Anonymous
09/16/25(Tue)23:10:59 No.24729119

File: goosebumps.jpg (1.71 MB, 4032x3024)

1.71 MB JPG

Anonymous 09/16/25(Tue)23:10:59 No.24729119

>be in a writing group
>some people there are actually pretty good
>one guy is sharing his epic fantasy novel and it's the worst thing I've ever read
>his prose is almost non-existent and he relies on dialog to do everything
>when there is actual action or description, he tries to get it out of the way as fast as possible to get back to the dialog
>so there will be a page of someone swimming, but there will be maybe two sentences of "he was in the ocean" and "he dove down," and the rest of the page is talking underwater like "it's so beautiful down here!" and "look at the fish!" For example.
>the same conversations are repeated several times, or characters talk about things to just explain the events in the previous chapter. So everything feels painfully slow.
>characters don't talk like actual people, they talk to feed the reader info. So something that two characters already know, and deal with every day, they talk about like, "well, these dangerous things have lived in the forest for hundreds of years, but they never come into town so long as we blah blah blah..."
>the characters are all stock and feel very unimportant. Like love interest girl only exists to be a love interest and says and does nothing and has no backstory and only exists so other characters can say how pretty she is.
>he writes the most ridiculous, nonsense similes and metaphors I've ever heard. Stuff like "the thunder shimmied like a wolf over a bridge." And I just circle it and ask "do wolves shimmy? Does thunder shimmy? What does this mean?"
>And the similes and metaphors are always at odds with the tone. Like someone will be getting decapitated and he'll throw in a simile that's comical, about how the blood was "like a geyser of delicious ketchup" or some shit.
>he really likes writing about characters that go insane but whenever an insane character is having a psychotic break they always scream and do the most unintentionally hilarious things. Like they'll start running in circles, stuttering, and being goofy.
>and then he uses zoomer speak now and again, like Princess Evergrim from the ancient lands of Zimwhadilie, keeper of the secret fire, will say stuff like, "Shut your fucking mouth or I'll shut it for you!"
>and no, he's not writing a comedy. He writes the most grimdark edgy bullshit imaginable, where characters go on long speeches about how unfair life is and how they won't fit in.
>and then there are typos and spelling mistakes
>explain all these things to him on his marked up manuscript
>he comes back next month with the next chapter and it has all the same problems. Repetitive conversations that go nowhere, no description of things, meandering, flat characters.
>I just want to write on his manuscript "This is bad because you don't read novels, so you don't know how to balance plot with character and prose. Stop sending your first drafts to the workshop."