Hey @poison_mara , it really sucks that you seem to be going through so much. I just read this today and I do hope that you have fully recovered well from the illness.
I also just wanted to let you know that your Halloween Jam, is basically the entire reason. I am currently writing an entire new IF that’s based on your entire theme, discos and all that. It’s just that my typing ambitions and actually typing output are still not yet aligned:sleepy_face:… However whenever you feel like you want a reminder, whether or not your Jams inspired a spark in someone, do hope you remember a certain wip of a certain ambitious typer.
Imma vent, why not- I’m stressing myself out and I know it. I know it’s why I feel stuck, why I’m struggling to think of things and ideas. Why nothing feels like it’s clicking for me, because I’m probably trying to force it.
I really want to take a break from AoL after Book 1 is done and out there and work on something else. So I’m desperately trying to plot out other things, play with ideas, etc. And it feels like nothing works. Granted, I figure I need to try writing them out because planning drains my will to do literally anything. It’s soul-sucking.
But then there’s also this… fear of being done with book 1? Like. What do I do after that? I mean, obviously, I go onto the next but my goodness. I’ve been here for what feels like forever that the knowledge of having it roughly done and out there for everyone to read and critique as a whole is scaring me. I still haven’t gone into my Patreon because it feels like acknowledging the end is approaching Even though there’s still so much to do, it still scares me.
These pro writers say the “hook” is really important. The initial sentence, to really grab readers and make them want to read on. I spent 10 minutes trying to come up with the BEST hook for a hypothetical short story and here it is:
The best hooks ever!
When she saw her lover for the last time, she had five bowling balls and four words unsaid.
She loved durians, karate, Sagittarius, and no dogs. As the last of her blood pooled under her hip, she thought again of that warm winter day.
I took in media res to heart when I first started writing but now I find drawing the reader in right away with something exciting is not quite as important to me as setting up the world, atmosphere, and ordinary life of the MC solidly.
Trial of the Demon Hunter (2014) opens with you getting sneak attacked by a goblin. Meteoric (hopefully 2025) opens with you walking to your car with anxiety.
That’s interesting cause I found that my original prologue, which leaned a lot into the worldbuild, to feel slow and ponderous, and things only started to kick into action when I swapped to an in media res start.
To be fair, that could have been a flaw of the writing rather than the approach as a whole
I tried in medias res as the opening, but it felt actually less effective as a hook than the current one.
Current hook
Three months ago, you picked up boxing on a whim. Now you’re slipping out of work early to fight strangers in basements and ferry terminals. It wasn’t a plan. It just happened.
Last week, your match was under a ferry pier. Half the crowd smoked through the entire thing. One guy wore a face mask printed with a grinning cat mouth and bet on both fighters. You won a lukewarm Vita lemon tea and a single glutinous rice dumpling in a plastic bag.
In medias res openings have a benefit that the “floor” is high. That is, the worst opening will still be catchy. But it doesn’t really have any effect on the “ceiling”.
My stories always start the morning of the inciting incident. That way we can get to know the characters and the world a bit, but then something exciting will happen by the end of the chapter
I’m in the opposite headspace. I’m ready to be done. I’ve been working on my project for five years, and for the last two and a half years, I’ve been pushing myself to improve it and make it better when I was ready to move on. I’m past ready to move on, but I keep finding more to fix or maybe add.
After having a break from DoH for the last two weeks, my new found distance give me clarity making me think I’m ready to drop trying to add a lot of improvements, and do away with revising more chapters at this time. I just want to move on to my next project or two. At this rate, this series will be finished in 20 years, and that thought gives me anxiety. This series is only four stories, and I have more I want to tell beyond this first series. The thought of spending a lot more time on DoH gives me anxiety.
At the same time, I don’t want to just put it on pause. I’ve abandoned too many personal projects throughout my life. Aside from building models, I can’t recall ever finishing a project I’ve started on my own. So I’m at a point where I want to release it to boost personal morale and to move forward.
@Eiwynn always encouraged me to take my time; she would say that I only get to make one first impression, so I should start with my game being the best it can be. To not hold myself to due dates, so that I don’t upset myself for not reaching them. Sometimes she was right, I would get down for missing a personal deadline. Other times, I was fine with missing them; the point was to encourage me to keep working and not slack off. Unfortunately, time is my problem with trying to get things right, and after 2 1/2 years of forcing myself to finish and improve DoH, I feel spent. I don’t want to pause the project because that’ll kill my morale, but I feel working on it a lot longer is going to hit me harder stress-wise than it already is.
No wonder my editor told me to take at least a week off from thinking bout or writing DoH.
One of the biggest hurdles I had to get over was the idea of anything I wrote not being good enough to publish, because - between you and me - most of what I write comes off to me as absolute dogshit at the time I’m writing it. Something like six or eight weeks have to go by before I can go back, and actually assess my own writing on its merits.
So now, I basically let inertia carry me. If a passage seems really bad, then I might go back and rewrite it, but if it doesn’t? I’ll keep going, no matter how rough or incoherent or shit it seems to me in the moment.
Only when I’m done a chapter do I go back, armed with feedback from my beta readers, and start fixing things.
Okay, I’d like to whine about the second-person perspective again. I find it really hard to show the PC’s internality. You know how usually you can write “She grinned at my punch. I hate when they grin.” Stuff like that to show the PC’s internal state. But something like “She grinned at your punch. You hate when they grin.” just sounds so awful.
I’m not an expert on tenses (I was one of those jerks in school who didn’t feel studying for languages was necessary,) but I’d write it as ‘She grinned as you punched her. You hate it when they grin.’ Or ‘She grins as you punch her. You hate it when they grin.’
But maybe you should write in first person? Write what makes you feel comfortable. (Wayhaven is first person, and that’s incredibly popular.)
I have the same issues the main difference is that people didnt like it either, lol.
My therapist suggests that I let it go, lol and stop being a coward about posting games and stuff here and being a grown up woman. Eiw was always more elegant in her wording, she was not a spaniard after all, but said something similar.
Now, that I am preparing this year jam in her honour, I will have to confront my own fears in her honour as well.
Everyone wish me luck, because if I end getting a You are a terrorist against language pm again after 13 years I can end up losing it.
I still feel that I haven’t improved a bit since the first time I arrived here when I was starting self-teaching myself English
Good luck! Your language is perfectly understandable (and I’m saying this as someone who has difficulties in understanding English when it goes too off the rails).
Thanks! That is a great compliment. Almost as good as the racist dude that couldn’t believe that I wasn’t native and called me imperialist american with no right to speak about Spain. To a Spaniard.
Yeah, dude was racist so yeah, not noticing I am clearly not native makes me wonder how terrible must be the grammar and redaction skills of everyone around him.
Even though there’s still so much to do, it still scares me.
