What's an Author hill you 100% die on? (Please talk about writing related topics)

[CharlesEBrown]

The reader is a terrible critic.

Literally NEVER listen to what they want unless you are writing for profit, which you aren't. Write what YOU would want to read.

I would change that last sentence to "Write what you have fun writing and/or would want to read." myself.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

Writers should always be super self-conscious about accidentally spoiling story endings when talking to people.

 

[Deleted member 206441]

There is a tactile satisfaction in writing with a pen and paper.

 

[lambenttyto]

Rewriting is for noobs.

AI writing isn't art and it's for hacks who have no skill and probably love the terrible low-level churn out of cookie cutter meh movies that are produced all the time.

Magic "systems" are boring and don't feel like magic at all, but pseudo science disguised as fantasy.

There should be more stories that are "told" rather than having invisible narrators designed to make fiction an alternate reality through prose.

Longer isn't better and most writers can't tell a story in few pages to save their lives.

Am I opinionated?

Good.

 

[Iassus-Rudera]

Writing is an exercise of the mind. Treat it like one. Don't write past your limits, you're just overtraining yourself. Don't underwrite or you'll never do so again. Increase the amount you write bit by bit until you can handle more. Proper rest is needed and proper effort should be put into it.

How you feel and your current life affects how and what you write to a significant degree. Don't write to the detriment of all else, even if you enjoy it.

If you feel the NEED to write, you're doing it wrong. If you're doing it PURELY to entertain your readers, you won't enjoy it. If you're doing it PURELY for yourself, don't look at the numbers. Hobby writers should post but treat it like a hobby. Professional hopefuls should write with the expectation they need to bend(not break) to the whims of their audience.

 

[sbdrag]

Going to add some nuance to "write for yourself" as advice:

You should write things you enjoy first and foremost - lots of authors do see more success when they stop trying to write something "marketable" and focus more on passion projects and experiments.* So yes, if you want to write something worthwhile, it should be something you write because you enjoy it before anything else.

But.

If you intend to sell your work in any capacity, you need to learn to treat your art as a business. You need to be savvy in the genre you're writing - you need to know what genre you're writing. You need to be aware of at least general trends, tropes, conventions, and reader expectations. This is doubly important when you write in more niche genres. You don't have to follow all of these to the letter - but you need to know the rules and understand why they're rules before you break them. If you hate thrillers and decide to write an "anti-thriller" but don't read thrillers or know anything about them, you're going to write garbage because you don't even know what you're trying to make fun of.

Writing something marketable and knowing how to market what you write are different things which new authors often conflate and then wax poetic about being avant-garde or too outside the mainstream. Writing something "marketable" is about chasing industry trends and setting out to write something you believe will appeal to a wide audience. Knowing how to market what you write is about what I was saying before - knowing your genre, tropes, conventions, and reader expectations and then marketing them accordingly.

"If you want to sell your work, you need to learn how to sell your work" is the author hill I will die on.

*Caveat: this applies almost exclusively to authors who have already spent a lot of time improving their craft - studying other works, analyzing literature and media, taking part in critique circles and writing groups, experimenting in their own writing, writing often, etc. In the same sense that learning anatomy through life studies in art will help you draw better cartoons, learning traditional writing craft will help you write better weird stories. Switching to a passion project will not guarantee you success - and it's less and less likely to do so the less time and effort you've put in when it comes to learning how to tell a story.

 

[Ai-chan]

Simplicity is strength.

The is no need to overdescribe a scene or object and waste readers time reading overexposition that matters little or doesn't matter at all.

 

[LuoirM]

Agreed with En chan, If you rely on motivation to get shit done you will never actually finish anything. Miss one day because you felt unmotivated, then it will turn into 2, then 4, and so on on until you drop completely.

Yooo wassup

 

[Okram]

Yooo wassup

Zug Zug

 

[Mortrexo]

Reading and learning to accept negative criticism with an open mind can help you grow as an author a lot. You, as an author, won't always make the correct decision and might mischaracterize some scenes, and that's okay. You don't need to be swayed by the reader, but listening to what they are saying is very helpful.

