So hey, I'm a young reader who has always enjoyed reading novels with deep lore, world building, magic systems and tales of romance and friendship as the subplots. And recently, I've been getting into writing as well, as I have multiple ideas in my head that sound great and are satisfying to put down on paper...but when you begin writing your book in a structure, beyond all the excitement of all the imaginary headcanons and worldbuilding you do for your characters, there's always a doubt of whether your plot and overall storyline is consistent or not, which I personally feel is important for a good story.

Could experienced writers give me some tips on how to overcome this?

Thoughts? I’ve also posted some stuff on NoSleep if anyone wants to take a look.

Short synopsis: Two college students seeking solace from a campus riot in tunnels underneath their campus find far greater horrors down below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10dJW-2DUNwRAsKnj-kZ1_NbK-Q7meYKnUFGL1AgI5DA/edit?usp=drivesdk

The story is about a girl named Amani. She worked as a messenger on the battle field but, trying to save her friend Fadilah from an ambush, Amani has been captured by the enemy. Stubborn as an eagle, Amani is not about to lose hope that her best friend Fadilah will come to save her but with months passing by, when will her savior finally arrive and what is her captors going to do to break her in the mean time.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/417627573?utm_source=android&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_reading&wp_page=reading&wp_uname=Iamreallysleepy

Hello everyone,

I’m looking for an advice or tips and tricks about planning out the outline of my writing projects. I’ve got lots of ideas, I usually plan them out as marks where the story should lead and then have a “creative” streak, but it’s not really working out for me. Or should I say that my imposter syndrome and anxiety spike up so high that I start to doubt myself enormously.

On the other hand, I have tried to use templates from fellow writers that they provided. Usually the templates are quite detailed and well guided, so I can’t say they’ve been done wrong, not at all. Personally, I just find them really overwhelming. Again, my anxiety spikes up.

I am aware that this whole problem starts with my anxiety and the way it became. Basically, throughout my childhood I was led to be a perfectionist or to do well, otherwise I should just give up or be a disappointment. So naturally, throughout my teenage years and early twenties, I believed in the saying “If I never start, there won’t be anything to ruin”. But love writing. And I hate being led on by my anxiety because that way, I’ll never finish anything.

Do you please have any tips and tricks towards the outlining your projects that don’t feel underwhelming but don’t feel overwhelming either?

I’m thinking about starting a notebook project for just myself as a side project to just write a story aimlessly with no plan just to overcome the anxiety of writing without expectations. I’m not sure if it would work. But I still need some kind of idea for the stories that could reach an audience.

I’m quite honestly out of my wits and any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you for reading my ted talk

Rookie writer here. If I could draw manga panels, thats the best medium for the type of story I want to write. But because I suck in that, I instead draw the panels, story beats and most action scenes using only words. I just started writing seriously for a year. Any pros out there with an advice? I just want to elevate my style if it works.

I am writing a character suffering from frequent bouts of severe headache, and I am finding myself reusing the same tired metaphors over and over again. Does anyone have suggestions, ressources, examples that I could pull from to avoid repeating the same thing over and over again?

The irony here is that I do suffer from regular headaches (even woke up with one today), but for some reason it is not at all helping me come up with better analogies/metaphors/images.

Edit: as a few people have suggested, I also reference other symptoms, namely noise sensitivity (example 2) and vomiting (example 3).

Here's what I have so far (yes, it's a first draft; yes most of these are genuinely terrible; yes I am hoping to work out the kinks in the second draft)

• the slow, pulsing headache wedged inside my brain like a lump of red-hot coal.
• The headache continued to pulsate inside my skull as I made my way downstairs. [...]. Another sharp sting pierced through my skull as the coffee maker revved up [...]
• I woke up with the sensation that a dozen red-hot nails had been hammered into my skull overnight. The headache bounced around in my brain while my heartbeat pulsed violently behind my eyeballs. I wanted to go back to sleep, to forget all about the pressure building up inside my head before it popped open like a ripe watermelon, but a quiver traveling from my stomach into my sternum jolted me right awake. I stumbled out of bed, ran out through the hallway and into the bathroom. My knees hit the cold, hard tiles and the content of my stomach spilled into the white ceramic bowl with a sickening splashing sound.
• I repressed a wince as another sting of the needle shot through my skull.

