/lit/ - Literature

>>20555658
Fuuuuck that brings back memories. The first time I got into writing was near the end of middle school, right around the time Sword Art Online first debuted. Watched it, got obsessed with the notion of isekai shit and began writing my own thing. Had some pretty good ideas, instead of the typical boring way of getting portal fantasy'd my protags got eaten up by a random tentacle monster that just appeared out of nowhere one day and woke up in this frozen hellscape. I'll post it here if I ever find it, remember that I got pretty into it and ended up shitting out like 400 pages of the stuff over the course of a couple months.

But in more recent times, I just sort of went with what I had in my head. Overactive imagination be damned, I had some pretty overbearing fantasies floating around in there that begged to be let out, so I let'em out. The first iteration of the idea wasunsalvagable dogshit with every cliche in the book (everyman protag, starts by waking up and looking out a window, introduces normal every day life in the blandest way possible, goes to school yadda yadda), but it was a valuable learning experience. The hardest part was actually sitting down and doing it, but once you get a feel for it and get the ball rolling it gets better fast.

Oh, and also, read. Read, read, read. Over the course of 6 months, I've read all of LotR, I'm re-reading ASoiaF and I'm at A Feast for Crows atm, read a bunch of Abercrombie starting with A Little Hatred and a local author's book/catalog of slavic mythology. I cannot overstate how important it is to read, it sharpens your prose, enhances your vocabulary and gives you a better sense of pacing, rhythm and flow. Hope that helped! Anyway, thanks for coming to my ted talk.

>>20532443
>>20533701
I think that all literature is a product of its time, litfic is no exception. The reason that litfic has fallen somewhat behind is, in my eyes, because the world that we live in now and the world that existed when litfic was in its prime are two different things altogether. In this day and age people don't want realism, they want escapism. Of course, every time has it's troubles, but imo because of mass media constantly pumping our heads full of shlock, people get burned out and tired of their own day to day lives, much less those of others. Plus, they get that from social media anyway. With all the endless pressure that exists in the world today, from nonstop media shilling to constant politicising of everything to everyone bitching and whining about this and that and everything else, I don't think its surprising that people want a way to detach from that world.

And I don't think that's a necessarily bad thing. As I've said countless times before, I find that having a hard distinction between literary and genre fiction is reductive and pointless, and I think that that line is going to become increasingly blurred as time goes on. I think we will see poigniant commentary on the human condition and the nature of life be increasily told through a fantastical lens, especially if the world continues to go in the same trajectory as it is now.

Alright, another question from your resident absinthe slinging toilet writer: Are exposition dump chapters innately bad even if I do all I can to make them seam as seamless as possible? E.g. I have a chapter where one of my characters is standing on a boat at night while the rest of his crewmates are asleep. He's part of a bigger viking-like expedition that travels around and explores and shit. The guy can't sleep and he sits and looks at the night sky and the calm sea and reminisces about his friends and some stories his father had told him of his own adventures. One of these stories is a bit exposition dumpy because it talks about their views of 'outsiders' and how they basically treat them as fodder for their own stories to be built upon. Think of how a player in a video game treats everyone in that universe as an NPC, kind of sort of like that. There's no dialogue, just the guy thinking and reminiscing about stuff. It's written in free indirect speech so I try to make it seem as realistic and personable as possible. Chapter is pretty rough right now and I'm in the process of revising it, might post later down the line.

Thoughts?

>>20453994
Wouldn't people end up just forgetting that line unless its immediately preceeding the event? Plus I have a feeling readers might bitch about Chekhov's gun if I just give one line of set up early on and it doesn't materialize into something until later down the line.

>>20453899
I actually kind of like it. To me, this reads less like an actual story, but more like a wiki article or the script to a lore video explaining what's happening in your world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's bad. Hell, I have a 30k word context file where I basically have my entire story written out in a format similar to this.

>>20453715
That's actually a pretty good idea. I can even have them be suisceptible to getting raided BECAUSE they've sent their men away to fight that distant war. Thanks for the idea, cheers mate.

>>20431844
>>20431863
>>20431881
Okay, great. I've already got a good chunk of the story written out but I keep going back and redoing the fucking opener / prologue because I keep rethinking of ways to make it 'better. The story involves a lot of tribulation and a lot of character death + multi PoVs, and setting up even the story's "ordained protagonist" as someone who immediately gets mulched because of one small slip up sets the tone pretty well I think so I'm probably gonna stick with this one. Gonna go slug some absinthe and get to it, cheers lads.

>get sloshed on absinthe
>listen to earrape hardstyle music
>write on the toilet for 3 hours
>its kino
Welp lads, I've found the recipie for success. Bottoms up!