I’m not entirely sure if this follows the rules of this subreddit, but I think it does. So…
Recently on r/writers, someone posted about how they were intending to be the lead actor in the live action adaptation of their (at time of writing) unfinished fantasy novel. (Think Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings etc) They later deleted their post, but a verbatim copy can be found on r/writingcirclejerk for anyone who’s interested.
(I can’t find any specific details about how many books receive a live action adaptation, but I doubt that it’s going to be good odds.)
I’ve also seen people ask about fanfiction of their (unpublished) work.
So I’m curious. What makes people think this way? Where do these unrealistic expectations come from?
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Youth. There's also a very large contingent of posers (there's no better word) who want to make a video game/anime/tv show/comic but lack the funds and talents, so they write instead. Only they have no love of the craft or literature itself. It's a means to an end, and a very delusional one.
Yeah soooo many posts here that are like "I really want to be a writer but I get so stressed trying to do it that I give up, it isnt fun, I cant think of anything" like bro do you actually like writing?
Well said 👏
It’s not “do you actually like writing”
It’s “do you actually life writing”
We are nothing without the pen
Edit: werkin? Naw I’m jerkin
I mean, they could always be writing screenplays. Still gonna be a rude awakening when they learn that you basically never have much say over casting.
Yea… and wait til they find out that even if you sell it, you have no control over whether it enters production, and if it does, you have no control over if it finishes production, and then no control over if/ when it appears on a network (or in theaters, if applicable).
And yea, reversion rights do exist, but they’re YEARS down the road if you get them, and usually you’re going to be writing new work anyway
The best advice I got about the writing subs is always assume it’s a teenager posting.
Basically advice for any sub.
95% of the time that's true. But sadly that's true in every single subreddit (ex. r/bodylanguage).
It's all a pipe dream for so many of them. They ask questions they could answer with a few seconds of research or self-reflection. Not because they want answers, but because they don't like the answers they've found.
If after two weeks of thinking, "I want to be a writer," and barely stringing up a thousand words, you're already here, craving validation for your work, you're in for a bad time. For the most part, writing is a lonely, internal, and personal affair—especially before you find an agent or editor who believes in your work enough to help. Test readers often flake, even relatives and friends. Even once you find a professional partner, it's still mostly you and a screen, alone with your thoughts and words. If you can't find enjoyment in that, you'll likely frustrate yourself into giving up and moving on. And that's okay. Even if most people have at least one good book in them, not everyone is built or conditioned to produce it. If they were, we'd be out of trees and squid.
I think this is a case of a vocal minority, whereby most mature onlookers and commentors of the sub don't post anything. Where would be the value in doing so? The feedback and critique is usually too chaotic and contradicting from one person to the next, and there is no vetting the sources of it. You might be reading someone with decades more experience than you, or someone with decades less and no understanding of the fundamentals, both presenting their arguments with authority. We also already have feedback loops and stricter editing criteria neutralizing the need for this kind of feedback. And we wouldn't be caught dead asking others to find a solution to a narrative hole we've dug ourselves into, as we understand that identifying and fixing such a hole is part of the craft, and, in my case at least, I find it to be one of the most enjoyable parts: problem solving.
As such, most posters here are new to the craft, with often little clue as to what it entails. We still get good posts here and there by writers sharing their experience of the business side of writing, but there does indeed seem to be an overwhelming quantity of low effort posts from people who've barely thought out a project, have wrote a couple of chapters, and have maybe put them through two drafts, who come here asking for feedback, but really, they're asking for validation to quell their doubts or destruction to confirm their fears. They see the mountain and seek praise for ascending it before the act, or a good reason not to bother and go around if it turns out no one will praise them even if they do ascend it.
That was very well crafted. Thank you!
Nailed it.
It's frustrating because there's no love for writing but also no initiative to find other like minded people (as well as getting a job to fund it) to make their "video game/anime/tv show/comic".
Yoots.
I feel there's also some assumption, born of naviete, where if you want to create something, be it a game, a movie, a cartoon, a comic, or whatever, then you must first master writing a book.
