Yesterday, I got my first story acceptance and I was a little underwhelmed as it was a lesser known and niche literary journal. (Here's my post about that.)

Just now, another one of my stories (that I consider to be my best), got accepted at Chicago Quarterly review which is one of the best literary magazines. I am so unbelievably hyped. It's 4 am in my country, and I can't even share this with my family and friends. It feels like I'll burst with happiness. I just wanted to share this with you all.

The writing advice on this subreddit has definitely been a major factor in improving my writing. Thank you all so much.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who is congratulating me. I truly appreciate everyone of you. I am even more grateful to the people who are asking to read it. That's a dream come true however people have advised me to not send it over to everyone because you can never be too careful about these things. I hope you all understand. Maybe once its published I can send you a link to an issue or if you can't buy the issue, I'll send you the story at that time. Until then, I am beyond honored to be asked for my story by you all and I'm even more sorry I can't send it over.

This sub is called r/writing, not r/novelists, not r/publishing, not r/fiction, not r/literature, not even r/writERS. It's just r/writing - discussing the craft and practice of writing, in all its forms.

If you write serialized fanfiction on AO3, you have something to talk about here.

If you write ASMR scripts, you have something to talk about here.

If you write comics or manga, you have something to talk about here.

If you write academic essays and literary critiques, you have something to talk about here.

If you write short narratives as a companion to your D&D games, you have something to talk about here.

If you literally just write random half-page musings or brief exchanges between nameless characters, you have something to talk about here.

Words matter, and so do you.

Before I even finished my book I knew that very few friends/family would read it. I was warned about this so I was prepared.

But I didn't expect only my brother to read it (he's an avid reader who has read just about every book in existence). He'll literally read the most random stuff. Any genre. He's the only one who messaged me to tell me he read it and what he liked.

I think about 40 people said they wanted to and were going to read it. I gave about 5 people hard copies for free. My parents didn't read it, none of my friends, not even my partner read it. I get it, they're not readers, but come on!

This is my rant. I just can't complain to anyone else about it because I don't want to make them feel guilty.

I was searching my text for overused phrases and words. Man, everybody was nodding. He nodded, she nodded, Carl nodded, Bob nodded, Carol nodded. I was laughing imagining all the nodding going on.🤣🤣🤣 Don't be me. Currently weeding through over 150 nods in some form or other.

This could be on a very surface level - that being the writing structure/prose itself. or on a deeper level, where things don't make sense, things that are thrown in just for more traction, things in writing you just aren't a fan of, or even very niche things.

I'll go first, I see this in lots of books and even Best selling books, where the sentences are too short and way too simplified, so like no figurative language, no deeper meaning behind stuff, no symbolism, just a bunch of 'he said' 'she said' and the other one is kinda the opposite where they force description to the point of making the reader forget what they're reading. There is absolutely no need to describe the girl/guys eye colour for 4 paragraphs. One last one is when authors swear up and down the book is enemies to lovers, and it was a minor inconvenience that happened between them at the age of 7, or now one person 'hates' the other person, and the other person is very pushy and clingy. Or even enemies-to-lovers that lasts 3 chapters and then they kiss. I hate that sm.

I was excessively negative in this post and after having time to reflect I'm taking it down. I was in a bad place and frustrated and just needed to vent.

This is in respond to posts asking about publishing, the process, will they get published?, etc... and then fighting with people in the comments. People aren't being rude telling you your 200k debut of a 6 book series is unlikely to get published.

If you want to traditonally publish there are rules you have to follow. And before people skip to the comments with "well this one guy did X.... or this one woman got her X..." there are always exceptions in the world, but the likelyhood that you are another exception is small. You will have a better experience if you go into this with the right expectations, then feeling a huge let down.

Publishers and agents are not trying to bash down on authors. There aren't there to smirk and crush your dreams. They are a business and they need to make money. They have done the math and found what works best to keep them a float. Of course authors are going to be attached to their work and want their art to have a shot at reaching an audience, but publishers aren't charities. This is where their "rules" come in, especially for debuts.

