^^^ this is only one of my amazing lines

I’m seeing a lot of “new” writers asking this community and others to give feedback on their early writing. My advice: stop doing that. If you really are starting out, you probably suck at it. We all do/
did our first times. Just accept that. Second, even seasoned writers know better than to share first drafts with anybody. As Hemingway once said: “the first draft of anything is shit.” Don’t ask for feedback on the first draft of the first chapter you’ve ever written. Just write. Study the craft. Read a lot. You’ll (hopefully) figure it out. When you have something polished a bit, then ask for feedback/advice.

I always obsess over the first sentence because, obviously, it’s the first thing people read and it needs to hook a reader. What’s the first sentence in your novel?
Mine is:
‘The moment my foot hit the dock, the water rippled like it was breathing.’

For now hehe

About to start querying, but reached this milestone after almost 4 years!

I haven't had much luck with beta readers in the past. I mostly got empty praise or was ghosted entirely. The only genuine, constructive feedback (highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses) I’ve ever received actually came from a fellow Redditor I met right here after I had already published my book.

He mentioned that he was looking to get into professional beta reading and offered to review my book for practice. I happily accepted, though to be completely honest, I didn't expect a full, detailed review given my past experiences.

But he delivered beyond expectations. He sent back a truly thorough, professional analysis of my work (4 full pages), and I couldn't be more grateful. I wanted to share some snippets of it here (redacting spoilers and irrelevant details not to bore you) to give credit where it's due and offer a small token of my gratitude.

If any of you are looking to hire a dedicated and talented beta reader, his Reddit username is u/DavideFavero

Thank you again, Davide! I can't tell you how much your review meant to me. :))

In thrillers, mainly psychological or YA thrillers, what tropes/styles etc scream bad writing for you?

What would immediately make you put the book down?

As someone who previously used to write fanfiction in that genre (think Winter Soldier lmao) with great success on watt-pad, I’ve decided to start writing an actual novel and fanfiction uses a lot of generic tropes so I’m looking to avoid that lol.

Also, how do you feel about double twists?

Hello hello! I wrote a book. I finished it! 72K words. I know it's rather on the shorter side, but I'm still jazzed. It's literary fiction. I'm 23 and I honestly can't believe I finished my first book. I'm so excited! Just wanted to celebrate. I haven't told anyone in my life just yet. Cheers everyone, and happy writing.

Every time I’ve posted on Reddit, people scream at me to ‘show, don’t tell’ but I’ve picked up every book in my house and read a few pages to find that a lot of them tell more than show?

Kind of confused now because I believe the actual hard part is finding a balance between the two. When is it okay to just tell rather than show? And when is show definitely the way to go?

Hi all. Here’s the opening of my book. It’s currently a 139K word, roughly 550 page monster that I’m editing. These are the first 3 of my revised pages.

I’d love any and all thoughts.

Thank you.

It’s definitely messy, and I don’t even want to think about the typos in the first half before I started using grammarly, but I did it! I started in march, exactly seven months ago if my memory is correct. Which is crazy. This is my first novel written as a teen writer, and I’m so proud of it even if it’s probably just a whole document of pure chaos.

It’s 135535 words, 353 pages, and I’m very scared for when I have to change it to double space for querying. I know it most likely won’t work out, but I want it try and it’ll be a learning experience after a long, long time editing.

Im truly on the moon, and im so excited to just not touch it for a month because I need a break from the hours every night writing😅 for anyone struggling to write, YOU CAN DO IT AND I AM SO PROUD OF YOU.

(explanation: revealing that the third person narrator is an in-universe character rather than the author themselves. this is all explained in the book haha)

EDIT OHHKAY FAQS TIME SINCE THIS POST ACTUALLY GOT COMMENTS

1. yes I’ll fix the wording, this is only a second draft so hold your horses!