So many of these people actually want to write scripts and screenplays, but they seem to think they need to write a book first. Which is why we get questions like 'Do I need to read book to write book?', 'How much read should I do?' and 'Why read important to write?'
Imagine someone saying 'If I want to make cartoons, do I need to watch cartoons?'
The person in op's post clearly wants to be more a movie director or an actor, but it's most likely a teenager who doesn't quite know the route they should be taking.
It's not limited to youth by any means.
Agreed. I've talked to people of all ages who have astonishingly weird ideas of how the writing business works. But they have no more experience with writing than a teenager, so they talk like one -- except that teenagers are vaguely aware that there's a lot they don't know, and they can be teachable. Older adults are far too sure of themselves.
A LOT of this sub’s users are teenagers who just discovered litterature. + they don’t take critique very well
Accurate. Nothing against young writers, but is there any writing sub specifically for adults or professionals?
Yes, actually. I started one but it died off.
Would enough people be interested to keep it going?
Maybe we can make it private and keep the non-serious folks out?
There's no writing sub for actual discussion/debate about the craft, industry trends, etc.
Honestly if there was one where most of the users were adults and 90% of the subject wasn’t fantasy I would absolutely join.
Same. Currently it feels like adults make up 10% or less of this sub.
I would. And we could have strict mod-bots to help keep low quality posts to a minimum. We'd also have to agree on the ground rules and overall purpose of the sub. Some examples:
-We don't critique writing
-No ai generated content or promo
-Restricted memes...
Basically, block the things that make this sub frustrating. Maybe consider limiting posts about topics that could be covered in an FAQ or wiki...
Possibly but once the young writers find out about it they'll come in and drive the quality down by not reading the rules and asking the same frequently asked low effort questions.
Would it help to make it an 18+ sub? There are ways around that, but it would at least keep a few people out.
Yes but it would have to be heavily moderated for reasons others said.
I would like to be in a sub where I can at least watch people talk about writing with one or more feet on the ground.
hell, i'd help mod!
I was going to ask for a mod. You're in. Will PM you and the others interested later. Please come up with your draft for rules and entry requirements.
Lemme know when it’s up!!!
Let me know when you guys make this happen!
It’d be a christmas miracle!
No but yes but really no.
Whenever one pops up it's good for awhile but then aspiring newbie young writers invade and ask the same 4-5 frequently asked questions and drives quality down. It also doesn't help that they don't bother to read the rules of any subreddit.
Absolutely. r/PubTips is probably the best sub-reddit on all of reddit.
It is almost exclusively serious amateur writers, agented / published authors, and agents.
You will find no better resource for actually getting your work traditionally published on the entire internet, and you will for sure find no better collection of people that take writing extremely seriously as a potential career, rather than a hobby.
That said, it is tightly moderated. There is no slop, the critique is brutal, and the posting guidelines are strict.
As a teenager I Can confirm
It's easier (and more fun) to day dream about this than to finish writing/editing/re-reading/re-writing the story.
Everyone has a great idea for a story, but few can endure the story boarding, character creation, world building, the tedium of constantly editing, and the rigor of tackling away paragraph by paragraph until the project is complete. And then they start talking about screenplay as though writing a script isn't the very same amount of effort lol
Eh, it’s fun to imagine. Most of the people are probably young, yeah, but I can see how the fantasy would theoretically be helpful. I’ve imagined what an adaptation of my writing would look like, but I usually try to tie that back into something helpful. (A good adaptation understands why something works, so what do I need to focus on here? What’s my core?)
Though I recognize they’re fantasies. My novella has been out for about six months and no one has read it. The likelihood of my work actually being read, much less getting an adaptation, is impossible.
I want to read your novel hahaha
It’s in the links in my profile! I will cry if you do, though. /j
Ya know how it is. They tell you your ten year baby is probably doomed but you love it too much to let it go.
Im sorry I tried!!! I read the intro with Rose and Bladelock. I even downloaded it but it then wants me to extract the download and I dont have an app to extract it to so it wants me to also download another app. If you have a Google doc link feel free to dm me with it!
Oh. God, yeah, I might need to fix the stupid ZIP. Last time I try a gimmick.