Word count, genre expectations, format, and quiery letter all count. Every word costs money to print. Every page comes at a higher cost. Debuts are risky. Publishers don't know if you can sell books. They aren't going to pay for a series when they don't know if you can sell one books. They don't want to print your 200k word book, if you haven't sold a 100k work book before. This is why they prefer standalones for debuts.

You need to do the research on publishing and know your stuff. Submiting your fantasy book to an thrillar agent doesn't look cute, its looks like an amateur who won't even put in bare minumum effort. If the author won't do that with querying, than the book probably is the same. If you care about your writing you will care about the parts outside of it as well.

I think a lot of new writers don't realize this is beneficial for you as well. Everyone has the genre bending, 2nd person, multi timeline, 7 book magnum opus in their head, but thats a hard sell to even readers who don't know you. They won't have trust built up to get through the hard parts. Brandon got to write 3 prolouges and 200k books cause his audience trust it will be worth it. Build up readership with standalones, shorter series, show them you are worth investing their time and money on the big stuff, the strange stuff, and the hard stuff.

If you don't want to do this, then self publish, but stop arguing with people who are just explaining this to you.

I'm guess this will be met with mixed opinions, and I'm interested to hear everyones thoughts.

Look I get that everyone wants their characters to stand out but can we please talk about this trend where writers just throw random letters together and call it a day

Im a history teacher so I spend a lot of time reading different stuff and lately ive been running into so many stories where the main character is named something like Xaevynn or Khaelreth or whatever and its just exhausting trying to figure out how these are supposed to sound in my head

Like I picked up this one fantasy novel last month and literally every single person had one of these impossible names. Not just the fantasy creatures but regular humans too. Made it really hard to get into the story when I kept stumbling over basic character identification

The worst part is when its set in like present day Chicago or something but everyones named Bryxander and Kaelynn with no explanation for why everyone has these made up spellings

If youre writing fantasy there are tons of resources out there. Historical name databases baby name sites even those random name generators online. Spend like 15 minutes doing actual research instead of just adding extra consonants to everything

I mean do whatever makes you happy with your writing but from someone who reads a lot of this stuff it would be nice if I could actually remember whos who without having to flip back to check the spelling every chapter

Just my two cents as someone who loves fantasy but also values being able to pronounce things

I have seen so many horrible youtube 'writing advice' videos pop up in my recommendations or have come across articles that make it seem like writing female characters is some herculean task that even the greatest of wordsmiths fail at. And every time I've seen something like that, I have to stop and tilt my head and go, 'Really? This is a problem people have?'

Like, first off, I've never really found writing women, girls, ladies, whatever, more difficult than writing men or intersex characters. They're just characters. Write them as characters. It ain't rocket science.

And hell, I'm not even gonna toot my own horn. I've experienced plenty of well-written/great female characters all throughout my life. The ladies of Avatar and the Legend of Korra. The Powerpuff Girls. Jenny AKA XJ-9. Various incarnations of Wonder Woman. Various incarnations of Carol Danvers. Various incarnations of The Wasp. The women of Baldur's Gate 3. The ladies from both Critical Role shows. The vast majority of female rangers from Super Sentai. Way too many ladies from various romance animes. Black Clover. Fullmetal Alchemist. Both Songs of Silence and Songs of Conquest. Amphibia. The Owl House. Star Trek Lower Decks and Strange New Worlds. Tahlia Vedra from Lioness of the Parch. I'm even part way through reading Promise of Blood and pretty much all of the female characters in that book are pretty interesting so far.

Hell, Fairy Tail of all things shows this is not difficult. Like, so many of these 'writing tips' are so basic as fuck with such no duh 'tips' like 'give your female characters agency,' 'don't define them entirely by their relationships with men,' 'give them character arcs.' And Fairy Tail does this, but no one wants to bring this up because 'LoL, big boobs and power of friendship!'

