Ok, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince many of you to come all the way over to my level of obsessive realism, but I hopefully can convince some of you to either find people like me to help you or to do the heavy lifting yourselves.

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Now, something I have been told time and time again is; “Just write. No matter how bad it is you are still writing and you can always go back and unfuck the disaster.” Now I understand where people are coming from, and I know they mean well, but let me beat something into the skulls of all the authors that keep giving this advice.

It’s not for me.

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Ok, let me first clarify the title of this blog. "Earning your end" is a phrase I try to write all of my stories by that can be summarised by; "If you want the story to end a particular way, especially happily, break your protagonists." One of my biggest pet peeves is stories where a happy ending happens, but the main character really didn't lose anything. For a story that ends happily, I find it to be much more satisfactory if I read the protagonist getting their shit pushed in during the

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So, after reviewing several stories and editing several works I would like to tell you something that pisses me off to no end; having characters say things. "But Schatten." I hear you say. "How am I supposed to have dialogue unless my characters say things?" And the answer is simple, just don’t have them say things. They can sigh them, or shout them, or even grabble them through broken teeth as they try to force themselves off the ground, but they should avoid just saying them. I cannot count

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