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Yes...? :blob_hmm:

There's something I once heard that eats at me from time to time. It went "as knowledge of grammar increases, creativity goes down" or something like that. I pushed back then and this is an even bigger pushback against that. No. It doesn't. Knowledge of such things INCREASES one's ability to be...

No, nobody has "stopped" this. It would be stupid to stop it as well since using italics for DIRECT internal dialogue helps point out when and where you do a specific shift and all kinds of stuff there. It isn't used for INDIRECT internal dialogue, but the way that's written is different anyway...

This would be a hard pass for me. It reads like a teenager trying to be edgy and cool. The premise itself is actually quite interesting, but the execution is lacking. For starters, both the protagonist and God-like figure come across as simplistic. The dialogue overuses profanity, lacks any...

Sorry that I can't go through every detail on how to do that here. It's another thing I need to make an episode on eventually. The stuff isn't difficult, on the plus side! Once you gain awareness of it, I think you can do well.

The fact this starts with the misuse of the semi-colon hurt me. A good, simple example of how to improve this opening while sticking with what you have... Anyway, this opening paragraph alone would be where I'd stop, since you jump between present tense and past tense quite a bit. If you're...

I'll be doing another set of these tomorrow! If my count is right, I have 5 of these to do right now...

I took a look at your writing real quick. You lack cadence, for starters. Also, there's a lot of passive language and it isn't well formatted. All of this, IMO, can add to the impression you don't care about the writing itself because you aren't exhibiting much care for language yet. At least...

In my experience, the advice to "show, don't tell" is often repeated without those who say it truly understanding it. Now, I agree that finding balance between showing and telling takes skill and practice. My issue is the parroting of the phrase. It doesn't teach writers how to approach it with...

I mean, it could be, but I'm not going to write you off. Your reaction is one I've read about in fact when studying how to use Powerpoint better and it's something I've worried about. Since I want to make stuff informative for people, but I also don't want to demand the same amount of time other...

Yeah, that's something I've been thinking about recently... In this case, I wanted to give examples for people to refer to/go back over at their leisure after knowing what the actual lesson is. I could read out every example or so on, but my concern is stuff being too long since, well, I value...

Full disclosure: While I dislike citing "show, don't tell" as advice, I also dislike ignoring its wisdom. It's all a balancing act that depends on pacing, among other things. I've often told people this stuff when I work with them more closely, but I haven't had the chance to go in-depth with it...

The problem with this is expecting the AI to do the heavy lifting. To just input something and that's it. If someone is going to blend AI, they need to do it with intent and know how to adjust things as opposed to expecting it to do all the work.

You're speaking my language! ...So long as it's actual Dante and not Donte. :LOL: It amuses me that the version of the character that's meant to be "literary" and "deep" is a walking pile of shit while the version mocked actually has tons of depth to him. Makes sense to me though: sometimes...

So, one tool I love using is The Enneagram of Personality when developing characters. It's insanely useful, as it can help make sense of characters and help give direction beyond just the surface details. To show what I mean (and give an example of this in action), I decided to analyze and break...

Request away, I say! I don't consider that fruitless and I don't feel anybody must listen to me. What annoys me is when someone who is explicitly writing purely for themselves asks me to read, gets a response they didn't want to hear, and then pushes back against me because what I said doesn't...

For the sake of anybody else reading this, I'll add in an excerpt from Story so you can know what we're talking about. :ROFLMAO: Reading over this again, it seems he's less against it and more against the constant poor use of it and how lazily it was used, particularly with exposition...

Alright, going to focus on your pacing issues first and foremost, since I'm working on another grammar guide to help people out, beyond the Showing stuff I already did. But here are some examples of mistakes I noticed... Run-on sentences... Sentence fragments... And other things that are...

Successful or better, it all depends on whatever you want out of it. I'd argue that what's "good" or "better" than another is entirely subjective and relies on taste. From a pragmatic perspective, however, I stand by the idea that people don't need as much as some might tout to get by. I'm not...

Oh yeah, you don't actually need to know "arcane" stuff at all. As said in it, an algorithm has even found that to be the literal case. It's also why Orwellian Prose helped as a foundation for me, even if I'm doing a lot lately to blend in more advanced techniques I know. Regardless, just basic...