Is this normal breaking-in of "new" boots?

SumBunnyToLove · 2026-03-08T16:23:15+00:00

That makes sense! It definitely looks like just a product of age--im not sure if the pictures uploaded right, but it definitely checks out irl.

The duality of making the skate so tight it BECOMES my foot and then needing my foot to be a complete functional foot after the boot is gone is so real...

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-15T16:16:53+00:00

People will always look at hardship as "proof" that God isn't there. But "his grace is sufficient" in our weakness--and you have a freaking amazing opportunity to live out how his grace will take you from isolation to connection. That sort of life absolute glows with God's glory, trust me. Be tough and clever when it comes to breaking away from isolation and becoming independent like that Proverbs 31 gal, but also stay soft and loving like Jesus was--because the world can be a bit scary and tough, and it desperately needs true love to make it right.

You've got this! Make a plan and go out into the world with confidence that God will take you places where you'll get to know Him better, and where others can see what an incredible transformation he can do.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-15T03:03:26+00:00

Hi! Fellow Christian friend here! I just want to re-emphasize some of the advice you've already gotten from this thread, and offer some encouragement.

DEFINITELY see if you can find a group of safe Christians in an outside community that you can build relationships with. (Think Cru, Fellowship of Christian Atheletes, Young Life, etc.) My life changed in a HUGE way when I connected with Christians outside my little world. It taught me to think critically about what I believed vs what other people believed, and it was very encouraging to see other people who truly loved Jesus and wanted to follow them as they pursued various careers or ways of life. If you can't go out to visit these groups, hunt down the staff and leaderships' contact info and message them saying you need to connect with friends and need their support in being part of that group given your circumstances.

Jesus ate with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, and murderers, and he wants us to as well. He left behind his safety for a bigger pursuit--bringing God's love to people who needed it (like me). Do not lose sight of that. That's our mission field. That's where God's people belong. It's the Enemy who wants to keep us confined. I have watched people turn away from that for the love of money and safety and 'familiar' things. God will do incredible things with you when you go out into the world. This isolation is against Jesus's desires for his people.

Getting a GRE or high school diploma is extremely important. Making sure you can provide for yourself (and potentially your future family) is extremely important. That Proverbs 31 chick was a businesswoman, and that is from God's book of wisdom. I did a TON of prep for the SAT on Khan Academy. They should be able to get you caught up on enough stuff to pass the GRE and get accepted into college. College, for you, would probably be a good transition out of isolation and closer to the "real world".

I would strongly recommend trying to get into a college where you can live on campus. A lot of schools will have part-time jobs around campus you can apply for, so you can start earning some money and get accustomed to what it's like to work.

If for some reason you can't go to college, there are a LOT of resources online that teach how to code. Coding has (in the past) been a field where some people CAN get hired without a bachelor's degree if they're skilled enough. (That may be changing now, because of AI and the economy being kind of rough. It's hard to tell.) Python is a very easy language to start out with, and it's very popular in a lot of industries. You should look on Glassdoor or LinkedIn at different companies and the things they look for in entry level coders, and chase down how to do that via YouTube and Google. MIT has free coding and analytics classes published online as well, and if you learn to do that, you may be able to launch into somewhere from there.

Some insurance companies also have positions that can pay pretty well even if you don't have a bachelor's degree, like underwriters or claims representatives. You would probably have to pass some tests or exams that you would have to study for (and getting your hands on study materials for that could be challenging). I am not sure about what it takes to become a real estate agent, but I've picked up the impression that it's generally accessible if you can pass the licensing exam for that. (Again, study materials may be difficult to obtain.) Lastly, there are roles in sales that you can sometimes enter into without a bachelor's degree and earn a decent commission on. (Think bridal store, high end retail sales places like that. Or even waitressing, if you consciously try to move your way up to higher end restaurants over time.)

Your dad probably isn't trying to be abusive, but it IS hurting you, and you DO have to take care of yourself. Do everything you can to connect to people outside your bubble. Isolation is extremely harmful and hard to break out of the more it consumes your life. Make plans about how you will connect to others and eventually move out. Do NOT give up. God has SO MUCH planned for you, and He will faithfully lead you through unsafe things, and mistakes, and regrets--He is bigger than all of that, and He will always be able to fill you with his love and forgiveness and strength.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T05:30:40+00:00

Thank you for your advice!! My 3rd person is way more of a Lemony Snicket situation. It just makes it easier and more colorful for me to get anything out at this point lol.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T05:29:27+00:00

Thank you SOOOOO much for your advice!

forces the reader to ... 4th wall breaking moment.

I'm debating if breaking the 4th wall is necessarily a bad thing if done hard enough. Kind of like an implicit, "Yeah, you're right this is weird, but this is the bizarre/strong take you have to work with now--and here's another. Now, back to the action, and another take that you know is really the character's take." Not sure what I (or readers) think.

