Morning.

We have made the following addendum to our How to Post guide which hopefully removes confusion about how this rule is enforced.

The entire rule now reads (amendments in italics):

No Generative AI

• Removed - Any post suspected to have been generated by AI
• Removed - Any post which supports the use of generative AI during any point of the creative process including brainstorming, proofreading, translation, or “bouncing ideas”
• Removed - Any post which references (including neutrally or in the past tense, regardless of word choice) the use of generative AI during any point if the creative process including brainstorming, proofreading, translation, or “bouncing ideas”
• Removed - Any post asking for reviews or use cases for software programs whose primary, non-optional function includes generative AI for anything other than spell check within a native word processor
• Approved - Nothing. We do not allow users to introduce the topic of generative AI on this subreddit. We moderate this AGGRESSIVELY.

 

Keep in mind the spirit of our rule against generative AI is not to police your use of AI in your creative process, nor to police your personal feelings about AI. It is to prevent the subreddit from being clogged by a subject matter that is low quality, leads to constant fights, is ripe for karma farming, and doesn't produce anything of value to anyone's writing craft. We will moderate these topics based on the spirit of the rule. Attempts to obfuscate an AI topic will be considered the same as explicitly introducing AI.

END

We hope this offers clarity. Please do not post about generative AI on this subreddit. If you see a post about generative AI, report it to the moderators and do not participate in the discussion.

Your feedback is welcome in this thread and in modmail.

Happy writing!

Part of me thinks it would be cool and nonchalant to not make a post like this, but I've identified myself as having "sour grapes" before, have always relied on HIGMA posts to motivate me, and tried hard to be a contributing member of this community, so I figured I'd share.

To start, I wrote the next book. I was querying what was basically my first novel, which I wrote when I didn't know much about agents, hooks, etc. It was a juicy story, but genre confused, a story clearly written by someone who didn't understand the meta part of writing. I felt I owed it to myself though to keep trying.

I was stuck in an R&R going nowhere from an agent who wanted me to write thrillers instead of litfic, trying to force myself to write 1,000 words a day. I started fantasizing about how much better this would feel with a fresh book, so I said screw it, and started writing something else I'd been thinking about.

2.5 months later I had a new manuscript to pitch. Walking away was hard, but it was the right move.

Stats on that first book: 102 queries sent, 5 requests, 0 offers.

With the new manuscript, I stayed protective over my vision. Workshopping the query here was great, but some responses were chilly, and I had to accept the people who didn't see the vision for the book weren't pieces of feedback I could take. I also didn't do beta readers. I leaned 100% on reading comps with similarly hooky, daring premises and becoming obsessed with how they worked.

I chose to only query senior agents and agency heads. This goes along with the above point. With my first book, I guess I had some imposter syndrome that because I was new, I should pitch new agents. I also pitched a lot of agents who said they "prioritized Black voices." I feel that thought process burned me through a lot of great agencies.

I have the sense that assistant and associate agents are perhaps being more picky/conservative than senior agents and agency heads. With both books, I did MUCH better with more senior agents than more junior agents. And I've vented about the "prioritizing Black voices" agents here before, so no need to rehash.

I had a deferential posture with book one. With book two, my posture was that I was confident I had something that could break through.

Agent bios and MSWL were taken with a grain of salt. Publisher's Marketplace and Query Tracker request rates were my bible. I know everyone says "read an agent's bio to know what they want," but I felt strongly that reading their Publisher's Marketplace page and their Query Tracker stats gave me a greater sense of what I needed.

This community leans a little toward the agent perspective, but, again, I wanted to adopt a different posture for book two, which meant that what the agent wants to communicate about their preferences was less important than a track record of what they could do for me and my book.

I stole my process of picking an agent from another poster here, who I'd tag if I could remember them, but basically it was this: Find the top agencies, pull the agents up on Publisher's Marketplace, query the one whose had the most deals/debuts/six-figure advances that sound like my book. I would also consider the request rates by word count and genre reports on Query Tracker.

Stats on book two: 56 queries, 7 requests, 2 offers. I signed with my agent 75 days after my first query, and 5 months after I started writing the book.

Everything I've written here could be absolute horseshit, and maybe the real differentiator is I just wrote a better book this time, but I did want to share in case it helps anyone else.

Thanks so much to the moderators who've built this community and all the incredible members. Reading your queries and getting your notes on mine has been absolutely invaluable. Can't wait to see you all get

Or don’t. Do whatever you want.

But I’ve found a lot of success holding my drafting time sacrosanct. When I’ve got my few hours after breakfast or few hours after dinner, the *only* thing I use that time for is advancing forward through the plot of my story.

