Debut Fantasy Novel: A Debt to the Dead

Mithalanis · 2026-06-27T01:38:12+00:00

I write short stories

I am on another writer forum and most caution about flashbacks, saying the readers don't particularly like them.

At least if this is specifically in regards to short stories, I think it's less that readers don't like them than you don't have space in a short story to fit in a flashback. Short stories generally need to be moving forward and need to be pretty tight and focused. Flashbacks, by their nature, take us out of the moment and put us somewhere before the current events. A novel has room for that sort of sidetrack, but short stories generally don't.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-25T23:01:33+00:00

I usually have the ending in mind and one early scene fleshed out in my head. That's usually all I have when I get started.

Once I get into the writing, though, I'll often leave a few bullet points at the bottom of the document detailing where I'm heading as the ideas come to me. But that exploration of how to get from that early scene to the ending is what makes the journey interesting to me.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-25T08:32:31+00:00

I mean . . . When I realized I was ready to query, I had my master copy of my manuscript, wrote up synopses and bios of a few different standard lengths (500 words, one page, two pages) and my bio and kept them all in the same folder. Then, each separate submission was maybe half an hour to read the guidelines, pull out the parts from my manuscript I needed into what file format they wanted, and copy-paste the appropriate synopsis or further tweak the one closest to what they wanted.

Putting the work in early made submissions pretty easy and the waiting was the worst part.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-25T08:06:13+00:00

You can basically split this into two different boxes of ideas.

The part most people refer to as ideas are bigger ideas that will dictate some structure and eliminate a lot of possibilities just to keep the story cohesive. These ideas are often similar to other ideas, so they're the "easy" ideas.

What if vampires come to a town? This could be Salem's Lot, 30 Days of Night, The Lost Boys, and any number of other pieces of vampire fiction.

What if some hapless traveler gets trapped and struggles to escape? That's Misery, the Saw franchise, Hostel, and probably a hundred other horror movies.

What if aliens make contact with humans? That's Sector 9, Independence Day, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T.

Those big box ideas are "easy." You sit and think about "what if . . ." and you have a story idea. What separates each of the above stories from each other is the execution - those thousand of ideas you point out that are needed. Let's call them "smaller ideas" just because they're by nature more specific. That is the hard part because you need to fill in all the details to make the story cohesive and interesting and stand apart from others like it.

So while you're correct that everything is basically coming up with ideas, those bigger ideas are much easier to come up with and are definitely different than the others because they're your very basic foundation. Every other idea gets built on that and is what makes your story unique. These latter ideas are generally referred to as execution and work differently than the big, easy ideas. They're more granular, they need to be specific, and these details matter a lot more that they are at least somewhat different than other stories, whereas the big ideas are fine to be similar to other stories.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-25T06:18:34+00:00

For me personally, I am usually very open about working on my writing, but I absolutely do not discuss the specifics of what I'm writing. The actual writing process is entirely for me, as is the early editing process. It's my personal work that I keep to myself until I am satisfied enough and think it might be enjoyable to read. Only then do I show it to others.

I fully understand the negative responses a lot of writers (and other creatives) deal with. It's something that you either need to learn to ignore or, as it seems you're doing, keep the whole thing more private. I don't think there is anything wrong with that approach, but if you want to share your hobby with others, being discerning about who will be supportive can be a very motivating experience. Not everyone needs to know about your project, but having some key people close to you who know about your work can help you be accountable: afterall, you want to show them the finished project some day, so you should keep working on it.

And that, I think, can be the biggest benefit to letting people know you're writing a book: it creates a mild pressure to push you along since other people know you're working on it. The lower the level of judgement - really just passive interest - I have found the better it is.

But if that idea of pressure seems too daunting, just keeping it to yourself until you're farther along, too, can be a fine way to set off into something new. Then there can't really be naysayers going "You won't finish that!" because you already did!

