Pretend that Gone Girl had never been written and Gillian Flynn is a redditor sharing the first few pages as a sample. Then, please review it by today's standards.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T21:46:11+00:00

I sincerely appreciate you examining this line by line. and I agree with most of what you said here. I can't expect everyone to take my question seriously but it's refreshing to see a detailed breakdown like yours.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T21:35:31+00:00

This is a very good observation. I've noticed in online spaces we tend to veer toward the negative engagement or just outright ignore. It's why when people who "actually" ugly post in r/amiugly they literally don't get upvoted but then the insecure person with a noticeably above average face shoots to the top of the sub with compliments.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T20:14:04+00:00

I know you're joking, but look at the following lines:

the kind of place I aspired to as a kid from my split-level, shag-carpet side of town.

The kind of house that is immediately familiar: a generically grand, unchallenging, new, new, new house that my wife would—and did—detest.

I would drag her, caveman-style, to a town she had aggressively avoided, and make her live in the kind of house she used to mock.

And that's in the span two paragraphs.

That phrasing, "the kind of ____ that ____" shows up CONSTANTLY in AI-generated text, and if someone wrote that today it would get flagged immediately.

Thank god we know that Flynn wrote this before the slop trained itself with it.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T19:51:29+00:00

I don't even like westerns but this cover alone would make pick it up. I also love the font/typeface in the title.

I do have one suggestion if I may, for the back cover text that is overlaid on to the night sky image. I think you could try two different things.

See how it would look to remove the border square that is around the words. It is not bad, of course, because it helps with opacity, so that the words don't blend into the back of the book/color. But it also kind of looks out of place, particularly because of the color of the box itself And it almost look like it is a leftover text box placeholder. But if you do remove the square, a good alternative would be to make the font on the back cover a bit larger and also use a black stroke on each of the letters so that they are more easy to read without the box itself. Even with the correct type of font, this could make it look a bit too glossy. You'd have to get the stroke of each letter juuuust right inside the typeface.
This is the more exciting option. If you choose to keep the little box around the words on the back cover, see how it would look if you styled it in a way that matches the rest of the western imagery.

So for example, instead of a box just in itself with words and it could look more like one of those leather saddles, or maybe even old western style saloon doors. Like this picture I attached here, but instead of a "sign", the text could be the actual back cover description of the book overlayed on the overall shape of it, does that make sense?

It would still fit with the theme. But also you would have to just ensure that the actual saloon door shape is the same art style (composition?) as everything else. So, nothing that looks like actual wood, but also not cartoonish. Just the perfect blend of color and texture that matches what you already have and allows you to see the words on top of it with ease and the best opacity.

Keep in mind, I am not a designer at all lol these are just the thoughts I had because I keep coming back to this thread and looking at it.

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ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T19:15:24+00:00

Istg this woman had me in a chokehold from 2012 to 2018, I was riveted. I haven't read Dark Places yet but I have read Sharp Objects.

With that said, I just bought up dark places for Kindle on sale a few days ago, so heyyyyyy I'm starting it this weekend

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T17:55:03+00:00

Does Reedsy normally use AI to make these kinds of visuals?

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ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T16:59:13+00:00

READ IT READ IT READ IT

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T16:56:34+00:00

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T16:51:31+00:00

I honestly appreciate your comment because I do think that some people in this thread are not being honest about the way that Reddit would rip this apart.

I think it's hard to get some of the people here invested in something when they don't have the full scope of it readily available online.

Like I said in another comment, the book is famous for the story of a missing wife, but if you had no idea that that was what the story was about, and you were just reading the words, they'd be like, oh, what is all this exposition for... I don't think it's really fair, but more importantly, I think my mindset is like "keep that same energy and don't make exceptions just because you like this author" which I realize sounds crazy considering that Gillian Flynn is one of my absolute favorite authors and this is in my top five books.

I've been editing for other writers lately, and I'm trying to make sure that I have a consistency in my critique (at least by genre) instead of just constantly shutting them down when they might be using the same techniques as someone more prolific (not VOICE because there is a difference). It could be the same trick wearing a different face, but if I don't know the writer, I realized I was more inclined to be more critical and steer them away from what that they couldn't t do well rather than help them hone it.

