scriptstructure

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Fantasy Markets: Worldbuilding Thoughts

Mapping Your Market

Ok so if you're writing a market scene, and your characters are wandering around stalls, have a think about why a market is set out in a specific way. If you've been to markets before, especially ones in the UK with medieval charters, you'll notice the market square might be set out in a particular way, or that things used to be in set out in specific quadrants or corners years ago and are more ad hoc now.

What market will you base yours on? Are there permanent structures used in the market, or is everything transitory?

The climate might determine if structures are used or not and what they look like, as it may be important to have the market, or at least, a lot of it, in shade, or undercover due to wet or cold conditions.

Or, it could be simple, like raised stages, and some stalls are on these.

If live animals and poultry are present, they might not be in cages or pens, but corralled inside a pre-existing structure with a wall around it, like a medieval poultry cross.

There may be a path or public right of way through the middle of the square, maybe at a diagonal from one corner to another, where stall holders aren't technically supposed to set up stalls on.

This may originally have been the route to get livestock in and out, or the path pedestrians take so they don't get in the way of said livestock.

You usually have all your animals in one place, and butchery happens right there as well, so the street is literally running with blood and shit. Then you have your fish - same deal. You do not want your textiles next to all that. You put them a bit further away. You can also have a range of shops and taverns around the market square, and it's fairly normal to have multiple taverns next to each other as they can take the footfall.

Not all will be inns with somewhere to stay, some will just be drinking establishments, and some you'll get food in as well.

More than a Market

Markets themselves can be staples of a town's way of life. Stopping them is a massive deal. There can also be a sense of civic pride around the market - for example, Salisbury's City Hall is on the market square, and the market doesn't stop or close just because a new mayor is being sworn in. The red carpet is rolled out, there's a brass band and a parade, and right next to the carpet is the grocery stall with the vendor screaming "STRAWBERRIES, A POUND!!!!" and "RASPBERRIES £2 A PUNNET!!!!!!" to be heard over the trombones somberly playing Gustav Holst. That market barely closed for the Black Death, it's not being stopped for some guy in a hat.

Similarly, if your characters are in town for a civic occasion, it wouldn't be weird to have the market on at the same time - it just means more footfall, and it might help to build a picture of the area's politics, and deepen the worldbuilding so you can drop hints about the wider world and wider region through the stalls and vendors and demographics who have come into town for different reasons.

Whose Market?

Markets don't just magically happen or appear, they're organised. By whom? This comes down to your political set-up. Who runs the town? Whoever runs the town, licences the market. They get rent from the stalls, or a fee. If there's a market, you may also find toll bridges set up around the town so that goods coming in by river have to pay a toll that then goes towards the upkeep of the riverbanks (flood defences) and the bridges (access routes) and roads. Someone is also usually profiting from this as well - who?

In the Middle Ages, the right to have a market licence was something a bishop could hold, not just a secular thing. Here's an example from Salisbury (known then as New Sarum, as Old Sarum is a hillfort with a castle and cathedral on top, and New Sarum moved down to the confluence of 5 rivers, as it didn't need to be in such a defensive position anymore, it was expanding rapidly, the bishop didn't want the secular lord to be able to throw a stone out of his bedroom window and hit the cathedral - they really were built that close together due to the size of the hilltop they are on - and rivers mean access to trade.

Market Etiquette & Norms

You can play a lot with trade and market stalls - you can use this to show off your world and create a wider sense of it, what goods are expensive and rare, what are usual sights, what entertainment is present, what are the children doing?

Also think about the smells (not all pleasant, not all unpleasant), the memories your characters would have of markets, or their attitudes to them if it's their first time at one. If they've never been to market before, why not, and how do they usually get their goods if they don't go to a weekly market to buy things?

What is "normal" behaviour at a market? What sort of unhinged behaviour wouldn't make anyone bat an eyelid, as they've seen it all before?

What dangers are there to look out for?

Loads more questions to ask, but I'll leave it there for now.

Just some things to think about!

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Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.

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Anonymous Asks are now Off

Hi all,

Unfortunately, due to a high volume of spam messages, Anonymous Asks are now turned OFF for Scriptstucture.

Hopefully in the future they can be turned back on, but in the meanwhile, I promise I'm not scary, feel free to ask.

thanks

Mason

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I've already said that my number one piece of writing advice is to read.

But my number two piece of advice is this: be deliberate.

Honestly this would fix so many pieces of bad writing advice. Don't forbid people from doing something, tell them to be conscious and deliberate about it. This could help stop people from falling into common mistakes without limiting their creativity. Black and white imperatives may stop a few annoying beginner habits, but ultimately they will restrict artistic expression.

Instead of "don't use epithets": "Know the effect epithets have and be deliberate about using them." Because yes, beginners often misuse them, but they can be useful when a character's name isn't known or when you want to reduce them to a particular trait they have.

Instead of "don't use 'said'" or "just use 'said'": "Be deliberate about your use of dialogue tags." Because sometimes you'll want "said" which fades into the background nicely, but sometimes you will need a more descriptive alternative to convey what a character is doing.

Instead of "don't use passive voice": "Be deliberate about when you use passive voice." Because using it when it's not needed can detract from your writing, but sometimes it can be useful to change the emphasis of a sentence or to portray a particular state of mind.

Instead of blindly following or ignorantly neglecting the rules of writing, familiarize yourself with them and their consequences so you can choose when and if breaking them would serve what you're trying to get across.

Your writing is yours. Take control of it.

It probably sounds like I'm preaching to the choir here because most of my mutuals are already great writers. But I'm hoping this will make it to the right people.

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Hi folks,

Mason here, I don't like to use this blog to promote my own work, but at the same time I think this is a very cool project, and there are probably some of you out there who would love this.

Meat4meat is an anthology of body horror short stories by trans authors, it is currently in the kickstarter phase, and has just ten days to go in its campaign. It features short stories from a bunch of incredible authors, including Joe Koch, Claudine Griggs, and many more (and me!)

From the Kickstarter:

What is meat4meat? meat4meat is an illustrated short fiction anthology dedicated to exploring body horror by those who know it best. It is a study in the relationship between discrepancy in self and body, in the horror of losing control, and the joy of taking it back. It’s a celebration of the strange and wonderful. But most of all, meat4meat is a fever dream of an anthology that drags the reader face-first though the guts and gore of world-class body horror. meat4meat features seventeen stories by transgender and disabled authors, ranging from debut writers such as Lorelei Thee to masters of the craft such as Joe Koch, Claudine Giggs and more! Each story is accompanied with original illustration by similarly marginalised artists, offering their own perspective on the anthology’s themes.

I hope that you check it out!

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Hi folks,

Mason here, I don't like to use this blog to promote my own work, but at the same time I think this is a very cool project, and there are probably some of you out there who would love this.

Meat4meat is an anthology of body horror short stories by trans authors, it is currently in the kickstarter phase, and has just ten days to go in its campaign. It features short stories from a bunch of incredible authors, including Joe Koch, Claudine Griggs, and many more (and me!)

From the Kickstarter:

What is meat4meat? meat4meat is an illustrated short fiction anthology dedicated to exploring body horror by those who know it best. It is a study in the relationship between discrepancy in self and body, in the horror of losing control, and the joy of taking it back. It’s a celebration of the strange and wonderful. But most of all, meat4meat is a fever dream of an anthology that drags the reader face-first though the guts and gore of world-class body horror. meat4meat features seventeen stories by transgender and disabled authors, ranging from debut writers such as Lorelei Thee to masters of the craft such as Joe Koch, Claudine Giggs and more! Each story is accompanied with original illustration by similarly marginalised artists, offering their own perspective on the anthology’s themes.

I hope that you check it out!

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!! NSFW WARNING !! Hey, I totally understand if you don't want to answer this I've been trying to write smut. Specifically, an orgy with ~15 characters with ~7 of them having more focus. Things are happening at the same time and partners/groups are changed all the time and not together i.e. a single person finishes and just joins somewhere else. I don't know how/when to start switching who/which group to write about or even backtrack to a different group. It's rather jumbled up now.

I think the most important thing to remember when it comes to writing sex scenes, is:

Sex scenes are action sequences

We are developing a series of acts between a number of characters, and we hope to do a number of things:

There is an arc of action, beginning at the beginning point, moving though the action, and a crescendo & denoument

Who did what -/With whom -/and where

Give a sense of mood, theme, and continuity with the rest of the story (or, jarring discontinuity, if that's what you're using it for)

and so on, as with any other action scene

So, as we do with any kind of action sequence, we need to figure out the order of events, the way that we want to feel about those events*, and the time we're going to take to show all of this.

