LJCC

I'm a lover of semicolons only because I write long-ass, complex sentences; I really like them. Followed by. Short. Sentences. Like these. Because it adds to the pacing that the writer is a nutcase and would like to implore your judgment to read his stories with a keen eye that he's insane. Partially. That is.

That was meant as a joke that Zelt is insane, but I guess that's cannon now. Ahihihihi. Sorry if I turned him hinsaeen on the membrane. Nutty characters always have a soft spot in my heart.

They stood together, watching the train pull away—a metallic beast sliding into the damp morning, swallowed whole by the mist. A single sunbeam, indecisive, pressed its fingers against the last car and then withdrew. For a moment, something moved on the horizon—divine intervention? No, just light making its last desperate claim. The sky cracked open in orange slits, jagged wounds above the mountains. The train, undeterred, surged forward. Not toward disaster, though that would have been poetic, two hundred souls dashed against the rock. No, this was a collision of a different kind: a slow, inevitable plunge into the tunnel of Mordor—where, for the next twenty minutes, passengers would surrender to the darkness, to sleep, to forgetfulness. Zelt had been speaking. To whom, he wasn’t sure. The air, maybe, or the careful curator of voices in his head. Yes. He's gone mental, apparently. "You know I’ll always love you." "Yes, and I’ll always love you." "Promise." "Yes, I promise." "But why do I have to go to the station?" "Your parents need our help. The luggage." A tap on his shoulder. It was real. Unmistakably real. Zelt turned, and the male nurse sighed. He was accompanying the patient on his last journey to get institutionalized, who, sounding weary and rehearsed, said, "How many times do I have to remind you, Zelt? Take your fucking meds."

Just finished Reading Night by Elie Wiesel. It's a short book but really made me think. Every moment where Elie describes losing his faith feels like a gut punch. His entire world had revolved around his religion, and by the end, it’s like that foundation has been ripped out from under him—leaving nothing but emptiness, now bereft of devotion. That scene with Juliek and his violin is haunting—such a powerful moment of beauty and despair intertwined. It’s one of those literary images that just lingers in your mind, no matter how much time passes. SPOILER WARNING.

I need to be alone for a few minutes... Greek wrestling was known to the ancients as or the pale ("upright (or erect) wrestling"). Yep. Sounds about right. Also, by 4:47, it's a thirst trap at this point. The uploader knows what he's doing, and I'm here for it. You're doing God's work. I support you.

Never watched this. Now I'm curious.

Yeah, I think you might just need to take a break. You might need a set of fresh eyes to tackle your story.

You just said it. You're an amateur. I'm gonna give you some reality check alright, and don't be offended. You don't have millions of followers expecting your next book. You don't have a following harranguing you about your projects. You don't have an agent checking up on you about your progress. You don't have a publishing agency telling you to do this or do that. You have ALL the freedom in the world to write as you want it to be. The MINUTE you think your next book is your OPUS and that it should be perfect, all hell breaks loose. Because those non-existent expectations no one is really expecting from you since, as you've said, we're all amateur writers here, and yet you managed to bundle up and burden yourself for no reason by breaking your mind to do this and do that—you, sir, have just shot yourself in the foot. Because, as most amateur writers experience (depending on your skill level and experience to navigate through the trenches of writing), you'll either feel stuck or lose the motivation to write. That's why good writers often write for themselves. Because it detaches the mind away from all the expectations, self-fulfillment, and eventual downfall you'd get when writing. Try reading a book. If you get the itch to write because somehow a good book you're reading inspires you, then that's a start.

Definitely yes. So wri

Is that scene part of the plot—subplot, major plot? If not, then why focus on something that is trivial if it's not something deemed important?

