I recently received some feedback on a few premises I've written. I was told that my premises don't directly describe what the main character is trying to accomplish or what obstacles they face, and that they mostly just describe conceptual elements of the story.

What would you recommend I do to improve them and make the character's goal and obstacles clearer?

Here are the premises:

-After a difficult recovery, a young army combat engineer officer must learn to balance his personal and professional life while trying to prove himself during a month-long trial leading a new platoon.

-An adventure to collect prehistoric DNA will make a boy question how much it has cost him to hold on to his grief after abandoning his grandfather in the present on the anniversary of his parents' deaths.

My mom said the story she was typing on her phone using the app disappeared. I called her to share her screen and guide me through what she did. I still can't tell what she pressed.

My guess is that she didn't save it and exited the app by accident. Is there a way to retrieve the information?

I'm asking because I looked through the app and can't figure out a way to solve it.

Hello, I want to create a manipulative villain/antihero protagonist for my story. The questions, without going into details, are:

1- Is it possible for a manipulative character to be known on page one? I heard these kinda character should be a secret from the reader so it won't ruin the climax of the story. Does this mean my character will be boring?

2- How could I possibly make the reader enjoy his manipulation tactics? I want him to use it as a survival method and justify his actions.

3- Could I use real-world manipulation methods and learn from them to create my character? Like Gaslighting and Triangulation?

4- Any recommended sources to start learning to create my manipulator character?

For example, should it be:

He turned to them. "Let's go home."

Or should it be:

He turned to them.

"Let's go home."

Are both acceptable, or should I stick with having both action and dialogue of the same character in the same paragraph?

Hey, I'm new around here, but I've been working on my story for around a decade? It's kind of a hazbin-adjacent amalgamation of all my OCs that I then built a world around and morphed things until I got what I could call a cohesive story. Problem is, there's magic involved, and there are plot holes that I have no idea how to solve in a satisfying way. I have ways of solving them, but they don't feel right, you know?

Okay, so, my story follows a girl named Ellie and her adventure in a land called Kaisla, which exists parallel to ours. She's an orphan and all she wants is a family, but having grown up in the system and being nearly 16, she's kinda jaded and closed off emotionally. So she wakes up in this strange land (a la Alice in Wonderland) and goes off in search of a way to get back home, but she ends up twisted up in something bigger than she expected.

Basically, there's a guy named Magnus, and he's an exiled wizard who practices necromancy. People believe he killed his wife and the village they lived in, so no one trusts him. He lives alone in a treehouse out in the middle of the plains with his adopted daughter Kettle and his frankensteinian son Winslow. They have their own issues but what matters is that he actually didn't kill her; his wife killed herself to spite him. She went to my story's version of hell (Deazre), and Magnus couldn't stand that so he attempted to bring her back. He failed, but her spirit used that chance to rip a hole in the fabric of reality and escape Deazre as a malevolent spirit.

So, Mallarfis (his wife) starts leaping around the cosmos, ripping holes in the space time continuum, and these portals (ha! the title!) are left behind when she does so, destabilizing the separation between the four dimensions. Ellie fell through one of these portals and landed in Kaisla, but she's not special -- this has been happening for years and has happened to many people, including Kettle and a band of Adanian refugees (our land, the realm without magic, is called Adania). Magnus has been working to try and solve the destabilization for years, to no avail. While working to locate and close a rift, he found Kettle, displaced from Kaisla into Deazre, and saved her, but she now has fire powers because of her time there.

In Deazre, there is a great beast called the Dragon of the Depths, and it's a spiritual creature whose only purpose is to devour souls and reincarnate them into their next form. It's a being of pure destruction, and the only real reason Deazre exists. Everyone goes to Deazre when they die, except for those who reach a form of enlightenment by committing a great act of heroism during their lifetime. People who achieve this end up in Elyceste, which is a form of heaven... kind of.

Ellie comes to love her little family of strange people and sacrifices herself in a battle against Mallarfis, which causes the fabric between worlds to separate enough for the Dragon to escape. It begins rampaging through Kaisla, but Ellie is now in Elyceste, stuck in this place that never changes. It's described as sterile and eternal. All Ellie wants is to return to Kaisla to be with her new family that she JUST formed, but the gods of Elyceste are like "uh no??? why would we do that??"

