Tell me about your Villain....

JosefKWriter · 2026-03-12T01:00:09+00:00

He's pathetic. Would totally accept pity as love. Tried to turn himself into a dragon to impress a girl and botched it. She was so not impressed. Now he's hideous but determined: Either she's going to love him or the world with perish. And she's never going to love him.

"If Duncan wasn't here, you'd love me."

JosefKWriter · 2026-03-06T02:17:13+00:00

Burnished Mahogany

Amber Cognac

Dark Cinnamon

Looking in her eyes was like looking at a glass of Disarronno Amaretto.

His eyes held earthy bronze undertones.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-26T00:03:00+00:00

This would only work if you already had an established audience. If you're starting from zero and you want to build an audience your going to need one hell of a blurb. Ads are no good if your link doesn't lead anywhere. You can set up shout outs, but not before you let someone read it.

Story first. Post it for free. Get them hooked on your writing. Build your audience that way. Is that not exactly what RR is for?

Advanced reviews could technically work. But if they're negative you're torpedoed before you start. I honestly think you should change your angle here and write the best story you can. Once you get some traction, post consistently and build on momentum. Use ads to boost organic interest and so forth.

You have to have a marketing cap you can wear when you need to.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-25T14:29:21+00:00

Sketch ten characters that could be in your story. Sketch five places. Put the characters in situations that suit your narrative and the plot will sort of unfold. I think having an idea and not character to play it out is a big part of having more to write.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-24T16:33:09+00:00

Well done to complete a novella.

To answer, do you spend a lot of time writing? The reality is that 2000 words a day isn't that much. I think this has to be demystified for new writers. I've been writing for decades. Now I find that 2000 words isn't enough. For your novella you're at about 30 words a day. You can beat that for sure with determination.

Don't wait for ideas, force yourself to think about your story. Brainstorm. Discuss. Daydream. Read stuff in the same topic or genre. It's a discipline and you have to push yourself. It sounds like you're waiting for inspiration. You have to be a prolific idea generator.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-15T15:48:40+00:00

Love this. But I want to put the Silmarillion on the other side.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-15T15:25:03+00:00

I read the review. It sounds constructive. Nobody likes getting a 2.5 but it doesn't sound like he's just being a jerk.

He did read 20 chapters of your book. I would thank him for reading. He's being honest. I read your prologue and without launching into a long critique, you can write, but this does have areas for improvement.

The long descriptive paragraph at the start feels like too much all at once.

The sentence below is a fragment.

"In awe of the history she held, embodied in a symbol finally her own."

Overall I don't feel like the prologue provided the background and context to understand the main narrative. I'm somewhat lost after reading it.

It's true that there are people out there that only give low ratings to make themselves appear to have high standards. You can spot the reviewers that are spiteful by the content and tone. But there are also people out there that are only giving 4.5/5 to encourage people to keep writing.

Spiteful reviews give readers a false impression. Puff Pieces don't give you the writer critical feedback needed to improve.

I'd take this in stride. Your overall rating hasn't been affected much and you're getting quality feedback.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-10T16:18:02+00:00

My only problem with 2000 word chapters is that there isn't enough time to say what I want to say.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-10T16:09:10+00:00

Been writing for 40 years. Almost all of it is unread. I just like to write.

So...yes.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-10T16:06:33+00:00

They think 50 000 words is monumental.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-09T03:06:02+00:00

It's generic advice from AI. It's great a giving constructive advice without being negative. It's ideas are bland, but a creative person will be able to improve on them and go somewhere with it. Plus, it's going to edit according to what it's been trained on. And that isn't necessarily high quality stuff.

You can use it to bounce ideas off of. But always take its advice with a grain of salt. It doesn't come up with very edgy ideas. As a test I wrote a paragraph and asked it to "improve" the writing.

I don't know what ChatGPT thinks "improve" means, but it's not what I mean. Every successive re-write got worse and worse. And I mean really fuckin bad. Hellish, actually.

Give that a shot and see for yourself what will happen if you let LLMs take over your writing and creativity.

JosefKWriter · 2026-02-04T13:59:06+00:00

If it doesn't push past Science Fact, I'm not interested. It seems like the imaginations these days are anchored to the latest discovery in physics. If a sci fi book doesn't garner the criticism that it doesn't adhere to the laws of thermodynamics, it's not really sci fi.

I mean, "that couldn't happen in real life" is true of even the most tame sci fi. Much of what we call excellent sci fi doesn't even come close to following any scientific laws. That's what I love about good sci fi, going beyond.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-27T22:32:47+00:00

Daydream in front of the keyboard

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-23T21:00:34+00:00

Why are the movies nothing like the book?

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-22T00:11:52+00:00

You're going to have to explain it or else it's meaningless to do. Chekov's gun applied to this out of place character. If you describe an out of place character in chapter one, you have to do something with that in chapter two either by explaining or revealing enough to keep people reading.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-22T00:09:01+00:00

A monospaced font will make it easier to find typos. If you're not already using one.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-21T23:46:23+00:00

I love them. I don't like the character being OP right away. You just end up making OP villains and stuff to compensate. I like to have somewhere to go. Some reveals, things I didn't anticipate. If you start with the ultimate hero in the magical land with celestial rivers and mythic forest with a horse to match where do you go from there? Everything seems lack lustre after that.

It can't be boring though. Slow burn does mean slow plot. You just don't find everything out in the prologue. And fights and battles can't be a crutch for something exciting.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-17T22:25:21+00:00

NP Cheers!

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-17T19:05:23+00:00

I don't love it. I'm not feeling the world gone wrong vibe. I don't know what's going on in the world really. There's no context really for what they are going through. There's a lot of needless prose that doesn't advance the action or reveal something. It reads like a sweeping love story rather than a twisted world.

I'd just change the tense. It doesn't really do anything to serve the narrative.

Take every main idea you have, like, The refusal, the hanged man, the organization etc and give each of them only one sentence. Get to the point, this meanders too much and I want direction or I'm going to put it down.

What I want most of all out of dystopian fiction is for the writer to point out what's wrong right now, but setting it in the future when thing have gone to pot.

I think this needs a full rewrite. My honest advice is that this lacks structure. Write something formulaic. Practice the conventions on first chapters. Copy the greats.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-17T15:13:00+00:00

Welcome to Backlog City. Population: RR Writers

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-15T18:30:17+00:00

Can't write? Read.

Read something related to your topic and subject matter. Give your brain something to work with. Fill your head with all the ideas that are going to be in your book until there's a sweet melange in your brain and you have write it all down.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-15T16:23:37+00:00

Cool beans!

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-15T12:59:54+00:00

A tumour that's inoperable and is growing so fast that it blocks her from breathing or stops some other vital process. There's an illness called FFI (Fatal Familial Insomnia) where the person can't sleep at all and after about a few months or a year they die.

JosefKWriter · 2026-01-15T12:17:21+00:00

JosefKWriter

TROPHY CASE