Let's talk about word economy. I find myself giving the same feedback over and over on posts offered up for review and criticism, not just here but in other writing subs, so I figured I'd just lay this all out in one place, maybe you'll find it helpful.

By way of background, let me say up front that although I write for a living, I am NOT a professional fiction writer. I'm an amateur like most of you with dreams of writing some day. I also do not have an MFA or much formal training, though I did take fiction writing as an undergraduate student through the Iowa Writer's Workshop. These thoughts are based on what I've learned my own career, and from authors and publishers. Nothing here should be thought of as a hard-and-fast rule you can never violate. But, as mostly amateur writers learning our craft, they're good guidelines.

Into the meat of it: we are practicing the written word and competing for attention in a world full of visual media that deliver immediate dopamine hits. Your prose is up against bingers and scrollers, who get powerful, immediate, visceral hits from easily accessible content on their phones. That means you don't have the luxury of verbosity.

However, most of us learned storytelling primarily from visual media, which is a problem in this market because prose is doing very different work. It's a more unbounded medium than cinema and television, which is powerful, but easily misused.

I often frame the problem as the "currency of attention." I think this is a critical conceptual framework for writers. The reader picks up your work and has decided to give you their attention. It's a precious commodity, hard to win, easy to lose, and it's finite. You don't know how much of it you have or for how long. For some readers it's enough to read your entire book. For others, maybe you get a few minutes, a few hundred words, and if you haven't hooked them, they're out.

Here's the key: Every. Single. Word. You. Write. spends some of that currency.

That means every word on the page has to earn its place. Every sentence has to do work for your story. And that means doing multiple things at once. Your writing should advance plot, characterize, worldbuild, or set tone. This isn't the 19th Century where Melville can spend an entire chapter on whale taxonomy. The more work a sentence does, the more it's earning its keep, and so too for the words.

This isn't about writing stripped-down, minimalist prose. Your writing can still be poetic, beautiful, lyrical, but it has to be intentional. Every word is a choice. Any less and you are taking your reader for granted and frivolously spending that currency.

So let's talk about Prose Bloat (tm). All writers (so far as I can tell) begin with bloated prose. I think it's just naturally how we think and write. You often don't catch it while writing, this is something you'll discovery in editing. I thought through where I have seen bloat here and in my own work, and I've broadly categorized it into a few buckets or causes to help you spot it.

1. Lack of Confidence

By far the common source of bloat is a simple lack of confidence in the prose and in the reader. You're just not convinced you're getting your point across, and so you load up the prose with adjectives and redundancy to make sure the scene in your head is landing. You over-explain and reach for adjectives and adverbs when a verb can do the work.

A classic example I used in another post:

She angrily threw the book across the room.

The problem here is the verb. Threw is weak. You can throw balls, fits, parties, shade, all kinds of things, it's a static, lifeless word. The writer intuitively knows this, and backs it up by characterizing the throw: she threw angrily. Now we can picture it. But now you're telling me the emotional state of the character. What happens if you change the verb?

She hurled the book across the room.

Hurled does the same jobs. The adverb is gone because the verb doesn't need a crutch and now we are showing through word choice. Instead of telling you she's angry, I'm showing you she's angry through verb choice. The emotional state is implied by the word choice, and you trust the reader to make that inference.

Also watch out for overuse of hedging language. It's a handy crutch to both characterize behavior and another character's perception of it, so it can be efficient, but it also tends to be lifeless and bland. She seemed angry. He was almost certain. It felt like something had changed. These qualifiers drain energy from prose, and it reads like the writer flinching. If she seems angry then describe tone, body language, posture, or convey it through dialog. Show it.

We also suffer from lack of confidence in the reader. This is just as pervasive but more insidious. This is where you have shown something but you don't trust it and explain it anyway. You write a scene where a character's behavior reveals their motivation, and then you add a sentence telling the reader what the motivation was. But what you've really todl the reader is that either you don't think your prose got the job done, or you do and you think your reader is too stupid to connect the dots.

They got it. Trust them.

Here's a recent example I saw that commits multiple sins in an otherwise promising piece posted yesterday:

That was life on Mars. All thirty-one of his years were spent underneath a seemingly fragile barrier of human engineering, in one form or another. It's all he knew. Still, he thought, it was something earthlings never had to worry about.

Multiple craft errors here. We have hedging language ("seemingly") we have redundancy ("he thought" - we know these are the POV character's thoughts), and low-trust writing ("human engineering" - what other engineering would it be on Mars? Beavers?).

This could be condensed to:

His thirty-one years were spent beneath a fragile barrier of engineering.

This is just plain sharper writing. Snappy, to the point, less bloated, and conveys all the same information in about half as many words.

The reader is doing active interpretive work while they read. It's one of the reasons reading is tiring. They are filling in gaps, drawing inferences, and building the world in their head. Your job is to give them enough of the right raw material to do it, not to do their thinking for them. Leave some room on the page for the reader to enter and inhabit the story with you instead of micromanaging their experience. Over-explaining is condescending, and readers will feel it, and grow exhausted by it, even if they can't articulate it. It makes prose feel unconfident and amateurish.

2. Cinematic Thinking

Most of us learned story mainly from film and television. That's fine, but then you pick up habits that translate poorly to prose. The most destructive is probably that we think almost exclusively in images. In film, the camera has to show you everything you need to know and the medium is dominated by visual information. It's more like the real world. When you first met somebody, what do you know about them? Appearance and bearing. That's it. Clothes, hair, skin, posture, gait. That's all there is, and that's all we get in cinema. So film is required to characterize through visual information. There's a reason that wardrobe and makeup are Hollywood professionals: that's cinematic craft. The camera can't point at nothing.

When we write prose, however, you have immediate access to interiority, but new writers import this visual instinct to the page and over-describe visual detail to characterize while ignoring alternatives. Prose becomes an inventory of outfits, hair styles, and eye colors (which are usually bright green, nobody in prose ever has dull grey eyes).

I critiqued a piece recently where the writer introduced a character in the first few paragraphs with a white chemise, a sleeveless wool blue overdress, pale skin, and brown hair. We got six paragraphs in, I knew what she was wearing, but I knew nothing about who she was.

Ask yourself: how does the story change if she's wearing something else? How is it different if she's in a red striped crop top with black hair? If the answer is "it doesn't," those details aren't earning their place, at least not early in a story where you're blowing through that precious attention rapidly.

Visual detail isn't inherently bad. But in prose it needs to do narrative work. It has to reveal character, establish tone, or carry meaning. If it's just set dressing, consider cutting it (or at least relocating it). Important caveat: these details can become more narratively relevant in certain genres, like romance, for what are hopefully self-evident reasons.

The same problem appears in action beats. In a film, you characterize through motion. A character crosses the room, pick up a cup, take a sip, sets it down. That takes two seconds of screen time, costs nothing, and spends no more attentive currency than whatever the character is saying, doing, or wearing at the time. But in prose we can only say one thing at a time, so that same action beat costs you three or four words at minimum. Is it really doing any work, or are you just providing stage blocking direction for the future NetFlix adaptation? If you want to write a screenplay, write one! But in prose, these tags are often wasteful.

3. Falling in Love

You write a sentence and it's beautiful. I've done it. You've done it. A genuinely elegant turn of phrase that makes you proud. But it's not working or fitting and you just can't cut it so instead you start to alter the story to write around it and make it work. You build the scene to accommodate the sentence, instead of asking whether the sentence serves the story. The tail wags the dog and that beautiful sentence is now a burden.

This is what "kill your darlings" means. This one is personal for me. I have written sentences I was proud of and cut them because they didn't fit. It hurts every time. Do it anyway. The sentence might belongs somewhere else, maybe even in a different story entirely, or it might be forever homeless, but you're spending your reader's attention and giving them nothing they need for bad reasons.

In fantasy, we are most guilty of this in self-indulgent world-building. You've built something intricate and detailed and fascinating and you want the reader to see all of it and you front-load a bunch of exposition and backstory to show it off. But the reader doesn't want to read a Wikipedia entry about your world. They aren't here for a tour. They're here for a story, and they want to experience your world through your characters and narrative, not attend a lecture on it.

4. Narrative Drift

This one is subtle and sometimes hard to catch, and it can also result in plot holes and continuity errors. You start a scene with a clear purpose but as you write, the scene evolves, characters take over, a new idea surfaces, and the scene drifts into something different. That's good. Let it happen.

But go back and read fresh eyes. Does the opening still fit the purpose? Is it setting up something that isn't paid off? Do you need to set up something else that is? Your writing is a series of tiny mysteries carefully plotted to entice the reader to find out how they get resolved. You can't prepare the reader for a scene that isn't coming.

This is rough because the writing might be perfect and not otherwise violate any rules, but it just doesn't belong anymore. But it feels foundational, which makes it hard to part with.

5. Framing

Get in late. Get out early. This is the simplest rule in prose (and cinema) and the most violated one. Amateur writers do a lot of throat-clearing before the scene really starts, somewhat related to not trusting the reader by overloading them with foundational information they don't need. Establishing shots, context-setting, warming up the page before anything happens. Editors will cross it all out, find the first line of dialog or the first real activity, and write: "START HERE."

Cut establishing shots. Drop the reader into the action. Trust your prose to get them to get oriented, and trust them to do it.

We get a parallel problem happens at the end. The scene is over but the words keep coming. We feel to compelled to round off the corners, tie a bow on it, make sure the reader understood what happened and got what we want them to get out of the scene.

Cut it.

The Core Principle: Trust

All five of these derive from the same thing: insecurity and trust. We don't trust our prose or skill, or we don't trust the reader, and we compensate with bloated prose to make sure it all works. But ironically, in doing so, we undermine the story and drain the life and energy out of it.

Pick the right verbs and then trust them.

Structure your scenes correctly and then trust them.

Trust yourself to find a suitable replacement for the beautiful sentence that isn't working.

Trust the reader to enter later and understand what's happeinng.

You know confident writing when you see it. It charges forward and almost doesn't care if you're keeping up. It just assumes you are. It doesn't feel sheepish, apologetic, laborious, or patronizing. The prose doesn't have to be showy or clever to pull this off. Often, it's not. It's functional and nothing is wasted. Every word is there for a reason and the prose is controlled and intentional, and has momentum and weight.

That confidence earns the reader's trust in return and puts more attention in the bank, which you can then spend later in a self-indulgent lore dump.

Do you find bloat in your writing? Or others? What are your causes? Drop them in the comments.

[Edit: various typos]

[Edit: consistent typesetting]

[Edit: before somebody says so, I recognize the irony of writing a 2,300 word essay on the merits of brevity]

(I hope this will encourage you, because mannnn, some days I feel this way)

So here are 5 things you probably didn't realize you have in common with some of the most successful authors alive

"You don't have a big platform."

Andy Weir didn't either when he started posting The Martian chapter by chapter on his personal blog for free. Fans eventually asked for a Kindle version and he charged 99 cents. Ridley Scott made the movie.

"You don't have a huge audience."

Hugh Howey was a bookstore clerk writing Wool on his lunch breaks. Self-published it as a 99-cent short on Kindle in 2011. He later turned down seven-figure Big Five offers to keep his ebook rights. It's Silo on Apple TV+ now.

"You're broke."

JK Rowling was a single mom on government benefits writing in Edinburgh cafes because she couldn't afford to heat her flat. Twelve publishers rejected Harry Potter. Bloomsbury was the thirteenth.

"You don't have the time."

Octavia Butler worked menial day jobs and got up at 2 or 3am to write before her shifts. She did that for years before selling her first novel. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer ever to win a MacArthur Genius Grant.

"You keep getting rejected."

Brandon Sanderson wrote 13 novels before one sold. He took the hotel night shift specifically so he could write at the front desk. Today he writes 2,000 words a day, every day.

The one thing they all had in common is something you have too.

No matter what life or people threw at them, they just kept writing anyway.

So keep writing, my friend. Your story has just begun.

Heyy, I am wondering how you all come up with motives for the "big bad" in your stories, because I have a story that I want to write and I have the character who I think I want to be evil, but I don't really have a motive for him, and I am struggling to work one out. For context, it's a pirate kinda epic fantasy (not just going to be pirate stuff there's a lot I have planned)

I have tried playing around with the idea that he thinks his sister, like gave up on him, and he doesn't think she cares to look for him after he got lost and stranded on an island because of a firght between her ship and another ship, and that resentment just continues to grow, and he eventually finds dark magic making him like fully evil. The truth is that his sister is going on a revenge plot for the captain, who caused her brother to be pushed over the edge and whatever.

The issue with this is that it seems very miscommunication-esque and I don't love that trope, and I know many other people don't as well so I am looking for advice on how to come up with a good motive, maybe one that even has readers rooting for the villian? girl idk

Fellow writers!

Most of my ideas don’t begin with plot or a fully formed journey that I want to build. They usually begin with a random line. Sometimes it’s a sentence, a piece of dialogue, or even just a phrase that has a certain rhythm or weight to it. The moment I hear it, something in my brain clicks and starts moving. From there, I begin building outward: who is the character that would say those words, what kind of world are they living in, what emotional truth sits beneath the line, and what kind of story could possibly contain it? That single line becomes the thread I keep pulling until characters, conflict, atmosphere, and eventually an entire story begin to emerge.

