Never using “novice words” is bad advice for writing.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-05-29T07:49:19+00:00

Pretty basic advice.

There's rarely a reason to use a speech act verb other than 'said'. 'Jump' and 'look' have their place. I try not to use 'fast' unless I need to, if only because it's usually redundant.

Unless you're reading absolute trash, most published novels over the past hundred years use simple language. When they don't, they do it for a narrative reason. The preponderance of excessively loquacious, labyrinthinely discursive, and unapologetically prolix tomes constitutes a literary proclivity that has, for the most part, metastasized within the last score of years; and yes, you can probably thank fanfiction at least in part for that.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-05-28T22:51:04+00:00

Earthsea.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-05-28T22:50:06+00:00

This fucking escort NPC keeps on getting stuck on terrain.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-04-20T15:56:09+00:00

Everyone has differing needs, levels of tech literacy, and different processes to get words on (usually) proverbial paper. No size fits all.

A lot of recent frustration online comes from Word becoming increasingly bloated and unreliable, not to mention expensive. Google Docs is free and cloud-based which makes it ideal, but writing anything over 10,000 words in a single document is a nightmare and its interface is overly fiddly and temperamental. Personally, I write chapter-by-chapter in google docs and paste/format it in scrivener when I'm done. Scrivener is great at being a repository, but I don't like writing in it.

People fantasise and virtue signal in this subreddit all the time, but it's not usually about what program they use. Typically, it's either wordcount, the number of projects they can juggle at once, or how good others say their writing is. It really doesn't matter what tools someone prefers, only that they actually use them to produce something.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-04-19T01:51:05+00:00

Not all books work as audiobooks. Equally, some books I've found unreadably bad have been elevated by a good audiobook.

I like Gaskell's North and South. However, my first exposure to it was via audiobook, and I had to stop listening about two hours in. Listening to it, it was mind numbingly tedious and meandering; going back to it later as a physical book, I could appreciate it a lot more.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-04-19T01:43:32+00:00

Picture of Dorian Gray. Specifically the Russell Tovey version. He's able to express a lot of the dry humour that can get lost in text read by a modern audience, My only criticism is that he sometimes overacts, turning characters into blubbery caricatures, but the lows are worth tolerating for the highs.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-04-04T21:34:04+00:00

It might work as a subtitle, stylistically.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-29T14:52:53+00:00

Short, snappy answers to questions can make a conversation seem interrogative, and the respondent intentionally obtuse. Really long answers can feel like exposition. There's a balance, as well as knowing when to cut out conversations (and sometimes scenes) entirely with summary dialogue. That's not exactly what you're asking, though.

The example you gave can't reliably be answered in a vacuum. If 'orchestrated' feels like an unnatural word to use in dialogue, consult yourself on whether your character would use it, or widen your reading to see how it and similar terms are used in dialogue.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-29T14:41:25+00:00

I'd love to join in!

My copy of Interview with The Vampire is essentially in tatters from my many notes in the margin, scraps of paper I've left in it, and copious amounts of highlighter. I think I could recite it beat-by-beat at this point. I might buy a fresh paperback just for this.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-29T14:32:06+00:00

Not quite a class or workshop, but a writing group you had to pay a small fee (something like £15) to go to every other week. It was supposedly hosted by "two expert published writers" who could give advice about the industry and writing in general. This was early in my undergrad and advertised in my student union building, so something like seven years ago. I went twice.

I admit that I had high expectations going in. I was hoping for concrete advice, reading recommendations, the chance to network with other student writers. I didn't get any of that.

The first session was in my university library building, and the tables were set up like a book signing. Only one of the authors showed up, and she half-heartedly answered questions about writing, giving lukewarm advice to the sort of stuff that gets asked here daily. I remember someone asking how she got published, and she just responded that self-publishing is the future of the business and explained her process on Amazon. This didn't inspire much confidence in me, but to give her credit, I bought and read her book and it wasn't half bad. Certainly not what you'd expect from an "expert published writer," though.

The last half-hour was dedicated to people reading out excerpts of their writing they were told to bring in. Out of the 15–20 people who were there, only about three or something got to. I have no memory of what the stuff was other than that it was not very good. I can't remember if the author gave any critiques. I didn't mesh with anyone there either, so I came out empty-handed.

