I mean, it’s gonna take years to actually finish a novel, you don’t get the dopamine.
Work on something shorter, and you get to enjoy your creations more.
This matches advice I heard (and need to try) to get better at making games. Instead of “making games”, make toys.
Single basic mechanics that are fun to play around with that don’t necessarily need a “point.”
Then eventually you’ll have experience with coding a bunch of neat mechanics that can come together in a larger project eventually, or at least have the experience to extrapolate into how you’d code more complex stuff you’ve never done before. :D
This is why after I got back into drawing I do smaller doodles now instead of big art projects like I used to do in art classes.
Just enough to keep in practice and the consistent dopamine hits incentivize me to keep creating.
I prefer writing short stories because it prevents you from wasting a lot of time with possibly interesting but ultimately superfluous world-building details. There’s a balance to be struck between keeping the story moving and describing enough to let the reader’s imagination take over and fill in their own details, even subconsciously.
I’ve taken to starting stories in media res more often because it keeps the attention long enough to build curiosity and drop in the details as you go along.
The older I get, the more I find I lose patience reading novels that spend too long with excess dialogue that ultimately doesn’t drive the plot anywhere, serving as unfulfilled promises or red herrings at best.
Even some otherwise good writers will let you get halfway or more through a novel before you understand where the plot is going. I wonder how much some novelists add primarily due to expectations for longer word counts, the way broadcast TV shows were constrained by half hour or hour long slots with commercial breaks and that dictated the flow.
I’ve tried to write novels before and never finished. I always seem to end up writing a short story at most before I run out of ideas. Either that or the story naturally reaches a good end point only 1 chapter in.
My fiancée suggested writing poems and its really hit or miss wether they’re good or not for me NGL.
