/lit/ - Literature

>>15974415
bump for more generals that need to be made.

>>15974415
Just make a thread if you have a legit question about writing otherwise fuck off

First off we should make sure this doesn't devolve into /crit/.

>>15974415
I've been working on a short primer on a theory of storytelling (based on Aristotle's Poetics) and some common writing techniques if anyone's interested. It's mostly just a pastiche of stuff I nabbed from several popular craft manuals. The bits that overlap or that I found particularly useful.

Yes, that's a good idea.

>>15974415
The best storytelling advice I've recieved is from robert McKee: story. It explains storytelling in a structural way that is adaptive to your style. It doesnt give you rules to follow just guidelines. Highly recommend

>>15974530
This more for screenwriting though so keep that in mind.

>>15974415
It's just /crit/ for people who want to talk about their careers anonymously and not be criticized.

>>15974415
He's expressing his shirt? I don't get this image.

I'm currently writing a (short) epic poem in iambic heptameter heavily inspired by Scandinavian folklore and trickster heroes, as well as heavy use of archetypes, both mythological and Freudian. It sounds really pretentious but it's a children's story.

What I've learned so far is that it takes a long fucking time to write epic poems, I'm averaging about 40 words/hr for a first draft, meaning the total words/hr will probably be hovering more around 10-15 words/hr counting total length over total time taken.

>>15974565
Tbh that sounds awful

>>15974597
The amount of work required, or the idea? If it's the latter I can just say that so far it seems pretty good. When you lay out all the ideas behind a novel it tends to sounds a bit strange.

>>15974636
Post an excerpt, I'm interested.

>>15974643
If you promise not to bully me too much. This is a first draft, after all.

>>15974702
It's got the rhythm down but suffers from the same faults as most amateur fiction (or first drafts, giving you the benefit of the doubt). Also I'm a bit confused on why you call this an epic poem, are you taking about the beast epic from the middle ages? It doesn't seem like there's the satiric component though maybe the excerpt is too short to reveal that.

>>15974809
I may be mistranslating into English here, I'm using "epic" to mean long, that is, any poem that is longer than a few stanzas.

Would you mind pointing out some of the faults?

>>15974827
Epic poetry is technically a genre/form of literature which is how I thought you were using the word. You should look into the beast epic then because its quite similar what you're doing (sans the social satire of course) and may give you some ideas.

The most obvious faults are stuff you could pick up on a line edit. Stuff like repeating words too often or too close together or using redundant qualifiers ("sprang with hastened step") or cliched expressions ("cunning fox", "fleet of foot") to satisfy the rhythm instead of coming up with fresh expressions. e.g how many times do you say that the fox is some variant of sly in just one page?

>>15974921
Yes, I'm aware epic poetry is a genre/form, I guess I just mistranslated. In my native language it means something more akin to its original Greek meaning.

I also agree with you about redundant qualifiers, and some cliched expressions. I would like to believe these are effects of it being a first draft, and when trying to fit into a meter the mind tends to grasp at cliches first. I also will most likely have forgotten I've already established a trait enough, because of the timespan of the writing.

I don't think the entire cliche feeling will go away though, since it is after all a poem in meter while essentially telling a variation of a story told thousands of times.

>>15974702
Why have the fox not eat him? That seemed like the trick. All the fox had done is show his hand.

>if you'd beat me
>I'll gladly give
I'd

>>15975067
>had
has, typo; I see the irony

>>15974415
Thanks, I will steal all the good bits from your excerpts

>>15975067
The fox doesn't want to eat him, or kill him. He just wants to toy with him. He's not a foe, but not quite a friend neither.

I could change to "I'll" to "I'd", but is it actually grammatically incorrect to use the former? "If you would do X I will do Y". I agree it's clunky, in either case.

>>15975091
>he can't come up with them on his own
>resorts to thievery

i quickly too often go to things that i desire to turn off my brain when i should be writing

Ive spent 250 hours handwriting out long form sales letters
and 100 hours outlining long form sales letters
plus probably 2-3,000 hours writing and researching long form sales letters
AMAA

>>15975601
whats a sales letter

I've been looking for Gertrude Stein's "How to Write" for awhile now, it seems like there no PDF of it anywhere

>>15975440
Apparently wordsteal anon has been adapting work from /lit/ for years but I've never seen any of it being publishned
Funny that

If your story doesn't include a memoreable opener / firstliner or straight jumps into something engaging into the first 3 pages, is not worth anyones time

Breached 10k words on a project today for the first time in a long while.

Now just got to resist the impulse to delete the whole thing out of embarrassment, and finish it instead.

Cracked 34k words on my fantasy-horror novel this morning.

I'd like to find or form a discord server for writers where we can mercilessly hound each other into getting work done. Anyone like the sound of that?

What a shitty "artsy" picture.
Here, I fixed it for you.
Send me the bill cocksmoker

>>15975814
there is "the writing group" server on discord. It kind of already achieves that with its weekly meetups.

>>15975118
I don't think it's explicitly incorrect, I just think it's worse and have been told so myself in crit threads.

>>15975814
I'd be down, although with the way these things usually go, it'll likely devolve into drama within a few days. But until that happens, it'll be comfy.

>>15975909
link?

Need some tips/thoughts about writing a novel. I'm sitting here thinking way too much about how each individual line looks instead of just writing. A lot of writers have talked about just writing the first draft without care about how the lines look, but getting the story itself done and then redoing it. But that feels really fucking difficult, how do you just let go and let it all come out without caring what it looks like in the moment?

