Search results

everyone wants to make everyplace *safe* grown-ups don't live in a safe world.

The quick answer is no. Basically, each writer writes in their own style, with their own strengths and weaknesses. Most advice from professionals simply involves either 'quick tips' (that only work in the mind and style of the professional that suggests them) or advice that simply makes your...

You dare correct me?! Hahaha! You are right! Take that! But uhh... I think it was Kevin Costner, not Mel Gibson :) My biggest problem with the Costner movie was not the lack of tights, or the bad acting and bad accent, but rather the inclusion of 'Azeem'. Of course, seeing Christian Slater as...

The problem is, when you hit the true motivation, it's entirely possible to paint yourself into a corner. My character in 'sentenced to Paradise', for example, has realized that just because he's an isekai, that doesn't mean he wants to spend his life adventuring and growing stronger to do...

You have not read much litrpg I take it? There are hundreds of clever systems, from cultivation 'ranks' to lotuses that pop up over people's heads, bracelets that read your 'stats', armor suits that can detect and tell you where your energy is going, 'god systems' that give you feathers...

Systems are never good, but they can be useful. Just remember that the entire point of the system is to support the story, instead of the other way around. But in the end, a system is a hammer. It works great to help with dealing with nails, but too many writers decide every problem is a nail...

Writing is the last bastion of merit. If you work hard and try to improve, you will. If you are lazy and never bother to learn, you will fail. Unless you are a rich celebrity with a ghost writer, in which case, your sponsors will pretend you are a good writer and buy your books in bulk to make...

Remember, the dumber, more ignorant, and more thoughtless the opinion, the louder the source is going to scream and insist that they be heard and paid attention to. That's how we get critics, politicians, and 'influencers'.

When I was writing 'They call me the alchemyst', a sort of grimdark superpower fiction, one reader left me a 5-page 'note' explaining why and how I needed to turn the main character into 'full metal alchemist' Later, I had a reader who screamed at me because I mentioned that one male character...

A squirrel, alone, has to use his abilities with chewing and a small storehouse of nuts to STOP THE OCCULT GODS AND SAVE THE UNIVERSE! one word book. *splat* The end. But it's pure GRRM Epic! Kill the hero in the first word? Yep, he'd probably roll off of his super-strength couch and cream his...

Hah! Us 'well akshuallys' are right behind Vegans and right ahead of Witnesses on the "I wish I had enough dynamite to shut them up" scale.

Here for now. RR is completely converged. Heck, I got perma-banned because someone whined in my chapter messages about the fact that my books were 'bigoted' because I had no sexual minority representation and I simply deleted them and prevented them from posting in my messages... apparently that...

Multi-tailed kitsune. Get your damned mytholgy straight, please, Kitsune are fox spirits, and pretty low-end. They have one tail and specialize in illusion and trickery. Sometimes they are evil, sometimes good, but usually a combination of both, like humans. Low-level Japanese demons that tend...

This. EVERY portrayal of elves I have read, from Tolkein's 'superior beings' to the vegan butthairs that infest a lot of fiction, just makes me want to feed the lot of them into a wood chipper and see if they come out as decent ground cover.

Dirk Bladefire Adam Hardman Rock Maxwell Steve Post Brock Steele Max Planke Oh wait, we aren't looking for porn star names?

it sucks when you write a story that only barely meets any tags. Superhero drama, for example, is hard to tag because it mostly has a variety of plotlines, none of which really encompass what you are writing.

Yep, except the dealbreaker is, I absolutely despise most anime and the vast majority of tropes. I think they are trite, childish, and absolutely terrible writing, even the best of them by 'legendary Japanese Filmmakers'. It saddens me enormously to see otherwise decent writers give in to the...

Yeah, Micah was where I wrote Hamilton off entirely. I tried to follow the Merry Gentry series and it was okay, if slow to publish, but I just got tired of dealing with all the stuff she was going through as a reader. I met her at a signing in Indiana, but she was....frenetic, which I guess must...

Woops, Maybe I broke a few rules, then. After a few of my books through Kindle Create started losing popularity, I pulled them from KU and re-released them elsewhere, based on dropping the exclusivity clause. I love KU, don't get me wrong, but they get really nasty about deprecating stuff that...

My problem lately is that most of the stories coming out here, RR, and even KU seem to only have two modes... You get three-quarters of the way through only for the author to mention that the protagonist and secondary character might have casually... you know... faded to black, or there's...