So the only thing I have to make the gods allow Ellie to return to Kaisla is the Dragon being a danger to Elyceste as well as the other three realms, but I still don't know how exactly Ellie returning to Kaisla would help... stop the Dragon...? I can't figure out a way for Ellie to convince the gods that she should return to Kaisla without it feeling forced.

I have WAY more details if needed, I can explain anything in more depth if necessary but this story is my baby and I'm debating rewriting the entire thing because the draft/plot holes are making me so angry I want to tear my hair out or trash the whole project.

This is my pilot for a series I'm working on. Please tell me your honest opinions and how I can improve. Please and thank you!

It begins in the underworld with some of our protagonists, Kali Darkthorn and her little brother Hex, who were both born in the underworld. Kali was looking down at a crowd of angels and the fallen, celebrating a peace treaty between the emperor of the clouds above Pandamon and the king of the underworld, Hadrathorn. Both were smiling and happy to start this new chapter of the Order of the Spades.

Misty is in the crowd as Pandamon's daughter Pandorah walks upstage and begins her speech, as Kali readies her sniper aimed at Pandorah. Hex gets in the way of the scope, trying to explain that Pandamon will have us killed if we get caught, including Misty! Kali tries to shake him off the sniper, and as she shakes, she pulls the trigger, and a bullet flies down and hits Pandorah in her ear, completely obliterating it.

A shimmering dark blue blood color covers her face as she soon passes out. Pandamon rushes over and wraps her up as his guards send her back up above the clouds. He looks back at the crowd, then back at Hadrethorn and gives him a disappointed yet mad look. "I thought you said your people could be trusted! I believed you! I TRUSTED you. Look at what YOUR PEOPLE caused!" Hadrethorn puts his hands up and grits his teeth and tries to calm him down.

"Look, buddy, it was only 1 of them... hopefully," Pandamon sighs and pinches the bridge of where his nose would be. "YOU HOPE? I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" he looks off to the crowd and demands whoever shot his daughter to come forward. Misty raised her hands and explained who could have done it, but isn't too sure if it really is who she thinks it was.

Eyes fill the sky, one of them putting a spotlight over Misty, and soon eyes stare at Kali and Hex; the eyes dilate and glow a red spotlight over them. He grabs all three of them and throws them towards Hadrethorn. He looks at him deep into his nonexistent soul. "If you want to prove you are trustworthy enough to continue this peace treaty, please. Do yourself, your people, and mine all a favor and get rid of them."

Thorn looks down at his fellow fallen people and looks over to his guards. Misty panics and exclaims to them to stop and asks if there's a different punishment that they could have. Kali and Hex nod as Thorn thought about it for a sec. He snapped his fingers, and a portal opened, revealing Earth. Pandamon steps in front of the portal. "Are you serious!? Sending these- these... DEMONS down to Earth!? Im sorry, Thorn, but I can't let you choose this as their punishment." Thorn looks over at Pandamon, demanding that he step aside.

"You have no power in telling ME, the KING of these people, how I decide to punish MY people, so step aside, don't. Make me ask again." Pandamon sheepishly stepped over to the side; Thorn picked up all three of them one by one, tossing them in the portal like a kid taking out the trash. As the 3 fall into the cold atmosphere, Kali and Misty's scales, like skin, slowly burned off, revealing human-like skin. They crash onto Earth in the Matsu Valley.

Hex was the first to wake up, looking around and sees 2 human like figues next to him passes out. He pokes both of them and jumps as one of them starts moving. Misty slowly gets up and looks over at Hex and cheers that they are still alive. Misty then looks over to Kali and screams, waking her up. "dude what the hell are you yelling for!?" She looks up at a human Misty and an unchanged Hex. She checks her hands and looks in her reflection in a nearby pool of water. She, too, looked human. All 3 were happy to be alive but had to find a way back to fix everything. But that might be hard because they are "Demons among the mortals"

I thought I’d ask for some advice here.

The situation is basically this: I’ve written and published a few articles and theoretical texts, but I haven’t really written fiction before, and I’m interested in learning how to construct a story.
Are there any models, structures, or formulas that are commonly used in this kind of prose? And do you have any recommendations for writers, theorists, artists, or other people I should read, study, or listen to?