I'm at 18k words on my piece and can probably get to 25k but there's no way i can stretch it to novel length
how well do novellas sell? i've read up on it a bit but do anons have any experience

>>15976415
https://discord.gg/SFzcPx

>>15976534
Novellas sell good if they're interesting enough on the face to catch someone who wants a quick read. Not that many people will read a 500 page novel from some unknown writer using a pen name, but a 150 page novella? Yeah, sure.

>>15976445
for me it took becoming completely fed up with being locked in a stand still and not writing anything, despite my head overflowing with ideas.
dont get me wrong, I still go over what I write and cringe. but the process won't happen if you don't take that first step forward

>>15976546
thanks anon. that's actually very reassuring

Does anyone here want to do a beta read swap? I have a 3k word short story I'd love to get someone's critique on, and I'd be happy to do the same for them.

I'm writing a short story set in the middle ages, it's not really placed specifically in a certain year, or technically even a country although I guess it's in England since I'm writing in English
But I don't know if I should go full middle English or not. Would it be best to just do something in between old and modern?

>>15976725
read mason & dixon to get a feel for what you want to use

I'm having a frustrating conversation with my friend who desperately wants to be a writer but only writes a thousand words a month in his novel because "I'm a perfectionist". For ten year's we've been friends, he's never finished a short story. I love him, but I see this a lot of people who only talk about writing and never actually writing something through. Is this an ego thing with him. What do I say?

>>15977549
Take the front you have and just tell him not to be a novelist rather than not to be a writer.

>>15976445
>how do you just let go and let it all come out without caring what it looks like in the moment?
There's this text editor that doesn't let you change what you've already written: https://www.moreofless.co.uk/earnest/
Otherwise, try writing on paper. If you find yourself writing whatever comes to mind and then crossing it out, try thinking a little bit longer before putting the pen down. Writing slower makes your handwriting more legible too, which saves time when you re-read it or type it on your computer.

>>15974415
No sorry i wanna read and shitpost about books and their content.
>help people in their journey
Yeah i don't think that this is how interesting content is created.

>>15975601
Without interacting with the customer, how do you distinguish what makes for a benefit to them, as opposed to just an advantage? What do you try to appeal to, their sense of socialidentity? Relying on cliches?

>>15977549
Honestly tell him to stop being a pretentious dipshit

Halfway through a draft of a psychological thriller that I've already outline out

>Set in a modern day mine somewhere in the American West
>Main Character and Secondary Character work maintenance
>They're in the deepest portion of the mine when an explosion hits
>A rock slide/cave in traps them at the bottom, a space of a few tunnels, corridors, and a supply room
>Main and Second wait for rescue. They know each other, but not closely.
>A day passes. Second is nervous. Main chides him for being soft, and tells the story of his brother.
>Brother suffers severe PTSD from military action and is in a veterans hospital
>Main insists they won't become like him
>Days go by. They make noise by banging on pipes, waiting for responses or noises above.
>They divide up the limited supplies that they have in the small room and try to keep themselves occupied, conserving lanterns and power.
>Weeks go by. They begin to lose their sanity, fighting with each other, spending days apart on opposite ends of their space.
>A few more days pass. The heat is unbearable. Oxygen is low. Food and water have run out. Second asks Main if he'll go into a suicide pact with him. Main doesn't want to give up, and stays behind on his makeshift bunk while Second leaves to presumably die.
>In and out of consciousness, Main uses his final bit of energy in a manic attempt to dig himself out of the cave-in at the collapsed tunnel.
(1/2)

>>15974415
STEM autist here who is a self-proclaimed pro at technical writing and recently found a love for creative writing. I initially started because I was getting some ideas down ahead of time for a class I have to take in the fall, but I ended up falling in love and I stay up half the in front of MS word.
I have a question for more experienced writer anons; what would you qualify as "writing what you know"? I've got a few short stories on the go, most based off my experience in real life/ in dreams/on 4chan, but i recently started a short piece set in the Levant during the 6-days war. I like researching and i've been diving down Wikipedia holes and listening to interviews, but will this be enough? Is researching too much effort in your opinion? Will I inevitably come off as inauthentic or try-hard? I'm trying to gauge the difference between the "write what you know" of the human condition vs actual lived experience. I dunno lads

>>15974496
This would be great. Post in a new thread if this one dies
>>15974565
>>15974702
interesting anon
>>15975601
what did you gain from it?
>>15975741
I also get this feeling about art and music. Feels good during creation but cringe around others.

>>15979244
(2/2)
>Main's thrashing causes a small rock slide, which reveals a new corridor aside from the boulders and dirt
>Second rejoins him, having stopped his own suicide
>They scale down the tunnel, and enter into an underground silo, with stairs descending down much further
>The stairs lead to a facility that continues to stretch deeper. Electricity, lights, but no signage or signs of people. More silos and cavernous spaces, stairs and elevators leading down.
>They speculate that it's a military installation, that maybe they've been secretly doing work for the government, but then agree that by this point, there's no need for something this deep underground that they could think of, seemingly miles underground
>At the bottom of the complex, Main and Second also realize that they've found some energy again, and lost their thirst and hunger. They deduce that they must be dead, and in some kind of subterranean purgatory.
>All routes continue downward, through a series of mazes and traps that require some cooperation to clear
>After a brief fight, Second splits off from Main, going in his own direction
>Alone in this place, Main breaks down again, the gravity of weeks and weeks spent below surface and the trauma he's been through
>He comes to what seems like a small river, knee deep, and follows it
>The water eventually winds to an end. A door, guarded by a soldier in a uniform of a dated war.
>He tells Main that they're probably dead, but it's a lateral afterlife or afterworld. Beyond the door lies a place where those who have been lost or forgotten can find peace and comfort in each other. Second has already passed through before him.
>The soldier says that Main can either enter , or go back up to the surface, where he'll have to live with the emotional baggage of his experience.
>Main decides to return to the surface. A minute's climb up a ladder brings him back out to daylight, climbing out from under a rock outside of the mine, trembling. The cave-in hasn't occurred yet. Second is nowhere to be found.
>Main enters into a work trailer, and calls his brother at the VA.

