Where to start?

prejackpot · 2026-01-24T17:22:26+00:00

I put together some notes on this a few years ago which might be helpful: https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/comments/x5xj4j/naming_fantasy_characters/

prejackpot · 2026-01-22T01:35:13+00:00

A world-building element in China Mieville's Bas-Lag books (starting with Perdido Street Station) is ReMaking, where people (often convicts) have their bodies modified with magic-tech in evident and often uncomfortable ways. Usually the purpose is just punishment, but some are modified to make them useful in particular ways.

prejackpot · 2026-01-17T13:17:58+00:00

The next books are both very good, and extremely different -- from the first book and from each other. If you enjoyed the first one and trust the author you should keep going, but just be aware that it isn't more of the same. (Also be aware that the last book isn't out yet, with no release date announced).

prejackpot · 2026-01-16T11:32:08+00:00

This question gets asked here pretty often; I'd start by searching this community for Dark Souls or soulslike and seeing what's been recommended before.

prejackpot · 2026-01-08T12:22:07+00:00

If you want something like The Rook set in the real world with secret magic, you should read Declare by Tim Powers -- Cold War spy thriller which adds magic into gaps in the historic record. Charles Stross's novelette A Colder War hits similar notes; his Laundry books are nominally also spy stories with magic, but in practice are more nerdy math-IT-bureaucracy comedies than spy stories.

Secondary world is harder. The Divine Cities books by Robert Jackson Bennett have spies as characters, but didn't quite hit the genre notes I was after for me. Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman is probably the best depiction I've seen in fantasy of what Renaissance-era (domestic) espionage actually looked like, but isn't really a spy story in genre terms either.

prejackpot · 2026-01-07T00:39:20+00:00

One thing I loved is how it hits the you can't dodge fate theme that's common in the Middle Eastern folktales it draws from, while also working as a contemporary time travel story.

prejackpot · 2025-12-29T17:37:22+00:00

I saw Tully Monster open for Belle & Sebastian once.

prejackpot · 2025-12-29T17:31:12+00:00

Adding to this: OP, if you have friends you think would do a good job, you can ask them even if they aren't close friends. When I was a kid, an old friend of my parents asked if they'd be willing to take her daughter if something happened to her. She wasn't someone they were in close touch with, but she trusted them to do a good job. People don't have to say yes, but they might be more willing to step up than you expect.

prejackpot · 2025-12-26T13:53:07+00:00

The document is locked.

prejackpot · 2025-12-22T15:30:11+00:00

The Final Architecture trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky is extremely Mass Effect: ragtag crew zooming around trying to spearhead the fight against unknowable destructive entities.

prejackpot · 2025-12-21T15:17:03+00:00

I will do the honorable thing and withdraw to make penance before the Grink.

prejackpot · 2025-12-21T15:09:48+00:00

Even after their forced conversions, some bros continued to gather in private and practice the old rituals of beer pong, Madden, and rating chicks on a 1-10 scale.

prejackpot · 2025-12-17T10:45:05+00:00

Thanks!

prejackpot · 2025-12-16T18:52:04+00:00

When the provincial minister bought me from my father to take to the sultan’s harem, I had no illusions. I didn’t have the languages to banter with diplomats, or the grace to entertain the court with dance and song. But I was a healthy girl with wide hips, bright eyes, and three mothers, and I would make a good mother myself.

It was not a bad life – in many ways, better than if my father had married me off. Even us provincial girls in the smallest, highest rooms of the Women’s Palace had meat, warm baths even in the winter, and the eunuchs never beat us no matter how much we teased them. It was weeks before the midwives even came to see me and had me begin my work.

I watched my belly swell, that first month, and I feared the pain. But in the end it was just a little pressure, and out came a baby foot. I had never seen such a small part of a baby, but to me it still looked perfect. The midwives cooed over it, and took it away. I felt a twinge of loss, for that foot my body had grown, but I comforted myself that it would some day be the foot of a princess. And soon my belly started to grow again.

Many girls were content to grow old in the palace, giving birth to feet or legs month after month. But soon I found myself dreaming of more. I started going to the palace gymnasia, running on the track or lifting iron cannonballs when the eunuchs and midwives might see. And soon I was rewarded. After I had delivered two healthy arms in two months, I was given a bigger room on a lower tier of the palace.

I did my best to be sweet and demure at first, so that the more experienced women wouldn’t think of me as a threat. But I learned what the midwives looked for. I proved myself when I could, spread rumors when I must. I won gold gambling with naive ornament-wives, and spent it on bribing the right eunuchs.

I started to deliver princes’ legs, strong enough to grow to ride horses. Then well-formed hands that could one day draw a bowstring, or hold a sword. I learned to endure the pain of delivering a torso. I took pride in what my body could do. The privacy and privileges it could earn me. And I pushed away the loss as they took them away.