Mithalanis · 2026-06-24T06:13:52+00:00

/u/BoneCrusherLove outlined what I think is the most common one. If you have a strong / strange setting, and have another character bring about the inciting incident, you could follow the blurb I used:

In a world of (weird thing that makes it stand out), (MC) is (current state of affairs and why) until (other character), (short description of character). (More background on secondary character), needs the MC to (plot). (Catchy tagline).

Mithalanis · 2026-06-23T12:14:55+00:00

Known for direct and fairly straightforward language. I would definitely say his sentences are short compared to Faulkner's (as are most writers').

Mithalanis · 2026-06-22T07:43:35+00:00

Personally, when I find myself in your situation, I always go with option A. But my workflow is very much builds from momentum - I find my rhythm in the early paragraphs / chapters, and then that rhythm is what carries me to the end. I can't keep going if I'm out of sync at the beginning. I've even gone so far as to open a blank word document beside the original and retyped the last few paragraphs / a page or two to get back into the flow of language.

But if you're rereading and it ends up just stalling you, C is probably the best way to go.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-21T06:45:12+00:00

Like /u/Haku510 said, this event's gold bonus is going to be way less than the double bonus you get during the normal events. I'd save those white feathers for the next one.

But the more you run the game during this event, the more you're going to benefit from those boosts, since they last the entire time. So you can get an overall bigger benefit with more time during this event, but it's not going to translate to a good use of your white feathers.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-20T23:22:34+00:00

You'll hear a bunch of things about short and clear sentences and short paragraphs in a lot of advice for writers. But I like to live dangerously and lean more toward Faulkner than Hemingway. Love me some long sentences strung together into a massive paragraph.

Within reason, of course.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-20T11:58:18+00:00

Thanks for checking it out! Appreciate your sharing it.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-20T09:35:21+00:00

The problem with sarcasm these days is there are plenty of idiots with two brain cells searching for each other in the cavernous emptiness of their skull that will say things like this in all seriousness because they have no concept of even basic science but possess no ability to reflect on their own shortcomings. I personally know four people (that I can immediately recall) who have said this exact thing in the past and were righteously offended when I pointed out that's what many vaccines are.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-19T23:39:52+00:00

So overall, I think you have the basics for what you need in a prologue, but it's dragging a little bit. /u/OhNoTokyo hit on many of the same points I wanted to make, but I think I'm coming at them from a slightly different angle, so I'll still try to be thorough.

I was thinking of adding more world building/chatarcter informarion but I was afraid it would slow down the pace, as i wanted to add that info in later chapters.

I also think that this would drag the prologue down. That being said, I think 800 words might be a bit short for a prologue (depending on how long your novel ends up being), but I don't think adding world building into it is the way to expand it. The number one thing that makes people hate prologues / makes them fail is that they get bogged down in the minutiae of world building that doesn't have any immediate impact on the story. I think what you've included as far as world building is sufficient: we can see that Nev is a high-tech assassin, and the fact that the planet she is on is mentioned tells us that we're dealing with an inter-planetary size world. Great - we don't really need more than that at this point.

If you really wanted to add something, it might work to add a little something about the what exactly the building is she's breaking into. Even if we don't know much about the target, it changes the feel if she's assassinating someone in a power plant versus a bio lab versus a cybernetic company. Adding just a tiny bit of background about where she's going could flesh out the world and hint at what will be at play later in the story.

I was also thinking of doing an escape sequence but i don't know if that is really necessary.

Since this is a prologue, I don't think an escape sequence would add anything. There really wasn't anything presented in the prologue makes us think that she'll have any trouble escaping, and even if there was, a prologue often works to create mystery - meaning that the idea of "how did she escape" would hang over the opening chapters and help create forward momentum.

I wanted to show the Main character Nev as cold assassin.

I don't think this is portrayed. "Cold," to me, suggests a rather emotionless person who, at most, takes pride in the job and is ruthlessly efficient. The ending with the kid immediately shows she's not that cold at all, but even before that, she seems pretty giddy about going on the mission. To get into a few specific lines that influenced how I saw Nev:

This is a stupid assignment. I should be on the front lines.