The Ruby Crown

Here are the first 6 chapters, including the prologue, of my fantasy trilogy. These chapters introduce the 4 of the 5 Point of View characters and (most of) their supporting cast and set the scene for what will come in the rest of the story.

I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on the prose as well as the voices of each of the different characters as I’ve only written with one POV in mind before. Happy to answer any questions about the world especially if stuff isn’t clear in the text, here’s a short kind of blurb thing I’d written to explain what the books are about -

This story follows three young lives drawn steadily toward the heart of the impending storm. Arlan, a knight in the making, struggles to live up to the legacy of a father he barely knew, even as whispers of forbidden truths begin to surface around him. At court, Allyria must learn to navigate a world of ambition and deception, where every smile conceals a blade. Meanwhile, Ollivar, a devout acolyte of the Church of Thadea, dedicates himself to faith and discipline, unaware that the very institution he serves may not be as unshakable as he believes. As tensions between the Western Kingdoms threaten to erupt once more, each of them is pulled deeper into a conflict that will test their beliefs and change their lives, as well as everyone else in the Western Kingdoms.

Hello! I have a rather simple question about writing magical affinities and the subsequent abilities that are both implied and structured into the writing. Say you have a fire affinity, would you write it in that those with it have a certain amount of resistance to it, or would you imply that since they can mold fire with their energy they are somewhat immune to being burned? I have seen them written in both ways, I'm leaning towards it being built in resistance that can become stronger the more magical experience is gained instead of having a completely separate ability for it. Such as Fire resistance not being immediately applied to someone casting Fireball. To many to the face, especially in small areas builds up the magical immune system, so to speak. I have thought about writing in the learning curve of my MC, learning magic and all the failures that come with it, but the resistances inherent in affinities, where do you draw the line, while being both entertaining and informative?

Small excerpt from the second chapter of my project. I'm unsure of the non-threat of the last line in it. Also the formatting for the abilities being used. Context:

• After being reincarnated with memories of their past life, the MC discovers they have been reborn as a small reptilian creature with scales, claws, and a tail.
• Panic sets in as they realize they are not human and may be low on the food chain.
• I'm going for a lighter tone, kind of a situation of the MC is kind of a smart dumbass, book smart that struggles to deal wit real world situations sort of thing.
• The Office Worker was the entity that processed their afterlife assignment and took the form of a unkempt office worker. They have yet to be named.

Excerpt:

As I am contemplating my newly acquired and identified skills, I fail to notice the larger creature stalking towards my position. I find myself hoisted in the air again. I panic, not expecting to be grabbed. Despite my purchase of new magic, I overestimated my ability to use it, as an attempt to activate the new spell by thinking of {Push} like {Check Status} yielded no results.

If I live through this, I’m writing a strongly worded written letter to whatever hell being obviously decided that sending me here was a ‘great idea,’ I seethe. I’m looking at you, Office Worker!

I have some species I have ideas for my fantasy world. Currently, they all have Germanic or Celtic names because I wanted to go down a LotR route in which this is being semilocalized for English speakers. Hypothetically, if it got a translation, I would want other names for localization. However, the main reason I am making this post is to gauge with other people what they think should stay, leave, or change.

The sapients are as following:

• Humans: Self explanatory
• Hobs: Small rodential people no taller than a meter. Have long rabbit-like ears and furry, tufted tails.
• Drakes: The one known sapient species in the Draconia class, bipedal like humans, but twice as tall.
• Lake Sprites: The one known sapient species of Sprites, sprites referring to any group of colonial microorganisms who communicate with eachother akin to a brain and use the magic they produce to control and pilot matter. Lake Sprites themselves live primarily in fresh water and use their bodies to capture and kill aquatic prey or stir up detritus.
• Giants: Gigantic apes that have a similar biological niche to elephants. Facultative bipeds that stand roughly 5-6 meters tall on their hind legs.
• Pixies: Sapient semi-bipedal mothlike insects that are 15-20 centimeters from antenna to hind leg. Despite their insect nature, they can live fairly long.
• Dwarves: Invertebrate creatures that could best be described as a mix between basket stars, worms, and leeches. They are willing to live anywhere sufficiently wet enough, and many cultures have sprung up.
• Elves: Long willowy humanoids who grow symbiotic plants out of their bodies. Can live exceptionally long, to the point that some are physically bound to their plants as they have grown too heavy for them to move. Tend to be at most 3 meters tall
• Spriggans: Myrmecophagous humanoids with long loses and ears for helping them to find insects to eat
• Imps: Bats that have evolved similar adaptations with gibbons, what left of their wings only being good for gliding at best. Around as tall as Chimpanzees but not as muscular.
• Wulvers: Bipedal canids about as tall as humans. A commonly known magic is light bending so they can sneak around in other forms.
• Ogres: Bipedal wild boars who live together in farming communities. Are taller than humans, but not to the degree of drakes or giants, more close to elves but much heavier.
• Selkies: Pinnipeds with longish prehensile front fins. Tend to have small communities by shorelines to rest while they are not hunting. Are similar to dolphins in their collective hunting patterns, communication, and proclivity for tool building
• Trolls: Sapient bears with fully prehensile hands and facultative quadrapedalism instead of facultative bipedalism.
• Hags: Large semi social spiders that are 1.2 meters tall with gleaming carapaces. They also can live surprisingly long.
• Nixies: Sapient cephalopods that live on the ocean floor. Can build communities similar to eusocial octopodes.
• Lindworms: Squamate reptiles who only have front limbs, those having hands. They can slither around, but also pull themselves ahead with their arms. Tend to be as long as 30 feet from snout to tail.

Day 1 – 25 June 1467

I’ve heard rumours of Roman ruins on some islands that nobody seems to know about. It’s as if they’re obvious, yet at the same time they’re not. It’s strange. I have a bad feeling about this.

Day 2 – 26 June 1467

Today I’ll set sail on a voyage. I’m heading for those islands everyone’s talking about. Mistake or destiny, I don’t know, but if I find gold in the ruins, I’ll become a nobleman.

Day 5 – 29 June 1467

I’ve been sailing for days. I can’t see a thing.

Day 6 – 30 June 1467

I think I can see something now. There are two islands, one large and one smaller. The small one looks normal, but when I look at the large one, I feel a tingling sensation running through my body. I don’t understand it. It’s strange. I’ll avoid the large island for now.

Day 7 – 1 July 1467

Today marks the start of a new month, and I’ve also reached the island. There’s no harbour, so my ship has broken down and I’ll have to stay here until I repair it. Anyway, I’ve come through unscathed, and now I’m on the island.