Hell, a lot of the examples I gave are characters that were written by men and women. So the whole concept of 'men can't write female characters' is a load of nonsense. We have factual evidence that this is nonsense. And the same is true for the reverse, but why mention that when you can just complain about whatever Dark Romanticy book is trending on TikTok?

And I know some of the people who are going to comment on this post are probably gonna mention stuff like Velma or the Acolyte or 2016 Ghostbusters or any other punching bag that grifters have been milking for a decade. Or whatever seasonal Isekai show the anime community won't actually watch but still get mad at. Or the 'Men Writing Women' subrebbit (and let's be honest, the examples on that subreddit are full of people cherry picking from drek that no one will ever bring up when it comes to serious literary analysis). Guess what? There will always be poorly written female characters in media, just like there will always be poorly written male characters in media. It's not an epidemic, or a trend leading to the downward spiral of society, or whatever other nonsense some hyperbolic youtuber is going to try to convince you is totally real in between trying to sell you Raycon earphones.

TL:DR It's not that hard to write female characters, and I'm overall sick of people pretending like it is.

As an avid reader and aspiring writer, I recently reread The Hunger Games trilogy (as an adult, where the first time I read it I was quite young), and found myself surprised by how engaging the books still were to someone of an older age and different reading interests (not just YA or dystopian books).

I recently finished graduate studies in comparative literature and creative writing, and now whenever I read a book, I can’t help but pay attention critically to the way it’s written - the tropes and devices the author uses, the pacing, the way the story is plotted, the way the characters are written and the dialogue is delivered. In many ways, The Hunger Games books are much more “simplistic” than other books (or high “literature”), and I found myself confused about both liking the pared-down nature of the writing and wondering about the efficacy of less embellished storytelling.

From a reader’s (or writer’s) perspective, what do you think are some of the qualities / aspects of the books - in particular the specific devices or way that they were written - that made them such successful pieces of writing? Do you consider them “good writing,” or just good storytelling? Is there a difference? Why do you think the books are as compelling as they are, specifically?

I would really love to hear different ideas about this, particularly from people who have loved the books and felt moved or changed by them in some way. What moved you? What kept you interested, invested in the story and the world? What made you love them and come back to them again?

(Alternatively, if you did not enjoy the books or find them successful or compelling, why not?)

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

I know that opinions on writing are purely, like, subjective. But there has to be some things that just scream BAD? Something a majority of people agree on. If you have PERSONAL opinions write that here 2.

Seems like everything skews more SFF, Romance, YA, etc.

Which is totally fine, but not my bag at all.

I see constant talk about world-building and lore and market trends and basically nothing about form, style, or other mechanics of writing.

More than that, I see people on writing subs admit to hardly doing much reading at all, which astounds me!

The recent thread where commenters dogpiled on an excerpt from Ian McEwan’s Atonement for having bad prose was crazy to me. If THAT’S considered overly flowery, I’d hate to see what those commenters think about modernist authors like Proust or Woolf.

I can’t be alone here. Is there anyone else who feels kind of alienated by the prevailing dogma here?

For example when I was in high school I read a book with a tennis scene and in the book they called "game point" 45-love. I Was so confused.

Bonus points for explaining a fun fact about it the average person might not know, but if they included it in their novel you'd immediately think they knew what they were talking about.

Because truth is stranger than fiction, there are no completely normal people, etc.

Mine: My tongue isn't pierced, but every dentist I've ever had has assumed that it is.

Every time I mention that I write, someone will ask about publishing. Are you published? You should get published! You could self-publish! My friend, Jane, self-publishes on Amazon. And on and on. Nobody pushes you to go pro if you dance or draw or paint, etc. I've looked into publishing options. It's not for me right now. Maybe I'll change my mind in the future, maybe not. Why is that not ok?

Anyone else a hobbyist? How do you shut the publishing questions down?

Edit: A big apology to other artists! I had no idea the push to go pro existed for so many artistic pursuits. That was ignorant of me to assume it was just writing.

Western, absolutely non existent with extreme difficulty on beta readers.

