Young Writers Society

More specifically,Dublin, since my story takes place there. For context, here's the plot:

a African Irish boy named Andrew McCoy moves to dublin after his dad gets a new job. there, he occasionally visits his uncle who rambles on about the ravens being sidhe, but he doesn't believe him. one day on the graveyard, he stumbles across an injured raven and takes him back home. he tends to it's wing until it fully healed. the raven, however, didn't want to leave just yet and so Andrew had to slept with it overnight. the next day, he wakes up to see a pale skinned boy dressed in feathers sleeping next to him. he freaks out and discovers he's been taking care of the prince of ravens the entire time.
straightaway, he's drifted into world never seen before by the naked eye. filled with fae and merciless gods, will Andrew be able to keep his new found friend, or will he be dragged down to the darkest depths of the otherwoods.

Basically, it's a urban fantasy about a private high schoolers and his shapeshifting raven.

[Deleted]

What do you need a co-writer for?

The idea sounds very cool, I can see a lot of potential for an amazing story there, so I say just go ahead and write it yourself. It'd be a shame to scrap it for this sort of reason.

Which brings me back to my first question: why do you need a co-writer? Is it about the fact that it's all happening in a place you don't know much about? Because if the only reason you want a co-writer is to get more info on Dublin, there are other [better] ways to go about it:

- do research about Dublin and Ireland online
- ask specific questions you have about it, and let many of our Ireland-based YWSers offer their opinion
- relocate your story. Why does it have to be Dublin?
- consider a completely made-up setting. It can still be urban fantasy without you specifying the city, or with having it happen in a city you came up with, in a world you came up with. There can still be the other world and everything you mentioned, the only difference is that instead of doing a lot of research to make sure your setting is correct, you do a lot of thinking to make sure it's believable.

Also, a note of advice: You may want to share more of your own work before looking for a co-writer, as well as establish yourself as someone people would want to collaborate with. People write in VERY different ways, not all styles are compatible, and not all personalities are compatible, either. Plus, if you want a co-writer for some reason other than just to tell you about Dublin, what are those other reasons? What would you expect your relationship to be, while writing this story/novel?

i actually did, but i could get one to review my work, edit grammar mistakes, etc.

it's Hugginstown, by the way. so yes, i decided to make a setting.

i guess i should have reworded it to need help.

ewolf20 wrote:if i don't get a reply by the end of may i might as well cancel the project.

Why?

It was before I thought no one wanted to help me. But, now that I'm getting repiles, I might delete it.

ewolf20 wrote:It was before I thought no one wanted to help me. But, now that I'm getting repiles, I might delete it.

In other words, it was an attempt of manipulation meant to get you replies.

Here's news: That's not how it works.

Everyone reading this topic is reading it because they want to. This entire forum exists because people want to read and support each other's ideas, offer advice, answer questions etc. Literally all you have to do to have someone help you is to ask for help. In all the other threads you've started recently, you've gotten answers, haven't you? Whether or not those were answers you wanted is a whole different thing.

Point being — throwing around dramatic statements along the lines of "I'll scrap the whole project if I don't get replies to my thread" is not going to get you anywhere, because that's not why prospective repliers do what they do; not on YWS, and most definitely not in the world of professional writing if you ever plan on tackling that. In fact it gets you quite the opposite.

~

And if you really feel insecure enough that you'd cancel the entire project just because your topic didn't get enough answers by the time you provided, you don't have to. We're all insecure about ideas sometimes. I've felt countless times like I couldn't write down a single word, or like nothing I do write would be worth anything. And then, all the research and planning can most definitely get exhausting for some — and that's all before the first of many drafts is even done.

Help is always available around here for those who ask (Dumbledore paraphrase unintentional), as long as it remains in the domain of "helping you write your own novel" and doesn't cross into "writing your novel for you"

For anyone reading this, sorry. Didn't mean to scare you off. One question through. What country are you currently living in?

I don't really have time to take on a co-writing project at the moment, but I could recommend Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt as a famous work of reference that might be of use. Tuppence across the Mersey by Helen Forester is a beautiful book and one of my favourites, it's about Liverpudlian culture more than Ireland, but Liverpudlian culture is very similar to Irish because of the amount of Irish immigrants who moved over for work, and it also has the aspect of what it's like to transition between cultures into a large city that might be useful to draw inspiration from. Also depending on your age and tolerance for inappropriate humour, Frankie Boyle's My Life So Far is a quite stark view of an Irish childhood.