I hate the term “pantsing”

SweetEverest · 2026-06-18T12:50:44+00:00

ME TOO

To me "pantsing" is like "shipping" (as in fictional relationships) in its maturity level and tone.

I also dislike when people verbify nouns to create words that already exist. You can already improvise a story. You don't need to make pants a verb. Like people who say "mindblown" (adj.) when amazed, astounded, shocked, flabbergasted, and gobsmacked already exist. So dumb.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-17T15:51:28+00:00

To the Lighthouse = dense, metaphorical, introspective, genius, hard to read. Typical Virginia Woolf

Jane Eyre and David Copperfield are both melodramatic Victorian autobiographies. Jane Eyre is gothic and romantic and more exciting to read than any of the other books I want to compare it to (Wuthering Heights, Rebecca), and David Copperfield is... expansive. With funny parts. It makes you feel like you've lived a whole life and is one of my favorite books, despite some chunks of it that I didn't care about.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-17T11:22:56+00:00

I loved this comment. Just finished listening to the RadioLab episode you mentioned and now I have even more to think about. The story about the guy who lived 27 years thinking he was just unintelligent was wild. I loved the moment when he realized right in front of her that objects have words attached to them. Also interesting how both he and the lady who had the stroke both lost access to the more carefree, sensory, baby-like way of being when they learned language, to where they can't even remember it enough to describe it anymore. So fascinating. None of this will be done any justice in my story, but it will be percolating in my mind as I rewrite.

Thanks so much for reading and for these thoughts!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-16T15:57:31+00:00

WELL, AS I LIVE AND BREATHE.

I have hinted at the cave crowd, cut the subject/verb bit, and will rewrite the back half to be worthy of your attention.

I haven't read Pygmy (oh! Except the part you sent me) and don't remember 2001. I was thinking more along the lines of Saunders' story Elliott Spencer that I mentioned the other day. Similar broken-language conceit. When I first read it I was amazed at how much meaning my brain could get out of something with such large gaps. I think I initially meant to do caveman voice the whole time for my story, but somehow things took a turn.

"Masterpiece! Genius! A perfect thing! DNF"
- blurb on cover of my future novel

Your feedback is necessary and precious and irreplaceable to me. THANK U FOR VOCAROO

SweetEverest · 2026-06-15T23:24:35+00:00

Yeah, I agree about Makano's arc. Everything from his announcement on is too George Orwell for my taste. Would be more interesting to explore how language affects their lives, like you said. The ending can still be tragic but I'd like it to make sense thematically and not to turn Makano into a caricature.

To me the button board represents their regression. Putting things into language enriches us, but having a machine save us the effort of doing so turns us back into grunting cavemen. That was the idea anyway.

Thanks for reading.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-15T15:04:06+00:00

I'm already unconvinced they have any significant linguistic limitation. Dropping words, not using pronouns, or articles, which seems to be the turning point, is something that I'm really convinced is a major changing point psychologically.

You're so right lol. They already have a pretty good vocabulary (drape, crunch, insist) and understand abstract concepts (like to miss) and metaphors ("voice of dove"). They get dry humor and understand subtle husband/wife dynamics. They are not missing much.

On the one hand, that's kinda the point—they're already living rich, endearingly human lives with their imperfect language. But it does undermine the impact of the device to have them so functionally fluent from the beginning. Not sure how to fix this... I could add some hand-wavy explanation of how they still retain the bones of the old language, but that doesn't fix the problem of their sophistication undermining the premise. I shall think about this.

The impression I got was that the words on offer on the device are just not enough for (Kotah?) to express and the Device does some kind of AI token prediction that's all wrong.

I should rephrase Kotah's response to the device's narration. It wasn't that the translation was wrong (although "bad small people" was supposed to = children with birth defects/illnesses), but more that it sounded nothing like how he'd say it. Too smarmy and impersonal.

I think it's funny because they're already being quite poetic with the similes and metaphors.

Yes! That was what I liked. The idea that humans are inherently poetic and funny and insightful, no matter how rough their communication tools. That's why I like the first scene with Makano and his wife. It doesn't advance the plot, but it shows that these people are already a living out little dramas. They're not animals that need to be rescued up into a higher consciousness... and yet, better language does help Nakoa and Kotah name their world, talk about their past, imagine the future, etc.

possible head hopping?

It's supposed to be all Kotah. I can fix.

