She said the whole 'chosen one' trope is played out and I should write about climate anxiety instead. It stung but honestly she kinda had a point, anyone else struggle with writing tropes that feel overdone?
I was at the downtown public library in Portland digging through the donation bin for old notebooks. One of the librarians, a quiet lady named Margaret, came over and dropped a crumpled letter on the table. She said "This got thrown out by the author who wrote that thriller you checked out last week. Read the editor's notes, they might help your own stuff." It was a brutal rejection but had really specific feedback about pacing and character motivation. Has anyone else ever stumbled across real writing advice from a rejected manuscript?
I ordered this book called '1000 Writing Prompts for Fiction' off Amazon last month. It promised fresh ideas but every single prompt was stuff like 'write about a broken clock' or 'a character finds a letter.' Nothing original. I went through all 1000 and maybe found 3 that I could use. I could have gotten better stuff for free off this subreddit. Has anyone else tried one of those books and actually gotten something useful out of it?
I picked up this huge thesaurus and style guide combo last month thinking it would fix all my weak descriptions. Cost me $50 and I've cracked it open maybe twice. The thing is full of examples that feel super dated and not helpful for modern fiction. Honestly, the free online tools and just reading more novels have taught me way more. Anyone else regret a writing purchase that seemed like a good idea at the time?
Last year a guy in my workshop gave me a prompt that was just two words: "broken windows." That was it. No setting, no character, no conflict needed. That single open ended line led to a story I still think about, but the prompts with 5 bullet points of requirements always feel like homework.
I saw this ad for a fancy prompt box that promised to spark new ideas every month. I signed up and got the first box, which had a few index cards with prompts like 'write about a door' and a cheap notebook. I figured the next month would be better but it was more of the same vague stuff. I could have just googled 'free writing prompts' and saved myself the cash. Has anyone else found a prompt box that's actually worth the money?
I figured it would help me bust through writer's block for a fantasy novel I'm working on. Within two hours I realized it was just churning out the same basic plot points I've seen a hundred times before. No character depth, no real emotion, just generic descriptions that felt hollow. The only thing it actually helped me do was realize how much I value writing the mess myself. Has anyone else had a tool completely flop on you like this?
I stopped into this tiny used bookshop downtown last Saturday, the kind with cats sleeping on the shelves and coffee stains on the floor. They had this corkboard near the register covered in handwritten prompts from customers. I spent a solid 20 minutes reading them and ended up filling half a notebook. One prompt said 'write a story about a key that opens the wrong door' and another was 'describe your hometown through the eyes of a ghost.' It got me thinking that maybe we overthink prompts online when the best ones come from real people just scribbling on scrap paper. Have you ever stumbled on a random writing prompt in a weird place that stuck with you?
I always thought writer's block was this big psychological wall or whatever. But last week I found this stat online that said 80% of writers who think they have block actually just haven't found the right prompt or angle yet. That hit me hard because I've been staring at a blank page for like 3 days. Is it really just about needing a better starting point or is there something real to the block? What side are you on?
My buddy Mark has been telling me for 6 months to try this app called Word Forge. I figured it was just another gimmick like the ones you see on TikTok. Last Tuesday I was stuck on a prompt about a haunted laundromat and downloaded it out of boredom. The app gave me three weird character traits to include, like 'afraid of quarters' and 'can only talk in rhymes'. I ended up writing 2,000 words in an hour and actually finished the story. Has anyone else had a random tool surprise them like that?
I was at a coffee shop last Tuesday and this older guy sitting next to me saw me editing a short story on my laptop. He asked what I was working on, then told me he used to edit for a small press for 35 years. He said 'most writers worry about the big plot stuff first, but readers actually leave when the sentences feel clunky.' That hit me because I spend hours on character arcs but never read my stuff out loud to catch awkward phrasing. Has anyone else changed their editing routine after a random conversation like that?
I keep seeing people post prompts here where they use names like 'David' or 'Sarah' and treat them like generic stand-ins. But if I write a story about a character named David who runs a shady business, and my neighbor David reads it, he might think it's about him even if it's not. I had a buddy last year write a short story about a 'Jenny' from the local coffee shop, and the actual Jenny there got super weird about it. Am I overthinking this or do other people worry about naming characters after strangers?