I DID realize a weird itch.io link was perhaps unappealing so I put a mirror up on Ao3. You’re not missing anything by not reading the PDF/looking through the files, they’re mainly just weird puzzles/bonus art. I’ll DM it to you.
EDIT: Your DMs are closed lol
The world hasn’t crushed them enough yet. Don’t worry. It will.
Whenever I see young, happy people, I think back to a time when the burden of life wasn’t so overwhelming. Reminds of a line in Bo Jovi‘s Jack and Diane, “life goes on, even when the thrill of living is gone.” That’s my uplifting message for this holiday season.
See life was always burdening and overwhelming especially when I was younger due to home life, CPS and non diagnosed ADHD lmao. now in my late 20s after many unfortunate lessons I at least learned from, deciding to be on my own and long term therapy… I have in fact discovered I enjoy my life much more now and am happier… Emotionally I’m Benjamin Button.
Don’t know if this is just me gaslighting myself because things are better than they ever were… or if I’m genuinely happy.. .but either way I’ll take it 😉 That’s my uplifting message for this holiday season.
I’m 45. Ancient. Basically a redwood tree or one of those old desert turtles. It gets better. And then a little worse. And then even better.
That's Mellencamp, not Bon Jovi. Great line though.
NOT BON JOVI That be some John Cougar Mellencamp!
Hope and ego.
The same place the ideas for any writer's stories come from. Imagination.
It’s just a dream or fantasy. When I was a kid, I wrote like 10-15 scripts for a show that me and my friends would obviously star in, and ANY network or cable channel would be happy to produce it because it was so very brilliant.
I’ve heard countless teachers today lament how their elementary and middle school aged kids just “assume” they will make their livings as famous TikTok or YouTube stars.
I assume the person in question is pretty young and/or pretty naive. They’ve got that childlike wonder still in tact.
Sometimes I like to imagine myself as an already established writer. People making youtube videos about my books, tik tok edits of my characters, and being interviewed about my work. But I know that is either extremely far off into the future, and only if I get lucky, or is just a fantasy of my ideal life as a writer. But I'm also not conceited enough to assume it's guaranteed to happen.
I think 9/10 times these aren't real expectations but people fantasizing about "making it big." But even then, the chances of being the lead in your own book-to-movie adaptation is nigh impossible.
I don't think there's anything wrong with fantazing or daydreaming about stuff like that. I do it. I imagine there's more people here that do it as well but would never admit it.
Where people trip themselves up is realistically expecting it's going to happen, or writing solely for the goal of making that a reality. If that's the only reason you want to become a writer, you're practically doomed from the start.
While I understand daydreaming instead of writing is a issue. I also imagine myself as a famous writer, often on a talk show discussing my lastest novel. Mostly this is a device for me to help break down the story thats gotten too tangled in my head to come out coherently on paper at the moment.
As I go back and forth with my night show host, who is of course asking the perfect hitting questions about the themes, motifs, and metaphors of my story and how they interplay with my characters psychological growth and destruction, everything starts to line up with the character arcs and the scene sequences.
Sometimes these imaginations, which 99.9999999999% won't come true, are just to help ground the mental world in physical reality.
The r/writingcirclejerk post if anyone is wondering https://www.reddit.com/r/writingcirclejerk/s/kXCfquLDla
Those poor fuckers got out jerked again.
Ego. There was a woman in my MFA program who was convinced her memoir (not yet written) would get picked up by Netflix. If you already are the type of person who thinks what you think is important enough that people should spend time (a non-renewable resource!) with your thoughts, as every writer is, you may also be the type of person to have even further delusions of your own importance
Lol SUCH a valid point. Every writer everywhere is at the minimum, a bit egotistical. It come with the gig. The balls it takes to think, yea what I wrote is important enough that people should read it. The mental attitude is definitely necessary but we can't be shocked when a writing sun is filled with people whose ego outstrips their work.
I actually know two screenwriters who were actors first and they cast themselves. Actually not that bad an idea; if i could act I’d want that ultimate control. And, though it comes with red flags, continuity of vision sure sounds appealing and can be used to good effect!
