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vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0d8lf | id0i917 | 1,655,688,380 | 1,655,691,158 | 2 | 12 | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | Is this a first draft? Those aren't supposed to be great. Even if it's a second or third draft, just finish it. You can always fix any problems in post, as it were. | 0 | 2,778 | 6 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id04zhe | id071wp | 1,655,683,868 | 1,655,684,985 | 9 | 10 | 1. How to tell if you’re a writer: motivation is secondary to compulsion. If you don’t feel the NEED to write, then it may not be for you. 2. Finish your book knowing that you can come back to it later and shape it up. Develop another story and forget this one for a while. If you still feel an attachment to the story, go to GoodReads or various other places to find some good beta readers. They’re out there. You can do this. | It's great because it's yours, so finish it. When you have the whole story written out it will be easier to identify the issues and fix them. | 0 | 1,117 | 1.111111 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id071wp | id05mtv | 1,655,684,985 | 1,655,684,222 | 10 | 5 | It's great because it's yours, so finish it. When you have the whole story written out it will be easier to identify the issues and fix them. | Finish it to at least a full draft if you feel you need to for your own sense of completeness, but the other option is to *put it in a drawer* and take some time away from it. Maybe you'll see it differently with fresh eyes after some time. Maybe you'll find something in it that inspires a better version. Maybe you'll just have gotten it out of your system and can move on to a new writing project. Some ideas can be like that. They need to be written out, even if the result is lacklustre. There's absolutely no shame in recognising that a piece of writing doesn't work. It'd be blind ego to think everything we commit to paper is somehow perfect and golden. In fact, having the awareness that something isn't working is a great instinct to hone. | 1 | 763 | 2 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0pj36 | id04zhe | 1,655,695,287 | 1,655,683,868 | 10 | 9 | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | 1. How to tell if you’re a writer: motivation is secondary to compulsion. If you don’t feel the NEED to write, then it may not be for you. 2. Finish your book knowing that you can come back to it later and shape it up. Develop another story and forget this one for a while. If you still feel an attachment to the story, go to GoodReads or various other places to find some good beta readers. They’re out there. You can do this. | 1 | 11,419 | 1.111111 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id05mtv | id0pj36 | 1,655,684,222 | 1,655,695,287 | 5 | 10 | Finish it to at least a full draft if you feel you need to for your own sense of completeness, but the other option is to *put it in a drawer* and take some time away from it. Maybe you'll see it differently with fresh eyes after some time. Maybe you'll find something in it that inspires a better version. Maybe you'll just have gotten it out of your system and can move on to a new writing project. Some ideas can be like that. They need to be written out, even if the result is lacklustre. There's absolutely no shame in recognising that a piece of writing doesn't work. It'd be blind ego to think everything we commit to paper is somehow perfect and golden. In fact, having the awareness that something isn't working is a great instinct to hone. | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | 0 | 11,065 | 2 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0pj36 | id0in45 | 1,655,695,287 | 1,655,691,379 | 10 | 4 | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | Can I just say as someone who has a million great ideas, starts things and never finishes them. Even if your story isn't that great. Isn't it going to be amazing to finish something? I'd love to be able to say I wrote a novel draft, even a first one, even if it were complete crap. Cause hey. That's a lot of commitment and hard work! | 1 | 3,908 | 2.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0pj36 | id0p7xs | 1,655,695,287 | 1,655,695,104 | 10 | 3 | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | Either push through and finish or do a makeover of the story. Depending on how bad it is, you could say it's an extremely rough draft and write something based around what got you writing in the first place. A bad story isn't the end of a writing career. If that was the case, we wouldn't learn what went wrong and fix errors because we wrote something bad. | 1 | 183 | 3.333333 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0pj36 | id0d8lf | 1,655,695,287 | 1,655,688,380 | 10 | 2 | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | 1 | 6,907 | 5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0pj36 | id0nz8h | 1,655,695,287 | 1,655,694,377 | 10 | 2 | 1) Let go of your need for this version to be publishable and finish it anyway. Give yourself permission to write a bad book as long as you finish it. 2) Your beta readers ghosting it doesn't tell you it's a badly written book. It tells you it wasn't their cup of tea. If you want, I'll take a look at it for you and give you my honest feedback on it. Just message me. | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | 1 | 910 | 5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id05mtv | id0q5f1 | 1,655,684,222 | 1,655,695,661 | 5 | 8 | Finish it to at least a full draft if you feel you need to for your own sense of completeness, but the other option is to *put it in a drawer* and take some time away from it. Maybe you'll see it differently with fresh eyes after some time. Maybe you'll find something in it that inspires a better version. Maybe you'll just have gotten it out of your system and can move on to a new writing project. Some ideas can be like that. They need to be written out, even if the result is lacklustre. There's absolutely no shame in recognising that a piece of writing doesn't work. It'd be blind ego to think everything we commit to paper is somehow perfect and golden. In fact, having the awareness that something isn't working is a great instinct to hone. | Finish it and put it in a drawer. Note the problems and work on fixing those in your next one. It took four to six books for me to write something publishable; it's the process most of us go through. | 0 | 11,439 | 1.6 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0q5f1 | id0in45 | 1,655,695,661 | 1,655,691,379 | 8 | 4 | Finish it and put it in a drawer. Note the problems and work on fixing those in your next one. It took four to six books for me to write something publishable; it's the process most of us go through. | Can I just say as someone who has a million great ideas, starts things and never finishes them. Even if your story isn't that great. Isn't it going to be amazing to finish something? I'd love to be able to say I wrote a novel draft, even a first one, even if it were complete crap. Cause hey. That's a lot of commitment and hard work! | 1 | 4,282 | 2 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0q5f1 | id0p7xs | 1,655,695,661 | 1,655,695,104 | 8 | 3 | Finish it and put it in a drawer. Note the problems and work on fixing those in your next one. It took four to six books for me to write something publishable; it's the process most of us go through. | Either push through and finish or do a makeover of the story. Depending on how bad it is, you could say it's an extremely rough draft and write something based around what got you writing in the first place. A bad story isn't the end of a writing career. If that was the case, we wouldn't learn what went wrong and fix errors because we wrote something bad. | 1 | 557 | 2.666667 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0d8lf | id0q5f1 | 1,655,688,380 | 1,655,695,661 | 2 | 8 | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | Finish it and put it in a drawer. Note the problems and work on fixing those in your next one. It took four to six books for me to write something publishable; it's the process most of us go through. | 0 | 7,281 | 4 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0q5f1 | id0nz8h | 1,655,695,661 | 1,655,694,377 | 8 | 2 | Finish it and put it in a drawer. Note the problems and work on fixing those in your next one. It took four to six books for me to write something publishable; it's the process most of us go through. | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | 1 | 1,284 | 4 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0in45 | id0d8lf | 1,655,691,379 | 1,655,688,380 | 4 | 2 | Can I just say as someone who has a million great ideas, starts