Great stuff as always.

Fantastic advice. Thank you, very much!

That’s the most relevant advice I could have heard right now. Thank you!

This is golden. I really needed to hear that. Thank you!

It's ok to tell your family and friends they'll regret not believing in you when you're only half finished.

Thank you for the tips!

Ohh, yeah! I need to break out of that second one and learn to keep pushing through, even if the story seems boring or like a mess. Lol! Also, "rules" can really discourage you from writing.

All these resonate. I find just writing an adverb ridden, tense jumping, pov shifting draft gets so much more out. It really is about believing in one's ability to improve a draft that messy. But we can, even if tiny bits are fixed up each time we go through the draft, eventually it adds up. I took a step back and said, maybe this writers block is because something isnt right with my idea. So ive just managed to complicate my story and make it more compelling- and so silly, i think im game enough to try. It might have been a goal issue- how can i sell a goal to stop a bad guy getting this thing because, apparently bad stuff will happen. Ok, have the characters learn it first hand. They actually get their hands on the thing... that's bad enough... then lose it to someone who actively wants the worst things to happen. Yoko Taro gave advice about story writing like this. A sad thing happens. Why is it sad? And make sure you put those reasons into the story. In this way he plots in reverse, or backwards, from the key moments he wants to have, to setting up the reasons to care leading to that key moment.

Beautiful tips

Working on a first draft of a first book and it's really blah. I'm pushing through but it feels so stilted and so "telly" (as in not showing enough, telling too much). Conflict and goals etc are there, I know my characters, but their chemistry and the story just feel a bit flat. I might be trying to be too detailed instead of pouring out that foundation. But damn its so annoying to feel like its just not taking shape they way it is in my head.

Yes please don't fall into the perfectionism trap. Sometimes when you fall into that trap it takes forever to claw your way out of it.

Lovely tips

Oh Shaylen it's such a loooooong process.

What not to do: Procrastinate by watching videos about what not to do Stop distracting yourself and go write the book already

That first draft point kills me every time.😅

My first draft is usually pretty much the final product sans error checking and language polishing. I never just throw stuff on the page. Every line is based on the overall plot and what has come before. and driven by the desired ending. Taking your house building analogy, you don't just lay bricks and concrete haphazardly, and then try to fix it later. Everything has to fit together according to plan or it will collapse. You build your foundation knowing what will sit on it later on. In fact, foundations do have to be nearly perfect, or at least fit for purpose. Cleaning up and painting isn't the same as knocking down and rebuilding.

I am quite often in agreement. 2-6, yes. Number 1? Not so much. The concepts in 4 and 5, which I agree with, pretty much undermine the concept in number 1, at least during the drafting stage. In the drafting stage, it is quite often important to NOT make definitive choices. If you happen to make one, that's OK. But you really should then leave room open for that to change. It is quite all right to make intuitive or gut-based choices. NOT wrong. It's OK to NOT have a solid concept of why you are drafting a particular scene element or even an entire scene, during the original drafting process. And doing that can often be very beneficial to the finished product, paradoxically enough, based on the way your conscious and unconscious minds collaborate. The reason why is that all creativity, all one hundred percent of it, comes from your unconscious. That is undeniable. It feels like our conscious minds do the creating, but in reality, we just become aware of what our unconscious minds just created and then try to take ownership of that as we make conscious sense of it. Our unconscious mind is then unable to say, 'Hey, wait a minute, I did that, not you!' bc it has no ego. Or language. The inspiration for the words we write comes entirely from the unconscious mind, and then the conscious mind translates that into actual language. And your unconscious is not the seat of reason and awareness and rationality. The best thing to do is to not fret about whether you have a solid idea behind what you draft, and to let your unconscious just have its head. Step aside. Let it do the drafting. It knows what it's doing, likely better than your conscious mind does. Of course, our unconscious has no language or ability to tell us why it suggests what it suggests, and the role of our conscious awareness during drafting is more to be an interpreter of that creative inspiration as well as a stenographer who forms the thought into words that can be written to the page. But I think doing that based on what the unconscious creates is the best way to do that, and to not let your conscious awareness or need to make sure everything makes immediate sense and has a reason, get in the way of that process. The end result of drafting is then unencumbered creativity, whether it makes sense or not. Step one. And often, there will be problems with elements of your draft making total sense. But that is the beauty of the nondestructive medium of writing-at this point, step forward. Relegate your creative unconscious to an observer role, put on your editor hat, and use the technique, craft, and skill you have acquired to refashion that raw material into something that will make sense to a reader and resonate with them, using your conscious awareness. Step two. IOW, all the goals mentioned in needing focus on what you are writing are still important, and this part, revision, is how you should accomplish that. But that should come later, at a strategic point in the writing process, and not first. Do not let that get in the way of letting your unconscious express its creativity. You would be doing that at your own peril: if you intercede in that process by inserting the reason and rationality of conscious awareness into that creative process, which is absolutely owned by your unconscious, that can severely cripple that creativity. Instead, relax. Let your unconscious create. Ask and answer all the important questions, but shoot first, ask questions later. Take turns to allow the process to work. It's a bit of a trance state, which our consciousness at first might not be completely on board with. But it's like learning to ride a bike-once you understand how that works, it quickly becomes second nature-if you let it. Find the courage to let it. That is where your good and strong stories will come from. Asking all the questions later will still prevent familiarity and cliché, and it will also allow uniqueness (as long as you are not trying to mimic other works or steal their ideas). So it is a collaboration. Let your unconscious contribute first in drafting, unencumbered, as it is the expert at creating story. Then allow your conscious awareness to fashion that raw material in the original draft into what it should be, as it is the expert on technique, skill, craft, syntax, grammar, spelling, punctuation, structure, and order.

Does your throat hurt when you speak?

I just luv your hair and face and voice and the advice you share. The Ancient World….. the novel universe……. I have no words, yet I have endless endless thousands. I cannot describe the magnificence and magnitude of it. The Ancient World, and all of its secondary stories. The Barbarians, The Wanter Chronicles, the Adventures of Bohn and Fellet, The Winds of a Thousand Rivers. But it starts with…. The Ancient World pt. I II & III. It cannot come any sooner than when it is meant to be given and shared to the world. My gosh. My gosh. Its magnificence is indescribable. Been in development for 22 years. Some say that is a sign of D.O.A, but my heart and soul knows…… it’s going to become of the best marinated novels to come out in decades. I never gave up or stopped developing and learning and improving my skills. Now I’m 31 and have this massive universe and endless stories and plot points and characters, and I don’t even have to look at anything because I have been engraving the universe into my soul and brain since I was 9 years old. I am confident and secure and feel smart enough to have begun assembling all the pieces and I have been a follower of Reedsy for gosh many years and am thankful for all the sage and thought shared. The Ancient World, but not only, the universe and many other stories of The Ancient World.