/lit/ - Literature

>>14060485
I JUST WANT A GIRLFRIEND AAAAAAAAAAAA

Slowed down by uni but it's starting to get there me thinks, it still feels too much like a YA novel whenever I try to turn into a few sentence pitch though

I'm like 1600 words in. It's pretty bad desu.

>>14060656
keep going nigga

The planning phase is progressing nicely

>>14060733
how are you doing it?

>>14060733

this, but im stumbling on my own momentum

>>14060485
12,000 words so far, plus a plan, but in dire need of an editor.

>>14061085
give me the basic gestalt

>>14061090
I'm not going to edit it until I've finished it, otherwise I'll never progress.

>>14061123
well what is it about (roughly)

>>14061124
Inspired by Tom Clancy novels. Genre stuff.

A private military company in year 2050 operate from a space station, dropping down whenever one of their millionaire clients needs rescuing from something. At first it's a series of unrelated attacks around the world, but a pattern begins to emerge. Someone on Earth coordinates several unconnected terror and criminal groups to launch an attach on the station. Two members of the PMC are lucky enough to escape and plan a counter attack from Earth with help from an eccentric billionaire. The rest of the novel is them tracking down the people behind the attack and making them "disappear". I'm just writing it for fun right now, but we'll see how it goes.

>>14061155
actually sounds kinda fun. good luck dude

I've got almost everything that I want outlined and planned out, outlined and planned out. I reckon I'll start in Christmas

>>14061167
Thanks. I think at the moment, writing convincing and engaging dialogue is my biggest weakness. It feels too utilitarian at the moment, but that's for editing.

>>14060485
pretty good desu
I worked on it for one hour each morning for the past month or so, down to 33k words, which will conclude the second part, and soon i'll start setting up the first part. I expecet it to turn out pretty short; I might wrap it up with a few short stories.

Writing is all about routine.

>>14061226
>Writing is all about routine.
That it is. Sometimes you've just got to sit down and type, even if it's shit. Just write. You can come back later and fix it, expand it, cut it out, whatever. Give yourself time to write and use it.

>>14060485
Can't write because Im doing the exam that, in my country, would make me a judge. These are going to be 3-5 years without an ounce of time nor energy to try a full fledged novel. I hope I can get a fix of short stories at the very least

I'm more interested in short story writing, but I'm too self conscious to even finish one.

Someone give me advice, is it better to just write a story start to finish, accepting its shittiness so you can write a ton of stories and improve via the quantity of experience, or is it better to spend the time you could have spent writing tons of shitty stories into making one not-so-shitty story and learn by the quality of experience.

If it's the former, how the hell do I turn off that "internal editor" and just write??

>>14060485
Just finished the first chapter. The opening paragraph is some of the best stuff I've ever written.

>>14060485
I haven't been able to write since my mom died last year. She was the only family I had left. When I open up scrivener nowadays I just disgorge a slurry of trash onto the page like a sick drunk before I start to deflate over the fact that she's never going to read anything I write again.

>>14061797
haven't been able to write much*

>>14061797
I'm sorry for your loss anon.

>>14061836
Thanks. I am determined to dig myself out of the hole, but venting anonymously helps as I do so. I hope your writing is going well.

>>14060485
OP, thanks for asking. Things we're going good until a few days ago when I decided to do a read thru of the first 4 chapters. By the middle of the 2nd chapter, it became pretty apparent that I was leaning on the "N" word pretty hard. 193 instances not even half way thru. I think this place might be having an effect on me. I just want to go back to not being red pilled anymore

>>14060485
Shit

Almost done. Finishing touches, some edits, and then it'll be done. Working about 5-7 years on it, at least 500+ pages, dunno where to go to get it published though...

>>14060509
me 2, never gonna get one. just cope

>>14060485
600 words in and I'm done. I used up all of my ideas. It's over. Where do I get new ideas? Do I just steal them?

>>14062103
What word percentage is that? Is it more than 22%?

>>14062338
Take a walk, watch some cartoons and other forms of media and think about what they should've done differently and when you're in the shower or going to sleep fantasies about ideas and mold them into originality

>>14060485
I've got ~1200 words of story so far, about twice that in notes. This morning I had nothing but the notes. It starts of as a Lovecraft Mythos story set in an alternate 1990s, but I've already got a plot and some original characters that aren't self inserts. If I can keep the pace of 1200 words a day I'll be done with my first draft by spring.

>>14060522
That's because YA is a marketing category. Your few sentence pitch is really an attempt at marketing. All art is reduced to how it was marketed. Nobody cares about how the food tastes, just how nice it looks on instagram.

>>14061779
Your 'internal editor' is your taste. You keep hitting your head against the wall (literally or figuratively. It depends. YMMV) until it's at a quality you don't cringe at. Then iteratively improve.

