JNC Writing Support Group
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Thanks. I’ll go looking for these. Fun is always a great place to start writing from.
I haven’t actually looked at places like Royal Road before so there is a danger I am about to go down a very long rabbit hole :)
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@Damon-Cavalchini said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Thanks. I’ll go looking for these. Fun is always a great place to start writing from.
I haven’t actually looked at places like Royal Road before so there is a danger I am about to go down a very long rabbit hole :)
@jazzyjeoff’s Tearmoon fics were such a treat in between volumes that I suggested that they enter the writing contest. I’m so glad they did cause it means means I have the opportunity to read a full length story from them😊
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Well, i have started the second book of my series, my opening is workable. Aside from that, I have maybe 100 pieces of a two-thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with 20-50 pieces from other random puzzles thrown in just for laughs.
I really want to feel like I have made some progress by the time they announce the first round results, or I am afraid that I will fall into a total funk when I don’t advance. (I have to keep saying “when I don’t advance” since I know that not advancing is the most probable outcome—but my emotions are not tracking with my brain).
Anyway, how is everyone else’s stuff going?
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@jazzyjeoff Nothing concrete. I started two documents, one for short stories which will include bits I wanted to write but ran out of time for in my entry. I have four or five titles for the short stories written down but not any actual content.
The other is just called 'Scraps'. It's more of a digital notepad/reference sheet with ideas I didn't want to forget: character names, words I'd like to use (shrewd, quavered, etc.), and things like that.
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@jazzyjeoff I'm still writing another work that is contracted elsewhere. Not sure if I should continue where my first volume finished for this competition just yet. I need to finish persona 3 reload first and then I'll have some extra time lol.
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Anyway, how is everyone else’s stuff going?
I finished my contest submission in a bit of a whirlwind and while I have clear ideas on how to improve it I'm holding off on revisiting it till March.
To some degree I feel my biggest issue was that I ran out of time to do cross-manuscript revision, some of my characters have different tones in different chapters because I was still figuring them out over the months I wrote things, and I fear that sticks out, for example. I also feel like there are big opportunities to smooth out the beginning of the book, I might have gone a bit heavy with exposition as I didn't know how much I'd need to convey about the setting and err'd on the side of saying too much.
Letting it settle and fall out of my mind is an important step before revisiting it, I think. I also want to productionize various python scripts I wrote during the contest, really just clean things up.
I also came up with an idea for a second series I'd like to write for the next contest. At the moment it's a 10/10 series title and a few scattered ideas but I need to put more work to find some story beats that will resonate and hook people in.
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@jazzyjeoff Don't forget, JNC has said it's very likely they'll hold another contest next year. Even if you don't advance this time, you can always rework the story with feedback and submit it again next year :)
As for my writing progress, I finished two short stories for volume one, and started my volume two, which is sitting around 12k words at the moment. Palworld and Granblue Fantasy Relink have been eating into my writing time in a major way, ahaha.
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Great discussion. I have two ideas I’ve been working on outside of work and waiting for the inevitable sad news in March.
One is a standalone sequel (about 3,000 words in) to one of my submissions for this round while the other is an isekai that simply wouldn’t let me ignore it any longer. I’ll probably sub the sequel for the next round depending on what (if any) feedback I get.
The tone on the Isekai is wrong at the moment (or not as engaging as I’d like so far) but it is still in the ugly draft phase and the plot is coming together outside of my own ignorance (what exactly is the best way to optimise the running of an adventurer’s guild?).
I very want my extremely put upon office worker to actually use their admin skills rather than OP superpowers to drive the plot when they aren’t fighting monsters or helping the hero face the Demon Lord.
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@Alfaerin Well, I hope they give some sort of input from J-Novel, even if I don't advance. Looking at the contest description, they only promise input for those that make it past the first round. It's an awful lot of work to get a thank you but, you didn't make it note. I know that their end has to be pretty tough-- with close to 500 entries and figuring out something constructive but not totally discouraging for each one would have to be sort of draining.
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@jazzyjeoff @Alfaerin - It would be nice to get some feedback for those who drop out in round one but they’ve been clear it isn’t likely to happen.
Whatever happens, I’m glad I subbed and if it isn’t for them (unless they say never submit again and block me), I’ll be back for the next time they run this.
With almost 500 entries, anything more than “sorry, try again time” is probably way too much of an ask. Plus most publishers don’t necessarily give feedback on manuscripts outside of “we’ve chosen not to progress with your work at this time”.
