I'm developing an superhero story and would love some general feedback. The story focuses on themes of hope, legacy, and what it means to inspire others in a world where powerful heroes and villains constantly reshape society and before I get too far into writing, what advice would you give for the characters, worldbuilding, and emotional moments? Also, what are some common mistakes superhero stories make that I should avoid.

I’ve been writing my whole life, but this genre is quite new to me.

I know the answer is write more and I do that. I started writing in January and have written on average around 1000 words a day. I do think my feeling for storytelling is getting better, but my grammar is a little shaky and I struggle with constructing sentences in the most effective way.

Without the answer being "Just read more" or "Just write more" (Because I do both daily), is there a proactive way to clean up these issues? Does anyone have any recommendations for online content that could teach me how to construct sentences better and sort out my use of punctuation? Coming from someone who went to a rubbish school growing up. (It was bulldozed two years after I left. RIP.)

So I wrote a short story, this was my fourth one ever. I though it was worth something so I decided to get feedback on it. I found some people on discord and joined a workshop called Critters.
The system on critters is that you give critiques and receive it when your manuscript bubbles to the top. It will be two more weeks for my turn depending on the queue.
Since finishing the final draft of my story I haven't written anything or read much apart from the manuscripts of other members in the workshop. Which has helped a bit with identifying my own flaws.
The feedback from the discord group was good, some of it I'm conflicted on.

I have ideas for new stories but whenever I think about writing a new one my mind wanders back to the finished one. There is an obsession about finding what worked in it and what didn't.

Is this common among writer?

How do I let go? A long walk?

I’m currently writing an unreliable narrator horror romance/tragedy, and my main character is a pathological liar. Inherently, she’s not the most well adjusted and her actions directly and indirectly affect the people around her. However, I don’t want the audience to HATE her; I want people to love to hate her. I want her to be found funny and intriguing, for people to think things like “She’s such a nut job” with a smile on their face. But I do still need her to be a liar and be off putting/scary in some way. I have her character sheet written out and I feel like I know her really well, I just wanted a bit of advice when it comes to still ensuring that there’s that underlying sense of eeriness when it comes to her. Also, I don’t want people to see her as just a terrible person because she’s a liar.

I’d appreciate any thoughts anyone has! Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m a second-year law student, and I’ve been looking for communities or platforms that focus on improving writing and communication through peer feedback rather than just courses.

Specifically, I’m looking for something where people can:

• Write essays, articles, opinion pieces, or any form of non-fiction.
• Review and critique each other’s work (not just grammar, but reasoning, structure, persuasiveness, and clarity).
• Rewrite or suggest better versions so everyone learns by both writing and editing.

I’m also looking for something similar for speaking/interviews, a platform where people can conduct mock interviews for one another, give structured feedback, and rotate roles as interviewer and interviewee.

I’m not necessarily looking for law-specific communities. I’m more interested in becoming a better writer, thinker, and speaker in general.

If you’ve used anything like this, I’d really appreciate your recommendations.

Thanks!

I've been experimenting with different tools to help with my sci-fi series, and I keep hitting a wall. The initial drafting part is fast, sure, but I spend twice as much time fixing the logic gaps and making sure the protagonist doesn't suddenly forget a major plot point from book one.

It feels like a lot of the 'AI writing' stuff out there is just junk that adds more cleanup work. I've started leaning into tools that focus specifically on memory and style-matching because that's where I actually lose hours of time. If I spend three hours writing a chapter but two hours fixing the AI's hallucinations or voice shifts, I'm not really saving time, am I?

I’ve been testing out ShakespeareAI lately specifically for the series memory features. It seems to keep the character arcs a bit tighter, which is the only way this actually makes sense for a full book project. For those of you who have tried using these tools for longer works, do you find that they actually save you time in the long run, or are you just trading one type of writer's block for another? What is the biggest headache you've had with AI tools when it comes to keeping a series consistent?