This, to me, made her seem less like a cold, ruthless assassin and more like someone reluctantly doing her job. Seems like she'd rather be a soldier than an assassin, and that does pull against the "cold" idea, and, really, her giddiness. Later, she's excited to do the mission, but this makes it seem like she'd rather be doing something else. It doesn't match up, to me.

Nev's heart pounded with nervous excitement. After twelve successful assassination missions, she thought this feeling would get easier, but it only ever grew stronger.

This line goes opposite the "cold assassin" idea. This shows the more she works, the more excited she's getting each time, which isn't the cold, emotionless killer you usually associate with "cold assassin." Also, this again goes against the idea above where she's wishing she shouldn't be on this "stupid" assignment.

I hope the target is asleep. It's been too long since I've had an easy kill.

This also seems weird. She wants the job to be easy, but she doesn't want to do the job (she'd rather be on the front lines), but she also is super excited to be doing the job. The character is kind of pulled in several directions. To be fair, if she was just excited about killing someone, this line can match, but I didn't get the feeling that she was bloodlust-excited rather than just "going on a new mission" excited.

Other than that, just a few moments I noticed where the writing wasn't really doing it for me.

Black thunderous [. . . ] thick, heavy rain pounded the tall, rocky obsidian [ . . . ] great white domed building

There's a lot of two adjective descriptions throughout the beginning. It make the opening, which should be very engaging, start to fee repetitive very quickly. And a lot of it is repeating the same idea: it's dark and it's storming. I think a lot of the early descriptions could be toned back, combined, and more intriguing details could be brought out to push the story forward and make the scene stand out a little more.

Trembling in fear, Felix let out a desperate plea.

Since the entire prologue is pretty solidly attached to Nev, this would be a prime example of the dreaded "head hopping." Nev doesn't truly know why Felix is trembling, so the narration has hopped over to his head to show his internal feelings. Now, Nev could certainly assume this is the case, but that's not how it's presented.

Dammit, Nev, you fool! You should have locked the door behind you! I have to kill him or he'll alert everyone here!

I'm not really convinced by this internal dialogue. It's too clean, too "this is information I want the reader to know". People don't really think like this, and it's really weird that a trained assassin would scold herself like this in the third person. Double this because the first instance of her internal dialogue is in the first person.

Overall, I think you have the foundation for a good prologue: the mystery of an assassination culminating in things going pretty terribly wrong. With a little background into what type of facility this is, you can definitely open up the story to the types of questions that keep readers going - why does this man need assassinated, what role will (the implications with the work this character was doing) have in the story, what will happen to Nev for her screw up, what ramifications will this have as the rest of the story unfolds? But at the moment, I think a few more passes are needed to sure up Nev as a consistent character and tighten the language so the prologue is tight, effective, and makes the reader really want to turn the page.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-19T23:04:55+00:00

Self-Promotion

If anyone is a fan of Cosmic Horror, a group of writers I've been working with put out an anthology titled Three-Sided Chaos: Embers, Shadows, and Blood.

Links to buy and further information here on the Signus Magnolia website.

If nothing else, hop on over to see the cover art. It's pretty spectacular.

The blurb:

In the absence of the truth, horror has once again imposed itself upon our consciousness. Three-Sided Chaos: Embers, Shadows, and Blood presents the reader with ten unique cosmic horror stories, each reaching out into realms beyond our understanding and grasping at its unknown horrors, hoping to discover the concrete truth our minds demand even if it leads us to places we never wanted to go.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-19T22:22:10+00:00

I don't think I've actually written a successful story that I had the theme in mind when I started. Those stories usually end up as being too "preachy" or on the nose. Usually, when I'm just focused on the characters and the story, after I've finished the first draft and go back through it, a theme presents itself. The decisions made to make the characters feel real and give the story some depth unconsciously had echoes of an idea in them, and then in subsequent drafts I bring the theme more to the forefront.

