/lit/ - Literature

I'm in Game Design.

So yeah, nothing useful.

>>1094907
In this one the Seven Sins motif doesn't go much further than Gilligan's Island. That is, there are seven people at the head of this organization, and their personalities are based on the seven sins.

In my OTHER story using the Seven Sins motif, I do go heavily into the symbolism and pretentiousness. It's a horror novel about a woman with no memory wandering through the town she used to live in, now haunted with somewhat demonic entities.
There are seven monsters, each one having been a person that played a heavy part in the reason the town is evil, and each one is based on the Sins and the penance of them in Purgatory.
Lust is on fire and has no genitals, Pride is hunched over with a huge rock, Wrath is blinded by acrid smoke that follows him. No idea what to do with Greed other than using the punishment of Simony in Inferno, though...
And Envy is less the penance for Envy and more the punishment for suicides. The less important monsters based on Envy are the ones that are bound in drab cloth--here being fleshbags, though.

And the story starts with the character waking up in a darkened wood, in water that she wakes up from with no memory. How's that for pretentious symbolism why do I seem proud of that...
I sometimes wonder if I go overboard with allusions.

>>1094891
Actually, the sins thing is just for my own reference in creating their personalities. That said, I do try to be a little alligorical in how they're finally defeated.

Raziel gets boiling oil poured on him, Kether is finally crushed beneath a ceiling.
Ash eventually defects to the hero's party, mostly because Tris wanted him to have a better life.
The Engels are just footsoldiers, since the Sefirot is an organization that's somewhere between destroying the world (to make it a better place the second time around) and being the Salvation Army.

I probably should have given a little background... Set up the clip, as they say in late night.

This is the first scene, and is meant to be similar to the first scene of Star Wars. In this case, it's not a droid being sent away, it's a girl. Tris launches Embla out pretty much at random, and as luck would have it the main character sees a falling star and goes into the woods to find it. It turns out that it's a young woman with no memories. He and his sickly elder sister (actually his mother) nurse her to health and take care of her, until Ash comes a month later. The main character's sister is killed, but holds off Ash, and the main character and the girl are exiled from the village.

From there, they travel, trying to find out who Ash is and why he wants the girl. Along the way they meet a colourful (and multicultural) cast of characters, and eventually save the world from Kether, who's quite Anti-Villainish.

Also the sister's boyfriend decides to leave the village as well, to go find the main character and look after him.

>>1094888
Would you say that I had too much description, or did I do it right?

I try to make dialogue a function of the narrative, instead of something standing outside of it.
Though it works a heck of a lot better in first person than it does in third.

>>1094874
Tell me about the rest of his books.

I'll just bump this a little...

I'd really like to get some outside opinions on this.

>>1094828
You know, there's a reason I didn't say 'the girl'.

It seemed more like the relationship you'd have with a good pet. I don't know, only seen the movie, but the ending felt like this time was supposed to be different.

I hated Dracula.

The only interesting part was when Harker was first meeting the Count. Then it was all Lucy and Mina being the dumbest bitches ever.
It might have been because I was listening to an audiobook while drawing, but I could not stand those bitches.
I just gave up alltogether and said fuck it.

>>1094804
>Let The Right One In
Yes. Yes yes yes.
Also, if you are interested in vampires that don't suck, I'd suggest looking into the World of Darkness Roleplaying Game Vampire: the Requiem. There are a few novels for it. (And a lot for the previous edition, Vampire: The Masquerade. But they're faggot Anne Rice vampires.)

>>1094814
Really? It seemed to me that the girl wasn't all that manipulative, and that she really did care for Oskar, insomuch as a horrible blood drinking abomination of a corpse can feel an emotion.
But I only saw the movie.

>>1094743
>>1094758
>mfw op doesn't say anything about my blog or wiki

>>1094793
Yes.

Isn't the plural of ellipsis ellipses?
I've been under the assumption that one dot is just a period, and three is an ellipsis, but that multiple uses of ellipsis in a writing was ellipses.

In dialogue?

I love me some ellipses.

I also use a break in the sentence, describing a pause.

"This is stupid..." he said, thinking about it for a moment. "But I want in."

http://privatepaste.com/ae8c043f9e#

Privatepasted, if you prefer, though it loses the italic-thoughts formatting.

/lit/izens, I was hoping to get some professional help--but you'll have to do.

Could you look over this and tell me what you think? It's the potential prologue for a novel I've been 'writing'--and I use that term so loosely that you wouldn't know it was there--for six years now.

http://www.mediafire.com/?uv0kohdh29r2xfh

If you're at all interested, there's also http://www.esperism.blogspot.com and http://www.ashcroft.wikidot.com
I'm on this whole self-betterment plan, and going back to writing more is one of the big parts.
The best way to not suck at something is to have people tell you how you suck, I always say.

Picture vaguely related.

Nineteen Eighty Four.

I've never read A Brave New World, but I can say with confidence that Nineteen Eighty Four is better.
Why?

Because that's how I roll.

Evil Empire toppled by iron filings.

>>1094681
I don't like Zoe's dialogue because it seems too rigid.

Alternately, she's a bitch.
Possibly both.

