JNC Writing Support Group
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
It was just a few words from someone I don't even know—I can't believe I am this fragile!
Hardly fragile. You worked hard and it didn’t work out this time. But you seem to be bouncing back.
We sometimes don’t give ourselves time to grieve (and it is grief) and assess/resolve things internally. I’ve been amazed by how well so many people have taken not progressing this round.
I’m sure this community is helping which makes me happy.
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I am back at home finally- now I can upload my entry (that got rejected) and would love to do so.
The only question is: ...Where?
I never did anything like this before and am in dire need of feedback, so if anyone has any tips, please, tell me! -
@AkayaKaito People on the forums have been following the instructions that the community came up with in https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7938/jnc-writing-group-feedback-thread/, looks like they recommend creating a google doc of it.
I also know people have been sharing their work on the JNC Discord in the
#Share your failed entriesthread under the#creative-writingchannel, if you're looking for a possibly different review population. They also seem to be mostly using google docs over there.I've never really used google docs so I'm not sure what settings you'd want to use but I'm assuming that anonymizing your google-related information is important, and possibly enabling commenting.
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@AkayaKaito
@Hylebos
I hope we get a nice feedback/viewing community here. I have tried posting other places, but most comments are from readers pov and not really insight (no discussion of areas for improvement) from other writers. If you just want your stuff to be seen, the best for me has been Royalroad, but Archive of our own has much more reader feedback with only a fraction of the views, wattpad probably splits the difference but is easier to edit in. On the plus side, everyone that has posted comments on all three sites have been kind and complementary (but that may be more indicative of the Tearmoon crowd than anything!). I probably polished my stuff for a year in Wattpad before I moved it to the other sites. -
Sorry I've been more or less MIA lately. After the announcement, I wound up having a stress-induced heart attack that resulted in being hospitalized twice. I've finally recovered somewhat physically and mentally, so I should be more active from now on. Gonna post my story in a minute--when I inquired about feedback, I was told the judge left none whatsoever. If anyone can help me figure out why I was rejected, I would be eternally grateful. Long story short, I'm severely disabled and have been denied benefits repeatedly for over ten years now. If I can't make ends meet by writing I basically have nowhere left to turn.
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Hi there,
Just posting something to keep the thread alive :)
With about 6 weeks until the next big announcement things have quietened down in here.
Hopefully once stories that progress to the next round (and which will get sample chapters put up for votes) are announced, things will pick up as we select our favourites and support those who don’t advance.
In the meantime the group is still open for chatting about stories and the review thread is also active with stories from many of people from this group if you want to pop over for a look.
It seems strange to say after waiting so long May 31is just around the corner and AnimeExpo in July marches closer.
Good luck and strong nerves everyone still alive in the competition. Who knows it probably won’t be long until it all starts again.
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@Damon-Cavalchini, this is just a polite suggestion so of course feel free to ignore it, but don't you think it would be better to keep discussions specifically about the competition in the competition thread and leave this thread as a more general writers' support group?
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Sorry - too many threads got me confused. Did you mean the one in the News section or is there another one?
I’m happy to delete the post above and move it somewhere else more appropriate.
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@Damon-Cavalchini I think it's fine either way. To me, it feels weird to post in the "submissions open" thread since they've long since closed. But if you did, you may get the attention of some contest entrants who aren't following the writing support thread. So it's up to you which audience you want to discuss things with.
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I think may have thought of an actual ending for my story—not a good enough because I couldn't think of anything else ending, but an actual ending ending. Something very natural that just pulls it all together. I still have a lot of writing to do to get there—but now I know where I am going!
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Woohoo. Endings can either be the easiest or hardest part to write. I actually find it hard to develop something without a rough ‘flag in the sand’ to aim at. I don’t always reach it or it often moves but I find it really hard to start without one being there.
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Yeah, me too. I tend to come up with the beginning and the ending of a story, and then work out how to get there as I write. That said, various character revolts usually happen along the way, so the story often turns out much differently from what I originally planned.
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@Alfaerin @Damon-Cavalchini
Even if I wrote that way, it wasn’t really and option for the contest. I had nothing going in and I knew I could never meet the deadline if didn't just start writing.
Of course, I didn't make it past the first round, but I did write half of my first original story with characters I adore—and now I just might have an ending that goes well with rest of the story. Now, I just need to not be lazy and maybe I will have something nice for next year’s contest! -
So, if my story story’s beginning starts as a villainess novel, but eventually makes its way down the redemption route— is it too on the nose (not to mention spoilery) for “Revenge and Redemption” to be in the title? It’s just that the beginning and other parts are a bit dark—so I want folks that like redemption arcs to hang it for the sweet stuff (and I don't want to piss of the folks who are into revenge porn—nahh—screw them! So mean! They should all be chopped into pieces and fed to wolves!!!). I could go with something more subtle like “Darkness and Light”. The idea would be for the volume to be divided into 2 books (”Darkness and Light” or “Revenge and Redemption”).
(oh, and the chopped up into pieces thing was a joke—yeah, it's not funny if you have to explain it—but it’s also not funny if folks think you are a psycho!)
