You Want To Learn To Write Better Dialogue? Become A Bitch Who Has Whole Conversations And Debates In

ANDY WEIR WRITES, READS AND ENCOURAGES FANFIC??

you know a fic is good when it has this

genuinely there is nothing like the first 48 hours of being insane about a character when you’re washing your eyeballs out with fan art and ripping ao3 apart with your teeth like a hound

Essential Beat Sheet for Writers

ACT ONE: SETUP

1. Opening Image: A snapshot of your story’s world and tone. Who are we following? What’s at stake?

2. Theme Stated: A subtle hint about the story’s deeper meaning or lesson, often posed as a question or challenge.

3. Setup: Introduce your protagonist, their ordinary world, supporting characters, and the status quo. Show us what needs to change.

4. Catalyst: The inciting incident that flips the protagonist’s world upside down. This is the point of no return.

5. Debate: Your protagonist hesitates. Should they step forward into the unknown or retreat? This beat builds anticipation.

ACT TWO: CONFRONTATION

6. Break Into Two: The protagonist makes a decision and steps into a new world (literal or figurative). The adventure begins.

7. B Story: The subplot kicks in—often a relationship or secondary goal that supports the main story’s theme.

8. Fun and Games: The “heart” of the story. Deliver on the premise and explore the stakes through action, conflict, and character growth.

9. Midpoint: A major turning point where everything changes. Stakes are raised. Success feels closer—or failure looms larger.

10. Bad Guys Close In: External and internal pressures mount. Allies falter. Enemies strike. Doubts creep in.

11. All Is Lost: The darkest moment. The protagonist experiences a significant loss or setback.

12. Dark Night of the Soul: A pause for reflection. Your protagonist processes their failure and digs deep to find the courage to move forward.

ACT THREE: RESOLUTION

13. Break Into Three: Armed with new insight or strength, the protagonist takes decisive action to face the story’s central conflict.

14. Finale: The climax. Everything comes to a head in a final showdown or resolution. Your protagonist proves they’ve changed—or failed to.

15. Closing Image: A mirror of the opening image, showing how the world—and your protagonist—has transformed.

sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four

Study not to be perfect but to become the best version of yourself.

Darcy Reads: Artemis by Andy Weir

So this is my first book review on this account. Full disclaimer, I have no plans of keeping a tight schedule for these things. My goal is to finish at least 24 books in 2025 and this is book #1. If you're still reading this, let's jump into the actual review...(Spoilers ahead)

Storytelling (4/5): While Jazz is bouncing around on the moon (sometimes literally), she explains in excruciating detail the many mechanisms required to live in Artemis indefinitely. Ever wondered what would happen if there was a fire on the moon? Or maybe you wondered what kind of industries could operate up there. Jazz doesn't answer every question, but she sure covers a lot of ground. You start to feel like your are visiting Artemis for the first time and Jazz is your personal tour guide. In fact, there's a scene where a tourist asks EVA master Bob several questions about walking on the moon and somehow it seems a lot more forced than just listening to Jazz silently explain everything herself. I'm not a scientist, so I'm not going to even pretend to know whether or not her explanations make any sense. I can however say that Jazz's scientific rantings are entertaining and I feel like I might know just a smidge more about astronomy than I did before reading.

Plot (2.5/5): Science jargon aside, the plot itself is very transparent. It's a double heist feature. Heist one: Jazz is commissioned to sabotage Sanchez Aluminum. She's confident that she can get it done, but we're not even a third of the way through the book yet. Jazz fails due to a series of unfortunate accidents, but at least she was able to make it back to Artemis in one piece and nobody got hurt. Heist two: Jazz's client gets assassinated and she uncovers a plot by the Brazilian mafia to take over the moon. She pulls together a ragtag team, including a Ukrainian mad scientist, her ex best friend, her genius father, a teenage billionaire, and Bob. She even takes a moment to give an inspirational speech about saving Artemis and working as a team (she also pokes fun at herself for saying such a speech, but this still a sin in my humble opinion). Their plan works despite some asteroid sized hiccups. Jazz makes a heroic sacrifice, but you don't even have to finish the novel to know that she will survive and that Artemis will be saved.