Dunning-Kruger effect in action
Where does the mindset of shitting on people on Christmas come from? Maybe they'll make it or maybe not. Statistically someone will make it be big and there is always better writers than you or me.
Nothing in this post is ‘shitting on people’.
I have no clue. I write for the love of the game.
Dreams. That's all. They dream of being great and succesfull writers instead of working on actually becoming one.
There’s an inherent hubris involved in anything creative. As the ambition and obstacles to the creation of that work increase, so to does that required belief that you, unlike the many fallen who have come before you, will be different. Once you’re on this spectrum, it’s just a matter of how much self awareness you have about it. More often than not, a lack of self awareness was the thing that prompted the entire affair in the first place (alongside the hubris).
And so there are any number of people that have that special blend of desire, arrogance, and lack of self awareness required to over saturate our chosen creative endeavor and dear sweet Reddit has removed society’s natural filters preventing us from hearing about it.
I, for one, enjoy the entire beautiful tragedy. Humans are fun.
I get the fantasy. It can even be fun to daydream about. Plus, with character building and stuff it can be fun to think about things like... What actor would I want to play the main villain or the old hermit or whatnot.
I think that people who assume it's going to happen one day are just kind of... naive in a way.
I'd guess they still think they're the protagonists of life and don't understand how hard even getting something published in the first place is, let alone how many incredible writers get knocked down or struggle to even finish their stories. They still think they're the special exception.
I kind of find it endearing in a way, like... In a, "bless your heart" kind of way. lol
People are sometimes very silly.
Want a live adaptation of your book? Get a bunch of your friends together, learn your lines, and do it. How do you think plays happen? Nobody can stop you if that’s what you want.
Exactly. This isn’t actually unobtainable or unprecedented. People do this all the time. Matt Damon wrote Good Will Hunting.
Hell if I was able to get someone as good as Robin Williams to star in my novel made screenplay hell yea I would!! Sadly I do not.
Think about the part, though. Even though Matt and Ben wrote themselves into the script, Robin Williams was stealing scenes. It was a good part with several “actor-forward” monologues. Robin Williams wasn’t doing them a favor. That’s one of his best roles.
(The whole thing’s a little odd, because how was Matt Damon that profound so young and then went on to create almost nothing else? But 🤷♀️)
The Dunning-Kruger effect.
People think, I can write a coherent paragraph. I can write an essay. I have ideas. I should be able to write fiction at a professional level without ever having written anything before.
They don't realize that's like thinking I can run. I can swing a club. I'm fit. I should be able to play professional baseball without ever having played a game or even practised.
You see this kind of thing on those talent show reality shows. All it takes is for nobody in your life to ever tell you the hard truth.
I remember a while back, someone did a sort of shitty reverse talent show. It was cringe, but unbeknownst to the participants, the judges would pick the worst singers to move on. The two finalists... oh boy... the confidence and dare I say arrogance that they displayed, it was cringe, too.
.. that’s a really mean/unethical social experiment
To be fair, given some of the slop that gets put out today, I'd wager many of those dreamers COULD write for TV/movies... At least if they had a powerful producer friend in their pocket.
That's the coldest truth of it all, actually having talent or skill doesn't matter. Only money does. And if you don't have it, or know someone who does... Well...
What’s wrong with dreaming big? I browse here alot but never really post. Shouldn’t we all be rooting for each other and not jaded
Yeah, there’s a massive difference between ‘I hope I get published’ and ‘I expect to be the leading actor in the live action adaptation even though I haven’t finished my book’
Every aspiring writer is daydreaming to some extent. Playing the lead role in a big- budget adaptation of your work is supremely unlikely, but profiting from writing is already unlikely and you have to be at least a little bit delusional to pursue it (myself included). It's silly but I see no harm in it.
What I find more amusing is the people that are like "if my novel is made into a movie, I'm not going to let them ruin it!"
Yeah, you get an offer for 10k you'll take it even without a author's final cut clause. even the biggest names in the industry don't have final cut (or any say) on their adaptations.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
Spoken by the Serpent talking to Eve in Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw, 1921
Edit to add that this is often misattributed to Robert Kennedy who used a revision of this in many of his speeches: "Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?"
