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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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While my novel draft is marinating, I decided to write a short story in the same genre. Turns out, I am incapable of brevity. How hard can it be to make the protagonist walk in on an intercourse-in-progress with a predictable outcome? Turns out, it's really damn hard! For me, at least. Surely some exposition is necessary, so you sneak in one expository scene, then another, then you end up designing whole expository sex scenes just to keep the reader entertained till you get to the good stuff. I'll have to edit like eighty percent of it out.

Speaking of editing, while writing the short story 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.

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.