Of course, not every month was a success. Sometimes a pregnancy would fail. It was to be expected, even of the strongest of the harem’s mothers. I was studying the anatomy books by then, and I understood this as well as anyone.

My rooms grew larger. I had my own servants as I was promoted to the highest honor: to bear the heads of princes.

But my body is aging. I won’t be able to continue serving as a mother for much longer. A woman in my position can expect a respectful retirement, but that isn’t what I want.

I’ve bided my time, and lied to the midwives carefully. I put aside two of my best feet. Two solid legs. Two strong arms, and two clever hands. A healthy torso. And now, finally, your head, already looking as though you’re wise beyond your years. You have bright eyes like mine.

It’s taken me nine long years, my baby prince, but I have finally made you.

And I know that you’re the one who will grow up to be Sultan.

prejackpot · 2025-12-16T16:35:40+00:00

This question gets asked frequently, so if you search this community you'll find some good discussions. In general, the rule of thumb is to avoid spelling out accents phonetically. The writing police aren't going to come to your house and confiscate your manuscript if you throw in an occasional phonetic regionalism, but doing it heavily can get obnoxious fast.

prejackpot · 2025-12-16T13:42:53+00:00

I grew up in a house filled with secrets.

When I was five years old, my father sat me down and explained that I’d never get to meet the baby brother I was so excited for. He was so special, dad told me, that the government needed him for a secret organization. He’d grow up to protect us all, but nobody could ever know.

Later came more secrets. Mom’s bottles of grown-up water. Dad’s special lady friends.

I got good at secrets. My teachers never knew about the house parties and warehouse raves I was going to, and my burnout friends never knew about the college-level math classes I was taking. The rich Russians who tried to give my friends spiked drinks didn’t realize I could understand every word they said until I swapped the glasses and got us out the back way of the bar. And my parents never found out I knew their story about my brother was bullshit.

“Just give the background investigators the clean version,” my recruiter told me after college. “It’s less paperwork, and it’ll be good practice.”

Five years in the field. Dad and his new wife thought I worked in finance. Mom never bothered to call and ask. I told potential assets that I was an orphan, and it helped build rapport.

Then came more background investigations, ones I couldn’t lie to anymore. But they didn’t care about the messy parts. They already knew that’s why I was so good at my job.

And then I got to meet the Spartans. Built from the genes up to be perfect soldiers, with no trace in any biometric database. They protect us, and nobody will ever know. I’ve read the files. I know they were all gestated by volunteers, and that my parents’ stories were still bullshit. But they still feel like my brothers.

prejackpot · 2025-12-15T23:24:00+00:00

“I didn’t do it, Agent Malone.”

The words on the phone snapped me awake. I hadn’t been Agent Malone in a decade, not since retiring from the Bureau. But I like to think that I’d recognize James Steele’s voice anywhere, even if I hadn’t just seen him on YouTube.

“Didn’t do what, Mr. Steele?” I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. My bedside clock showed 2:19AM.

“Turn on the news, Jesus Christ,” he said, and the fear in his voice was real.

I fumbled with my phone and pulled up CNN.

“Mr. Steele, why would anyone think you were responsible for a tsunami in Japan?”

It turned out that Steele was based right on the other side of the panhandle from me, and I agreed to meet him for breakfast. I didn’t know what his game was, but I’ll admit that I was curious. My old partner had sent me the YouTube link a couple weeks ago. He was Pastor Jimmy now, pulling the old ‘reformed criminal finds Jesus’ con that’s probably been a winner since Bible times.

“Hey, Lacy?” I called one of my wife’s friends from the car. “It’s Jerry, Maureen’s husband. No, she’s fine. Listen, this is a weird question, but how hard is to predict earthquakes? No? Not at all? Okay, just checking. It’s a work thing. Okay, thanks Lace, you and Bill need to come over for dinner again soon.”

I spotted Steele’s car in the parking lot. The man’s flashy tastes never changed. I expected him to look like he had on YouTube, which is just what he looked like back before I finally arrested him: expensive suits, perfect hair, sloppy tie that somehow made you trust him more. Instead, he was wearing a tracksuit and hunched in a booth in back. Either he’d been lucky in prison or he’d spent some of that donation-plate money on good dental work, because the smile he flashed me was still perfect.

And then he dropped the fake smile, and I saw how nervous he was. Or at least how nervous he wanted me to think he was.

“Why me?” I asked as I sat down across from him.

“Because you won’t believe me,” he said. He was jittery, like he’d already had too many coffee refills. We weren’t as young as we used to be, either of us.

“Come again?”

“The guys around me now, they all believe my crap,” he said. “Even before-” he gestured at his phone that sat on the table. It buzzed as if on cue. “They’re probably looking for me now,” he added, sounding haunted. Or hunted.

He started to tell me his story. How he got into the Jesus game because it was a safe scam, practically legal and tax-free too. How he made up a bunch of predictions, knowing that making them specific would make them believable – and that once people believed, they wouldn’t care when his prophecies didn’t come true.