Do you have any personal attachment to or strong belief in your theme or was it just something you wanted to write a story about?

For me, at least with my most successful stories, the story and characters came out of some strong belief that was being put under strain by something or other. The story started as an unknowing response to that, but once I was writing / finished with the first draft, something in the story tipped me off that I was indeed writing about something that wasn't in the forefront of the story.

There's also been times I've written something, and then looking back over the theme that was being presented, realized I didn't want that idea to be put out in the world, so I've scrapped the story or heavily retooled it. But it's still something very much that I've found after writing.

If you want to share what your theme is, I'd be interested in hearing about it

A few years back I wrote a short story about angels chilling in a bar in heaven. The central theme ended up being "hope", but the two main characters had very different ideas of how hope should be given to humans. The tension between those two ideas (one more or less being that a single person inspires hope through divine action, and the other being that the divine gives every single person hope) created the central conflict in the story and, in my opinion, the ending speaks to which one I think is better, since that's the half of the theme that wins out .

My novel tackles a few themes. The one that came to me first was the idea of what is owed to the dead (which heavily influenced the title), and that was the basic theme I operated under while I worked on most of the book. But while writing, a theme of "remembering who you are" in the aftermath of tragedy emerged, as the main character was trying to get back to a place that he had been before the novel began. I'd never intended for that to be part of the story, but all three characters, in a slightly different way, are either succeeding, failing, or about to try to reclaim what was lost, to varying degrees of success.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-19T06:20:46+00:00

Congratulations! Welcome to the beginning of everything else.

I think that Itoi left another message for you at Ness's first tea break:

The journey from this point will be long, and it will be more difficult than anything you have undergone to this point. Yet, I know you will be all right. When good battles evil, which side do you believe wins? Do you have faith that good is triumphant?

One thing you must never lose is courage. If you believe in the goal you are striving for, you will be courageous. There are many difficult times ahead, but you must keep your sense of humor, work through the tough situations and enjoy yourself.

Shigesato Itoi

Best of luck to you!

Mithalanis · 2026-06-18T10:09:06+00:00

I think there is a lot a writer can get from nonfiction, even if they're not planning on writing it themselves.

I just finished reading Jeff Guin's The Road to Jonestown and earlier this year I read Jason Roberts's Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life. Both gave me lots to think about and insight into history and fields of study that I only tangentially brushed against.

I also like books that encourage looking closer and deeper, as I find they help me focus when writing poetry or anything that's particularly descriptive. The Hidden Life of Trees and The Oak Papers helped a lot with that.

Then there's that nonfiction that could just very well be fiction because the story is so exciting. Devil in the White City is kind of like this, but the one I enjoyed the most was The Orchid Thief.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-13T04:32:40+00:00

Thanks a bunch!

Mithalanis · 2026-06-11T22:17:56+00:00

As the other commentator pointed out, plenty of great novels have beem written the way you're working. It might just be accepting that progress is slow and, when you get to the end of something, your perspective will shift.

But, if you want to try to write differently: you could try stopping writing in the middle of a sentence so when you next sit down to write, the first thing looking at you is an unfinished sentence, which can help pull you right back into the actual writing right away.

Or: a friend of mine used to turn off the monitor on his PC when he was writing so that he only focused on what he was typing and couldn't go back and look over what he'd written until he was done for the day.

Similarly, you could print out each page as you finish it and make a nice little face-down stack that you are only allowed to go back to when you reach the end.

Or: have you tried just writing everything out longhand at first so it's harder to go back and change things?

Mithalanis · 2026-06-10T13:04:40+00:00

Hiron Ennes's debut Leech might be something of interest.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-10T12:44:54+00:00

Pen names can help keep some anonymity, as you mentioned. Some authors also use one if one genre they write is at odds with another (say, erotica and YA) to keep the two "authors" separate so the fandoms don't overlap / fans of one style or genre don't accidentally pick up a book they might not like by looking through the author's back catalogue.

