Recent content by Mad Swede

Yes, it was 85000 words in one night, for a completely new story. There's a few things to add which will add another 15000 words or so, but I know where those bits will go. I was (am) working on the fifth novel, but this sixth novel just turned up in my mind and I had to write it. It's the...

And for those wondering how it went. I now have an almost complete novel (85000 words), all that's needed is a few connecting scenes and varipous background details. I'm shattered, but pleased.

...and now I've thought the story through. All the way. Here comes an all-nighter. ✍️ 🌙 See you in the morning, or whatever time of day it is in your part of the world in 12 hours time. ☀️

Write the whole story, then come back to the first few chapters. You may find that re-arranging the order in which some things happen or are mentioned improves the story as a whole.

If I were you I'd read a few fantasy books which don't have magic or monsters in them. Here are a few examples: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Arlinga: Concerning a man by Roan Clay The Folding Knife by K J Parker The Black Hawks by David Wragg Red Country by Joe Abercrombie The Lions...

What some (many?) call AI is in fact what is known as a Large Language Model (LLM). LLMs basically work by using conditional probability analyses and statistical inference to go through a data set and produce a result, based on whatever prompt was given. The quality of the result is entirely...

Writing this as someone who peer reviews academic papers I can tell you that we will scrutinise in detail any paper where we know or suspect that AI has been used. This is because we must be certain that the authors understand and can justify what they have written and the conclusions they have...

OK JLiana, now that Malik has gone into the POV details better than I can I'm going to give you a suggestion. Rewrite your story in Third Person Limited. This is very close to the First Person POV you've already started using, but lets you follow several different characters and gives you the...

I wonder if you understand. The LLM can identify data which in some way differs from other data in the data set. But this is ONLY done using the data set available to the LLM. So if you feed the LLM a data set which contains known falsehoods in sufficient volumes then the LLM may give incorrect...

I didn't read Elf Quest, but I did follow SnarfQuest...

It's that shrug which is so dangerous. People assume something without knowing how the answers are produced or what the answers are based on - see below for a more detailed explanation. Gemini as an LLM has tried to produce a readable reply. I've written this before, but what LLMs do is...

OK, you mean your writing method not your writing style. That may seem pedantic, but it matters. Writing style is how you express yourself in your prose. Writing method is how you set about writing your story. I think most of us start with an idea, but how we get that idea and how we then...

And I have this commanding officer's voice which keeps asking if we have enough information to make a decision, send out the orders and then report to higher command. If not, what is missing and when will we have this available?

Effective research? skip.knox has already mentioned it, you need to be fairly specific in what you are researching. That means you need to have some idea of what it is you need to know more about and how (in the context of this discussion) it fits into what you are writing. These two factors set...

That's not the point. The point is that you need self-discipline to finish anything you do, espcecially if you're not being forced to do whatever it is that needs finishing.