That's all. I can think of at least a dozen pieces of media that follow a very similar if not identical path as Artemis. With that being said, clichés exist for a reason. We like them. At least having it all play out on the moon makes it more noteworthy than Ocean's 26. I am also happy for any futuristic science fiction story that does not immediately ooze misanthropy and depression.

Characters (3/5): I don't like Jazz - wait here me out. I also don't hate her. Jazz is a well developed character. She's competent and she's flawed. She's ambitious and she harbors some doubts. She has a backstory that I think many people can sympathize with. I appreciate that even after everything she experienced before the start of the novel, Jazz is still the same smartass that got her into that trouble. Does she regret anything? Yes. Will she stop all of her antics and live a peaceful, law abiding life? Absolutely not.

If you like Jazz, that's great. My reasons for disliking her are completely personal. I wouldn't ever want to be friends with her, but that doesn't make her a bad character by any stretch.

As for the other characters, they are very much like the plot itself. While detailed and entertaining, there truly are no surprises. Svoboda is a lovesick nerd, Ammar is the cranky but devoted father, Rudy is a no nonsense cop, etc. Everyone has a specific role that they play out perfectly. It's disappointing. To the very end, I hoped for at least one surprise either in the form of a turncoat or an unexpected ally. How much more interesting would it have been if Jazz's longtime pen pal Kelvin was actually working with O Palácio right from the start? Or what if Rudy joined in on their plans? Instead, we get characters that are only there to help develop Jazz's story. What kind of person is Dale? He's Jazz's ex best friend, he's gay, and - oh yeah he's Jewish. I guess that counts as personality trait (NOTE: it definitely does not). We don't learn anything else about him because nothing else matters. It would have been a lot more interesting to hear how exactly he and Jazz became so close and what happened when he stole Jazz's then boyfriend. Alas, that's an entirely different story that just doesn't fit well into Weir's moon heists.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I didn't have any expectations for this book. I stumbled across it in a used bookstore and my first thought was "Wait, that guy who wrote The Martian has other books?" (I have not read The Martian). Even after finishing this book, I feel very neutral. The characters are entertaining and the worldbuilding is top notch, but I'm not compelled to look for anything more. I can say that the most interesting thing about this book is the amount of thought and research Weir put into it to justify an entire civilization living on the moon. But again, I am not a science person, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

Artemis feels like the start of something bigger. It's laying down the groundwork for what could potentially expand into something much much bigger than it currently is. If humans can live on the moon, what's to stop anyone from colonizing other planets? What happens if they put more than one city on the moon? I'm not saying that this has to be expanded into a series, but it would be a prime setting for some good old RPG. Like Jazz herself, there is some potential there, waiting to be expanded upon.

And in case anyone else is wondering: I would never ever want to live in Artemis. I wouldn't even want to visit it. It's a bouncy castle prison with terrifyingly poor safety measures.

I do a lot of worldbuilding, and there are very few things that I keep away from.

One of them is truth magic.

Truth magic, even in a restricted form, even if it's expensive, digs its fingers into every social institution in a world, and then also digs its fingers into every element of plot, and will seep into every scene that you ever write for a given story. There are many many many ways to implement truth magic, and most of them are just beset by this problem of sheer magnitude.

But I also think there are a few interesting narrative things you can do with it, if wielded properly:

Character who really seems untrustworthy, but the magic has verified them, as improbable as this seems.

Character who technically did tell the truth, but they were clever about leaving in a loophole.

Character who has been dodging truth spells for a long time is finally forced to have all their lies undone.

Character who has been raised scrupulously truthful because they exist in a part of society where truth spells are common and all speech must be self-monitored.

Character who is deep in self-denial is forced to confront a hidden truth they don't want to accept.

Character who is insane enough that truth magic just doesn't work on them.

Maybe some day I'll give truth magic a shot, it just seems horribly complicated to write for.

Cannot stress how amazing Our Wives Under The Sea is!

Never Let Me Go has also been on my list for a while. Maybe this year...

JOMP Book Photo Challenge - December - 31/12/24 - Favourite Books of the Year

My favourite books of this year are:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

Medusa by Jessie Burton

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee