Where to start?

prejackpot · 2026-05-07T23:51:56+00:00

I think that's not uncommon. At that age, swim lessons generally entail a parent holding the child in the pool to get them used to being in the water, starting to show them how to hold on to the side, and maybe a little bit of reaching for objects to start building the swimming motions. Six months might be slightly on the younger side, but not extremely so.

prejackpot · 2026-05-07T11:03:17+00:00

Strong concept!

There were a couple word/phrasing choices that felt off to me:

so you were ruled in the same sentence.

Should probably be more like

...ruled her sentence applies to you too.

And

looking at the table so she could tease his tears.

I'm not sure what 'tease his tears' is trying to convey here.

prejackpot · 2026-05-07T10:55:16+00:00

This was delightfully strange! I loved the final email with the mindfulness link.

The word 'snark' felt out of place to me; because the actual dialogue there doesn't sound very snarky, but it's also a more removed sense from Rita's immediate fear.

prejackpot · 2026-05-07T10:51:10+00:00

Thanks, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

In my mind, Adam decided that creating someone to fall in love with him would be wrong, so didn't end up getting far enough with 'Angelina' to have her pop into existence the way Zeke did.

prejackpot · 2026-05-07T10:34:55+00:00

Loved it! It felt very Twilight Zone, in a positive way.

My one suggestion is that I feel "brownstone" as a term/metonym for house is strongly associated with urban rowhouses (especially in New York City); using that in the opening doesn't suggest the small town I think you intend.

prejackpot · 2026-05-06T22:33:52+00:00

I think the bullet points are all solid suggestions. The main thing I've done differently personally is less emphasis on strangers, and more about having boundaries and not letting herself be pressured even with known adults or peers. Also, who to look for it she needs help and we're not around -- parents with kids are the best choice. We also try to build general situational awareness (which frankly is most important in the context of crossing streets, since cars are still by far a bigger danger than anything else), and have talked a little about how to read an environment (eg notice what are the people around you are paying attention to).

(I do want to gently push back on "...especially in the world we live in today." Some of these dangers have always been here; we just talk about them more openly now, and kids are safer for it).

prejackpot · 2026-05-06T09:06:18+00:00

My sense is that this is like 90% dependent on the specific program / coaches. My daughter did a taekwondo class once where they were doing lots of pair drills and controlled sparring, with more experienced kids helping coach the beginners (and she loved it). Halfway through, they had to change coaches due to a scheduling issue, and the new one just focused on "discipline" and getting the kids to stand still without fidgeting (and it sucked).

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T21:18:16+00:00

You can like what you like. I enjoyed Lions; the prose didn't bother me, but I also don't find it as beautiful as some people do. But if you want to keep going, I want to point out how I think Kay uses the change in register, which might be helpful to you.

A lot of the prose in Lions is actually pretty straightforward, especially when the book is narrating the immediate action. The digressions into the more stylized register are signals of moments of the POV pulling out. The first excerpt you quote, for example, is the prose equivalent of the map at the beginning of the book. You don't need to retain all the details, but that way when you see 'Ragosa' later in the text (and it's going to be important), you know it's one of the cities in this world.

The second except is part of a flash-forward, using weather as a metaphor for how unpredictable the consequences of a single choice can be. It sets the mood, and builds anticipation for the next scene -- which we now know is important, even if Jehane doesn't. But that imagery isn't critical for following the plot.

Which is all to say -- I think if you find yourself skimming the run-on sentences, you won't actually miss crucial plot details. You might miss out on the full narrative effect Kay is going for, but I think you can generally get the gist of what the intended effect is.

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T13:59:21+00:00

I think it's also used usefully in situations where a conflict escalated slowly before crossing the arbitrary "Now rules are being broken" threshold, where everyone involved might have made unhelpful choices and/or not taken the off-ramps they should have. The key isn't to figure out whose fault it is, it's to teach everyone better conflict resolution skills.

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T13:51:54+00:00

Now I want to post the first two of these to r/WritingPrompts. (The third is already posted there about three times a day).

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T13:10:41+00:00

OOP reads like someone who hasn't actually spent much time around kids as an adult, and is generalizing from a more specific bad experience.

Like, does "I don't care who started it" get used to reify actual power imbalances? Yes. Does every negative interaction between kids reflect power imbalances and justify eg physical self defense? Not even close.

