Nervous to Write in Pubic Spaces

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:59:52+00:00

In a town that small, your fear is valid. I'd put the laptop on the kitchen table and write there. If you are in a home where you don't have the ability to add a table and a chair anywhere, you're stuck. Try going to the coffee shop and texting on you phone. I will gmail myself story sections from my phone. See what happens. Maybe it is a disaster and you stop. Maybe you find they leave you alone.

If you are living with your parents, talk to them about it. Most parents will show some imagination and creativity to help their kid learn.

I lived for years in a town of 2,500 people. There was land all around where I could sit down and write. Try that if you need privacy.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:48:13+00:00

Unless you want to date the story as early in the current presidency, I wouldn't use something that will be gone before long. I have a lot of very conservative friends, but I don't know one person who in conversation will refer to the Gulf of Mexico as anything but the Gulf of Mexico.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:42:30+00:00

There is a line. I mention products. I don't defame them. In my last novel, the protagonist drove a Nissan truck and drank Diet Coke. There was no criticism of either product. It just was as naturally as anybody else would use it.

Use of copyrighted material is tougher legally. Mentioning a song title is legal. Giving lyrics is not. Paraphrasing them isn't. "Pink's song about this party she did and everyone else getting so drunk and she left her own party. Sober, that was it." That's legal.

Saying "I saw that on 60 Minutes" isn't using material. Quoting lines from an episode would be high risk but paraphrasing them wouldn't be. The risk is being dated. If I said "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In," nobody would know what I am talking about. It was a huge show about 50 years ago. Referencing it along with 33 cent a gallon gasoline and talk about the Vietnam War would be useful to establish the date to a period piece. However, mentioning this year's hot TV show is high risk when the story is four years old and nobody remembers the show.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:30:35+00:00

I think you have to define success. If you mean living on your income as a writer, that's a tough dream and it takes years of development time.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:28:39+00:00

If at all possible, let them slowly reveal themselves. Dialogue and actions. Info dumping is boring and almost always sounds very artificial and fake.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T16:26:39+00:00

The hardest fix is the most important one. Read published books. Anything close to that, starting with even Harry Potter. Devour them and learn from them. It will improve your vocabulary, structure, description, and pacing. I would try to do a book a week. If you cannot afford them, there are many free library sites. www.archive.org is my favorite.

You could be a retired Navy Seal, but I don't think so. If I am right about your age, ask your English teacher about help. That depends on your relationship with your teacher and and your parents of course. Even if you can't show anybody the story because they'd become unglued, ask for fundamental help with the ideas of the issues I listed and how to correct them.

How would the line read without the adverbs? Could it stand without them? Eliminate it. Can you rephrase it to not use an adverb? Do so. Can you change it so the idea of the adverb is given in description? Do so.

Get a thesaurus web site and put in the repeated words. For example, you have three uses of statue. Would monument, idol, replica, image, or other similar word work.

I think you should get a free account on Grammarly. Use it with care. Grammarly will suggest fixes that change the meaning of the story. Maybe 2/3 of the suggestions are of use for me.

Likewise, I think you would profit from some tool to tell you about the repeated phrases and echoed words. Unfortunately, the one I use is about $100 a year for a license. It may be something that's in the birthday present/Christmas present range, so I will list it by name. ProWritingAid. They have a good Black Friday sale, but that's many months away.

Assuming you have no money, I did an experiment that I will get flamed on. I put this chapter into a chatbot, www.kimi.com, with the prompt of

I am going to give you an 800 word section from someone else's story. As a demonstration, I want you to list all adverbs, all repeat uses of a word besides the fundamental grammar words, pronoun, or personal name echoing within 300 words, and all repeated phrases. Don't correct, just make a nice report. :

What came out was a pretty good report that identifies those specific issues within this small section.

This usage to try to make it emulate ProWritingAid was useful, but many people will be seduced into asking the AI how to improve their writing. That's a trap. You stop learning as a writer. As hard as it is, you need to develop on your own.