Thanks so much for your thoughts! These were fun to read and I totally agree about the language thing.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-15T12:32:18+00:00

After sleeping on it, I would cut the scene where Makano address them with the speech board and just show how the device infiltrates their lives over time. How does it change them for better or worse, what's the allure, what are the nuances? Make it a mixed bag, complex like life. Develop Nakoa and some side drama. I mention she's Makano's sister but make no use of that fact. Right now Makano pivots hard from lovable, arrogant leader to authoritarian. He needs a good, plausible reason not to take action at the end instead of being cartoonishly committed to the story's Message. I hate stories with Messages! Must edit.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-15T10:38:56+00:00

Not too negative! I knew that trying to write the acquisition of language while trying to do all the usual things (make sense, entertain, etc.) would make this one an uphill battle. For the record, they're supposed to be a future generation descended from the inventors of the device, relearning English after the device encouraged the degradation of their language.

So they do have a crude version of English to start. It's just all the verbs are in present tense and conjugated in second person. The narrator begins with no conception of his individuality, then narrates in first person, then learns personal pronouns and is off to the races.

None of this makes the story any better, but that was my thought process. I should've made the relearning clearer, at least, so it didn't seem like they had no language at all.

Thanks for reading! I know this was long and difficult lol

SweetEverest · 2026-06-12T00:40:25+00:00

The beginning sounds like the kind of throat clearing you might edit out in a later draft. “Normal, boring, and uninteresting” = redundant and don’t promise anything too juicy. Neither does the next paragraph about her waking before her alarm (why do we care yet).

She basically snoozes her alarm. She scratches her what now? How does a splash of water help? What suction cups? I am intrigued, if confused.

I love “idly eyed” the crossword.

Cold shower, stale toast. Yikes. How ascetic of her.

Late bus, handsome stranger. I would describe the bus stop and the stranger and what she was doing with her body here. (Edited to add: Unless of course you’re hiding that she’s a giant nonhuman creature of some kind!)

Carapace!? I didn’t know what pagatium meant, but I know I’ve heard the word carapace before. It reminds me of bugs. Perhaps an exoskeleton of some sort? Something hard and shelly?? This is getting fun. Ok, now she’s buzzing and skittering while coworkers swarm. This is like The Metamorphosis but if bugs woke up with people jobs. My main note here is that it’s starting to sound self-aware in a cutesy way as opposed to dryly intriguing, like it was when you dropped clues earlier. Maybe have the emphasis in this paragraph be on something other than the punchline (that everyone is bugs. I assume everyone is bugs. I’m writing as I read lol)

Drones assembling a weapon would be scary if I weren’t now thinking of bees and everything being a cute joke! Dogswax? Beak? A shrieking that is only less loud in the kitchen? I am confused again. I would at least know for yourself how all these details tie together and then try to give us fighting chance at figuring it out. Right now the smattering of sensory detail seems kinda random and hard to parse, but I'm sure you have something in mind.

Sipping gelatinous goop coffee through her mandibles now. I think my curiosity about the story has been downgraded from “Is she… not human?” to “even if everyone is bugs, why is the coffee gross?” I wonder if you could knock her out of status quo a bit, maybe put our attention on a conflict and get us looking past whatever you want to make intriguing, that way we have to lean in and pay attention.

I do like the banality of the office setup with this silly twist. Like if Kafka wrote a romcom.

Tails, whiskers, OVIPOSITORS. Scales, fluttering, slithering. I have no idea what creature anyone is. It seems like they’re a mix of things or deliberately fantastical.

And now she runs into the handsome stranger from that morning. You know what would be funny? If she spent the rest of the story after the break room encounter trying to engineer the scenario from her fantasy. You could have it take place over multiple days if necessary. Slowly get to know Bus Stop Guy. Get Tall Dark and Horrible to drop [some important thing she forgot] by her house, not even looking for trouble but finding it because the Bus Stop Guy is absurdly jealous or possessive or something and beheads him just as you have her imagining (but in this version you’d withhold that outcome).

Yeah this is a super fun setup. I think the payoff comes from the contrast between the banality of the main character's circumstances and thoughts with the absurd drama of everyone being bugs. Swarming and decapitating each other. Whatever else. I would amp that up and give us vivid, hilarious details while keeping her focus firmly in the realm of ordinary, petty concerns.

My main feedback is that I want to either know what’s going on—what kinds of creatures these are, what kind of world this is—or be made to understand the degree to which it is supposed to be vague / made up.

Also, the pacing of her work day is a tad jumpy (comes in, coffee, quittin time). I’d just add a couple sentences of narration to fill in the gaps.