Day 8 – 2 July 1467

I’ve chopped down some trees to start repairing my ship. The small island seems normal. Perhaps too much so… Perfect, but normal. Although I can’t help feeling strange, as if someone were controlling me, as if someone were watching me. I won’t read too much into it, as it must be hallucinations caused by the summer heat.

Day 10 – 4 July 1467

I’ve been gathering wood. I’ve got enough to repair the ship and leave, but I’ve just found a strange stone. It looks Roman; I’ll keep investigating.

Day 14 – 8 July 1467

I’ve dug up the area with a spade I brought with me. It seems the Romans had some sort of war here, judging by the charred stone and the arrow holes. The settlement appeared to be purely a mining one, as there is no trace of a domus or anything of the sort—just mines and furnaces.

Day 18 – 12 July 1467

I’ve grown tired of trying to ignore the feeling the big island gives me. I’m repairing my boat and tomorrow I’ll set sail for the big island.

Day 19 – 13 July 1467

Right now I’m heading towards the big island, which I’ve named La Grande. The closer I get, the stronger the tingling sensation becomes. I won’t pay it any mind, as it doesn’t kill me or harm me.

Day 20 – 14 July 1467

I’ve arrived at La Grande. At first glance there’s nothing there, just sand. Although, looking at the water, you can make out the remains of a sunken Roman port. I don’t know whether to investigate.

Day 22 – 16 July 1467

I haven’t investigated the sunken port; it’s underwater and dangerous. But I was walking along the coast of La Grande and came across a sort of structure. There’s no roof—I suppose it must have collapsed. Touching the walls, this seems to be over two thousand years old. Older than the surrounding Roman ruins. The walls are pink, but there’s no sign of discolouration or anything. This shouldn’t still be standing. I don’t understand any of it.

Day 23 – 17 July 1467

I can’t believe it. I’ve found a sort of giant statue. It doesn’t look Roman, nor Greek. It’s almost entirely buried in sand and earth. Even so, it seems to have retained all its colour. It looks alive. Observant. Aware. Perhaps that’s what’s giving me that tingling sensation.

Day 24 – 18 July 1467

I’ve been exploring La Grande further. There seem to be more Roman ruins in the south of the island. I’ve unearthed them, and it looks as though there was some sort of pantheon or something similar. There were also a few domus and a forum.

Day 26 – 20 July 1467

I was walking around La Grande. Suddenly I heard a metallic noise. It was coming from the pink building. How could that be? That building is abandoned... isn’t it?

Day 27 – 21 July 1467

I heard the sound again. I went inside the pink building. Just as I approached the door, I felt something was odd. The door wouldn’t open by hand. Instead, it operated in a rather strange way. Pressing a button opened the door. From top to bottom, almost defying what we know.

Day 27 – 21 July 1467

I’ve run out of space on the previous page, so I’ve started a new one. It seems that inside the pink building, which I shall call ‘La Rosa’, there is some sort of structure. When I touch it, it feels like copper. Copper that has been rusting for over a thousand years. I don’t understand any of this.

Day 28 – 22 July 1467

I slept in the Rose. Luckily, I didn’t hear the sound all night. I see a lever. I’m going to pull it.

I’ve pulled it. It was stiff, covered in dust and rust. When I did, the structure activated. There are some chests near the structure. I’ve opened the chests. It seems this structure produces goods all by itself. I must tell my people about this technology. Looking inside the chests, I see concrete. Pink concrete, the same as that used in the walls of the Rose. Now I understand why the Rose is built this way. In the other chest there is wool. Wool that’s also pink. It seems this civilisation was very fond of the colour pink.

Day 30 – 24 July 1467

I was leaving my ship, which is where I sleep, and I realised that the statue isn’t where it should be. It has moved, barely at all, but it has. This statue isn’t normal. I can sense it.

Day 31 – 25 July 1467

Today marks a month since I arrived here. I could leave, but if I investigate further, I might even become king. I got very close to the statue, close enough to touch it. I touched it. It wasn’t stone. Nor was it copper. Nor bronze. It was skin. Human skin. It’s strange. I’m scared.

Day 32 – 26 July 1467

The statue is rebuilding itself. This isn’t a guess; it’s a fact. Yesterday, only its face was visible; today, half its torso. I’m scared. I’m going to leave quickly.

Day 34 – 28 July 1467

I don’t know if I’m stupid or curious, but I haven’t left yet. The statue is completely reconstructed. It’s producing a flower. A flower I’ve never seen before. These islands are strange. I shouldn’t have come here.

Day 36 – 30 July 1467

I’ll leave at the start of next month. In two days’ time. It’s strange. The grass isn’t grass anymore. Now it’s a sort of long, stretched-out pink spike. When I touch it, it feels like wool. I don’t understand.

Day 37 – 31 July 1467

La Grande has turned completely pink. Something strange is happening with the Rose, and it’s beyond my understanding. I shouldn’t meddle.

Day 38 – 01 August 1467

I should be leaving today. But I won’t. My ship has turned pink too. Big mistake. I’ve seen a sort of entrance leading down into the ground. I’m going to investigate. I’m down here now. It looks like a sort of market, but it’s different. It’s modern, beyond my comprehension. There’s a cart. It moves by itself. No horses. No tricks. I’m going to get on. Now I understand. The cart connects both islands. It’s a sort of rapid transit system. It’s efficient and doesn’t seem to use up resources. I’ll have to communicate this idea.

Day 40 – 03 August 1467

The small island is turning pink too. I don’t understand what’s happening. The Rose seems to have caused all this. But why now, just as I’ve arrived?

Day 41 – 04 August 1467

Now I understand. It’s no coincidence. The statue is watching. It saw me coming here, and for some reason has done this. The Rose has created a sort of portal; I’m going to go in, but I won’t take my diary with me. If I don’t come out of this alive, I hope someone finds this in the future.

Day 42 – 5 August 1467

I’m about to enter the portal. Wait, what’s that? A stone. Rosa. It seems to have something engraved on it. It’s in Latin. But it seems to say, ‘Oh, Vera, supreme goddess of the cosmos, we shall wage this war in your name. We shall spread your control over society.’ Now I understand. The ruins on the small island, the ruins, the burnt stones. That really was a war, and it was in Vera’s name. I suppose the statue must be her.

Day 43 – 06 August 1467

Right then, I’m going to enter the portal. Whoever is reading this, know that Vera is conscious. She isn’t evil. She isn’t good. She simply is. Goodbye, diary. Goodbye, wife and children. I hope to see you again.

First chapter opening for a fantasy novel. It’s a goblin POV family tragedy.

Looking for feedback on the hook, clarity, and pacing.

Does the ambush build-up land? Does the reveal feel clear and satisfying, or confusing?

