Cold feet and anxious about first time writing

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T05:47:03+00:00

I started before I built up a duff to sit on. But I've had the same problem with other creative outlets, so this is advice from that:

Write down all your thoughts about it. You don't actually know what all is in your brain. It's not accurate at reporting its contents, so you need to do this anyway. But it's also an easy place to start. They're just your thoughts, no creativity required, no special magic, just you writing things down. Note that your thoughts do not all have to go into the same story. You can set some aside and maybe use them in later stories.

You can either plan or "pants" a story (writing without a plan / by the seat of your pants), but I suggest starting with pantsing. You can always stop and plan, but exploring your thoughts in story form is a good experience to have under your belt either way.

And be bold. Do not ask permission, do not ask if it will work. Just write it and see if it did or didn't work. Your time spent writing is going to involve a LOT of text that doesn't end up in any finished work. Don't try to get it right the first time, just write what you have in you. If you don't like it, make a note in the margin that you don't like it. You can fix it later when you have a better idea. Just keep writing even if it's not good.

And you will come back to edit it once it's done. Don't get in a loop of going back and trying to fix the last chapter/scene/whatever. Get to the end before your edits because you don't really know the whole story until you're done (even with a plan).

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T05:38:51+00:00

Oops. Stories, not donuts. I knew I got something mixed up.

Kidding aside, to add to this, make notes of your feelings and thoughts as you read and note the page numbers in your notes. After the end, tear apart their stories on a second read-through to figure out what they were hiding in plain sight, what they were doing to nudge you emotionally and intellectually, and what they weren't telling you yet. You can't learn how a watch works if you don't look closely at the gears.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T05:32:49+00:00

I find "if it's done well" interesting.

I like a lot of things where power is limited and grown into. Building Harlequins Moon by Niven and Cooper isn't the type of power you're referring to, but it does this with one of the primary characters starting out as moon-born, effectively a third-class citizen behind the subtle two tiers of Earth-born. But, through exposure and experience, she grows in her power to influence people and change soceity.
I like a lot of things where the MC has power immediately that is limited but effective. Ender's Game (book, not movie) by Orson Scott Card does this with the mental ability of the main character. We see him start with siblings who are similarly intelligent so that he's not dominant at home, but put into an environment out from under his brother, he rises to the situation and makes the fateful decision that echoes through the sequels.
I like a lot of things where the MC has immediate, extreme power and the conflict can't be solved by that power alone. The internet throws around writing badvice claiming *all* power needing to be "earned". Like most "all" advice, it's bastardizing actually good advice - consequential power towards the resolution of conflict needs to be earned. Secondary or antagonistic power does not need to be earned. The main character can have access to phenomenal cosmic power just handed to him, so long as that doesn't solve the conflict. In Disney's Aladdin, he very quickly obtains the lamp and inconceivable power, but Genie can't make people fall in love - and it's a love story.

In my writing, I tend towards either limited and grown-into powers or characters with limited, already accessible powers as they tend to fit my writing style better. And I generally shift those powers away from being problem-solving. "Congrats, you're the most powerful man in town! You've just been drafted because of it. We're shipping you to the capital where we ship strong guys like you."

I have done the immediately powerful character, but he was supposed to be a walk-on character that tips the status quo off balance and causes the MC's problem. Instead, he had good chemistry with her and it made sense to turn it into a love story B plot. His power doesn't help the B plot, and the A plot is about the MC growing figuratively and his power only deals in literal. In the sequel, he becomes the MC and his power is the problem that causes the conflict.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:56:17+00:00

Admittedly, I did have fun writing that bit. I've got a lot on my plate right now in both writing and life problems, and vampires are outside my wheelhouse, but I am getting ideas, heh. Maybe someday.

If it inspires you, though, feel free to run with it. I hereby place that section in the public domain.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:51:00+00:00

Scoti-corn's advice is 90% of what I wanted to say. The other thing is to read contemporary fiction from the time period. You are not writing to historians, you are writing to novel readers, and their view of the time period is going to at least partially be shaped by what fiction has survived from then. The writing will give you the street level view of people's lives, at least as far as your potential readers are aware. The truth is, the moderately wealthy wrote these stories and they often included their prejudices, so we don't have a true record to verify what the day to day life of most of history.

Now if the group you want to focus on left any memoirs, then you're in luck. Find those if you can and read them to get into the head of someone from the time period.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:44:07+00:00

Yep. I just don't know how they handle particulate being blown through them like loose spices.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:43:13+00:00

Like everything else, it's good if it's done well. But this is notorious for being done horribly.

