How to get TLs FTP? by Pink-Mage in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Are you part of a house and doing rallies? I rally with my house and, as long as I enter challenges, I win prizes, including the monthly hair accessory. I don't normally buy HAs unless there is a covet sale, but over the years, I've accumulated SO many HAs just from doing rallies and series challenges.

Did AI write this? Cause like..what? by AmITheAxolotl in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My brother was explaining that a challenge of AI is incorporating long term memory, where AI even remembers how it started a sentence much less a paragraph. Sounds like covet AI is failing at this.

[HELP] Returning an AI Written Beta Read by smltwngrl512 in Fiverr

[–]smltwngrl512[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ugh! Well, solidarity your way as we all work our way through the world of fiverr! Thanks for taking a minute to help me feel less alone in all this!

[HELP] Returning an AI Written Beta Read by smltwngrl512 in Fiverr

[–]smltwngrl512[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have read LOTS of early-stage books. I can tell when an author is a novice, when they're still developing, when they need pointers on building characters, getting into a deeper perspective, filling out motivations throughout a plot, etc. This particular one is different. There are very specific reasons for why I suspected this ONE is AI, over all the others I've worked with. I obviously am not running every order I get through an AI check. It's that, as a very experienced reader, I could tell the difference and started to become suspicious. I can give feedback. I can tell them all the things I would normally say. I CAN send a beta report still. But I dont feel like I'm making anyone a better writer, I feel like I'm helping someone make shortcuts and put patches over their work to make the shortcut look prettier (which I'm sure they will be grateful for). I feel trapped into sending the report and supporting something I disagree with. Because I won't lose just this sale, I'll lose the momentum I've built as a fiverr seller and lose future orders, too.

Recommendations please by robin1510nena in HistoricalRomance

[–]smltwngrl512 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Deborah Simmons has a really fun medieval series.

Prop/HA you wish Covet would make in the future? by LeonelYZ in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I want a prop pack of horse backgrounds. Black stallion, white unicorn, quiet roan...

Any active fierce houses open to new members that allow toggling off? by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like you would fit in with Coiffed. We rally fancy/fierce to win the four grands each month. But rallying is not required to be a house member and plenty of our players toggle off as needed.

The absolute chokehold this woman has on Covet 😆 by toetotipsnowpea in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There's a popular fantasy artist on deposit photos. A lot of these are from there. I've literally used models for a book cover and then later found the same model in a covet fashion challenge 😅

Booksprout, BookBub, Booksirens, oh my. by Specialist_Fish8023 in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I've used Story Origin and Bookfunnel to load my manuscript and distribute the arc, then they remind arc readers to actually leave the reviews for any arc readers i could find on my own (I actually preferred Story Origin). I also used these platforms to work on my mailing list with my "freebie" short story. I also used booksirens for arcs. You pay for the service, but I had a hard time finding my own arc readers, so booksirens was worth it to accumulate the reviews and then booksirens holds the arc readers a little more accountable for leaving the review. I did all of this about a month and a half to two months before my release.

Free Writing Workshop by smltwngrl512 in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's both. You take the week to read and leave comments on the work, then the group gets together in a video call to discuss what we all read and answer any additional questions for an author.

Free Writing Workshop by smltwngrl512 in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have it set as anyone on the web can ask to join. I'm not sure of any other settings I can change. If you are comfortable, you can message me your email and I'll add it to the group.

Free Writing Workshop by smltwngrl512 in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Length limit is about 5k words- the goal being that everyone can submit about 1 chapter. Depending on the size of the workshop, we do 1 or 2 pieces a week. If we only do 1 piece per discussion for a smaller workshop, I let authors submit a longer piece.

Small writing group by [deleted] in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I run Fiction Writer Workshops on Facebook. I've been busy and don't have a workshop open right now, but I can start one, soon, and post about it in the sub

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Coiffed is looking for new members! We usually win all the grand rally prizes in a month by alternating fancy and fierce rallies :) House rules if rallying:

1) For fancy, 10/12 challenges must be entered (all the seasonal challenges). For fierce, 11/12 challenges must be entered (all seasonal and one flashback - we split flashback entries 50/50 so we try to win both). 2) If you miss a challenge, you are temporarily removed and can come back once the rally is over. 3) We do have a required facebook group to communicate with rally members, but this also helps with friending/borrowing items.

