Recent content by Miles Lacey

It looks very interesting but one piece of advice: most people on this site tend to regard AI as the very personification of evil so if you've used it in your writing or any part of the writing process (such as outlines) they will have nothing to do with you. What were your ideas about the...

85,000 words in one night is impressive! How much planning went into it beforehand?

I based it on the toxic masculinity / warrior attitudes I've encountered among many Pacific Island men in my home town here in New Zealand. But it would not take much to change it as Tahitians have both a masculine culture and an acceptance of LGBT+ people.

Different humanoid species have different views about LGBT+ people with orcs being the most hostile towards them because of their masculine warrior culture and elves being the most accepting of LGBT+ people because most elves are bisexual and matriarchial. Humans and Dwarves tend to vary...

I use pen and paper. I intend to upgrade to a typewriter soon. When I do write on a device I use a basic version of Microsoft Word that I use on my Samsung tablet which I can use both on and offline. From time to time I send what I'm writing as a Word Document attachment to one of my email...

Begin with working out the culture(s) of the characters and the area(s) they live in. My main characters live on a fictional island in the Pacific that was a French colony. The island is located within the Polynesian part of the Pacific. Thus, the place names and characters have French...

I've been drawing maps since I was a child. Then, as now, if a place is mentioned in anything I write it goes on a map. It gets modified as I introduce more details such as railway stations, towns, villages, mountains, lakes, rivers and other features. For me, maps never stay static as...

"What is a wobble board? Why did it strike terror into the hearts of even the bravest warriors? And who is this Rolf Harris they speak of?"

"I've been relying upon ChatGPT for so long now I can't read the bloody map!"

When writing for teenagers keep the violence to street fight in alleyway level rather than sadistic/graphic levels of violence and keep the sex at Mills & Boon/Harlequin level rather than Fifty Shades of Grey or Eyes Wide Shut level. As for swearing and curse words? My attitude towards...

S I never use the f-word to describe sex in anything I write or say because it is seen in the same light as public displays of affection, adult virginity or, worst of all, holding hands in public where I live. In short, a sign of such moral depravity I count myself lucky we don't have...

Poor people swear. My story is about the working poor. I am one of the working poor (dishy in an Italian restaurant). Thus, there is swearing in what I write. If you write about poor people and do not have swearing you deserve to be smacked into next week (metaphorically, not literally). I...

I'm reminded of what a certain famous American writer wrote about the reality of writing: "Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first...

I went for a calendar of 13 months of 28 days each which equalled 364 days and a stand alone day for New Year's Day. Every fourth (leap) year an additional day was added to New Year's Day. It was a simple calendar created because my maths sucks.

You know you've done too much world building when investors from the United Arab Emirates ask to invest in your (imaginary) country. That actually happened to me!