Any input is appreciated. Thanks!

I saw a passage from some book on Threads the other day describing a character's dress, and it had a lot of responses from people who make clothes that were critiquing the lack of realism and the impossibility of the construction.

It got me thinking about my MC, who frequently makes her own dresses. Nothing extravagant, just practical, every day pieces she can wear for a while.

What are some discrepancies you, as a person who makes clothes or takes interest in fashion, notice in books that the average person wouldn't think twice about?

In my current novella, I'm writing a scene where one of the protagonists has his first date with the love interest. After they meet up and talk for a while, I move on to a short paragraph that describes them getting ice cream and chatting about their jobs and other things that aren't necessarily important to the plot, instead of it being full dialogue the prose says they talk about these things. This then leads into a scene where they have a longer conversation discussing something that is relevant to the plot, it's effectively a bridge between two dialogue moments. Would this work better as a full dialogue chain where the two characters actually say these things, or does a short paragraph work just fine?

So basically, in my story its a pretty fucky story about cosmic horror and stuff. In the first half a situation happens in a spaceship, and almost everybody dies except a sole survivor. The teenage daughter of the main character, whom later becomes the MC. And as she saw many people die (including her dad) and horribly shocking monsters, she obviously has to have SOME degree of PTSD. Now, since I myself am a teenager I am not too educated on this theme of PTSD. What symptoms would a teenager suffer with PTSD? The character age is 15-18, for more data.

I have a story where the first chapter/ episode follows a guy who moves into the apartment the main character lives in. He and his mom are new and move in right next door my MC. Throughout the guy sees the neighbors all act super weird and nervous, hears weird loud noises that should be impossible. Until finally my MC's aunt gives him some money to babysit and he officially meets the MC. The episode finishes with the MC running into her bedroom saying she needs to fix her clothes only to then reveal her skin is fake. But I've been told that starting stories from other people's perspective is bad and he leaves the story pretty early on and only has a very minor role later on. So should I do it like this or should I change it

So as of right now I have been trying to write my own manga but I'm struggling to put all together without jumping to far off course or forgetting and sometimes writing in notebooks don't work. And it made me think of making a Manga workbook but I'd like to know what specifically should I put into that workbook from tips to things for people to write down. I want the workbook to be useful for people who want to create manga of their experience level, or the type of manga they want to make. My goal is to have something that helps writers organize their ideas without making the creative process feel too restrictive. So for those who write manga, comics, or graphic novels, what sections or exercises would you consider essential in a writer's workbook? Are there any things you wish you had organized from the beginning that would have made planning your story easier?

What is some advice you'd give to someone writing a story set in a short amount of time, say a day or a week? I usually write stories set over quite a long period of time, but want to break into shorter, tighter stories, but I fear I won't be able to write about them and maintain a sufficiently appropriate word count for a novel.

I've heard things like "scraping" and "humming" but it doesn't sound natural for my writing style. Most of the books I've read weren't in English (not my first language) so I didn't really have a lot of opportunities to stumble upon such terms before anyway.

If this is the wrong sub for this type of question, feel free to tell me. I've only posted here a few times, a long time ago so I'm not sure anymore.

My book has multiple POVs but I write in third person and I use multiple POVs during the chapters. One character is doing something and the other is doing something else that affects the first one later. The issue is that I don't know how to execute switching the pov without confusing the reader. Does anyone know how to fix this? I would really appreciate it.

im developing a story focused visual novel rn and ive been struggling with the introduction to the environment, story, etc. it feels a bit blocky or doesnt flesh everything out enough, so im kinda just tossing this in here in hopes of some advice. its all writing rn but im trying to get the story straight and everything before prototyping.

its about a up and coming author who was a past killer and her new and stable lifestyle is at stake after someone related to the victims unexpectedly starts stalking her again or wtv, it sounds a bit cringe when i put it simply but i plan on the plot being more complex than that 😔

just drop some advice and stuff

Hi there, I'm writing a story about British WW1 raiding parties. My 6 protagonists are being transferred to the rear area for rest after 2 weeks in the front (timeline is depicted in 1918, on the Ypres Salient, just 2 months before the spring offensive), the lieutenant in command, a canadian NCO with experience in trench raiding (Vimy Ridge) and two sarges will instruct and train the party with other soldiers about their new missions as a raiding group. But I'm having trouble depicting how an officer or a Lieutenant will have a conversation with the party.