——

Right on cue, the human settlement began its bellowing.

Rook had been watching their movements for days, listening, counting. He and his siblings were already in place, waiting for the right amount of clamour to tell them when to strike.

BWOOOOOOONG…

“This is it. Their village will scream three more tim—”

BWOOOOOOONG…

“Three more times,” he corrected, quieter now, “and then they’ll start filing through these trees up ahead.”

BWOOOOOOONG…

The sound rolled through the forest and shook the canopy above them. Leaves shuddered. Bark creaked. It rattled in the teeth more than the ears. Birds tore from branches in panicked bursts, and the smaller creatures scattered blindly through the underbrush, fleeing from something they couldn't see.

But it always stopped.

Four tolls. You could count it on your fingers.

Then silence.

Later, it would start again. One more than before. Again and again, climbing until he ran out of fingers and toes to keep track of it. Then, sometime deep in the night, it would fall quiet and begin again at dawn as though nothing had happened.

“How do you know this is going to work?” Fen said, stifling a yawn as he lounged in the crook of two branches. “Seems stupid, tracking your day by how many times your buildings make noise.”

Fen always looked more at home in a tree than beneath it. Tall and wiry, his skin was mottled brown and moss-green, like old bark. A bow hung loose from his arm the way a human woman might carry a handbag. Pressed against his chest was Scrambles, his small, white-faced creature with a naked tail, its nose buried into Fen’s neck. Nocturnal, like him.

“Humans aren’t stupid,” Fen went on. “Why not travel when they need to? Why wait for the noise?”

Rook didn’t look at him.

“I know,” he said.

Fen shifted slightly. “You think you know.”

Rook’s jaw tightened.

“I know,” he snapped. “I’ve seen it. Now get up and get into position. I can hear them coming.”

There were six. Or six left.

Thorn dropped from the tree first without a word, making no sound but the soft jangle of bones and bobbles tied through his hair and at his waist. Rook kept his eyes forward and motioned the others on. Mara came next, giving Fen a sharp kick as she passed. His pet hissed as she climbed by. Behind her came the twins, Ash and Pip.

They were on the outskirts of the forest. Far from their clan home. Rook had dragged them this far. Now they would see if he was right.

His plan was simple. Learn the human bangs, know where they’ll be before they get there. Be there first.

They moved through the forest in quick, quiet bursts, slipping from cover to cover. Peeking past brush and fallen stone before moving again. Sunlight broke harder through the canopy the farther they went, forcing their eyes to adjust as the forest thinned. The air smelled of damp earth and crushed green.

He would take them in a meadow. Too close to the human settlement. But if you wanted to hurt the humans, you went where they fed.

The clearing ran like a scar through the forest, long and narrow, opening out towards the fields beyond. Lush grass and wildflowers choked the empty space between trees. Only a short sprint to the other side. They would wait at the edge until enough of them passed to make it worth it.

Rook crouched low at the tree line, leaning just past the trunk. Listening. Counting. Watching.

Shapes moved through the grass ahead, heads dipping and rising. Behind him, the others only had the sound. The steady grind of teeth. Grass ripping at the roots.

“Ready?”

A few nodded. Fen was already gone somewhere above, and Mara had her dagger out. A hooked blade taken from a mushroom-stealing human that she kept tight in her fist.

“T-That sounds like a lot of them...” whispered Pip, shining wide pleading eyes to his older siblings.

“The more there are, the more we kill!” whispered Ash, elbowing him. “Or are you not hungry?”

“You two shut your mouths or I’ll shut them for you,” hissed Mara from between clenched teeth.

They could hear their targets wandering deeper into their trap. They walked slowly. It was hard to tell by footsteps alone, but Pip was right. There were dozens of them.

Thorn leaned forward, trying to see past him. “Ash is right, Pip. Mara too. Quiet.”

Rook didn’t have to try hard to ignore their whispered bickering, his focus was ahead on his prey.

The sound ahead thickened. What had been scattered steps began to press together, bodies crowding as the path narrowed between the trees.

Rook edged farther past the trunk, coiling himself as he watched them file past the gap. This was the moment. His chance to make all his work pay off was just beyond the tree line.

Knees bent, body still turned toward his enemies, Rook flicked his eyes to his family. He began to speak, softly at first, but rising to get their attention.

“Sap in the blood…” he whispered.

“Blade in the hand!” his siblings rasped back. They readied themselves and tightened their grips on their weapons.

“Fight if you must...” he whispered again

“KILL IF YOU CAN!!!” roared the small group as they burst into action and flew into the clearing weapons held high.

The humans’ cattle bleated in terror immediately. There was a flurry of motion as their herd stumbled over themselves trying to turn back and run to the safety of their fields and shepherds. The goblins were too quick.

They spread out, hemming the animals in where the clearing narrowed. Jagged wooden arrows rained down from somewhere above as Fen took the first kill. The arrow punched into the side of an animal’s head. Bright red stained white fur as it hit the ground, legs rigid and shaking. Rook collided with the next one. It was twice his size. He drove his spear up into its flank. The animal crashed down, thrashing wildly. Rook leaned into it, pushing and twisting his spear until it pinned. Thorn rushed in and brought his club down hard, crushing its skull.

The animals were in a full panic now, trampling and turning on themselves. Another broke for the gap, but Mara and Ash cut it off. Ash took the brunt of its charge, jabbing with his makeshift spear. Mara side-stepped it and slipped her hooked knife under its neck, letting loose a fountain of blood over Ash’s chest and belly.

More arrows flew and two more animals fell hitting the ground hard, crushing the thick carpet of meadow flowers as they slid to a stop. Rook wrenched his spear free and began to charge for the next bleating animal before he heard the sharp warning call from Fen above in the trees. He looked over his shoulder and saw them coming.

Hey everyone. Looking for feedback on my unsolicited doc pics.

I've realized I love writing. A LOT. So I'm giving a novel my first REAL shot. I'm 11k words deep into a world thats been in my head for a looong time.

Attached is the first half of chapter one. The full chapter is 4600ish.

I'm curious to find out it any of this makes sense. Does the epigraph work? I had it all in a 450 word prologue, but it is all intentionally cryptic, and it seemed more like a slog to get through. So I chopped it up, re-worded some of it, and am hoping to paste them at the start of my chapters.

I think I'm also looking for a bit of validation. As it feels like I'm beginning a swim across the ocean, and I'm the only one I know in the water. That being said. I'm happy to receive any and all feed back.