I spent 3 months rolling my eyes at daily prompts on this sub until my own story from one got picked up by a small lit mag last spring and now I'm hooked on them.
I've been in this creative writing group for about 8 months now, and the leader kept pushing this hard rule that adverbs are the enemy of good prose. He said things like "Stephen King never says 'he said softly,' he shows the character whispering." So I spent 3 months ripping every -ly word out of my short story drafts. But last week I submitted a piece to a small contest and got feedback from the judge who said one of my stronger choices was using "carefully" in a scene where a character handles an old photograph. She pointed out that sometimes the right adverb adds a layer that showing takes too long to get to. Now I'm wondering - has anyone else found that strict writing rules from group leaders don't always hold up when you actually submit work?
For two straight years I kept describing every single thing about my characters. Hair color, eye color, height, build, the whole deal. I thought that's what real writers did. Then I picked up Blood Meridian last winter during a layover in Cheyenne and realized McCarthy barely describes what anyone looks like. The Judge is just big and pale. That's it. It hit me that I was wasting paragraphs on description that didn't matter. Readers fill in the blanks if you give them the vibe. Now I pick one weird detail per character instead of a whole shopping list. Anyone else have that moment where you realized you were overwriting something basic?
I've been sending short stories to lit mags for about 8 months now. Kept a spreadsheet of every submission. Hit exactly 50 rejections yesterday. That number surprised me. It made me realize I wasn't learning from the nos. I was just collecting them. Now I'm going back to study each rejection instead of rushing to the next submission. Anyone else track their submission stats like this?
I went to this weekend workshop at a small bookstore off South Congress. The instructor had us do a timed exercise where we wrote a 500 word story with no planning at all. It came out messy but I got more raw ideas down than I do after a week of outlining. Now I do a quick 10 minute freewrite before I even touch a story structure. It helps me figure out the voice before I lock in a plot. Has anyone else tried ditching the outline for a rough draft first?
I went to a workshop in Portland last Tuesday and this guy spent 10 minutes explaining why we should replace 'said' with things like 'opined' or 'posited.' I get that variety is nice but look at any bestseller, Stephen King uses 'said' on every other page. Has anyone else noticed newer writers trying way too hard to avoid basic dialogue tags?
I was 200 words into a scene about a diner waitress finding a locked box behind the grill when my 2017 Dell just went black and won't boot up again... I lost the whole thing because I forgot to hit save. Has anyone else had a computer crash right when you were finally hitting a good flow in your story?
It was at the public library downtown, a Tuesday night. I brought this scene I spent like two months on, thought it was gold. First guy says, "Your dialogue sounds like a Hallmark card." Then another person chimes in, "I don't get why the character would even care about the lamp." By the end I felt like I'd been through a structure fire and lost. I rewrote that thing six times based on their notes and it still got rejected by three lit mags. Has anyone else gotten feedback that made you question if you can write at all?
I spent two days going back and forth on it. I went with keeping the plot twist intact and the character death ended up giving their arc way more weight than I expected. Has anyone else had to make a painful call like that for the sake of the story?
I was writing this scene for a horror story where two friends are arguing in a basement, and I had them talking all proper and complete sentences... like nobody ever interrupts or trails off. Then I overheard my neighbor and her husband arguing about a broken lawnmower, and they were finishing each other's sentences wrong and cutting each other off. That's when it clicked - my dialogue sounded like a textbook, not real people talking. Has anyone else had to unlearn "proper" writing and start writing actual messy human speech?
I went to this tiny workshop at a coffee shop in Portland a few years back. The host said, "your outline is just a guess, not a contract." That stuck with me because I used to lock in my plots way too early. Now I keep my plans loose and let the story surprise me (which is way less stressful). Has anyone else had a writing habit get flipped by someone else's advice?
Finally tried one last night where every sentence had to start with a different letter of the alphabet. Wrote 800 words in 45 minutes, which is 3x faster than my normal pace. Has anyone else had a gimmick actually fix their writer's block?