#writerscoffeeclub

@Klepsis@indieauthors.social · May 10, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 9. Call & Response: Share the first line of your current WIP. “Listen here, young lady. I was doing undercover work in schools since before you were born!” Everyone: How enticed are you? #Writing #WIP

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Extra Special Bitter

@extraspecialbitter@indieauthors.social · May 08, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub Apr 27: Share a possibly unpopular opinion - haiku edition. Haibun exists because some haiku poets would rather "explain" their poem than allow it to resonate with the reader, inviting them to imbue the words and images with meaning unique to them.

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E. H. Lupton

@pretensesoup@indieauthors.social · May 08, 2026

#writersCoffeeClub 8 May: What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today? When I had objections to some rumors about the 1996 Dr Who telemovie (picked up on usenet, because argh I'm old). My dad said if I didn't like it, I should write my own. I had always been vaguely interested in writing, but that gave me something to focus on, like a...a seed crystal or something. It would still be years and years before I really finished a story, though, and even longer before I wrote something approaching a novel.

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Aron Silver

@aronsilver@indieauthors.social · May 08, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 8: What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today? The experience of myself. “He who does not know himself, cannot write faithfully of others.” — Someone, somewhere, certainly.

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Will Elm

@willelm@indieauthors.social · May 08, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 8. What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today? I think it's probably all the experiences of my life. I'm not sure there's a single experience that made me the writer I am.

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Brighton Taylor

@brightontaylor@indieauthors.social · May 08, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 5/8. What experience can you identify as having made you the writer you are today? The experience of realizing that I can write what I want to read, not what I think people want to read. It may be lonely, and I follow whims and tangents that seem like risks, but I often think they were okay choices later, even if sometimes it is MUCH later.

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Klepsis

@Klepsis@indieauthors.social · May 07, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 7. Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand the story? So, I'm thinking of one book in particular, that was written in close 1st person, and yet the author concealed some pretty key facts about the protagonist until the very end. I felt like the author pulled a fast one on me, and didn't enjoy the experience. #Writing #Reading

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Jürgen Hubert

@juergen_hubert@mementomori.social · May 07, 2026

#writerscoffeeclub May 7: Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand a story? At least for the German folk tales I am translating, this is helpful. They were told in a different cultural context, with narrative conventions that were very familiar to their original audience, but which can be very alien to modern-day readers. Thus, if a character's motivation for a specific action is not directly clear, I will sometimes try to explain it from my own understanding of the context - which admittedly means speculation at times.

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E. H. Lupton

@pretensesoup@indieauthors.social · May 07, 2026

#writersCoffeeClub 7 May: Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand a story? Broadly, yes. They don't have to agree with them, but they need to have some idea why things are happening. I definitely have to understand motivations to write them.

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Will Elm

@willelm@indieauthors.social · May 07, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 7. Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand the story? Need is maybe a strong word. You can certainly understand stories without a character's motivations even being revealed. But I think it greatly improves a story and its meaning to understand a character's motivations.

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Aron Silver

@aronsilver@indieauthors.social · May 07, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 7 May: Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand the story? I think it’s the author’s responsibility to *make* the reader understand, otherwise the characters would fall horribly flat. But does the reader *need* to understand them to understand the story as a whole? I hope they do, but I reckon there are readers paying less attention to individual characters, and they should still have a good time with the work.

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Aron Silver

@aronsilver@indieauthors.social · May 07, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 6 May: Talk about something you've written which you expected would divide readers. Generally that’s not something I think about much, but because my novels use a mix of real places with fictionalised settings, I sometimes worry a bit how it would be perceived by locals who recognise parts of the setting, especially when a character in the novel has negative views on a real place that still exists. After Child of the Moon was published, I sent a box of books and a letter to one of the pubs that was extensively featured in the novel. Never heard back from them though 😅

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Jon Harley

@sundog@sunny.garden · May 07, 2026

An example of a story where the main character has little agency is the classic anime film "Akira" which I saw recently. There is a "hero" character, Kaneda, but you only know he's the hero because he's drawn more handsome than the others. Throughout the story, he has almost no effect on events around him. We can see that he's motivated to look out for his friends, but we never find out why (affection? loyalty? fear of loneliness? something else?). The only character whose motivations are explored is the anti-hero Tetsuo, who casually destroys because when young he was abandoned by his mother and bullied. It wasn't a satisfying story for me, as someone who likes character-driven stories, but I still found the questions it raised about motivation interesting. Motivations that aren't revealed can make a story interesting, as long as the characters' behaviour is consistent and suggests there is a plausible motivation behind them. #WriterscoffeeClub

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adaddinsane (Steve Turnbull)

@adaddinsane@mastodonapp.uk · May 07, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 5/7. Do readers need to understand a character's motivations to understand the story? I mean, superficially, I suppose they might get away with not for the simplest stories. But generally, yes. Of course! #writing #writingCommunity

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Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop · May 06, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 6: Talk about something you've written which you expected would (or expect will) divide readers. I published a near-future alternate history trilogy via Tor (Empire Games) in which the USA are *very clearly the bad guys* (vs. a parallel universe North America that went kinda-sorta communist with Iranian constitutional overtones). I was startled by how little pushback this got from my readers. Or maybe it just shows the effect of the first Trump presidency.

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adaddinsane (Steve Turnbull)

@adaddinsane@mastodonapp.uk · May 06, 2026

WritersCoffeClub Female nudity, punishment Hover or focus to reveal Sensitive

#WritersCoffeeClub 5/6. Talk about something you've written which you expected would (_or expect will_) divide readers. Better than that, I'll give you something that absolutely does divide readers. "Wind in the East", the fourth book of the Maliha Anderson series, has a scene where she has herself strung up naked and insists her boyfriend whip her. Writing the scene wiped me out emotionally for two weeks, but it wasn't some random perversion. She had a very specific reason (well, two reasons) even if they don't necessarily bear detailed examination. Let's just say that readers either do, or do not, get past this scene. #writing #writingCommunity #3dRender #noAI #madeWithDaz #3dArt #CGI #art #humanMade

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Inverse Shadow

@Inverse_Shadow@indieauthors.social · May 05, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub – 5th May. Have you ever taken inspiration from something which could have but didn't happen? Jim and Lily's relationship backstory is an example of this. The little story they told in book 1 is based on something real, but with them, it went way differently.

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Alexander Corby 🇵🇷

@AlexCorby@indieauthors.social · May 05, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 5/5 Have you taken inspiration from something that could have happened but didn't? That seems like a pretty broad swath of fiction. I write historical fiction and I think that's the only thing I write about. There are somethings that are flat out impossible but, given enough a large enough time frame, that list shrinks down pretty low. Yeah, chances are there wasn't a 300 foot giant walking around Wales in 545 AD, but it's not against the laws of physics. Somebody dying and then getting brought back to life in a boiling cauldron? Again, very, very unlikely it happened that way, but I could see some kind of lost, highly advanced technology that might allow that.

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Charlie Stross

@cstross@wandering.shop · May 05, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub May 5: Have you ever taken inspiration from something which could have but didn't happen? Plenty of times! I write SF, and much of it is counterfactual/alternate history. Hell, my most recent published novel is about the assassination of Queen Elizabeth II back in 2015. Do you remember where you were the day it happened?

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Tiggy

@tiggy@mastodonapp.uk · May 05, 2026

#WritersCoffeeClub 5. Have you ever taken inspiration from something which could have but didn't happen? Given some of my writing is science fiction, yes.

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