 

[SurfAngel_1031]

- Idea
- Brainstorm
- Settle main plot
- integrate sub-plots
- Outline
- Write
Don't use the damned Scribble Hub Editor, use a real word processor.

And my biggest pet peeve / Mountain that I will sacrifice all of you for is :

"..." <---- The ellipsis. This is the worst form of writing ever. Writing "The cat is brown, Tim frowned." - as stupid as that sounds is infinitely better than saying nothing.

??

 

[dukerino]

A lot of people jump into writing with a bunch of big ideas that have been colored by the genres they like, without any concept of the broader first principles of storytelling. You can tell when they ask for advice, and their questions are always about systems and powers and the use of the genre's tropes and trappings, and then you check their story out and the fundamentals of satisfying storytelling just aren't there. A lot of people are asking the wrong questions and focusing on the window dressing, without an understanding of the underpinning reasons the conventions they copy were enshrined in the first place.

Part of this is that you can't stick to only reading within your genre--some people don't pick anything up outside of webnovels and manga and litrpgs, and aren't getting essential vitamins and minerals. That's okay if you're just reading, but if you want to create your own thing and make it good, you gotta expand your palate.

 

[DaelyxLenAuphydas]

Whew, I should have a few, let me see!

- 'write for yourself' is missing the point, and people who dislike the point of writing for yourself also miss the point. I want people to read my story. If i have to change the story entirely to make it more marketable, then that's pointless, because its not my story anymore. If I have no-one read the story, then thats... bearable, but still sub-ideal. I can totally want people to read it while still refusing to compromise or renege upon my ideas because it might make it more palatable.

- Reading is not really that useful for writing. I kinda feel like it can be counterproductive at times by making you more predictable and stale. And forcing yourself to read things your not interested in will just convey that same disinterest into your writing.

- Asking for help when writing is invaluable, but you also should take anything you hear with severe doubt. Too many people, when someone asks them for help, think that means its an admission that the other person has no clue what they're doing and need you to bail them out by telling them everything to write. It's invaluable to hear how other people think a story can be improved as well as their input about what is a good or bad idea, but ultimately that only goes if their input doesnt contradict something important to you about your story. Being able to take some and leave other ideas is necessary to get much value out of it.

- Everyone thinks they know what makes a good story and that their opinion is the only correct one. Almost nothing is objective about good storytelling, and people are overly dogmatic about how a story should be. I tend to have a lot of preferences that go contrary to a lot of very commonly received advice, and it irks me to no end when people try to insist that my literal personal taste is somehow objectively wrong. Speaking of which...

- Fluff is good, pacing is overrated, and nothing important has to happen. Like, at all. A story can literally have no conflict nor plot and still be engaging if its well written, descriptive, and has something good to latch onto. Cute wholesome fluff, great action writing, whatever. Even the basic principle of having a narrative at all is optional. That isnt to say that I dont like conflict and drama and heavy plots, just that it doesnt need to always be there. When I like characters, I am perfectly happy to just bask in their presence and see them interact even if it doesnt build up to anything greater. Of course, a perfect story to me would include both, but the needs of having a plot tends to discourage the kind of meandering that gives room for 'pointless' fluff and character building.

- Impressions are more valuable than opinions, and generally harder to get. The most important thing to a writer I think is not to get the opinion of other people on how they would do the story, but rather hearing how a reader interprets and understands the story that is written. If the idea I wanted to communicate doesn't get across to the reader then I failed in writing it, but if the idea does come across but the person just doesn't like it, then the story is fine because that idea is what the story was about regardless of if they liked it

- Flaws and conflict are a crutch to making characters interesting. If a character is just a checklist of 'make sure they have good and bad traits' to make them believable they will feel stale and unfulfilling, you should neither be actively trying to make a character flawed nor the opposite but only to execute the character concept as well as you can. Flaws can be good if they are adding deeper depths to a character or fleshing them out more, but just throwing on random weaknesses or problems for the sake of it is just insipid and uninspiring. Likewise, a perfect or flawless character can still be plenty interesting so long as their personality is engaging and the world interacts with them in a realistic feeling way. The real problem is when the narrative and world start warping around trying to show off how great a character is.

