What’s the worst thing you’ve done in a past book of yours?

[Verdant]

I logged back on my Royal Road account after 2 years and realized that my first (unfinished) novel is posted there. It’s super bad and stuff but it committed two sins.

The thumbnail was so badly drawn that someone (on another site) told me to change it.

Spoiler

I had a 17 year old girl willingly give… sexual favors to her dad for money and played it off as a quirky joke. May just be slightly less worse than naming a black girl “Jezebel” in the unfinished story following…

I definitely didn’t know better (especially with that 2nd part that was shortly lived).
I also guess this bad thing could be something a protagonist did. Honestly, anything that you didn’t know at the time was screwed up.

 

[Zinless]

Introduced an arc, ended it in three chapters.
Constant tense switching mid-sentence.
No periods or commas in dialogues.
Everyone is frickin' special, AKA, not enough "normal" side characters.
Five POV switches in one chapter, and two to four in others.

 

[RiaCorvidiva]

I mean, I've had Lysette (threaten to) torture some enemy soldiers on multiple occasions. She tries act with some semblance of morality, but damn, do I make it hard for her.

 

[Indicterra]

Info dump.........lots lots and lots of info dump

 

[RiaCorvidiva]

I would say that, in terms of the worst thing I've done in terms of the writing itself, it would be that my writing style is somewhat inaccessible. Meaty paragraphs, complex sentence choices, and an extensive vocabulary all find their way into my prose.

 

[Syringe]

Pacing, and chapter word length in an old story. My chaps used to be pushing 20k words, with the longest being around 35k words. It got so large that Royal Road staff had to tell me to cut it in half lmao.

 

[Xcalibur_Xc]

Started the book with LEMONS in the very first chapter...??

 

[Beta_Krogoth]

Slamming fresh, hot, first drafts straight online with no spelling or grammar checking. Straight off the press, ink still drying. You gotta start somewhere though.

 

[Glitched]

Uhhh, I guess the fact that I don't proofread anything? I just finish and post. Typically <3 errors tho. Otherwise the worst thing is a bad pov in the first 6 chapters of my story, which I changed after someone pointed it out.

If we're talking story wise, then my mc literally enjoyed testing a teenage girl pain receptors before killing her.

 

[KrisVFX]

I read one novel and I thought i was ready to start my journey as a writer.... My first novel was a mess...

 

[Thraben]

Killed off my most interesting antagonist when I initially planned to despite it being the readers' favorite character.

There was a lot of pointing at me for killing a good character off too early, and I've since learned that if you make an antagonist any sort of likeable, people will like them.

Most important lesson I've learned.

 

[NotaNuffian]

Made it a torture porn with a dull MC written by the dull me.

Even I hate the work.