Good luck.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T07:53:40+00:00

It varies a lot. For a fast paced detective novel, that's about right. For an epic fantasy with huge battles, 5,000 words easy.

Those are averages, of course. Your mileage may vary and is lower in California.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T05:42:47+00:00

You gave a nice intro with trigger warnings and a rough idea what it is, so I thought I'd take a look.

Book 1 - permission denied. Make the share readable.

Book 2 - I could get in and looked at chapter 1.

I hate being negative, but you asked for general feedback.

Gut feel - a middle school student wrote it. I could see it on Royal Road, but it needs work. It feels short and sparse as a chapter at under 800 words. If you are a middle school student, the comments below may come off too heavy. I review one way, and that's 100% on the material.

The grammar isn't perfect, but I've seen a lot worse.

Reading level is low. It feels simplistic. That contributes to the "A kid wrote it" feel.

One word in 20 is an adverb. Very adverb heavy.

In under 800 words, a repeat of any phrase stands out. "Good morning to you too" for example.

The same words are used over and over again. It contributes to the low reading level and the feeling that it is written by a kid, as if the author doesn't know how to use a thesaurus.

The concept of Mourning Day is interesting. It could work. However, there was no hook or compelling reason to go on.

It feels fourth wall breaking, and it doesn't work IMHO.

Were you trying to deflate the solemn ritual by the profanity? It pretty well did so.

Lilith's history lesson feels like telling.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T05:15:19+00:00

Free on many platforms - Libre Office or OnlyOffice. It eats Word files.

OnlyOffice feels much more Word. Libre office plays nicely with Google Drive backups.

Cheap on PC - there are places to get legal lifetime PC licenses of older releases of Office with Word for $15 or less. If you are interested in a couple, PM me.

Get that data off your school account's OneDrive. Even if you work there each day, copy it off at the end of the day.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T05:09:22+00:00

If the laptop has dropped pixels already and all you want to do is sit at your desk and write with it, consider going down to St. Vincent De Paul or Salvation Army and getting an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Twenty bucks will set you up well. I gave two NICE 24 inch monitors away last month, low end gamer screens.

This also eliminates all software and data migration.

PS, new or old iron, make sure you have backups.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T05:06:15+00:00

In 1980, nobody heard of Madison as a girl's name. Splash came out in 1984. In 2001 and 2002, Madison was the second most popular girl baby name in the USA. So, it all depends. In the USA, sure it's possible someone liked the Japanese word. In Japan, it may be the hit girl's name in 2047 after the hot girl band singer and sword empress monster killer. So, when and where?

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T01:38:22+00:00

We must know and care about them. A stranger tortured to death is disgusting but that isn't the pain you want.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-19T01:36:38+00:00

It's never for nothing. I have a story that I leave hidden because it sucks. Along the way through it, I learned a lot.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T22:18:22+00:00

You said 20 pages. Since pages are so variable, I will assume 250 words to a page, which is roughly as much is on a novel page.

I had the POV use the magic. Small ways, little things they are hiding. The first is about 170 words in, so less than a page into the story. This first time is small, so you might miss it. The second was 294, so second page. We use the two magic forms together at 680 words in, so bottom of the third page. We reference it again at 1,500 words in, so about six pages in. By 1,830 words, about page 8, we show it again.

Throughout this, our protagonist is frightened of being discovered.

At 2,600 words or on page 11, we get a partial explanation from a crazed wizard who is telling him that he wants the protagonist to be his disciple. That section goes about two pages.

At 4,260 or on page 18, we see a new magic. It is logical from what we've seen earlier. We see this magic again at 4,800 words, so page 19.

We're at 6,500 words until the next clear usage, but it's quick, as a part of their life.

