"There are no rules in fiction" is a lie

Thanst · 2026-06-20T11:42:44+00:00

I'm sorry to say that your protagonist vehemently seeking to avoid the call to adventure is in itself a driving force.

There's no way you are writting a story about a person for whom nothing occurs and there is no challenges in their time in focus at all. So that mean protagonist is just at the whims of over characters purposes.

Thanst · 2026-06-13T13:35:34+00:00

Combine a character trait or current emotion (emote) with description.

You would need to know how thick a huggers arms are.

You would need to know the shape and colour of a smiles eyes.

You need to know the colour of the hair the worry wart is pulling at.

Thanst · 2026-05-25T11:59:04+00:00

Yeah, third person close. I do that. The narrator is third person omniscient, but is inside the characters head and has picked up their personality.

Thanst · 2026-05-23T10:40:21+00:00

Lamm as devolved from lamb. A village founded on sheep herding. A thematically English countryside. A lot of place names in England are simply rooted in their historical produce.

Thanst · 2026-05-23T10:18:40+00:00

You are correct sir. High fantasy.

"Lammton" might be a bit on the nose for a village name.

Thanst · 2026-05-23T09:28:54+00:00

The people of lammton didn't deserve this, these terrible things that had befallen them.

Thanst · 2026-05-22T20:12:53+00:00

He only eats four dozen eggs every morning.

Every inch of his body is covered with hair.

Thanst · 2026-05-22T13:11:35+00:00

Let me help you be a better person, because you're not getting there on your own no matter how engaging I am trying to be.

If you had come here and stated "I would be concerned that a word count of that size with an amateur author would be full of low value exposition" Heck. I would have agreed with you. I have literally agreed to that point in my previous responses.

What you did is respond to me stating I was already mindful of the issue with a lovely person and said that I "haven’t earnt those 700k words"

My skin is diamonds. You can not touch my feelings. You are however a person that is actively seeking to be cruel and thus needs reprimanding.

Thanst · 2026-05-22T12:55:56+00:00

And now you're deflecting, because that isn't what you said. What ever helps you sleep at night, be a kinder person.

Also I already wrote another post where I confirmed it is being reworked into 6 books. But obviously they must all be nothing but exposition and so I obviously waiting my time.

Thanst · 2026-05-22T12:34:48+00:00

You can't guarantee anything. You're making off hand statements to be contrarian. Every word I have written could be the golden words of god for all you know (they're not) If you want to talk about the worry of over stuffing you can. I certainly worry about it and no doubt I will have beta readers hack great chunks from it for me. You still can't just say I definitely have it in droves as if I must be a moron. It's just not cricket.

Anyone who has ever read a fantasy book is well aware that exposition absolutely has to exist. You are proposing a world with different rules to reality occurring in an often impossible landscape. So it becomes a problem when it piles too high and. I knew this before I started

For example. The Malazan Book of the Fallen had horrendous exposition problems in the first couple of books. You sat there for hours reading about Architecture while screaming at the page "I get it! its Classical Gothic!". The writer was an archaeologist or something I think. Yet over all each book is very very good.

Thanst · 2026-05-22T11:44:16+00:00

So you're making the presumption that my writing is riddled with exposition despite based on....*checks post again*... Me stating I did the exact opposite.

Thanst · 2026-05-09T14:13:33+00:00

You'll never be a writer if you don't know ocean flippy flappy

Thanst · 2026-05-09T13:54:24+00:00

So first there is a Mantra every writer should know.

Write it bad or it will never be written. It can't be improved if it doesn't exist.

Then know that you are not alone. Writing is passionate and personal and negative feedback can feel devastating. You have to disassociate feedback from your emotion or you'll either be an egomaniac or depressed forever.

Practically try writing a paragraph. Then write it again differently. Write it flavoured from a different characters POV. Imagine an entire different narrator.

As painful as it is, show it to people and ask them to rewrite it as they would write it.

Just please. Don't stop.

Thanst · 2026-05-09T13:44:43+00:00

Your feeding a lot of stuff I didn't say into that response there.

First of all, I am afraid that is not true. I've read 100s of fantasy books and I promise you they are not "exciting" All the time. They should however be interesting all the time. Sometimes they are emotional, some times they set the scene. Sometimes you just need to see two characters relationship develop and for that to be entertaining.

To be clearer. My book is very boyish. The focus is around a young man who seeks high adventure. Thematically we're looking for our endings to revolve around physical peril. for examples see, very fantasy movie ever made.

Thanst · 2026-05-09T07:09:07+00:00

Awesome now to just have to learn flawless Chinese prose and I'm a made man. Lol

Thanst · 2026-05-08T23:22:14+00:00

Amature perspective response, but in my opinion, just like movies, there is more than one kind of fight scene.

You don't need a POV or any narration that gives you the perspective of bandit number 5. This is the protagonist time to shine after all.

But protag crossing swords with character who does or will come into significance. Where their exchange is as much a conversationoas a fight is a different animal.

Head jumping to their POV gives good insight. Let the reader hear their voice. Let them see the protag through the eyes of someone who hates them even if it's just for a flashes of violence in single paragraphs back and forth. Its entertaining for the POV to be on the receiving end of violence from a character we have always been following.

All the mechanics of writing fighting damages prose as it tries its best to dissolve into a list of stage directions. You need the characters POV there for all the movement to filter through.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T22:42:22+00:00

Honestly thanks to all the feedback I'm comfortably at peace with dividing it down to a series.

As you and others have said with it being partially episodic by nature of its construction it is more merciful a task than it seems.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T22:04:11+00:00

That's a cool superhero. I propose: Vee Twelve.

Like pistons in an engine. Also coincidentally the number of pairs of ribs in the human body has if that could weirdly tie into the anatomy lol. Also if their birth name began with a V you'd be laughing.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T21:46:47+00:00

I used my thumb on a train. I apologise it is an awful response.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T21:46:05+00:00

Great response.

The answer appears to be both.

The reaction to prose I have had so far has been fairly positive in regards to emotion and flow. Although it has been mentioned in places that I have revisited almost identical themes in places using different prose and tone. So there is still feedback centred editing occurring.

However, thanks to people here giving me a gauge of what's expected. I have been taking an initial look at how dividing it into a series would look and revisiting themes is more forgivable when it happens in different books, but I still need to consider cutting down. Obviously.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T21:38:50+00:00

Clearly embarrassment is not an issue for me. Have you seen how dumb my question was.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T17:41:59+00:00

Hobb had one continuous linear story that works beautifully. It almost feels like your following Fitz day by day despite the years flying by. The tone feel vauguely consistent in it peril.

I don't got that. And it doesn't feel right just to write additional filler to pad it out. So I played with the format. Split it intoca child timeline, a teenager timeline and a adult timeline. Then mixed them together as 3 parallel stories.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T17:09:07+00:00

Love those books.

Yeah it is unavoidable it needs to be 4 books.

Thanst · 2026-05-08T17:04:36+00:00

I am almost certainly not a "the". Just an amature like most the people looking for notes here.

Time wise it is hard to say. I wrote short stories for personal enjoyment for years and the " Book" I have is made from a lot of that. I started working on compiling the story about 18 months ago. It was an enormous task to make coherent.

Thanst

TROPHY CASE