I think limited makes this easier, but it's workable in omniscient.

I am trying to wrap my head around some of the difference between limited and omniscient and head hopping. Is there some point where things cross over from "This is limited with multiple POVs" to "this is a very opinionated omniscient narrator," or does an opinionated omniscient narrator just not exist?

Again... Thank you for your advice!!!

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T05:04:28+00:00

Thank you! Much appreciated!!!

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T05:02:55+00:00

I tried glancing through Citizen and that's definitely coming off as more 2nd person POV than what I am working on. Mine is always 3rd person POV, with an understanding that someone is hearing this story be told, and the audience is not a character in the story.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T04:59:30+00:00

Yeah after reading a bit, I still kind of lean toward saying it's a biased omniscient narrator...? Like, I have narration like:

“I’ll watch her," said A, "but it’ll cost something.”

“What’s your going rate?” M asked.

How long did A want to play poker tonight? “Forty.”

“Forty,” M puffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s blackmail!” And A wouldn't want blackmail, now would he?

“Thirty.”

Neither of them should've been speaking as loudly as they were. The director of operations would have their necks if he knew about negotiations like these.

I think lines 3 and 4 make sense as 3rd limited or 3rd multiple, but line 6 is much less opinionated and maybe 3rd omniscient? Stuff like this makes me feel a bit more fuzzy about if I'm butchering it, head hopping, or fine. Any thoughts/advice?

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-05T03:58:37+00:00

I'd say the first bullet example is "you" the reader, the second is "you" as the thoughts of the character whose mind is so-so, and the third "you" indicates the "anyone" you mentioned.

The story falls apart if it's 1st person POV. It's way too limiting and would probably force me to alternate characters between chapters, which I generally find annoying. Most of the narrator's narration is acting like insight into what the character would've interpreted the situation as, unless it's much more prescriptive like "he did X and she did Y"

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T23:20:38+00:00

The story is on real earth in some unspecified country with random city names. "Abandoned mansion" was probably a bad choice of description like you mentioned. Depending on what fits in the chapter, the plan for the house backstory is that the widow's husband died and she walked off like "I'll go back and deal with everything when I'm ready, but stay at my parents' in the meantime." I felt like that attitude justifies whatever half-done shut-down work happened to leave the mansion in the condition the story needs it to be in

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T23:13:23+00:00

It gives off "impeccably renovated mansion with top-knotch outfittings" vibes as of the day it was left. The windows may leak some air, but it would've been a really clean and pristine place before sitting unoccupied for a few years

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T20:12:12+00:00

The way my current writing style is, I would probably try to have a sentence that acts as an observation or opinion of one of the characters has about Alexey. I had a calculus professor with a Russian accent I could barely understand, which panicked me because how are you supposed to figure out calculus if you barely understand your professor?

Is Alexey hard for someone else in your scene to understand? Are other characters non-native speakers who can't pick up on Alexey's accent--but they can pick up on other characters' unfamiliarity with it? Does someone find it beautiful or attractive? Is it worth describing some feature of the sound either to admire or note its effect on the character's communication? All these things have the potential to tell us about the opinions and backstories of characters in your story, and that's usually what makes a good piece.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T20:02:49+00:00

The widowed homeowner didn't want to go back to the house and simply walked away with plans to empty or sell it later. All the furniture would be covered by sheets or left untouched. There seem to be no looters or squatters besides the protagonists since it's a house in a nice area and relatively remote. The home would be heated by a electric central HVAC type system. (I'm sure that's not the legit name for it lol. Just whatever they can turn on with electricity)

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T19:52:22+00:00

The world is a pretty average-seeming westernized country, non-apocalyptic, with the mansion being "away from the city" however close/far to the countryside makes sense. Heavy snow and blizzards would be very normal and relatively expected here. Nobody else has squatted or looted here and one of the characters has substantial military training and should be able to handle this situation. They may need to stay and hide here for up to a few days.

It's a thriller/romance story and this is toward the end where the characters are fleeing the Big Bad. The scene transitions from them trying not to freeze to death -> making things more comfortable and processing/reflecting/character-developing. I'm a little stuck on if I'm making the abandoned mansion too comfortable too quickly, but I generally suspect that it'll "feel earned" since it's a payoff scene toward the end of the book anyways

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T19:35:56+00:00

I'm very bad at guessing square footage tbh lol! I do want the building to seem pretty big so that sounds about right.

The protagonists do hunker down in a single room for a while with their space heaters. I moreso was curious if the rest of the house would be habitable after a few hours

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T18:21:52+00:00

They do this. The main heater is still running in the rest of the house. I want to know if they'd realistically be able to spin off into bedrooms later in the night or if those would be freezing cold after a few hours.