things and never finishes them. Even if your story isn't that great. Isn't it going to be amazing to finish something? I'd love to be able to say I wrote a novel draft, even a first one, even if it were complete crap. Cause hey. That's a lot of commitment and hard work! | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | 1 | 2,999 | 2 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0d8lf | id0p7xs | 1,655,688,380 | 1,655,695,104 | 2 | 3 | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | Either push through and finish or do a makeover of the story. Depending on how bad it is, you could say it's an extremely rough draft and write something based around what got you writing in the first place. A bad story isn't the end of a writing career. If that was the case, we wouldn't learn what went wrong and fix errors because we wrote something bad. | 0 | 6,724 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0p7xs | id0nz8h | 1,655,695,104 | 1,655,694,377 | 3 | 2 | Either push through and finish or do a makeover of the story. Depending on how bad it is, you could say it's an extremely rough draft and write something based around what got you writing in the first place. A bad story isn't the end of a writing career. If that was the case, we wouldn't learn what went wrong and fix errors because we wrote something bad. | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | 1 | 727 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id0d8lf | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,688,380 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | 1 | 47,741 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0nz8h | id2b8vf | 1,655,694,377 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 41,744 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0sb4c | id2b8vf | 1,655,696,966 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | Make the end extremely disappointing so that the reader can learn that it doesn't have to end successfully because they didn't write it | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 39,155 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0void | id2b8vf | 1,655,699,126 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | the fact that you gave your first draft to beta readers this early... the first draft will never be your best version (unless you just have an insane talent for it). you go continuing your story knowing that it will suck and that's okay, because second, third, fourth etc draft exists for that. you can edit and do major changes. also regarding your husband, it is good to engage your story with him. it can boost your motivation and excite you. just because his standards are "low" doesn't mean your story isn't good or atleast doesn't have the potential to be good. finish your first draft first, and polish it to the best you can, then you can send to beta readers to see it objectively | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 36,995 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id0w7g7 | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,699,475 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | It is a book. There have been many written. Were they all original, mind-blowing masterpieces? No. Did they have a write to exist? Yes. Let's say you go to a restaurant. Not McDonald's, but not a fancy 5 star either. You order a steak. It's good. It fills you up. Are you going to remember that steak for the rest of your life? Probably not. But it was a steak, and someone cooked it and you ate it. Maybe the cook that grilled your steak made a bunch of steaks in his life that were a bit crap. All on his journey to being good enough to cook for a living. | 1 | 36,646 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id148e7 | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,705,319 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | Do you already have your story more or less plotted out so that you know the bones of what needs to happen, you just need to write it? If so, my suggestion for you is that you make a goal and spreadsheet it. Example goal: 'In the next two weeks, I will write 10,000 words,' which is 715 words a day. Each day, sit down and write. (Some days will be 3K days and some days will be 300 word days, but that's okay--just keep your goal in mind, and they'll all get you there.) Engage with the craft of it, and let the growth of your story serve as your motivating force. Finishing the book will feel wonderful when you get there! Don't cheat yourself of that accomplishment. As others have said, your first draft and your final draft are not the same. Making a book that people will enjoy is hard work; it'll take you many passes over the material before you're happy with everything. You can't edit a blank page, though. Step one: get it done. If the above isn't enough, I have one more piece of advice for you. Is there anything in your book that makes you happy--something that came out really well and made you pleased and proud? Go read that, and fall in love with your work again. | 1 | 30,802 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1az16 | id2b8vf | 1,655,710,966 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | You don't. Just stop working on it, put it aside and write something else. In a couple of months, come back to this story, sit down and read it. If you get excited for the story again, finish it and improve it. | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 25,155 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id1e7p1 | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,713,926 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | Don't know if this is allowed or not but first, publish your book, set it up on Amazon, contact us and then wr shall positively review bombard it to make people think its a great book. It won't solve your problem but it might be very funny. | 1 | 22,195 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1qh1a | id2b8vf | 1,655,724,530 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | Here's my experience: I recently got to 50k words of my fourth draft, the first draft I've actually considered worth showing anyone. Despite not finishing the last three chapters, I decided to share my first chapter with a lot of people online. I did it in google docs and let anyone with the link be a commentator. I got a lot of feedback on my writing. The first couple days reading it was difficult and demotivating. But although I saw how my *writing* was bad, I truly believed that my *story* is good. So I took that first chapter and carefully rewrote it using all the advice. I sent it to the same people and got really great feedback about how much it improved! It was the better writing that made the characters more relatable, the story easier to follow and the plot engaging. I'm now starting from the beginning of my story and rewriting the chapters. When I finish, I plan to do the same thing again. Hopefully the writing will be a lot better and I'll actually move onto the revising and editing part instead of rewriting the whole story for the uptenth time. Edit: also, instead of getting beta readers, do swaps in stead. As they see you adding comments to their book, one chapter at a time, they'll add comments to your story at the same pace. If you read Chapter 1 of theirs and they don't read Chapter 1 of yours for a week, you know to find someone else. | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 11,591 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1u1fp | id2b8vf | 1,655,726,946 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | You don’t have to. It’s perfectly fine to put it in a drawer and start the next one. Or even start this one again from scratch. That’s often necessary! | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 9,175 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id1uxb1 | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,727,512 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | First drafts are always shit. Ask any famous author. no one puts out perfect engaging prose on the first try. | 1 | 8,609 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1yemu | id2b8vf | 1,655,729,595 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | I don't have any great advice, but I've learned one thing. If I put a piece down for a few months and come back and read it, I always like it A LOT more than I did when I last looked at it. Just my 2 cents. Keep your head up kid. | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 6,526 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id22k6f | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,731,879 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | Complete something. Do more research, then complete something else. Either that or have someone honest con-critique your work and suggest improvements. I'd be willing to do so, (honest opinions + what I feel could be improved). That being said, you can't really force interest (not saying you are), but it kind of seems to me that maybe your genre just wasn't their thing. A couple of people is a small pool. 100 is a better test pool. 100 people interested in your genre is an even better test pool. | 1 | 4,242 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id23843 | id2b8vf | 1,655,732,224 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | I wouldn't assume that your betas ghosted you because the story is bad. People have stuff going on and beta reading an internet person's thing isn't at the top of their list. I also wouldn't send your work out to betas before you do at least one pass on it. This isn't like a hard rule, but generally - if your work is unpolished, people are more likely to bail. That doesn't mean they'd bail on it when it is polished. That said, people have given you good advice on how to continue, but like - if you're out of steam on this one, it's fine to quit and move on to a different draft. When you're new to a skill, it's normal to improve quickly, so it's not unusual to find mid-way through a big project like a novel that your skills have improved enough that the project isn't worth continuing. | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 3,897 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2b8vf | id23iky | 1,655,736,121 | 1,655,732,377 | 3 | 2 | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | If you'd like I'd be willing to read it and provide you feedback. What all writers need is feedback. If you don't know where you messed up how can you make it better ya know. | 1 | 3,744 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2aueh | id2b8vf | 1,655,735,936 | 1,655,736,121 | 2 | 3 | You need more beta-readers. Hop on over to /r/betareaders and ask for some, or hop into this friendly discord server (https://discord.gg/ZGuhSaRx) and some of us can help you out. I wouldn't trust such a small sample set of readers, plus even if there _are_ problems with your story, they can be fixed with some help and constructive feedback. Your first version of a manuscript is _never_ your last! | In the future - after you’ve completed a second draft and gotten the story to your satisfaction! - it might be helpful to give your beta readers a list of questions you want their reading to answer. Items like, “when did you feel the story began”, “what did you like or dislike about the main character”, etc. An open-ended request for feedback might be overwhelming, and your beta readers might not know where to start. Targeting their reading and giving them specific questions to answer might help get their thoughts in order and open the floodgates for feedback. | 0 | 185 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0d8lf | id2bri5 | 1,655,688,380 | 1,655,736,361 | 2 | 3 | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | 0 | 47,981 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id0nz8h | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,694,377 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | 1 | 41,984 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id0sb4c | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,696,966 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | Make the end extremely disappointing so that the reader can learn that it doesn't have to end successfully because they didn't write it | 1 | 39,395 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id0void | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,699,126 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | the fact that you gave your first draft to beta readers this early... the first draft will never be your best version (unless you just have an insane talent for it). you go continuing your story knowing that it will suck and that's okay, because second, third, fourth etc draft exists for that. you can edit and do major changes. also regarding your husband, it is good to engage your story with him. it can boost your motivation and excite you. just because his standards are "low" doesn't mean your story isn't good or atleast doesn't have the potential to be good. finish your first draft first, and polish it to the best you can, then you can send to beta readers to see it objectively | 1 | 37,235 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id0w7g7 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,699,475 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | It is a book. There have been many written. Were they all original, mind-blowing masterpieces? No. Did they have a write to exist? Yes. Let's say you go to a restaurant. Not McDonald's, but not a fancy 5 star either. You order a steak. It's good. It fills you up. Are you going to remember that steak for the rest of your life? Probably not. But it was a steak, and someone cooked it and you ate it. Maybe the cook that grilled your steak made a bunch of steaks in his life that were a bit crap. All on his journey to being good enough to cook for a living. | 1 | 36,886 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id148e7 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,705,319 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | Do you already have your story more or less plotted out so that you know the bones of what needs to happen, you just need to write it? If so, my suggestion for you is that you make a goal and spreadsheet it. Example goal: 'In the next two weeks, I will write 10,000 words,' which is 715 words a day. Each day, sit down and write. (Some days will be 3K days and some days will be 300 word days, but that's okay--just keep your goal in mind, and they'll all get you there.) Engage with the craft of it, and let the growth of your story serve as your motivating force. Finishing the book will feel wonderful when you get there! Don't cheat yourself of that accomplishment. As others have said, your first draft and your final draft are not the same. Making a book that people will enjoy is hard work; it'll take you many passes over the material before you're happy with everything. You can't edit a blank page, though. Step one: get it done. If the above isn't enough, I have one more piece of advice for you. Is there anything in your book that makes you happy--something that came out really well and made you pleased and proud? Go read that, and fall in love with your work again. | 1 | 31,042 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id1az16 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,710,966 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | You don't. Just stop working on it, put it aside and write something else. In a couple of months, come back to this story, sit down and read it. If you get excited for the story again, finish it and improve it. | 1 | 25,395 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id1e7p1 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,713,926 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | Don't know if this is allowed or not but first, publish your book, set it up on Amazon, contact us and then wr shall positively review bombard it to make people think its a great book. It won't solve your problem but it might be very funny. | 1 | 22,435 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id1qh1a | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,724,530 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | Here's my experience: I recently got to 50k words of my fourth draft, the first draft I've actually considered worth showing anyone. Despite not finishing the last three chapters, I decided to share my first chapter with a lot of people online. I did it in google docs and let anyone with the link be a commentator. I got a lot of feedback on my writing. The first couple days reading it was difficult and demotivating. But although I saw how my *writing* was bad, I truly believed that my *story* is good. So I took that first chapter and carefully rewrote it using all the advice. I sent it to the same people and got really great feedback about how much it improved! It was the better writing that made the characters more relatable, the story easier to follow and the plot engaging. I'm now starting from the beginning of my story and rewriting the chapters. When I finish, I plan to do the same thing again. Hopefully the writing will be a lot better and I'll actually move onto the revising and editing part instead of rewriting the whole story for the uptenth time. Edit: also, instead of getting beta readers, do swaps in stead. As they see you adding comments to their book, one chapter at a time, they'll add comments to your story at the same pace. If you read Chapter 1 of theirs and they don't read Chapter 1 of yours for a week, you know to find someone else. | 1 | 11,831 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1u1fp | id2bri5 | 1,655,726,946 | 1,655,736,361 | 2 | 3 | You don’t have to. It’s perfectly fine to put it in a drawer and start the next one. Or even start this one again from scratch. That’s often necessary! | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | 0 | 9,415 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id1uxb1 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,727,512 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | First drafts are always shit. Ask any famous author. no one puts out perfect engaging prose on the first try. | 1 | 8,849 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id1yemu | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,729,595 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | I don't have any great advice, but I've learned one thing. If I put a piece down for a few months and come back and read it, I always like it A LOT more than I did when I last looked at it. Just my 2 cents. Keep your head up kid. | 1 | 6,766 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id22k6f | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,731,879 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | Complete something. Do more research, then complete something else. Either that or have someone honest con-critique your work and suggest improvements. I'd be willing to do so, (honest opinions + what I feel could be improved). That being said, you can't really force interest (not saying you are), but it kind of seems to me that maybe your genre just wasn't their thing. A couple of people is a small pool. 100 is a better test pool. 100 people interested in your genre is an even better test pool. | 1 | 4,482 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id23843 | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,732,224 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | I wouldn't assume that your betas ghosted you because the story is bad. People have stuff going on and beta reading an internet person's thing isn't at the top of their list. I also wouldn't send your work out to betas before you do at least one pass on it. This isn't like a hard rule, but generally - if your work is unpolished, people are more likely to bail. That doesn't mean they'd bail on it when it is polished. That said, people have given you good advice on how to continue, but like - if you're out of steam on this one, it's fine to quit and move on to a different draft. When you're new to a skill, it's normal to improve quickly, so it's not unusual to find mid-way through a big project like a novel that your skills have improved enough that the project isn't worth continuing. | 1 | 4,137 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id23iky | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,732,377 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | If you'd like I'd be willing to read it and provide you feedback. What all writers need is feedback. If you don't know where you messed up how can you make it better ya know. | 1 | 3,984 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2bri5 | id2aueh | 1,655,736,361 | 1,655,735,936 | 3 | 2 | if you dont finish it, you've given up & that leads to giving up on other stories as well. pretty soon, its why bother in the first place. & that ends the writing endeavor. no one is good at anything without determination & perserverence. Even the very talented. btw, beta readers arent proof readers, spell checkers, grammar nazis, editors. Beta readers are those people youve come to trust that they will tell you didnt keep my interest, i couldnt identify with any of the characters, or it was great up until, or dont need chapter 1, start the story on chapter 2. or its boring as hell.. or you totally forgot you wrote this in chapter 2 or what the MC does in chapter 23 is totally out of character & readers will throw up their hands, toss the book out the window, dont do it. they read your final draft like a regular reader & give you comments. before you publish it so you can, if you want, make a few changes. you dont even have to make changes. its beta read through. | You need more beta-readers. Hop on over to /r/betareaders and ask for some, or hop into this friendly discord server (https://discord.gg/ZGuhSaRx) and some of us can help you out. I wouldn't trust such a small sample set of readers, plus even if there _are_ problems with your story, they can be fixed with some help and constructive feedback. Your first version of a manuscript is _never_ your last! | 1 | 425 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0d8lf | id2h976 | 1,655,688,380 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | You’re not a failure. My advice? Finish the novel, power through if you have to and then go back to revise/edit. Or leave it alone for a bit. Regardless, this is your book, your story, your passion. Don’t let the beta readers discourage you, be grateful even if they read one chapter. Your husband may be a bit too easily pleased, but that’s not a bad thing, you know you’d have a problem if he wasn’t pleased by it. Find solace in his support. And you said your story isn’t engaging. Perhaps it’s not that the story isn’t engaging, maybe it was just the way that it started. Or maybe your story just isn’t engaging. Then what? It’s time to go back to the drawing board. (I believe in you!) And maybe it wasn’t engaging to your beta readers, but it might be to thousands of others who have never heard of your story. And if it’s engaging to you, if you are happy creating the story, then that’s all that matters. I can see how you feel like a failure, but trust me, you’re not. You would be if you gave up because of a few beta readers. I’d rather have someone ghosting my story than tell me how horrible it is. At the end of the day, a writers craft is not going to please everyone. A story most likely won’t be great in the first draft. And you are not giving yourself enough credit or support. It’s okay to lose motivation, it’s comes and goes. But as long as you’re dedicated, you’ll succeed. You are a winner. You are deserving of countless readers. You got this. We all hit bumps at one point or another, but don’t let it stop you. Continue writing that story, great things take time. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 50,439 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id0nz8h | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,694,377 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | You finish it because you can’t make it great if you don’t. | 1 | 44,442 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id0sb4c | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,696,966 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | Make the end extremely disappointing so that the reader can learn that it doesn't have to end successfully because they didn't write it | 1 | 41,853 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id0void | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,699,126 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | the fact that you gave your first draft to beta readers this early... the first draft will never be your best version (unless you just have an insane talent for it). you go continuing your story knowing that it will suck and that's okay, because second, third, fourth etc draft exists for that. you can edit and do major changes. also regarding your husband, it is good to engage your story with him. it can boost your motivation and excite you. just because his standards are "low" doesn't mean your story isn't good or atleast doesn't have the potential to be good. finish your first draft first, and polish it to the best you can, then you can send to beta readers to see it objectively | 1 | 39,693 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id0w7g7 | id2h976 | 1,655,699,475 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | It is a book. There have been many written. Were they all original, mind-blowing masterpieces? No. Did they have a write to exist? Yes. Let's say you go to a restaurant. Not McDonald's, but not a fancy 5 star either. You order a steak. It's good. It fills you up. Are you going to remember that steak for the rest of your life? Probably not. But it was a steak, and someone cooked it and you ate it. Maybe the cook that grilled your steak made a bunch of steaks in his life that were a bit crap. All on his journey to being good enough to cook for a living. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 39,344 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id148e7 | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,705,319 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | Do you already have your story more or less plotted out so that you know the bones of what needs to happen, you just need to write it? If so, my suggestion for you is that you make a goal and spreadsheet it. Example goal: 'In the next two weeks, I will write 10,000 words,' which is 715 words a day. Each day, sit down and write. (Some days will be 3K days and some days will be 300 word days, but that's okay--just keep your goal in mind, and they'll all get you there.) Engage with the craft of it, and let the growth of your story serve as your motivating force. Finishing the book will feel wonderful when you get there! Don't cheat yourself of that accomplishment. As others have said, your first draft and your final draft are not the same. Making a book that people will enjoy is hard work; it'll take you many passes over the material before you're happy with everything. You can't edit a blank page, though. Step one: get it done. If the above isn't enough, I have one more piece of advice for you. Is there anything in your book that makes you happy--something that came out really well and made you pleased and proud? Go read that, and fall in love with your work again. | 1 | 33,500 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1az16 | id2h976 | 1,655,710,966 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | You don't. Just stop working on it, put it aside and write something else. In a couple of months, come back to this story, sit down and read it. If you get excited for the story again, finish it and improve it. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 27,853 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1e7p1 | id2h976 | 1,655,713,926 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | Don't know if this is allowed or not but first, publish your book, set it up on Amazon, contact us and then wr shall positively review bombard it to make people think its a great book. It won't solve your problem but it might be very funny. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 24,893 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1qh1a | id2h976 | 1,655,724,530 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | Here's my experience: I recently got to 50k words of my fourth draft, the first draft I've actually considered worth showing anyone. Despite not finishing the last three chapters, I decided to share my first chapter with a lot of people online. I did it in google docs and let anyone with the link be a commentator. I got a lot of feedback on my writing. The first couple days reading it was difficult and demotivating. But although I saw how my *writing* was bad, I truly believed that my *story* is good. So I took that first chapter and carefully rewrote it using all the advice. I sent it to the same people and got really great feedback about how much it improved! It was the better writing that made the characters more relatable, the story easier to follow and the plot engaging. I'm now starting from the beginning of my story and rewriting the chapters. When I finish, I plan to do the same thing again. Hopefully the writing will be a lot better and I'll actually move onto the revising and editing part instead of rewriting the whole story for the uptenth time. Edit: also, instead of getting beta readers, do swaps in stead. As they see you adding comments to their book, one chapter at a time, they'll add comments to your story at the same pace. If you read Chapter 1 of theirs and they don't read Chapter 1 of yours for a week, you know to find someone else. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 14,289 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1u1fp | id2h976 | 1,655,726,946 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | You don’t have to. It’s perfectly fine to put it in a drawer and start the next one. Or even start this one again from scratch. That’s often necessary! | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 11,873 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id1uxb1 | id2h976 | 1,655,727,512 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | First drafts are always shit. Ask any famous author. no one puts out perfect engaging prose on the first try. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 11,307 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id1yemu | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,729,595 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | I don't have any great advice, but I've learned one thing. If I put a piece down for a few months and come back and read it, I always like it A LOT more than I did when I last looked at it. Just my 2 cents. Keep your head up kid. | 1 | 9,224 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id22k6f | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,731,879 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | Complete something. Do more research, then complete something else. Either that or have someone honest con-critique your work and suggest improvements. I'd be willing to do so, (honest opinions + what I feel could be improved). That being said, you can't really force interest (not saying you are), but it kind of seems to me that maybe your genre just wasn't their thing. A couple of people is a small pool. 100 is a better test pool. 100 people interested in your genre is an even better test pool. | 1 | 6,940 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id23843 | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,732,224 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | I wouldn't assume that your betas ghosted you because the story is bad. People have stuff going on and beta reading an internet person's thing isn't at the top of their list. I also wouldn't send your work out to betas before you do at least one pass on it. This isn't like a hard rule, but generally - if your work is unpolished, people are more likely to bail. That doesn't mean they'd bail on it when it is polished. That said, people have given you good advice on how to continue, but like - if you're out of steam on this one, it's fine to quit and move on to a different draft. When you're new to a skill, it's normal to improve quickly, so it's not unusual to find mid-way through a big project like a novel that your skills have improved enough that the project isn't worth continuing. | 1 | 6,595 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id23iky | id2h976 | 1,655,732,377 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | If you'd like I'd be willing to read it and provide you feedback. What all writers need is feedback. If you don't know where you messed up how can you make it better ya know. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 6,442 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2aueh | id2h976 | 1,655,735,936 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | You need more beta-readers. Hop on over to /r/betareaders and ask for some, or hop into this friendly discord server (https://discord.gg/ZGuhSaRx) and some of us can help you out. I wouldn't trust such a small sample set of readers, plus even if there _are_ problems with your story, they can be fixed with some help and constructive feedback. Your first version of a manuscript is _never_ your last! | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 2,883 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2h976 | id2ewg0 | 1,655,738,819 | 1,655,737,772 | 3 | 2 | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | Finish it, then put it down. Leave it for at least four months. Then pick it up again and begin the editing process. You are comparing your (I am assuming) first draft novel to the final draft of other people's novels. You don't mention whether its been edited, once, twice, five times, at all? Usually you don't go to a beta reader until you feel it is near ready for how you would send to agents. Do not write your story off. Its unfinished. That's all you need to tell your brain right now. | 1 | 1,047 | 1.5 | ||
