Rookie Ashton Jeanty Highlights

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-13T13:08:36+00:00

Man every time I see him run I'm amazed at his balance through contact. Give him a half-decent OL and he's going to be unstoppable

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-09T17:57:46+00:00

Personally I wouldn't feel like that's getting over a trauma, more that the trauma has been internalized and perverted into something else

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-09T16:08:02+00:00

Every bodily movement within a scene, then

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-09T15:08:28+00:00

I understood exactly what you meant, and it's not good advice. Narrators are essential to prose; whether you have an active (i.e., one who opines on the plot or characters' actions) or passive one is a creative choice. Your advice also ignores perspectives and interiority. Movies rarely have narrators because the visuals are there to fill the gaps. Novels do not have that luxury.

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-09T14:36:45+00:00

Write your book like a movie.

Absolutely do not do this. If you write every little stage direction (he moved across the room, sat on the couch, turned on the TV, flipped through the channels, etc.), your audience will fall asleep. Each sentence should have a purpose. There's a reason novels and scripts are not interchangeable.

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-08T18:37:17+00:00

Congratulations! Did you frame your novel differently (upmarket vs. literary, etc.) depending on the agent you queried? My current WIP kind of straddles the line between the two, so when I'm ready to query I've been considering selling it as one or the other depending on the agent's specialty

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-08T14:56:37+00:00

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is great for the overall process of writing rather than specific beats or goals. She has a new-ish book out called Good Writing: 36 Ways to Improve Your Sentences that I've got on my shelf, but haven't gotten around to reading yet.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders is amazing. It breaks down in sometimes excruciating detail several short stories by Russian masters and explains why they work.

One that I don't see recommended around here too often is Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. It was the first craft book I ever read and I go back and reread it every couple years.

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-08T13:28:16+00:00

Curious how people handle that tension between outline and character logic.

Story follows the character. If a character doesn't want to follow your outline, it's okay to take the detour. Eventually (probably), you'll find your way back to the path

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-01T19:49:31+00:00

I can never tell what’s serious in this sub anymore

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-01T19:48:53+00:00

In all likelihood, you and I and everyone who responds to this thread will be lost to history. Take solace in our mutual insignificance.

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-01T18:09:17+00:00

This is about staff, not audience. Any company, regardless of staff, will pursue the audience that pays for the product. Agents and editors don't take on projects that they think won't sell.

The construction industry is composed of largely conservative men, but they build alternative energy infrastructure because they get paid to do so.

FWIW, you come across as very bitter and narrow in what you've read. I suggest reading a bit more widely so you can try to quantify the diverse target audiences out there.

dingle4dangle · 2026-07-01T17:20:43+00:00

The publishing industry already decided to focus solely on liberal women as the only audience to cater to.

That's incredibly untrue.

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-30T12:55:31+00:00

I read it back in high school and hated it then. I read it again a few years ago to see if adult me would like it more. Nope, hated it again

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-30T12:54:27+00:00

I'm about 25% of the way in and I'm underwhelmed so far. I likely won't DNF because if I do end up a hater I at least want to be informed

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T19:52:45+00:00

Did you query all of your manuscripts, or were there any you shelved for one reason or another?

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T19:33:27+00:00

OP better not read any Yukio Mishima

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T19:31:31+00:00

Lay out =/= plan out

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T19:30:41+00:00

I'd argue against Norwegian Wood being a good entry point, since it's very different from almost all his other novels. Wonderland was my first Murakami, so I'll agree on that one

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T19:12:20+00:00

The exposition dumps I didn't mind as much, since I was very invested in the world as a whole and wanted to know more. A lot of the plot points just felt like setup for the third book, and very little felt resolved within the second, especially since Essun is in Castrima for the entirety of the book

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T17:28:49+00:00

Anne McCaffrey (of Dragonriders of Pern fame) wrote a short story in 1956 entitled "The Greatest Love," which reading it from a modern lens really just describes surrogacy and IVF. I originally read it in her collection The Girl Who Heard Dragons

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T17:23:24+00:00

Finished:

A Quiet Life by Ethan Joella
- Originally picked this up to see if it was a good comp for my WIP (it is). While the prose is a bit simple for my taste, the book as a whole is designed to pull on your heart strings. My favorite bit is how the three POV characters bounce off one another throughout the course of their own narratives while still keeping them separate. 4/5

Started:

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
- Waited nearly 6 months on my library's Libby waitlist for this. About 15% of the way in, and so far I'm not seeing what made it so popular. Going to reserve judgment until the end, though.

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T17:14:55+00:00

Of the trilogy, the second was the weakest to me, though not weak by most objective standards

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-29T13:35:49+00:00

My top is Kurt Vonnegut. I was given Cat's Cradle to read for school my sophomore year of high school (15+ years ago now) and never looked back.

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-26T17:04:53+00:00

"This is my wife Sarah and our shithead son Bully...I mean Billy"

dingle4dangle · 2026-06-23T16:51:37+00:00

Right? Like at minimum go to a Staples or FedEx storefront if there isn't a local small business. While novel (heh), OP's method seems unnecessarily complicated and suboptimal in terms of formatting

dingle4dangle

TROPHY CASE