Tootfinder

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 30 — the day I skipped
30. Share some good things about how your work went this month!
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I am burnt out, but hey, no time like the Present Continuous.
I have approached the 100th page of translation for #DarkScience aka

#WritersCoffeeClub
6. Do you make use of unconventional punctuation?
7. Talk about a character from another's work that's stuck with you.
8. How do you keep yourself motivated?
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6. Not much. I love my em dashes tho.
7. I dunno. At some point it was Motoko Kusanagi. Sylvanas Windrunner. Before Blizzard butchered her in WoW.
Oh, and April Ryan and …

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov 28: In what ways do you see yourself reflected in your own work?
In one novel I've written, I based my main character on what I imagine I would have been like if not for the trauma of my childhood. He came out as very successful, but also extremely arrogant and entitled — not a likeable person.

#WritersCoffeeClub November
3. How much of your writing time is actively spent putting words on the page?
4. What's the funniest thing you've ever written?
5. Is the idea of a work requiring a takeaway 'moral' old-fashioned?
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3. Much less than mulling it over. 5%? Probably still too generous.
I can cycle ideas for years.
4. Wish I could r…

#WritersCoffeeClub 26 Oct
How culturally diverse do your casts tend to be?
In my fantasy stories, the Great Place is a very complex theocracy; the Coast has a broadly communistic peasantry with superstructures of a capitalist urban merchant class and a autocratic aristocracy; the Western Clans are a tribal society which is broadly communist; the Wild Herd are a puritanical mat…

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec
6. How has your past writing shaped your present writing?
7. What future writing goals are you working towards with your present work?
8. How does your work compare to the earliest work in your genre?
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6. Typically, the more you write, the better you write. 10k hours and all that.
Beyond that, hard to say.
7. Reaching audience to s…

#WritersCoffeeClub 24 Nov
How do you make sure a reader has room to process and absorb ideas?
I think it's perfectly OK to include things in stories that 90% of readers won't pick up on -- because the delight of discovery for the 10% of readers who do is worth it, I think.
In some of my writing I use a lot of subtle intertextual references -- which readers who kn…

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec
3. Do genre conventions provide an essential framework, or stifle original storytelling?
4. What would you like to see explored in prompts for this hashtag game?
5. What’s a no-longer popular trend in writing you’d like to see make a comeback?
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3. Both. And neither. A convention is a tool. With enough experience you begin to see when breakin…

#WritersCoffeeClub Oct-Nov
31. In terms of writing, how did this month go for you?
1. What do you need to amplify in your work?
2. What makes character growth believable for you?
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31. As in writing "writing", as bad as usual. That probably won't change in the next months. Or years
In terms of my ongoing translation, pretty well. Steadily growin…

#WritersCoffeeClub December 2025
1. From where did the inspiration for your current WIP come?
2. What do you dislike as reader and thus avoid in your own work?
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Postponing Nov30 as I'm answering while in transit.
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1. It didn't.
2. A number of things, hard to describe in the moment. It's a kneejerk. Two categories - a) bad taste, and b) not…

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov
27. Do you prefer writing serialised, sequential, or standalone works? Why?
28. In what ways do you see yourself reflected in your own work?
29. What do you need to simplify in your work?
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27. Sequental. I never wrote long enough to give it justice but it's what I strive for. Standalones lack space for long stories, serialized requires d…

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov
24. How do you make sure a reader has room to process and absorb ideas?
25. What are some tips you can share to avoid 'clunky' phrasing?
26. How do you keep yourself sharp?
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24. It is out of my scope but for complex things it is a good idea. Create coffee breaks. Crack a joke. Make characters mull ideas for a while.
25. Know whe…

#WritersCoffeeClub
28. Have you ever edited another's work? Was it harder than editing your own?
29. Do you include elements of the horror genre in your(non-horror) work?
30. Do you tend to include epilogues?
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28. Yes.
Not really.
29. No.
Terror, existential dread, despair... yes. Horror... no.
30. I used to when I was a beginner. Now I usu…

#WritersCoffeeClub
22-23-24. I gave a gnawing deja vu. I have answered these before.
25. Does 'destiny' have a rôle in modern fiction?
26. How culturally diverse do your casts tend to be?
27. Recommend a book that had an impact on your prose.
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25. It is now a trivial plot device. As such, it — or its denial/deconstruction — begs for originality. Warcr…