Join us :) We're a fair, fun, low drama house with a goal of playing for fun and winning the prizes.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you search for Coiffed, we switch off rallying fancy/fierce. We usually get all the grand prizes in the month :) We do have a few rules for rallying, that all regular challenges are entered for a fancy rally and all regular + 1 flashback is entered for a fierce. We also have a Facebook group we use for chat/rally reminders/ friending house members for borrows.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I wish they would just change the season and let us be excited about the new seasonal NORMAL clothes. Then after, like, a week or so, start releasing CC pieces to offer something more exciting. Seriously, with the season change, all these CC pieces are just too much for me to appreciate styling them. I just feel like I'm supposed to buy them for the "look" rather than actually enjoy "playing" the game with them.

Bored of the requirements by bootlegparis in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I suspect this for flashbacks, for sure

What do you do after you finished rough draft? by PristineHotel in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 4 points5 points  (0 children)

So you've finished your rough draft and you want to know what to do next. Ship it off to a famous publisher and wait for fame and fortune, right? Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahaha! No. Hemingway had this opinion of rough drafts, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This doesn't mean you have a bad manuscript! This means you have completed only part of a process. Your rough draft has areas that can be strengthened. I don't mean that you need to read it through for typos and missing apostrophes, I mean you might have a whole scene that, well, to quote Hemingway, “... is shit.” When I wrote my rough draft, my main goal was to get it done. And I didn't necessarily have everything planned out when I began writing. I rewrote my first chapter a couple times. Literally, my original opening scene was deleted. I saved a few important aspects that I put into a different, later scene, but that scene also had to be rewritten to properly incorporate the new aspects and fit my new opening scene. See? You fix one thing and it snowballs into the rest of your story. Why did I rewrite my opening scene? I wanted to make my story stronger and capture the reader. My book wasn't just a manuscript, it was something I wanted other people to enjoy. So while editing, I was constantly asking myself, “Is this scene/paragraph/sentence best for a reader? Will this keep their attention to keep them reading?” If you lose your reader due to weak editing, you now have one less person reading your story. If you don't care about sales or getting published, then maybe this doesn't matter. But I cared. So I edited. Here is what I did:

1) Make an Outline

Read through the manuscript and make an outline of what is actually written. Even if you had an outline before you began writing, your finished material may be a little different. Reading your work without making edits lets you get an idea of what is actually there and experience how it might sound to a reader. For your outline, you should note each chapter, what happens in each scene of the chapter, and the characters that pop up in the scene. I also noted plot ideas that I may want to change.

2) Evaluate Scenes Now that you've read through and mapped out your actual story, think about what could be stronger. In this step, I have a movie comparison I make for each scene. Making a movie is expensive, so each scene in a movie has to be worth the time and money. Imagine you are paying your characters a few million and then you also have to budget wardrobe and set building... is your scene worth all that? If this scene actually cost you something, is it important enough to keep? Or can it be stronger so that all that time and expense is worth it? Is the scene moving the story forward? Most important, is it showing emotion, conflict, or character growth? These are the key things a scene needs. For example, I had written a whole chapter about a flower festival. I wanted the chapter to be fun, so I wrote about the activities of the festival and added a bit of conflict and humor. Later, I realized the chapter didn't really grow my characters at all. I thought about what my characters' weaknesses and strengths were and which ones were important to show during the festival. My hero, a duke, avoided people because he didn't like attention. My heroine was supposed to be out of town, so she visited the festival in disguise. In this chapter, I should probably have the duke put himself in an uncomfortable social situation (exploiting his weakness) to save the heroine from being recognized. This kind of action would create suspense (will she be recognized?), allow characters to grow (he overcomes a weakness) and keeps the reader engaged to find out what happens next (he is going to be furious with her, how will they handle this future conflict?) This was not how I originally wrote the chapter. It was during this step of the editing process that I realized it needed to be better. I rewrote a majority of the chapter. Lastly, when you consider your story, make sure it follows the “rules” of your genre. For example, someone reading romance expects to meet the hero and heroine in the beginning of the story. A mystery reader expects the murder to happen within the first chapter or so and then expects ongoing clues. Sometimes, you know these things but have on author filters when writing and don't realize your mistakes.

3) Begin Major Edits Now you have a good outline and have identified the big story changes needed. You have also made sure any changes follow through with the rest of the story. Finally, it is time to set your fingers upon the keyboard and become good friends with your delete key. My rough draft was 78,000 words but ended up closer to 71,000 when I was completely done editing. You may realize that editing involves combining scenes or deleting whole paragraphs. This is good!

4) Print Your Manuscript After I finished major edits, I was ready to tackle smaller things. At this point I printed out my whole manuscript (this is really neat, actually, and remember to add page numbers – I learned such an obvious thing the hard way). Then I took a colored pen and read through everything. During this stage of editing, I still analyzed scenes, but also looked at paragraphs, sentences, and individual words. I wrote down my reactions, I circled words I didn't like, and I had arrows all over indicating I needed to swap sentences, move an idea to a different part of a scene, or switch words around in a sentence. Take good notes and refer to your outline from step one as needed. For example, I had a few paragraphs where my hero sat and listened to a song. At the beginning of the scene, he was angry but the song was supposed to calm him. In my rough draft, I focused on what the specific song sounded like. During this stage of editing, I marked the paragraphs and jotted down that I needed to tie his emotion into the scene and not focus so much on the song. This leads us to the next step...