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@jazzyjeoff I haven’t read your story yet, so I’m not sure about this. But maybe I’d ask how strongly you foreshadow (or want to foreshadow) the eventual redemption arc in the text of your work before the plot actually reaches that point.
If the seeds of your protagonist’s eventual redemption are in plain sight and reasonably recognizable as such in the earlier, darker portions of the story, then you probably don’t need to worry about the title coming across as spoiler-y. But if she experiences a “bolt from the blue” that causes her to seek or earn her redemption, then you probably don’t want to highlight that the moment is coming quite so clearly. At least, not if it’s supposed to be a surprise to the reader as it is to the protagonist.
Another way to consider it might be, what kind of language is likely to appear in the hypothetical marketing blurb for your work? Whatever description might sensibly appear on the back cover or store page for your light novel might be the threshold to consider for your title - it’d be odd for the title to be more of a spoiler than the synopsis. If you haven’t already put much thought into a short description or synopsis (for general readers, instead of contest judges or peer-reviewers), this might not be helpful. But if you’ve already put something together in that direction, even just as a mock-up, that might give you a better benchmark for your title.
Also also, I’m not sure I’d count on your title alone to convince people to stick around, depending on how dark the earlier portions of your story tends to be. I suspect that I’m not alone in finishing a book and feeling the title was misleading. So if I’m getting bogged down in the dark parts with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel, I might conclude that the promised “redemption” was either false or unlikely to be satisfying to my tastes and drop the story anyway. But that’s my personal perspective as someone who sometimes has a lower tolerance for darker stories than many.
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@Dawnaxis said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@jazzyjeoff I haven’t read your story yet, so I’m not sure about this. But maybe I’d ask how strongly you foreshadow (or want to foreshadow) the eventual redemption arc in the text of your work before the plot actually reaches that point.
If the seeds of your protagonist’s eventual redemption are in plain sight and reasonably recognizable as such in the earlier, darker portions of the story, then you probably don’t need to worry about the title coming across as spoiler-y. But if she experiences a “bolt from the blue” that causes her to seek or earn her redemption, then you probably don’t want to highlight that the moment is coming quite so clearly. At least, not if it’s supposed to be a surprise to the reader as it is to the protagonist.
Another way to consider it might be, what kind of language is likely to appear in the hypothetical marketing blurb for your work? Whatever description might sensibly appear on the back cover or store page for your light novel might be the threshold to consider for your title - it’d be odd for the title to be more of a spoiler than the synopsis. If you haven’t already put much thought into a short description or synopsis (for general readers, instead of contest judges or peer-reviewers), this might not be helpful. But if you’ve already put something together in that direction, even just as a mock-up, that might give you a better benchmark for your title.
Also also, I’m not sure I’d count on your title alone to convince people to stick around, depending on how dark the earlier portions of your story tends to be. I suspect that I’m not alone in finishing a book and feeling the title was misleading. So if I’m getting bogged down in the dark parts with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel, I might conclude that the promised “redemption” was either false or unlikely to be satisfying to my tastes and drop the story anyway. But that’s my personal perspective as someone who sometimes has a lower tolerance for darker stories than many.
Here is a link, if you are interested/have time.
So, it’s a villainess returns to her youth for revenge thing—but here’s the hook: when the villainess returns to her ten-year-old body, her ten-year-old soul is still there! It turns out that the villainess at age 10 was a sweet kid who just wants to love and be loved by the family her villainess soul wants to destroy. They share the same body, but neither soul dominates throughout the story—so, much of the tension comes from which soul will change the other the most.
There are other children in the story that have better ends in this new timeline—and I have made an effort to play them mostly straight—they are children and think like children, play like children and are sweet and mean and stupid and malable like children (as opposed to many LN’s where ten-year-old’s are all brilliant and have the social maturity of adults).
The darkest part is mostly the first chapter: scary prison, scary execution, scary resurrection. I really like the idea of playing the first chapter straight, since it adds substance to everything that follows—I would hate to tone it down too much.
There is nothing hopeful until chapter 2.(I am completely reworking and extending the ending, btw).
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How is everyone going? It's been over a month since we got the results back from the first round, I hope those like me who did not pass are still pursuing writing.
I was pretty down when I didn't make it, so I posted my book on Webnovel in hopes of serializing with the website. I managed to get a contract and have been posting since 1st April.
Since then my book has blown up, and in its 1st two weeks of going premium (locked chapters), it has climbed up the ranks to top #30 out of 10,000 books.
As far as monetary value, I won't go into detail on here out of respect for J-Novel.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is just because you failed somewhere else, doesn't mean you won't succeed elsewhere. My feedback was that my book was slow paced and not necessarily interesting.
I took that as meaning it may not be suitable for the short format Light Novels that JNC publishes and it turns out I was right.
Feel free to reach out if you'd like to chat, or want some more details.
Regards,
Leeroy. -
@LeeroyCGNA
Congratulations for you (and some very hopeful news for the rest of us!) -
@LeeroyCGNA Talk about a 180. Congratulations! But what about the name of your work? I am curious now.
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@GhostMechanic it's Major League System. You can find it here: https://www.webnovel.com/book/major-league-system_29191847408467705
Thanks :)