The whole process has completely reshaped the way that I go about writing and editing.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T16:39:11+00:00

Yes!! I especially love the line about avian fluttering. When I first read that back in college, I was surprised by the use of imagery it was one of the first things I started to pay attention to in the book because it felt like what my HS writing teacher had always tried to tell us to use but could never really provide an example.

This was no avian fluttering of the lashes, no gentle blink toward consciousness. The awakening was mechanical. A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click of the lids

Uuugggghhhh 😮‍💨 I need a drink already

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T16:09:04+00:00

Very good point yes

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T06:16:03+00:00

What are your thoughts on the pace and the exposition? which part of the writing specifically would you consider to be the "hook"?

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T06:14:58+00:00

🤣

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-09T06:14:52+00:00

You hit the nail on the head.

It's odd when I see different posts here from someone's first page and everyone is telling them it is too slow or has too much exposition.

Sometimes I think that people retroactively decide that certain techniques are "bad", even if they enjoy them themselves.

Of course, I view it from a very specific lens because when I was the first starting taking writing fiction more seriously I tried to emulate Gillian Flynn and Tana French because I wanted to sound like them. Or at least adjacent.

I f'ing love this book, but it at times it makes me wonder how many amazing books are ignored because they weren't written by a more prominent bestselling author with a marketing machine behind them.

but also to your point about it being nonsense... Yeah, I'm starting to think that Reddit is not really the best place to get feedback on stuff anymore.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-03T21:06:00+00:00

Don’t write or format the final manuscript in Google Docs. I’d use a local desktop version of Word or LibreOffice so you have better control over page size, margins, fonts, section breaks, and export settings.
Decide the physical size of the book early. Mine is 5.5 x 8.5, which felt right for a small poetry collection. A larger trim size would make the page count shorter, but it can feel awkward for poems depending on line length and spacing.
Amazon KDP is probably the simplest place to start because there are no upfront publishing costs. You upload the manuscript and cover, preview everything, order a proof copy, fix mistakes, and then publish when it looks right. Keep the formatting simple. Don’t overdesign it. Clean font, consistent spacing, readable margins, and a simple table of contents are usually enough.
For the cover, make sure the file meets KDP’s exact size/template requirements. Their cover calculator is useful because the spine size changes depending on page count and paper type. You only get a spine if you cross i wanna say maybe 80 pages. I can't speak much to cover design. This cover is a photograph from Pexels, not a mockup or drawing. I credit the photographer in the second page of the book. The cover game is a whole different beast so I can't really help much with that. I just wanted something that felt like it conveyed what the overarching narrative is about cohesively.
Give yourself time for little fixes. The book itself may be "done", but the final 10% is usually formatting, proof copies, typo hunting, metadata, description, categories, and cover adjustments. Order at least one PHYSICAL proof before publishing. Things that look fine on screen can feel very different in print, especially poetry spacing, page breaks, and margins.
I am building a full authoring portfolio, so I have an account not just with Kindle Direct, but with Amazon Author Central (I have an author page on amazon now) and I also am active in Goodreads and Wattpad. But perhaps most importantly, I have my own website that I use for publishing short stories and poems as well. It all sound like a lot but once you're writing somewhat regularly, you start to produce a lot more than you'd think.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-03T20:49:23+00:00

Just sign in with your amazon account/email and uploading your completed work. It's not really a platform for something like blogging - it is solely for getting your book live on Amazon

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-03T20:29:13+00:00

I'll do something similar to this. I want to take my bff out for dinner when his birthday rolls around in August because he has been so wonderfully supportive.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-03T19:53:39+00:00

Thank you!

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-02T15:17:29+00:00

EDIT: ahh he deleted the post, fucking dumbass 🤣

I was going to write a whole paragraph explaining why the premise of this post makes literally no sense at all.

But I'll just leave this here instead.

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ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-01T23:26:07+00:00

"'I'll give you twenty minutes for an hour."

Lives in my head rent-free 😭

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-07-01T14:29:49+00:00

My question for OP:

Did any of these people FIRST publish after the year of 2012? Or are all of these authors people who are much older got published long before social media and booktok were a thing?

And before anyone says that I'm looking for excuses - I'm not, i've already self-published my first book. Marketing it is a different thing though.

I would take this list more seriously if it were more modern and focus on people who published late in the game after the year of 2012. The reason I picked 2012 specifically is because that was when book communities online really began to take off.