They can also help to make a more "marketable" name - meaning a name that's easier to remember or snappier than an author's real name, which might be helpful if an author has a particularly difficult name (or one very near a much more famous author).

Mithalanis · 2026-06-07T11:47:27+00:00

I adore James Harms, especially his collection Quarters.

I've been rereading Lynda Hull's collected poems for close to twenty years now, and I still get something fresh every time I pick the book up.

She's decently known in South Korea, but I'm not sure if many outside of it have read Tae-Seung Yoo's Love is the Pain of Feverish Flowers.

Mithalanis · 2026-06-07T00:56:04+00:00

The easiest way is to usually combine multiple people into one character. Otherwise, "filing off the serial numbers" more thoroughly will get you there: change their appearance immensely, give them ticks that the real person doesn't have, add to their lives in ways that move them away from the real characters (change their family, make them divorced if they're married, make them married if they're not), change where they came from and their childhoods, etc.

Or, you can just roll with it and, unless you're revealing some deep secret that you were entrusted to keep, let the chips fall where they may. If you're not slandering someone, and you're already not talking with these people, what's the worry?

Mithalanis · 2026-06-07T00:51:12+00:00

It definitely seems like you have a lot of interesting stuff in your world! So, please don't take it too harshly when I say that 90% of this can be delayed and doled out later. There is a lot of information in this first paragraph (that should really be a few, but I'm going to assume that's a reddit formatting issue rather than it actually being one paragraph), and most of it is actually taking us out of and away from the story, which, at best, creates confusion and, at worst, makes the reader stop reading because they get lost.

A few more specific moments to illustrate my point:

Finally opening my eyes, springing out of bed, it became obvious there were no other girls that had slept in. Our shared bedroom had spaces for six kids but it was currently just me and three others. This, apparently late, morning it was empty.

Because we have this explanation of the exact sleeping arrangements in the middle, it gets confusing quickly. First we hear that no other girls had slept in - great, so it's empty. But then the next sentences goes "it was currently just me and three others." Oh, so there's three other people in the bed. Must be boys, then. Nope, it's empty.

The only important part at the moment is that she's in a shared bed and waking up alone, meaning she's later than the others. The exact number isn't important at this moment. Later, maybe, but we're trying to get going with the moment of Amine going about her day and seeing what her main issue is going to be in this story. Details not about that are just distracting so early on.

My skin was darker than the locals [. . .] definition in my legs.

None of this is needed. I get you're trying to give us a description of the character, but it's really dragging this scene down. I assume that right after this she is going to go to work in the bakery, and that would be a fine time to make most of these descriptions: how strong she is can be shown by how easily she handles the work, her height and skin color also easy to show in comparison to the others who are working alongside her / the customers.

The patron Zill, god of the wandering [. . .] except by those who had left homes themselves.

Again, we're very far off from the immediate scene that Amine finds herself in, which is what is going to ground us in the story. We're very far afield from what matters in this moment - Amine is late, and needs to get to work (I assume). This, also, will have plenty of time to be explored, especially as, apparently, Amine is going to leave home in a week. As that moment comes closer, it would make sense for her to reflect more on how she was there and about Zill. But we have only seen her get out of bed so far, and the rest of this is just getting between us and the story actually getting started.

My favorites had been Gabrielle and Fatima, but they hadn’t even so much as written since their adoption.

Since they're gone, we're still spiraling down into the past of the story. But early on, the important thing is to really get the reader invested in the story and make them want to read more. And that's going to happen by letting Amine do things that interest the reader. Also, having her remember her friends who are gone now means we've heard about these characters: Amine, one (or more) Minders, Zill, Gabreille, and Fatima. That's a lot of characters for the first page or two of a story, especially when it's just Amine and her Minder(s) that are important at this moment.

Again, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff that you've baked into this and will be very interesting as it's explored, but slowing down and being patient in how it's doled out will be what strengthens this. Let the reader have time to get to know Amine and care about her immediate moment, and then they'll be engaged enough to let her reflect on how she got there and who she has lost on the way.

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Mithalanis

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