How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#1
I thought I made writering guide before but cannot find it.

So this will be a thread with my fiction writering observations and thoughts. And my thoughts are small so I will not waste too much of your time.

Achievements of interest:
Top List #60
750,000 views on a single fiction
2k followers on a single fiction
Over 500k words

In RR terms, I am a midlist writer.

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1. Cooking with Words

Writing a story is much like cooking a meal. There aren't any objective rules but there are many ingredients and preparation methods, which are strongly influenced by cultural tendencies and personal taste. Taking time to learn about these parts or study how others make their stories can be useful. They allow you to appreciate storycrafting and train you to see the parts of your own story that may need refining.

But you don't need it to be popular or make money.

One of the most successful RR authors I've known told me they hardly read books at all as they preferred to watch anime. Their schedule was to wake up early, write for a couple of hours, and then play games for the rest of the day. Their audience was 'guys like me who like anime' and that combined with the self-discipline of consistently writing meant they could live off their Patreon.

That's awesome.

There are no rules, only ingredients and preperation methods.

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#2
2. The vivid and continuous dream

The purpose of writering is to create in the reader's mind a vivid and continuous dream.

Vividness comes from language that stimulates and evokes. Weak language is dull. It plods when it must run. It is muddy when it needs to be crisp. It is gray when the scene calls for violent splashes of color.

Continuity comes from the flow of the story and the sense that people and events on page 50 arose naturally from what we read on page 1 and are steadily moving towards a page 100.

This is not 'continuity' in the sense fans often use. Indiana Jones fights atop a tank as it races across the desert then suddenly, he slides to the edge, and looking down they are now on a cliff that was nowhere to be seen previously. CinemaSins docks a point, but in terms of action, the scene follows the flow of piling up dangers and difficulties.

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#3
3. It's okay to use passive voice

Or it would be if it were possible in English, which it is not. Latin has passive voice. English has passive sentence structure.

Journalism has a strong influence in how English is taught in America and in journalism, the use of active sentence structure is important. In fiction writing, both active and passive sentence structure has a place.

Example a: John called the police to his house.
Example b: The police were called to the house.

We like to stick the important part in the front. Even in a third-person story where John is the main character, if this is the beginning of a paragraph that focuses on the police and their actions at John's house, lead with them. 

If this is a novel from John's POV and he didn't call, you might be tempted to write...

Example c: Someone called the police to John's house.

This only works if who did the calling is meant to be a mystery that John discovers. When you stick 'someone' in the front of a sentence, the implication is that this 'someone' is important in some way.

If who did the calling doesn't matter, 'The police were called to John's house' is fine.

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#4
4. What is the best time to release a chapter?

12:05 PM GMT. If you release exactly at 12:00 PM, you will be pushed off by a bunch of scheduled chapter updates.

5. I've heard you want to release when there are more readers.

That's incorrect. The busiest time of day, you will get pushed off the front page faster. It is better to spend 30 minutes on the front page when there are fewer readers than 5 minutes on the front page when there are more readers.

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#5
6. I am sick of these motherfucking tonal breaks in my motherfucking stories

Chapters 1 - 15: Lighthearted adventuring and exploration
Chapter 16: The author realizes things are getting staid, so the hero is beaten and maimed and the villagers burned alive.
Chapter 20: The author can't maintain this grim and harrowing tone, so things lighten up, but not because situations have been resolved or the MC has dealt with their grief.
Chapter 30: Also, the MC is now a prince doing kingdom-building and discovers they alone have the power to beat the demon lord.
Chapter 40: The author remembers they just wanted to tell a lighthearted story about adventuring and exploration, but things have gone terribly off the rail.
Chapter 41: Never released. [Hiatus]

Pick a tone and stick with it. If things begin to feel flat, add tonally appropriate conflict or stakes.

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#6
Very good guide. I approve FancyDrakan

Re: How to Writering--Reaver's Guide!

#9

SJ Wrote: 6. I am sick of these motherfucking tonal breaks in my motherfucking stories

[...]
Pick a tone and stick with it. If things begin to feel flat, add tonally appropriate conflict or stakes.
I don't quite agree with this one. If you are writing a drama or a grimdark story, you also might run into the problem of overburdening the reader with doom, gloom, and constant depression. A lighthearted moment here and there can give the reader some emotional rest and result in an even greater gut-punch when the griminess continues. What I do agree with is that one needs to know what genre/general concept one wants to utilize so that the story does not feel like two completely disconnected stories mashed together and held only by the characters (like you start a western but it suddenly turns out it is a vampire story with zero foreshadowing).