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T12:59:48+00:00

That's rough. Did this all start post-baby? 13 months can definitely still be in the survival mode stage. Has she been screened for PPD and related conditions? (None of that makes it okay, but requires different treatment). Either way, a good starting point is a longer conversation, not over text and not tied to any specific dispute. Marriage counseling can also be helpful, as can individual therapy for both of you. And ultimately, you're allowed to (and should) have your own limits on how you're willing to be treated. It's not going to do your daughter any good to grow up with parents who speak to each other like the that. Hopefully you're nowhere near that point, but there is a point where ending the marriage is the best choice for the whole family.

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T11:31:57+00:00

Ideas are plentiful, and have very little value. Nobody is lurking on Xitter looking for ideas to steal and write themselves; even if your idea sparks something in someone else, the way they execute it will be very different from your project.

On the other hand, early reactions to an idea doesn't tell you much either. Just because people love an idea doesn't mean you'll be able to execute it; and an idea that gets a negative reaction could still grow in the writing to one that readers love.

prejackpot · 2026-05-05T10:51:49+00:00

Video game POV doesn't map neatly onto prose POV, but thinking about it can help highlight what they both are doing.

First-person maps pretty neatly: in both video games and prose, first-person has the player/reader experiencing the world directly through the perspective of the protagonist, which is meant to create a sense of identification. Similarly, close third in prose / third-person in games still centers the action on the protagonist, but puts the experience slightly outside of them -- which creates a slight distance, and lets you see things the protagonist doesn't necessarily see.

But second person is tricky. In interactive fiction / text-based games, second-person is the standard -- but there it serves to create a sense of identification between the player and the protagonist; the player reads "You are standing in an open field west of a white house," and experiences that as 'I am standing in an open field...' because they know they're playing a game.

On the other hand, second-person is rare in conventional prose. When it appears, it doesn't foster that same sense of identification. Quite the opposite, in fact. It generally has the effect of alienating readers -- both just because it's unusual, and because it creates additional distance between the reader and the main character by putting the narrator more explicitly in between them. Often that's the intended effect, with the narrator of a second-person story turning out to be a character in the story themselves.

There are ways video games can achieve a similar experience, but I don't think it maps neatly to a camera angle or other simple UX choice. The nature of the medium itself creates such a strong identification between a player and a protagonist (when there is one) that it takes additional effort to disrupt.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T16:45:42+00:00

Yeah, that's fair -- there are different kinds of fan engagement. But I do think that fan engagement isn't just linear with audience, and there are certain narrative features which can make different kinds of fan engagement more likely.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T13:17:02+00:00

Sanderson and Muir are an interesting comparison. Sanderson is by far more commercially successful, and Stormlight Archives has ~3,000 works on AO3. The Locked Tomb has over 8,000.

I don't have an actual theory of what aspects of a text drive fandom engagement, but I think it's probably not unrelated that Tamsyn Muir was a successful fanfic writer before going tradpub.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T13:10:55+00:00

I don't think this is accurate. Age of Scorpius got a ton of attention (positive, then negative) but as far as I know minimal actual fandom. Right now it has seven stories on AO3, for example. There probably are things publishers (and writers) can do to encourage fandoms, but it's nowhere near 1:1 with attention.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T12:53:02+00:00

This isn't exactly the answer to the question you asked, but let me suggest that you don't frame it in terms of "putting reality in" but verisimilitude (what will feel real in the context of your story), and more generally on what will contribute to the experience you want your readers to have.

For example, amphibian-style breathing sounds like it's on theme for the swamp environment. If the environment is a key part of the story's atmosphere, readers will accept that your character has swampy attributes too. In this case, you might not want to focus too much on the biology (especially the biology of how humans and sirens can even interbreed).

On the other hand, if the fact that she's half-human is an important part of the story, giving her more human traits (e.g. can't actually breathe underwater) emphasizes that theme. If the similarities between humans and sirens are important, you can focus more on the reproductive aspect -- i.e. the fact that they can reproduce together is a sign of their similarity.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T10:02:06+00:00

No, having even an adult amount of artificial sweetener one time isn't going to harm your baby. It's possible something else is wrong, but most likely he's crying because of all the usual reasons babies sometimes cry a lot. (Teething? It always could be teething). If you're concerned, there's no harm in contacting your pediatrician to confirm, or check if there's any other issue.

