Any insecurities you authors have about your novels?

Lord_Drakonus

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It can be anything, i.e., not having decent grammar, bad word choice, and etc.

I for sure have a lot, but my most prominent insecurity of my novel is amateurish writing.
So I'm a bit curious if other authors have any.
 

LostLibrarian

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For me, honestly, my writing style.

While I have (some) confidence in my plot structrue and ideas, my writing style always feels to passive and matter of fact to me. Not all chapters, but both dialogue and world descriptions often feel like a struggle. Given my slow writing, I have few "filler/expanding chapters" and I still sometimes have problems to hit the 1.5k I try to go for with my chapters. On the other hand I see other stories (e.g. some chinese webnovels I read) who write 5 chapters with 2k each and nothing happened at all. But I still felt entertained, because the writing flows and takes me with it.

So yeah... I understand that this is also something that comes with the time and a lot of rewrites, but... there are still days or chapters that really bother me...
 

DubstheDuke

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Yes. Everything. As all authors are.

I would say that among authors, I have less insecurities than most because I am doing what I enjoy as opposed to what others want, but I am insecure about a lot of things.

1. My overall writing flow. I understand that I am not a genius when it comes to description and immersement, so I instead focus more on character development, plot, and worldbuilding. However, when I read other novels I often look at it like 'man these words are just sucking me in', whereas when I read my own writing I rarely ever get that feeling.
2. Plot holes. This is a big one, as I always am trying to avoid them, but it can be very hard especially when you introduce more and more characters places and concepts to your stories. Sometimes I forget something and it ends up creating a discrepancy somewhere.
3. Repetitiveness. I try hard to make my stories fresh and new, but sometimes I can't help but think that all my characters and plotlines are the same but in slightly different ways.

I would say these are my biggest worries as a writer, but even so, I still work hard and do a lot of thinking when I do my writing, and for the most part I have fun so even if it isn't perfect, it's still good enough to enjoy and not something that I will ever be ashamed of.
 

Saileri

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My writing was always overwhelming, be it documents, essays, everyday chatting or messages. When someone texts me, I usually end up replying with at least 2-3 sentences. The same thing goes for my novel. I'm trying to not overwhelm my readers, but I know it's not really working as I would want. I don't mind it when reading myself, but I know most people don't like too many words :blob_nom:
 

atgongumerki

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Isn't amateurish writing the norm for beginners?
You cannot expect to be perfect from the start!

For me, it is that nobody understands what is going on in my chapters.
 

lazyredragon

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I fear what I always fear, my hubris "the hardware is there but the software isn't installed," yeah...be it work or whatever it doesn't have 'soul'
 

GhostlyArtz

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Oh, all of the insecurities.

My biggest worries are: Does it come across as trying to hard? Is it too 'edgey' (since the story I'm writing was an idea I came up with when I was... 13-ish?)? Did I rush this scene? Did I make this scene take too long? What about this transition? Are the characters developing? Oh god, why aren't the characters working how they were originally supposed to work?

Should I add this scene? Oh wait, this scene is for later- should I hint at this scene? Am I being too obvious? Am I not being obvious enough? Does it make sense? I think it makes sense, but what do I know, I already know everything. Oh look, is there an inconsistency? Does the character make sense? Please tell me they aren't coming out like a mary sue D:

Etc etc. All in a day's work haha. There's always some niggling doubt, but it's okay because I just tell myself it is a first draft so of course everything is wrong and I just need feedback to iron out those details on the rewrite. I just need to be happy that I've gotten as far as I have and not worry about those things until later.
 

JayDirex

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OMG I FEEL ATTACKED (yes to all insecurities). and may i offer one more insecurity: Plateauing

i have been writing for a few years now, and my new fear is if my writing maybe hit a wall, and won't evolve/improve.

But whatever, even if it has that can be overcome. Besides readers still read what WE ALL WRITE, so meh
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Moonpearl

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I worry that my writing style is boring. I worry that I describe things so ineffectively that my readers' eyes will glaze over and they'll be unable to imagine anything, that the experience of reading it will be drier than an encyclopedia, and that I'll never succeed at the art because all I'll ever achieve is words on a page, meaning nothing to anyone.

I also worry that my characters are all flat and lifeless, or that they're all copies of each other.

It looks like these are common insecurities, though, so I'll share the two things I've learned about these along the way.

First: Another writer once let me in on a secret. That is that every writer thinks that their own writing is boring. The reason for that is that we already know what's happening next - not just in the plot, but in every sentence - so nothing is surprising or fresh to us even when we first put it down on the page.
As writers, we can next to never experience what it is to be a reader of our own work.

Second (which I learned myself): We see or imagine similarities in our characters that readers never do.
I found this out years ago, when I confided in the friend I play RPGs with that all my characters felt the same. She was utterly confused, insisted that they weren't, and then said that it was her characters that were all completely the same. Which utterly confused me.