Not that this has happened to me :)
Sometimes you get feedback but it isn’t the norm.
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@Damon-Cavalchini said in JNC Writing Support Group:
Sometimes you get feedback but it isn’t the norm.
I look forward to ChatGPT-5 (6? 7?), it will be able to read whole novels in a few seconds and then give feedback as good as a professional editor. "Hey, it looks like you're writing a novel..."
As for my own efforts, I'm currently working on 3 things:
- Adding a map and some illustrations (however did people who can't draw manage before AI?) solely for my own satisfaction to the novel I submitted. That's complete now except for the cover, probably going to need to brush up my rusty Blender skills for some of that.
- Carrying on with the other volumes of the novel, not that I'll win a prize for the first volume, but both of my beta readers want to know what happens next.
- Seeing if I can make my harebrained idea of combining a sci-fi/fantasy story set 200 million years in the future with an isekai somehow work.
The two story threads in that last one are currently kind of like oil and water, one thread is a deadly serious third-person (well, third-something!) story about someone placed under house arrest for her heretical views about evolution, and the other thread is a lightheared first-person isekai. I'm trying the alternating chapters approach right now, but it doesn't feel like it's working so I've clearly got a long way to go. I really don't want to drop the isekai part, though, because I'm very pleased with how it's started off, so if one part has to go it will have to be the serious one, I guess.
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@Angelus - It sounds great but the variation between might be hard to manage. Keep going with it and once you’ve finished, then tease it apart if needed.
That way you have skeletons of a story to work on.
I haven’t tried AI as an editor and I’m not sure how that would even work to be honest. I mean, how would recognise stylistic tricks that may not clean grammar but which highlight character?
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@Damon-Cavalchini said in JNC Writing Support Group:
I haven’t tried AI as an editor and I’m not sure how that would even work to be honest.
I'm about to find out! I've just discovered that Nvidia released a chatbot yesterday that runs locally on almost all RTX 30/40 graphics cards and that you can train on your own documents, so I'm downloading that now (only 35GB zipped!) and I'll see what it makes of my novel.
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@Damon-Cavalchini said in JNC Writing Support Group:
I haven’t tried AI as an editor
I wouldn't suggest it... AI tools are designed to be confidently incorrect. I wouldn't really suggest them if you can't verify their results through a secondary method.
Something like ProWritingAid is gonna be much more useful. It has tips from experts in writing. It can make your writing much more professional and detect bad habits. It also has detailed explanations about pretty much anything it suggests, so it's easier to understand why it suggests changing something. It's easily the best tool I've worked with. The only thing is that it helps improve writing style, but that's only half the battle with writing. What you write is also just as important.
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@Parity, ProWritingAid is AI-powered too, but at least (I assume) it's been trained for very specific tasks rather than a general-purpose chatbot. I guess I might consider it if it wasn't cloud-based.
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@Angelus It's AI powered in the same way that 1990's games had AI... In that, they use that term purely for marketing purposes. Behind the scene's, it's just rules and algorithms.
Generative AI, like Chat GPT, are operating on completely different principles. And they tend to lie, which is why you can't trust them.
ProWritingAid is seriously good, though. It has pretty much all the information you need to write in a professional style. It detects passive voice, grammatical issues, and stylistic rules. It can generate reports on sentence length, pacing, dialogue tags, and sentence structure. Like, you can use it to detect if you are overusing a certain sentence structure in comparison to published writing. It's crazy useful as an analysis tool.
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@Parity, I have my own analysis tools but they're pretty limited - word and phrase usage and proximity plus readability metrics, but I can see how something like ProWritingAid would be useful.
Certainly more useful than the Nvidia AI I've just been trying for a laugh. I asked it if it thought my competition entry could be considered a light novel, and it said that there weren't enough typical light novel elements such as harems and magical abilities in there for it to be sure!
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@Angelus said in JNC Writing Support Group …it said that there weren't enough typical light novel elements such as harems and magical abilities in there for it to be sure!
Oh no! I forget the harem as well. I’ll have to fix that next time.
Thanks for all the comments on AI tools everyone. It is a space I’ve spent no time in from a writing perspective.
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How are things going? It’s funny, I was sort of reluctant to join this thread because its name “JNC Writing Support Group” sounds so needy. But it turns out that I am so needy.
Someone talk to me!🤪 -
@jazzyjeoff I'm buried in original light novel competition entries. For every good one there are 5 bad ones....
At least there have been a couple pretty damn good ones, so I'm hopeful the winners are gonna be good.