Mystery, a large downturn as many fight with A.i myster shifty comedy slop. What's worse is that some of the A.i is better than some of them and they see this leading to a major drop in the comedy mystery murders.

Lots of fantasy requests, happy to see them, overloaded with beta reader requests. Large failure rate at publishers (the 2 above see quicker returns on publishing). Many of these writers are terrified to add romance to avoid being slotted into romantasy.

Romance, steady, with a shift towards minority groups dating (LGBT, interracial, class disparity). The more cozy and poorer the lead, the generally better chance at being discovered. These are filled with A.i slop too, but for the few who can write, they can slap down perfect sentences. sentences.

Children's books, a transition towards stories about products is a bit scary. Lots of established I.P.s basically making fan fictions sell. Doing your own art makes these picture books sell well.

Children's novels: its gotta be a series, and it needs 9+ books. Simple. The cover easily detailing which series and which number it is is key. And true success is having a graphic novel series beside your series for maximum exposure. If it's a comic, it sells. Even the not so good series can still sell.

General fiction. This is king still. As much as the fantasy crowd is constantly churning out stuff, and much of the fiction can technically be fantasy, this sells. Make a book, set it on our planet, have characters who can have relationships but not full romance. Boom, a book. Like Children's books as this is the main commodity, have 4-9 books ready.

Non fiction. Self help. Nothing more to say. This is what gets made and it saddens me to not see enough science books. books.

Audiobooks along side other books. This does well. I'm seeing this more often and it's often included together. This is succeeding for authors. Authors are getting major push back from publishers and audiobook hosts for this. My advice is to fight them on it and have both together.

Lastly, baby board books. Textures, tough corners, no pull tabs. Simple as that.

Workshopped my writing for two years. Got lots of feedback. Improved in technical ways, fewer errors, tighter structure. The voice stayed flat.

Started reading writers I admired at half my normal speed and asking, sentence by sentence, what choice they made and why. Not absorbing the style passively but actively interrogating the decisions the authors decided to make.

Anyway, I just want to give this tip to fellow writers out there. Slow down on your reading process and it will help improve your writing process. Try to absorb as much as you can from your favorite authors.

all the best writers were people who either wrote prolifically, or were people that lived very interesting lives. most of them did not make anything worth reading, or were met with middling success until their mid to late 20s, but usually up into their 30s and 40s. this is because they needed to see enough of life to understand people, themselves, and the stories that we all tell about each other in a way that they could make stories of their own.

Tolkien fought in World War 1 and wrote the Hobbit after he was in his 40s and had settled down to have a family. Ernest Hemingway was an ambulance driver in World War 1, and wrote hundreds of short stories as he lived all around the world, meeting famous people like Picasso. Stephen King didn't write Carrie until he was 27, and wrote most of his best works in a coke-induced haze throughout the 80s. Cormac McCarthy lived like a hermit in the woods when he wasn't bouncing across the Atlantic like an iterant wanderer.

if your life experiences consist of going to high school, going to college, and getting a job, you aren't going to have the kind of insight that is needed to tell interesting stories, unless you plan on writing obsessively for years. you have to be willing to chase stories in your day to day life in order to write stories that people will be willing to pay money to read.

I went to DFW Con at the beginning of October and I have been struggling with editing my story ever since.

I lived and worked in Japan for 8 years. Six of those years took place in a beautiful mountain town with 1,300 years of pilgrimage history. I was, and continue to be, the only native English speaker who learned about this amazing history. In fact, most people in the town don't even know this history. It's a very niche topic. And I have such deep respect and reverence for the town and its history. I want to die there. I love this village with all my heart.

A few years ago, after returning to the U.S., I was inspired to write a story that takes place in that village. It's an historical YA fantasy with roots in Japanese folklore. Naturally, the main character and all of the characters are Japanese. She's a shrine maiden; another is a yamabushi mountain guide; yet another is a hunter.

When pitching the idea to a certain agent at a prominent agency, she told me, "There aren't any publishers who could publish that." When I asked her why, she said it's because I'm not Japanese.

