this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026

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✍️ Writing

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A community for writers, like poems, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, long books, all those sorts of things, to discuss writing approaches and what's new in the writing world, and to help each other with writing.

Rules for now:

1. Try to be constructive and nice. When discussing approaches or giving feedback to excerpts, please try to be constructive and to maintain a positive vibe. For example, don't just vaguely say something is bad but try to list and explain downsides, and if you can, also find some upsides. However, this is not to say that you need to pretend you liked something or that you need to hide or embellish what you disliked.

2. Mention own work for purpose and not mainly for promo: Feel free to post asking for feedback on excerpts or worldbuilding advice, but please don't make posts purely for self promo like a released book. If you offer professional services like editing, this is not the community to openly advertise them either. (Mentioning your occupation on the side is okay.) Don't link your excerpts via your website when asking for advice, but e.g. Google Docs or similar is okay. Don't post entire manuscripts, focus on more manageable excerpts for people to give feedback on.

3. What happens in feedback or critique requests posts stays in these posts: Basically, if you encounter someone you gave feedback to on their work in their post, try not to quote and argue against them based on their concrete writing elsewhere in other discussions unless invited. (As an example, if they discuss why they generally enjoy outlining novels, don't quote their excerpts to them to try to prove why their outlining is bad for them as a singled out person.) This is so that people aren't afraid to post things for critique.

4. All writing approaches are valid. If someone prefers outlining over pantsing for example, it's okay to discuss up- and downsides but don't tell someone that their approach is somehow objectively worse. All approaches are on some level subjective anyway.

5. No LLM advocacy. Due to the many ethical problems of current LLM technology, we neither allow LLM-written posts in this community nor do we think discussing the use of LLMs for writing texts in any positive manner is appropriate. Don’t feed people’s works into commercial LLM services either.

6. Solarpunk rules still apply. The general rules of the solarpunk instance of course still apply.

Click here to visit our solarpunk writing resource wiki!

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Writing Club - July 2026 (slrpnk.net)

submitted 3 months ago by ellie@slrpnk.net to c/writing@slrpnk.net

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Welcome to the 25th writing club update! 😊

I hope you've all found some nice cozy spots in the shade, to do some creative thinking or writing. Or perhaps some of you have been taking a break, there's nothing wrong with that either!

The usual info about how this writing club update works:

To anyone stumbling upon this post and wondering about the rules – there really aren’t any! This is a club for mostly the same regulars and semi-regulars, but visitors are encouraged to comment on writing updates or share their own. The main idea is to set a goal for yourself and try to achieve it by the next month’s update. :)

Feel free to comment and tell us how things are going for you, regarding writing, creative works, and everything related!

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[–] riskable@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Well, it's alright. It's fine for outlining a normal book I think... My only problem with it is that it's primarily designed to make old fashioned books like they're Hollywood movies or TV shows.

That made a whole lot of sense when people were still going to the movies and watching TV. That way, your book's layout (not the story... That's a different matter) would match what people are used to.

It's made for short-term consumption: ~6 hours.

When a reader picks up a printed book, that is what they expect: To be entertained for about six hours, then put the book down maybe forever.

When it comes to web novels, that style of outlining makes no sense. The longest-running web novels that are still popular focus on character development for the most part.

How much of Save The Cat! is focused on character development? Like, zero. It's about tightening your story into a concise, easy to read format that readers have historically enjoyed. It makes a lot of sense for traditional publishing!

You can wave your hands in the air and say that character development is something you're supposed to fit into the story e.g. just write well when writing say, Dude with a Problem.

You can also say that even if you're trying to write something big, you should still divide it up into volumes and each volume should follow a traditional publishing plot flow (e.g. 5 act, 3 act, Save The Cat!, Hero's Journey, etc).

All fine advice, LOL. I believed! It made so much sense! Not only that, but what other advice are we all told to follow?

1500-2500 word chapters.
Keep the entire story within 80,000-120,000 words.
Don't use any fancy formatting, emoji, or special characters, and certainly no color!

I believed all of it until I read The Wandering Inn. It's all bullshit!

80,000 word chapters, colorized text, emoji. It's fantastic. Reading that was so refreshing and completely made me do a 180 on all that other advice.

I've read other extra long web novels and enjoyed them too. Not only that but I really appreciate bullet points and tables! Also, colorized text here and there looks fantastic and can be super immersive.

Even the occasional emoji can be super fun and make the reader smile.

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[–] ellie@slrpnk.net [S] 2 points 3 months ago*

It makes a lot of sense for traditional publishing!

Now, I haven't fully read the book but I heard a lot about the theories in it. And they make sense if you "write for the modern mainstream market". I don't think truly old-fashioned books followed this formula either, the Save The Cat formula from what I've heard seems - with this narrow focus - to be a more modern invention.

For example, I write these type of books where people say Save The cat applies, yet I don't consider it useful because I write for the purpose of art, not for the purpose of sales.

Edit: and I'm not entirely against streamlining. I do it as well, for aspects where I think it fits my work. However, I don't like writing books that only present the streamlined view as the correct one, I just decided against buying a similar one yesterday for that reason. I think writing books should be broad and open-minded, so that new artists choose the narrow mainstream path consciously rather than because they think that's the only option.

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