I have no idea. John Greens cameo got cut out of The Fault in Our Stars and he was even big on YouTube when the movie got made!
When I was a teenager and tried to start a novel it was entirely played in my head with me as the lead actor in the movie adaptation. Why? Because I thought it would be badass to be a famous actor and make a billion dollars. I also envisioned myself as the director and with full control over the casting process and all editing decisions. I was like 17.
Now I'm much more realistic, in my absolute wildest dreams in the impossible chance that I have a best seller worth making a movie about I simply refuse to sell the movie rights unless I get some sort of contingency about making sure they don't ruin it. Some basic veto powers. My big fantasy has changed from being the main character to me saying "No, Amy Schumer cannot play the male lead and replace all the philosophy with fart jokes"
Let me try and answer that with a real life example I actually encountered this year. Bear with me here.
I'm 44 and have been writing for 11 years, 6 of those what I'd call professionally or experienced. To be clear in this context when I say "professionally", I don't mean I make a living from it, that I'm well known, or even any better than anyone else...I mean I've had short stories, poetry, and non-fiction work accepted and even been paid for a few. I've had novels requested (and ultimately rejected) by agents. Let's just say that if anything, I approach it professionally....all the good and all the bad, and I like to think I have some advice here and there.
A few months back an acquaintance of a friend announced his intent to write a memoir. Nothing wrong with that. But in the same breath he mentioned how it'd be perfect for Netflix or even a studio like A24. So already my internal eyes are rolling, but hey, nothing wrong with dreaming big if you want. At this point I should mention this guy is my age and has never written a thing in his life.
Anyway, within like 6 weeks, this guy has a rough draft and a query letter "ready" to go, and sends me some samples to see what I think. And it's... not great. Now this part sounds cold but it's important to the story. This man's a nice guy, an average middle aged man. But his life (like most of ours) hasn't been all that exciting. His book is just 90,000 words of where he grew up, went to school, got a job, friends and lovers that came and went, etc... The main dramatic hook of the thing is his relationship with his father. But even that is basically just they argue from time to time. Like that's it. So he asks me to be "brutally honest" (the thing a lot of people think they want, but what they mean is "please justify what I've already decided") and I tell him.
I say on one hand, it's clean and clear. No major punctuation gaffs. Paragraph and sentence lengths are varied enough. I understand what is happening, the people, the settings. On the other, it's full of self-indulgent, purple prose. Clumsy and cliche analogies and metaphors. What's worse...there's no story here. So I ask him, as kind as I can, does he really think there's a market for a memoir of a 40 year old white guy who's never encountered any difficulty in his life, where nothing of dramatic consequence happens?
He doesn't understand literary markets, so I explain. He brushes that aside, and tells me I "don't get it." That Hollywood loves these slice of life stories and again, imagine what A24 could do with it? Who could play him and his father? I tell him it sounds like he doesn't want to write a memoir, he wants to write a screenplay. He responds that that's "too hard" and "too limiting"..his story needs the space and length of a novel. I see where this is going, and wish him luck. And I kid you not, he starts querying this thing blindly to any agent he Googles, even tries sending it to studios.
So where does that mindset come from? Ego. A little arrogance. Jumping in a world you don't understand and have no real desire to...because to you it's either a stepping stone to something else, or a shortcut to what you really want. And to you, hey...it's "just writing"...how hard can it be?
That post was one of the better recent jerks. The r/writingcirclejerk post wasn't bad, either.
Lmao I felt bad but I had to
And? I want to be the screenwriter and director of the adaptation of my novel. What gives? Why do you care?
I’m curious.
I don’t care if you want to do that. I want to make JK Rowling money on my books. I’m also self aware enough to know that it’s probably not going to happen and plan accordingly.
But there’s a world of difference between wanting something and actually understanding what is realistically possible.
Nothing's impossible in that regard, just highly unlikely.
But because I can, I'm going to write the script, draw the storyboards and compose parts of the music.
As it's original fiction, I'm getting close enough with that.
Oh goodness. Lol I do NOT want to be an actor! I might do the Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock thing of being in the background somewhere, but that's it. Lol
I mean, in my daydreams I’m the lead actor of the blockbuster adaptation of my best selling novels, but I don’t actually expect that to happen.