That means not re-reading anything I’ve written before.

That means not editing anything I’ve written before.

That means no fiddling with my outline, character sheets, or world building documents.

That means not looking through the thesaurus for a synonym of a word.

That means not researching random details.

All of that can be done after I have a finished first draft.

Do I always successfully avoid doing that? No. I absolutely at times find myself checking what time the sun would set in North Carolina in August, or going back to my outline to leave a note for myself.

But the purpose of the rule is to remind myself that nothing I do during the drafting process is more important than drafting.

If I’d rather be researching or proofreading, it’s usually a sign the material I’m working on isn’t all that interesting.

I’ve read that one of the main questions to ask on The Call is about submission strategy. I get why this is important to ask, but I’m not sure how to evaluate the response.

Are there strategies that work better than others? How do I know if the agent’s vision for sub strategy is a good one if I’ve never done it before? What even are the strategies?

Thanks!

I get that drafting a novel can be a long, solitary experience. So over the course of that time, you might get antsy for someone to read what you're working on. But I can't stress enough how much you probably don't need outside feedback yet.

If you're not sure if your story works from a structural standpoint, you need to read more books. In the course of your daily reading habit, if you're reading contemporary (last five years) traditionally published books in your genre, you should be able to see what those authors do to craft stories and compare it to your own.

If you haven't done that, feedback won't be helpful to you yet because you won't know how to evaluate the validity of that feedback, nor will you be able to understand it or implement it.

The rush to get feedback is also leading a lot of writers to bad sources. Your friends and family don't necessarily know anything about writing, and they'll happily lie to your face to avoid ruffling your feathers. Random beta readers you find online have no way to confirm to you that they know what they're talking about either. Paying thousands of dollars to an editor from Fiverr who claims they've got 20 years experience even though they're only 32 years old is putting you in a financial hole your story is unlikely to ever make enough money to pull you out of.

So all that means that when you're in a critical stage of your development as a writer, instead of spending time reading and writing, instead of sharpening your authorial confidence, instead of making the kinds of decisions that will lead to development of your style and practice of writing, you're being responsive to the whims of some random person just because it tickles you to get feedback.

Yes, great authors have great editors, but you are not a great author yet. The editor won't make you great.

The point in which you're ready for feedback is when you've written the draft of a story which, based on your extensive history of reading stories like it, you are confident is a strong story. Then, you edit it yourself for multiple rounds based on your extensive history of reading stories like it. Then, the people you need to get feedback from are either trusted writer friends whose work you admire and who have familiarity with reading for a critical lens, or literary agents who you can pitch for free (yes, agents will give you form rejection, but a form rejection IS FEEDBACK--it means your premise or writing didn't wow enough for more than a form rejection).

Feedback feels good. It's entertaining. "Oh my God, someone read my work and is now talking to me about it!" But until you're highly confident that you've got a winner on your hands, you probably don't need feedback yet.

Tell her happy Mother’s Day. Ask her what her plans are for the day. Tell her what you’ve been up to as of late. Thank her, not because she was perfect, but because she tried her best with what she had. Talk to her for at least ten minutes. Even better if you can send her a Starbucks gift card or something so she can buy herself a little treat.

If we all do it, the Hornets should be able to get the 1st overall pick.

[You're free to do this or not do it. This post is for the many, many people who ask for help coming up with story ideas. If your story isn't about any of the things below, I am not saying your story is bad.]

Think about watershed moments. Weddings. Funerals. Family reunions. The birth of a child. A diagnosis. Getting fired. A break in a cold case. A sudden rise to fame. What are things that change people's lives forever? A good way I've heard it verbalized is that the story you're writing should be about the most important thing that's ever happened to your protagonist.

Go to a new place. The wedding takes place on a tropical beach at a fancy resort. The funeral requires scattering the ashes in the rings of a distant moon. The family reunion is back in the rural Montana farming community. The new child requires the posh Manhattanite to move out to the country for more space. The diagnosis leads to a lengthy hospital stay. Getting fired forces moving back in the parents. The break in the cold case leads back to the site of the summer camp where the disappearance first took place. The sudden rise to fame pushes us to Hollywood.

