On Youtube vidoes, some guys will tell you that once you finished your first draft, you then have to competely rewrite the entire story from stretch in the second draft instead of editing and cutting down on the firsrt draft.

Do you have to do this in order to be a sucessful writer, or is it going too far? Because it sounds very daunting and wastes months of work just to start over again.

I'm writing a psychological thriller called The System — would you read it?

My story follows a 12-year-old named Kairo, who finds himself in an eerily empty version of Vancouver. At first, things seem normal enough, but something doesn't add up. The lights still work, the water still runs, and the city seems to function despite having no people in it.

As Kairo investigates, he begins finding old CRT televisions displaying surveillance footage and strange analogue warnings about “inconsistencies.” He notices silhouettes, unexplained glitches, and clues that eventually lead him toward Canada Place, where he encounters a cryptic message: “The building.”

Then there's Max, a red-haired boy who has supposedly been trapped in this world for two months. He might be Kairo's only chance of understanding what's happening, but the truth about him is much stranger than it seems.

Something called the System is controlling this world, and Kairo may be more of a threat to it than he realizes. The deeper he investigates, the harder the System tries to stop him.

I'm aiming for an eerie, psychological atmosphere with mystery, surveillance, and the feeling that reality itself can't be trusted.

I'd love to hear your thoughts! Does the premise sound interesting? What would you expect from a story like this?

The the chapter im about to write is from the pov of one of the main characters. The thing is, the character is in a cage. Its the first chapter from his pov, so there’ll be some establishing of his character, but other than that, im a bit unsure of what to do. I’ve been considering flashbacks and a bunch of interaction with the guards, but i dont really know😭

advice?

I feel like I keep rushing my scenes but I genuinely just don’t think they need to be dragged out longer. I also don’t enjoy over explaining so that could also explain it, but I could definitely be missing something that could make my writing more enjoyable. I also feel like some of my sentences could just be defined as word slop. Criticism would be greatly appreciated!! (please keep in mind that I’m a minor)

i grew up ahead of the curve in terms of language skills, and always sort of had a knack for storytelling that set me apart from my peers, but i’m a few years out of school now and curious about what it takes/feels like to be a good writer in the real world.

writing is not my main passion but lately i have enjoyed working on a series of short stories. i notice that i feel like i’m not pushing the medium hard enough, especially for a story that is meant to be shocking in an impactful way, but i’m also wary of pushing it so hard that it becomes nothing But shock material and comes off as immature. not looking for advice on this in particular but wanted to provide as a reference as to where i am in my creative mindset.

to all the more experienced writers who may see this.. what changes in your own mindset have you noticed through different points in your creative journey? is there any advice you’ve heard that helped your writing more than you expected? when you write something that strikes you as better than your past work, what makes you feel that way?

Are there any tropes you absolutely can’t stand? No matter how well written it could have been?
What makes you hate that trope?
Have you ever come across a book that made you love or enjoy a trope you usually hate?

What kind of terrible truth would justify concealing it to protect something fundamentally good? And could you understand someone making that choice, even if you believed it was morally wrong?

I would love to hear your ideas and feedback on it.

I'm just writing whatever comes up in my mind and I'm a few chapters in. Now, I'm sure I have to have a plot. But, how do I actually develop a plot? Can I just write whatever comes up in my mind and then edit it after writing the entire book?

I'm trying to write a female character who feels alluring without relying on obvious clichés. She might be reserved at first, but there's something quietly magnetic about her presence.

How can I show that kind of appeal through small details,her mannerisms, confidence, humor, or the way she interacts with othr characters without making her seem overly mysterious or defined only by her looks?.

Every time I sit down to write at daytime I cannot focus for God's sake and instead do a hundred different things but the minute the time is late and middle of the night I feel this overwhelming urge to write that I just want to stay up all night to finish the chapter but the morning my body feels like it has been through hell, like what the hell am I supposed to do?? instead of suffering this way because I fear writer's block will hit me if I continue on

I have a story in mind about 2 Continents , 1 magic land and 1 technology land. This story has a victorian setting like around 1800 to early 1900. Both factions are at odds of each other with the main antagonist, taking the opportunity of the feud to control both worlds. The tagline is "2 worlds, One fate."

Let me know your suggestions below. Thanks

When you first started or desired or even around the discussion of story telling. What‘s a something that helped you understand how to write better; dialogue, description, narration and atmosphere.
To me it’s do not over explain anything, use mystery and subtext, so leave it to the audience imagination. Sometimes something is cooler or scarier in one person’s head than another one.

People are indirect, they are not robots who give blunt, honest responses, they use simple vague responses like they are almost hiding something. Like if someone asked about my day regardless of if it was amazing or bad, I usually say “alright, fine or good”.

Brake up dialogue with action. When I say action I don’t mean explosions or violence, instead simple things like, the character wipes their head or drinking water. Even If your character is doing some big speech, describe some little action to break it up for a bit.

Everyone speaks differently. There’s many types of people like farmers, the wealthy elites and immigrants who are learning a new language. Older people use shorter sentences, because they don’t have the energy to speak longer sentences. People in the country use more hick twang dialect and phrases. But also how people pronounce certain words based on their region and accents.

Don’t always worry on grammar but don’t use it to excuse or ignore bad grammar, at least know basic grammar so people know what you are even saying. And knowing how to spell is part of it. Because it can add character and immerse the reader. Like the story is set in Southern America or the outback of Australia, or the narrator’s second language is English and struggle with it.