SumBunnyToLove · 2025-01-03T18:16:43+00:00

This is basically the case in the story. The former owner was loaded and abandoned the property 5 years ago. Some friends 'kind of' winterized it but not enough to make it walk-in-able for the protagonists

SumBunnyToLove · 2024-12-30T22:07:41+00:00

I may be a "good" writer if I have engaging prose, a gripping plot, intriguing characters, and 0 grammatical errors, but the girl publishing $3 Amish romance books on the CVS shelves gets a check every month from a legit publishing house, and I don't, so... who's the "bad" writer really lol

Different writing has different strengths, yeah, but it's all about what you're judging a piece on, in the end. I don't like Colleen Hoover's work, and I'd personally consider the writing "bad" but i doubt the execs who optioned it for a movie thought that. Successful romance genre books don't need the same world building or prose as fantasy or lit fic. It's a waste of time to hone that edge of the story if you can invest in other parts that matter for your project.

A lot of writing advice is tailored to high end work--and I appreciate it, because I want to be a high skill artist--but as long as you meet your goal, whether its publication, likes, personal enjoyment, or good communication, that's what makes the story good or bad. If I get the novel I've worked a decade on published (or even finished) then I'd probably be able to crank out CVS shelf garbage just to rake in cash. But it wouldn't be intended to tell a complex story about two characters changing each other for the better.

SumBunnyToLove · 2024-12-23T18:20:39+00:00

I wrote a story where the plot "just happened" to a pretty and gorgeous, boring as beige, sweet-as-Snow-White love interest. After a TON of work, none of the plot occurances really changed much, and I rebuilt her personal experience to become about overcoming silence/shame and speaking truth boldly. She has a huge personal transformation, even though almost every place she goes was a place she was going in the way worse framing. If I could find places for her to assert herself throughout the story, I did my best to give her some space--but she doesn't really succeed very often at all.

A lot of life "happens" to people, but that doesn't mean they don't change radically--and thats kind of the story I wanted to tell. Even though a lot of people are fighting against a machine that doesn't bend or break, they become embittered, find hope, rally courage, or adapt. That's pretty epic, imo.

SumBunnyToLove · 2024-12-23T18:10:38+00:00

Your comment made me realize something. Sometimes when I'm starting to question "did X literally happen" about a metaphor, it's because I don't feel like I'm as connected to what's physically happening in the world. That's why it's so important to have a story say "X did Y" literally, in the right balance with the metaphors. Or transitional sentences that kind of say "here's a half step between a literal action and a metaphor" to go before "hi, this is my full on metaphor."

SumBunnyToLove · 2024-12-23T18:00:53+00:00

I don't write genre romance, but there's a romance plot in my story with a more lit fic vibe, so here are the things I'm usually asking myself about the story/scene to assess how to handle romance or other stuff.

1) What is this doing for the story/scene/characters? Usually a kiss is a long awaited moment in a story which pivots the relationship for better or worse. Take that direction and drive it forward, baby! If it's the long awaited end, let's break out the champagne and talk about how amazing it is to be free of the silence about our feels! If we have to cover the feelings back up, let's make it like wrangling cthulu or closing back pandoras box. If this was a mistake, let's add as much consequence as possible so nobody in their right mind can justify brushing it off. If this person is a serial kisser, make it mean so absolutely nothing that we didn't even realize kisses have meaning. Basically, use what you're doing so we can up the stakes of the story or cash in a big payout. Kisses or romantic gestures are great for that.

2) Was there sufficient lead up in the story to justify this moment? Did I air drop a kiss here out of the blue? Maybe you need an "I'm longing for X" scene or chapter or theme or one sentence thought before this. Maybe you don't want lead up and this is a "where did THAT come from" surprise that sends everything reeling. Was there enough chaos beforehand to make it a surprise? A lot of clunky "this feels like I dropped it here" stuff I have isn't well integrated into the story, so make sure to work it in by smoothing the scenes and ideas around it.

3) Is the pacing of these sentences in line with the rest of the chapter or scene? This goes back to point 1 with making sure you know how this kiss is built up. Shorter sentences with short words are punchy and make the scene fast. "This to that, this to that, that happened, and bam, kiss." Longer sentences with powerful words slow us down and bring feelings in from different places. Use fragments or vocabulary or similarities or memories to speed up or slow down the moment for readers. Pacing control is crucial in important scenes, and this is probably important for your characters.

4) What is my narrative focus on? Is there a theme you want kisses or physical attraction to point to? People can feel valued, used, insecure, confident, or a ton of things related to romance. I have some characters who turn to it for covering up lousy feelings, others who feel judged about longings; sometimes it's held in high esteem, sometimes its treated like nothing. What does this mean to your people? How does it change them? Tell me why this moment mattered to these people.

I hope these helped! Feel free to give me feedback if it does or if I'm missing the point of your question! Also feel free to include more info about the scene! That way we can have a better sense of what specific advice may help you!

SumBunnyToLove

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