#WritersCoffeeClub
21. What are some preconceptions about writers you'd like to see challenged?
22. What has been the biggest change to your style since you started out?
23. What's your niche?
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Answers from the community are already good, I'll cover additional things.
21. That they will write anything a bystander asks.
"Oh, you're a …

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov
18. Do you include real-world quotations in your work?
19. What's something (even if fantastical!) which could improve your process?
20. How did you find your writerly voice?
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18. I did once. Now my settings are mostly fictional so real-world quotes are immersion-breaking and rarely appropriate.
It's not so hard to reforge them.…

#WritersCoffeeClub Nov
16. How much work goes into naming your characters?
17. What rôle does race play in your work?
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16. Much. It's part of the research, and I love my research.
Generators are a good starting point but I always polish and iterate on it to ensure it fits my vision. I like to sift through old dictionaries (as in Arabic, Ye Olde English/Welsh/S…

#WritersCoffeeClub
18. Are there writing ‘traditions’ which ought to be preserved?
19. If you were to teach a writing course, what would be the most important lesson?
20. If you write instalments (issues, chapters, etc) what’s the average length of one instalment?
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18. I dunno. Are there?
19. Any writing "rule" can be broken. But extraordinary choic…

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec
15. What’s a non-literary artistic tradition which inspires you?
16. Do you have one format you write in, or many?
17. Give a shout-out to a resource or site you think more writers should know.
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15. Just one?
Stand-up comedy as a successor of court jesters.
Not the most important, merely the first that comes to mind.
16. I hav…

#WritersCoffeeClub
19. How do you keep track of dates and events in a WIP?
20. What rôle does death (or undeath!) play in your work?
21. What is your take on the adverb debate?
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19. Any WIP that needs dates and events is probably already big enough to void memorization.
I went all the way from stickies to txt files to wikis to, eventually, Campfire. I love m…

#WritersCoffeeClub
14. How objective or authoratative do you strive for your narration to be?
15. Does the bulk of your research come before starting a work? During? Or not at all?!
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14. Define 'objective'.
I have trouble channeling some characters. My preferences override my sense of the work. I see this as a flaw. Char *subjectivities* contribute to the …

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec
12. Who is a writer whose life inspires you?
13. What have you written for another writer?
14. Share how you tackle a first round of revisions.
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12. At this point, no idea. I prefer keeping lives of authors and works of authors on separate shelves. Specifically, lives of authors share space with lives of people. Lives of other people do not …

#WritersCoffeeClub
16. How much does your working vocabulary change between works?
17. What is the significance of a work's dedication?
18. Do you tend to incorporate supernatural elements in your work?
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16. Not much, for better or worse. I adapt to the setting, of f course, but beyond that my vocabulary is a part of my writing style.
17. Such dedication.…

#WritersCoffeeClub
13. Name the oldest work to have inspired you.
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13. Hard to say. Lots of people here mention Gilgamesh or some other ancient epic. I know these mostly by name. It is manageable to relate to despite the alien temporal and cultural context but I'm not 'inspired' by it. It's research.
Inspiring things probably don't go as much back a…

#WritersCoffeeClub Dec
9. Do you reuse certain words as refrain or motif, or avoid repetition altogether?
10. Is it ethical to base characters on real people? What is the limit?
11. How do you keep track of plots and subplots?
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9. I would love to, intentionally, but I'm not there (yet?). I've seen good examples of it though, so I have rough understanding o…

#WritersCoffeeClub
10. What have you recently learned which will have a big impact on your work?
11. How accessible is your work?
12. How can writers ensure the focus is on the work and not the writer? Or should they?
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10. That's a hard question.
I fear I've reached a plateau where nothing freshly learned can do that.
11. It consists of words.

#WritersCoffeeClub
9. How does the means of publication change a work? print? digital? audiobook? something else?
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9. I do only digital so my answers are limited. I wouldn't change my preexisting work to fit the publishing format (I am naive enough to believe it fits most formats I need 'as is'). But creating a new work (or recreating it) would get a lot from le…