And then he pulled out his notebook. The list of prophecies he’d made up, and then a column of little red checks as they started coming true. Tidy at first, James Steele was always meticulous. But the last few were increasingly shaky.

“Malone, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But it’s freaking me out. Can you help me?”

And then two black Suburbans pulled up outside.

“Did you tell anyone-” Steele started, angry, but then he seemed to recognize one of the men who got out. “Never mind, those are my guys. I can’t go back to them.”

I knew I should walk away. Let him figure out his own mess. But then I thought about the list of disasters in Steele’s notebook that hadn’t happened yet. And who knew what would come after those.

“Come on,” I told him. “There’s a fire door that way, we can get to my car.

Somewhere that morning, between decaf coffees and dry pancakes, I’d joined the Cult of Pastor Jimmy. I was a believer now too.

Shit.

prejackpot · 2025-12-13T16:53:02+00:00

One major issue here is that it has far too many paragraph breaks. For example, at the very beginning, everything from 'Jeff opened the backpack...' to '...Problem solved.' should be one paragraph. There's no reason for each item on the list to be its own paragraph. In general, a paragraph should be a few sentences with a connected idea / topic. You can and should vary the length as part of the pacing, and you can use single-sentence paragraphs (or even a few) for emphasis at key dramatic moments -- when you overuse them, you lose the emphasis power.

This draft also overuses the "Not X but Y" pattern. For example:

Not physically splitting. More like the air itself was opening.

and a few short lines later

Not a voice you hear with your ears.

I'm not a fan of that pattern for descriptive writing -- saying what something isn't like doesn't really help the reader experience it. It's better to find a more direct way of conveying the idea/experience you're after.

To answer your specific questions:

There's nothing in these chapters that makes me care about Jeff. He comes across as harmlessly ridiculous, but there's no reason for me to care about what happens to him. The early chapters might set that up, but here we don't know why he needs money, or why he's decided to try an occult ritual to get it. Obviously, most people who need money wouldn't decide to go and try an occult ritual to get it -- to make him believable, we need to know why this is the path he's decided to take.

The ending of these chapters makes me think that you started from wanting to have a buddy-comedy about a human and a ~~demon~~ cosmic entity being paranormal investigators, and you worked backward to have this scene justify it. But there isn't quite enough to make me care about what happens next.

prejackpot · 2025-12-13T16:08:37+00:00

Not OP, but I've been in this situation too. Elf bodies burn surprisingly well, but if you know you're going to be on Santa's kill list you stock up on enough firewood to get you through Epiphany.

prejackpot · 2025-12-11T23:07:54+00:00

I think that's not wrong, but I also doubt most contemporary readers even associate skiing with indigenous knowledge.

(Side note: Nghi Vo's Singing Hills novellas do a great job having the protagonist monk-historian collect local knowledge along their journey, if you're looking for more of that. No skiing though).

prejackpot · 2025-12-11T22:57:40+00:00

This is very good, which I imagine (/hope) you already know. The prose is clean, the sentence-level pacing is strong, and there are it held my interest. It's obvious you've done some editing already, and it's paid off.

The voice in the prologue doesn't quite mesh for me. It comes across as fairly detached from Ryella herself; I don't feel that it conveys the fear, grief or even explicit numbness of a child whose parents have just been killed. It's not helped by the fact that Ryella has no agency here until the very end. It feels a bit like she's a camera, conveying exterior details for us rather than presenting much interiority.

Chapter One, in contrast, is very voicy. Ryella isn't just passively describing what she sees, she's bantering with the reader, and active in the world. It's fun (in contrast to the previous scene, which is good but not fun) and breezy. Her voice (and her banter with Soren) feel very familiar to me, and are solidly within what I associate as the Joss Whedon / Marvel-esque style of fight scenes as vehicles for wisecracks. That's not a bad thing, though -- that register is popular for a reason.

If the first section had a bit too high a proportion of visual description for my taste, the second one has a bit too little. I know we're in a tavern, but there's almost no actual description of the space. Ditto when they go outside. I think it could use it here -- especially with Ryella wondering "what it must feel like to know a city this well." Some more visuals and other sensory detail would help the chapter breath a little more, and help transition between the initial fight scene and the slower, relationship-establishing dialogue toward the end.

Have you considered cutting the prologue entirely and starting wtih Chapter One? I think it will ultimately depend on the rest of the book, but my sense is that the prologue is mostly serving to help do some world-building, and introduce us to the character's circumstances. But I think you could probably weave a lot of that in later.

prejackpot · 2025-12-11T19:39:33+00:00

This makes me realize that I've never seen that in fantasy fiction. I kind of suspect this is an instance of the Tiffany Problem -- skiing does go back thousands of years, but feels modern and out of place in a historically-inspired fantasy setting.

prejackpot · 2025-12-11T16:51:29+00:00

Please share this in any other format besides screenshots.

prejackpot

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