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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  7d ago (text post)   Edited 9hr ago   421 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for July 28th, 2026

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service.

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Turns out, it's really damn hard!

Look at that, you accidentally wrote something you can reuse as a line of dialogue.

I've realized I've been insufficiently consistent with my points of view in the novel. It's usually written with a single POV per scene, but some scenes utilize omniscient narration, which feels like head hopping. I insert a dinkus every time I have to switch the point of view mid-chapter, but this clearly doesn't work when it's two people hashing out their relationship status.

How Not to Write a Novel has an entire section about this, highly recommended.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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