In reality, I’ll be over the moon if I ever actually get published, heck, I’ll be happy if I just get to write every day.
It’s not unrealistic if they can act as well as write.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, everyone wanted to get into a band, play that big concert that gets the labels interested, and become the next big megastar.
The reality was, and is, that to get to the levels of acts like AC/DC or Michael Jackson, you have to play shows. Lots of them. AC/DC would pack up a van and drive from one coast of Asstralia to the other, playing at any pub that will let them. They played hundreds of shows like this. One record label head, Digby Pearson of Earache fame, said that if a band could prove they played three hundred shows in a year, he would get very interested in them. I am not sure AC/DC ever played that many in one year, but it would not surprise me, either.
The same is true with writing, but the parameters differ. Writers plug away at a similar sort of barrier. Writing for anyone who will let them, get printed in magazines or journals, getting as much of their work in print or whatever as possible, then approaching agents with manuscripts. It is tiring and hard, but so is anything else worth doing.
So if you want to blame anyone in particular, thank the TV shows and cartoons of the 1980s, with the way they made it seem like you are just one great gig away from becoming a megastar. People still believe this misrepresentation, only in these cases, they believe it about writing.
Bit tricky for me to think about that, two of my main characters are young adult women, and i'm a grumpy old man.
A mix of daydreaming + not knowing how the sausage gets made.
When you’re new, it’s super easy to picture the Netflix deal, the casting, the premiere, etc. Hell, I used to pick out actors for my half‑finished drafts like it was part of outlining. It’s fun. But once you’ve pitched even one agent or tried to option anything, you realize how hilariously little control writers have over adaptations, let alone casting yourself as the lead.
Also, the internet kinda trains people to think “content → instant audience.” TikTok brain. You post, it blows up, why wouldn’t a book do the same? Add a sprinkle of Dunning‑Kruger and some hero‑of‑your‑own‑story bias and boom: expectations go vertical.
Dream big, sure. Just… write the book first, finish it, revise it a few times, get wrecked by critiques, and then see how you feel about starring in the movie. Usually cures the itch.
Let people dream. Jesus Christ.
It's mostly coming from younger people - the generation of participation trophies that taught them that everyone was equal in terms of talent and success. I wish so much it was - but it's not. It's part of the same delusion that that Age of Scopius person labored under until it blew up in their face. That fiasco might have been avoided if someone had been honest with them about the level their writing was at - and they'd listened to said advice. They still don't seem to be listening, and are instead focusing on everything but fixing their novel and have now apparently run off to Scandinavia.
I'm all for encouraging and nurturing young writers and artists - it's critical to do so, but continuing to blow smoke up the asses of people who grew up being incorrectly taught that the playing field was level in terms of talent, was and is, a serious disservice to them. You don't know what you don't know and we all want grand things, nothing at all wrong with that, but we all have to live in reality and with our own personal limitations. And many of them have zero interest in actually learning the craft of writing, thinking there's a shortcut - there's not.
It's painful and embarrassing to watch people crash out like that and I feel like if expectations had been managed from the get-go, they'd have been much better off.
A vast, vast majority of writers and people who want to become writers are just crazy people.
Me when I ask chatgpt whether my creative output is good
What’s unrealistic about this expectation?
Pretty much every single part of it
How though?
What's unrealistic about adaping your novel and then acting in it?
Haven'y you ever acted in anything you have written?
The problem is that it relies heavily on a series of increasingly improbable events happening to actually happen.
1: Write book.
2: Get published
3: Be popular enough for people to believe that your story is worth adapting. Or, at the very least, the attention of someone who believes that it’s worth doing.
4: Get people to invest in an adaptation.
5: Be cast in the role.
And all this from an unfinished book.
There are easier ways to go about it. If you’re saying that that author needs to focus on the vision and trust it can happen, without relying on those steps, the you are correct.
Maybe he's rich? I know author, even two, who managed to hire cinema studios (cheap ones, obviously) to record movies.
One of them even become super popular because of that. Yeah, they didn't play role. "Movie was based on workname."