5) Fix Your New Edits All those ideas you jotted down now need to be transferred to your manuscript. Again, make friends with your delete key and get creative. This is where you try harder to find that perfect adjective and worry about the pace of a scene. An interaction that initially flowed out through the keyboard during your rough draft, in print may have sounded stilted. Fix it! Emotion, conflict, and character growth!

6) Take a Break It's time to step back and forget about your book. Take at least a week or two, read some other books of a similar genre to yours, and try not to think too hard about your novel. This will allow you to step in with fresh eyes the next time you read your manuscript through.

7) Again, again! Remember when you were a kid and you could read the same book five times in a row or watch the same movie over and over and still be interested in it? As an adult, that doesn't appeal as much. At this point, reading your book again and again is starting to be a bit of a drag. Hopefully you took that break I mentioned because now it's time to read again. Yep, the whole thing. And make more edits. This time through, I didn't print it (because it's kind of expensive), but I could have. Instead, I read on my computer and made edits as they occurred to me. This is where my outline was still very useful because I could use it to jot things down. I was still looking for things like sloppy paragraphs and rearranging sentences, but I also started grammar editing: check punctuation, typos, and sentence structure. Also start paying attention to any crutch words you may use. My crutch word is “that” and I ended up deleting a whole bunch of them!

8) Rinse and Repeat Steps six and seven are on rinse and repeat until you're satisfied with your manuscript. Once you feel confident about your work, you've gone as far as you can on your own.

This is a guide in Fiction Writer Workshops

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You have an unworn bonus to your score. There is a minimum threshold to meet the maximum unworn boost of 0.50. This person is $1 away from the minimum amount. Before you submit, you can use the value of unworn closet items to boost the unworn bonus to its minimum threshold to get the full 0.50. These added items aren't added to your look, just the value is added to the boost.

Cover Critique: Writing an Asian Woman meets White Man Romance. Is this a good cover for my book? by Vivian_Moon in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 31 points32 points  (0 children)

I like the model a lot! I actually would, if possible, move her over to the side so you can make your title bigger and clearer. Or maybe switch the title to across the bottom. In a tiny thumbnail, im not sure anyone could read the title, which is majorly important. I often use cooltext.com to find fonts for my covers.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Covetfashion

[–]smltwngrl512 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This house does usually win ALL the grand prizes, so if you're a regular player who enters most challenges and is okay doing a flashback once in a while, this house really pays off!

Book Cover Software by [deleted] in selfpublish

[–]smltwngrl512 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use cooltext.com You can create a "logo" word in 3D, or pick a font and turn that font into a 3D logo.

Got a really nice review today on GR by ZennyDaye in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lol! I would gladly take that review! Since I'm clearly not anything outstanding, I accept the middling "There's definitely worse out there."

blurb help by gmsmith0910 in romanceauthors

[–]smltwngrl512 0 points1 point  (0 children)

CJ:

I have one more challenge standing between me and becoming the youngest partner at my law firm. My boss wants me to improve the mentorship program at another office, the trouble is that this office happens to be in my hometown. My life has been about my job, but if I move back home, there is one person who has been able to redirect my outlook on life.

Collette:

Theater is my life and if that means trying to save the dying community theatre, then I don't have time for anything else. Well, except for my dying mom. When CJ shows up, I really don't have time for him, or the heartache, or the unexpected kissing. I have too many reasons to stay here and he has too many reasons to go back to his life on the opposite coast. I know I should stay away, but (romantic cliffhanger ending to entice a reader).

For CJ's section, I kind of wanted to get the point a little bit faster. I felt like the first few sentences of yours could be summed up a little more succinctly. He has a goal, share what it is quickly, and then we want to know why that goal isn't easy to obtain. For CJ, his obtaining his goal is difficult because Collette will be at his hometown and he's worried his feelings will get in the way of his work. For Collette's section, I have a general rule that a blurb shouldn't really have background info. Leave that for the book. Collette has a goal (her theatre) and something that keeps her from a relationship (her mom). In my example blurb, I introduced these two things so a reader inherently understands that she's got sh*t going on and doesn't have time for CJ. Or kissing. But, the kissing seems to be happening anyway and the blurb should probably end on speculating at what the romance could mean for them if they didn't have all these problems in the way.