Explore a layered contradiction ("I like big buts"). So this woman is a parole officer. She's surrounded by sad stories every day or drug addiction, crime, and poverty, BUT she remains doggedly optimistic. She was raised by wealthy parents, BUT she chose to help the less fortunate instead, BUT her belief she's making a difference is slipping. Her favorite parolee is a teenage girl whose close to getting her life back together, BUT the girl surprisingly fails a drug test one day. The parole officer's job is to report the truth, BUT she decides to fabricate the test results instead. She thinks she's done the right thing, BUT the parolee is arrested on suspicion of murder. You can get a long way by layering in contradictions, conflict, and BUTS as you're coming up with the premise.

Take an old premise and give it a new twist. Emma Pattee's phenomenal book Tilt took the classic natural disaster narrative and made it fresh by making the protagonist a heavily pregnant woman narrating the experience of the disaster to her unborn child. There are endless ways writers can remix and reinvent stories. That's part of why it's so important to read. Some of the best ideas come from moments where you're reading and think "This is cool, but what if it was like this?"

Thanks for any input. Have heavily revised the manuscript in an exclusive R&R. Not querying yet but want it ready just in case.

-

Hi, agent.

I’m excited to share THE BACHELORS, a 91,000 word upmarket novel about a couple whose marriage is tested when the wife accepts an invitation to attend her ex boyfriend's bachelor trip. The story is a drama interwoven with a sense of dread, similar to Emma Pattee's Tilt or Rumaan Alam's Leave the World Behind.

When Mara’s habit of an afternoon glass of wine cascades into her showing up drunk to school pickup, she realizes her suburban malaise has become a full blown crisis. A chance to blow off some steam arrives when her male best friend from college invites her to his bachelor trip. The reformed party girl is convinced a weekend spent partying in the mountains of North Carolina is the perfect way to shake out the cobwebs. 

Mara’s husband David is stunned. A farm boy at heart from rural Pennsylvania, he finds the whole idea perverse. David’s delusion of their perfectly content marriage is shattered when Mara accepts the invitation despite his objections. 

On the first night of the bachelor trip, Mara finds there’s nothing wild about three overweight millennial men sitting around scrolling on their phones. Desperate for a cathartic rager, Mara goads the groomsmen into wilder behavior. The weekend descends into a haze of alcohol, body shots, fights, and hot tub confessions as Mara nurses a long simmering romance with the groom.

Back home, David has a night out with Taylor, a family friend and Mara’s mirror opposite. He realizes there’s a mutual attraction between himself and Taylor, and with his animosity toward his wife’s trip, he’s not sure he can resist temptation. Worse, he’s not sure he wants to. 

When Mara learns her husband has been out with Taylor, she enters a self-destructive tailspin thanks to a baggie of cocaine. As the chaos of the trip grows, so does the dread. A strange woman has been harassing Mara the entire time she’s been on the mountain, and the woman is growing more threatening.

Mara and David must separately confront their disillusionment with domestic life, the shortcomings of their upbringings, and their anxieties around parenthood if their marriage is to survive its toughest, and most dangerous, challenge yet. 

[bio]

How to Post on r/writing - A Guide

This community is one of the most active writing communities on the internet. This means we are a central hub for writers across experience levels and genres. This delicate balance requires us to actively moderate the content of the subreddit. To help you understand how our moderation policies are implemented, please use this guide. 

The simplest way to think about this is that if the main beneficiary of the thread is the person who posted it, it probably does not belong on the sub.

Broadly, your post fits the sub if it is:

• Directly or tangentially related to the craft of writing
• A valuable contribution to the broader writing community
• A question or discussion prompt likely to generate valuable contributions to the broader writing community.
• Does not violate any of our rules or Banned/Stale Topics (more on that below)

Broadly, your post belongs in one of our weekly threads if it is:

• Benefitting only the person who posted it
• Seeking to share your work or get feedback on it
• Promoting your book, blog, or services
• Seeking brainstorming help

 

Note that the same rules that govern threads on the main board also generally govern the content of the thread. Threads that solicit rule-breaking content will be removed. 

What r/writing is:
A place to discuss the craft of writing, to share advice and experiences that will help us become more complete, developed writers

What r/writing is not:
A machine for new writers to get answers handed to them they can find on Google, or for veteran writers to get a buzz off slapping down new writers, or for anyone to find readers/customers/clients. 

In the next section, we will provide clarifications and examples of some of our more commonly misunderstood rules. 