First up, you probably want to think about how central this scene is to your story. Is it a major incident, or a minor incident? ie, do we want to spend a lot of page space and detail on it, or is it something that just needs to be glossed over in a few paragraphs, just so we know that it happened?

This is going to change depending on what you're trying to do with the sex scene, and what your story is about.

Second up, the 'blocking' or figuring out the choreography of the scene. Who is where, what are they doing, and with whom. You can probably figure out a skeleton outline, just so that you can be sure that characters have time to participate in each scenario that you're including them in. (This is also a good time to think about the pace and rhythm of the scene--are there going to be snack breaks, lulls in the action, time for characters to catch their breath, etc)

If you're having trouble thinking of how to shift focus between different groupings, think about when and why the characters decide to move on from what they're doing to join someone else. Or about how what each group is doing might change the vibe of the scene.

Then, we'll think about mood. The mood can shift throughout the scene, eg frantic/ high energy->slow/ romantic->lazy/sated, or nervous->focussed->confident, whatever the emotional beats and journeys that you want to show.

Mood is also something which is going to lend a great deal to the scene in terms of communicating what it is for** in the story. Is this scene a way of showing the group dynamic, or of exploring individual character's psychology, or illustrating a cultural norm, or of celebrating a victory, or any other thing that it could be about. These characters are having sex, why are they doing that, and what does it mean in the context of the narrative.

So now we know that we need to have an understanding of what the purpose of this scene is in the overall narrative, what exactly happens and in what order, what sort of mood we're trying to evoke with this scene, and what other things we might be learning about character/ place/ culture through this scene.

Next, what about some examples of books that use sex scenes with more or less complex staging to develop various plots and themes:

In the Court of the Nameless Queen by Natalie Ironsides->exploration of gender and identity, with both orgy scenes and couple scenes

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite/ Billy Martin->this is a horror novel featuring two serial killers falling in love, look up some content warnings if that sounds like it isn't for you

Leash by Jane Delynn-> a classic of lesbian weirdo-erotica, about societal alienation and BDSM

Some posts about plotting and POV that might be useful:

Multiple plots with different character groups [HERE] Multiple plots that converge at the end [HERE] Multiple plots and subplots [HERE] Multiple POV characters and narrative shape [HERE] Third person POV and focalisation 'depth' [HERE] First person POV strengths and limitations [HERE]

I hope that's helpful! If there's anything that needs clarifying, please don't hesitate to ask again!

-Mason

*note: you might think that I'd say that we're assuming that people should read the sex scene to get horny about it, but that is just one option of many, and while it has its place, there are far more things that you can do with a sex scene

**note: I also do want to be clear that there's nothing wrong with writing sex scenes explicitly for the horny factor. That, traditionally, is one of the major reasons to include sex scenes in a story. But I do think that more narrative weight makes a sex scene more memorable and interesting.

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Dear DD, I'm wondering if you could show examples (from your own work or otherwise) of what really, *really* rough drafts of fiction writing look like. I'm talking the earliest stages of the process that normally most people don't show to the public; whenever I look around online, what folks seem to post as "WIP" samples are usually more like 80-90% polished excerpts.

While my brain logically knows these are the late-stage stuff, it has an ill-advised habit of trying to draft to that 80-90 level of quality from the get-go--I think it might help to see what the equivalent of "thumbnails" or "sketches/doodles" look like in writing, especially from someone who's been At The Work for a long time. Hopefully it's an alright request! I understand if for various reasons you can't.

I'm more than willing to show people my stuff in process, every now and then. ...But in my case, your initial query poses an unusual challenge. And it's this:

After pushing fifty years of doing this work (or indeed, you had it right, this Work) for money, everything comes out looking fairly polished.

And this can't be helped. Once you've been doing this work for long enough—once doing it well starts being the thing responsible for keeping you and your family fed—you will inevitably (eventually) evolve the ability to exude smooth-looking prose at minutes' notice. Over the years your internal prose filters will get trained into being increasingly fine-meshed... and the longer this goes on, the more flatly they'll refuse to let clunky stuff out onto the page any more. You don't really even think about it. You just keep refining a given phrase/sentence/paragraph in your head until it feels acceptable.

