/lit/ - Literature

Thoughts on starting an epic fantasy book with a poem? Had this idea of starting the story off with part of a larger poem intentionally written to be easily readable / seem somewhat generic at a glance, but to have it make more sense and gain deeper meaning the more the reader knows about the plot, characters and world. I want to make it diegetic too, have bits and peices of it scattered throughout the story (not necessarily in order mind you) so that the reader can peice it all together into one larger whole; like having the characters hum / sing parts of it or so on.

I'm a huge fan of subtext and hidden meanings, so I'd really like to have something readers can look back on, peice together and find deeper meaning in later down the line.

>>20887096
>>20887060

There's something primally satisfying about watching numbers get higher that tickles our ape brains in just the right way. Stuff like passing a certain word count threshold, or a certain number of chapters and the like. That's why people grind currency or levels or ranks in video games. Trouble is, seeing stat screens and game mechanics in writing will never not be jarring. Feels like the cheapest and weakest way to convey character growth / progression. Sure, it could be that it's just kids who get excited over big numbers, but even the ones written by adults with at the very least a servicable level of quality, like The Wandering Inn for example, have this shitty level up stat screen system that feels like a stinky cop out compared to actually properly showing and describing character growth.
>tfw I cast lvl 5 ice lance

Got a question about switching PoVs mid chapter, why and how do you think it might work? Right now I'm sort of struggling to balance out the personalities of all my PoV characters and I quite like the idea of pitting two of them in the same dangeros, snappy-decision making sitation at the same time, and showing half their encounter from one perspective then the other.

It would go something along the lines of:

>'I'll take left, you go center!' Mick yelled, as he barreled down the hallway, through the mist. The stuff was hard against his lungs, harder still his eyes. Couldn't see a damn foot in front of him. Before long, the rattle of his rucksack faded from earshot, leaving Dave in in the hefty silence of the main atrium. His eyes scanned the high balconies, itching to spot any hint of movement. Bootleather creeked against the aged flagstones, coursing as a grone through the hollow, crumbling hall.

Might be a shoddy example but its the best I can come up with off the top of my head.

>>20737850
>>20737921
What the fuck is up with those names.
>My Negromancy System
???? Do these people have zero creativity, or am I missing something?

>>20738019
>tfw P*rateAba
Keks aside, you're absolutely right, building a big backlog is probably THE most important thing to do when it comes to serialized works. Too bad even if my shit is golden I write at a glacial fucking pace and get stuck in editing hell. Swear to god I've rewritten my opening chapter at least eight times.

What's your guys and (((gals)))' opinon on alliteration? I recently started editing some older chapters and found that I've accidentally constructed sentences that, at the time, seemed melodic and flowy but are really heavy with alliteration. And I do mean in every sentence, or every other sentence. Stuff like:

>The three men reared back and slammed their woods together, spilling one cup into the other before popping their meaty morsels into their mouths and washing them down with bittersweet braggot. Notes of honey and barley mingled in Davin’s mouth, piss warm and watery but good enough to give him a proper wash on his way. Bottoms to the sky, the men emptied their drinks in a single draft, beet red as they laughed for breath right after.

And this is a pretty tame example.

One of the protagonists / PoVs of my story is a hyper anxious young man that constantly needs to drink in order to be sociable / confident. He is shunted into a role that requires him to be social, thus necessitating that he constantly be drunk or tipsy. It's a very central part of his character and a lot of scenes are motivated by either him looking for or being unable to get a drink, characters noticing that he's pretty much never sober and that causes more conflict etc. I wanted to ask for your guys's opinion concerning a specific gimick I had in mind; I want to make the prose more flowery and descriptions more vivid and inner dialogue more confident when he's washed, but to make everything seem faded, give terser descriptions and focus on inner stuff like his monologue being him constantly second guessing everything he says and does, bodily sensations like itching, crawling skin, nausea and focusing on how others speak and trying to find double meanings to their words etc when he's sober.

I can handle the inner dialogue being different since I'm in essence writing two different characters that share a head more or less. Only thing I am worried about is that it might either come off as jarring to have sudden shifts in prose and that the constant mentioning of him discretely drinking or suffering the consequences thereof might get repetitive.

Thoughts?

>accidentally turned my fantasy novel about a man struggling with alcoholism and crippling anxiety into a harem again
God fucking damnit. Is this the consequence of having lived among women my whole life? Ever since 2nd year of high school, I've never been part of a class that has more than one other guy in it. I'm in uni now studying psychology, and lo and behold I'm in a class of 20 women and 2 other men. How do I avoid having a disproportionate amount of female characters in my story when its literally what my life is like?

>accidentally turned my fantasy novel about a man struggling with alcoholism and crippling anxiety into a harem again
God fucking damnit. Is this the consequence of having lived among women my whole life? Ever since 2nd year of high school, I've never been part of a class that has more than one other guy in it. I'm in uni now studying psychology, and lo and behold I'm in a class of 20 women and 2 other men. How do I avoid having a disproportionate amount of female characters in my story when its literally what my life is like?