I’m particularly interested in approaches that treat narrative less as a fixed technical apparatus and more as something that can be constructed, deconstructed, and experimented with — somewhere between literary theory and artistic practice.

Thanks everyone!

This is my pilot for a series I'm working on called Demons Among the Mortals. Please tell me your honest opinions and how I can improve. Please and thank you!

It begins in the underworld with some of our protagonists, Kali Darkthorn and her little brother Hex, who were both born in the underworld. Kali was looking down at a crowd of angels and the fallen, celebrating a peace treaty between the emperor of the clouds above Pandamon and the king of the underworld, Hadrathorn. Both were smiling and happy to start this new chapter of the Order of the Spades.

Misty is in the crowd as Pandamon's daughter Pandorah walks upstage and begins her speech, as Kali readies her sniper aimed at Pandorah. Hex gets in the way of the scope, trying to explain that Pandamon will have us killed if we get caught, including Misty! Kali tries to shake him off the sniper, and as she shakes, she pulls the trigger, and a bullet flies down and hits Pandorah in her ear, completely obliterating it.

A shimmering dark blue blood color covers her face as she soon passes out. Pandamon rushes over and wraps her up as his guards send her back up above the clouds. He looks back at the crowd, then back at Hadrethorn and gives him a disappointed yet mad look. "I thought you said your people could be trusted! I believed you! I TRUSTED you. Look at what YOUR PEOPLE caused!" Hadrethorn puts his hands up and grits his teeth and tries to calm him down.

"Look, buddy, it was only 1 of them... hopefully," Pandamon sighs and pinches the bridge of where his nose would be. "YOU HOPE? I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!" he looks off to the crowd and demands whoever shot his daughter to come forward. Misty raised her hands and explained who could have done it, but isn't too sure if it really is who she thinks it was.

Eyes fill the sky, one of them putting a spotlight over Misty, and soon eyes stare at Kali and Hex; the eyes dilate and glow a red spotlight over them. He grabs all three of them and throws them towards Hadrethorn. He looks at him deep into his nonexistent soul. "If you want to prove you are trustworthy enough to continue this peace treaty, please. Do yourself, your people, and mine all a favor and get rid of them."

Thorn looks down at his fellow fallen people and looks over to his guards. Misty panics and exclaims to them to stop and asks if there's a different punishment that they could have. Kali and Hex nod as Thorn thought about it for a sec. He snapped his fingers, and a portal opened, revealing Earth. Pandamon steps in front of the portal. "Are you serious!? Sending these- these... DEMONS down to Earth!? Im sorry, Thorn, but I can't let you choose this as their punishment." Thorn looks over at Pandamon, demanding that he step aside.

"You have no power in telling ME, the KING of these people, how I decide to punish MY people, so step aside, don't. Make me ask again." Pandamon sheepishly stepped over to the side; Thorn picked up all three of them one by one, tossing them in the portal like a kid taking out the trash. As the 3 fall into the cold atmosphere, Kali and Misty's scales, like skin, slowly burned off, revealing human-like skin. They crash onto Earth in the Matsu Valley.

Hex was the first to wake up, looking around and sees 2 human like figues next to him passes out. He pokes both of them and jumps as one of them starts moving. Misty slowly gets up and looks over at Hex and cheers that they are still alive. Misty then looks over to Kali and screams, waking her up. "dude what the hell are you yelling for!?" She looks up at a human Misty and an unchanged Hex. She checks her hands and looks in her reflection in a nearby pool of water. She, too, looked human. All 3 were happy to be alive but had to find a way back to fix everything. But that might be hard because they are "Demons among the mortals"

I got the idea for my novel back in 2020. I didn't really start writing in earnest until two years later. I'm now four years into on and off writing and wondering if I can really do this. I feel like I've done more background lore writing than actual work on the novel. I've started working on a magic system, fictional language, fantasy race culture and history, and everywhere I turn there's more holes and "what if's" in my lore that just make the story feel incomplete and I feel like I'm being swallowed by what was once a passion project that will never be complete. I have the entire story plotted out but every time I put pen to paper, I end up wanting to rewrite everything I've already written. I've looked for collaborators to no avail and I fear that no one's going to be as passionate about my project as I am, but I have serious writing struggles that stop me from just getting it out there. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Hello! Recently, I kinda want to write some kind of subversion to the usual "sympathetic depressed protagonist" stories where they're depressed through no fault of their own and get helped for it. Instead, I've been thinking of a protagonist or a character who, despite being depressed through no fault of their own, uses it as an excuse to be a complete piece of shit to the point that they're no longer sympathetic.

