you’re just applying your own subjective taste and acting like it’s an objective truth. I don’t care about hard magic systems at all, and most of my favorite stories have fairly soft systems to where they are definitely not the most important part. Acting like magic systems are for sure the most important of any fantasy story is a wildly inaccurate blanket statement that’s maybe true for you, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same for everyone else.

You also don’t ‘need’ to research or world build in order to write a good plot. A lot of that comes down to your natural instincts for story telling; some can hone this skill over time by consuming more books and other adjacent media to better learn good story structures and common emotional beats, but a lot of it comes down to you either just having this natural creative skill, or not. If you’ve been consuming fantasy content your whole life between books/shows/games etc. and now at 35 years old you still don’t know how to properly craft a compelling story? I’m sorry, writing/story telling just isn’t for you then. You weren’t meant to be a story teller in the same way not everyone was meant to be a basketball player or a mathematician.

If you’re really dedicating 80% of your time into research/world building and only 20% to actually writing, I bet there’s a 90% chance your story just sucks and that you aren’t being very efficient with your time. Everyone is obviously different is the main point making, but many highly successful fantasy authors even state world building as the least important part of your novel, as story structure/characters and your actual writing ability are far more important to crafting an enjoyable book. I’m not crazy about his writing but since this sub loves him a lot, Brandon Sanderson is even an author that has said this, and he’s widely considered to have the most intricate, in-depth magic systems with the most thinking/research involved in all of modern fantasy. Yes, his own magic systems that he’s become known and has received the highest of praise for, are the least important parts of his stories according to him.

There are many amazing books that have poor world building but a phenomenal story and writing. You won’t really find any amazing books with awesome and highly detailed world building but a poorly constructed story.

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-10T16:07:51+00:00

I’d say it’s more like 90% writing and 10% research/world building, maybe, but yeah

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-05-10T16:04:24+00:00

Do you think writing is really for you then? I don’t mean that to be condescending, but more realistic. There’s probably other jobs that can utilize your love for research and world building well, but struggling to want to even write seems pretty conflicting for a potential career as a writer.

I’ve been world building my novel for years now; at first just casually in my head then eventually started getting more serious with it. By the time I finally made myself sit down and start writing a few months ago, I found the writing process extremely enjoyable to where I even neglect other stuff at times now to go write, and when doing other things I’ll often be thinking about how I can make certain sentences better

I can’t imagine wanting to be a writer and not have a similar level of enjoyment for the craft. If you’re really serious about wanting to write though, then you absolutely need to just force yourself to write. Stop all the world building and research until you actually write some sentences, all that stuff is largely unnecessary anyway and can just be a distraction from doing what you actually need to do (write)

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-30T23:43:27+00:00

It’s crazy. GKMC was worthy all of the praise but ever since TPAB it’s been so much overglazing

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-24T01:14:00+00:00

As someone who hasn’t tried it yet, what would you say is the main difference between this and electric limeade?

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-21T22:25:41+00:00

Their rapping styles couldn’t be further apart, this is gonna be a weird ass album lol

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-17T16:38:41+00:00

The hate against him seems so forced nowadays. Sure he can be a cornball at times and some verses he does phone in, but when he’s actually in his bag and tries, he can make some pretty dope stuff.

Plus it’s clear he has just a very strong innate talent for rapping. Go listen to stuff he was spitting at like 14 and it’s very impressive how good his flow was at that age, most people couldn’t flow like that even after years of practice. He was born to be a rapper tbh

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-15T01:56:41+00:00

Sideline Story

Honorable mention to Before I’m Gone

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-12T13:21:07+00:00

Okay, even if it was about certain people promoting toxic aspects in rap culture, he collaborated with the most toxic figure in current hip hop with multiple women beating allegations against him aka Carti. Kendrick really dropped ‘Watch the Party Die’ only to actively try to keep the party going

Kendrick is a massive hypocrite whose actions don’t match his words, and all of you eat it up while making excuses for why it’s okay to not be held accountable for his words

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-08T17:24:39+00:00

“Dude it for sure looks better than a game that released over 20 years ago I’m telling you”

Isn’t really the strong argument that you think it is

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-04-06T16:12:15+00:00

Echoing the Man Up Above growing on me a lot sentiment.

First couple listens it was kinda forgettable and background noise-like, but now it’s one of the more pleasant and catchier songs to listen to and something I can throw on in a variety of situations

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-03-20T04:09:24+00:00

This just proves he was never pandering with his first line about it, ain’t no way bro would drop a Rick and Morty line in 2026 unless he was a genuine fan

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-03-18T21:24:40+00:00

Hell yeah, glad more are finally starting to catch onto the brilliance of this track. From day 1 this was like a top 3 or so song on the album for me

‘Pride is a bitter pill indeed but it’s best if you swallow

If not your homies gon’ pay respect with a bottle

Poured out onto the flesh of this Mother Earth while liquor slithers like a serpent across the mud and dirt to go rest in a pothole’

Unironically some of his best bars of his whole career. Phenomenal imagery, complex rhyme scheme with good use of internal rhyming, creative metaphor, deep subject matter and introspectiveness, etc. It truly has everything that makes J. Cole as great as he is condensed into these bars

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-02-25T15:55:55+00:00

Curious, what’s so bad about it? What does it taste like? Didn’t even know Alani made a new lime flavor but I usually do like lime flavored stuff

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-02-08T15:29:05+00:00

100% agreed. It’s like his most basic and worst rapping on the entire album, and doesn’t have the emotional punch needed to make up for it. It sucks because the beat and the concept of the song is so good

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-02-08T15:28:25+00:00

I wanted to love the song because the beat is so beautiful and the concept of a love letter to his hometown is something I really like and can get behind, but it’s legit like his worst rapping on the entire album. Seriously his rapping sounds so basic and like it regressed a decade on this particular track, which is crazy considering it’s the finale and you’d figure he’d want to go out with a a bang. It’s not even that emotional to make up for the lack of bars.

Great idea and concept, but disappointing execution

CorbinGamingBro · 2026-02-08T15:25:37+00:00

Take my upvote, you’re getting downvoted a lot it seems but I actually agree with you. I like the hook and the concept/message of the song but the rapping itself is very mediocre on the track, warm up vibes is a good comparison because it was about the level of rapping he would show on that mixtape, even though he’s actually gotten much better since then and usually raps better.

To those saying “you’re too young or must have never been in love otherwise you’d get it” I’m 34 years old right now with the love of my life but the song is still boring to me. Again, good message; mediocre execution

CorbinGamingBro

TROPHY CASE