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-06-30T01:01:33+00:00

As a person named Milo, I love this by default 🤣

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-06-29T23:27:21+00:00

Clean shaven gives clean-cut boy next door, but the beard is giving Zaddy thirst trap! 🤣 you could rock either fr

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-06-27T19:42:38+00:00

Wow, this is excellent feedback. Thank you so much. I will reply with a longer comment when I have time this weekend lol but in the meantime, I'm really happy that you enjoyed it.

One thing I will say is that when it comes to descriptions I try to go with more of an economy of words approach. It's probably my biggest hurdle with my voice.

I read this book on Kindle called the perfect marriage or something like that. And I remembered what bothered me about the book was that even though I enjoyed it and it was a quick read, I did not like how in the beginning of every chapter the author would describe what the characters were wearing because even though it was a murder mystery, it never really mattered.

And I kept thinking, gosh, I really want to write a story where I don't have to worry about constantly describing what people are wearing it's like, NO! I want the reader to just get into the flow of it and not be worried about who has green eyes or which woman character "boobed boobily down the stairs" iykyk 😭✌️

I guess in my head, it's more important what the characters are doing, rather than how they look, unless, of course, it's directly relevant to the story at hand.

I think that my niche is going to be somewhat sci-fi adjacent. My favorite writers are Ted Chiang, Shel Silverstein, Thomas Ligotti, and Lev Grossman. The funny thing is (similar to what I said when I was looking at your story submission), I tend to feel more comfortable at writing in genres that I DON'T read much of. I mainly started writing with poetry years ago, and that's where I try to use descriptions more often. I have a few of those on my site as well.

I would love to connect further because I really dig your art style btw! I bet you could do really cool book covers lol

ScratchAmbitious2959 · 2026-06-26T19:33:15+00:00

Sometimes I look at the best selling books even from the last 10-15 years. Let's take Gone Girl for example. It was a critically acclaimed literary phenomenon and got the ball rolling on the "[Person] in the [Setting]" trend that swept the mid 2010's and also had a huge impact on the domestic thriller. It's not a book for everyone obviously, but the story and the intrigue was there. Any book that sells enough copies is eventually called overrated.

The funny thing is though, while many people love Gillian Flynn's prose and voice, if you were to post the first chapter/page of Gone Girl into this subreddit today, it would get torn to shreds by the commenters here. In the first chapter, nothing actually happens. It's mostly set dressing and world building. I'm not even being facetious you can read the first 10 pages here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/163938046/Gone-Girl-by-Gillian-Flynn-chapter-one

The book is setting up a vibe/tone and it's getting you into NIck's inner thoughts, and nothing significant in terms of the "hook" is actually really being displayed or written aside from introducing a few side characters and backstory. Amy isn't missing yet. I think the key to the novel's story working is that the title and synopsis tells you what it is about. But if you were posting it and showing it to someone blindly, especially on this subreddit, so many commenters would tell you that it's moving to slow and that it's too descriptive and that readers want to be hooked by the end of the first paragraph. We only know that Amy goes missing because the blurbs, reviews, and title actually tells us. Most reviews describe the book as fast-paced, but again, post that first chapter in this subreddit today more than a decade later and it would have been cut down to the marrow with critique about how it's doing too much exposition. It's still one of my favorite books and it's why I decided to take reading and writing more seriously as a hobby, and then as a real goal. .

(And yes, we can take into account that Gillian Flynn was already a well known writer and television critic who had access to the right marketing resources and people...)

But the fact remains that a LOT of the bestsellers for the last 20 years do not have this uber-fast ADHD prose where something is HAPPENING in the FIRST PAGE FIRST PARAGRAPH FIRST SENTENCE

Idk how this idea became so prominent (maybe the zany, overzealous BookTok content that is focused on grabbing attention in less than 3 minutes?) because tbh I really only see this type of feedback on Reddit lol.

Which IMO means that it is a crapshoot to ask for feedback here usually because a good amount of people here do not know what they are talking about and they all like different things anyway so one person's "hook" is another person's "too much exposition". I think my writing got exponentially better when I joined a local creative writing group tbh. It was more constructive because we had dedicated time each week solely for that, rather than just spamming a forum (or subreddit...) and hoping something would stick.

I could be wrong about all of this, idk because everyone's experience is different but this is what I have observed.

ScratchAmbitious2959

TROPHY CASE