The 'have you read a story like this?' thread.
No idea where this thread should go, by the way, so feel free to put it wherever. My hope is that people other than just me will find it useful.
As a relatively new author I often find myself taking inspiration from things I've read. I find it useful to look at how books I liked are structured and planned out. I.e. if I want to write a specific type of story I'll often go back and read a lot of other books that are of similar types to what I want.
For example, when I wanted to write a mystery short story a while back I re-read a lot of short stories involving Hercule Poirot (since that was more the style I wanted rather than Sherlock Holmes). The result wasn't similar in the least (it starred two boys in magic-land getting involved in a robbery by accident), but paying attention to the structure and progression that Agatha Christie used helped when I was writing. Since I was introducing a magic system and alternate history world I also read several fantasy short stories to see how they handled that in a short format.
But sometimes I want suggestions a little more specific. Often TVTropes can help -- if you can identify the trope you like and want to use (or invert, or whatever) you can check out the references on its page. But it doesn't always give you a good list, and the lists it does give you aren't always accurate.
So... that was a long thread introduction. Sorry about that. But I'm hoping that some of you will also be looking for specific types of books and want to use it as well.
Types of books I'm looking for:
[1] Novel or Novella under 50k words long, preferably 30-35k, that has really good character progression for two characters (preferably non-romance, preferably shown from both POVs) who go from antagonistic to friendly. Standalone. Preferably will also have an actual plot.
I can rattle off numerous longer works that manage that but I haven't personally seen it done well in a short format.
[2] Standalone story of approx 15k-100k involving a heist. I've read surprisingly few standalone stories where the focus is "let's steal something."
Most "thief" related stories that I've run into don't tend to focus on this aspect.
Anyone read something that fits the requirements for either of those?
Anyone else looking for a very specific "kind" of story to read? If so, what is it? Maybe someone here has an idea.
No idea where this thread should go, by the way, so feel free to put it wherever. My hope is that people other than just me will find it useful.
As a relatively new author I often find myself taking inspiration from things I've read. I find it useful to look at how books I liked are structured and planned out. I.e. if I want to write a specific type of story I'll often go back and read a lot of other books that are of similar types to what I want.
For example, when I wanted to write a mystery short story a while back I re-read a lot of short stories involving Hercule Poirot (since that was more the style I wanted rather than Sherlock Holmes). The result wasn't similar in the least (it starred two boys in magic-land getting involved in a robbery by accident), but paying attention to the structure and progression that Agatha Christie used helped when I was writing. Since I was introducing a magic system and alternate history world I also read several fantasy short stories to see how they handled that in a short format.
But sometimes I want suggestions a little more specific. Often TVTropes can help -- if you can identify the trope you like and want to use (or invert, or whatever) you can check out the references on its page. But it doesn't always give you a good list, and the lists it does give you aren't always accurate.
So... that was a long thread introduction. Sorry about that. But I'm hoping that some of you will also be looking for specific types of books and want to use it as well.
Types of books I'm looking for:
[1] Novel or Novella under 50k words long, preferably 30-35k, that has really good character progression for two characters (preferably non-romance, preferably shown from both POVs) who go from antagonistic to friendly. Standalone. Preferably will also have an actual plot.
I can rattle off numerous longer works that manage that but I haven't personally seen it done well in a short format.
[2] Standalone story of approx 15k-100k involving a heist. I've read surprisingly few standalone stories where the focus is "let's steal something."
Most "thief" related stories that I've run into don't tend to focus on this aspect.
Anyone read something that fits the requirements for either of those?
Anyone else looking for a very specific "kind" of story to read? If so, what is it? Maybe someone here has an idea.