>>15979337
holy fuck anon this is good

>>15979337
Underwhelming ending
>He tells Main that they're probably dead, but it's a lateral afterlife or afterworld
i dont like things like that being spelled out

>>15979607
I didn't want to be direct and say "Yes, this is Heaven, or Yes, this is hell." I want the final version to still be vague.

Also emphasize that the brother in the VA is seen by Main and the rest of his family as a disappointment and source of scorn.

>>15974415

How does one get into writing?
What are the books that can guide you from scratch?

>>15979337
Could be gud

>>15979244
>>15979337
>>15979607
Anon, this is gold. I hope you do end up writing it, the premise is great. Godspeed.

>>15979244
The man not committing suicide being what saves the guy who pressed onward is a nice move. Ending seems pretty flat.

Thanks for the support

>>15979773
I'm absolutely doing it, I'm already halfway in. Going to try it in screenplay form when I'm done to give myself a second bullet. I've never made it very far in publishing/representation with anything else.

My book on bread is coming along.

Any recommended books if I wanted to get into screenwriting?

>>15980180
No. Just find some examples online to read to get the hang of all of the layouts.

I finished a first draft of my first novel late last year. Haven't opened it since then.

Absolutely agree that we should have an ongoing general for this. Even aside from asking/answering questions, I think having a dedicated community can be helpful as a sort of constant reminder to write and improve.

Does anyone have any web resources they think could be useful as part of the OP template? Another idea is to compile a collection of short stories (from anons or otherwise) and choose one at the start of each thread to critique and discuss. Depends on how fast the threads move, we'd have to see. But anything that allows us to critique works without it turning into individuals attention whoring would be worthwhile.

>>15974415
We've had threads like this on and off. They encouraged a lot of anon to start writing. I was labeling them /write/. I'm on hiatus for a bit though to get other life issues sorted out.
Barely anyone on /lit/ even reads and yet fewer write, so traffic is limited in the endless sludge of cheap bait that floods the board.

I like to read about story structure and how to outline. Then I try to plan out a short story and fail completely. This leaves me discouraged and I try to give up on the idea of writing. But after a few months, I always come back to repeat the cycle.

I like the idea of writing, but I guess I just have nothing to say.

Anyone here use leanpub?

The problem with this kind of thread is that people will just talk about writing instead of actually writing

On the second draft of my first novel(80k words) and 30 pages into the second. I doubt anyone really cares or should but writing is something anyone can do with some extra time on their hands. I am in no way smart yet have made something pretty neat.

>>15974702
I really like it. The dialogue is stilted but stilted in the same way many of the old epic tales have stilted dialogue.

>>15974702
Post the rest

There is/was a homebrew writing subcommunity of sort in the /a/ isekai threads but its not welcome there anymore. There's always some anon off his meds being butthurt about people not posting on /lit/ which doesn't have a equivalent place at all. But if /vg/ gens are anything to go by maybe a general would be a bad idea after a while.

>>15980779
This is a pretty weird thing. I follow some amateur writers on Twitter and most of their updates are just "got some writing done on lunch break" or "wrote 30k words of my first draft last night". Ok, good for you, but that doesn't really say anything to other people, does it?

I think stuff like why you write, what you try to achieve by writing and how, would be more interesting topics to talk about than arbitrary mileage, even if you have no content to post.

>>15975644
https://b-ok.cc/book/3810562/d1cbcf
It's an epub, but you can convert to PDF with calibre if you prefer that.

how is your guys' handwriting? do you type or write on paper more?

>>15975710
>3 pages
Unless the writer was recommended to me by someone I trust or the back cover is fucking amazing, I won't read past the first page unless it makes me. Or it's comically bad and I want to see how often the writer can make me facepalm before I put it down.

>>15979313
stem autism is incompatible with great creativity. if you give a shit about being cringe you will never make it.

Haven't attempted to seriously write out something in years, then around a week or so ago I thought back to an old dream I had written down, and drew up an outline based off that. I'm not confident on the tone of the story which is a red flag in and of itself, but I'm not too committed on the story either way. It sounds closest to a thriller, at least
Basic gist is it's a fem wagie dealing with a terrible fever living with her single mother, in where it's revealed her mother is actually a creature impersonating her mother and preying off of her.
The dream that inspired this was really striking as dreams tend to be, thinking of it now it reminds me most of this piece.
The outline is "done". I want to play around very lightly with conventions of the platform, the most major being when after chapter 9 something significant happens which results in the next two chapters both resetting back to 1. Then when our protagonist becomes "enlightened" we return back to the "true" chapter numbering. Just basic stuff I feel I can execute decently enough. I'm also toying with changing the setting entirely and am a bit at odds with myself. Right now its modern day America but the concept of an 18th century Russian settlement came to me, just because the creature in the story proper takes vague influence from the baba yaga myth. I've never had to research for a story before though, and the task feels rather daunting.
>>15982013
Type, my handwriting is really bad at this point

>>15982013
>not getting an iPad to do both
For complex stuff I prefer typing since it's much faster and it's much easier to fix mistakes and move on.