Wasn't this basically the story behind Millie Bobby Brown's godawful WWII novel? The one that was 80% ghostwritten? Someone called out that she basically hedged bets on playing the self-insert lead on any screen adaptation, then not long after it was announced that it was becoming a film...
This isn't something new, and it's always been a thing.
Some people are visual thinkers and need a real visual anchor to hold on to. Having a specific actor in mind who would play the character helps them realise the character in their mind and gives them a way to talk about the character to others while they are still working that character out.
As for asking about fanfiction, that's community. Writers, like all people, like being in community and being in creative communities helps people create. This is especially true for female artists, including writers.
It's not about 'I am declaring my book will have a movie', it's here is a tool to help form the character and help me discuss it with others. It's also extremely common in traditional publishing for authors and publishers to talk about characters in terms of actors or other well known characters because it contains shorthand, connotations and is a hook. So the publishers giving advice to writers are literally doing this too.
It's saddening to see how many replies here are looking for the worst, bad faith reasons to disparage and dismiss fellow writers instead of being open to understanding them. It might be harder to understand than to sneer, but you get more out of it, especially if you want to be a writer which is a career where being open to the perspectives and experiences of others is a core requirement.
Young, cocky, inexperienced kids think the words that flow from their fingertips are the best words that ever worded themselves into the best story that is currently wording its way out of cocky dude's brain. It *will* become an instant number one bestseller after his agent gets multiple offers and it sells at auction. All of this of course will happen as soon as he finishes aforementioned masterpiece. Until then, he has homework, chores, and soccer practice that has to come first becomes mom won't buy him a new laptop unless he gets all A's.
I read that post
Understand that everything is possible. Let's go one step further. Everything is probable.
Everything starts as thought. Imagination gives thought form. Emotion gives form an imprint toward reality. Action creates reality.
Understand that when you are born, you are complete. There is nothing missing. You are born and when your consciousness has matured, you can do anything you want.
What stops you from doing anything you want is ego. Conformity to the status quo where the ego is most comfortable and the mind attaches itself to false identities.
Everyday of your life you create. You do so unconsciously.
Your imagination is the greatest tool to getting what want via creation. With your imagination you can do anything. There are no limits.
When this person is telling people his or her goal, they are giving form to thought .
To acquire thought requires a mindset. Your brain is like an antenna. Thoughts come to you based on the mindset you send out. It's frequency
Try it out. Sit still. Be quiet. Chill. Send a mindset. I would like to.... you fill in the blank. Thoughts will arrive to you.
You have done so many times already in your life. You have done so unconsciously . So doing this consciously you are switching gears. It's going to feel odd. It's going to seem sometimes nothing is happening. Understand you already done so many times, just unconsciously .
Practice. Watch. You see it. When you do see it you can't unsee it.
I have fantasized about lead actors playing roles in my manuscript should it ever be turned into a movie. Is it going to happen? No. Does it help me visualize the character better? Yes.
I mean, everyone thinks more grandiose sometimes lol. Would it be cool as heck to play a main character in an award winning movie based on a novel series I write? Of course it would! It's never going to happen in a million years though. At least not for me. I think the big question is how serious you're actually taking it when you consider stuff like this. Fanfiction is a tiny bit more realistic if you've gotten one or two things published, but if you haven't it's definitely pretty far off the radar. But sometimes if you just want to think about the "what if" of it just for fun, that's okay, as long as you don't let it get to your head.
Fake it til you make it
I mean, look, it's fine — good even — to have dreams and aspirations, but you might wanna keep those inside your mind rather than out on Reddit for everyone to see :P
Eh, they’re not my expectations. I’ve just seen them around
Oh I know, I just meant in general
It's one thing to dream and be hopeful, but to expect that amount of success is medically delusional.
They have goals and dreams and ambitions for their writing, and they haven’t spent enough time on this subreddit to become a hopeless husk of a person
Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence.
When asked to show proof, dreams dissolve onto reality, and posts get deleted.
Where does the mindset come from? Probably their trusted ai platform cheering them on.
AI can make mistakes. Please check the information.
It's nice, actually. To see people's dreams crushed under the heel of reality. Too many weirdos out there already. 😜