W Writer: Blog

I've just submitted chapter 5, so it should be up soon.

Its a much longer chapter than any of the others, at just over 9000 words and I had thought about splitting it into two chapters. However as I had a few comments about chapter 4 being too short and that it shouldn't have ended in the middle of the action like it did, I decided to leave chapter 5 as it was. I just don't think I'll be writing many more chapters of this length.

I've had a bit of feedback about how confusing the story can be to tell the difference between the protagonist's thoughts and what he says aloud, because I use double quotation marks for both. I can certainly see how this can be the case.

Some people suggested using italics for his thoughts, while others suggested putting them in single quotation marks. I did think about going with the single quotation marks. But after doing some reading about this, I'm now not so sure as according to all the gramar guides that I've read, single quotation marks should be used as I thought they were, "which is for 'a quote' inside another quote".

Some of the writing guides suggest using italics, but a number of them also warn against using them if there is going to be a lot of thoughts. As they can be tiring to read. Which is something that I find when I'm reading other stories with a lot of italics in them.

From the writing and grammar guides that I've read, it seems that with thoughts, they don't have to be inside quotation marks but if they are going to be, then the double quotation marks are correct.

So I have a number of options on what to do about this:
1. Leave them as they are, but try to make some changes to make it more clear that they are internal thoughts and not said aloud.
2. Use italics, which I'm certainly willing to do, but personaly don't really like.
3. Remove the direct thoughts and change it so that they are described instead.
4. Go with the single quotation marks. Even if they aren't grammatically correct, if they make the story easier to read, then maybe its the best thing to do.
5. Some other idea.

Any thoughts on this subject are welcome.

For now, I'm going to do some more reading on the subject, and I hope to do something to improve this situation before I post the next chapter. So it looks like reposts of the current 4 chapters will come before the next chapter.

I've just submitted Chapter 4, so it should be up soon.

I've found this chapter the hardest one so far to get into any sort of state that I'm happy with. This is the third rewrite of it that I've done. I'm still not that happy with it and it could do with some more work. But I now feel that I need to post it and move on or its going to drain me too much, if I keep working on the same chapter for much longer. I expect to come back to it later, but as with any other changes that I do after I've posted a chapter, the actual story won't change.

One of the things that I've found hard with this chapter, is to make it not feel too forced. Originally the events that happen in this chapter were going to happen a few chapters later on. But I felt that the pace of the story was too slow, so rearranged things a bit. However the first version of this chapter felt way too quick or forced. I hope the rewrites have improved it. I would like to hear other people's opinion on if it feels too quick or forced.

Another thing that changed during these rewrites, was the length of the chapter. In the end I decided to split it up into two chapters. So the chapter 4 that I've submitted is really the first part of what used to be chapter 4. The second part will now be chapter 5, which should be posted in a couple of days.

Finally a bit of news, is that I've decided to put my other story (which was my main one) on hold for now and focus on this one.

I already knew it, but the scores that this story have got, have told me that I really need to focus on improving my technical writing skills. So by focusing on only one story, I hope that I can spend more time on improving that area.

I've resubmitted chapter 2, it should be up soon.

This is a small rewrite. It's roughly 1000 words longer than the old version but the story doesn't change, so you won't miss anyting by not rereading it. It just fixes some errors, rephrases some parts and hopefully has some better descriptions in places.

I'm going to look at chapter 1 next. Then I might do a bit more work on chapter 2, before focusing on chapter 3. So it might be a couple of days before chapter 3 is posted.

Chapter 2 is now up. Another chapter that is a bit shorter than the ones I normally write, but a improvement on chapter 1 at least (in size wise).

Thank you to the readers who have sent feedback and the encouragementt, its all been positive so far.

If you have any helpfull suggestions to make the story better, please write to me. If you just want to say the story sucks then there is no point, but if you can point out why it sucks or if you have helpfull suggestions then I'd like to hear them.