Well, the authors you mentioned are rich, so, you know, writing with the times and what's popular can be befitting as a lucrative writing deal. Of course, if your writing is shitty, no one will respect you. But...you'll get richer if your book sells and you're white. 😂 *coughs* diversity issues in the publishing world favoring white authors *coughs*

Traditional publishing will always be the best. You have a publisher backing you up. They have the tools and means to stretch the reach of your book throughout different demographics. They have several editors to help your story. They have the $$$ to support whatever your book needs to pay off the New York Times to prop your book in their Best Seller lists. They basically have the money to market your story either way. Book tours. They're the ones who organize that. Flights. They'll shoulder everything. TV guestings. All you need to do is show up. As opposed to everything done with self-publishing, wherein you'd have to pay everything yourself when you self-publish. Self-publishing works IF and IF you already have a base audience. If, let's say, you're a traditionally published author with 2 million book sales who self-published a novel, YES, your story would be bought like hot pancakes. If you're an unknown writer trying to self-publish a novel, chances are unless your story and writing are exceptional (let's face it, not all mass-produced novels consumed by the market are exceptional) is Timely and What the Market Wants, then your book would be selling like pancakes. Like for example, if the mood now is for chesty vampires, write one and it'll sell. Sadly, that's just the reality. How many self-published books out there are, er, shit? A lot. Why, you ask? Cause they don't have the budget to hire proper editors. Just to enhance that point, Amazon was (I think they took it down) selling A.I. Chat GPT novels, which is to say, self-publishing as opposed to traditional publishing is a step-down, imo, because there's no real assurance or guarantee that what you're buying is of quality. In fact, it made traditional publishing seem more exclusive than it already was, considering any writer can self-publish a book, while being picked up by a traditional publisher means there's a semblance of quality in your writing.

It's time to throw in the towel when you have other stories coming forward and you're not thinking about the story you're about to walk out of. That's the time you know you'd have to step away. There was an alien space opera story I started (think of Star Trek or the Mass Effect series—that scale), and I didn't realize it was too large a world for me to write. So I stopped writing it. It would have taken me more than a decade in order to write a 6 or 8-novel anthology out of that. But yeah, I think of the characters from time to time. However, not enough for me to dust them off and take them out of hiding. There's also a story I wrote when I was 18. But I was such a shitty writer then that it didn't give them justice. So I scrapped it 80k+ words in. The emotional depth and maturity required to convey the story were out of my reach. Now, I think I could give them the justice they deserve. I just don't have the time yet to do so. Maybe in a few years or more. Who knows?

I sadly don't have Amazon Prime. I have Netflix though. I don't think it's on Netflix.

I wish this had a good English translation. Now my quest to find a good english sub has begun.

When you're writing with 1st person POV, you're writing with blinders on. You only have one path of sight, which is the 180' degree at which your character's line of sight can see. If your narrator looks straight ahead, those are the things you can describe. If N slightly angles their view to their left and right, it's the extent of how you can describe things. In no way can the narrator elaborate on the things he cannot see. If he does describe them, it would be things that had already happened in the past based on the extent of how he'd acquired such knowledge. For example, behind the narrator is a church. He could say: Martha, my gossipy neighbor, told me about a robbery at the Cathedral Square last week. He wouldn't have an idea that the same robbers that attempted to rob the church would be robbing the place again as he's walking through the town because it's literally behind him. So, putting words in the mouth of your narrator's son literally pertains to that emotion from the narrator's perspective because, as a rule with first-person POV, unless the narrator can read minds, the narrator wouldn't know other people's truths apart from their version of how he/she would explain things. UNLESS those around him have some one-on-one time and tell him whatever they're feeling. This leads to the question of: Are these characters telling him what they're really feeling, or are they just saying what the narrator wants to hear? Are they lying or being truthful? And yes, you can surmise, BASED on WHATEVER your character sees (eye roll, smirk, side eye). Because whatever explanation your narrator creates for the people around him is an opinion formed on his own. He can interpret the eye roll as an attempt to question authority, a typical teenage way of dismissing things, a disparaging remark on whatever he did, or he can describe it and not think about it while still putting it in the story because you want the readers to think he doesn't think about the eye roll, but in fact, it's an intricate emotion leading to his son not having respect, and it bothers him (SUBTEXT). It can be as simple and complex as that, with him interpreting one single gesture.