For planning and collecting ideas, writing seems more direct and gives more freedom for intuition.

>>15975853
Incredibly basef

>>15974702
i like the style do post the rest if there is more

>>15975741
Never delete anything. Put it in the 'trunk' folder. Trust me.

>>15977549
Ask him what his goals are. He simply wants to be published? Fine. He wants to make a decent amount of money? Then he has to be more mercenary, write to market, be prolific. The only way to write good stories is to first write bad ones. It's OK to write a bad story. New writers are not expected to be good at it. He has to be disciplined and grind.

>>15974565
Hope you share it here when it's done, I'd like to read it

>>15976534
Novellas sell well self-published, in certain genres. I heard it's difficult to sell novellas in traditional publishing unless you're a well known author.

>>15976445
You need to put words on the page and not worry about it. You need to actually write and keep writing. It can be painful but it's the only way.

>>15974415
you shouldn't post your shit online because of FNASR. The last thing you want is your story to be accepted into a publication and then the editors run a Google search and find it's already been published on a neo nazi resin kit figurine forum.

>>15974415
Didn’t see this thread. I posted >>15982845 not long ago. Hoping to hear what people think

>>15983278
There’s almost no profitability in traditional publishing

>>15980180
John Truby's Anatomy of Story
He has some old but good youtube videos.

>>15983324
Holy cringe

>>15983347
And almost no respect in self-publishing. If someone tells me they're self-published it's like an 'oh' moment, like you weren't good enough to make it properly. Sorry but it's true.

>>15983716
This is true but consider that there are very few great things being written. I guess the question is, would someone’s debut, if it was great, get picked up by a publishing house and promoted properly? I don’t think it would. Your best bet from a monetary standpoint is to try and build some kind of base online and then publish yourself. Associating prestige with a publisher is somewhat antiquated but a difficult mindset to drop.

>>15983716
I wanna be published by penguin

>>15983716
It flips if the self-pubber makes 200k and the 'proper' author has their nuts in a vise by the publisher and gets 40k.

>>15983716
>>15983759
Both of you are right. Traditional publishing, self publishing. Neither are very good.

But with traditional publishing you make connections, and that's the most valuable thing. Because both trad and self publishing involve pushing your book on the masses with fake reviews, but one way has the author writing their own fake reviews on amazon, and the other has celebrities writing fake reviews for the author. For some reason the later is more respectable.

>>15983347
If I cared about profit I'd open a gun store.

>>15983759
>>15983823

For me, recognised artistic merit is more important than monetary success. I would rather have a couple of critically well received novels to my name and plug away quietly in my job as an English teacher, with the possibility of pulling a Melville and being recognised after my death.

Also, I notice on this board particular there's this mindset that unless you're a black Jewish queer woman you wont get published, which simply isn't true. Schlock may come out of publishing houses but that should inspire you. Authors who have also been traditionally published in recent years include Ishiguro (who did a Master's in creative writing of all things and went on to win the Nobel), Ian McEwan, Knausgaard and plenty of straight white males. The last issue of the New Yorker had a short story by a straight white male, and the current issue has a short story written by a devout white Christian writer.

Quality might not be recognised either way, but if you get a book deal with a major publishing house it automatically is seen as a sign of quality, all your advertising and marketing is done for you, they put posters on the subway and they put your book on the shelves in actual bookshops.

>>15979666
Open a document and start writing something. Why make it more complicated than it really is?

>>15983935
The problem I see is that all of that success is determined by a small group of editors in New York. I would rather be loved by the people. I want my work to be read as much as possible, by people happy to pay for it. I'd rather be Jim Butcher than win a Nebula.

>>15974425
Fuck off generals are the worst thing that have happened to this website

>>15983716
>willingly giving up the rights to a work you produced
Yeah I'm thinking there's more respect in self-publishing your work.
>you weren't good enough to make it properly
Getting published has little to do with being a good writer.

>>15983935
While I generally agree with you, it is beyond disconcerting that a disproportionate majority of today’s literary gatekeepers (agents, publishers, and so on) are Jewish women residing in New York.

>>15976546
Yeah but it's also way more difficult to get a novella published than a not-too-long novel these days.

What's your writing routine guys? I work early so I find it really hard writing in the morning but I try to write in the evenings every day. It's difficult though.

>>15984188
Cope

>>15984516
I make a cup of coffee at 8:30 and another at 9:00 when I begin writing. I write until I get bored around noon and then read while enjoying afternoon tea. Then I’ll do some light exercise like yoga or a neighborhood walk before evening writing followed by evening reading. It’s difficult to follow this routine every day, but I realize that to not follow this routine increases my odds of being an unpublished wage slave for the rest of my life.

>>15984318
It's disheartening to say the least. I suppose I shouldn't let that stop me trying though.

>>15984585
I'm guessing you used to work for a publisher or in some other traditional print field.
Are you upset because you lost your job?
It's ok anon, we're all friends here. You can talk to us about it.