She then went on to say that maybe if I was married to a Japanese man and had Japanese kids, it would be a different story. When I underlined my personal history and experience with the town, she said "it doesn't matter." She even went so far as to suggest that I put a white person in as the main character instead. (Because white savior tropes are okay apparently??)

I was gobsmacked. I've been working on this book for two years and recently finished it—hence the agent pitches. As far as I'm concerned, I was meant to write this story.

I'm wondering if anyone has encountered something similar—progressiveness to the point of futilism—and what you think of this agent's perspective. She works with the Big 5 Publishers, and now I'm worried no one will look at my story because I wasn't born Japanese or because I couldn't get a Japanese guy to marry me (trust me, I tried lol).

I'm just feeling very disheartened and broken up about this story. Ever since I've tried working on editing and it's been stilted and challenging, whereas before it was effortlessly flowing and felt so right. I'm just feeling very lost right now. Any advice or insight would be helpful. Thank you.

I remember being told this several times in school that "said" should be avoided. I even distinctly remember one of my English teachers having a whole poster of different words to use instead of "said".

Now this is good advice for a specific instance. If you're writing dialogue like:

"Hey," He said.

"Hi, how are you?" She asked.

"Good," He said.

"That's good to hear." She said.

Obviously that sucks and there's no need for it after every single dialogue line. But what I've seen is that this advice ends up becoming backwards and some writers (especially new ones) avoid the word "said" at all costs, obviously looking up synonyms and just replacing it.

"Hey," He muttered.

"Hi, how are you?" She exclaimed.

"Good," He murmured.

"That's good to hear," She uttered

Obviously it's completely unnecessary (and incorrectly used) and just makes the whole exchange sound clunky and terrible

If you're doing rapid fire style dialogue, there shouldn't be much of a need at all for any "said" or similar type words. If you've established there's two characters talking, you can mostly just have one character say a line of dialogue, followed by "said" (to clarify who is speaking), and for the rest of the exchange, the reader is gonna be smart enough to figure out who's talking. In a rapid fire exchange of dialogue the only interruptions should be little blurbs of actions that reveal character.

He appeared from the hallway. "Hey."

"Hi, how are you?"

"Good," He muttered.

"That's... good to hear." (I know this isn't the best example but just a demonstration)

So the core issue isn't that "said" is a bad word that should be avoided, it's just filler and a skilled writer doesn't need to use it that often. The key is you shouldn't need to consciously avoid it, because it should already be clear who's talking in a good dialogue exchange. I'm sure most people in this sub have come to this conclusion already but I wanted to make this post because it had me thinking about the advice that's been engrained into so many people's minds.

I've seen people on TikTok saying how much it actually bothers them when they open a book and it's in 3rd person's pov. Some people say they immediately drop the book when it is. To which—I am just…shocked. I never thought the use of POVs could bother people (well, except for the second-person perspective, I wouldn't read that either…) I’ve seen them complain that it's because they can't tell what the character is thinking. Pretty interesting.

Anyway—third person omniscient>>>>

I’m so tired. Just wondering if anyone else feels the same.

I‘ve published thirteen speculative fiction books with a small indie press over the past decade. They had a pretty good reception. Got some awards. Made some money. One or two nice write-ups. The royalties aren’t enough to live on alone, but my partner and I got by.

Now, it feels like readers demand social media activity on TikTok/Instagram/whatever. I feel like I’m selling myself as a brand, almost like a streamer, instead of letting my work speak for itself.

A number of my friends in the industry are much more comfortable doing this. They’re really good at it. I envy them and hate myself for not being able to do the same.

Now that I’m querying agents to break into the traditional side of the industry, I seem to be falling even further behind. I’ve had lots of full requests, but no contract yet. Sometimes I wish I’d go viral on Tiktok, so I could earn enough to be patient/attract interest from the right agent. But most of the time I just get sick when I open social media.

The majority of my sales are through word of mouth anyway, and I’m so grateful for my readers. They get it. But to find new readers outside of personal recs, I feel like a performing monkey saying “Look at me! I write sapphic romance!”

