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Hey that's really cool! Out of curiosity, as someone who'd like to write one myself--
Do you enjoy writing? Do you like your own writing? I'm hopeful that my current distaste for writing is because I recognize my own lack of skill in it, which will hopefully improve with practice.
If not, how do you motivate yourself to write?
Agreed that the longer the book the better, so long as it's good.
I enjoy writing, but it's much more difficult for me to write cohesively, following the standard conventions of plot and narrative.
The way I get inspired is usually some cool idea or vignette, that I then want to incorporate into the story at large, instead of sitting and storyboarding or outlining and then following along.
Taken to it's natural conclusion, that would be a world building document, and very few people want to read those, so I've had to force myself to package them into a more reader friendly form and end up with a novel haha.
As for my own writing, I'm mostly proud of it, especially in the sheer breadth of the worldbuilding. Most authors, even in sci-fi, tend to only think of one or two novel concepts or themes, or perhaps extrapolate 2 or 3 speculative technologies while leaving the rest untouched.
Have advanced cybernetics? For some reason gene therapy isn't explored.
How much of that is intentional and how much is a failure of imagination, I can't say, but my favorite authors go for breadth as well as depth.
However, even if I enjoy that aspect, and am glad that multiple readers have noticed and appreciated the effort and plausibility of the setting, I've discovered several flaws in my own writing that are difficult or unpleasant for me to deal with. I don't like writing dialogue, or environmental description much. Sometimes I struggle to make characters other than the protagonist and make them feel fleshed out.
I haven't had anyone complain about the above yet, so I don't know how much is me being overly critical and what I do need to improve.
But what I'm proudest of is actually getting the damn thing ready for public consumption, for maybe a decade I've had interesting concepts, vignettes or abortive excerpts languishing in my head or a random Google docs file. It took courage to finally say fuck it, we're going live with this one.
And I'm at 78k words, so nobody can say I didn't stick with it either, though the initial enthusiasm has worn off.
You know the primary motivation for me choosing now of all times to publish? It's because of GPT-4. While still not as good a writer as me, I can see the cards on the table, if I don't prove to the world that I actually am a good writer, it'll be entirely moot sooner than later.
I've tried using it in my own work occasionally out of laziness or curiosity, and am usually disappointed. I still can do way better in fiction, and context windows makes it difficult for it to follow along well in such a large work. Ideally I'd get it to polish up some of the aspects I don't like doing, like descriptions etc.
But I was also care about feedback and recognition, and so far my writing has met all the modest goals I've set for it:
Well reviewed? Check.
Had people outright offer to pay for a Patreon to support me? Check.
Get independently recommended to people on /r/rational? Check.
It would take a great deal of effort from me to improve further and become as good as my favorite authors, but I think that I can compete at least when it comes to sheer inventiveness and richness if nothing else.
And since I've spent so long talking about it, here's a link to the actual story:.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/65211/ex-nihilo-nihil-supernum-original-hard-scifi-with
Now I'm not you, so I can't say how much practise or effort you need to be feel happy about it, but I'd suggest getting one or two chapters out even if you're not 100% on them, just for the feedback. If it's surprisingly positive, that's good motivation to continue and if it's not, you've got concrete issues to work with. It's not hard to do, and if it flops just quietly drop it and pretend it never happened haha
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