I Really Do Not Understand The Culture Around Authors Who Post Online.

I really do not understand the culture around authors who post online.

I've been following a lot of indie authors especially on tiktok. it gives me some good insights into how things work for these types of authors and also it helps me find some really good books. But it feels so... dead? People never talk about their characters, or their favourite scenes or make memes about their stories or answer questions about their characters or world. there's no whimsy. Like when I draw my ocs I expect to make jokes about them, and chat with people about them. But that culture seems to be severely lacking around written ocs.

and then even worse authors seem scared to review books. I saw one woman today who said she doesn't even like to say online WHAT she's reading because what if the author turns out to be problematic or she doesn't like the book and then has to admit that.

like girl you are still a normal ass woman. you're allowed to have opinions on books.

Idk it just feels so sanitized and like almost gross how people who write books just have this culture of never talking about the contents of said books and also you're now meant to be this opinionless being who has 0 opinions on other literature. I write cause I love my characters and cause I love stories. why the fuck would I not gush about my characters and review books to my hearts content?!

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

note to self: in the future, when creating variables, give them names that won't make me go "wtf is this supposed to be" if I ever take a long break

Artists when they realize the colors look different on other screens

My self-appointed rules for drawing comics:

No pages with only talking. If all the characters are doing is talk, they should be doing something while having this conversation. If that is not possible, there should be something happening in the background - even if it's just a faceless background character spilling a glass of water and cleaning it up.

The illustrations should be clear enough that even a person who can't read the text would have some kind of a grasp of what's going on, and how the characters feel about it.

Every character who is speaking in this panel should be in this panel, unless it's explicitly funny that they are not.

Each character's design must be distinct enough from each other that they can't be confused with any other one from any angle or distance.

Make the characters' body language clear enough that a reader could tell how they are feeling even if their face isn't visible.

Fit the characters around the dialogue, never the other way around. They should be positioned in order of who speaks first, no matter how strange of an angle that must take. A character whose speech bubble is on the left should be on the left of a character who says something on the right.

In both setting and characters, quality is measured by consistency, distinction and clarity. As long as a reader can tell who the characters are, where they are and what they are doing, it's a good panel. A comic consisting of extremely well-drawn individual panels, but where locations and characters aren't recognisable on sight, or are hard to tell apart from each other, is worse than one drawn with stick figures.

In the end, it mostly boils down to consistency, clarity, motion and emotion. As long as each individual panel meets those standards, it's good enough. Anything above and beyond that is a bonus, not a requirement.

Billford is so… interesting 👀💛