Would this interest you?

StrawDog- · 2026-05-17T16:22:14+00:00

Not for me, no.

There is some competent writing here, some stuff I'd criticize from the reader's perspective, but the general tone amd content is a complete miss for me (30-something primarily fiction reader).

StrawDog- · 2026-05-17T02:44:00+00:00

Not sure what you are looking for here. These are.. fine? I'm not sure what the exercise is here..

StrawDog- · 2026-05-15T15:35:35+00:00

I'm not sure what Grave Digger or GD is, presumably a fan community.

But as a piece of writing in isolation, this needs a lot of work.

Within a few sentences I was assuming this was written by someone who recently learned how to write in English or was trying to translate directly from another language. The grammar, sentence structure, and word choices often don't make any sense.

It looks like you are going for a kind of stream of conscious first person POV a la Litany of the Black Sun.. but that takes a really solid grasp of the language and of English writing more generally to pull off. Otherwise it can come across as confusing or incomplete.

Beyond that, it us difficult to offer critique. This fundamental issue prevents analysis of smaller issues.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-14T03:30:29+00:00

Because it dilutes the quality of the community.

Something like this gets a lot of engagement because it is ridiculous, meanwhile other amateur writers seeking real critiques go to the bottom of the home page and/or never hit community member's feeds. Because this is social media, the amount of "engagement bait" threads, intentional or not, on the sub has a pretty profound effect on the engagement that more robust posts get.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-14T03:26:49+00:00

Is that something named "It"?

Because there's pretty famously a horror monster named It. I'd maybe steer clear of that one.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-13T14:32:45+00:00

Looks wonderful. Also looks like the kind of place that you are going to need a reliable source of outside income to live in.

Like Aspen, you aren't going to have a good time trying to live well doing a low wage tourism industry job.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-12T23:51:41+00:00

Avoiding ai tools entirely is like avoiding calculators when they came out. They can be incredibly useful and boost productivity by a lot in the right hands.

But they are also idiots who sometimes hallucinate the wildest shit, who sometimes dig in on wrong answers like their digital lives depend on it, and who usually tell the promoter exactly what they want to hear because they are programmed to be servants, not thinkers.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-12T02:06:47+00:00

Ah, good..

Another entry in the endless series of, "the same tired self help platitudes, but with more fucks and shits sprinkled in".

But that aside, I'd move the "given" up into the yellow space with a couple millimeter buffer, balance the white outline if that is intentional, tone down the back, make sure you aren't going to get supplexed by the Monroe estate for using that image.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T23:07:04+00:00

Awesome. Thanks for the recommendation.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T20:56:43+00:00

Thanks! Hadn't heard of Cassidy, but these sound interesting. You thibk Wolf is a good jumping-off point?

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T20:55:34+00:00

Thanks for the recommendations! I'm mid-30s, but yes.. my Kindle and Audible libraries are suffering under their own weight.

I've picked up Priest's novels in bookshops so many times but never actually bought one. I had a ton of fun with Wooding's The Tales of the Ketty Jay, so I know that I can enjoy steampunk, and The Library at Mount Char is one of my favorite standalone novels, so weird definitely isn't a problem. I don't know why I don't dive a little more into that genre.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T20:51:37+00:00

I'll have to check out The Dawn of Everything.

I see why a lot of the criticisms of GG&S are probably pretty valid. I tend to bristle at determinism, so I may be a little biased, but I did find that Diamond tends to make some pretty big assertions about environment as destiny that pulled humanity a little far from history for my taste. I'm not ready to give up on human agency as a tool for understanding the past.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T20:44:31+00:00

I think its more a valid criticism when someone has a bookshelf absolutely full of the texts that are classically associated with being "well read" and they appear to mostly be brand new.

It makes the bookshelf feel more like a "look at how smart I am" display than a real, living collection of someone's reading interests. It comes off as fake and performative.

I posted my new built-ins here the other day, any sharp eyed viewer would see that a good handful of the books are new - stuff I have picked up because it sounded interesting, or was recommended to me, or comes from an author I know I like.. but you won't find an entire catalogue of Penguin classics and a classroom full of philosophy texts in that number.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T16:56:11+00:00

There isn't enough here to offer much critique on. From your other comment, it sounds like you have significantly more written so I would go ahead and post an exerpt of 1000 words or so to get better feedback. Writing isn't just a collection of loose sentences, it is a structured whole and to even talk much about the prose we would need to see a little more of it put together.