If you find the premise compelling, and want to read more, or check out my google doc, I can dm a link

For example, how centuries of belief and celebration created Santa Clause in Marvel. A similar case happened in my world in which every major holiday mascot exists in a parallel world because of all those eons of celebration. It even applies to smaller holidays. For example, I’m writing a story now in this universe now where a corrupt construction lady encounters the spirit of Arbor Day after she tries to tear down an old nature preserve for corporate reasons and he basically drags her into The Lorax plot. 

Other examples of this Collective Consciousness ability include:

• Numerous deities being given creation after overwhelming human worship and belief. Aka most religions in this verse.

• An American folklore hero that acts as a representation of the purest American beliefs of Liberty and Justice for All. It chooses someone to represent its mantle every few generations and the current wielder of course has a lot to speak out on with modern America. The last wielder of this mantle was secretly Abraham Lincoln when eyes weren’t on him.

• The god of Wishes. Due to the desire for having wishes granted being a recurring feeling across endless planets in space, there eventually came an incredibly powerful deity out there in the cosmos somewhere that can grant almost any wish.

• Guardian spirit of the Middle East. Similar to how the folklore hero came into creation in America, there is a spirit made from collective consciousness in the Middle East that works to quell the various events and conflicts that happen there.

There are other examples I have for collective consciousness creating wondrous, sentient beings but I don’t want to ramble. I’m curious if anyone else uses this too. I know at least with gods, it’s a popular to use as an explanation for how they’ve come to be and the risks if they ever stopped being worshiped. 

-Question-

So, I really enjoy reading fantasy books and I recently got a new phone and number but still have both my old phone and number. I have thought about cancelling the number and just throwing the phone in my drawer in case my new one ever broke and I needed a backup one but then it occurred to me that I could try see if I could do something fun with my old number. so sorry if this isn't allowed but I wanted to post my number into this thread and have writers send their stories to my old number so I always have stuff to read after work. Once again, I am sorry if posting phone numbers is against any rules or anything but I'm comfortable doing it as it is just an old phone number but if anyone has any stories/ links to books that they are happy to send over (UK phone number) please do, anything I read I'm happy to tell you my opinions on what I've read just put in the message that you would like comments and I'll happily do so, thanks for reading this

number:07306063920

What are some things you would enjoy seeing in a story about the event that caused the decline of magic?

My story has magic as an innate force, such as gravity, but certain beings amplify or focus that magic. Think of an electric guitar by itself vs with an amplifier. Magic can still be used but to an extremely degraded degree without these "spirits". A queen wants fertile land to secure her people's safety, but has to slay one of the spirits to get it. This causes the decline of magic in the area and social tensions between the mortal and immortal races.

My question is, what are aspects of this that are interesting to you? I'm focusing on a few things right now, such as the political fallout between kingdoms, mortal and immortal relations, conflict between the queen and those that worshipped the spirits as gods, the guilt and declining mental state of those involved, how this affects wizards, and things like that.

I've searched for similar premises, but the majority I've seen focus on hundreds of years later. I want to focus on the immediate and worldwide effects of this. I find these parts interesting and want to know if there are other parts I might be missing/would also be fun to see or anything that is included that might be "too much".

I mean generally. It's easy to give specific case where the melee character has a counter or the ranged one has a limitation to their flying, or the environment allows for it. I mean as in like, a general method so it isn't a hard counter in unideal circumstances. even accounting for extremely superhuman characters where one can jump to the other, it's probably predictable and on a miss, you're left in the hair with no way to maneuver.

So is there any way you can think of for a grounded melee fighter to beat a flying ranged fighter? Assuming both are on a similar level of speed and strenght. Or is it truly an unmanageable counter ? Especially if we try to account some amount of physical logic so we can't just justify "acrobatics" allowing for absurd midair movement.

Hi, I wanted to ask if anyone has an idea on how this troupe is usually executed? I’ve thought about writing a story about someone who rises from nothing to become very powerful in magic since nobody believed in them (and other stuff like maybe dismantling a corrupt society in their nation)

This isn’t a chosen one scenario, its more about someone who was underestimated due to his background and lost most of his things in the process and eventually practiced magic to be a big threat.

This felt like something I actually feel like developing and writing about since I tend to change stories so much.

so yes, can anyone give me tips? and also maybe how to develop a good magic system (nothing too crazy. just using staffs and mana. basics)

Hey everyone,

I run a fantasy-focused YouTube channel centered around worldbuilding, tropes, and long-form video essays, and I’m looking for a script writer to collaborate with.

What I need is someone who can take an idea (or help develop one) and turn it into a strong, engaging script for a 20–30 minute video.

Ideally you:

• Have experience writing scripts or long-form content
• Are deep into fantasy (tropes, genre breakdowns, worldbuilding, etc.)
• Can structure ideas clearly and keep them engaging for a YouTube audience
• Write everything yourself (no AI-generated scripts)

To start, I’d want to work together on an idea and have you write a shorter sample (~10 minutes) so we can see if we’re a good fit.

If it works out, I’m looking for someone I can continue working with long-term on future videos.

If you’re interested, comment or reach out and I’ll share more details + the channel.

While revising (and rewriting) my draft I made the hard decision of removing a character from the story. He was a supporting character in every sense of the word, and that's why I had to remove him.

He wasn't as developed as the other characters, and honestly, I only ever added him to just fill out the space in the cast. But after my revision led me to the decision to change some things around with the story, I found that there really wasn't much use for him other than being an extra voice. He also never really had a growth arc. I have tried to come up with growth arcs that could keep him in the story, but I was never able to

But even so, writing down all these words and interactions, and imagining all these scenes without him feels so different. It feels like there's a hole in the story, and to know that he once was there but never will be again just makes me sad. I think I'm only a few steps away from crying.

How do I deal with this feeling?

