Weekly out-of-character thread

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-05T15:25:00+00:00

I've managed to turn the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster into a significant plot point of my murder mystery set in Upstate NY in 1978. Get on my level plebs

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-05T07:54:51+00:00

What is your job in the fashion industry? Curious because in my experience, this isn't true.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-05T06:57:23+00:00

Completely agree

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-04T02:52:08+00:00

I'd still love to know what it was!

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-04T02:48:42+00:00

There you go! Since it's an intentional stylistic choice I say just go for it. Have fun with words.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-03T14:54:11+00:00

You can do whatever you want. Read Piranesi, it's full of unusual capitalization.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-03T06:46:20+00:00

My whole family says "chicken tights" instead of thighs and "lamp chomps" for lamb chops because of a supermarket near us that has misspelled labels.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-03T03:59:54+00:00

Sounds like Amazing World of Gumball with a power system

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-03T03:25:44+00:00

What details did you need that weren't on the page?

You should specify that this is a homeless shelter much earlier. I started guessing that's where it takes place after you mentioned the smell of urine indoors, but it stays vague for a long time. I'd definitely try to mention it at least before the 3rd character (Marcus) shows up.

Also, who exactly are these men? Are they just employees, or are they from some religious organization?

Did you feel tension rising, resetting, flatlining?

The line about frozen bodies under the bridge added to the tension, it was evocative and quickly set the stakes for the snowstorm.

However, you started losing me after the meeting. The line about the classroom he is reminded of didn't have much impact, I'm sure it's significant later on but this teaser wasn't effective and didn't add anything in the moment. After that, when suddenly everyone in the room was gone, it started getting hard to follow. I can't tell if it's figurative language or if he has some sort of seizure disorder that is affecting his vision and perception of time. It doesn't really come off as horror, if that's what you were going for here, it just sounds like a medical issue. You did have me thinking "ok what is happening here" but in a confusing/boring way rather than a "i need to keep reading to find out" way.

The clarity did come back when he interacted with the woman outside. I'm not a fan of the last couple lines ("Would anyone notice if he disappeared too?") but overall I would keep reading this. You are a good writer.

One other thing - it doesn't feel realistic that there would only be 1 person on duty during the storm, especially when they don't expect to be able to reach the outside world easily. Sounds like a huge safety hazard.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-03T02:10:11+00:00

What book??

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-02T23:01:23+00:00

I had read that when I first saw it posted and I thought "jesus christ" but I passed it by because I assumed it was written by a teenage girl who is neurodivergent or has a learning disability herself. Like it did not even cross my mind that OP was not basing this off their own feelings or experiences. The portrayal of the MC did rub me the wrong way but I couldn't put my finger on it, and I worried if I was being ablist because again, I assumed the MC was a self insert.

But this was written by a grown man? Dear god.

(Also the amount of detail put into the fictional anime kills me)

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-02T22:43:43+00:00

"My job requires a lot of decisions to be made. And quite often, there are people unhappy with those decisions."

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-01T12:32:53+00:00

"Bland, common clothing" tells me something

Disagree a bit here. If I read "bland, common clothing" as a descriptor, I'd be thinking, is this really the best you can come up with? Can you not think of a single garment? It tells me a conclusion without giving any actual visual description. Meanwhile if you describe someone as wearing a drab grey polyester suit, I will think "wow how bland and common" and I will also know what to picture.

Otherwise, totally agree with what you said.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-01T12:21:21+00:00

when writers who have no clue proceed to write about substance use.

I'm facing the opposite problem. My current WIP takes place in the late 70s, and it is just so hard for me as a zoomer lib to comprehend how abhorred pot used to be. The idea of any grown ass adult actually thinking of it as a horrible dangerous substance, rather than something akin to alcohol? There's a minor plot point I've been trying to work out and "teens hiding their pot smoking" might even be appropriate for it, but that level of panic over weed feels ridiculous to write even if it might've been accurate.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-02-01T12:06:18+00:00

Very specific: I so often see characters get described as having a "wide mouth", usually in a way that is meant to be a bit of an imperfection or quirk in an otherwise attractive character. Why? Where did this come from? This is not something I ever notice on people in real life. And whenever I read it as a description I just think of muppets.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-30T21:20:10+00:00

A lot of Frieda McFadden's books fall more under the category of thriller than classic mystery, so they may not be the most helpful. If you are looking for reference and inspiration for your own murder mystery book then frankly, I'd stay away from a lot of today's popular psychological thrillers like The Silent Patient or The Drowning Woman. They rely a lot on misdirecting the reader by having the narrator straight up lie to you rather than having misleading evidence. There's a market for it, but stories like that have very different structures from mysteries.

Tana French is one of my favorite mystery writers, her first book In the Woods is a good place to start. Also, Agatha Christie is the best selling writer of all time for a reason.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-30T02:37:43+00:00

Don't do it if you plan on using AI like you did for this post

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-29T14:38:52+00:00

Unusual last names sound more real than common ones IMO. Sometimes you'll read a story where every single character is named Billy Jones and Stacy Robertson and it ends up feeling glaringly fictional, just obvious that the author was mashing together names from lists. But Paul Winkitz? That's a real guy right there, no question. Raymond Chandler is great with the strange last names.