It's 1st person POV. Anything the narrator says is formed from the narrator's opinions. That's why 1st person POV is inherently unreliable because you're assuming that the narrator doesn't know everything. Unless the narrator explicitly states like, "[Son] said he didn't like his weekends with me," or indirectly, "His [Mother] pointed out how I kept buying the wrong cereal brand. Was I such a shitty father that my own son kept tattling on me?" As for this: I know he’s waiting for me to say something, to open up, How did the narrator know what the son was thinking? I don't know the son's age, but children tend to not be reliable conversationalists with their emotions since they are, after all, children. Unless the son spoke to the father outright, the reader would assume whatever the father was saying was directly coming from his own insights. If it went like this: I know he told his mother that I'm barely saying anything to open up, but… what’s the point? If it's a third-person POV, it could go like this: "[Son] hinted, through a series of eye gestures, eye rolls, and dismissive nods, when his mother had asked how his father was, that the entire weekend was inexplicably fraught with silence, a shrug, and his father excusing himself to lollygag at his beloved shed. [Son's] weekend was met with abject displeasure that his father still remembers the shit he did, one shitty thing at a time—as expected. And that got the teen frowning at his mother. Stealing your father's credit card to purchase concert tickets will surely elicit any parent's greatest arsenal, the silent treatment."

This is the start of the story, basically. After I finish book 3, what I wrote here may or may not change (just the details.) But yeah, this is literally the start of the story. I might continue that or restart another Cop story about Angels and Demons once I finish this. But yeah, that is after I finish this. lol.

Thanks for the support mate. Give me six months more to finish everything. I'm currently writing the last sequel to this trilogy. Fingers crossed it'd be up before July.

Those are very kind words.

I'm a hundred percent sure you'll fall in love with them. 😂 Also, the goal is to get the audience horned up and emotionally invested. So imagine yourself wanking off while crying. This is basically what this story is. I'm kidding. Haha. Anyway, I just need to write around 80k+ words to finally finish the last installment before I publish the rest of the series. It's still an uphill climb but it's getting there.

For My Niece, Who Always Believed that Romance Lives in the Eyes of The Reader— Carol Dianne CONTENTS: THE LONGEST THIRD DATE (PART 1) THE MEETCUTE THE BILLION DOLLAR KID MISTER TOLEDO MR. LONELY THE TINGE THE ENCOUNTER, A ONE NIGHT STAND? THE FIRST DATE - PARKS & RECREATION RELATIONSHIPS? ADVICE, ANYONE? THE SECOND DATE, SCENE 1 - UPDOWNDATING THE SECOND DATE, SCENE 2 - CUPSHUP DATE

Wait for the finished product months from now. 🤣 I assure you, you shall be surprised. Cause I changed a lot. Lol. And as for you, MISTER... Please finish your story now, because I want to read it.