>>15984516
I'm luckily out of work until September. Right now I wake up, make coffee and write straight away. I'll do anywhere between 500-1000 words over a couple hours until I feel the creativity start to flag. I'll then do some exercise and read a short story or a poem. I'm trying to write a paper on Keats as well so work on that a bit, go for a walk, play some video games if I'm feeling indulgent. Late afternoon into evening I'll read, and in bed I'll watch a good movie before falling asleep.

>>15984625
I didn't at all, but dude come on, you're kidding yourself if you think self-publishing beats the traditional route. Literally everyone sees it as a self-indulgence, a "good for you" moment, a nice little project to keep you busy but an artistic failure. I urge you, if you write, not to sell yourself short and aim for the tried and tested routes which are available. Nobody knows self-published authors, nobody respects them, and I would rather not publish at all than suffer the degradation of adding my creative vision to the maelstrom of YA/sci-fi/fantasy tripe with 7 readers per book.

But then maybe I'm wasting my time and you really just aren't good enough.

>>15984516
>What's your writing routine guys?

8-9AM: wake up, eat breakfast, browse news and 4chan.
10-11AM: Read some book for a bit to get to the right mindset.
11AM: Start writing.
1PM: Take a break to go grocery shopping, make lunch.
2PM: Resume writing.
4-5PM: Take a coffee break and a nap.
5PM: Resume writing.
8PM: Done for the day. Go for a run or a walk, do some light exercises, and shower.
9PM: Cook supper, play vidya for an hour or two.
11PM: Go to bed.
Repeat. I aim for 5k words per day, but am satisfied with 3k.

>>15984659
>Nobody knows self-published authors, nobody respects them
If you write for fame and respect, then your "artistry" was a joke to begin with.

can someone critique my short story?
>would be nice if they could list out the problems
>and maybe even suggest material to read and improve from
https://l.messenger.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.fbsbx.com%2Fv%2Ft59.2708-21%2F110512551_819120735287762_4408494397233071762_n.docx%2FSnow-Edit-No.-1.docx%3F_nc_cat%3D105%26_nc_sid%3D0cab14%26_nc_ohc%3DBJLO1gn4zYYAX8A4rqp%26_nc_ht%3Dcdn.fbsbx.com%26oh%3Db6b814651475e0cac8b6e167c084c144%26oe%3D5F221C9A%26dl%3D1&h=AT3nTkk97XFgblEPdZXn4UBA0ZQkUpGwKvOcBvLjOpB7idmq-91rZ-NBmiyTr6xzKgV8DnL_7cNEQ1jJrMp1XLn8_OHskXzzXomLAyOmOq3naMmGpUdOeT6Loz42PE3J1Xxw1Kb_SmAoIEen

>>15984890
>>15984636
>>15984587

Very jealous. I'm trying to balance writing with French, work and other skills. I barely manage 200 words a day. Keep up the good work guys.

Does anyone else write and edit for a living? I tried starting a thread about this a while back but basically no one responded.

>>15979313
Here's a first draft of the primer:
https://pastebin.com/0VZFwXWv

I wrote it primarily for myself, so it might a bit impenetrable, let me know if something is unclear. It also describes what lit might consider a narrow view of storytelling (and would denigrate as being fit only for genre fiction), so let me just emphasize that, despite the authoritative way that I've written it, this is only my personal interpretation of storytelling.

>>15980582
Meaning typically comes from the subconscious. I usually make two outlines. One before writing, in order to see if I can bring the story to an actual end (and make sure its really a story and not just a cool idea for a setting or something). Then after I write the rough draft, I go back and try to figure out what subconsciously drove me to write that story and make another outline which highlights ways to develop those ideas and make them more clear to the reader.

>>15974415
Day 1.5
Yesterday, I decided to download ab educational program/game that teaches how to read musical notes. I found that I would keep playing this as I would play video games for entertainment.

I reflected on how I spent my time and realized that the time I spend playing video games is probably just wasted energy and frustration developing skills in something that do not further my life and distract me from other pursuits. It puts a drain on my willpower reserve for nothing and much of video games are repetitive nonsense.
Of course, I can play them just to entertain myself, but I thought, is that really why? It seems very possible that almost the entire reason I play video games is so I can keep up with a perceived identity as a "gamer".
While I wouldn't necessarily like to reinvent my general self-identity as a nerd who likes technology, science, and writing, this is no real reason to play video games when I could be doing things to advance my overall lot in life, socialize online, read or watch something therapeutic or engaging, do chores, exercise, or otherwise just make my life better than it would be just sitting around playing games.

So, I've made a decision.

I'm giving up video games for a week. Whenever I get bored and feel like playing a game that doesn't develop a real world skilIs, I will instead write something creative once per day, with the exception of today where I just say what I am doing.
If it happens more than once in a day that I feel like playing games, then I may write or may do something else,I might even look for one-shot tabletop RPGs on Roll20 but I won't play video games.
Not even trivia games or sudoku, because those aren't directly related with improvement, and I want to maximize the time I spend usefully.

I mark this day as 1.5, because I did not play video games yesterday, but I also had not decided to write. So, day 1.5 it is.

Wish me luck /lit/.

If anyone else wants to join me on this or engage in some similar form of fasting, feel free I don't want to be an attentionwhore documentinf how many days I spent without games on /lit/ alone so that I basically become a namefag, but if someone else does do similar, it would be convenient to title my posts "day x". Plus, I think that might make it easier for me to continue doing this and feel accomplished.

Otherwise, I guess I'll just find another way to keep track. Either way, this is my declaration.

I posted this years ago, and I can now confidently say nothing has fucking changed I still haven't written anything at all I feel like shit.