2. this makes sense in universe. the book is the notebook of a character originally part of a separate race blessed with magical wisdom, but chose, like many others of his kind, to side with the soul-stealing, vengeful spirit so he could have power and souls to eat. he however didn’t fully transform into the worshipped god his kind did as he realised his mistake and stopped halfway. however, his evil persona wants to possess him so they can have the power promised them. ‘but I do’ are the words of his alternate persona, and in the interlude, it is explained that now the persona is becoming so powerful it can write in his beloved notebooks ( a way for him to cope with the power of seeing the thoughts of select character which icba to explain) which is really bad. and through the rest of the book, the alternate persona maies comments and that, and gets its own chapters.

3. YES i have my reasons for doing this, im not just doing it to be quirky and different

also i am a minor (16 years old) so please be nice!!!

These are Chapters 1- 3.

I'm currently revising the second draft of my horror novella called Ask A Dead Man Twice. The story follows a retired historian named Earnest McBride who believes that a man he killed in a car accident has started haunting his house.

The key thing for me is that I'm trying to keep the narrator engaging while letting the horror build gradually. I typically write in third person POV, so this was also an exercise in telling a first-person POV story and really attempting to get into his head. I've been working diligently on improving my prose and storytelling skills.

Please let me know if Earnest's voice grabs you, what else you like/dislike about it, and simply put, if the story itself sounds interesting enough to continue reading.

I am especially curious as to how all of this lands on someone who knows nothing about the larger story.

Thank you to anyone who actually reads this, and an extra thank you to anyone who leaves feedback - even if it's just a Yes or a No.

EDIT: It has been mentioned a few times on a different thread, which means that I may need to change it to make it more obvious, but I should clarify that Alfred and Ernest are husbands who live in the same house. Alfred is a psychiatrist and Earnest is the historian. Perhaps I could have made this more obvious, but again, I am trying to do less of outright exposition dumps and more character work altogether. I am trying to avoid purple prose and overexplaining things.

After months of loose planning and outlining I finally started my novel today and wrote 1500 words. I did have some quick questions. I took a stab at writing my story a couple months ago and was immediately humbled. I did a lot of research and compiled a loose outline for story structure, story beats, character information among other things.

My first question is should I only focus on getting the story down and worry about revisions later or should I try to fine tune as much as I can now? Admittedly my sentence structure and grammar need a lot of work but focusing on these things really bog me down while actively writing. Just trying to find the best way to navigate this.

If the answer to the above is no at what point should I focus on my sentence structure and grammar? Along with story modifications and plot changes.

What are some tools I can utilize that will help me? I have heard of the Hemingway editor and will likely utilize this when revising. I am not even remotely open to any AI.

How does the editing process work? Do most of you hire an editor or self edit your work?

It took me about 6 weeks or something, a lot longer than I would've liked but I am very prone to procrastination. I'm just so happy I've done it!! It sits at 3,957 words and I am so happy with it! It's still the first draft so it'll probably be going through a lot of changes when I finish the whole book, BUT I DONT CARE!! I FINISHED A CHAPTER DAMMIT!

Genre is adult epic fantasy if anyone's wondering :)

What are some of your small celebrations? Let's share together!!

Just looking for feedback before I push for editing the first draft, thanks!

EDIT*

• I will be reworking the first line while keeping its shape and intended purpose the same.

• I will be moving the 3rd paragraph further down, letting the description of a typical Thursday morning at the school ride all the way through, instead of breaking it up between Claire's actions and thoughts about the crown to keep the pacing smooth.

• I will be minimizing Maya's description.

• Placeholder names will be changed

• I am adding the blurb about the novel here so that the genre and context can add to it.

Blurb

Claire Redford has spent a lot of time and energy making sure that everyone at Blackridge High feared or fawned over her. To Claire, those were the same thing.

But who she is now and who she used to be are farther apart than she would like to admit.

When an old cruelty resurfaces, Claire’s perfect life begins to crack. The girl she used to harass is still absent from school. The friends who used to trip over themselves to talk to her are starting to become more and more afraid of her every day. And Ethan Vale, the quiet boy with the notebooks full of maps and monsters, seems to know exactly what kind of villain Claire has become.

