IDK Who Needs To Hear This But (I Certainly Did) : A Chapter Is Not Required To Be 2000-4000 Words In

IDK who needs to hear this but (I certainly did) : A chapter is not required to be 2000-4000 words in length (or whatever 'reasonable' amount it is in your head.) A chapter ends where you feel comfortable ending it. You make your own rules!

(shaking my 14-year-old self) I was so mean to you but I love you, I love you, love you

Writing a synopsis in my head: entire book explained in three neat paragraphs, no missing pieces, no fluff, exceptional writing.

Sitting down at the computer: there was a girl, she got angry about some things, a few people died about it. There was a cat.

reject booktok culture. go to the library and get a weird little novel you’ve never heard of in your life and read it all in 2 days like god intended.

First/Last Line Tag!!!!

More tags! More tags! @sabewebb gave me this one

rules: make a new post and share the first and last line(s) you wrote

Characters:

Valerie-

"But I'm always on sweeping duty!"

"Guts!"

Oakley-

"Goodness! What happened?"

"Please, Valerie. Just let me think."

Connor-

"I don't like it here. I want to go home."

"Yeah."

Steven-

"Hi, I'm Steven. Don't call me Steve."

"I'm gonna hurl."

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Last Lines I Wrote (general):

Oh, God. The girl. Was she dead? Connor couldn't tell. He smelled blood, a lot of it. He tasted it. He bit her. Like some feral animal! Like some kind of monster. She's breathing. That's good, right? Alarick howled. Go back. But she's dying! What can you do? You can't help her. You hurt her. You are your mother's monster after all.

Some fun Hidnight trivia, as a treat:

The girl Connor bites in this scene is named Florence and she's a character in a spin-off short story set in the same universe. Florence was originally a completely separate story I dreamed up one night as I struggled to fall asleep then later decided to put in the same world. However, its inciting incident (Florence being bitten) didn't align with the lore of Hidnight which is that only certain werewolves can transmit lycanthropy via bite (Connor becomes one of them). I then (independently) realized that I was protecting Connor from consequences too much so I let him actually fuck up and hurt people and suddenly Florence fit in the same universe!

I made this note back in May:

I keep coming up with spin-off stories set in the same world as Hidnight except no I don't because the inciting incidents fundamentally conflict with the important world logic previously established in the core story.

Coming up with these spin-offs has helped me cement the themes of the original story so it's not all bad.

just had the thought “i don’t even know what im doing, i feel like im just making this all up” about writing and like ….. yeah. making it up is kind of what writers do. chill.