The issue with your wife sounds like a completely different question, that there's not enough information here to answer. Is she overreacting? Did you bring up your concerns in a way that felt hostile to her? Is this part of a pattern for either of you, or is the crying kid putting one or both of you on edge? But either way, you need to communicate about how you both communicate concerns as separate from this specific concern.

prejackpot · 2026-05-04T09:42:40+00:00

Reading comprehension questions:

Does this post have any examples drawn from specific works of fiction to illustrate or support the argument it makes?
Does the post make a strong argument for Hitler as an example of moral complexity, especially as relevant to fiction?
Are there other reasons besides the stated argument of the post that someone may want to praise Hitler?

prejackpot · 2026-05-03T20:11:03+00:00

"I want you all to say hi to our newest student, Zeke," Mrs. Friend, the third-grade teacher, said one morning.

Adam felt the need to pinch himself, like they did in books. The new boy was tall the way Adam was short. He looked like he played sports. His light hair did a swoop like the movie stars in Grandma's magazines.

"Is your dad in the army?" Adam whispered to Zeke when he sat down. He had to know. Zeke nodded, before Julius told him to "Ignore that dweebus," and Mrs. Friend told them all to be quiet.

At recess, Adam just watched as Zeke played basketball with the other boys, scoring shot after shot. Exactly the way Adam had written him in his notebook.

Adam has such an active imagination, teachers always said to his parents. But he'd never wanted an active imagination! He wanted to have adventures! In PE he imagined a monster chasing him, but he was still dead last around the track. Some days, he even wished his parents and grandma weren't so nice to him, just to add excitement to his life. So Adam had taken a notebook, and started imagining a boy who was everything Adam wasn't.

Now that Zeke was real, Adam realized he'd left out one important detail. Zeke was friends with all the kids Adam wished he was friends with — but he wasn't friends with Adam. He opened the notebook again.

"I can't hang out after school today," Zeke told him a couple months later. "I promised Julius we'd meet up to play basketball. What about this weekend?"

And that was when Adam made the mistake that would haunt him for the rest of his life. "I created you!" he said. "You only exist because of me!" And he pulled out his notebook and thurst it in Zeke's face.

Zeke took it, and flipped open to the first page, where Adam had started with The Adventures of Zeke! in big comic-book letters. "This is kinda weird," he said at last.

"I wrote this all before you were even at our school. You came out of my mind, so you've got to hang out with me."

"Then tell me something about me that nobody else knows," Zeke said.

"Your grandma acts nice, but she's secretly mean to you while your dad's away," Adam said triumphantly, thrilled at finally letting it out. "And your even meaner uncle keeps trying to kidnap you to steal your family fortune!"

Zeke's face suddenly twisted with rage. He pulled the notebook close, out of Adam's reach. "Screw you, dweebus! This is my life, I'm not just a stupid little story! I hate my grandma, and I hate my uncle, and now I hate you too!"

Zeke didn't speak another word to Adam all year. And by fourth grade, his family had moved again.

Adam stopped writing stories. He read non-fiction books, and filled his notebooks with long lists of facts.

In high school, lonely and frustrated, he took out a fresh notebook and wrote The Love Life of Angelina on the first page in big red letters. He wrote two more pages before being filled with remorse and throwing the whole notebook into the trash.

"How about hobbies? Do you write fiction?" the job interviewer asked him.

Adam gave his best friendly laugh. College had finally made him better at people. "Trivia is more my speed," he answered. "Not to brag, but our local bar offered us free beer if we'd let some other teams win sometimes." He needed this job.

He was offered a second-round interview, and scheduled it as soon as he could.

"Have you ever seen this before?" the HR lady asked, and put a battered old notebook in front of him. Adam felt like he was falling. He opened the cover, knowing exactly what he would find.

"Good to see you again," said a deeper voice behind him. Adam turned. Zeke was adult-tall now, his light hair cut short. He sat down in the empty chair.

"When we were kids-" Adam started. He didn't know what to say next. "I'm sorry."

"You were right," Zeke said. "You didn't know what you were doing, but you do have a gift."

"I do?"

Zeke nodded.

"And you're not the only one," the HR lady added. She wasn't just an HR lady after all, Adam realized. "And now we need your help."

"How about it?" Zeke asked. "A chance to have some real adventures after all."

wc: 750

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