The setting and location is also a character with history, when a character enters a cabin, don’t just say “He enters the cabin and sat in chair”. Describe the texture, the smell- make the reader believe they are in the cabin or forest or anywhere. Nature isn’t an object, it’s a place filled with life and I just don’t mean animals, but the trees and plants as well. A forest is old and massive, so write in the scale that makes people feel small and at their mercy.

Do not use “And then” a lot, to make the story structure make sense use “but” & “therefore“. ‘I woke up wanting breakfast, so THEREFORE I went to get the cereal and milk, BUT I discovered that I ran out of milk, so THEREFORE I need to buy more-‘. You see where I’m going?

Styles work for certain settings. If you writing a medieval fantasy then you need to write in an older style like what Tolkien does. Be more poetic and archaic, give it a soul and fairy like. So don’t use modern slang, that ruins the escapist immersion for the reader. And do something similar for science fiction, which more about the material scientific angle of life. So be more minimalist and technical terms, you are not reading about dragons or goblins, but spaceships and aliens. If you use the fantasy style in sci-fi, it wouldn’t work because it’s not what either genres are made for.

Not every rule is the laws of God like the 10 Commandments, sometimes say “screw it I want to experiment and do things my own way”. But like I said, only sometimes and not all the time, there must be a reason to it.

I don't know. I have never really tried to do this before.

Long story short: Virgin alien soldier. Sees the human he's falling in love with after a long, anxious break. He's on a mission and is filtering his affection through it. She doesn't know he's an alien... Yet.

I just need my writing to not just be seen, but I want to actually hold onto my accomplishment. I want it to be a reality. Where should I go to self publish?

This (fortunately and unfortunately, because writing is such sweet torture) ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve been toying with the opening of my fourth novel, a speculative work of literary fiction.

As a disclaimer: I know I can lean purply in moments. Unless it’s unbearable it’s not something I wish to change. I like to read sensory rich prose myself—I’m a lit fic girlie pop through and through.

Just wanna know general thoughts. Does it hook you? What could make it hookier, if not?

My third novel is in the trenches right now with 40 unanswered queries and 5 full requests still out, so I’m trying to dive into a new project so I don’t lose my mind.

Thanks guys!

EDIT: Sorry that the formatting is weird. I’ve never looked at it from my phone; it looks much better on my actual writing laptop.

about the pause and drama that comes off with em-dashes

so i'm writing espionage and high stakes spy thriller and good god am i dramatic and i tend to do drama very heavily,might i add.
when i am writing it i can hear back ground noises as i'm wiring the dialouge, you know teh exaperated sighs, the gun shot pops stuff like that. and i told this to a friend of mine, who says i'm too dramatic, and now i'm over thinking all of it.
and i would feed my work into an A. i bot for objectivity but i like my principles

There’s a certain dilemma I’m coming across as I brainstorm characters and ideas. I myself am a gay cis man, and more often than not, I like making young adult action stories that would usually star a male protagonist but instead star female protagonist. I’m kind of concerned that I might somehow portray these characters in a disingenuous way because I myself am not female.

To clarify, being female genuinely has nothing to do with the story. The main reason why they are female is that I wanted to put girls in a male-dominated genre, and I go out of my way to treat these female characters no differently than male counterparts. However, because I spend too much time on the Internet, I’m afraid that I might offend people by doing this.

I ran into the same problem when thinking about my characters’ ethnicities as well. I wanted to create a story that takes place in a fictional city in California. Seeing as California has a large Hispanic and Latino population, I thought it would make sense for my main character to be Hispanic. Again, his ethnicity has nothing to do with the story. It just makes the most sense given where the story is set.

I assume that research is in order when it comes to writing characters who are nothing like myself, but I truly can’t stress enough how, more often than not, the stories I want to create don’t actually involve the characters’ ethnicity or gender playing a role.

Is this a larger issue that I need to address within myself, or am I just overthinking it?

To be effective in a writers group you need to be descriptive with your critiques rather than prescriptive. The writer you are critiquing does not need to know how you would have done it. They need to know the effect of their writing on the reader. What did they feel and think while reading? What was missing from the experience? Where did it land?

What I also noticed is that it's against the law to put in people real name without their permission which means that even from the very start, the law doesn't even what you to tell the complete true! So why even write a book about yourself then of the law say you can't tell the truth fully and you can lie about it and no one can suspect a thing?!

I started writing an unreliable narrator "man and his dog" cyberpunk story. I've been really enjoying the experience. It is not my usual genre. And I feel like I can actually see where the book is going and have a lot of the story beats thought out ahead of where I am in the narrative.

12k words in though and I'm starting to doubt that it is going anywhere actually worth reading. I feel like I've lost who the audience is reading this. Since it's not my normal genre, I don't know if it has any appeal to those that might pick it up.

The easy response is: keep going. Finish it up. Part of me though is saying: you have story ideas in the genre that you know. Your time is probably better spent there.

Has anyone else had "changing genre jitters"?

For anyone interested in taking a peek, here's a link to the first 6 chapters. (Please keep in mind that this is a first draft with all the ugliness that entails) Feel free to leave comments, criticisms, concerns or effusive praise.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P2zBkL6SIdY1KrAburQWlp-GdvR5DTGc0Z2gtU7caTg/edit?usp=sharing

So I want to write a new short story. I don't know what it should be about. The first comment will tell me what I will write about. I will ask the first person what every chapter should be about once I get there.