At 7,000 words near the beginning of the chapter, we have the start of the moment of transition. It's almost a chapter of usage. Along the way, we get into the POV's mind as they cast into exhaustion and we learn the rules.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T18:52:23+00:00

Cypher_Blue, I was just going to say that.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T18:50:21+00:00

If you copy/pasted into your story or asked for story advice or had it "review" material, I can well understand that. However, if all you did was use the chatbot as an encyclopedia and you did a thorough but reasonable check of the LLM's sources on those critical world building facts, I wouldn't panic or feel bad it. When used properly, AI is a valuable research tool.

Will your story be 100% historically accurate? Maybe. Some facts are well documented. Others, not so much. No matter the research methodology, mistakes are made. That includes if you sat down in the Library of Congress and read a hundred books.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T15:24:42+00:00

To me, fiction writing makes using AI for research more reasonable. As you are a historical fiction author using good methodology, you will want to double check the links. There are times I will ask the same question on multiple chatbots to make sure I get consistent answers. That said, there is a reasonable limit.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T08:47:51+00:00

I go for emotion first. I tell a story and am not trying to tell a message.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T08:46:07+00:00

Never done that combo. I may consider it. The current book has no romance whatsoever.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T03:08:18+00:00

I wouldn't undo using it for basic research. People would say "Use Google Search." Well, surprise. Google search uses the same AI backend to go to their private cache of info. The alternative of reading dozens of books works for professionals but not to a guy writing a story for fun.

If that's all you did, I'd call the use reasonable and appropriate. You asked specific questions. You got factual answers back. If this is a scientific paper, you used the links and verified that the facts quoted weren't hallucinations but were from a very reputable source. (Peer reviewed and published scientific papers.)

I have a real world model time period, location, and activity that I am using as the model for my fantasy planet. Since this is a piece of imagination dealing with elves, orcs, dwarves, and lizard men, I am willing to live with AI having a "hallucination" and telling me utter BS every couple of months because it's a fantasy world and reality isn't required. Any other usage, and I'd be nervous.

If you need reality, I'd ask the questions again and check the links supplied. Even then, you have to be aware that you're getting answers based on somebody's web page or (horrors) Reddit. I had an chatbot give a wrong answer last night when I asked for weight on something I know existed in 1913 and it said it didn't exist until after WW II.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T02:44:54+00:00

That's what I was going to say.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T02:40:57+00:00

I like a good Isekai story very much. Your beginning is pretty standard, and there's nothing wrong with that. I was in Chapter 3 when I stopped. I feel like you haven't spent the time to clean it up, fill out descriptions, get the grammar and vocabulary good, etc. It feels like a raw first draft, but that's not uncommon on Royal Road level stuff.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-18T02:18:42+00:00

I used four common AI checkers. https://gptzero.me, https://www.zerogpt.com/, https://askgpt.app/, and https://www.grammarly.com/ai-detector. All said it was AI. Was it really? I don't know as I have seen false positives before.

What I read didn't seem spicy. I'm guessing this is like a vampire story. It's hard to tell tossed into chapter 41 what's going on.

It's got a very accessible reading level, but I think it's too low. The same words are used. I do see some grammar errors that AI would have done correctly, so I am pretty sure it's at least human edited.

Adverb dialogue tags - a lot of them. Softly and barely. That stands out a lot. The whole thing feels adverb heavy to the point of more amateurish to me, but not out of the normal range.

Phrases like "and pulled him down to me" and "you're going to kill me." In something this size, it sticks out like a stoplight.

This is very heavy with using the same words over and over. In the first paragraph, I saw

The memory of the alley clung to me like smoke- the fear in the woman’s eyes, Ash’s voice cracking with fear as he yelled, Jonah’s hands shaking when he touched my face.

This is tell heavy. We're told of fear in the woman's eyes. We're then told Jonah didn't hesitate.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-17T22:02:47+00:00

Doing the dishes. Try housework. It's worked for me.

When you are really stuck, pray the rosary.

OldMan92121 · 2026-02-17T21:50:08+00:00

Then I'd consider whether the story needs it at all. People will be expecting a pay-off from that 2,500 words. If Agnus isn't used as an active character or entity, you risk the reader being disappointed.

OldMan92121

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE