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So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.

There's a subset of self-published indie authors who write a ludicrous number of books a year, we're talking double digit releases of full novels, and these folks make a lot of money telling you how you can do the same thing. A lot of them feature in breathless puff pieces about how "competitive" self-publishing is as an industry now.

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They're using upwork or fiverr to find people to outline, draft, edit, and market their books. Most of them, presumably, do write some of their own stuff! But many "prolific" indie writers are absolutely using ghostwriters to speed up their process, get higher Amazon best-seller ratings, and, bluntly, make more money faster.

When you see some godawful puff piece floating around about how some indie writer is thinking about having to start using AI to "stay competitive in self-publishing", the part the journalist isn't telling you is that the 'indie writer' in question is planning to use AI instead of paying some guy on Upwork to do the drafting.

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive', because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

#scam alert #scam #dérives sectaires

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it's hilarious how if you do any amount of research into life or death melee combat the prevailing themes that emerge are that

you're gonna get tired very quickly

tired leads to injured, injured leads to tired, tired leads to—

you're not gonna be as composed as you expect

humans are more fragile than you think and also more durable than you think. both are true and neither stop them from dying of an infection later (DO NOT GET BITTEN)

DO NOT GET STABBED (generally good life advice)

DO GET A SPEAR

knights are faster than you think

#tip military #writing tips

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i want 60 thousand votes by next thursday

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For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

otp:true will return results where there is only 1 relationship tag on the fic. If you want results where there are 2+ relationship tags (and no fics with only 1 relationship tag) then you can use otp:false

#fanfiction #ao3

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Irish, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic speakers, I need your help! 🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

For a piece of academic writing I am working on right now, I was wondering if in the context of those three languages, you have positive or negative examples of:

1) The presence of non-standard dialects digitally or in the media (any content creator you know, any regular speakers on the radio that actively uses a non-standard dialect, or on the contrary, you only encounter standard Irish/Welsh/Gaelic. If you have any example of non-standard writing too, for example in the printed press, I am all ears)

2) Do you speak and/or write a non-standard dialect and have been looked down upon for it by other speakers? If yes what dialect and in what context

3) What do you think about purification practices in which loan-words from English are replaced by new words? Which words do you use? If you study the language formally, which are taught to you?

Thank you, and please reblog!

- A grateful Celtic student

#signal boost

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So I just saw a post by a random personal blog that said “don’t follow me if we never even had a conversation before” and?????? Not to be rude but literally what the fuck??????????

I’ve had people (non-pornbots) try to strike conversation out of nowhere in my DMs recently, and now I’m wondering if they were doing that because they wanted to follow me and thought they needed to interact first. I feel compelled to say, just in case, that it’s totally okay to follow this blog (or my side blog, for that matter) even if we’ve never talked before.

Also, I’m legit confused. Is this how follow culture works right now? It was worded like it’s common sense but is that really a thing?

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no matter how terrible my day is. i can always end my day in bed imagining fictional characters making out sloppy style and fucking raw. and that's beautiful. there's some good in this world mister frodo and it's worth fighting for

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Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.

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The Minimalist Character Sheet

So I am not the biggest fan of those ten page character sheets that include 100 questions like “What’s their favourite ice cream?”. Don’t get me wrong: If those help you with your writing, more power to you! Do what works for you. But I tend to discover all the little details of a character while writing. I only need the fundamental things. Maybe this works for you too!

The Basics

Name: including all nicknames, titles, etc.

Gender

Age

Role in the Narrative

Physical Description: focus on defining features

GMC (If you want to learn more about the concept, check out this post.)

Internal Goal

Internal Motivation

Internal Conflict

External Goal

External Motivation

External Conflict

Personality

Short characterization: internal personality and external behavior

Their biggest failure/issue/flaw: and how it impacts their life/personality/behavior

Backstory: and its consequences, such as triggers

Speech pattern: at least three speech marks that emphasize their personality (if you want to learn more about speech patterns, check out this post)

Behaviour pattern: at least three habits that emphasize their personality

Character Arc: where do they start, how do they change, where do they end?

That’s it! Hope this gave you some pointers on how to start out with character creation.

Have fun writing!