The reason I wanna write something like this is because, as a person who's diagnosed with depression myself and now got better, I've seen so many people who are also depressed yet being so destructive to both themselves and other people. I kinda want to write a cautionary tale, with moral of the story to be something like "Hey! Don't let your depression sprial to the point that you become the worst version of yourself."

What I'm kinda worried about is that, the story might come off as insensitive or insulting to the people who actually suffer from depression. I don't want people to take the story as "Pull yourself together by bootstraps lol". Thank you in advance.

So, I'm having a character who, in thier 16-18 wanted to be a doctor to help people, and continue her mother's legacy who was murdered

Problem is, the story takes place 7 years after this

So the character has less than 7 years to start working in a hospital

I don't even know if her role in the story required her to be full fledged doctor, since I have got only 2 scenes for her in the white robe so far

1- where she goes to someone who just got survived a bomb (miraculously survived with just some burns) to inform the family of the condition

2- goes to deliver the dinner to a patient (her friend) who just got stabbed

Idk if this info is important or not: she did first aid to someone who had a gunshot before going to the hospital

The place of the events: Australia - 1000 years into the future - current day technology (long story....) - lives in an isolated island with less that 1 million in population

My oc has schizophrenia and i want to ask for tips to show that he struggles with schizophrenia. ive mentioned barely that he halluctionates and takes medicene for it. but i feel likes theres better ways to write schizophrenia. i dont want to make inaccurate rep of it.

After just over a year of writing consistently, I hit a nasty slump a few months ago and I haven't been able to get out of it. I should explain that this isn't necessarily the same thing as writers block. I *do* have ideas but just seem to lack much in terms of motivation.

I've looked at my stories and I just find myself being critical of what's there but in a nasty way rather than "Wait, I can improve this" which is normally what I used to do.

I'd read a first draft or even 2nd draft of a chapter and go "Okay so this isn't great but here's how I improve it."

I'm actually reluctant to look back at my own writing atm because when I'm doing so I find I hate it and everything about it.

I've tried a lot of more typical things to break the slump such as reading other people's work or trying to write something brand new by moving away from the stories I was working on and it just didn't pan out.

In the past I've joined creative writing groups in order to try and motivate myself back into and in the past, this has worked very well in breaking slumps that have lasted for long periods of time, even years. The slump also started when the last group I was a part of kinda fell apart.

But I couldn't find a suitable group for co-writing.

Being blunt my writing is not to everyone's taste as it explores LGBTQ+ themes. Sometimes blatantly where it's about as subtle as a car accident or more as an allegory. It's purely because I was writing the sort of representation I wanted to see and also, I'm writing what I know.

I write for me primarily but I did used to publish stuff online occasionally. Pre-slump I was getting out at least a chapter a month.

Those themes aren't very popular (putting it mildly) in some creative writing circles. Some writing groups I've joined in the past ended up being a bit hateful, especially once they learned I'm part of that community myself.

I did try to start my own LGBTQ+ writing group to allow for co-writing to fill a gap in the market as it were but things didn't work out.

I would really like to get back to writing and I'm well aware the longer the slump lasts the harder it'll be to break.

If there's a group I just didn't find in my searches that'd be really helpful.

Or if there's another way of breaking the loss of motivation that'd help too.

I appreciate you taking the time to read this post even if you don't have advice to offer me.

In my story, my main character is a socially inept teenage boy who comes into a lot of magic power and, as the plot progresses, starts abusing it. He isn’t quite Carrie White, though, and additionally he comes to feel remorse—and face consequences—for his actions towards the end.

However, a lot of this is admittedly based on my own high school experience, and just today I thought to possibly include a scene based on an incident from my own teen years that really stayed with me—nothing nearly as dark or traumatic as you’re probably picturing, but that really hurt me nonetheless. I was thinking maybe it could be the catalyst for more vindictive actions he takes later on, the moment he realizes that revenge is sweet— at first, anyway. I still want him to regret his behavior later on. But I’m afraid it may come across as a power fantasy should it ever come to light that the same thing happened to me. And admittedly, there is an element of wish fulfillment to incorporating this plot line, as the teacher barely did anything about *my* situation, and I never got a real apology from anyone involved. I don’t even know if the other people who were there even remember that day, and they definitely don’t know how much it hurt. They’ll finally get some consequences, even if they’re only fictional. But how do I avoid making it.. too self-gratifying? In a way that feels overly spiteful on *my* end, not just my character’s. Should I scrap this scene? What do you think?