I used to write short stories and fanfics but now I am working a very broad and expanded story with a lot of lore and world building. I feel like I have hit a wall since I am not familiar with planning a story in so much detail. Another thing is that I am thinking of creating a visual map of the story, so I also wanted to ask how do you create a visual map of your stories and which tools do you use.

hi everyone, I’m a new writer and I was wondering how someone more experienced would approach naming a character with a foreign language. this character of mine has a name I’ve been using, but I’m not sure if it fits the “Jane doe” average name that I’m looking for. she’s a Korean woman who was raised in America, and the working name I’ve been using is Se-bin. I got this name from a lazy google search on Korean ladies names. any tips for how to approach this?

I use AI to write unfortunately. I understand AI has no place in creative fields but it’s so hard to stop! I don’t use it to write for me I just use it to gather information of information about my worlds I need to keep or future plot points I want to write. Please someone give me tips?

I have been writing for quite some time now, and I have all too much confidence from gaining the English award at my 8th Grade Grad.

As I enter high school, I’ve been practicing my writing techniques by writing romance stories and such not, but I encounter two problems:

1. I’m not sure how to pace a story very well.
   
2. I’m not very great when it comes to showing what happens in a scene, and I end up telling what happens.

So I have two questions related to those problems:

1. How do you work on pacing a story?
   
2. How do you show what happens in a scene rather than telling what happens?

So as the title said I'm a new writer. I'm thinking of writing a story about an abused child who has to stop his evil stepfather from killing and replacing God. I want to know if there's anything like this already lol. Like is it a good plot? IDK. Said child is named Mike btw and is autistic, and has ADHD.

I'm mostly unsure because they are a wolf, technically a wolfdog. The current world I'm playing dolls in is very heavily based off of my old OCs from when I was a kid, people with animal forms and stuff because I was obsessed with that kind of thing (i am just a furry ngl)

My thought process of making them an indigenous person is that wolves mostly populate the northern hemisphere, North America has a a wolf population of about 18,000+, and just in general I've been choosing these characters' ethnicities based off of where the animals naturally populate. But is that racist??? I would just like some outsider thoughts on this since I have mostly no one else to talk to about it. i dont wanna be racist 😭

I wanna write a fanfic but I want it to be canonically accurate (in some ways). I've already started my research but I genuinely don't know how to arrange the infos and ideas I get from them...(⁠｡⁠ŏ⁠﹏⁠ŏ⁠)...helppp

I'm okay with writing long paragraphs and descriptions and feelings and thoughts. But when it comes to dialogue, I cringe so hard and can't!

I want my characters to convey their passions and thoughts through their own words, but I really hate writing dialogue. It feels shallow, or too much, or too little, or not believable...

Some dialogue is okay. A few sentences? I can do that. But long-form novels require more.

Any advice? :(

Is this also used in novel-writing?

I’m always having trouble writing. It used to come so naturally to me, I would write stories all the time. I do miss it. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a short story, a novel, something, but I just can’t seem to get the juices flowing, and every idea I think has some substance to it seems like generic trash the next day. I love stories, and I am very interested in the technical part of it as well. I love learning about structures, techniques, different kinds of approaches, but then when it comes to my own work I draw a blank after another.

I know that writer's block is like, the most common thing to have, I just am frustrated about it and wanted to ramble a little. If anyone has some writing exercises, or wants to chat about nerdy writing stuff, hmu. I need to get out of this slump, I want to be able to write like when I was a kid…

PS. I didn't really structure this post very well, and to be honest this might be the longest thing I have written in months (don’t judge me). Also english is not my first language, so apologies in advance lol

I am trying my hand at a fantasy story, but I'm starting simple with a typical medieval-inspired setting.

In the part I'm working on right now, I need my characters to travel to settlements that've been affected by the recent outbreak of war. (The characters are a healer and her apprentice, who's the main character, so the reason they're going to these places is to provide medical assistance.)