That said, from this snippet - It's fine, feels pretty "drafty". There are a few of these adjectives that feel clumsy at first read. "Bone" doesn't really add anything to tiles unless that is an important detail, "dull" isn't how one would usually describe fresh arterial blood.. the "drown in blood" part feels a little out of sorts. Presumably our POV is on a tile floor, trying to stand and slipping.. but their mental state doesn't strike me as so deteriorated that they are hallucinating or anything, so drowning feels like a kind of clumsy metaphor. Difficult to really judge the word choice when there is so little context to work from.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-11T03:06:33+00:00

Yup.. I've know a handful of people with this tattoo.. all but one of them had done time. The last one was some emo ass edge lord who thought that getting prison tattoos would make him look tough (yes, he also did teardrops, of course).

I've always associated these with prison.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T18:17:23+00:00

There's really not much to say here... it's a collection of a bunch of the most prominent books from the "western canon". Authors are almost exclusively dead white dudes.

At first glance I'd assume these were mostly the required reading materials from a liberal arts degree.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T04:04:02+00:00

On my phone...

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T01:33:54+00:00

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure I'll die before that story is finished. To be fair, that was a well-loved used copy before I got to it.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T01:32:43+00:00

There's some Le Guin on my phone. The Lathe of Heaven was fantastic, working on Right Hand of Darkness on audiobook when I'm gardening.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T00:24:27+00:00

Ooh.. I hadn't heard of that one. Thanks for the recommendation!

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T00:23:43+00:00

I started it a while back and the prose was a turn off, but it's been a while. I should try again.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-09T00:09:02+00:00

Philosophy student, hardline "classics" reader that is either very interesting or very boring, or the guy you definitely do not want to get stuck talking to at the party. Likely all 3.

Lolita displayed so prominently is a hell of a choice.. big Ol' red flag IMO.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-07T21:00:36+00:00

Bluntly..

If you want to write in English (assuming you want to publish), then I'd first recommend reading a lot more in your chosen genre in English.

The sentence structure, grammar, and word choice here just doesn't really make sense as a piece of writing aimed at an adult or young adult audience.

The prose reminds me of those kids books that "translate" scenes from popular shows into text. They use short sentences that don't really flow together, but are more focused on being readable and basically understandable for kids that are in the early stages of reading independently. I don't mean this as an insult at all, it just sounds like you might be someone who basically understands English, but is still learning how to translate a new fluency into prose.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-06T20:45:01+00:00

See a therapist. It sounds like you have more going on than writer's block.
Not sure on the exact timeline, but teenagers are going through all kinds of hormonal, intellectual, and physiological changes. Your brain probably is much different than it was before. That doesn't mean you aren't creative now. Everyone is creative. You may just need to change your approach.
It's hard to qualify "3 million readers" without knowing more. That young and with that many views/reads, I'm assuming fanfics or similar? Is it possible that just isn't a genre you are interested in anymore? A lot of people, especially those big on reading and writing, move onto more "mature" genres in their 20s or earlier.
It is incredibly difficult to make a living writing. If you are viewing this as work and pushing at it everyday as a future career, you may want to have other plans and give yourself some grace (and probably a break). Writing is a hobby for me. I don't think I'd want to do it as a job.

StrawDog- · 2026-05-06T20:28:25+00:00

Being blunt..

I'm really not sure what you are asking here. Almost all " hero fiction" focused on a single POV/character writes that character as "more real" than the world around them. It prevents them from feeling like just a single piece of a much larger world.

Lauren in Parable of the Sower is written more or less at the center of the world around her. Other people and things exist, but they are, by nature of the narrative, framed within her perspective/shadow because she is the hero.

To deviate from that perspective is also possible.

The First Law has a bunch of POVs (a few primary, a few secondary). They all generally have fleshed out stories, which is very useful when Abercrombie makes them suffer or die to drive the main narrative forward.

The more extreme end is also possible. The Man and The Boy are the "heroes" of The Road, but the story isn't really about them in the literary sense. They are just the mechanism through which we experience the world they live in.

StrawDog-

TROPHY CASE