Welcome to all things fiction! I've set it up so anyone can become a member. Just click "join the fiction" under the channel title to open the join frame. Feel free to post anything and everything, as long as it's about fiction in all of its forms. I do hope this channel will become as much a place for creators of fiction as for consumers of fiction.

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Any crime fiction fans here? Would you be interested in getting a single, "unheralded" book recommendation to your inbox every week?

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Did they just tease a Squid Game USA at the end of season 3?

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Finished Black Mirror S7. Perhaps all the positive reviews set my expectations a little too high. Not to say it wasn't better, but it didn't have that "Holy crap!" episode like most of the previous seasons. E1 - 7/10. Definitely the nearest-future of the episodes. It's probably already happening somewhere. E2 - 4/10. Was 6/10 until the ending. Premise was a bit out there. E3 - 8/10. This was my favourite of the season. Fantastic imagination. E4 - 6/10. The Bandersnatch connection was interesting. E5 - 7/10. This concept probably wasn't too far away. E6 - 5/10. Should've watched the first USS Callister episode again before this one. Took a bit to remember what was going on.

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Life is like a war where winning is hard to achieve. Each person faces their own struggles and suffering. Rather than trying to win every battle, we learn to deal with our challenges with resilience and grace. The true value of life isn't in triumphs, but in our ability to endure and cope. By embracing our pain, we gain a better understanding of ourselves and the world, which helps us grow and become stronger through vulnerability. Ultimately, the journey we take is just as important as any outcome.

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Finished up You S5. For me, this series peaked at S3. S4 was good, but you could tell they were reaching. For S5, they had to rely on multiple plot twists per episode instead of originality. If I had to put my finger on it, I'd say the main reason this show didn't need to go on so long is because Joe doesn't change. You don't need 5 seasons of Joe doing the same thing again and again.

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Read this quite interesting book earlier this week, and I really liked it. Would rate it a 6.5/10

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Finished The White Lotus S3. Aside from the gun obsession that American shows seem to have, the one part that felt off was the pretense Rick used for going to Sritala's house. Find it hard to believe that a seasoned Thai actress would be so enamoured with Hollywood that she would blindly trust a random guest when he says he wants her to be in a movie. Alas, it got me thinking of a difficult technique for fiction creators: when creating a pretense for some unlikely event, how to avoid making it seem contrived?

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"If novelists can learn how filmmakers utilize particular camera shots to achieve specific effects, create specific moods, and evoke specific emotions, they have a powerful tool at hand." Great perspective on how to show, not tell. https://www.livewritethrive.com/2025/04/03/the-best-way-to-show-dont-tell-scene-segmenting/?inf_contact_key=ae45938d25b65253aca653c05c6cd40b680f8914173f9191b1c0223e68310bb1

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Five chapters of narration complete and there is one feature that would make the process a lot better: The ability to provide semantic instructions to the virtual voice on how to read a particular piece of text, say dialogue. Startled, surprised, angry, for example, or even something more granular like "Said in the same way a person who just receives bad news on a great day". Even better if it would allow you to select the voice that reads the text. One thing this would do is eliminate the need for dialogue tags, which really aren't necessary in audio books if narrated correctly.

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A few chapters in now. I remember getting a piece of sage writing advice a number of years ago: Read your writing aloud. It's the only way you'll come close to understanding how it sounds in a reader's head. I never ended up doing it, but now I see why it's important and can be so helpful. It's a lot easier to judge pacing, flow, and transitions when you hear it. The parts that don't work sound like a wrong note was played in a familiar song.

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Trying out Amazon's virtual voice feature for producing audio books. - Choose between American, British, Australian, and American South accents. - Each chapter can have its own voice. - You get a decent level of granular control over pronunciation, pauses, and voice speed. - It will take quite a while to go through the entire book and set all the pauses correctly. The obvious drawback so far is that you don't have much control over intonation and inflection. You can't make character sound more excited or sinister, for example. Combine that with expanding the vocal library and specifying a voice for individual dialogue lines and you have quite a powerful tool. A new audiobook director/producer role will be needed to help writers get the most out of it.

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listen to a snippet of @kentb 's accidental intrigue season 2 teaser and have your mind blown 🤯

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Co-authoring is likely the way forward for the relationship between fiction writers and AI. You get to establish your voice and the AI does the things that offer you the most resistance while providing an editor's polish. Thanks, @vgr, for including your process in the post!

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Just finished The Residence on Netflix. Really well done. Perhaps dragged out a bit, but delightfully quirky. Favourite random bit was the calligrapher who happened to have an off night. 😂

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