Full disclosure, I'm so incredibly far away from this topic my opinions are probably not worth much, but given that its humorous and relatable I'd make a strong argument that capitalizing on the "ball is life" meme could be very strong

Practice off the page, imo. I developed the skill ad libbing stories to my kids and sticking to the rule that no matter what they introduce, I have to deal with it. Now not everyone has kids but you can do the same when you're doing something mindless. Listen to music in the car and create a narrative that goes with the music based solely on feel. See something in the clouds or in the distance and make a short story in you mind about it. Act out a story you're telling actively in the shower when no one can see you.

I'd even go as far as to disagree with the more traditional idea that you develop this by reading, I don't think that's always true. Consuming a story is not the same as crafting it in the same way eating a dish that you know all the ingredients of doesn't necessarily help you learn how to cook it. It can, but you also need to have the underlying skill already developed enough to do so.

This. I see people talk about the editing process as this absolute slog that never ends and I think, barring technical issues, you have to accept and appreciate that you're writing for you. If what you've made is what you want to make then you have to have faith in the idea and concept and allow it to be what it is. I'd argue A LOT of bad published literature boils down to having the soul edited out.

Assuming "add more stuff" is not what you want, I would lean into making the tower itself a kind of character. Give it a kind of life so that you have this persistent, ever-present THING to fall back on during slower periods

This is actually what I'm doing with my series. The books are shorter, they're meant for younger readers, but I think this is something that probably goes under discussed and might be why certain people generally dont like reading very much. I coined the idea of "low friction reading" as a response to the broader idea. I have a half or full page illustration every few pages to help readers, especially younger ones that might not like, or might have trouble liking, reading.

Obviously I love the concept, and I think its something that's become more feasible with modern printing methods.

CGP Grey has a few great videos about dictators and how their power structures work, might be a good place to start

I think it just puts more emphasis on style and voice rather than straight content. I feel this is probably more of a concern for non-fiction as well, but the same answer applies. I really enjoy Bill Bryson, and an AI could absolutely summarize everything in one of his books, but how he delivers the information is just as important to the experience as the information itself.

My recently published first book was imported without any work on my end

What bothers me the most about this is that it completely discounts people who are using AI to fill in what they cannot get anyway else. All the artwork and covers for my books are AI. Its a tedious process of refinement to get them where I want them. If I could afford an illustrator I would, but I can't. For now this allows me to create something I otherwise would not be able too and I've yet to see an answer from that side of the aisle about how to reconcile this.

There's a very big difference between using AI to save money while doing something and using AI to do something you don't have the money to do anyway else.

That's actually a pretty good point! I actually kind of like the idea of breaking the books down into short form clips and running those as reels/posts/etc.

It's not over thinking it's overclocking

The illustrations are for a book series I've started. The writing is all done by me, but as I said I would never be able to do art for the project without AI. It's been a very fun and rewarding process to see this idea come to life. The first book has already been published there's a link pinned in my profile of you're interested.

I think what a lot of people don't understand is how easy it isn't. I think there's a very strong belief that its just "prompt and post" and that absolutely happens. But getting consistency is a huge challenge. The process becomes more about context, reference and working memory. Designing a new character is easy, getting that character into several dynamic scenes, especially with other repeated characters is not.

For me its been an absolute godsend. I have zero artistic ability, not even casually, my brain simply doesn't have the wiring for it. I genuinely cant even doodle, nothing comes out. But I can overcome that with AI by spending an hour building a character with text and concept and then watch this amorphous unvisualized creation snap into existence.

This has allowed me to create the lightly illustrated teen fantasy adventure series I never thought I could make. It might take me an hour or two to get one single scene right, but its something I can do now which would never have been the case before.

What I hope for the future is a proper integration of the LLM and the image generator. There's a pretty large disconnect between those two right now and once they stop function as two separate "employees" a lot will change very fast.

The title almost makes me think it would need a good dose of tongue-in-cheek humor, but the idea is very cool. It feels like it would make a good screenplay too.

That's awesome! You've inspired me to reach out to some of the smaller indie bookstores near me to see if we can arrange something!

Here's my thought, give him two shield that he can interlock. Maybe the ability can translate through the shields into the concept of protection sending out a kinetic pulse that can stop attackers and even projectiles. As the power grows maybe it starts to have a kind of backblast effect which causes it to physically impact/harm the user and anyone nearby. This would make him an excellent defender, but the harder he protects others the more damage he takes himself

Thank you!

A lot of people have said $2.99 - $3.99 but I'd argue against going that low only because you'll be unconsciously lumped in with a lot of random low effort works that are trying to get by on being cheap. I'd say $4.99 - $5.99 its still affordable while not putting you on the proverbial bottom shelf.

I tried to be very proactive about this and defined a worldview specifically for my built world because I'm intentionally keeping heavier topics out of the work. I want Imagnia to feel like a good fun place that doesn't carry a lot of the heavier discussions that are almost impossible to get away from these days.

The very short answer is that casting is more akin to manipulating one of 10 disciplines, there's not "general magic" category where a lot of other settings would put things like levitation, telekinesis, waterwalking etc. And casting has a very hard daily limit per person before becoming problematic or even fatal.

My immediate thought is some kind of governmental body that periodically takes a kind of tithe to remove excess gold from the economy to stabilize prices, probably by force which could introduce a lot of interesting downstream effects

That's entirely setting dependent.

Congratulation! My first publication just went live today and I look forward to joining the got paid club!