No Posting Work

• Removed - Any post in which you share any portion of your work
• Removed - Any post in which you ask other users to share any portion of their work
• Removed - Any post where the primary bulk of the content is explaining the details of your work to seek a solution to a specific issue you are having
• Approved - Light context about your work for the purpose of illustrating a point or topic which has value to the broader community of writers

No Generative AI

• Removed - Any post suspected to have been generated by AI
• Removed - Any post which supports the use of generative AI during any point of the creative process including brainstorming, proofreading, translation, or “bouncing ideas”
• Removed - Any post which references (including neutrally or in the past tense) the use of generative AI during any point if the creative process including brainstorming, proofreading, translation, or “bouncing ideas”
• Removed - Any post asking for reviews or use cases for software programs whose primary, non-optional function includes generative AI for anything other than spell check within a native word processor
• Approved - Nothing. We do not allow users to introduce the topic of generative AI on this subreddit. We moderate this AGGRESSIVELY.

 

Civility and Genre Bashing

• Removed - “New books are trash for the TikTok brainrot crowd.”
• Removed - “Romatasy is slop and people who read it are idiots.”
• Removed - "Self publishing/trad publishing is dumb."
• Removed - “If you agree with/don’t agree with a certain writing rule, you are an idiot.”
• Removed - Any kind of personal insult directed at another user
• Approved - “New books are faster paced than classic books, and I think that’s bad because…”
• Approved - “XYZ genre has certain conventions and a market fit that are unique in such that…”
• Approved - Constructive criticism of certain habits that, even if stiff, is still intended to be of value to the broader writing community

Note that the line between chippy exchanges between passionate writers and rule-violating incivility will be moderated based on tone. Sometimes a quick 1-2 exchange is fine, but repeatedly circling back with increasingly sharp, pointed jabs will be taken as uncivil. 

Minimum Post Requirement (Low-Effort Posts)

• Removed - Posts with egregious spelling or grammatical errors
• Removed - “How do I make my character’s dialogue more realistic?”
• Approved - “What are the differences between realistic dialogue and unrealistic dialogue?”
• Approved - “The best way I’ve found to make dialogue more realistic is…”
• Removed - “I’m new to writing. Any tips?”
• Approved - “What tips helped you when you were new to writing?”
• Approved - “For new writers, here’s a tip: Try to…”
• Removed - “Give me ideas for stories.”
• Approved - “What’s your process like for coming up with story ideas?”
• Approved - “If you’re stuck with a lack of ideas, try this…”

Note that similarly to our rule against incivility, low-effort posts may be moderated based on tone. Posts with egregious spelling or grammar errors, vague titles, or no discussion prompt/question may also be removed under this rule. 

If you have any questions about this guide, please feel free to reach out in modmail. Happy writing!

[Your feedback is welcome. This post will be linked in the sidebar as well as in our Wiki within the Rules section]

Now, if you’re a hobbyist or writing primarily for fun or self-expression, the difference doesn’t matter. You can write whatever you want.

For those who hope to write for an audience, it’s good to remember that anything holding you back from finishing your story or making it click the way you want to is something you can just move on from.

As the author, you have full control over your story. Stories can work in infinite ways. They don’t *need* to be anything.

For the most part, the only things a reader *needs* are to be able to understand the story and to be entertained by the story.

So if you’ve felt the following:

“This scene is boring, but it needs to be here.”

“I don’t know how to write this character perspective, but he needs to be this way.”

“This prologue is an info dump, but I need to explain this bit of lore.”

“My manuscript is 250K words long, but it needs every chapter.”

I’d say you can challenge yourself by making a hard distinction between what you need and what you want. That’s not to say cut everything you want. But the effect will be a story with the best, juiciest, most engaging narrative possible.

If you're self-publishing, readers might not read past that point when looking at your sample. If you're trad publishing, many agents only take a very small writing sample (as few as five pages).

So what's stopping you from giving the reader the exact thing you promised in the blurb on the very first page?

"But there's backstory they need to understand first."

The inciting incident should be concrete enough that we can understand why it's important on its face without needing to know all that much about the world. If not, your premise might need some work.

What make prose special is we have the ability to write characters that slip into the present, past, and speculative dimensions seamlessly. "He swung the sword the way his father taught him years ago in that dusty dojo." The backstory that deepens the meaning of the inciting incident can be introduced while you're pushing the action forward.

"But what I want to show what a normal day looks like first."

Readers didn't pick up the book to read about normal days. You can give them what a normal day was like in reflection, flashbacks, dialogue with other characters. You can do it all in chapter one if you really feel the need to get it in early. But there's no reason you can't do it all after you do the inciting incident.

I think a lot of folks here might be struggling to start/finish works because they're bored. The solution is simply to not write things that are boring. You're the author.

Skip the setup and jump right in.

[Boilerplate disclaimer: This is something I'm just sharing you can try. You don't have to do this. If you don't do this, I'm not saying your story is bad. Just because something doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it can't work.]