We've been playing with each other for years and you'd think we'd know each other's cliche character types, but we spent several hours hotly debating how the other person's characters were completely different, and every time one of us compared two of our own characters that we felt were identical, the other person would be like, "That's such a reach? They've got nothing in common."

In short... It's impossible to accurately judge your work as a writer. But that means that many of your writing's flaws are probably just in your head.
 

CupcakeNinja

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It can be anything, i.e., not having decent grammar, bad word choice, and etc.

I for sure have a lot, but my most prominent insecurity of my novel is amateurish writing.
So I'm a bit curious if other authors have any.
No everything i write is basically the epitome of perfection. Honestly my only gripe is that im TOO good. Its honestly quite boring, being such a godly writer. There are no challenges, no obstacles. Only pure, unadultered greatness.

....Why must everything i touch turn to gold?

--Cupcake, suffering from success.
 

CautiousTitan

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This is an interesting thread that I will follow with great interest.

As for any insecurities? I'm not sure. I always try to improve my writing every day since I'm an ambitious person. I always seek out more information and chronicle my research for later. Having a drive to consistently improve, to be better than the status quo, is what helps keeps away insecurities.

At the end of the day, if you are 1% better than you were yesterday, you've spent the day wisely. The quickest way to drive away any insecurities is to seek more knowledge.
 

CupcakeNinja

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Yes. Everything. As all authors are.

I would say that among authors, I have less insecurities than most because I am doing what I enjoy as opposed to what others want, but I am insecure about a lot of things.

1. My overall writing flow. I understand that I am not a genius when it comes to description and immersement, so I instead focus more on character development, plot, and worldbuilding. However, when I read other novels I often look at it like 'man these words are just sucking me in', whereas when I read my own writing I rarely ever get that feeling.
2. Plot holes. This is a big one, as I always am trying to avoid them, but it can be very hard especially when you introduce more and more characters places and concepts to your stories. Sometimes I forget something and it ends up creating a discrepancy somewhere.
3. Repetitiveness. I try hard to make my stories fresh and new, but sometimes I can't help but think that all my characters and plotlines are the same but in slightly different ways.

I would say these are my biggest worries as a writer, but even so, I still work hard and do a lot of thinking when I do my writing, and for the most part I have fun so even if it isn't perfect, it's still good enough to enjoy and not something that I will ever be ashamed of.
Speak for yourself, pleb.

For me, honestly, my writing style.

While I have (some) confidence in my plot structrue and ideas, my writing style always feels to passive and matter of fact to me. Not all chapters, but both dialogue and world descriptions often feel like a struggle. Given my slow writing, I have few "filler/expanding chapters" and I still sometimes have problems to hit the 1.5k I try to go for with my chapters. On the other hand I see other stories (e.g. some chinese webnovels I read) who write 5 chapters with 2k each and nothing happened at all. But I still felt entertained, because the writing flows and takes me with it.

So yeah... I understand that this is also something that comes with the time and a lot of rewrites, but... there are still days or chapters that really bother me...
I don't really understand that honestly. Why? Because theres no...excuse for it? Like i dont wanna sound rude, so lemme explain: you have thousands of works to take examples from.

Dont like how your writing style is? Take from others then. Incorporate their styles into your own.

Thats what i always do. I mean take a look at any of my works and you'll notice a difference between the styles in all of them.


I dont understand why writers never do thst. Never look to their own favorite authors as examples and imitate them. I dont find styles hard to copy. Perhaps the only challenge is using the right vocabulary since some authors use words larger or more complex wording. And so you would have to as well.
 

LostLibrarian

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I dont find styles hard to copy.
Good for you. To me, it's different. English isn't my mother tongue and trying to simply copy other styles not only slows my writing even more, it also makes it feel all the more unnatural, taking any motivation out of the process. And while I work on that, it isn't as easy for me. In exchange, I don't struggle at all with stuff, other people struggle with.
 

Lord_Drakonus

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No everything i write is basically the epitome of perfection. Honestly my only gripe is that im TOO good. Its honestly quite boring, being such a godly writer. There are no challenges, no obstacles. Only pure, unadultered greatness.

....Why must everything i touch turn to gold?

--Cupcake, suffering from success.

Says the guy who don't capitalize the word "I".

( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
 

Lord_Drakonus

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Good for you. To me, it's different. English isn't my mother tongue and trying to simply copy other styles not only slows my writing even more, it also makes it feel all the more unnatural, taking any motivation out of the process. And while I work on that, it isn't as easy for me. In exchange, I don't struggle at all with stuff, other people struggle with.

Same, having the ability to speak other languages than English definitely hinders the grammar and word choice. Even for bilingual people, it's hard enough for them to manage both languages.

English is my third language, and so it's a bit hard to find the right words in English without thinking about the words from the other languages.

I've read a news article somewhere that said that bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual people, have a hard time on mastering every language that they speak. Since there's always one language that dominates, and it's usually their mother language.
 
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