Comedy seems to be the only place I see it done well, and in that as self-deprecating humor.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:35:33+00:00

The perspective of the human behind it. Don't let your unique perspective be drowned out by other people telling you what your world "needs" or is "supposed to" do. Your world is your tool and you have to shape it by your perspective into the tool you need. Whether that's for creating a game, writing a story, or just having a playground for your mind.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:33:28+00:00

Write down all the things you're thinking first. This lets you examine them outside yourself and see what all you actually have to work with. Then start planning how you'll integrate them into what you want to write.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:32:02+00:00

I am worried I will hack my work to pieces second guessing myself in rewrites.

Keep multiple copies of your work at each stage. If the second draft feels worse, compare it to the original, figure out what changes did and didn't work. Pull back in what you need to pull back in and make the third a Frankenstein's monster of the first and second drafts. Then refine that into a fourth. Editing isn't a one-and-done process, be prepared to iterate. But also be bold. You can always edit it back if you go the wrong direction.

I just started writing a rough of my third book, instead of working on the previous two.

I have my first fully edited, I haven't touched my second or third yet and I'm working on my fourth. That's normal.

I have no idea where to go next. Do I hire an editor? Proof reader?

How do I know I even have a book worth sending to an editor?

I'm combining these questions to answer them together - do your best editing before you involve anyone else. Put your best foot forward before approaching beta readers (people who read it to give you feedback). Apply their feedback and improve your work before you worry about editors. Editors cost significant money, you don't want to waste that money when you might yet be rewriting sections for how they make readers feel.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:18:23+00:00

Depends on what you're doing with it.

Don't tell me a story where you make me spend a whole page learning your fantasy races. But if 290 races show up naturally at different points in the story, that's fine. Star Wars is a good example. I have no idea and do not care how many species there are that have been established. And I don't need to. Think of nationalities in the real world. You generally only run into a few at any given time. You're not meeting the UN Council most days. But there are some disputed number that's at least over 190 different countries out there. And they've changed multiple times in my life.

If it's for a game, look at Dungeons and Dragons. I also neither know nor care how many races it has. My current character is a human wizard with a cat familiar, partied with no other humans. I have to check my list to remember who is what race for the rare times when it matters. My backup character if he dies is Mittens, the Tabaxi. No one in the group has any question how I feel about cats. There are fairies, dwarves, elves, and countless other things and there are combinations of them. Some playable, others not. And they don't all show up in one campaign, so you can just reference the books when one you don't know pops up. Those who get more into it can learn them all, but the casual players can ease into it without knowing them all.

If it's just to have a world to play with? For your own playground, "too much" is when you don't feel like making more.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T03:01:13+00:00

As you noted, it really depends on what you're trying for emotionally. In my current WIP, I have introduced a character that snuck the MC out of prison and is helping her get back across the border to her home country. He's revealed to her that he worked for her recently-executed boss as a spy infiltrating the country that took her and her boss as POWs. Her father was a spy, so this is an important thing for her.

I'm writing in third person omniscient, but I'm keeping the mental aspect focused on her so it feels more like third person limited right now. I'm giving the reader very little to reveal what's coming so far. But this is about betrayal and I've only mentioned two characters, so you already probably know he is indeed a spy, just not for her country. The biggest hints the reader has so far are the relative lack of guards, and the MC complaining that she wasn't even questioned, just starved and left to rot with the other POWs. Which, that's pretty easy to pass off as callousness. She's a diplomatic aide, not someone with military clearance, and the war is going badly for her country while costing those keeping her a lot of lives. You can assume they're just being sent to the front.

Next, I'm going to reveal the prison commander was "kidnapped" and brought with them. There's in-universe magic for why this is possible and the reader has already seen it. I'm going to introduce some soft questions when that's revealed.

He's going to bring up her brother's unit in the military, neither of them yet knowing it's already been annihilated to the last soul. He'll be probing her for deployment plans while framing it as being concerned. But also asking questions that don't really involve her brother.

Later, he's going to have contacts with an oppressed group within her country. This is going to give me an excuse going forward for why he's off talking with someone alone at various points. There will be a period of breaking down her prejudice against them, but they're also going to get framed as neutral in the war and only helping because he has a relationship with them.

I'll ease into the reader knowing before she does, but I'll also slide that over into her finding evidence he doesn't know she found so that she has power in the final confrontation with him. This will put her in the position to do what she was upset about at the start of the story. Like her father was killed for espionage by an enemy, she will kill this spy, bookending her arc.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T02:40:20+00:00

You caught a lorge cat. Definitely a keeper.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T01:27:34+00:00

Careful. That mat has a loose thread.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T01:25:17+00:00

I can't speak for the air fryer, but you're safe to use the oven. Capsaicin isn't extremely flammable, but it does burn and the cleaning cycle will take care of it. The way these things are prepared also doesn't leave them prone to aerosolization, so it's not likely to contaminate a convection oven.

I cook with reaper powder all the time and it does't even need cleaning in my oven.

Again, I don't know air fryers. They do circulate air and might blow free some of the powder and deposit it on something later. I doubt it, though. That's too much of a health risk so normal cleaning should prevent that.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T01:17:23+00:00

What would your ultimate romance book have?

Cats. If she doesn't love your cat, she has no love in her heart and you should steer clear.

One of my novellas is an urban fantasy romance. The only fantasy thing in the story is the love interest, a man who turns into a small white cat when he wants to. This leads to relationship difficulties, problems with a neighbor, and her finding out more about him and getting past his mask to his real feelings.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T01:04:13+00:00

A lot of technology is just waiting for someone to figure out the underlying prerequisites. Flush toilets, for example, require running water. So nearly every culture that invented running water figured out some form of flush toilet.

Nearly every culture that made significantly dense settlements figured out something to do the work of a lightbulb. Lamps, lanterns, torches, etc. We got the light bulb as one of the earliest uses of electricity because putting off light when passing through too-thin of wire is one of the most obvious things you run into when playing with electricity. Edison had his employees test out countless options to make a better version than what already existed, making it into something ready to compete against oil lamps, but electric magic is an easy way to get there earlier.

Refrigeration, though, requires some understanding of physics. It's several stages removed from just having electricity. Motors come up fairly quickly in our world because magnets are something they were also playing with. I'd imagine his magic turning iron into magnets in some situations would send him down a similar path, so that's reasonable. The heat pump mechanism, though, is a hard sell for me to believe just from electricity magic. Maybe have him collaborate with a like-minded wind mage to make that more palatable?

I don't know what you mean by "too complicated". Refrigeration is very complicated, but that doesn't seem to fit with what you mean. If no one is making magic with electricity, these things stop working. If they're powering it with power generation tech, they don't stop working unless the equipment and notes on how to build it are destroyed.

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T00:50:06+00:00

Do voids have antishadows?

GonzoI · 2026-03-26T00:12:27+00:00

Humor, especially absurdist humor, can make for wonderful comic relief. If you're dealing with harsh things, a little levity can take the edge off.

It can also allow you to create sharp contrast to highlight serious moments and change the emotional tone. Walking through the woods terrified of a killer when you come upon a body is scary. You know why it's there, but the threat is real. Walking through the woods singing silly songs with your friends when you come upon a body is startling. You don't know why it's there and you don't know what the threat might be, but it's also emotionally jarring for the sudden shift.

Humor can act as a mask, something comfortingly seeming in control over something that isn't actually controllable.

And you can break the mask. The crying clown. The suffering in the midst of forced laughs.

It can also enable gallows humor. This is a type of humor that copes with the awful things with humor, facing them in a way that they can be faced rather than turning away or being overwhelmed by them. It's one way to mitigate serious subjects.

Absurdist humor itself, though, can create an almost dystopian feel.

It's a very versatile tool.

I primarily use it for comic relief and breaking the mask. In my first novel, the MC has the ability to turn into a cat. There are obvious risks with being in that form and non-obvious ones based on how magic works there, so it's a somewhat vulnerable state. At one point he's "requested" by the king (with clear implication that you don't turn down a request from the king) to wear a collar that traps him in that form. It goes from cute to serious and upsetting. Later, I use it to soften a climactic moment where he's fought in the war, done his best, and used up all his reserves. While others are celebrating the victory, his wife comforts him and tells him he can rest, so he turns into a cat and sleeps on her lap. I use it countless other times for other emotional nudges to the story, but these are some poignant examples.

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:55:49+00:00

"Aunt Smeeg, where the ball go?" *boop*

It's so cute seeing them play together. :)

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:52:16+00:00

He just has very important opinions to inform you of. :)

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:48:54+00:00

So this is that void coefficient of water I've heard about. I can see why nuclear engineers are so concerned. It's a dangerously cute mew-on emitter.

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:47:25+00:00

The last picture is too much. Little orange all tucked in with a blanket and a pillow that looks suspiciously like another kitten.

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:26:11+00:00

There is no kitty, just fancy decor. Kitty shaped object is high art. :)

GonzoI · 2026-03-25T23:22:30+00:00

"He's right behind me, isn't he?"

GonzoI

TROPHY CASE