#writing tips #tip characters

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I'm just curious of other writers use similar forms to me/if anyone has any helpful ways to do this! If you guys are willing to reblog for greater sample size I'd be grateful but no pressure! <3

#while i use pinterest boards #the primary image is just locked in the depths of my head

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Hey guys!

I've had a few people tell me they liked my little disclaimer at the bottom of my tag games. So I am giving everyone who wants to full permission to use it.

I love when the people I tag @ me and/or link back to my post. I love it when you reblog my post with questions, compliments, words of encouragement about my WIP, or even no comment at all. But please make your own post to complete this tag. Please do not turn my post into a reblog chain.

Anyone who wants to is welcome to paste this word-for-word or alter it as they see fit onto any of their tag games. You do not need to credit me.

It is with a saddened heart that I just had to turn off reblogs on one of my 9 People tags so I am hoping a disclaimer like this will prevent this situation in the future, without me having to resort to drastic measures.

I hate taking away the ability for other people's mutuals/followers to interact with their tag games (in this case 24 other people) but alas, this would not have happened if they had just made their own posts in the first place.

I find reblog chains on my tag games very uncomfortable for a few reasons:

I don't like long reblog chains in general. I do not want my blog associated with starting them.

Jumping on someone else's post about them or their writing to make it about you can be read as rude, especially when you make no effort to acknowledge OP.

Tag games are intended for the OP's followers. OP is not expecting them to be shared widely. Particularly, OP is not expecting them to be shared with people who otherwise would have no interest in their blog (or might not like their content).

There is established etiquette around tag games. When doing a tag you make your own post. That's how it's been on Tumblr since before I got here. That's was the expectation that was set for me.

So yeah. That's all from me about this. Hopefully in a few months I can enable reblogs on that post again when everything dies down. But alas.

Anyone who wants to is free to reblog this post and add to it if they would like. And, of course, to use the disclaimer.

#i too find reblog chains for tag games a bit weird #i’ll also add reblog chains are less likely to be read even by people who follow your work #and they won’t be included in general tag search

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Speaking of badly-run organisations:

Don't use Nanowrimo anymore.

If you don't know, here is a link but there are also some more recent developments regarding how this is being handled and MLs are stepping down en masse as a result.

Nanowrimo is over. If you want to know about some cool writing communities on discord, facebook or twitch, I will happily share them with you, but there is no need to use Nanowrimo's services for anything any more.

You can still write 50K words in November if you want to of course.

#heard of this #a quite sad development #nanowrimo

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realizing that sticking to the "do it bad" "do it scared" mentality implies theres also a "do it bored"

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🚨GOOGLE DOC WRITERS🚨

BE AWARE GOOGLE CHANGED THEIR SHARING TERMS

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A fantasy book where many characters have dramatic High Fantasy epithets, but for incredibly non-dramatic reasons.

An adventurer known as The Herald of Dawn, but it's because she tends to wake up naturally at 4 or 5 am and every single fucking time wakes up the whole damn camp before sunrise by banging pots and pans together while making herself breakfast.

A nobleman known as The Lord of Shadows, but it's because his land is shaded from all sides by cliffs and mountains and all the other nobility are roasting this guy for not being able to grow or farm anything on his shitty, shady, no-sunshine-having estates.

A courtesan known as The Emerald of [location], but it's because the county she was born in is known for manufacturing forged jewels and gemstones, and so far she is the fakest pretty thing to ever come from there.

An assassin known as The Kiss of Death, but it's because he has somehow acquired every single known and documented STD in his mouth.

The Dark Huntress, named so to distinguish her from The Blonde Huntress.

A prince known as The Raven Prince, but it's because he's autistic and can and WILL tell you everything that is known about ravens, for five hours straight.

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this has probably already been done before but i was thinking about it earlier and got curious

#pen and paper #then i type back in scrivener

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Fantasy setting where the calendar has exactly twelve months of thirty days, but the year is still 365 days long; the remaining five days are nameless, numberless, considered to be part of no month or year, and may strike at any time, being impossible for mortals to predict in advance – you just wake up in the morning and see the Signs. Sometimes they're widely scattered throughout the year, sometimes you get two or three in a row; all five in one go is either a very good omen, or a very bad one. Some years have six nameless days rather than five and nobody knows why.

#prompt #writing prompt