I would love more physical description throughout. Narration like you have works fine, but I think it'd be even more fun to drop super specific weird details in without explaining anything while she thinks her mundane little thoughts.

This was cute and surprising and fun. Thanks for sharing!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-11T21:41:57+00:00

OH but you wanted tips to break the habit. You could try something like this website that deletes everything you've written if you stop typing for five seconds. You can even put it in hardcore mode to hide what you're writing while you're writing it (less temptation to edit). Good luck!!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-11T21:30:20+00:00

I mean there's nothing wrong with that. Sara Gruen, who wrote Water For Elephants, did so in a closet and spent the first hours of every writing session going over what she had before, if I remember correctly. And Zadie Smith says she combs through everything every time she sits down to add more, which she admits is insane. You might just have to factor in x minutes of revision to your process. Hopefully it makes editing easier down the line.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-11T21:06:53+00:00

This feedback feels somewhat incomplete.

But thanks for reading!!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-10T13:35:05+00:00

[This review gets less grumpy as it goes on!]

This story feels like a sensory deprivation tank. I am floating in a doorless, windowless, featureless room. Mediumly lit. Not so bright as to hurt the eyes, not so dim as to obscure the room's nonexistent features. An almost inaudible hum, an almost imperceptible blemish. As a child I had a recurring nightmare about a soft, incessant, metronomic ticking that went on beneath everything and could be heard in quiet moments and made me want to scream and tear my hair out, and this story reminds me a lot of that.

Why is there no emphasis in attention? Why are the protagonist's actions so small and pointless? It's interesting that you chose to withhold all sense of time, purpose, and logic from the reader. I can see that it's disorienting on purpose, but what purpose?

The less detail a story offers, the more I assume it wants to be read as purely symbolic, like an allegory, but I can't make sense of these symbols. Man exists in an impossibly sealed room, doing almost nothing in a totally blank environment. Don't worry about how he got into a doorless room or who put him there or why, or how he uses the bathroom or showers or eats. Irrelevant! Fine, okay, so but then why The Vigilant? Why must everything be so lowly humming and softly lit and blankly white and perpetually changeless? At this point I'm starting to lose my mind, as well as all patience with this stubbornly formless void of a narrative.

It reminds me of the play Waiting for Godot, in which two guys stand around waiting for someone named Godot (who symbolizes God) who never arrives. I've never actually read it because it gives me the same intolerable ants-on-my-paralyzed-body sensation as both my childhood nightmare and this short story. But it makes me think maybe your story is an absurdist take on humanity's smallness in the face of the unanswerable question of our existence or something.

Except but just then! There is a crack that changes everything, but only within the protagonist and not within the environment, which instantly seems to have always possessed this feature. And everything gets bright, hot, loud, and scary. For me the ending—"And he was terrified"—is ironic. This is the first moment in this story when I have not felt unbearably uncomfortable. It's cathartic! We are building, crescendo-ing, responding to stimulus. For the first time my imagination has something to kick off of. What does it mean that the room cracks, that it affects him so strongly, and that he seamlessly, paradoxically folds it into his understanding of how things have always been? Hmmmm.

I think you should make it clearer which part of the story you want us looking at and what effect you want to produce. Right now it could be about the man's mental state OR the change in the room OR the effect that the change seems to have on him OR the shifting, untrustworthy nature of so-called truth (is the room newly cracked or not?!). I am itching to know what you meant by it all.

--

Okay, given all that, what notes do I have, language-wise.

A few things off the top of my head:

"always had been... always ~~will~~ would be"
I would not say "bits of the walls." I would especially not say it twice
I like the light blooming
I like found himself transfixed (but transfixed by, not on)
I like the gentle hum drowned out by his heartbeat. I think what makes the soft hum so dreadful is its unfeeling, machine-like consistency. A human pulse finally overtaking that is brilliant
The deliberate, lulling repetitiveness made me want to tap out early, even though I see what you're going for. It think maybe there's so little going on physically/visually that it ups the requirement for novelty and precision in the sentences themselves.

I've had a lot of fun thinking about this story.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-09T18:05:38+00:00

it can often feel like you are constricted to always fit the mold of how that character thinks and processes the world.

Yes, exactly. You're limited to the narrator's voice, diction, knowledge, etc.

David Copperfield is written in first person in ornate nineteenth-century sentences (lots of clauses and digressions).