After a couple/few decades, this ability becomes an ever more finely-honed survival characteristic. You can no sooner emit actively coarse prose (without trying purposefully to do so, which is another story...) than you can stop breathing for minutes at a time without suffering the consequences. (shrug) It's just the way your life experience has taught your Drafting Brain to conduct itself, going forward.

Now... this doesn't mean at all that the drafted material, be it ever so polished-looking, is necessarily what you intended (or needed!) to write. Oh no. I could this very day show you some prose that by my standards is still really rough, because I wrote it five minutes ago... and you'd look at it and be very unlikely to be able to see what my problem was with it.* Whereas I'm sitting staring at it and muttering "Dammit, something's missing here. No idea what. I'll come back to it tomorrow."

And indeed I wrote something about three hours ago that (as I got it onto the page in its earliest form) left me literally gasping about how obtuse I'd been about the situation and emotions described in it, as recently as early this afternoon before I had lunch. It was a scene that had been missing from something I'm completing at the moment—indeed not merely missing but completely uncontemplated—and as it spooled itself out on the page all I could do was shake my head at my own idiocy at having missed the opportunity earlier, while I was nailing down the plot.

And I would love to show you that piece of prose right this minute, so that you could see what minutes-old prose from me looks like. Except it's seriously spoilery, and I refuse to sabotage a larger work by allowing out any material that's so loaded... and which viewed out of context would deprive it of most of its power. So, as we say around here, 'Sorry not sorry.'" Though I promise I'll come back to this and talk about it "in the clear" later, when that work's published.

...Anyway. The best advice I have for you just now is that trying to make your filters-in-training less effective is—to put it as gently as Captain Amelia might—a mistake.

That urge to have the first draft—or the "zero draft" as some are calling it these days: I use this myself—be as good as possible is frankly a lifesaver. Indulging it, sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, will only leave you with less frustration, less editing and re-editing, and way less Flat Forehead Syndrome over time. You are going in the right direction, even if it makes you feel like you're losing valuable time.

Your brain's attempts to draft to the highest possible level are not ill-advised. Indulge the urge to get your drafting more right, even if it makes you suffer a bit. No one ever said this writing lark was going to be all fun. (And if they did, they lied to you.) Also: hunting through other people's WIP excerpts, be they rougher than yours or more polished, in a search for something that your excerpts or drafting style should or could theoretically look like, will do you no good in the long term... and may do you harm. All you're likely to be left with, after you haven't found anything useful in the wake of the shoulder-peering, is a sense—almost certainly an inaccurate one—that you're somehow doing it wrong.**

You're not. You're finding your own way, at your own speed. This is the Writer's Journey. (As opposed to the Hero's, which I have characters shouting at me about at the moment.) (eyeroll) As you continue going your own way, your drafting will gradually pick up speed without losing quality. ...And don't neglect your outside reading. You need to be reading outside your own genre and your own century to pick up, as it were, new (or old) plugins for your filters.

Anyway. If (as it seems) you're in this for the long term: get right down here with the rest of us and suffer your way (briefly) through it. We all suffer from concerns about process from time to time. The only cure is to say "fuck that noise" to the back of your Writer's Mind, and get back to the actual writing, where these problems are worked out in the only way that counts.

So: go do your thing, and let the chips fall where they may. And I hope this has helped! Let me know, over time, how things go.

*This situation is also, BTW, a bit of a problem for a writer in a career stage like mine. In an inversion of the usual rule—where "the Perfect becomes the enemy of the (Merely) Good"—the "Really Not Bad At All" becomes the enemy of the "Could Have Been Way Better If You'd Given It A 'Should I Maybe Sweat Over This A Little More?' Pass". Because the Not Bad At All genuinely isn't... but if you're not careful, you stop seeing where to kick it into the next stage when you're distracted by all the other junk going on in life.

**...But this is one of the downsides of the community, and communality, of the writing life online. We wind up endlessly looking over each others' shoulders to try to find answers that—in many cases—were already sitting between us and the screen, on the keyboard.