Thank you for listening, I will now go mourn my sorry resolve.

>>15974415
Ooh, i like this idea. I have been writing ever since I was young and really enjoy poetry, and things that are atmospheric, yet meaningful in nature. I wrote a short story and I was curious if I could get more insight. I posted it yesterday but got one response, however even if some people read a bit of it that would be great.
https://pastebin.com/u7UKZq2R

Any good free creative writing courses?
Are they even worth it?

>>15985302
I'm sorry, I can't read pastebin formatting, it rapes my eyes. This shit was made for shopping lists and lecture notes, not fiction

I am writing a 250 page monologue of Trump slowly coming to the realization that he is only a character in a novel. Not even a serious anglo novel, but one of those latin-american dictator novels. He hesitates between the humiliation of realizing he is the puppet of some Hispanic or the joy of knowing the world has been specially created for him.

What are some good rules of thumb for writing a decent opening paragraph for your book?

>>15985332
I don't know about "free", but yes they can be useful if they are done right.

But really, all you need is that part they do right; the round-robin writing workshop with proper rules on how to give useful, constructive feedback. Ideally, this includes reading your work out loud, because that's actually surprisingly helpful.

The only real issue I recall having with writing classes is when you get people bringing in their dumb social political commentary. Actually taught me a lot in that way, frankly, but I admit it can distract from the topic of writing when people go that far off kilter. I found it nearly impossible to not comment on their beliefs, and actually, being intimidated by them really sucked because in the end, I reinforced at least one thing...

However, that might not be exclusive to the college setting since we're talking about writing and art...

>>15985411
Write it normally and then delete the first page.

>>15985302
>>15985366
Not that anon, but I agree about not using pastebin. The lack of indentation drives me insane.
I think you might want to do an anonymous blogspot post; that's what I like to do.

But I will still try and read it and give you feedback on a bit...

>>15985411
Like, write normally. Don't think about it. Just get on with it. Whenever I see those epic "hook" opening lines, it's an instant drop for me. 999 times out of 1000, it's not as clever as it sounded in your head.

>>15985411
Basically kinda sorta in-a-way this: >>15985420

What I find when I write is that sometimes, I'll start with some strong lines I just came up with out of nowhere and I have to now start writing, or a sit down and something strong comes then.

Other times, probably more often than not, I have to "warm up" by just starting to write something.
As I write, I generally will find myself retyping lines as I go down my rough draft when I think of more creative ideas or see words like "of" or "to" that I can replace with better things or remove entirely. I will also insert any sort of imagery or metaphor if what I wrote was just bland shit and I think of something better real soon, but more importantly, I just keep writing. I don't break, I just keep going and generally avoid removing things, or if I do remove something, well, now you're introduced to my insane process of constant branching edits which I'm not sure if I can recommend...

Either way, you just keep going. Keep adding things. Then, the next time you sit down, you revise it a bit.
Then you get feedback.
Then you revise it, move to the next pages, and repeat.

This doesn't include the matter of randomly going back and forth, checking and re-checking things or developing new, better (even sometimes creatively unequivocally better...) ideas.

>>15985406
You sound like a faggot

>>15974702
English is your second language yet you write this well? Goddamn. I’m humbled.

>>15985411
>>15985548
>>15985554
Oh, and yeah, don't overthink it. It's much more important you just keep writing (missed what anon actually asked).

Eventually, a good line could come to you, but you gotta work.
That's what writing really is; it's work. It might not be as bad as some other types of work, but it is work.

Keep writing. Keep getting feedback. If you think of a better first paragraph, write it, otherwise leave it and don't let it intimidate you.

You could also I guess try and go outside or look at a nice photograph and try todraw inspiration there for some nice imagery or something.
But even then, you can't get attached. Gotta keep writing. Gotta erase. Gotta get the idea in your head.
If you keep writing, you will eventually write something that you wanna keep writing. You'll eventually write some good lines.

It's like documenting your mind processing creativity.

I'm working on abridging the The Wheel of Time. Getting closer to finishing... currently working on combining books 9-11. Just finished the Faile/Perrin arc today! It's been a fun project thus far. Quite informative, since I haven't analyzed books to this level of detail before. It's been interesting to learn where things can be cut, where perhaps PoVs can be shifted for effect, and learning methods to keep track of it all, etc. I plan to finish by the end of this year, and then start writing my own series next year.

>>15985674
Can you post some before and after I'm curious to see what it looks like.

>>15974702
Is that LaTeX? Use `` (two backticks) and '' (two apostrophes) for curly double quotes, or use
>\usepackage{csquotes}
>\MakeOuterQuote{"}
before
>\begin{document}
to automatically turn pairs of quotation marks into their curly equivalents.

However, in the case you want to split a very long line of dialogue into multiple paragraphs, where you only put an opening quotation mark, but don't end the line with another, like:
>“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet [...]
>“Vivamus blandit erat [...] Vivamus in quam purus.”
You'll get this error:
>Package csquotes Error: Unbalanced groups or invalid nesting.
So use `` for those lines where you want only the opening quotation mark.

Also don't forget:
>\usepackage{microtype}
It gets rid of most badbox warnings.

>>15985742
Sure, I can do that later tonight. Do you have any particular scene you'd like to see? To give you some idea 'til I can post: I've mostly been removing unnecessary recaps (how many times must we explain Aes Sedai) or overly descriptive bits on dresses lol. Which, desu has meant cutting almost 25% of the wordcount on most books...even if I don't cut major scenes.

