r/novelwriting

For the record, I sometimes create first chapter drafts for different ideas and from that, I would decide if I should continue it or not. However, I decided, "Why not get some advice from a human that isn't me?" and bam, here I am. Please tell if I should continue this or not. Also, I do NOT have any lore ready for this. I am a "continue with the flow" type of writer lol.

I’m writing my first ever book and it’s like an epic fantasy romance. My current outline is around 150k words and was originally 40 chapters, but I’m considering shortening it to around 32–35 because I don’t want to drag out the story just to hit a chapter count. The plot is mystery-driven with a slow-burn romance, and every chapter advances either the mystery or the relationship. My concern is that I’m rushing through time because the first half of the story only spans a few weeks. For those who’ve written or published fantasy: is it better to compress time and keep the pacing tight, or spend more chapters showing day-to-day life? I’d rather have a book readers can’t put down than one that feels padded. I’m also worried about a lot of other things. Like my pacing sucks. I feel like sometimes I can be dragging on and right now I’m stuck on how to do a transition without boom time skip. Which is also a problem for me because I’m not the best at the whole time passing thing. It’s my first time trying to write a book and genuinely hoping to finish it. Yet I’m anxious as well as excited. I’ve had a few people read what I have so far and they’ve really enjoyed it but they’re my friends so I’m not sure if it’s biased or genuine. Then I’ve done some edits which only shortened the whole thing as well as make it feel even worse than it did before. I haven’t technically written in days because I’m so stuck in this way I don’t know how to explain. Im not sure what to do. Any advice?

New aspiring author, created a whole universe to allow myself to write a sci-fi/fantasy/cultivation novels. After 2 years world building I am currently releasing the “barebones” story draft for the first book. Looking for support and constructive criticism on story basis alone. I am fully aware this needs a lot more polish at its current stage. This story progresses from Sci-Fi and virtual game novels - cultivation novels - finally ending in a Isekia.

It's a site to allow authors to make monthly recurring revenue. It's currently brand new and needs authors stat! You can make money by having subs for your book they can read chapter by chapter or through a fanclub. You can make them pay to join your fanclub. The last one is selling digital copies of your book popular authors can easily make 10k to 30 k a month. I take 15% of each purchase leaving you with 85% straight to your bank account

Some tips specifically about establishing the world building without directly telling the audience, or pacing, would be appreciated. The genre is fantasy and mystery in modern day with a little slice of life.

Hi all! Would love some feedback please. This is a new genre for me (usually write fantasy) & I’ve found the time jump hard to get across in the query, so FYI:

•the book opens with protagonist arrest (present day), rest of the book is her recounting the summer/events (past 4 months) that led up to the arrest. Is this clear?
• Also, is the opening cheesy? (I was trying to wordplay on protagonist writing career)
• Does my ‘book’ section run off or sound relatable to the ‘whydunnit’ question?
• Comp suggestions welcome, I’m so stuck as need to read more in this genre.
• Kind of a First Wives Club (the film) reverse retelling about millennial Second Wives.
• any other feedback welcome 😊 pls be kind, first attempt!

Dear [AGENT NAME],

In a life-imitates-art plot twist, best-selling crime writer and Cotswold socialite Fliss Harcourt is arrested on the eve of her wedding for the murder of her best friend’s husband. She has one night—and one interrogation—to prove her innocence or swap walking down the aisle for one through a cell block. Only, the final hours before she was found floating in the same swimming pool as the victim, the murder weapon still in her hand, are missing from her memory.

Whilst waiting for legal counsel, Fliss attempts to hurry the interview along by recounting the summer that led to her arrest, certain the truth will clear her name. Fresh from a bestselling book tour, Fliss returns to the Cotswolds newly engaged expecting to enjoy her first social season as a bride-to-be, only to become Hellshire's newest 'second wife' when her fiancé's past comes to light, leaving her ostracised by the old-money circles she belongs to. Welcomed instead by an intoxicating group of nouveau-riche second wives, Fliss is seduced by a world of flashy new-found wealth and unapologetic female ambition unlike anything in Fliss's own aristocratic circle.

But as friendships deepen and rivalries surface, Fliss begins to realise that loyalty within this circle is conditional, and that beneath its glamour lie secrets far more dangerous than she first assumed. With morning fast approaching, Fliss must separate memory from manipulation before the story she's been telling becomes the evidence that condemns her.