Think of it this way: let's say you're trying to solve a math problem, or an engineering problem. You won't improve by coming up with many wrong implementations until you hit the right one by pure happenstance. Think about what you need to do to write this particular story, and experiment until it more or less works (~20%). Then you can work on getting it from 20% to 80%. If you can get it to ~99% then it's sort of a masterpiece, but let's not overextend the metaphor.

So far I have written 2 pages, in my notebook, then I write it down on word.

>>14060485
I have two paragraphs

533,358 words down; probably about 700k or 800k to go. Aside from the occasional block re: what's going on in the smaller scenes (brainstorms about future events being a little more fun to think about), it's moving along pretty well.

>>14060522
>starting to get there me thinks
It's trash and this is how I know it's trash

I have my first 3 fiction novels planned out and, over the last decade or so, I've written about 10k words of what I originally thought was going to be the first, but now realize that it's part of the third. But recently I've turned to learning more about the short story.. At the same time I have my first non-fiction book planned and I have written about 3k words of my true magnum opus, a full philosophical look at my own personal religion, theory of family, and how the individual relates to society. I hope to complete it all just before my death.

I haven't finished the language and become fluent in it yet, so I still have several more years of work ahead
>what language? what do you mean "finish it"?
to clarify, the book will be entirely in a conlang

>>14063323
Publishing tip: once you get the additional 800k, simplify it down to 250k.

I'm trying to write a short story but I just keep preambling with background and meaningless action before getting to the actual story. Shit's 1500 words and I haven't said a damn thing.

Lost grasp on the word-count, as it's written on notebook paper. Most likely, I'll begin work on it again whenever it's actually typed. It's a strange enough idea that I figure there won't be any issues with competition (thematically speaking)

>>14062154
What's it about, anon?

>>14063578
Have you read many short stories? It might help to just basically copy the structure of one as a starting point

>>14063052
sounds interesting, tell me more.

>>14063077
>Nobody cares about how the food tastes, just how nice it looks on instagram.
go outside this isn't how most people are

>>14063559
but the gratuitous lesbian sex scene in the last chapter won't be as impactful if it doesn't last for 500 pages!! >:(

>>14063626
Cope

>>14063077
>That's because YA is a marketing category. Your few sentence pitch is really an attempt at marketing. All art is reduced to how it was marketed.
Based and re-
>Nobody cares about how the food tastes, just how nice it looks on instagram.

>>14063604
It starts off in Lovecraft Country, briefly intersects WWII related conspiracy theories, and then heads to space. There are a couple of recent scientific discoveries that make both a certain mythos monster and sail like spaceship propulsion more realistic, so I'm taking them and running with them.

Some days I feel like it's pure shit and I should just give up, then some days I feel like it is the greatest thing ever and I push on. I hate editing though and would rather eat ass than make another draft.

>>14063843
i like that.

It's getting written 500 words at a time. I'm completely confident that I'll finish it, and also completely confident it's going to completely unpublishable garbage that I'll be ashamed of for the rest of my like.

Every day thereafter I'll have to look at it and wonder just how easily a competent writer could have made it work. Sadly, I'll never be one of them

Planning to write a few medium-length short stories for publication purposes, but my almost incessant need to rewrite them is slowing any real progress. Although it's entirely under realism, I have been experiencing some difficulty writing without anything fantastical (or hallucinatory) happening in the prose. I also consider some of the plots shameful, in that the characters are all entirely anemic and displeasing

>>14060485
Dead in the water

>>14061531
boy if i were to go on trial for any reason, i sure wouldn't like the thought that the judge on the case is a 4chan anon.

Haven't even started. Had an idea rattling around in my head that I might force myself to write. Will suck, but fuck it. Would using first person in a fantasy book be weird? Too pretentious for genre fiction trash perhaps?

>>14062200
i could get one if i weren't afraid of women because of feminazism. i'm handsome and have a big dick. but i'm terrified of women.

>>14064224

>>14061797
Wew, lad. My mom is very old and now I feel compelled to send her the scraps I've written recently. She was very encouraging when I was in school but the mundane toils of my adult life have mostly drowned out my inner poetry. Maybe she'll be happy to read something, anything of mine again.

>>14060509
>>14062200
The question is why do you not want a boyfriend? And no, "because I'm not gay" is not an acceptable answer.

>>14061797
My condolences, Anon. I will pray for you and your mother. I want you to know that she's looking down at you from Heaven. Stay strong.
:)

>>14060485
already published it and sold 60 physical copies. pretty happy.

>>14060485
recently finished with 62k words in, took me a year
it's written in first person and about an ancounter with a man with a beak on his face. The main character proceeds to follow him to his home, starts to live there and seduces his wife

>>14064686
nice, what is it about? how long were you waiting at first for the publisher to respond?