Recent content by Dawnathon

I got the same kind of message last month from someone also called "natalie", saying the same thing to a lot of writers. They got banned pretty quickly so I can only imagine they were sending suspicious links to people who responded.

Writing a longer novel is only a bad idea when the story doesn't need it and it's being done of some sort of self-imposed obligation. If anything, writing a single long novel makes it infinitely harder to run out of ideas, because you'll always be working in the same general framework and...

The hardest part for me is the ignition step. Once I get into the flow of writing or editing, it can be very hard to want to stop. It's just that it's hard to actually find the right time when I'm worried about X, Y, or Z that's going to force me to break out of that flow. You'll never see a...

"Kill your baby" is common advice for a lot of reasons. You're just keeping yourself rooted to what you already have. It's not always a bad thing, but don't be afraid to wrap things up and move on. I've had to give up two stories of over a million words before. It's never fun, but sometimes you...

I write primarily with third-person limited. Sometimes I'll play loose with it, but that's more for explaining things the character(s) would already know, rather than actual omniscient narration. It's one advantage that the written medium has over others, not needing to have the MC ask or be...

It's like a form of advertising, huh?

You'd actually be harder pressed to find LitRPGs that thoroughly incorporate other characters' game systems into the narrative. At best, it's usually just thrown at you from the moment you meet the other characters to avoid having to actually think of how to naturally introduce them to show you...

I've mentioned before that I like to treat fiction as if I was writing historical events of that world, but I feel like this is pushing a similar idea to an untenable extreme. It sounds like you need to get your feet wet before you go off the deep end.

I always approach stories like I'm writing historical accounts of what happened, not that I'm personally causing things to happen. It can lead to a lot of twists and turns that are more natural, even if uncomfortable or inconvenient for me as a writer. That natural flow is still important enough...

I only see one msg from them which is even weirder than spamming

I'll agree with what others are saying. Don't force yourself to do it. I feel like sex scenes actually drive a lot of people away simply for existing in a story they'd otherwise be fine with, no matter how demarcated they are. Plus, if you're writing them out of obligation, the people who are...

One major component is deciding how much "health" your characters have. Don't mistake that for a literal HP system. Rather, in the back-and-forth, to-and-fro attacks between the combatants, how many attacks should it take to decide the battle? Some people write very prolonged fights where it's...

Martial Arts are to Liberal Arts degrees in the same way that the Sweet Science is to STEM degrees. :blob_cookie:

I feel like it's a crutch half the time, particularly with "reincarnated as This Specific Character" types. If you're writing a story about Goku from DBZ doing whatever random shenanigans you want, people might wonder why he's acting nothing like Goku ever would. But if you're writing a story...

I can't write any scene while listening to music that "matches" the scene. Even if the most exciting, heart-pumping action is going on, it takes a lot more careful consideration to write than it would for the characters to act. It can take over an hour between writing an editing. I prefer...