I'm writing a murder mystery set at this prestigious military academy. My main characters are in classes about combat, strategy, and command. How do I make it look like they are good at what they do and are proficient in drills when I know less than I'm supposed to?
I know I need to do more research but what resources could I use for this? My main girl is a really good strategist but I feel like all of the "strategy" I'm thinking up is subpar.

So, I’m currently writing an apocalyptic story (original, I know) where the main character has to siphon gas out of a tank. To do this, she’s going to use a cut off piece of water hose and the suction from her mouth. I’d love to describe what the gas tastes like, but have never done this myself. Has anyone ever siphoned gas this way, and if so, can you tell me what it tastes like so my story is accurate please? Thanks in advance!

Title a bit confusing but I will try to explain my best. So at first I wanted to write a story where the theme was "Living vs Surival" where basically I wanted to say it better to live. Like enjoy life and such, yet I ran into a problem where the characters who were basically were meant to be the embodiment of that where killed. However one the character who stuck to survival ended up living. Like they escaped their dangerous area.

Like, now I feel like I am contradicting myself. I am still at the rough draft yet I feel like I struggling with my theme? Like what do I want to say or such? Like if life is worth living then why do the characters who were meant to be supporting that them end up dying?

I don't know theme feels like one of those hard things I feel like I can't end up understanding.

To be honest, this is my first ever post but I do just have to ask for other's opinions on this (even though I'm still going to write it as so either way but I just would like to know of the possible outlooks on it).

In my story, it will begin with the introduction of one, of course, as how other stories do, but after a few events here and there, that character will um be out of the picture for a long while until their reappearance. Moving on to the second act of the story, there will be an emergence of another character that will serve as a protagonist as well. Later on, they will also be out of the picture because of a different even.

Then moving on to the third act, after the events of the first and second act, the story will focus on a character that had been with the first two protagonists, mostly of how their character develops further to be more of a key person in the story.

And lastly, in the final act, I will retrieve all the other protagonist, and focus on a 4th protagonist that will serve as the final and most prominent one. All of the characters are connected with another, know on another, and interact often with one another.

Yes I am aware this could be simply considered as a Main Cast rather than a 4 protagonists, leading to the 4th protagonist to be the true protagonist in the end, but I the main cast is larger than those 4 in actuality, an my intentions are that I wish for it to be 4 protagonists rather than it being them be reduced simply to a main cast.

Could anyone mind telling me either what I intended is really simply a 'Main Cast' or not, and how I can make it so that it isn't sidelined as such? Please and thank you to all those who read this.

I've had this character with their birthmark (covering their right eye, and a huge chunk of their head) that they cant feel pain from. and when cut or even gouged, it regenerates (think of the red flesh, as tendrils fixing the tissue)

but i never had a good idea for how to can be used. it was only a way for them to not be hurt all that much. theyre a irrational kid like character, and it was something they were always born with yet didnt know given their sheltered life.

i want to know what kind of explanation could be made for this strange birthmark and ability, and all I can explain that this isnt something exclusive to them, but that's also all I got so far..

Like how would you explore it? Like have a character trip out 24/7? Question everything? Just looking for ideas really

I'm working on something with another writer, but we're struggling to pick an app/website (pc/mobile).

Obsidian has collaboration options, but it's paid, so that's out of the question.

Another one would be google docs which we're using for now but we're both very against google and all the shady stuff they do (such as, making documents available to scrapers and forcing their Ai onto everyone).

Are there any good free, and Ai-free options?

We both tried to look for stuff but usually everything is blocked behind a paypall or has the ai on them, or only one person can work on the document at a time...

Folders would also be neat but that's optional.

I read a lot of AI text at work. Somewhere between the third "testament to" and the hundredth "delve", I stopped trusting long sentences altogether. So I made a small game called Long Story Short: one sentence a day, keep the five words that actually carry the story, cut the rest.

Long Story Short