vg85wy | writing_train | 0.93 | How do I finish my book knowing it's not great? I want to finish my book. I really do, even though my hopes of it being publishable are pretty much nil at this point. I won't improve if I don't finish things. So I need advice. I am writing an urban fantasy/paranormal romance story. Not claiming it is anything particularly intellectual or world-shocking, it's just some genre fiction. I have so far let a handful of people read it. None of my two serious beta readers made it past the first chapters. My husband is the one exception, and he doesn't count on ground of being A) My husband and B) someone who has read, among other stuff, around a 1000 chapters of a shitty google-translated Chinese light novel, just out of curiosity. His standards for literature are *low*. None of the beta readers said it was *bad*. They didn't say they hated the writing style, or the characters, or the plot, or that the genre just wasn't for them. They didn't criticise grammar and spelling. They didn't point out flaws VS positives. They just... ghosted on the story. "It's not you, it's me" style. Claiming it was good but they just didn't have a lot of time, or they forgot, or they'd get back to it -but then never did... blah blah blah, read between the lines, dear Reddit, *the story is not good*. It's not even bad in a clearly defined way that could be addressed in feedback -it just fails to do the one thing that fiction is supposed to do, which is engage a reader so they want to read more. This has killed my motivation completely. How do I get my motivation back? I don't want to publish this anymore, I just want to finish it so that document will stop taunting me and my too-easily-pleased husband will stop making puppy eyes at me to know how it ends. I feel like such a failure. | id2goof | id2h976 | 1,655,738,567 | 1,655,738,819 | 2 | 3 | If you know it's not great, then deep down you might as well just know what makes it not great. Once you know the issue you could find ways to overcome it. There's also the point of view of just finishing it and polishing after it's actually done. Most books are not great, and they don't have to be. In fact, I would argue that even the majority of the more popular books are good but not great. I found that trying to enjoy the process rather than anxiously waiting for it to end is more helpful, less stressful and more enjoyable. | Finish it for the sake of improving. If you know it's already bad then it won't hurt to experiment a little more. Write things you wouldn't usually write and/or things you aren't comfortable with. Just try to go out of your comfort zone as much as you can. You'll improve naturally and will get better only over practice. Just keep going :)) | 0 | 252 | 1.5 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6tpxbd | f6tdi4k | 1,573,152,504 | 1,573,147,392 | 8 | 2 | Sounds like a bad idea. Trust me, I've sent people first drafts for review before finishing it. In theory, it might sound like a good way to work out problems before making significant progress. In practice, what your beta readers will really be doing is pointing out all the typos, bad grammar, and plot holes that you could easily have fixed yourself, but are too distracting for them to look at deeper problems that you might not be able to solve on your own, like characterisation. It won't help anyone, you're much better off sending your work out for feedback only after you've done the basic edits yourself. | It's a double edged sword. My parents have been the first people I send stuff to for the last couple years. They are always encouraging, but last time I sent them some stuff, my mom gave me a note about how there were a few too many similarities with Harry Dresden and the Dresden Files, and that did kind of derail the draft, unfortunately. I kinda needed to hear it, because I've taken steps to make my character and setting more unique, but it is frustrating to think about how I lost the thread on a draft that was just under 50k words. If you feel you need the encouragement/feedback on a start to help feel confident in continuing, sending out chapters early can help you find that. Just be aware, someone might say something that is just perfectly capable of killing your momentum. | 1 | 5,112 | 4 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6thndi | f6tpxbd | 1,573,149,062 | 1,573,152,504 | 1 | 8 | I think it's a good idea to get as much feedback as you can get, as soon as you can get it. If you're a published author with ten bestselling books under your name, then ignore this. But if, like me, you're still learning how to write, then getting as much feedback as you can is vital to that process. If you've found some charitable souls who are willing to look at your unfinished manuscript, then by all means let them. We've all got blind spots. We all have things that are important to stories or writing that we just don't know or haven't remembered to implement. Being made aware of those things before you write hundreds of thousands of words is going to save you time in the long run. | Sounds like a bad idea. Trust me, I've sent people first drafts for review before finishing it. In theory, it might sound like a good way to work out problems before making significant progress. In practice, what your beta readers will really be doing is pointing out all the typos, bad grammar, and plot holes that you could easily have fixed yourself, but are too distracting for them to look at deeper problems that you might not be able to solve on your own, like characterisation. It won't help anyone, you're much better off sending your work out for feedback only after you've done the basic edits yourself. | 0 | 3,442 | 8 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6ur8f9 | f6thndi | 1,573,166,963 | 1,573,149,062 | 2 | 1 | You should go to a workshop site like Scribophile, they'll work with you on the first part. It's free but you have to put an equal amount of work in from what you get out. | I think it's a good idea to get as much feedback as you can get, as soon as you can get it. If you're a published author with ten bestselling books under your name, then ignore this. But if, like me, you're still learning how to write, then getting as much feedback as you can is vital to that process. If you've found some charitable souls who are willing to look at your unfinished manuscript, then by all means let them. We've all got blind spots. We all have things that are important to stories or writing that we just don't know or haven't remembered to implement. Being made aware of those things before you write hundreds of thousands of words is going to save you time in the long run. | 1 | 17,901 | 2 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6uf5pm | f6ur8f9 | 1,573,162,056 | 1,573,166,963 | 1 | 2 | My first thought is: if you have unlimited, eager beta readers (I'm jealous, I need some), then why not? My second thought is: you should probably fix everything YOU can see before having beta readers go to it. And, in general, beta readers are candles. They can read once. After that, they have too much knowledge of prior versions and revisions to give a full, first-read experience. And the first-read experience is the only experience that matters at this stage. So... I'd use 1, to start to get a feel for if you're making any big blunders. | You should go to a workshop site like Scribophile, they'll work with you on the first part. It's free but you have to put an equal amount of work in from what you get out. | 0 | 4,907 | 2 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6thndi | f6vgrod | 1,573,149,062 | 1,573,185,770 | 1 | 2 | I think it's a good idea to get as much feedback as you can get, as soon as you can get it. If you're a published author with ten bestselling books under your name, then ignore this. But if, like me, you're still learning how to write, then getting as much feedback as you can is vital to that process. If you've found some charitable souls who are willing to look at your unfinished manuscript, then by all means let them. We've all got blind spots. We all have things that are important to stories or writing that we just don't know or haven't remembered to implement. Being made aware of those things before you write hundreds of thousands of words is going to save you time in the long run. | Bad idea. Waste of time. | 0 | 36,708 | 2 | ||