>>15985810
Nothing in particular but it'd be fun to see extreme cuts/edits where you felt it was an obvious decision.

>>15984183
this
If you sincerely like the format of generals, then what you want is an IRC channel.

>>15984183
>>15985832
Fuck off, productivity oriented generals are great. We don't need a general for a specific writer, or genre, but when it comes to stuff like this generals are useful.

>>15985869
You fuck off, go make #/lit/writers on Rizon or something, then you can have your dedicated chatroom where you say the same stuff every day, and you won't even have to worry about it getting deleted.

>>15985888
>where you say the same stuff every day,
But that's why generals like this are fine retard, since progress is always being made they aren't always the same stuff every day.

In any case there's no rule against generals, there's no /litg/ board, so they go here, like it or not.

Does anybody not understand the people who need fancy word processors to write? I don't get it. I've been using Libre Office for years because it's totally free and basically does everything that Word does without me having to pay for it. I don't understand what more you could need from a word processor.

Any of you guys have any advice on picking up a story late? I wrote like 80% of a short story a few years ago based on themes and a setting that I like a lot. I've come back to it after this time and I want to finish it but I'm finding writing the ending really hard. Anyone have any tips for coming back to something like this after a long break?

>>15986068
uhh, what is more fancy than a modern rich text editor?
Or are you referring to the Game of Thrones guy that has a DoS computer boot into Word Star?

>>15985302
>but the sun was not blasting in alarm
Creative imagery to think of the sun and it's heat as an alarm.
This sentence threw me off becausw it ends so abruptly, to me and that made me unsure at first why it was a "but" statement.
However, it does add to the character to see how he usually wakes. Just feels like it needs a little expansion like "as it usually does on blah blah" or something not exactly that, but something a little more to make it flow.
But I do like the metaphor of the sun blasting in alarm. It makes me think about the arms of the sun. I don't know maybe that's just me.

I forget how long these are... For now, I'll just post this in pieces as I read, I guess.

Where can I post my writing to get feedback?
I've always wanted to get published, like in a magazine or something, but I don't know where I can get good feedback.
I was thinking of just doing fanfics, to draw some attention from people, but uhh thats kinda cringe.
Is there some amateur writers review site, where you just share your work?

summer storms across the south
or so my TV says
summer storms like violent reds
a wildfire vortex
your eyes like eggs melting
your flesh like bacon singed
your mother said the neighbor's son
who never left
lays on his lawn and tans
you've known him to be depressed
and wondered why Sylvia Plath
would stick her head in an oven
he's almost purple
she says
ironically snapping you out of it
you hang up and call again
tell him I said
not to get skin cancer
and call him a sausage

>just received 1st publishing credit
>poem got picked by a major poet for the longlist of the annual prize of a solid journal

Just spent about 30 mins putting this together, think it'll be the opening of my novella but ik it's a bit rough, any feedback is welcome! :]


September the 6th, 2016. I still remember the utter extent at which my panties had been soaked, an inevitable symptom of the mere fact that I'd soon be entering a new land, a world apart from the judgement permeating the imperious island in which I'd so long, too long, been confined. And in this new land, a new world awaited me: the youth of the opposite sex, now entering young-adulthood but still clinging to their intense libidos, were soon to be my peers, and each of them accompanied the very thing that occluded my fantasies ever since my first encounter with my clit at a relatively young age - just throbbing, pulsating, especially designed for the defiance of my tiny asian cunt. I yearned for cock. Years of anticipation and desperation have resulting in me being fully prepared to allow myself to be violated, to reduce myself to the state of a filthy little mynx, the slut from the east here to devour all the cum that comes my way. Bringing shame to my family and my culture turned me on.

I stood, sweaty, intently awaiting my flight. My perfect little bubble butt was scarcely contained by my tight, sea-blue denim shorts whose torn perimiter was just high enough to expose the sudoric crease that borders the top my smooth, olive thighs and the curves of my compressed ass. The humidity of the waiting room had carried the odour of my moistened panties at least to my nose, and I just hoped that this titilating stench drifted far enough to indicate to the surrounding people that they were in the prescense of a licentious young knave who'd induced substantial wetness from their cunt purely via anticipation; the everpresent smut of my thoughts, enticing my cunt to repeatedly twitch, consequentially left me feeling as if I were permanently on the brink of orgasm: whereever I was, and whoever was around.

Just spent about 30 mins putting this together, think it'll be the opening of my novella but ik it's a bit rough, any feedback is welcome! :]


September the 6th, 2016. I still remember the utter extent at which my panties had been soaked, an inevitable symptom of the mere fact that I'd soon be entering a new land, a world apart from the judgement permeating the imperious island in which I'd so long, too long, been confined. And in this new land, a new world awaited me: the youth of the opposite sex, now entering young-adulthood but still clinging to their intense libidos, were soon to be my peers, and each of them accompanied the very thing that occluded my fantasies ever since my first encounter with my clit at a relatively young age - just throbbing, pulsating, especially designed for the defiance of my tiny asian cunt. I yearned for cock. Years of anticipation and desperation have resulted in me being fully prepared to allow myself to be violated, to reduce myself to the state of a filthy little mynx, the slut from the east here to devour all the cum that comes my way. Bringing shame to my family and my culture turned me on.