>>1094646
Actually, I try to write very naturally. I make sure my characters say "um" and "uh," and stop and stutter when they're under stress or worried.

Though for some of my more... pathetic and wimpy characters, it comes out nearly unreadable the more emotional they get.

Which is where the description comes in. If an accent is too thick for you to write comfortably, write it thickly, then describe how thick it is, and from there on tone it down and mention how it took the character longer than it should have to piece through the dialogue.

Think as much about what people do as you do about what they say.

Example time*:
<Aspel> "Let me help you," I ask her, giving her hand a squeeze. "Let me do whatever I can."
<@XXX> "You can't. The bond between Vassal and Liege is unbreakable."
<Aspel> I don't believe in unbreakable. "There has to be some way to get him to let go of you. Some favour that can be done."
<@XXX> "None. Once I die, my soul belongs to him. The only possible way to break it would be to destroy him. And I don't think you have the power to kill a god, Juste."
<Aspel> I bite my lip, but start thinking of ways to do just that. This thing can't be stronger than The Many, and Leo has to defeat it. If I'm going to help him, then killing a God should be a good start. Not that I could have any chance against Legion. Or anything stronger than a Spirit Count. "I can at least try to lessen his control." Spirits have bans. The bigger the spirit, the bigger the ban.
<Aspel> This thing's is probably huge.
<@XXX> And is probably incredibly hard to find out.
<@XXX> She just drinks her water. "I can't tell you anything about him, you know. It would be betraying my loyalty."
<Aspel> Looks like I'm going to have to buy the grim reaper a drink, and try to turn up the charm. "Wh-what?" my train of thought is knocked off course, and I try to act like I wasn't thinking of breaking into a cemetery, and doing something reckless and stupid, "I know..." There's also Rachel. I haven't talked to her in a while. It feels strange talking to her lately.
<@XXX> "Juste, don't even think about trying to track him down. Beings this powerful... they're not that easy to get to."
<Aspel> "I know," I reply with a sigh, "I just... I just want to help you."

*Sidebar: Roleplaying helps a lot with writing dialogue and description, and making it feel less stilted. Especially online roleplaying, because then you're typing it out much like you would with actual writing.

>>1094610
>>1094580
I was about to say. Would have been interesting if they were by the same person.
Though Lethal Weapon to Brick? That's still a 180.

Brick was very well written, though. Noir in high school. Classy.

I liked Inception, but I'm not really sure I'd call it well written. It was great, but the dialogue felt too... I don't know, it was like it was...
Shit. It was like it was from a dream.

Oh, and on the subject of dialogue? Silent Hill the movie. Not good dialogue, in fact it could be considered bad, or very bad, depending on how you like it. But it was JUST like the games.

>>1094623
TOO MUCH OF A PUSS

I really do need to stop and start. Instead of stopping starting.

>>1094602
>Fantasy Americana
That sounds awesome. I almost don't want you to tell me more, because the image in my head is so cool.

I'm imagining a sort of traditional Coca-Cola advert with magic, and 1950s diners with wizards.

>>1094618
Laura Croft archeologist in a fantasy world
Law and Order: Criminal Intent in a fantasy world.
Lupin in a fantasy world.
Slice of life high school story. In a fantasy world.
Elves. In space. Actually, funny story, this was the first place that my magic system debuted, and it's now one of the cores of the giant huge geofiction project that I sidetracked myself with.

I started the geofiction project as a sort of "maybe I should make the world before the story". Now I want my story to mention or go to everywhere on the map...

*Sidebar: Funny story, the pure evil's 'children' in a metaphorical and metaphysical sense, behemoths, creatures that look a bit like elephants without the ears and trunks, and with thicker tails, are in the fictional pop culture said to be afraid of mice, pretty much like elephants nowadays. Now, the real reason an elephant would be freaked out by a mouse is because mice are tiny and elephants are pretty blind, and having something you can't see running around your legs would freak you out. But, what with folklore, there's always a story instead of a rational reason. The demigod who defeated Bahamut was Gaetta the Rat. So the behemoths are afraid of rats, because The Rat defeated the Lord of Earth and Flame.
tl;dr: I created an epic story to explain why elephants are afraid of mice in the setting.

>>1094591
My journal of ideas always ends up a list of stories I'd like to run, but never did more than a few sentences.

dramatic magicpunk setting where a young man rescues a girl who has no memory and turns out to be MAGIC! robot, globetrotting, RPGan, Big Baddan
Prehistory story of the above where a young demigod defeats PURE EVIL*
Woman wakes up from a crash with no memory, stumbles into abandoned town filled with METAPHYSICAL DEMONS based on the seven sins, holy shit crazy psychic girls
Guy wakes up with no memory, understands blatant Japanese fantasy counterpart conlang despite being blatant European fantasy counterpart, holy shit he's really the devil and got kicked out of Hell and needs to stop the apocalypse crazy psuedoChristianity, Metatron is a hot crazy bitch chained to a pillar and Jeshuah is a street urchin, what the fuck is this a manga?
Tens of thousands of ideas for World of Darkness games.
Mages pair up with spirits to fight evil spirits buddhist hungry ghost shit, stop watching anime it rots your brain
Ten billion ideas for the magicpunk setting.