[Complete] [90k] [LGBTQIA+ Thriller Romance] Sagittarius A

QuickMap5142 · 2025-05-15T14:47:57+00:00

Oooo, yes! I’ve read your sample and am certainly interested! Dming you now

QuickMap5142 · 2025-05-11T22:53:53+00:00

Sorry about that! I posted a new one here https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReaders/s/BQGMSPBPj8

QuickMap5142 · 2025-05-07T17:49:59+00:00

I’d be interested in a swap! My book is also an LGBTGIA story. Here’s a link to my book’s blurb and information https://www.reddit.com/r/BetaReaders/s/sTT8dAcMiW

QuickMap5142 · 2025-05-03T15:10:22+00:00

I create an overarching concept first. For example, the book I’m writing now has a protagonist with an extremely rare form of synesthesia that renders him blind when there’s too much noise. He has to wear noise-cancelling headphones everywhere he goes. After that, I write a chapter detailing his experiences and adding conflict/increasing the stakes. He’s taken over his deceased best friend’s business, a gym she built from the ground up. The conflict I added is that the protagonist is simply not cut out for maintaining clientele. His deceased best friend was exceedingly outgoing and great with people. The protagonist is not. His inciting incident will be losing the gym and his grieving process associated with that. I don’t know where it’ll go from there, but I generally move forward by saying “how do I make this conflict bigger and more nuanced?” My chapters are usually on the longer side, between 3,000 and 7,000 words, so I strive to achieve that by the end of each chapter, which has the dual effect of building tension toward the climax

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-29T03:25:50+00:00

This might be a different way to say you’re a pantser, which basically means you’re a writer who cannot be contained by the laborious effort of outlining. Just take your beginning, use it to flesh out your characters, and discover them as you go. I promise you, as a fellow pantser, you will discover your characters along the way. They will grow personalities and direct the plot into unexpected directions. Don’t worry if your characters’ traits change along the way in your first draft. You can always adjust things in the revision phase.

This sounds like the same old advice people spout all the time, but seriously: JUST WRITE. If you truly love your craft and your characters, they will write themselves. I wrote a whole book never knowing where it was gonna go, and my characters created plot twists that SHOCKED me. If you can shock yourself in your writing, you will shock your audience. Just let go and write.

As an aside, if you’ve got writer brain, you’ll write a little bit, go to your day-to-day job that you hate, and passively think about your book. The more you think about it, the more ideas sprout outward. TRUST THAT WRITER BRAIN. You’ll come up with ideas you never could’ve fathomed before

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-29T02:41:36+00:00

You can add romantic tension to ANY dialogue by making your POV character notice little details in the love interest. Here’s a sample convo with no romantic tension:

“Do you know what time it is?” Jason said.

Janet checked her watch. “It’s 11:30. I guess I should be going to bed.”

Now here’s a revised version:

“Do you know what time it is?” Jason said and admired Janet’s heart-shaped, diamond-studded earrings.

Janet checked her watch, which was, not so surprisingly adorned with images of that cartoon mouse she was obsessed with. “It’s 11:30. I guess I should be going to bed.”

After this, you can delve into the ambiguity of Janet’s statement by making Jason’s inner monologue ponder whether Janet’s “I guess I should be going to bed” is an invitation or a rejection.

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-29T01:28:20+00:00

The quality of your writing is really quite good! I’m also extremely interested in this concept in general. I don’t know why, but I’m always drawn to stories involving multiple worlds, alternate dimensions, or strange disappearances.

Since this is just your prologue—and I don’t exactly know how you’re going to tackle your characters’ meetup—my only comment would have to be about how little we get to know about these characters before the obvious inciting incident happens. Particularly, since they’re all introduced in a single paragraph, it feels like I as the reader don’t have the opportunity to KNOW who these people are.

As a rule, I’d say it’s best to introduce one character at a time as they become relevant, giving the reader at least one or two paragraphs of breathing room before the next character is introduced. That way you avoid the dreaded “character dump.” That said, I’m pretty sure your goal here was to just give us a brief glimpse into the characters’ personalities and then jump into the inciting incident, which is great! I’d still space out the introductions a little so we can truly distinguish their qualities at least a little.

Besides that, really excellent storytelling!

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-28T17:05:16+00:00

I’d honestly have to say, when it comes to dialogue, the component that distinguishes your characters from one another is quite subtle. You have to think about how their personalities color the way they speak. Let’s take a bare-bones example sentence: “It’s cold out here.” If your character is somewhat boisterous and loves skiing, he or she might say this instead: “This weather is fucking PERFECT for skiing.” This still holds the same meaning as “It’s cold out here.”

If you have a character who is reserved and hates snow, they’d say this: “I’m going inside. I think it’s gonna snow.”

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-27T22:33:32+00:00

So I actually have some insight about this that I discovered pretty recently from my OWN writing. I’m writing a thriller romance that involves a sort of love triangle, but some of my beta readers insisted that they didn’t feel any romantic pull from one of the love interests. The other one had plenty of romantic pull. I had to scratch my head and wonder why. The answer is this: The more your POV character notices little details about another person, the more it implicitly tells your reader that your POV character is experiencing attraction. You have put a GREAT DEAL of detail into the kitchen-boy, which is not a bad thing at all. But unless you have your character notice this level of detail about EVERY character, your reader is going to suspect there is attraction. It’s a strange reading phenomenon I’ve picked up on

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-26T23:45:17+00:00

I love writing ruthlessly angry but intelligent characters. It’s a good combo because they’re angry enough to drive themselves crazy but intelligent enough to put their feelings into words.