Complete at 80,000 words, SECOND WIVES CLUB is a psychological thriller blending domestic suspense with social satire and an unreliable narrator at its core. It will appeal to readers of Lucy Foley, Lisa Jewell, and Gillian McAllister's THAT NIGHT.

I am writing a Novel ,which i always wanted to write..this is my first time writing something..

I am not a english speaker, so i am very bad in english..I have not even read that many novels , so i don't have any idea about how to write things..

And, genuinely i don't want to read any novel and copy them subconsciously...

Is it ok if i take help from Ai for grammar and sentence structuring??Or will it make the story unreadable??

Even, the concept is kinda cheesy. So i am not sure if i should master english first or Just use ai for structuring and grammars???

A thin slit of morning light cuts through the waiting room, falling across Soul's face as he sleeps upright on a worn couch against the south wall. The room is small—barely four meters by three—its emptiness making it feel even tighter. A heavy metal door occupies the northwest corner, while a broad window, one and a half meters wide and stretching three meters across the east wall, lets in the pale daylight. An empty bookshelf stands abandoned in the southwest corner, its vacant shelves gathering dust. Apart from the couch and the silent furniture, the waiting room is devoid of life, wrapped in a stillness broken only by Soul's slow, steady breathing.

The heavy metal door in the northwest corner flew open with a violent metallic bang, shattering the room's quiet rhythm. A man barged into the cramped space, his presence instantly crowding the small room. He didn't just speak; he barked an order directly at the couch, commanding Soul to wake up.

"Walker 1110!" the man screamed, the designation cutting through the last remnants of Soul's sleep like a blade.

Before Soul could fully shake off the haze, the man was over him, his voice echoing off the bare walls. He ordered Soul to strip away every piece of identity he carried, demanding he give up all his worldly possessions and empty his pockets onto the floor right then and there. The slow, steady breathing that had filled the room a moment ago was gone, replaced by the harsh, demanding reality of the uniform or authority standing over him.

Soul opened his eyes, the haze of sleep vanishing instantly behind a gaze that remained perfectly still. He stood up with a slow, deliberate grace, rising to his full six-foot frame until he was looking straight into the man’s eyes.

"I am but a dead man walking," Soul said, his voice flat and unbothered. "I have no possessions."

To prove it, he turned out his pockets. They hung limp and hollow—already empty.

The man didn't back down. Instead, he took a heavy step forward, closing the distance until he towered a full foot over Soul, using his massive height to cast a suffocating shadow.

"I said, all of your possessions, Walker," the man growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low register.

Without a word, Soul’s expression remained stoic. He reached down and smoothly stripped away his clothes, letting them drop to the floor until he stood entirely naked before the giant. Though his physique was flawlessly built—sharp, athletic, and defined—it wasn't his strength that commanded the room. It was the horror etched into his skin.

Every single inch of his body that had just been hidden beneath his clothes was a roadmap of violence. Deep cut wounds crisscrossed his flesh, overlapping one another. By the look of the dark, jagged lines, not a single one of them had ever been stitched, bandaged, or treated; they had simply been left open to clot, fester, and heal on their own into a armor of raw scar tissue.

"Finally!" The man’s laughter boomed, a coarse, jarring sound that echoed off the cold concrete walls. "Follow me, kid. By the end of this, you’ll either be a man... or you’ll be dead."

"Dead is what I am here for," Soul replied, his tone entirely devoid of fear.

The man turned on his heel and strode out through the heavy metal door. Soul followed closely behind, stepping into a narrow, two-meter-wide hallway. The corridor was oppressive and claustrophobic, forcing them through two sharp right turns and a sudden left before the confinement abruptly shattered.

They emerged into a breathtaking, ten-story cylindrical reception hall. The sheer scale of the architecture was dizzying. Suspended from the distant ceiling a hundred feet above was a colossal chandelier, cascading down like a frozen waterfall of crystal and iron, plunging through the empty space to hover just above the second-floor level.

In the dead center of the vast floor sat a solitary reception desk, dwarfed by the immense volume of the room. Behind it rose a monumental staircase. At its base, the steps sprawled out a massive five meters wide, anchoring the structure to the floor like the roots of a giant tree. As the staircase swept upward, splitting and winding to connect the first six levels, it gradually tapered, shrinking to a narrow two meters by the time it met the upper balconies.

I have a story in mind where one of the characters is based on what would be a prince of Spain—during one of those 700 years spain was an Islamic state.