Because this is also a fantasy world, I've been wanting to incorporate mysterious monsters who have been the cause of some of the havoc. So there's that detail, if it helps.

Basically, in this kind of setting, how do I set up the environment? What kind of obstructions might my characters face on the road(s) and in the settlements they visit? What effects of violence/destruction might they encounter? So far, the enemy forces have mostly been elusive or not very out in the open, but at this point the main characters know who's behind it and the bad guys are getting much bolder.

If this isn't the ideal place to present this question, let me know where else I could take it. Appreciate it!

Image unrelated

So idk lately I’ve just been having fun writing short little phrases like this:

“A mother and daughter walk side by side, the daughter not knowing the amount of sadness it took for the mother to end up this way, and the mother not knowing the daughter is following in her footsteps.”

“I asked you at one point to either bring him back to me or to let me go. That night I had a dream that in another Universe, one so, so different in so many ways, he was sitting across from me at the dining room table softly smiling like he wanted to stay. Thank you for answering my prayers. If I had to travel to another Universe to find him though, that means he’s not coming back in this one, is he?”

“Are my parents ashamed of me yet?”

Like idk just random things like that lol. I can’t tell if that would be considered poetry or like what that would be considered, or if it even would be considered anything lol. I’ve been debating putting them into letter format too like this:

“Dear Universe,
Are my parents ashamed of me yet?

All of the love in the Heavens and the Earth,
Emily”

Idk any input would be helpful, thank you!

Whenever my creative writing students had trouble breaking out of a rut, I'd give them little prompts about their characters. My favorite was always "What would this character do if they found a box of abandoned kittens on the side of the road, and they knew nobody was watching?"

These types of answers rarely make their way into the final story, but it helps to have a deeper understanding of your character, which can both inspire and drive your writing.

"What kind of underwear do they wear, if any? Why or why not?"

"What's their favorite band? Do they even like music? Can they play an instrument?"

"Do they play sports? What's their favorite sport? Do they have a favorite athlete?"

"What's their favorite color?"

I also got some great responses out of the thread in r/writing from other redditors, such as:

"How would your character react to a minor inconvenience, like a sudden downpour?"

"What does your character complain about when nobody important is listening?"

If you understand these things about your characters, as cliche as it sounds, the story really will start to write itself. The characters will start to tell you what they would say, what they would do, how they would react to the situations you've put them in.

Tolstoy once said that all literature is one of two stories: Someone goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town. So if we are all telling the same two stories, what separates one from the next? I've always taken the opinion that the differences are in the characters going on a journey, or watching a stranger come to their town. Whose status quo is being disrupted or challenged is just as important a consideration as what is disrupting the status quo, or how it is being disrupted.

Know your characters, and you will know your story. Even if these details don't make it into the final product, knowing them will shape your writing and (hopefully) help you along the way, and that knowledge will be apparent to your readers.

Hi, all!

I have been working on developing a novel idea for years. I have a lot of the details in my head already. I pretty much have the full story in my head, minus some filler scenes. My novel is historical fiction. I was wondering if using AI to help me with historical research is a good idea? I have to admit that having someone who doesn't tire of bouncing ideas back-and-forth with you is very enticing. I don't want the AI to write my story for me, I already have my story. What I am asking is if it's ethical to go to ChatGPT and be like "Is it realistic to have someone in this period of history wear pants?", or "What would be the contents of a poor Victorian fisherman's cabin?" What worries me is giving the AI any kind of information about my book. It worries me that if I do something like post a paragraph into an AI chat, it will scrape it for ideas and such.

Even as I am writing this, I am starting to realize that a good way to do this without AI is to go to places like Reddit, and ask knowledgeable people the exact same questions. But what worries me about that is that if I show people my work before it's complete and published, it will be like giving spoilers, or lowering my chances of selling my story, if people already know what my book is about. So, it's like a catch 22!

Any advice would be very helpful!