(And now a suggestion for those who find these occasional excursions into the Advice Barrel useful: at various folks' request, I have a Ko-Fi now. If you find the advice useful and you feel so inclined, send me a sign.) :)

[scriptstructure]

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

About & Guidelines

About the Blog:

In the fashion of ScriptMedic and cohort, this blog is here to answer questions about how to structure your story, and develop your narrative, and themes. If you’ve got your research, and you’ve got your plot, and then you’re stuck on how to make it fit together, or how to use your awesome research, then this is the blog for you!

This blog can provide assistance from simple tips regarding writing itself, through to recommendations for further reading and research. If I’m able I will provide links to relevant texts, or at least attempt to provide ways to find them.

Guidelines for Asking:

FIRST! An important note: I will not read your manuscript!

MS reading is time-intensive and is the sort of thing better left to dedicated beta readers or paid editors, please do not submit part/ all of your MS, and ask me to ‘tell you what’s wrong with it’ or ‘help fix it’.

Sending your ask:

ask box is preferred! Submit box is available if you absolutely can’t fit your question into the ask

I’ll be keeping messenger open in case I need to ask clarifying questions, but I would prefer that initial questions NOT be sent via messenger.

You’ll probably need to put 1-2 sentences of context about your story, and ask about the specific issue you’re having difficulty with

Generally speaking, the more specific your question is the better I will be able to help you – figure out the area that you’re having difficulty with and ask about that in particular. Sending a long rehash of your MS and then simply asking how to make it work is impossible to answer. Tell me what You think the problem you’re having is, and we can work from there.

As this blog grows, there will no doubt be posts related to troubles you’re having, I’ll be making sure to keep up a consistent tagging system so that all previous posts should be simple to find, simply head to the navigation page and look to see if your question has already been answered. If it hasn’t? Then ask away! If I’ve answered something similar to the question you have but haven’t quite hit the nail on the head? Ask away!

Also, you might notice that I’ll often advise people to read certain texts, or recommend stories, shows, films, novels, etc that are similar to what they’re working on. Reading is the best practice for writing, you’ll learn a lot about writing by reading attentively, and it is a process – all writing is a process! There’s no quick fix or cheat sheet that will work for everyone.

If you must send a question longer than the ask box allows, use a browser to access:

www.scriptstructure.tumblr/submit

About the Blogger:

My name is Mason and I’m all about character and narrative development, I’ll be doing my best to try and work through the thorny problems that come with the writing part of writing!

I have a degree in Creative Writing, a minor in English Literature, and an honours degree in Creative Writing (thesis focused on character structure and narrative). I’ve lectured on Character development in adaptation, and I’ve taught general creative writing, as well as writing for the stage.

I have several short stories published, as well as a self published novella, you can find my personal/ author blog [HERE]

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fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

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Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

Bluesky post from Dr Sam Hirst:

Barely a week to-go before the annual Romancing the Gothic charity teachathon! 15th February - it runs all day so people can join from any timezone for at least some of it Sessions recorded so you don't miss out THIRTEEN (13) amazing talks and workshops

This is a really fun event that has been running for three years now, raising money for Magic Breakfast, a charity that offers over 300,000 breakfasts every day to children and young people in schools across England and Scotland.

If you like Gothic, Horror, Spooky, fun literature, movies, and weirdness, sign up for Goths For Breakfast, and enjoy all of the above while contributing to a good cause!

Tickets start at £5 and are pay-what-you-can up to £50, everyone gets to see all the same content, and afterwards links will be provided to recorded versions of the talks and workshops, slide files, and an expansive resource pack of every text referenced throughout the course of the day!

Check it out!

[scriptstructure]

You can fight AI in indie publishing by leaving reviews.

Seriously.

Ai-generated garbage is flooding the self-publishing market. It works as a numbers game- put out ENOUGH fake crap and eventually someone’s aunt will buy them the ebook as an unwanted gift, and you’ll have made two dollars. This tactic works at SCALE, which means real independent titles are now a needle amongst a haystack of slop.

If you have read a book this year that has less than 5 reviews, your rating is an algorithmic spotlight on that needle.

A one sentence review helps. Really. A star rating helps if you really can’t think of anything to say, but if you can muster up even “I laughed at the part about the tabby cat” you are doing indie authors a favor like you cannot believe.

(Also if you left a review on one of my books this year I am kissing you so softly on your forehead and I adore you)