 

[SarahsBuzzard]

IMO, writers starting out should probably avoid romance. Focus on what motivates your characters outside that bubble and you'll create more dynamic, driven portraits of them and the stakes in the plot.

 

[Context5812]

Write what YOU would want to read.

Should be the subtitle of the website.

 

[Gray_Mann]

Fluff is good

The amount of people that cry about the length of descriptions if it's anything more than a sentence or two, genuinely makes me damn near growl every time I see it.

Anyone who proudly suggests minimal description is superior, in my experience, are the same kind of people whose reading palate mostly or entirely consists of light novel/webnovel-esque quality work, and therefore there opinions have very little weight or importance in my own opinion.

In fact, anyone who complains about mUh ExCeSsIvE dEsCrIpTiOn,I always instinctively dismiss everything else they say following this statement.

I guess in hindsight, the majority of the people I'm speaking about/against, are those coming from a western origin.

 

[Anonjohn20]

Time for me to be a jerk.

1. If you write for yourself, don't publish; your story should try to at least appeal to a group of people. Any group of people will do. Some stories are written in such a way that they should be stuck as private diary entries; some of you know the type of story I mean, the ones that read like a rant or are really preachy about the author's views—those suck.

2. Finish your damn stories! Hell, at least finish one. I'm talking to you, infinite hiatus writers.

3. Try to use genres and tags correctly. Some stories need way more tags, and a few stories have tags that readers are expecting but haven't seen in the entire work. I know there is wiggle room in the interpretation of each tag but don't use something like "politics" or "war" and never show it.

4. Fan/reader opinions are valid. If one reader doesn't like your story and says so in the comments or a review. Is his opinion a fact? No, but there is no need to make a forum post asking the moderators to delete his review or ban the reader (I've seen this more than once). For every person who dislikes your story, there will be another that likes it. Focus on the readers that are enjoying your story.

5. Considering almost no writer is actually writing, you people making webnovels should be called typers instead of writers. LOL JK

 

[Gray_Mann]

Considering almost no writer is actually writing, you people making webnovels should be called typers instead of writers

 

[JayMark]

Time for me to be a jerk.

1. If you write for yourself, don't publish; your story should try to at least appeal to a group of people. Any group of people will do. Some stories are written in such a way that they should be stuck as private diary entries; some of you know the type of story I mean, the ones that read like a rant or are really preachy about the author's views—those suck.

2. Finish your damn stories! Hell, at least finish one. I'm talking to you, infinite hiatus writers.

3. Try to use genres and tags correctly. Some stories need way more tags, and a few stories have tags that readers are expecting but haven't seen in the entire work. I know there is wiggle room in the interpretation of each tag but don't use something like "politics" or "war" and never show it.

4. Fan/reader opinions are valid. If one reader doesn't like your story and says so in the comments or a review. Is his opinion a fact? No, but there is no need to make a forum post asking the moderators to delete his review or ban the reader (I've seen this more than once). For every person who dislikes your story, there will be another that likes it. Focus on the readers that are enjoying your story.

5. Considering almost no writer is actually writing, you people making webnovels should be called typers instead of writers. LOL JK

1. I write for nobody. And since there is infinite nobody, my audience is infinite! Mwhahahahaha! Moooooooo!
2. Yah, yah, yah, fine. Finishing is hard but I'll do it. Except for that epic futa smut I wrote five chapters of, that stays on infinite hiatus and can never be released.
3. Tags are difficult for me because all my stories will mix genres and themes depending on where they are.
4. Not all of them. I know the difference between good critique, helpful suggestions, trolling, nit-picking, and preference raging [this happened and I don't like it].
5. I write everything with a quill pen and ink in perfect cursive before I type.

 

[Anonjohn20]

Except for that epic futa smut I wrote five chapters of, that stays on infinite hiatus and can never be released.

Its almost midnight in my time zone and I might just go for a burger over this.