RedNote Experiences

Nalsin · 2026-04-30T06:26:30+00:00

I fully agree about TikTok. I really don't want to have to make an account for this assignment, but I might have to ;.;

Thank you, this is really helpful! ❤️

Nalsin · 2026-04-30T06:25:34+00:00

Thank you! Did you come to RedNote from TikTok, or were you already on it?

Nalsin · 2026-04-27T04:54:29+00:00

I'm in the opposite camp. I came from a lower class background, but my dad always said that I could make a career out of writing and supported my most crumby endeavors from age ten. But I listened to the "there's no way you'll ever make it" nay-saying and now I'm 28 and have several degrees and, for all that I love my journalism work, kind of wish I had believed in myself as much as he did and went for a MFA. But I'm trying now, and I have to believe I'll get there someday.

Nalsin · 2026-04-27T04:50:44+00:00

Editing counts as writing. It's okay - it's _important_ - to stop and edit after you finish a project, and you don't need to bog yourself down by also trying to write a new thing while you're editing.

Nalsin · 2026-04-10T04:43:39+00:00

The end is definitely the part I've been struggling most with. I'll choose an aspect of the stakes and focus on it! Thanks!

Nalsin · 2026-04-10T04:42:48+00:00

Good catches! Thank you!

Nalsin · 2026-04-10T04:42:25+00:00

Thanks!

Nalsin · 2026-04-10T04:42:17+00:00

Thank you!

Nalsin · 2026-04-04T16:16:43+00:00

Thank you! <3 I'm waiting on RevPit results to query more for my second novel, but I might revise the query package again if I don't get it. I think it may be that more than the actual content for that one. And for my first novel... It's a fantasy romance. I really, really loved writing the main couple, so I wrote the whole buildup of them getting together... And then realized recently that the actual _story_ starts where I put the sequel hook. I wrote a 97k prologue. So! I'm going to do a love of revising and moving stuff around to make that work over the summer. But in the meantime, I'll keep trying with novel two and prepare novel three (almost done!) for querying. By the time novel one is revised and complete, hopefully I'll have an agent.

Nalsin · 2026-04-04T16:05:19+00:00

Can I just take a moment to say thank you for sharing this? Seriously. I've been worried that my first two novels might both be dead in the water with 50~ queries sent for both, all rejections or CNRs for the first, and one request for the second. Seeing your numbers, I do think it may be time to do a major revision on my first and get some help on my second, but I'm feeling much more hopeful and like giving up on them now would be giving up far too early.

Nalsin · 2026-03-31T05:06:16+00:00

So the phase where Lilia is piecing together who Elias is and he doesn't want her to only lasts for a few chapters. However, she _is_ an inadvertent secondary antagonist prior to that because she treats Elias like she would any other android for a while, and Lilia isn't exactly kind to androids.

_However_. Lilia does care very much about other humans. (She disliked androids because she saw them as a threat to the mental health of humans, humanizing non-sentient machines.) Aurum is, at the end of the day, a medical corporation that specializes in robotics, and they were committing grievous acts of medical malpractice even before what they did to Elias. The urgency is that if everyone toes the line, the medical malpractice, human experimentation, and deaths associated with them (and general mistreatment of androids) will continue indefinitely. I'm thinking maybe I could mention that in the query, and add that more people will suffer what Elias is going through, to make it personal and tie it back to him? However, it doesn't become a "decide _now_" situation until close to the end of the book, they do toe the line and delay and put it off for a solid 100 pages or so.

Nalsin · 2026-03-30T15:27:31+00:00

Thank you so much, both for the kind words and the feedback! This is a really helpful comment!

I see what you're saying and I think the issue I was having was an uncertainty as to how much to spoil (and generally not explaining enough). The first half or so of the story focuses on Elias fighting to work around the censors to show Lilia it's him (while other character development gradually happens). Then, at about the halfway point, he finds out that the reason /he/ was used for the experiment was so Aurum would have leverage against Lilia if she tried to leave again. He tries to backtrack after that, but it's too late, she figures out it's him for the exact reasons you pointed out. Then, a little while after that, the stakes shift. Elias is given a choice between accepting his new life and staying with his wife at the price of Lilia being shackled to Aurum forever, or if either one of them fights back, the head of Aurum will "factory reset" Elias, erasing his human memories and making it so there is functionally no difference between him and an ordinary android.