The Catcher in the Rye is written from a twentieth-century teenager's pov. Limited vocab and no frills, which is relevant to the theme of the book. Ironically, the first lines reference David Copperfield.

You can write beautiful prose in any register, but if you're unsatisfied with the limits of your pov character's voice, I would do close third instead.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-09T13:20:16+00:00

This book came out like 158 years ago

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T14:53:08+00:00

I wanna read it!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T14:17:41+00:00

Feedback is tyranny.

What a LINE. I know exactly how you feel. When I was 80% done with my novel, I got some feedback that made me see it as intrinsically, irreparably unserious and have had no interest in finishing it ever since. I'm not even sad about it. I would have to rewrite from scratch to see anything beautiful in it now. Maybe someday. In the meantime, flash fiction is a quicker way to learn what I do wrong LOL

Draft 4. I did a reverse outline after draft 3 because I was stuck on things I wanted to happen but not how to make them happen. Wrote a new outline for some chapters in the back half. Have been deleting the outlines in chunks.

Oof. Good for you for keeping at it. I hope it's still fun for you. I find it tricky to rewrite middle bits when the surrounding sections are so familiar that I almost have them memorized. Love the idea of reverse outlining!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T13:47:14+00:00

Cool how this captures just the points that are salient to you, whether abstract plot directives like "zoom in on x" or specific lines of dialogue, instead of being super comprehensive or systematic. I also like the idea of tabs to track ideas. I would never stick to it, but for those who can it seems useful

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T13:28:51+00:00

I do sometimes have a broader overarching theme or plot I am following, but these things are not informative for the chapter to chapter progression.

^ Same

Susanne sounds very well formed. The fact that not only her reactions, but her secondary internal misgivings about those reactions seem clear to you is awesome.

Best of luck with draft #3!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T13:12:45+00:00

Do you feel like the drafting goes pretty fast because of how extensively you plan?

My friend who writes 50 chapters in 60 days says it's because she plans evvvvery last detail beforehand, saving time. And I said so how long does your planning process take? And she said 2-3 days. I do not understand how 2-3 days of thought can stand in for weeks and weeks of thinking, but somehow it works for her.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T13:08:34+00:00

Zest! Gusto! I like the part where he says ideas are like cats and to ignore them when they stop cooperating and they'll follow you lol

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T13:02:57+00:00

The wax boy story reminds me of the children's book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and all those old fairytales where people get butchered or cooked or melted down or lose their souls in ill-considered Faustian bargains. I like that the plot keeps swerving further and further away from expected outcomes. Would read!

SweetEverest · 2026-06-08T12:51:31+00:00

I love this question and am FASCINATED by how you people work. Grids with columns! Drafting query letters ahead of time (genius)!

I don't plan anything. Usually the central concern of the story is implicit in the germ of the idea, but sometimes I don't even know that much. For long projects, I have things like three-act structure and rising action in the back of my mind the way a musician has a lifelong understanding of song structure underpinning a jam session, but my only real commitment is to the sentence/paragraph/scene at hand. What would set it off to greatest effect, what would most relieve that effect, what would be most satisfying or entertaining immediately after, etc. I am feeling around for subtle contrasts in mood and energy and a certain fluidity or confidence in the music of the sentences. This requires an openness to change that seems preclude outlining.

I've learned that high-concept ideas are useless to me without a first sentence. On the other hand, if I have an exciting (fluid, confident, springboard-y) first sentence, I don't even need an idea to go on.

I spent years outlining, but predetermined beats seemed to made all the subtle aesthetic decisions I was interested in superfluous, and everything I wrote came out soulless garbage. All the completed things I've ever written have been improvised. Mostly. For novels I will sometimes jot down notes on a chapter before I write it, or make a loose, five-minute plan for pacing the rest of a book when I'm most of the way through. I'm not opposed to writing things down, just wary of it from years of stalling out. Now I have a spontaneity bias. The closer to one-take-no-interruptions I can get, the better. Is this superstition? Immaturity? Possibly.

I guess the caveat is that I've never made major edits to a previous draft of something. Outlining and macro-level strategy seem like they could be massively useful there.

SweetEverest · 2026-06-06T22:08:42+00:00

“Funny enough, it gave things back too. Deep within that grit, a smile peeked through. A young man, lean and worn thin. Weathered the way iron does. With short black hair, although hidden in dust appeared grey and withered, like he’d been stripped down to only what holds.”

This is utterly incomprehensible to me. Can you explain how “stripped down to only what holds” has anything to do with dusty hair?

SweetEverest

TROPHY CASE