I am not Muslim, nor have Muslim/arab roots. I ask because even if it's far into the past time period I would be writing a character with heavy religious imagery and cultural background.

I also ask because the story is somewhat fantastic, and as such it would not be a Spanish character, but one from a fake country; only taking the inspiration from the time period.

Would it be appropriation?

The hardest sentence in the book. Let's see yours.

Post the first line, or the opening paragraph, of whatever you're working on. Finished, drafting, or barely started, it all counts. No essay required: just drop the opening and let it stand on its own.

Want feedback? Say so, and feel free to react to a few others while you're here. Curious what grabs a reader? This thread is a goldmine. Notice which openings make you want to keep reading and ask yourself why.

Give us your first line.

I'm not sure what the point is of having AI generate prose. The whole fun in writing is creating your own worlds, your own characters, giving them life... delegating that to a machine seems counterproductive. Writing goes from a flight of imagination to drudgework. If the goal truly is to create a living out of AI-generated content, there are easier ways to do this than novels, and ones that are far more likely to work, given the flood of AI slop on selfpub platforms.

That said, I think that there IS room for AI within the writing profession. I've gotten MUCH better editorial feedback from ChatGPT on my scenes than I got from an editor I paid over 3k to edit my book. And ChatGPT will interact with me for as long as I want to, not until it gets too busy with another client. Provided I prompt it correctly, I've gotten better brainstorming sessions out of it than I have with friends and friend writers. And, finally, it is a very efficient mechanism to keep track of information in my novel and help me maintain character and world continuity... provided it's used correctly.

Which brings me to Deepquill. This is an app I've been developing to help me with my own writing. The intent is to organize information -- the characters, locations, reveals, story structure, and then present it in such a way as to make it easily available when I'm writing a scene and forget what color eyes Jane had, or whether I'd already mentioned that Bob was an assassin two scenes ago, without having to leave my scene to check, breaking my flow. It scans my scene with a local or a remote LLM, and auto-generates the scene beats, so I can focus on the actual writing. It helps me map my scenes into a structure template (like Hero's Journey, Freytag's Pyramid, Save The Cat, and so on), automatically analyzing scene tension so I can see where the manuscript is flagging. I think THIS is where AI can be most useful -- not to generate my prose for me, but to take away all the other drudgery so I can focus on it exclusively.

I'm trying to build it as a complete end to end writing environment -- a replacement for Scrivener, DabbleWriter, Ulysses, Word, and so on. I've built in import/export from the start, so people are never locked into its ecosystem. I've taken it to Beta recently. If anyone's interested, check it out or DM me.

I am well aware AI is universally frowned upon for any type of creative thinking--plugging and chugging a general idea in and asking to build the story (just get a ghost writer for that), story IDEAS themselves, plot twists, plot, world building, characters and growth. I wholeheartedly agree. Writing stops becoming art. The author's own voice, tone, voice, core story and plot, twists, characters ARE the art.

*Yes, i use -- naturally lol. I am an attorney and it is used extensively in legal writing.

Beyond that, I think it is a shame for our society, future, species, humanity. What makes humans so different from other species IS our free and analytical thinking, abstract ideas, reasoning, individuality. Anyways--that's a rant for another day.

And then I think there's a gray area for some. Things like prose suggestions, rhythm, sentence structure, pacing, syntax, rhythm etc. I think opinions are split on that. My personal position is these should also come from the author's own creative mind. Voice and style are what makes a story personal and intimate. But we also naturally draw inspiration and style from other authors--you are what you eat. But where is the line? Where does it stop being inspiration and suggestions? Where does it become inauthentic?

What are you all's thoughts on whether it is okay to use at all? Research purposes (and then double and triple fact checking), a thesaurus? What about general editing, spell check, grammar? What about "improve this sentence for me"? (a no for me I think).

I am very torn on where the line is. It is a slippery slope. I don't want it to snowball and before I realize it have unintentionally lose my own voice and stories--I have so many to tell. I have no shortage of characters, stories, plots. Of course I want other's to enjoy my work. But it is more personal than that for me. I want to tell MY stories authentically.

Would also love suggestions for any articles or other media you all may have on the subject.

There are so many books on writing, but I'm specifically looking for ones that teach you how to edit your own novel.

Not just dialogue, but things like pacing, character development and structure.

Which books genuinely improved your editing skills?