dt0gxe | writing_train | 0.88 | Is it practical to have Alpha/Beta readers read only the first part of a book while I'm writing the rest, even for stylistic purposes? Hello, this is my first post in this community, despite lurking for awhile. I'm currently writing a story that is separated into several parts. I'm nearly finished with my rough draft of part 1, and am excited to hear feedback from alpha/beta readers. Is it practical to have them read this first part while I'm writing the second and so on? I want to take any feedback they give me and incorporate it into my story in a greater capacity later on, as well as refine any character arcs that are half-baked before I continue/resolve them, but is it viable to do so? The story has 7 main POV characters, so I'd like to try and get them as well rounded as possible before I make significant progress. I appreciate any responses! | f6vgrod | f6uf5pm | 1,573,185,770 | 1,573,162,056 | 2 | 1 | Bad idea. Waste of time. | My first thought is: if you have unlimited, eager beta readers (I'm jealous, I need some), then why not? My second thought is: you should probably fix everything YOU can see before having beta readers go to it. And, in general, beta readers are candles. They can read once. After that, they have too much knowledge of prior versions and revisions to give a full, first-read experience. And the first-read experience is the only experience that matters at this stage. So... I'd use 1, to start to get a feel for if you're making any big blunders. | 1 | 23,714 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j162uxs | j163q3j | 1,671,663,256 | 1,671,663,620 | 9 | 24 | Hunger games, LOTR, Divergent, Fight Club, hell Harry Potter even? | Thrillers are a whole (large and profitable) genre, and a great many main characters are ex-SEAL/CIA/etc. commandos so that the protagonist can mow down rows of villains with every available weapon, starting with their fists and working up to really big guns. If you're having fun writing it, go ahead. Plenty of people like an action-movie type novel. | 0 | 364 | 2.666667 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163p4i | j163q3j | 1,671,663,609 | 1,671,663,620 | 3 | 24 | Action is a good thing. The film industry has a whole genre dedicated to it. Enen contemporary literature and romance genres have action. They are fun to read and can contribute to the plot and tension. If the story calls for action, please do! | Thrillers are a whole (large and profitable) genre, and a great many main characters are ex-SEAL/CIA/etc. commandos so that the protagonist can mow down rows of villains with every available weapon, starting with their fists and working up to really big guns. If you're having fun writing it, go ahead. Plenty of people like an action-movie type novel. | 0 | 11 | 8 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163q3j | j163dp9 | 1,671,663,620 | 1,671,663,476 | 24 | 2 | Thrillers are a whole (large and profitable) genre, and a great many main characters are ex-SEAL/CIA/etc. commandos so that the protagonist can mow down rows of villains with every available weapon, starting with their fists and working up to really big guns. If you're having fun writing it, go ahead. Plenty of people like an action-movie type novel. | If you haven’t read many books, then yes it is safe to assume that any book you try to write would not be good. | 1 | 144 | 12 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163p4i | j168zh4 | 1,671,663,609 | 1,671,665,911 | 3 | 6 | Action is a good thing. The film industry has a whole genre dedicated to it. Enen contemporary literature and romance genres have action. They are fun to read and can contribute to the plot and tension. If the story calls for action, please do! | I haven't read any of them but isn't Tom Clancy's books pretty much all action? | 0 | 2,302 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j168zh4 | j163dp9 | 1,671,665,911 | 1,671,663,476 | 6 | 2 | I haven't read any of them but isn't Tom Clancy's books pretty much all action? | If you haven’t read many books, then yes it is safe to assume that any book you try to write would not be good. | 1 | 2,435 | 3 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j168zh4 | j164bgj | 1,671,665,911 | 1,671,663,876 | 6 | 2 | I haven't read any of them but isn't Tom Clancy's books pretty much all action? | Plot drives action. Do you have a strong plot? A reason for the fight scenes? The action isn't important, it's the consequences of the action. Are you saying your novel focuses only on action? That doesn't sound good, I only know of one <decent> novel like that. The mix of downtime and action doesn't matter too much. What matters is that the reader cares what happens. | 1 | 2,035 | 3 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163p4i | j16l6xl | 1,671,663,609 | 1,671,671,520 | 3 | 4 | Action is a good thing. The film industry has a whole genre dedicated to it. Enen contemporary literature and romance genres have action. They are fun to read and can contribute to the plot and tension. If the story calls for action, please do! | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | 0 | 7,911 | 1.333333 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163p4i | j163dp9 | 1,671,663,609 | 1,671,663,476 | 3 | 2 | Action is a good thing. The film industry has a whole genre dedicated to it. Enen contemporary literature and romance genres have action. They are fun to read and can contribute to the plot and tension. If the story calls for action, please do! | If you haven’t read many books, then yes it is safe to assume that any book you try to write would not be good. | 1 | 133 | 1.5 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j163dp9 | j16l6xl | 1,671,663,476 | 1,671,671,520 | 2 | 4 | If you haven’t read many books, then yes it is safe to assume that any book you try to write would not be good. | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | 0 | 8,044 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j16l6xl | j164bgj | 1,671,671,520 | 1,671,663,876 | 4 | 2 | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | Plot drives action. Do you have a strong plot? A reason for the fight scenes? The action isn't important, it's the consequences of the action. Are you saying your novel focuses only on action? That doesn't sound good, I only know of one <decent> novel like that. The mix of downtime and action doesn't matter too much. What matters is that the reader cares what happens. | 1 | 7,644 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j16l6xl | j16d3ib | 1,671,671,520 | 1,671,667,769 | 4 | 2 | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | Few books you can use as reference for fight scenes * Jason Bourne books - This is set in our world. So you'll get fist fights, foot and vehicle chase scenes, gun fights * Avatar: The Last Airbender books - If you've watched the show, you'll know different elemental benders have different styles. Don't expect the same level of details in fight scenes that the animated shows have Brandon Sanderson covers this topic in one of his lectures that's uploaded to Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9cdgE6FjRs | 1 | 3,751 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j16dmvn | j16l6xl | 1,671,668,019 | 1,671,671,520 | 2 | 4 | Action books fall under the thriller genre, which is hugely popular. If that’s the area in which you want to write, step one is to become well read in the genre. | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | 0 | 3,501 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j16l6xl | j16ez30 | 1,671,671,520 | 1,671,668,630 | 4 | 2 | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | Action and fight scenes are just as good in books as they are in a visual medium. A lot of action movies started out as books. It just takes a little more skill to write an *engaging* fight scene, and not just "This guy punched the other guy" | 1 | 2,890 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j16g7mw | j16l6xl | 1,671,669,201 | 1,671,671,520 | 2 | 4 | I love action books! I love when MC's learn to fight and you can actually read into their fighting style! IMO, writing about Fighting comes down to beats and blocking. Fighting is good as long as the reader is being kept up with what is happening. Something I did what I wasn't entirely sure what was happening was I used two figurines and blocked out their movements for the scene. It allowed me to make sure what I read was the same thing I was seeing. Then, from there, I freely wrote. | Action in written form never works. Except for Gilgamesh, Beowulf and everything after that until now... | 0 | 2,319 | 2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j170pna | j1730j8 | 1,671,678,810 | 1,671,679,973 | -1 | 2 | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | Personally I like action scenes. With inner monologue in between moments reacting to the action. I like them descriptive of all relevant actions taking place, preferably at least the actions which the characters' POV experience. And I like it when a scene switches between different POVs. If done so in a good and effective manner. My book has several heavy action scenes (it's a fantasy) where I describe all that the POV characters do and experience. Though I may switch POV which doesn't see all actions on the battlefield, instead they see the consequences of several actions moments after they occur and react to where battle is in that moment. Write so that the action scenes that are required for the story and write them in the fashion that you enjoy and then see if your beta readers enjoy it too or have some feedback how to make them better. That's my plan at least, though my beta readers haven't gotten far enough for the proper elaborate action scenes yet. But I've read plenty of comments of people liking elaborate descriptive action sequences, while others don't care for the action