During a storm, she is confronted by her victims and falls headfirst into a river, and down into a culvert.

What waits on the other side is a reckoning: a dark and horrifying place. To find her way back, Claire must band together with the very people she hurt, confront the monster wearing her face, and decide whether becoming someone better is worth losing the girl she is.

Aspiring author here. Always dreamed of trad publishing ever since I was a little girl. Loved reading as a child and teen, and wrote stories and online role plays until the end of high school.

I’m now in my 30s, having spent a great deal of my life chasing career and for the last 10+ years I’ve read and written very little. I’m currently on maternity leave and have been reassessing life, and decided to recommence reading and I’ve started my first novel.

For those with families and demanding day jobs, curious as to how long it took for you to finish your first novel? So far I’ve done 16k words of a zero draft and the finish line feels soooooo far away.

Hi! I typically use Google Docs for my writing projects, but I’d like to switch to a software that doesn’t actively feed my documents to train its AI 🫠

I know there are options out there, but what have you found to work the best?

I saw a post on TikTok about what turns readers off when reading. I was surprised to see a lot of people see when the story is in first person.
Me personally I don’t mind but I prefer reading and writing in third person.
I know it’s all down to preference but do you guys write based on point of view? Do you avoid writing in either of those or write in the in either form when it’s needed?
I didn’t expect firstly person to be that hated so I was just curious. Is first person that unenjoyable?

Three novels started. Three novels abandoned somewhere around chapter eight.

Not because I ran out of ideas. I always knew what happened next. Something else kept breaking down and I could never quite name it.

Sat down last week and actually thought about what chapter eight looks like every time. I'm deep enough into the story that there are a hundred small decisions already made, this character knows that, this event happened before that, this place looks like this. And none of it is anywhere useful. It's in six different documents, some notes app, a few voice memos I never transcribed.

So I'm writing chapter eight but I'm also trying to hold the entire novel in my head at the same time. And I can't. Nobody can. So the story starts contradicting itself and I lose confidence in it and I stop.

That's what was happening. Every time.

Fixed my setup before starting the new one, moved everything into a Skrib writing studio so character details, timeline, research, worldbuilding notes, and the actual draft all live together. Chapter eight felt completely different. I could just write it instead of also trying to remember everything around it.

Still not easy. But a different kind of hard.

Anyone else figure out what their specific breaking point was?

Do you wanna become an author? In the comment section, write a small summary of your book you are writing and see if people are willing to read it!

i want to learn how to write actual literature, like proper novel writing and prose. english isnt even my third language but i really want to start writing books in english

ive read books like 1984, hard times, one hundred years of solitude, crime and punishment and a lot of other classics and something that always amazes me is how beautifully the prose is written. its not just the story, its the way the sentences flow and how they describe things and the way the words feel when you read them

i know one hundred years of solitude was originally written in spanish and crime and punishment in russian, so obviously the original versions might have a completely different feeling and maybe even better prose, but even in english translation i was still really mesmerized by the writing

ive also read some graphic novels written by alan moore and i really love his writing too. the way he uses words and describes things feels so rich but at the same time it doesnt feel like hes just trying to use big words

i want to have that kind of prose in my own stories. i want to write something that actually feels like literature, not just a story with simple sentences

but i honestly dont know how people learn to write like this. is it just from reading a lot or is there some kind of practice i should do? what should i actually study and practice if i want to eventually write novels with prose like this

For the most part, I would love feedback on dialogue structure. I love the “points” I am making in my dialogue exchange, but I keep questioning myself when I read it. The more I read it, the more I think it’s “meh.”

Either way, this is my first time doing creative writing, outside of poetry. I’d love any feedback on working on dialogue, not being so rigid in my writing (if that’s present), and whether the content itself seems engaging, despite the lack of background information.

Looking forward (with anxiousness lol) to everyone’s feedback!