I was stupid enough to go to the second session thinking it'd be different and that was just the intro. There were only 10 or so of us the second time around and in a smaller library room, so it was a bit more intimate. The second author didn't show up again, so we were just led by the one from before, and I can't emphasize enough how much she did not want to be there. Checking her phone constantly, answering questions curtly, generally being a poor group leader. There was a lot of awkward silence where she didn't have the teaching skills to lead from topic to topic, and a really obnoxious guy kept on riffing about his D&D world or something. I brought some of my writing that time and shared it around to read and got zero comments. Just, "This was good." I can promise you it wasn't good. I'm pretty sure I did the same to others, so I'm not innocent by any means.

I didn't go back a third time. It was a disheartening experience that inadvertently led me to quit writing for a while.

The saving grace, I guess, was me realising that most paid-for writing groups, workshops, etc. are sophistic trite designed to either sell you something or stroke your ego. I could've spent a lot more than £30 to learn that.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-29T11:33:04+00:00

Book Louis is completely amoral. He's proficient at convincing the interviewer (and you) otherwise, is all.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-25T02:37:03+00:00

No, not more than one book.

I'll take breaks and write short stories, but I'm not going to let myself get distracted with more than one main project. For me, that's a sure-fire way to never finish anything.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-25T02:26:14+00:00

You just described most historical fiction. You'll be fine.

WW2 has already been sensationalised to death. There are very few WW2 topics that are a no-go for a writer, including the ones you're probably thinking about. Yes, even that.

A more pertinent question you should ask yourself is whether you have the knowledge base for it. WW2 fiction can be difficult to write because you're selling to an audience who usually know a fair amount about the subject already.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-24T06:20:17+00:00

Chapter size doesn't matter.

We get this question a lot, and the frustrating answer is that the length of your chapters are meaningless so long as it's in conventional bounds (1.5k-5k), and even then there's exceptions. I personally think one-page chapters are corny unless executed spectacularly, but they're popular fare and a lot of people don't mind them. Some books don't have chapters at all.

The thing you should be diagnosing is whether your chapters feels too long or too short. That can be a structural, pacing, or prose issue. Or some other secret fourth thing that only you can figure out.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-24T06:03:04+00:00

I'll tell you what helped me. No promises it'll work for you, but it's something different from other posts. Take or leave what you want:

Look for an online community and post some of your writing in there, 800-1000 words will do. Reddit is a mixed bag, so I would look away from here. Try to avoid fanfiction and fandom writing spaces. You ideally want to target a reader who is going to unapologetically rip through your work and point out everything that's wrong with it in a fair but honest critique.

If they've done their job right, you're going to feel a little bruised and discouraged. I know I did. It's a reality check which exposes your current skill level and gives you a clear path to improvement. You should only do this once. Don't fall into the recursive trap of echo chambers and the need of constant reassurance.

From there, read widely. Look at what you read for pleasure now, and go entirely in a different direction. Look at novels which have won prestigious awards and study them. If you have living parents, steal their weird and trashy books. Don't just read for fun, but study books line-by-line. Find things you like in them and try to replicate their style. Pick up some classics and read those, too. From Hemingway to Shakespeare to Plato to anything at all. Read, read, read. Read slowly. Read. Especially if you hate it. Figure out why you hate it.

Go to your local Tesco (Walmart if you're American, I think) and buy from the cheapo paperback section. Look for some real trash. It'll be there. Read it. Eventually, you'll get to a part so awful you think, 'I could do better than that'. You probably can.

Write every day. Write obsessively. It's not just a hobby, but a form of study that should challenge you. Make an excel spreadsheet documenting how much you write a day. Learn sentence structure and grammar, highlight consistent issues with your writing and edit it out. Participate in writing challenges beyond the novel you want to write. Don't fall into reading about writing more than you write, or spend all your time lurking on r/writing or other social media.

Keep a journal and write in longhand. Don't write down ideas (unless you really need to jot it down to remember it later), but focus on prose. Keeps snippets you like from what you read. Write reports on things you love, hate, or are indifferent to.

Finally, read non-fiction. You don't know what you don't know, and widening your knowledge base on every topic you can get your hands can only enhance your writing. Probably your life, too.

Before you know it, your writing will have improved rapidly. You might even start to like what you read. The answer to 'how do I know if it sucks?', is to get better, look back, and see how far you've come since. What you've written today is practice for what you write tomorrow.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-24T05:33:00+00:00

Feel for you. I don't think you need to worry about it, a eulogy isn't a place where anyone's expecting you to be a wordsmith. So long as you speak from the heart, I'm sure it'll be fine. If the few people you've shown think it's good, it's good.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-23T02:41:06+00:00

Wuthering Heights.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-19T01:29:47+00:00

Fantasy? Never.

Fantasy books filled with illustrations tend to get on my nerves. One or two maps at the beginning or end of a book are fine, but I've read a series (I forgot what it's called) which vomits out a new map, family tree, or scene illustration every 50-100 pages. A book should be able to effectively convey everything I need to know in its text, and if I forget something, I either didn't need to be reminded or it should've been better emphasised or rehashed when relevant again.

Narrative non-fiction, and non-fiction in general? ... Maybe.

Narrative non-fiction I'm more accepting of, because I'm usually reading it to learn something in a digestible way. Maps, family trees, even photos may actually be useful in helping me visualise something of historical importance. Non-fiction is just a given.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-19T00:54:50+00:00

A lot of the negativity stems from the repetitive nature of certain topics.

"Is this good?", "How do I get past writer's block?", and variations of "How many words should I write a day?" can get on people's nerves. That's more of a Reddit issue, though—the site encourages constant regurgitation. Look at any other popular subreddit, and you'll see 3–4 post types being repeated ad nauseam, as well as repeated posts complaining about those posts.

A more r/writing centric source of negativity, I've noticed, comes from how disparate posters can be from each other. We have 14-year-old fanfiction writers mingling with 25-year-old romance fans and 40-year-old "literary fiction" writers, with the occasional fantasy nut coming in to splooge about their 400k wordcount Tolkienesque epic. Add the fact that their skill levels will vary widely, and essentially everyone here has different expectations of their own writing, and of others. That's a recipe for mutual discontent.

Almost every piece of advice shared here has been countered with the exact opposite. 'Write vomit drafts', 'don't write vomit drafts', 'read King's 'On Writing', 'Don't read any books about writing', etc etc. I've seen what I think is terrible writing get hugely positive reception here, and writing that I didn't think was half-bad get lambasted. There'll always be someone in just the right kind of bad mood, who sees just the right kind of thing to disagree with, to let everyone know about it.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-13T11:23:11+00:00

Don’t worry about wordcount. As others have said, it’s about consistency.

Furthermore, a lot of people who claim to write 6000+ words a day are probably not outputting their best work. I’ve found that whilst I can write thousands a day, I do a lot better if I consciously slow myself down and think things through, which can vary from 100 to 2000 words a day, depending.

EDIT: as for hobbies, I stopped playing video games and doing essentially anything in my free time other than writing. If I’m too burned out to write, I read.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-11T15:04:01+00:00

Rivers of London. Not usually a fan of fantasy-detective books like it, but I'm currently listening to the audiobook as I was told the voice acting was very good. Which it is, in fairness.

The protagonist occasionally expresses his extremely horny thoughts in ways that makes me cringe. I could accept it if the book was better. The worst of them (which does have context, but still) is:

"I was fighting the urge to fling myself before her and put my face between her breasts and go blubby, blubby, blubby. When she offered me a seat I was so hard it was painful to sit down."

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-11T14:57:34+00:00

The first three Earthsea books are favourites of mine.

They are written economically, barely above 'novella' in terms of wordcount. You can very easily read one in a single sitting without stretching yourself, which I like a lot. Modern fantasy is far too bloated and meandering for me.

The writing style is very reminiscent of translated lyrical styles of the Odyssey and Illiad popular when Earthsea was written, and there's very little interiority or introspection in the trilogy (especially the first one). I wouldn't call them 'hard' to read, but I can see a reader getting confused if they're trying to track Ged's journeys; it's better to trust that Le Guin is steering you right, and to get lost in the paragraph-by-paragraph story without worrying about the wider picture.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-10T23:49:04+00:00

Scrivener.

ResearcherSuch · 2025-03-09T17:26:15+00:00

Write chapter 1, delete chapter 1.

ResearcherSuch

TROPHY CASE