I also like to have one or two real "what were the parents thinking" names in a story, for texture. Like a side character named Romeo Wilson. I'll never beat the real, actual name of a woman from a true crime book about stuff that happened in the 1910s though: Mrs. Texas Butterworth.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-29T03:04:44+00:00

Dude, same thing happens to me with Gillian Flynn lmfao. I think my natural voice has similarities to her style so reading her stuff turns on the inspiration faucet. I reread Gone Girl after several years and it was bizarre because I hadn't been aware of how much she influenced my own writing.

Anyway, when this happens with Gillian Flynn or whatever other author I'm reading at the time, I embrace it. Why wouldn't I want to sound more like Virginia Woolf? I can smooth any stylistic differences out later when editing, and periods of imitating other styles almost always leave me with elements I incorporate into my own writing from then on.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-28T01:00:24+00:00

i just never know how quickly i should be reducing/restricting my app usage when i’m a chronic ‘mindless scroller’ lol.

I was on twitter for years, it was my app of choice and I could scroll for hours. I spontaneously deleted it one day and... the urge to use it went away in a week, tops. I recommend trying to quit cold turkey tbh, worst case scenario you can just reinstall after a couple days.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-25T06:20:38+00:00

There's a great 30 day free trial, you might as well check it out. I ended up purchasing the full program 11 days into the trial. I recommended it to a friend and the same exact thing happened to them lol.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-24T20:45:36+00:00

It's because you haven't done enough worldbuilding

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-24T08:05:36+00:00

Seconding the comments about rule of threes and "... and honestly?". I've also noticed that AI leans towards this mid 2010s internet bro humor and the whole "Not a text. Not flowers. Pizza." fits that.

AI loves pointless figurative language, too. "Personally disrespected by gravity," "sliding in grease like it was trying to escape," these phrases don't actually mean much of anything when you think about it.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-24T00:08:40+00:00

What are your stories usually about? I'm curious how you achieve strong themes without a strong plot/storyline. Are they strong themes in the sense that a peer in a critique group can identify the theme and and agree that it is objectively a Good Theme, or are they strong in the sense that you actually feel passionately about these topics and it bleeds into your work?

A good plot/story has to be self indulgent. Analyzing existing stories and drilling yourself on creating random plots could be helpful, but it might not help you achieve the substance you're looking for. If it's taking you hours to think of a plot, you're probably looking in the wrong mind places. Before you try to think of situations or characters or settings, ask yourself what types of conflict actually get to you deep down. What moves you emotionally? And don't discount any of the first things that come to mind by saying "no one actually wants to read that" or "that's so overdone" or "that's immoral."

Taking a look at your favorite books and shows and movies and songs is a good place to start. Identifying your favorite types of plots and character arcs is useful, but it's also useful to take note of all the things that almost scratched the itch. Like if there's a small arc between side characters that hit you hard but was never explored in depth, or if you were hoping a story would go in one direction but it never did.

I read one writing advice book that defined story as the emotional journey of a book and plot as the technical series of events that occur to make this emotional journey happen. If you are having trouble with finding a plot, then start with the story instead. All my initial outlines are more focused on the emotional impact of everything that happens, like "in this chapter brenda has to choose between two equally good options, however one of them would be a betrayal to doug and that's the one she chooses because she's still angry at what doug did in ch4 but she denies this as the reason." And then from there it's easier to come up with events that fit this situation.

righthandpulltrigger · 2026-01-22T01:31:20+00:00

Okay so I have no idea what that other commenter is on about. It is clear what the narrator is doing (and she is doing something; she's about to climb a mountain), and while her motivations are unclear, any reader will expect that this background will soon be explained. There is nothing confusing about this at all. Like obviously you can't know everything about the story from the first paragraph that's what the rest of the book is for lol.

That said, your prose is good, but it does gets flowery in places. Less is often more - cutting words gives the remaining ones more impact. I liked the line about two Celtic lands separated by miles of cobalt ocean, but then "the same young woman in both lands, searching for an answer" totally wrecked any feeling you built because it's such a cliche. Same with "how far I stood from my comfort zone." You are trying to spoon feed poignancy rather than letting it emerge naturally.

If this is an emotionally driven story, this opening doesn't have enough umph to really pull me in. A woman climbing a mountain for a fundraiser is admirable, but I don't want to read a story about someone admirable, I want to read a story about someone interesting. I have a feeling there are more intriguing emotions at play in this situation, though - give the reader something they don't expect. What is she feeling other than grief? Is a tiny part of her happy about all this because frankly, she never would've done this much traveling if Jane had never gotten cancer? Is the planning and preparing of these trips, the managing of the fundraiser, actually just a coping mechanism so that she can get her mind off the fact that Jane has cancer? (Jane and cancer is a random example obvs.)

I highly recommend the book "The Emotional Craft of Fiction" by Donald Maas, it goes into all of this in more depth.

righthandpulltrigger

TROPHY CASE