Tomas’s Comments (group member since May 15, 2018)

Tomas’s comments from the Support for Indie Authors group.

One more from David Gaughran:
"Writers tend to think everything they write is crap or everything they write is amazing, often holding both opinions simultaneously (and without contradiction)."

I'd agree with M.L. In addition, 'Desolation of Dormere' feels closer to your specific work as it mentions the place where it happens (if I understand it correctly) while Desolation's Reach feels less specific.

Another possible idea when it comes to avatars: heraldry. If you plan to only write books from a single fictional world (or write other works under a different pen name) then maybe some kind of coat of arms typical for that world could be a decent avatar. Imagine JK Rowling having the Hogwarts banner as a profile picture, it could be fitting and just below photo on how I see the relevancy scale (sorry for lack of better example).

Edit: also, thanks for the virtual hug :)

Not sure if it belongs here but now that I am thinking in a bit more detail how I want my WIP to end (specifically, the second half of #3), I realized that it'll not be easy to avoid what happened in Paolini's Inheritance where it takes something 10% of the book to close off all the (back)story threads. It's not a bad thing to see questions answered and matters resolved but when I look at the book's comments and question, some people obviously don't feel like going through all of it when the threat is ended.

I'll most likely think about what could be pre-prepared (what the hell did I just write?) during the build-up so it takes less space to close off. I'll try to make it fit the way I write: having some borders that define the direction but letting the flow decide the specific course. It's one of the main reasons I started early work on #3 despite being just one (hopefully) revision short of beta for #1...

And of course, I am glad I joined you and can see and learn from what the others share about their writing process.

Felix wrote: "What's wrong with an avatar - especially if it's relevant?"
In my personal opinion: nothing, IF it's relevant. Irrelevant avatar might be worse than no picture at all.

Even though I am not writing something like that, I think that I'd turn red completely if I even mentioned to my family that among the 700-ish pages of my fantasy is one intimate scene (even though it fades out after foreplay). I guess that 'coming out' with such genre must be doubly as hard...

Glad I could help

Well, I am hiking a lot in my spare time. In fact, probably 90%+ photos of me are done when hiking, so it'd be hard to find something else. On the other hand, it's what I love to do so in a way it would fit who and what I am. Especially when I often recharge my inspiration when walking the hills.
I might as well keep my current profile picture when I upgrade from reader to writer if I was too lazy to look for something newer. It's not like my average look would change apart from my monthly shaving cycles.

Personally, from reader's perspective, I'd say it's about the completeness of the profile. I'd not mind if it's not a professional photo, as long as it stays "on topic" = shows the author, not something totally random.

I admit that as a metalhead, I named a few (four or five maybe) chapters of my WIP after a metal song (not always to the letter). Without spoilers, I can say that the prologue is named "Lifetime at War" after a Sabaton song of the same name and has two of the main characters reflect on what happened in the past 200-ish years and thus introduce the story and the different factions.

One of the best lines and one that is spot on in my case is from the movie 'Inception'
"What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere."
I spent 12 years with an idea of a story and never believed I'd finish it, let alone start writing it. Yet, I could not get rid of it...

Well, in case of correctly formatted ebook, ToC is not necessary as the reader will process it from header tags (sorry if I am not using the terminology correctly).

As for my own expectations... it feels right if longer books have chapter names. Yet, I admit it's just a feeling and there's no big reason for it. As other said, it can work as a set-up or a way to entice the reader further.

Maybe using the name to hint whether the next chapter will be action-packed or calmer is something that could help a reader to decide if he wants to continue - in cases when it's unavoidable to interrupt the reading (in my case, that would be needed to get off the bus/train soon).

I just looked at my settings, I have auto updates on and still, the four books that have an update available were not doing it automatically. I guess the changes were really minor, maybe typo fixes or something like that. I manually updated two of them just to see if it works (and how fast) even though I am not likely to re-read them in the next half-year at least.

Maybe I am a bit old school, but I just have a timeline (with chapter numbers) drawn by colored pens on a paper. Most of my other notes are either on paper, in simple *.txt files or (most cases) both (never enough backups).

I have excel file where I have characters with their simple list of physical traits and skills.

Christina wrote: "Any time I've updated a book, I've asked them to push the new version to my Kindle so I can review the changes. I've never had an issue with the wrong version showing up. It is possible that it too..."
About this, when I look in "manage my content and devices" and look at the list of books I bought, some have a button like "update available" or something, so you probably need to update manually.

I hope mods won't mind me bringing this thread back from the dead...
I was going through Amazon newsletters (and deleting most of them as they contained duplicates and often books I have already noted in my offline file) and was surprised to find a $1,99 book ($2,41 or so with 21% VAT in case of my country). Considering the math I posted above, it felt really strange to see it was not just the first book in a series (for which I'd understand it) but for the whole series...

Hello everyone!
Both as a reader and an aspiring writer, I thought about chapter names. To use them or not, and why? When reading, I admit I don't give them much attention, until I want to return to a specific scene, especially in a longer book, when finding it by chapter number could be a long shot.

When writing, I found it really helpful. It makes going back to a specific point of the story much easier if the chapter names are done right. It makes it easier when I want to mention something that happened in the past and thus want to have a look at the mentioned moment. Truth be told, I can't imagine I'd work on my to-be trilogy without named chapters.

Yet, they are a double-edged blade. Bad choice of name could be an unintended spoiler or set up false expectations. Chapter naming is a pain for me (who generally struggles with naming in general) and it was definitely not easy to (so far) name 60 chapters in #1, 76 in #2 and some more in the barely-started draft of #3.

So, I wanted to ask what experience you have, if naming chapters can help you or not, and for how long story do you think they start to be actually useful (I, personally, doubt it for "one-day-reads"). And if you name chapters, do you use the name only, or both name and number?

There are moments/lines I really like in my WIP but can't share most of them without context and possibly spoilers. I'm not sure if it belongs here thematically, but I decided to share one part.

Context: After the finale of to-be book two of the trilogy, several characters meet to discuss the fate of those who were captured in the fighting, majority of them evil magicians of varying skill level. Each of those present has their own opinion why they should (or not) be executed. The MC who led the efforts to get rid of them, despite being against death sentence personally, shares his thoughts on why he agrees with the execution of those who are most likely unable to reform.
Note that the characters are elves and "half of their life" is a four-digit number.

"If we lock them up for half of their life or more, what hope is there for them to reform? What hope is there that they won't be even more dangerous after? What hope is there that they'll see a motivation to reform instead of bitterness when they are released?
Keeping them together in the prison, even if separated enough, would mean that sooner or later, we'll let caged monsters back into the world, at least some of them hungry for revenge. Death sentence feels like better step for safety of our lands in the long term, if it's used in extreme situations like this."

I think that good point might be to look at what's common in your genre (which you did not specify). In my case (fantasy), longer gaps for longer books are something that happens. If your genre is favoring shorter books released with shorter breaks, then it might be the way to go.

I am still in progress with book one (beta soon) but when I was between drafts, I worked on book two already and at his point, I am touching the early book three. This approach has one advantage: you can check continuity and even make changes that have overlaps between the books.

Then, I might not be an example to follow. I started in 2015 and the books are to be around 700 pages each, by my best guess. So in my case, it's definitely going to be a break around one year in length if everything goes well now (the beginning was the hardest, learning everything myself on the go).