more so than the consequences of action scenes and just dialogue and inner monologues in the scenes. So you won't please all audiences. But that's fine if you enjoy writing such for the people that enjoy them. | 0 | 1,163 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j170pna | j176hhx | 1,671,678,810 | 1,671,681,765 | -1 | 2 | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | Is an action scene good for books? Have you ever read an adventure? A spy or detective novel? | 0 | 2,955 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j170pna | j176w1p | 1,671,678,810 | 1,671,681,976 | -1 | 2 | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | It better be, else my plans are going down pretty quick | 0 | 3,166 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j17btrx | j170pna | 1,671,684,679 | 1,671,678,810 | 2 | -1 | Definitely can and does work for books. I would recommend checking out the Cradle series for some examples. These books have A LOT of fight scenes and is basically an anime in novel form. And it does pretty well popularity wise, though not as main stream as other fantasy books. | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | 1 | 5,869 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j170pna | j17gtwo | 1,671,678,810 | 1,671,687,680 | -1 | 2 | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | It was good enough for Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy and Ian Fleming. I say go for it. | 0 | 8,870 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j17otk2 | j170pna | 1,671,693,242 | 1,671,678,810 | 2 | -1 | Action is ok, but it's not the best thing for long stretches of a book (and indeed some films needed shorter sequences; I was incredibly disappointed with District 9, where there was a battle that lasted a full hour of screen time). Prose can convey short skirmishes, but page after page of raw action 'footage' without some kind of breather in between can be dull to read. Even many thrillers involve more subtle action such as espionage, planning, building suspense/tension as much as they depict someone going for broke with a gun. Prose does best when the action is tempered by some scenes where the protagonist has to use their wit to get places. | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | 1 | 14,432 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j184zqh | j170pna | 1,671,706,542 | 1,671,678,810 | 2 | -1 | Action stories are good but they have limitations in the medium of books. Action is supposed to be dynamic which is hard to do when you're writing in words. That being said action stories can do well if you also make it character driven. Just remember, a fight isn't a brawl but a clash between two protagonists of their own stories. A fight itself should tell a story. If you can convey the action as more than just action, you'll never fail. | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | 1 | 27,732 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j170pna | j18lub7 | 1,671,678,810 | 1,671,717,266 | -1 | 2 | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | You need to read a lot more before you start worrying about what you're going to write. | 0 | 38,456 | -2 | ||
zs4569 | writing_train | 0.62 | Is an action story good for books or should I drop it? I'm currently writing my first novella, which has three important fight scenes. I haven't been reading frequently for too long, about 3 months (always wanted to write something, but had a lot of irrational anxiety about reading), and I don't know of any books that focus on action. It's not like mine is only action, of course, and I'm only in the first draft so I may enlarge downtime scenes and reduce some of the action, but it will still be there. I'm starting to think it won't be good to read. This may be just temporary anxiety, but I wanted to get confirmation from more experienced folks, so let me know what you think. | j19bc0i | j170pna | 1,671,728,047 | 1,671,678,810 | 2 | -1 | Honestly the more niche, the better. Make something that no one will be able to get anywhere else. Even if it isn't popular, someone will like it, and you'll be their go-to. If you don't see a lot of what you're making, that means there's a gap you can fill. | This is so vague I'm not even sure what you want. You just want people to give you headpats that you are capable of writing action scenes? Uh, sure, go for it, champ. | 1 | 49,237 | -2 | ||
uan2m0 | writing_train | 0.89 | How do I work on making my writing less choppy? My current writing goal is to focus on making my stories flow easier. I notice that my sentences are choppy and horrid, even when typing up something as simple as a Reddit post. How do I go about improving this? Any exercises or tips? | i5ysobx | i5yudej | 1,650,776,659 | 1,650,777,741 | 3 | 10 | I’m not a writer but maybe try saying it out loud and seeing where exactly you can make changes. Sometimes I wanna use big words but it can sound better if you write it how you speak in real life. Also, your post seems completely fine to me! Hope this helps :) | If you want to fix choppy writing, then you should look how you transition from one sentence to the next. The next sentence has to be related to the sentence prior. If they are not, then it becomes choppy. A paragraph is a bunch of related sentences that focuses on one idea/topic. Then you create an another paragraph when you want to move on to the next idea/topic. To clarify, an idea/topic in stories is either description, dialogue, action/beat, or introspection. In your writing, practice flowing from one sentence to the next, one idea to the next. If it looks weird, try saying it out loud. Most of the time, you can spot where the choppiness is coming from. Writing is about creating that flow and rhythm to convey your story, your ideas. | 0 | 1,082 | 3.333333 | ||
uan2m0 | writing_train | 0.89 | How do I work on making my writing less choppy? My current writing goal is to focus on making my stories flow easier. I notice that my sentences are choppy and horrid, even when typing up something as simple as a Reddit post. How do I go about improving this? Any exercises or tips? | i5yudej | i5ysdj8 | 1,650,777,741 | 1,650,776,478 | 10 | 2 | If you want to fix choppy writing, then you should look how you transition from one sentence to the next. The next sentence has to be related to the sentence prior. If they are not, then it becomes choppy. A paragraph is a bunch of related sentences that focuses on one idea/topic. Then you create an another paragraph when you want to move on to the next idea/topic. To clarify, an idea/topic in stories is either description, dialogue, action/beat, or introspection. In your writing, practice flowing from one sentence to the next, one idea to the next. If it looks weird, try saying it out loud. Most of the time, you can spot where the choppiness is coming from. Writing is about creating that flow and rhythm to convey your story, your ideas. | Your paragraph is fine. Do everything like that. | 1 | 1,263 | 5 | ||
uan2m0 | writing_train | 0.89 | How do I work on making my writing less choppy? My current writing goal is to focus on making my stories flow easier. I notice that my sentences are choppy and horrid, even when typing up something as simple as a Reddit post. How do I go about improving this? Any exercises or tips? | i5ysobx | i5ysdj8 | 1,650,776,659 | 1,650,776,478 | 3 | 2 | I’m not a writer but maybe try saying it out loud and seeing where exactly you can make changes. Sometimes I wanna use big words but it can sound better if you write it how you speak in real life. Also, your post seems completely fine to me! Hope this helps :) | Your paragraph is fine. Do everything like that. | 1 | 181 | 1.5 | ||
uan2m0 | writing_train | 0.89 | How do I work on making my writing less choppy? My current writing goal is to focus on making my stories flow easier. I notice that my sentences are choppy and horrid, even when typing up something as simple as a Reddit post. How do I go about improving this? Any exercises or tips? | i5ysdj8 | i5yvb7h | 1,650,776,478 | 1,650,778,374 | 2 | 3 | Your paragraph is fine. Do everything like that. | Try combining your sentences or adding more details to a single sentence Here's an example of a choppy paragraph: I heard a noise downstairs. I was scared. I still listened closely. It sounded like moaning. My heart pounded my chest. My hands were shaking. I reached under my bed. I tried to find my gun. Here's a less choppy paragraph: I heard a noise traveling into my room from downstairs. Despite my fear, I listened closely. The staircase trembled with the sound of moaning. With my heart pounding my chest, I reached under my bed, my shaking hands scrambling for my gun. | 0 | 1,896 | 1.5 |
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