ProWritingAid has a Lifetime purchase option. If you go to their pricing page, it gives you the option to purchase monthly, yearly, or lifetime. I like how its desktop app lets you open Scrivener and Word files within the app, without the need to paste the text into the window.

Super helpful!

Filtring words are easy to avoid, but glue words are hard to avoid. Are there any videos to avoid them?

i know i have a lot of filtering words in my novel, but without them the story reads weird to me...

great tips!

Good lesson...🎉

Look it's like with the first iteration I'm trying to focus on getting what's in my head onto the page and, secondarily, on achieving my word count goal (if it's November). With the final iteration, I'm focusing on making my point understood and evoking the right emotion as concisely as possible with no redundancies or superfluous bits. In your first draft, nothing matters but getting what's in your head, out. In your final draft, every word or phrase has a niche job, and when two words or phrases have the same job, one of them has to go.

Congratulations, Claire! Valuable knowledge to enrich a book. I'm writing my first and will consider your thoughts. Greetings from Brazil!

I'm always stuck editing since we are advised to avoid glue, filters, and filler words to sound “professional.” Although this is the advice we are given, I hear many successful authors use them. I'm confused. 😵‍💫 Why give this advice if not use the advice themselves?

Tbh I love to have as many details as possible, I am a very visual person (and artist) and that’s how I get into a story in the first place… so having a vague description of a character being "plain looking“ or "tall and handsome" is TORTURE! Plain?? Handsome? What is that? Give me details!! Give me their eye color, the fullness of their cheeks, the shape of their nose, do they have a hunch, is their skin tone cool or frail looking? Are they lanky, chubby, athletic? Do their eyes have a playful spark, are they zoned out and slow? What do they wear!! 😂 ok maybe it’s just me, but the visual design of a character tells a whole story by itself. I could imagine it by myself but the fun for me is to see what the Author imagines! 😇 (though having vague descriptions fits too when it serves the plot/"vibe" of the character :)

SO TRUE

Real! When you have to make the experience seem like it happened to your book character and not you.

If you want to turn books into yet another route to pure escapism, this is a good video. But if you want to write books that transform the reader and leave something in them that keeps on giving, that they can take into their life, don't.

Me re-editing my few chapters of fanfiction every three years lol

I’m out

Id

I keep mixing up perspectives because sometimes it doesn't match but then I realize how it does but it's annoying😭

“Slam” goes the door!

Thank you for posting this video. It gives me some things to consider before starting my next novel. I wrote my first novel using the third-person POV, which has its own challenges. Two things I would share: first, while trying to find our voice, it is essential not to rely on AI tools, spell and grammar checks, etc. I find these things can rob us of our voice as the quest for perfection robs us of the very faults that make our writing human. Interesting will always triumph over perfection. If anyone doubts this, copy and paste any passage from a classic into a Word document and watch the algorithm try to correct and improve the author's voice. Not only has my confidence as a writer grown as I trust my voice, but I don't fear AI taking over the world because I know it is fundamentally flawed. Second, the one thing I was told about writing in first person POV was to 'bury the "I" ' to prevent increasing narrator distance. In the John Green example, I counted "I" used five times, six "my"'s, and one "me." I did not find this a distraction until I searched for it.

Sexy vampire = red face. The prettiest blush in the business.

This is good but you need to go down to the dance between our fundamental human needs. Exploration, status, belonging, safety, control and certainty. There are also tensions between status and belonging and exploration (adventure) and safety/certainty/control. Stories that lie along those tensions are very interesting.

That's a very intriguing video. I'm off to make my ID list!

even though Twilight rooted in an a kind of absolutely real story

Thank you for the recommendations. Excellent presentation.😊

I’ll always get my friends and people who like to read that I know to read through and make edits that they think, usually gets about 95% of the problems done

While I agree that such appeals to pleasure certainly do sell books and movies, etc., they do not produce anything of lasting value. The only books or movies that do are those that challenge the prevailing values, ethics, world view, mental models, etc. of the reader. That is not to say that such books should not be pleasurable to read, they should definitely have their pleasurable moments, but it is to say that if your book is strictly designed to be entertaining, then that is what it is - entertainment. It is not a novel or a film. So as an author, you need to decide, are you in it for the money or are you in it because you have something to say.

I fucking hate spelling and grammar checks. I often find that I use grammar improperly or use too many words for something that could be very simply explained. Sometimes I can't even tell what I was trying to say and it's like "hey I have to actually redo this part of the paper or story because I don't know how this sentence would ever make sense in this context."

New subscriber here

I like the aspect of keeping track of each subplot. Thank you for this video ❤️

You don't want the antagonist to be evil all the time, full stop. The antagonist isn't the villain, the antagonist is the person who opposes the protagonist who might be a villain themselves.

REALLLL

I’m in between. I use King’s “unearth the fossil” method, but can see the totality of its form from the start. I am pleasantly surprised when I uncover the details, however. I write very allegorically, and I think plotting would inhibit that.

This was super helpful! Being a young author is hard, and I'm always burned out... Thanks for the tips.

More prewrite less writers block

Watched pot never boils my ass 😂

No! The annoying part is using a touch screen device and missing what you're aiming for only for auto ccorrect to dictate to you what you intend to say for about two minutes straight

Im loving your videos and just picked up They Stay on the strength of them. The “no adverbs” advice always seems weird to me because it’s basically editing advice not writing advice. When you’re in a creative flow getting a draft down, who cares about adverbs. These are things to fix in a line edit, not in the midst of trying to turn ideas into words. Also glad to hear someone who understands the value of “said” as a dialog attribution. It worked for Robert B. Parker for decades! Thanks for a great vid. Keep it up!

Same girl same, everyone I ask says “oh shit I’m not reading all that”

Thanks for sharing this - very helpful!!

I rly hate reading my drafts for some reason so I mostly make sure that I use Grammarly or something so that I don't have to come back again and again.

Real. I definitely struggle with using too much filler especially when I r e a l l y want to get my very specific image across. I’m working on when to let up and let go 😂. At least it’s immensely better than when I started writing LMAO. Besides I find it easier to write when tired probably because I care less then I can edit some things later.

Can the creator of the video please just pin a comment to the top ssying that this video is about filter words, so people can stop acting like I'm an idiot for saying that? Because apprently the literal caption where you say it's about filtering words is not enough.

Very detailed and very helpful. Thank you, Claire.

They Stay? 🤔 Does your story push the pleasure buttons? 😏 If it does, maybe tell people to check out your book so they can get an idea of how it works in practice 😅 The paranormal aspect about your story intrigues me. Great information, thanks!

There is another KZbinr you should watch because it changed my writing skill a large amount. Abbie Emmons channel is great because she let's the characters drive the story. There are differences between my writings than Abbie's but without her channel I wouldn't be the writer I'm now.

this was a very smart video! i found the psychology 160 class i took for additional credits (BN program) was super helpful in changing the way i see people, youre right people can be very predictable and we can optimize our writing around that!

Thank you! please can you make a video on how to turn an idea into a story, i have many ideas but i don't know what to do with them, thank you in advance! New subscriber

Who tf writes in present tense