I've been writing really slowly lately because I've been thinking about the current plot of my story. I've mostly been doing rewrites and edits. If I don't like the way I wrote a passage or segment, I'd rewrite it. I write long chapters, 5k minimum to 8k to 15k, so around 1k to 2k or writing daily sometimes would do (in the current festive month we're in). But normally I write around 5k+ if I'm really in the mood on the weekends. Then sometimes, if I'm in a writing slump, I'd take a month or two to decompress my thoughts. Then I'd be back to writing again. My brain can only handle one story at a time. I tend to be manic-obsessive in my stories; that's why. I'm currently in the last part of a three-part novel, so everything has to be cohesive. It's also the time for me to think of my next big project, plotting it in my head while I'm ahead. It's also the holidays, so I get to forgive myself if I don't write as often as I do. I promised I'd be back in the full swing of things come next year, January. I normally get ideas when I reread what I wrote. Also, having an AI read your story back to you helps a lot with sentence fragmenting: the arrangement of words and sentences with the way it's written—having your story read aloud helps you make sense if the phrasing SOUNDS right or nice, or if it's awkward. So if the goal is to read an entire chapter today and have it passed through an AI, sometimes I'd get ideas from that. It's time-consuming, yes, but imo it's worth it. Sometimes a sentence would make sense in your head, and when read aloud, it sounds completely nonsensical or plain awkward because you've arranged the words in a way that makes it sound constrained. There are so many enlightening moments where I've read a passage that didn't sit well with me and an AHA! moment just came through. For example, reading a section where my characters encounter an iguana, then suddenly asking myself, "Are iguanas even legal in NYC?" because they'll be bringing back that creature as a pet when they return to New York. I read up on it and found out they're illegal because they're an invasive species, which led me to literally change the creature into another lizard for the sake of cohesion. I've honestly had a TON of moments like that just by rereading my story, again, and again, and again. Writing is easier, tbh. But editing is a nightmare if you don't think about the fact that any changes, sensible changes you make, add to the value of your story.

Like with your question: Other than their actions and their words, how would YOU show what another character is thinking while being limited to the main character's overall point of view? By describing things, really. Context and subcontext are the keys to every situation. Subcontext is probably the most important part of storytelling you'd have to insert in everything you write. Without it, its like eating a sugarless cereal. The story would taste very bland. In-your-face writing is literally the opposite of fiction writing. It's like reading a news report. So to successfully hide whatever intention you have with your characters, you have to hide them in a subcontext that the readers will subtly understand. Some writers will directly hint at what the subcontext is (like in this sample), and some will hide it in their graves. This is a very short prompt I made to, hopefully (if it makes sense), give my answer to your question: SETTING: Context: William is showing his apparent 'fiance' to the guy he slept with last night. A fellow spy. Subcontext: Roger is doubting himself if William truly feels nothing about what they've shared together the night before. The CIA agent feels there's something more. He's also doubting if the fiance is his real fiance. “Well, this is my fiancé,” Damien said, smug as a cat dragging in a half-dead mouse. He turned to face Roger, his expression all polish and ice, heartless, soulless. Roger felt the contrarian demons stir inside him, their claws in his guts, pulling him toward what he shouldn’t feel, shouldn’t want—but did, and did deeply. He knew his feelings for Damien, and he knew Damien's duty. Knew, too, what he himself could give, which was less than nothing when the CIA had its iron hand on his leash. And yet, last night—goddamn it—last night had happened. He had let passion, real passion, take the wheel, knowing full well that today Damien would be boarding a plane back to London, back to MI6. Back to the interrogators, with their sharp questions and sharper eyes. If he wasn’t pitch-perfect, it would be his fault because he hadn’t said no to William last night Romantic, cold-effacing, heartless Brits. That’s what Damien was—wasn’t he? Or was he just a full-frontal asshole of an American to expect something? He wanted some version of romance, sure, but they were both intelligence officers. No room for distractions. No room for...this. And yet. Damien looked at him now, the look of someone who had already filed everything away in a locked box. Roger saw it. He saw the purple shadows pooling around his shoulders like bruises. Whatever connection they’d shared last night was gone, replaced by duty and steel. And now, as if the whole moment weren’t absurd enough, Damien was introducing him to this spineless twig of a man—this toothpick masquerading as a person—who was, apparently, William’s fiancé. The words floated, as pompous and self-satisfied as Damien’s tone. Roger swallowed down everything he couldn’t say and told himself, not for the first time, that what happened last night was for nothing. Or was it really for nothing? Because for certain, he'll be thinking of William till the end of his days. Fuck it, he thought. I have to stop his flight, was his convincing tirade in his mind. I'll blow up the plane if I have to.