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>>What are some things that the best kinds of writing you come across have in common?

They tell a great story. While there are many elements to writing well, and many books on how to do that (some of which you should consider buying and reading), I'd say a great story is the most important. Right from the book blurb to the very first sentence. Grab your reader and don't let go. Readers will forgive a few imperfections in someone's writing if they get that one element right. Also, since you're just starting out, approach the work with the expectation that you will have to do multiple (many?) drafts, especially that first sentence, paragraph, page, and chapter. But don't get paralyzed trying to perfect them before moving on. The very act of writing the novel will almost certainly alter what you want to say at the beginning.

On a site like this, where you can get widely varying feedback from different authors (including quite a few who are published), you'll quickly learn many of the elements that go into writing well. But it's not just their feedback that's very important. So is reading and studying their writing, so you can decide which elements of each author's writing or storytelling style you like and may want to emulate versus those you don't. Do the same with novels you've read that you enjoyed, but this time, approach them from what the author can teach you. For the stories I write, I particularly like Frank Herbert's Dune novels, as well as Dan Brown's Angels & Demons. I've reread both many times.

The points system on this site, while not as onerous (anymore) as other workshop sites, still requires you to read and critique other members' stories. Approach those from the perspective of what their writing can teach you; collecting the points to post is of secondary importance to exposing yourself to many different writing and storytelling styles.

This is where a lot of would-be authors give up. They realize that writing that first successful novel is a lot of work beyond just writing. Anybody can write, but most people don't do it particularly well at the beginning. There are authors here who will tell you they thought their first written work was great until they joined this site and realized how much there was to learn. Some of those same authors are now published and among the most skilled on this site. I have an IT background that has always included technical writing, and I can tell you, my first attempt at a novel, which I thought was pretty good at the outset, I now realize was total crap. Taser-stunningly bad. :-)

You'll probably get a lot more feedback to this post as it's a great topic. Be sure to look at the forum article entitled "How to Get the Most Reviews of Your Writing" (pinned at the top of this forum), which should help you maximize how much feedback you get during your trial and help you decide if this approach to writing and learning to write suits you. I've been here 12 years, others even longer, and for us this approach to writing and learning is ideal. It's also how most online critique sites work. The most important aspect to getting lots of reviews is to give lots reviews. Be sure to keep your posted chapters to a reasonable size (see the above article for suggested length/wordcount) to help the most number of readers here find the time to review your story during your trial period.

Is your currently posted work, Life Extension Program, the lgbtq+ psychological drama you were referring to? I'm a bit swamped this coming week, but I'll do my best to get to it. FYI, one of my two novels currently in progress, Archangel Syndrome, is sci-fi with a number of gay characters living on a conservative Christian world. It's a great way to explore the issues arising from that, including the evolution in the thinking of the planet's sixteen-year-old crown prince, Joseph, one of the story's two main characters, who has a lot of evolving to do, especially since he himself may be gay and is horrified by the possibility. :-)

Welcome to the site.
Dirk

That's the direction Sol (the site admin) is considering going in, although we hadn't heard that he already implemented any changes for that.

Non-paying users would (I hope) be able to read stories posted on the site, judge the quality of the writing (i.e., are there people on the site whose writing you feel you can learn from?), explore the quality of the reviews given to others to ensure you'll get the level of feedback you desire, do reviews of your own and collect points in preparation for becoming a paying user, get familiar with the system, interact with paying users who might become potential critiquing partners for you, etc., and then, if the site seems sufficiently valuable (it is!), they could convert to a paying user and start posting.

Some of the above details of how the site may work have not been announced as definite, so big grain of salt there. It's similar to a site model that was used on the old TNBW site, and it seemed to work better at attracting and retaining members than the current trials, without burdening existing members with having to review posts from every trial member only to have most of them disappear.

If I take too long to write a forum post, the system will log me out. Seems to happen when I leave my browser (Chrome) pointing too long at a specific forum post or forum. For example, I currently have my text cursor in the Post Reply field of this thread (Reviving TNBW). If I were to walk away, it logs me out pretty quickly. It also logs me out pretty quickly if I take too long writing a post like this reply to you. Usually, that's merely a nuisance (if I attempt to post my reply to this thread and the system has already logged me out, it will still post it, after which I have to log back in). This happens a lot.

The problem is greatest if I try to post a new topic and I take too long. Not only won't it save what I wrote, even the browser's back button won't get me back to what I wrote. This bug hits those who write long forum posts hardest since everything you wrote is gone. It happened to at least one new user some months ago that I know of. It also happened to me several times. Naturally, a new user who loses an hour's worth of typing isn't going to be happy.

These days, I usually (though not always) remember to copy the content of my forum post to the clipboard in case I run into this bug.

EDIT: For example, it kicked me out while I was writing this reply.

The timeout bug in the forums still exists. Sol, was any attempt made to eliminate that bug, or am I testing the original version with the timeouts?

Why is your em-dash so short? Mine (from MS Word) looks like so: —
Yours (copied from above) looks like so: –
Since your en-dash is likely shorter, I'd hate to see how short your hyphen is.

Is that a review site? A contest?

Hi Sol.

I noticed/tested most of the fixes you made.
I'm pretty sure the timeout problem in the forums is gone too. I'm just doing a few more timeout test cases.

These changes rock!

Thank you very much.
Dirk

Treewoman61, below is a link to a site page of what you should be paying. If you think you're being charged $20/month, please contact SolN.

https://www.thenextbigwriter.com/guide/about-us

Thanks
Dirk

A little coddling may be reasonable in the short term since we're trying to add new users quickly. The contest ought to be just hard enough to keep out anyone who isn't even willing to do a few reviews. Without doing that, they won't really experience the site and its benefits (see my previous post). Since many of them will be doing a trial, they ought to be doing reviews anyway, so here's a chance for them to win something (membership) while doing something they should be doing anyway. Perhaps three reviews? Five? The total number ought to be commensurate with the value of the prize and the length of the contest (keep in mind, the trials only last two weeks at present).

I agree on both counts. Perhaps do it only on the contest for all members. And if you keep the requirement easy (2-3 reviews?), anyone serious would probably still enter, while anyone too lazy to even do that isn't going to succeed on our site.