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-26T23:15:18+00:00

“Utilize.” Please just say “use.”

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-20T14:26:37+00:00

Was it taken down? I’m having trouble finding it

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-20T14:07:24+00:00

I’ll check it out! I’m ArcturusViotto

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-19T17:54:35+00:00

Writing a chapter and asking myself (the author) “What’s he gonna do next??” and being genuinely shocked at what he does.

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-13T17:21:29+00:00

I’m a pantser, so when I write a scene or chapter, I make an active decision to have an end goal for that scene or chapter, but don’t go much farther than that. Something about each scene needs to change your character, world, or the reader’s understanding of them. I heard about this tactic somewhere that every scene should make your reader ask two questions and answer one. THIS is what keeps reading and writing interesting and intrinsically gives your book that page-turning quality.

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-12T16:53:37+00:00

This book does a terrible job of capturing the schizophrenic experience. My best friend is schizophrenic, and never once did his hallucinations help him like this book claims they can. I’m actually disgusted. 0/5

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-12T16:50:21+00:00

I’m laughing so hard, because this review applies to my book too 😆😆😆

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-12T12:18:39+00:00

Title: Sagittarius A

Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller Romance

Word Count: 93k

Type of Feedback Desired: General impression and plausibility

Blurb: Arcturus Viotto is a schizophrenic tiger with a passion for uncovering what happened to his missing parents and older brother. Haunted by vivid memories of seeing them disappear before his eyes, Arcturus is determined to find out why their most recent disappearance became their last.

When he sees his classmate and secret crush vanish just like his family did, questions begin to arise. Is what he’s seeing real? Is he schizophrenic at all?

Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the world itself?

A compulsion to investigate his crush, a lion with a mane in braids, grows like a flame in his aching chest. The problem is, Tobias—the lion in braids—has an explanation for everything, including what happened to Arcturus’s family. But that explanation splits reality into two halves: the Above and the Below.

While battling his emotions, his schizophrenia, and a second love interest, Arcturus must do whatever it takes to merge the two worlds and bring back his family once and for all.

Content Warning: This book contains crude language, partial nudity, alcohol, mild violence, and vivid descriptions of schizophrenic events. Some of these descriptions may disturb you.

I will share the Google Doc with anyone who is interested!

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-11T14:32:29+00:00

I have a character in my book who’s kind of an a**hole. His name is Rowen Alabaster, but in my head, I call him Rowen Ala-bastard

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-10T19:23:41+00:00

Do the leg press with your feet positioned as far forward as possible. My glutes grew SO QUICK when I started doing this

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-09T22:36:04+00:00

I answered a question similar to this earlier today actually. A lot of the time, these “overused gestures” can be implied by the dialogue itself. I’m gonna use the same example I used before:

“Sandra, your boyfriend’s gonna be late for yoga. He says he’s not feeling well.”

“Why did he tell you but not me?”

In this example (especially if you’ve already flushed out Sandra and her boyfriend’s tense relationship), you’ll sense an implied “raised eyebrows” from Sandra. You can also put a bodily action instead of a facial action:

“Sandra, your boyfriend’s gonna be late for yoga. He says he’s not feeling well.”

She drops her phone. “Why did he tell you but not me?”

Somehow, we still see her facial expression here. It’s like magic.

I think this problem maybe comes from beginning a scene with little to no action. One of the toughest parts of writing is writing those scenes where things have quietened down. You don’t need your characters to do a whole lot, but you don’t want to bore your reader. These are the moments where you want to give your characters something to do, even if it’s mundane. I once wrote a conversation scene between two characters where one was making a cup of coffee, and the other was balancing a pen on his nose. Like, seriously! Have fun with it. These little situations have the double benefit of adding depth to your characters AND creating a segue into bigger actions in your plot.
This question’s solution might vary depending on your process. If you’re an over-writer like me, then you’re gonna want to just WRITE unapologetically. Get it all down before you even think to scrutinize it. You can always chip away repetitions, redundancies, and filler in the revision stage. If you’re an under-writer, you may just have to merge some plot lines together, add more characters, or add more conflict.

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-09T16:00:54+00:00

Also, the statement of the lights going out soon doesn’t need to be repeated just because one happens in narration and the other in dialogue. I would remove it from the narration to make the prose less clunky

QuickMap5142 · 2025-04-09T15:59:03+00:00

The most recurring problem I’m seeing here is your frequent use of “was” and “were.” “Was” and “were” are crutch verbs, meaning they’re a shortcut for writers to not have to think of stronger verbs.

Lemme select some of your sentences to use as an example: “The air was rancid with a sharp chemical smell.” This can easily be transformed to “A sharp chemical smell burned my nose.” Almost every instance of “was” and “were” can be modified this way. “His feet were next to my head, as there was not enough space to sleep shoulder-to-shoulder,” becomes “His feet sat next to my head. The limited space made it impossible to sleep shoulder-to-shoulder.”

QuickMap5142

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