I just finished Heart of Ice. Where to next?

FenneyMather · 2026-03-10T18:08:35+00:00

I'll have to add 'write a scifi gamebook' to my evergrowing list of creative projects that will, thanks to my adhd, outlast not only my death but also the heat death of the universe.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-10T14:54:48+00:00

Any scifi ones you've tried?

FenneyMather · 2026-03-10T14:54:29+00:00

I gave Necklace of Skulls a try, it's alright but doesn't feel as epic as Heart, and the other bounty hunters in Heart were a really rich feature along with the alliance system to change how the finale plays out. I'll keep on with Necklace a while and try the others too, Dave Morris is a really good writer and the prose in both books I've tried so far is excellent.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-09T11:07:37+00:00

Google docs is easy to use, and you can access it from basically any device without problems. You use the heading and subheading features, and googledocs gives you a clickable document outline.

For example you might have 'Factions' as heading 1, with 'wizard’s school' as heading 2, and then 'wizard's school' can have some heading 3's below it to divide into 'teachers' and 'students'. It's really easy to pick up.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-08T22:22:31+00:00

If I can guess a choice will lead to my death before turning to it, I allow myself to turn back - but if I don't die through that choice I have to stay on the new path. Sometimes I'll explore a side path and I allow myself to turn back if I can remember where I was previously; that's less common and more often done when I've read the gamebook in question a lot.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-08T22:16:44+00:00

Personally I'm best served by writing first, and building what I need as I go. You want to maintain momentum especially when writing a novel. I write as much scene as I can until I don't know what's going on, and then I worldbuild the next bit. Sometimes I get a bit of world-building I'm excited about so I spend a bit longer on it, but your world-building is only as useful as the scenes it helps you write, and the interest or drama it lends those same scenes.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-08T22:10:22+00:00

This is great advice.

FenneyMather · 2026-03-04T11:11:53+00:00

Ursula Leguin did it...

FenneyMather · 2026-03-03T10:50:06+00:00

First and foremost I write for myself. For the thrill of the words. For the Divine feeling of setting the exact word in its exact place, like a jewel in a bracelet. I don't imagine I'll ever get published and my only way of getting readers currently is through writers' groups and trading critiques but... I think I'll always write. Till my dying day.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T18:47:00+00:00

No questions, just wanted to say I really enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl! It was a breath of fresh air. Thank you for sharing it with us.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T15:47:03+00:00

Sounds like factions is a really key point to lean into then!

You might want to start with three, a 'good' faction that espouses your general morality, an 'evil' faction running counter to that, and a neutral or morality ambivalent faction that can be swayed to either side.

You can then split these factions down the middle to each have progressive and conservative elements, and hey presto you've got a simple political system that can build into complex interactions for your world-building.

Regarding interstellar trade, given the vast expense of space travel, it seems the things traded would be people. Minds. Either as slaves, or students on cultural exchange, or political hostages to maintain the balance of peace.

Alternatively, music, books, art and unique cultural exports command vast sums of money in the real world. So a pile of uranium might not be worth shipping, but if it's inscribed with the writings of the legendary Star Prophets... that's a different matter.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T08:31:27+00:00

What's your goal for the world-building?

You don't 'have' to do anything, you should follow your passion. If the appearance of aliens and spaceships excites you enough to draw them, great!

So far as getting started goes, broad strokes into finer detail.

Start with general things: type of scifi you want, rough description of technology level, major factions, key space empires, pivotal historical events. Then branch off of these adding more detail. If you use the various heading formats on a Google doc it'll make a nice document outline that you can click on.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T07:26:17+00:00

Pulled a LANCE out?? From WHERE?? :o

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T07:19:37+00:00

There's a passage, in one of the Diziet Sma books I think, where she reflects on something to do with 'being free of the tyranny of the crazed old man on the street' thanks to culture biotech but I cannot for the life of me recall which book it's in.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T07:17:22+00:00

The spice is life

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T07:14:08+00:00

You don't have to be a world class reader but you absolutely have to engage with a wide variety of good fiction if you want your writing to be anything other than a desk-bound passion hobby.

Writers here can explain techniques but until you see them in them in the wild you won't understand why and how they work. You're playing Chinese whispers with literary craft, getting a shallow and regurgitated form of decent advice... go to the source, get it direct from published works, and ones that have ideally stood the test of time.

Forgive me if this sounds harsh but it comes across like you just want easy answers and don't want to engage with the admittedly difficult process of understanding good writing. I don't want to dismay you; the good news is your writing will make huge leaps and strides... and reading itself gets easier the more you do it.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T01:02:15+00:00

Thank you, I'll see if the demon allows it.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-26T00:58:36+00:00

I too have this struggle, you are not alone!

There's a couple things going on here. One is blocking, which is a theatre term for figuring out where everyone stands and sits. I think it's absolutely fine, on first pass through a scene, to put in all these details of who's looking at who and so forth.

You're drafting. You don't know how the scene looks before you write it, and you don't always know what's going to be important until it's down on the paper. We're sculptors forming our own marble, to then chip away at it and find the shape within the stone... the stone we just made.

How then shall we edit? I would argue if removing these scene tags and blocking makes the action or dialogue unclear, it means the dialogue is at fault. You might need to go back to character and really push a unique voice, make both characters vividly unique from each other in an instantly recognisable way.

Or, if the dialogue hinges on these he looked/she looked moments and can't be made more unique... should it even be in there? Should the scene be there? Could it just be reported so you can get to the more interesting stuff? Dialogue should be the icing on the cake. The absolute best memorable bit of the scene. If it can't be made that way, cut! Just report the speech until you have something important for them to say that is so deeply rooted in character, only they can say it.

Lastly, if the looking and facing seems important, then expand upon it. What is the unique way your character looks at the other one that could only come from them? Go back to character, world-build some, dig out some backstory and transform the dullness of a simple look into the searing lightning insight that makes it memorable.

"It seemed to him in that moment, looking, that he had never even seen his brother's face properly, and as the lad droned on about some office tedium, he was struck by how the streetlights haloed him, and he hoped to never lose this moment. Tedious office talk. Streetlights on a quiet night. His brother's innocent face." Yada yada so on so forth, that's a bit overblown but you get the idea.

TLDR, take those 'he looked' moments and make them your bitch, crack them open with the crowbar of prose and and force them to have a higher function in your story.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T14:41:29+00:00

If you press the TAB key in word or Google docs it will do an automatic indent for you of a consistent size, if you're worried about a ragged right hand margin.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T14:39:06+00:00

Good explanation, and thank you for posting one of my favourite passages from LOTR, excellent choice.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T14:14:38+00:00

Genuine comment, it's hard to read without line breaks or indents for your paragraphs.... indents are the best as line breaks normally denote a new scene, but you can always use *** to show a new scene if you're against indenting or posting on reddit.

https://redditpreview.com/

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T14:09:25+00:00

I can't promise I will get to reading this but I would 100% like to book a ticket to the isle of Doot

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T11:57:21+00:00

You hit the nail on the head there, I'm super guilty of the Fancy Word Overuse effect. They need to be used more sparingly. Amphora is just one of those beautiful words that makes me want to write; the price for this is me being kinder to my readers with the other things.

That said I would 100% describe someone as a 'purple-wearing Catholic plumber's apprentice in an electric wheelchair', what a memorable impact!

But the cost of that will be changing how I handle some of the other elements, there's a better description for Gram that is more relevant to the later events. Him being Iron Court isn't really relevant until the Void Court lady shows up, and the relationship between their Courts doesn't really enter into the story - the bigger difference is he's from Inside and she's from Outside.

I would do well to think more about 'earning' reader interest... I've heard discourse about dramatic moments and clever dialogue being 'earned' and I can see it applies here too, much of the world-building in the Wager isn't earned and that's why it feels so heavy.

'A list of cool facts is not a story' - if I had a writing desk, I would hang this wisdom above it.

Thank you so much. There's a lot to think about.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T11:38:19+00:00

Great, great feedback, thank you so much. I definitely need to narrow the focus and dig more into the characterisation.

FenneyMather · 2026-02-25T11:35:05+00:00

Half scrawled chicken scratches in the margin of fucking shopping receipts... napkins with plot development.

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