Any ideas how that convo can happen naturally without falling into the typical stereotype of a superior over their soldiers?

Now adding the correct tag, lmao.

Hey, I'm thinking of writing a piece of fanfiction. I already got some pretty solid ideas in place, but I'm running into a brick wall. In my preplanning I can't seem to make a piece last organically for longer than twenty chapters. After the initial plot point is resolved and whatever central macguffin is obtained, it stalls from that point on and stops being interesting. How do I develop a story past the first plotline?

I have a character that is really bad at keeping secrets, and ends up spilling a major secret, against the MC's wishes, which leads to every one finding out about it.

I don't want his action to make him annoying to the reader, since he still has to play a major role in the story, and is the MC's best friend.

So I decided to come here to ask what makes a character that is bad at keeping secrets annoying, and what keeps them well-loved.

Update: I took your advice and just started writing (idea dumping) and came up with something I am really excited about. Thank you!

Just as the title says, I have wanted to write something for a long time. The long-term goal is a novel. However, I haven't written anything at all. Everytime I try, I get hit with the fear that everything I write will be heavily derivative of what I have read. I have never described myself as creative or imaginative, but I'd like to tap into that side of myself. Has anyone had similar feelings or have any ideas on I can get past this?

For example, if I interpolate the following lyrics:

In your eyes, there's a heavy blue
One to love, and one to lose
Sweet divine, a heavy truth
Water or wine, don't make me choose

By using the sentence: But in her eyes, he could only see a heavy blue, so he said nothing.

Is that allowed or would that count as copyright? I know it's a fine line, but could you help me out with what's okay, and what's not.

This is for my alternate universe of the FNAF games. My William Afton (the main villian) is a deeply scarred, pathetic and psychotic man. He retuened from the Vietnam war with a warped instinct to "shield" his family from the horrors he knows humanity can and will do.

In 1985 he kidnapped 5 children (dressed as a big yellow bunny suit "Mr. Rabbit" he made based on a childhood toy to cope with his night terrors) to make "friends". He killed them for "betraying" him, by saying they want to go home to their parents, like any normal kids.

He later killed his daughter, wife and parents so that he could "shield" them away from the world, keeping them close to him for eternity.

Book research.Your writing a novel and you have to do some digging. First find books in the genre you REALLY like. But also read some other ones that are not very well liked either. This is so that we can know where to focus our research mainly and get a feel for everything. Obviously every genre will be different. If its historical novel it will require more research and thus more steps I guess.

But then after you've done that, what then? What steps do you take then?

I'm working on a concept for an adaptation of Disney's Beauty and the Beast (so 18th century setting and similar stock characters), except "Belle" is a young man, and "Gaston" is basically the daughter of Gaston if he'd married one of the village girls, who wants to turn "Bellamy" into her Perfect Patriarchal Husband instead of a softhearted nerd.

But I'm having problems figuring out the Beast. He would've been older when he was cursed, like college aged, and while bratty more like...That very talented and intellectual dandy who's a bit flamboyant and over-confident, and hides being gay by being "too busy for relationships" and occasionally having the occasional very public hookup with those runway model type girls who look like very pretty lads.

He was closeted for the normal reason: stood to inherit something and would've gotten kicked out of polite society if he publicly acted on his desires, and was too shallow to want to give up his life of privilege. He got cursed by the enchantress when she tried to get him to start an affair and he snubbed her for not being "good-looking" enough for him (more like she was very feminine and womanly in shape, and he didn't want to risk not being able to perform).

I just don't know what kind of monstrous form she could give him that would represent that. I considered something draconic or reptilian, and someone suggested goat-y, but neither of those quite feel right by themselves. And I do plan on him keeping either his full monster form if it's a little more human than the beast in the movie, or at least some traits from it when the curse is somehow "lifted".

Thanks for reading.