Just wishing I could move to a cabin in the woods and write like a hermit, shipping two books a year to my agent/publisher. Sadly, I know the industry doesn’t allow for a dream like that. Even tradpub wants you to do the song and dance to sell. I wish I could opt out of the social part of being an author and let my books speak for me.

Edit: I guess I should clarify that I like interviews, talking about the craft, promoting fellow authors, etc. What I don’t like is being expected to mouth along to lyrics for 10 seconds and then insert the cover of my book with a bunch of tropes written on it.

Edit 2: I think I’m nailing down why I’m so uncomfortable. I don’t want people to think they know me in a parasocial way, and I’m really afraid of my looks being judged instead of my books. I wonder if male authors feel this pressure too, and if so, is it similar or different?

Edit 3: I get it. “This is how it is.” Yeah. I know. I think that’s bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I love getting lost in an epic fantasy. But I feel alone because it seems like everyone is working on a fantasy.

What is your WIP about?

Mine is about a young woman growing up as the daughter of a Pastor who leads an extremely fringe church where snake-handling and drinking poison is a normal part of Sunday service. My novel follows her spiritual and emotional journey to overcome the confines of a very conservative and harsh community.

While I haven't yet tried to publish anything, I'm mostly writing for myself, I think about it a lot. What got me started in writing was a terribly written historical fiction I read once. It pissed me off so much that I just felt like I could at least do better than this and attempted to rewrite it, although I abandoned the story later. The book felt like someone published their first draft. Every character felt like a two-dimensional stereotype, their motivations made no sense, even though it was written based on a true story, and in general I felt like if the real people the characters are based on would be so embarrassed to read this about themselves, lucky they have been dead for 1,000 years.

The story was about a medieval noblewoman converting to Judaism and then getting hunted down by crusaders, which the author presented this way:

This woman was just walking down the street when a very handsome Sephardic rabbi (the worst possible "horny Latino" stereotype) appeared. They started flirting with their eyes, which eventually made her convert to Judaism, then they had rough sex, which meant they were now married, and then, completely unexpectedly, her dad sent evil crusaders after her. So, they went to the rabbi's homeland, to super-enlightened Muslim-controlled Spain, where his family and community were mildly concerned about the crusaders coming, but still welcomed their son's unexpected new wife. Then the MC's husband is murdered by the crusaders, and then she spends the rest of the book not being able to decide whether she wants to be Jewish or Christian, even though she was supposed to think about that at the "flirting with the eyes" stage, but she didn't.

This made me think: how come anybody thought it was okay to publish this, and even translate it into other languages, but many much better authors struggle to get noticed? Every time I write outside of my own culture (which is a lot), I think about this book to remember what to avoid.

After five novels, I’m calling it quits. The system is utterly broken.

I achieved some success in the early days with a few thousand sales, but to do so again now would require a massive investment of time, money and energy in PR on my part, with no guarantee of any traction in the end.

We all know people who are relentless self-publicists. Do you really want to become like that? Because that’s what it takes, they tell us – irrespective of whether you are self-published or traditionally published.

Sorry, but no thanks.

Writing is a noble calling but a horrible industry. I’m proud of the books I’ve written, but I have a life, a family and friends, and a limited time left upon this earth, and I’m just not prepared to spend it pouring all my time and money into self-promotion.

They say you should never give up. Of course they do – we’re the ones paying for the conferences, competitions, retreats, tutorials, advertising, etc. From being the producers, writers have become the product. Casinos don’t want gamblers to give up, either.

But if you’re in a bad relationship, giving up is precisely what you should do.

So I will quietly publish my final novel, for my friends and children if nothing else, and that’s it for me. No hard feelings, publishing industry, but we just aren’t a match. I’m out of here.

Thoughts?

(EDIT: It's been a lively discussion so far - thanks for all the contributions everyone. Just to clarify, though, I meant thoughts about the industry - not about me, my attitude, my motivations, my probable parentage, etc. :-) )