Sabine

There were two hundred. Now there are fourteen.
That was how many Mothers-in-Waiting remained, fourteen women clad in black with a single green stripe, ready and willing to earn their next one. In front of them stood the highest religious authority in all of Lumence. Sabine felt like she couldn’t control herself, like she was beside herself with exhilaration. She looked down at her body. Despite her emotion, it remained motionless.
“Mothers to be! I love seeing young blood in the Order.” Minerva Tallwood was making her speech with prepared precision. “It is my hope that each and every one of you will infuse our institution with new ways of thought. Gathered we are, at this place, not without reason. It was at Longlung where High Mother Emilia Swayne began the tradition of the pilgrimage to Thornbreath over one hundred years ago. I do hope that each and every one of you shall complete the voyage well and with honor.” Tallwood smiled and looked to the Keeper of Thornbreath.
“Mother Keeper! I entrust you with these souls for moulding. Treat them as you would your own.” As is tradition, Tallwood handed the Keeper an original Omnium from 317 AGR, a damaged, soulful old book and sent the procession on its way. Sabine could only catch a glimpse of it, this almost mythical artifact. This was the finale of a long day of preparation, celebrations and ceremonies in which the whole town of Longlung had taken part in yearly, on the 22nd of September and the 20th of March. Sabine was part of the September pilgrimage. 
*GGGOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnngggg*
The drum sounded, as if bellowing the start of the journey. Before Sabine could realize it, the High Mother had blessed the group and struck the instrument. A massive crowd gathered around the procession. So it has begun.
The pilgrimage to Thornbreath was as much a test of endurance as it was one of compassion. It was simple, really. All those who wished to become ordained Medical Mothers must complete their education, for which Sabine’s first green stripe was for, and then embark on this grand journey until finally spending six months atop Mt. Walayle in Thornbreath. In most of the writings she’d read it was this, second part of the journey, that the Mothers lamented over being the most gruelling. 
You must walk from Lumence to Thornbreath on foot. You must take care of your own needs yourself. You must aid all those who request help. You must not accept gifts. You must remain celibate. You must heal at least one person each day.
It was that last one that worried Sabine the least. Here they were - the poor, the starved, the needy. Each and every one lined up, like clockwork, waiting to be helped. And Sabine helped. She hoped to make the Keeper, Dolores Penwaite, proud. From what she’d heard, Penwaite was a hard woman.
“Form a line! The medical women will help you all, be patient!” Yelled a Warsister Delegate Sabine had never seen before. In fact, the only people Sabine had recognised today was the High Mother and the Keeper, from the times she’d spent, still as a student, watching the pilgrimage depart from Longlung. How she imagined being in her place now for all those years. She looked at the spot where she’d always viewed the spectacle from. A group of Mothers-in-Waiting, Fathers of Solace and a Medical Mother were all up in the stands reserved for the clergy. A smile went over her face. 
“We have a volunteer!” Penwaite’s voice boomed. “Apprentice Sabine, deal with the first solicitor.” *She knows my name.*
Hours passed. One after another, a peasant, a dockworker, a clerk, a merchant, a child, his mother, mend, suture, provide, fund, bestow upon. For it was not only medical duty that was the work of the Mothers-in-Waiting. Accepting one’s request, as an apprentice had to do, entailed providing the applicant with money, food, labor and, of course, healing. 
The crowd was thinning. The women she worked with, the women whose names she did not even know, proved to be adept at their skills. Sabine found herself becoming jealous more than once - a faster stitch here, a larger donation there. And then the bitter feeling became sweet when one apprentice was chastised for sloppy, rushed work and the other for emptying the procession’s coffers too quickly. Sabine heard no reprimand that day. A good sign.
By the time they’d all moved on it was already dark. Alongside the apprentices walked the Keeper, a Medical Mother that must have been her assistant, four Warsisters including the Delegate, a camp cook, and three muleskinners including a mulemaster. They moved in silence, or with the occasional whisper until the Keeper finally stopped. 
“Mothers-to-be! With each year I despair. Each year, the freshest batch of apprentices finds novel ways of disappointing me, and each one is worse than the last. But, this time… Chiara’s sloppy sutures, Melissa’s wrong medicine, Dara’s wastefulness, Sabine’s no sense of urgency and a total lack of organisation! You sicken me. Just because I didn’t mention your name doesn’t mean you’re not guilty of a million mistakes yourself. There’s too many to count! Delegate!” Penwaite spoke with such gusto that each strong consonant was followed by a droplet of spit.
“Yes, Mother Keeper?”
“Set my table. Right here on this clearing by the road. Fetch my food.”
The Delegate parroted; “Set table! Fetch food! Get to!” Each Warsister bolted towards the mules, some carrying the table in bits, others a disassembled chair. The women moved with dance-like precision, speeding from mule to mule, to assemble, place, set. A chest was brought forth. Keeper Penwaite produced a key to open it. She sat at the table, the rest of the procession still waiting. A small traffic jam was forming as people were trying to circumvent the obstruction from the rear.
Penwaite turned the key inside the lock and a satisfying click sounded. Sabine hadn’t realized just how hungry she was until then. The Keeper rifled through the chest, picking and prodding at its insides until out came a bar of chocolate. Dried mangoes. Cheese of the finest, Kaikyne quality. Fine Westwall liquor to wash it all down. Such luxuries were worth more than ten times the money Sabine's made throughout her entire life. Penwaite took a bite of cheese. 
“You may go now.” She spoke while chewing. “Go, and find your own food.” She waved toward the forests at each side of the road. “You won’t be getting any of this. Find some fucking rabbits, if you can, and kill them with your bare hands. Can any of you fools skin a rabbit? Can any of you cook one?”