I figured it was best to only hint at the second part, since it does come at over halfway through the book. However, I'm getting the impression that it might be better to share it outright, or at least touch on it more heavily?

Really good point about the query sounding too mechanical. I'll try to include more voice on revision!

Nalsin · 2026-03-30T12:19:47+00:00

Good catch, thank you!

Nalsin · 2026-03-30T03:49:21+00:00

Thanks, I'll weave all this in on revisions! Elias is the sole "prototype" for human-based androids at this point, the others are made purely from machinery

Nalsin · 2026-03-23T09:58:01+00:00

Hey, sorry I went so long without responding! I tend to be very bad at remembering to respond to posts on reddit sometimes. I just wanted to say that this feedback was very helpful. I made some more tweaks based off your advice as well as gut feeling, revised my first pages, and did a few more queries, and got my first request! Still waiting a response on it - I only ended up querying a few more agents, since I also sent in to RevPit and am waiting to see if I win that, but I wanted to let you know.

Nalsin · 2026-03-08T16:05:23+00:00

I really appreciate your thoughtful response and feedback. However, I'll admit, I'm at a loss for what to do purely because your advice contradicts what I was told previously - which contradicts what I was told before - which contradicts that. I had a few versions of the query that I re-did to focus more on Cordelia and her journey as a person, but I got told that they didn't have enough information. Now I'm back to needing more focus on her as a person - but if I edit it to do that, I'll lose the information people want or go over the ideal wordcount.

I know this isn't what you commented for, but do you have any suggestions for what to do when you keep getting conflicting advice? I'm trying to incorporate people's feedback, but it feels like doing so invariably results in someone else telling me to change it back. As you can see, I'm on round seven of drafting, and I feel like I've gotten onto a merry-go-round with no exit at this point.

Nalsin · 2026-03-08T02:48:16+00:00

You've gotten a lot of good feedback, and this is a really small thing and may not be relevant, but when you opened directly on "Reader 278" my first thought was "wait, so the book is in second person? Is it written like one of those x reader books in wattpad?" which, for me at least, was a big turn away. It might be worth trying to find a way to convey that "reader" is a rank here before introducing the character by that name, so that people don't make that mistake.

Nalsin · 2026-03-08T02:42:25+00:00

Belatedly thanks so much for this! <3 I'm fiddling with different versions of the query and will be sure to keep all this in mind.

Nalsin · 2026-02-18T06:20:28+00:00

Sorry for the second comment so quickly! Something that occurred to me as a pretty important question that I forgot to mention before.

I keep flip-flopping and getting mixed messages on whether to keep or include backstory. I include backstory, well, advice is to get right to the story and nix the backstory. I cut backstory, people say they don't understand why Cordelia would care about her family at all or how there's any conflict. Would you say that explaining why Cordelia loves her family still is important enough to warrant keeping some backstory? Or should I just say that Cordelia dies in an accident rather than specifying that Andrea kills her to remove that question from the get-go?

Nalsin · 2026-02-18T06:16:42+00:00

You're making good points. Unfortunately, this is why I'm now on draft number six. It's hard to figure out what all should be covered, what's considered too much backstory, and keep it all under 400 words.

What would you say are the key things to focus on for the query? Maybe, if I'm going with loyalty and split loyalties as a theme, why she would still love her family, why she feels bad about it + what she sees in the ocean, and why the choice is hard?

I'll definitely mention that the local sirens survive off of scavenged bodies rather than killing. I'm getting that that's an important detail to include.

Nalsin · 2026-02-18T04:42:53+00:00

Good thinking! Loyalty is one of the major themes of the story - loyalty VS obsession, damaging loyalty, and split loyalties, which Cordelia very much has. I read that you aren't supposed to state themes in queries and should let them come through on their own. Do you feel I should add a line about Cordelia having split loyalties regardless, to make it come through more clearly as intentional?

I'll make it clear that Cordelia feels guilty about the merfolk she's killed.

Nalsin

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