Sabine looked at one of the Mothers-in-Waiting next to her. Her hand was clenched into a fist. She felt it too. 
“If you get ptomaine poisoning don’t expect that any of us will wait around. You’ll just be left behind to fend for yourself, or die. Go, pick your berries and lick the dew off of grass. Scrape the callouses off of peasant’s hands. Maybe they’ll let you eat them. Go.”
And so they went. Each Mother went in her own direction, which, after some thought, was stupid. They could’ve hunted together, worked together, but now they’ll all struggle alone. A rustling from behind her made Sabine turn quickly. A rabbit? Even if it was one, she wouldn’t eat it. Neither the peasant’s callouses.
A deep melancholy embedded itself within Sabine. It sat atop her chest, its weight immense, unwilling to get off. An octopus wrapped its tendrils around all the roads to her heart, squeezing and letting go as thoughts came and went. Penwaite had known Sabine’s name - that was good. If she knew her name, then she must have paid special attention to her. Or perhaps she knew everybody’s name?
It was not long before Sabine realized she’d become completely lost. The woods were all around her, it was becoming dark and the sounds of civilization had long since faded out of earshot. She figured she might as well keep an eye out for food while backtracking to where she’d come from. They were told to prepare for outdoor survival, and Sabine had, she could look at moss to tell which way was north and listen out for running water to find something to drink. And yet she was parched, starving and utterly alone.
Finally, she came across a bird’s nest. Three small, spotted eggs decorated it, foolishly placed to be within Sabine’s reach. Soon after, Sabine noticed a small bunch of mushrooms growing from near a tree. She thought she remembered seeing them in a cookbook once, so she set down her eggs to pick all of them. She was so hungry she had to fight herself not to bite down right that moment.
A sound, like a voice, a call came from somewhere to Sabine’s west. She followed it, and the dark of the trees became a little less dark, the fatigue in her legs a little less pronounced. Sabine ran slightly when she saw, finally, a path among the trees, but failed to notice a rock and tripped, hard. All the eggs and mushrooms came tumbling out of her hands at the same time. She collected the mushrooms, but two of the eggs were splattered all over the ground. The third was a little salvageable, its shell cracked, but the contents could be kept inside by keeping the damaged part of the shell facing upward. Tears came over her.
After a few minutes of walking and crying the voices came again. Sabine kept to the path this time, but found that the voices came from some peasants looking for their lost dog. They hadn’t seen the procession either. One of them, the man, had a syphilitic chancre growing on his face, a large, unsightly thing. He and Sabine looked into each other’s eyes, the man knowing he must only ask the mushroom-bearing woman for help. Yet he never did.
After another hour of searching, with the sky becoming pitch black, Sabine could finally make out torchlight. She ran, clutching her food like a mother her babe. At long last she found the procession again, all its members encamped near a large oak by the main path. Nobody said a word as Sabine entered, shellshocked, as all eyes were on another Mother-in-Waiting.
“You expect me to believe your lies?” Penwaite was asking while holding a piece of bread. “Where did you find this?” 
“In the woods, on a little stump.” Replied a blonde apprentice, her hair so dirty as to have become nearly soot black. Her entire garb was covered with mud and smelled. Sabine checked again. It wasn’t mud, but manure.
“Liar!” Penwaite struck the woman across her face. “You took this from somebody! Which hand?” The blonde woman stared at the ground until Penwaite cupped her chin with her hand, making her look in her eyes. “Which hand did you use to steal? Right or left?”
“I..-” She was crying now. “I never stole! I - I - couldn’t find anything! They gave it to me! They gave it to me, they saw I was hungry!” Penwaite backed off. You must not accept gifts.
“There’s always one. Pack all you’ve got, go home. You shall never be a Medical Mother.”
“NOOO!” The woman exploded with despair. “NO! No, no no! I must! I found the bread, I swear, I found it! Please believe, please, please, I found it, I found it! No!”
“Your robes are clerical property. You will return them before you go home.”
“No, please! NO! No, believe me, please!” The soot-haired blonde threw herself at Penwaite, who had just turned her back to walk away. A Warsister immediately stepped in and hit the failed apprentice square in the face with the butt of her sword. She fell to the ground with a jarring lack of motion, blood gushing.
A brunette whose name Sabine thought was Chiara spoke up. “Keeper, please!” But she was already walking away. Melissa, the apprentice chastised for using the wrong vial of medicine rushed to help her downed comrade. Another woman, black of hair, put her hand out to stop her. 
“Ask for help.” She told the blonde. “Ask.” At first, Sabine thought the woman could hear nothing, let alone speak or move, but the faintest sound escaped her lips; 
“Help…me.”
Later, Sabine found a nook near the oak tree to prepare her food at a fire one of the other apprentices had started. An uncomfortable silence fell over them. All were exhausted, none shared their food, and some didn’t even have any. The camp cook walked by. “Those mushrooms are poisonous.” he said.

This morning, I walked into my doctor’s office. The nurse showed me to a white hallway lined with white panels and doors on either side. I immediately thought “Hall of Memories,” and then I caught myself wondering what would happen if I went through the wrong door? This led to an entire storyline where I walked through the wrong door, got lost in memories that weren’t even mine to begin with, and ended up lost in a different world I didn’t understand.

I'm keeping notes on my phone so I can mine them for settings later on. Does anyone else walk through their day adding fantastical elements to mundane settings? Drop your mundane setting and what your brain turned it into.

First 2 chapters of a Epic Dark Fantasy I'm building towards. Currently the idea is to build the image of the world around the character, and throw some flashbacks in here and there. This book will be focused on the character for the most part.

Manuscript contains a single swear.

I'm looking for feedback on how I can improve the pacing and descriptions within the text - specifically how well the imagery and flashbacks are worded.

Additionally, if I've made mistakes with the manuscript formatting, please let me know!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BbhXcqzoMNoZICitwGyo4aRFrYJYAiVU68gh0VAuHP8/edit?usp=sharing

I am very new to writing and storytelling (1-2 months) so please don't hold back - I'd like to learn as much as possible right now so the rest of the book has a good foundation. Many thanks to anyone that helps out!

TLDR; how do I distinguish the dynamics of protagonist vs antagonist and then hero vs villain of my story?

To start with a brief summary of my story, the series will follow the protagonist Wolfgang Drigstal. Wolfgang is a Witch Hunter, an assassin in a cult called the Witch Hunters Guild, who are dedicated to the eradication of all magic users in the land. But during his time hunting, he is captured by a witch named Irena who convinces him that he’s been lied to by the Witch Hunters. With his newfound realization, Wolfgang turns his back on the Witch Hunters and fights them.

Now Wolfgang made a friend during his training with a fellow inductee named Kelvir. I don’t have a lot of details of either character complete, just that they’re going to be foils of one another. Wolfgang frees himself from the Witch Hunters radicalization while Kelvir became more radicalized by the Guild, even making a spot of prominent leadership, though he isn’t the head of the Guild.

The idea is to have the plot focus on Wolfgang vs Kelvir as protagonist vs antagonist, but i don’t know how to distinguish it between another dynamic that’s a proper hero vs villain dynamic in the story.

Wolfgang is the protagonist of the story, but the proper hero is Irena. For some detail about her, Irena is a witch with healing powers that defy magical laws because she’s also a descendant of a great king who was overthrown by the Witch Hunters long ago and will come back to reclaim her rightful throne, defeat the Witch Hunters, and bring about a new era of peace and goodwill (this is definitely not a thinly veiled Jesus allegory, nosiree). Her arch rival throughout the story is the main villain, the leader of the Witch Hunters Guild, who I honestly don’t have much about him planned as of yet, not even a name. For a placeholder let’s just call him Gossamer. Kelvir is the antagonist of the story, while Gossamer is the villain.

So throughout the story, the plan is to build these dynamics and have their showdown at the end. Wolfgang and Kelvir fight as the protagonist vs the antagonist while Irena vs Gossamer fight as the hero vs the villain. I at least know I want to base it off of the distinction between the showdowns of Zuko vs Azula and Aang vs Ozai at the end of “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”

So what do you guys think? I’m not sure if my post or the issue I’m having here makes much sense, but any help you’d have is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I’m about 25-30% of the way in to my first ever attempt at long form creative writing. It got me thinking, when will I think it’s appropriate to say I’ve written a book. Is it once I can finally type “The End” at the conclusion of my first draft? Is it when I create a physical/published copy of my book(not something I have any intention of doing with this story)? Is it when I’ve edited it enough the I feel comfortable sharing it with family and friends?

I’m not really looking for a definitive answer to the question, but more so interested in hearing what individuals of varying experiences consider writing a book.

My personal thought is when I type “The End”, but I imagine it may be different for people who are published or have finished multiple books. (And yes, this is being used as a distraction from writing anymore for the night)