I stood, sweaty, intently awaiting my flight. My perfect little bubble butt was scarcely contained by my tight, sea-blue denim shorts whose torn perimiter was just high enough to expose the sudoric crease that borders the top of my smooth, olive thighs and the curves of my compressed ass. The humidity of the waiting room had carried the odour of my moistened panties at least to my nose, and I just hoped that this titilating stench drifted far enough to indicate to the surrounding people that they were in the prescense of a licentious young knave who'd induced substantial wetness from their cunt purely via anticipation; the everpresent smut of my thoughts, enticing my cunt to repeatedly twitch, consequentially left me feeling as if I were permanently on the brink of orgasm: whereever I was, and whoever was around.

>>15985420

>>15986367
I remember the first time something like this happened to me, it is indeed a very based feeling.

>>15986367
Well done, anon, you should be proud. Is your poem metrical/rhyming or free verse?

>>15986446
A bit overwritten anon but keep going!

>tfw my style always gravitates to a more archaic style of prose and stilted dialogue that other writers tend to try and beat out of their systems
I try to keep a lid on it so it doesn't get too purple, at least. Its a shame that people nowadays seem to prefer looser or more minimalist forms of writing that are more active instead of passive, makes me feel a bit of an odd one out even though I'm just starting out

>>15986765
There's a difference between unnecessarily purple, flowery prose, and good prose. Good prose does contain adjectives and passive voice and long poetic stretches, but it does so sparingly. You don't have to become a neo-hemingway. Think Joyce in Dubliners or Portrait.

When I create a story for a novel, I visualize the most pivotal of scenes in my mind, describe them as vividly as I can, and then try to get from point A to point B (pivotal scenes) when I'm writing. My writing has been described as methodical and very technical by my professor, but that it doesn't have any "soul". He's a successful published author, his books have thousands of reviews on Amazon, (one has 3000 reviews, 4 1/2 stars) and so I trust him deeply. Yet, I have no fucking idea what he means. When I asked him what he meant, he repeated that my style doesn't allow for a story to blossom organically and that again, it doesn't have a soul.

>>15986614
>>15986634
Thank you anons. It's a free verse sonnet, there is internal rhyme, slant rhyme and rhythm.

>>15986858
It sounds to me that you are being a bit too "technical" in your approach to the construction of your novels. You thinking of a plot as a way to "try to get from point A to point B" is an example of this. Your professor saying your work is not organic is another good description.

Remember: this is an art, not a science. And some of the creation of art is about its inconstancy, its lack of cohesion, its un-mechanistic qualities. You cannot just plug forward, not always. That's not to say that you shouldn't have a work ethic or you shouldn't have a regular routine when it comes to writing. You absolutely should. There's a ton of "writers" out there who don't write anything at all, because they're waiting for things to "feel" right. You have to do more than that.

But it sounds like both I and your professor are telling you that you are trying to force the issue too much. Again: this is art. There is an aspect to it that cannot be forced, cannot be brute-forced. Sometimes you just have to sit back and breathe. Wait. Fuck around and do nothing at all. Let your mind breathe, let your heart be still. And, eventually, something will bubble up. Ideas will come, and a structure will form. You won't have to try so hard to form the connective tissue around your pivotal scenes; rather, the entire story will kind of grow, blossom, like a garden.

So I suppose my answer is that if you want your writing to have a "soul," you need to both try harder and not try at all. You need to be willing to take time, step back, and just let a story happen. It sounds like you're forcing the issue a bit. Don't.

>>15986127
WORD STAR WORD STAR

>>15986191
Bruh, fanfics are legit. Let's see what you got.

>>15987044
That makes sense, do you have any ideas on how to change? In his class, he separated writers by "discovery writers" and writers that pre-plan, but I didn't follow up on how to fix myself.

>>15986287
Some patterns in this aren't chained well. The first two couples are clearly similar, but the next one is different though still a couple. One more or one less line could let you chain into the change.

>>15987199
Who is your professor? It sounds like Robert Olen Butler's theory of writing.

>>15974415
I’m worried a character I’m currently writing fits in too comfortably with the mentor role often found in fantasy novels. I’ve been trying to subvert those tropes, but do you think that such a conscious act would only lead to readers thinking that I’m trying too hard?

>>15987199
Not quite sure. It's different for every person.

For me, I'm extremely religious, a very devout Catholic, so when I feel at a loss I often find myself praying, praying directly to God or praying for the intercession of the saints, all on the subject of inspiration and what I am going to write.

In general, I would suggest just thinking, but not forcing. THINK first, don't jump into writing. It sounds like that's kind of your problem, that you have your big scenes and you barge forward overtly to try to link them all up into an overall story. It sounds like you don't do enough thinking, not enough just sitting around or walking around or pondering during the day-to-day of your life. Think more. THINK more.

>>15985823
So here's an example from Crossroads of Twilight (Chapter 25). I cut quite a bit. It went from 4366 words to 2165, A cut of ~50%

I decided this chapter needed to show:
>Why Perrin needs to go to So Habor (food for his men)
>Berelain has talked Perrin into putting on a good face
>That the Asha'man are suddenly cheerful (Cleansing just occurred)
>Aram is beginning to act sketchy
>Seanchan are nearby.

I decided this chapter did not need to show:
>Every single person going with Perrin in detail

Link to full chapters: https://filebin.net/mzlqs5vib2n5jdvk

>>15987536
Certain archetypes exist because they're often found in real life. A lot of people inhabit mentor roles for people in their lives.
The most important thing is not letting that relationship be the foremost factor in determining their actions. Make sure the character is a realized person who has internal motivations for being the mentor.

>>15987515
Brandon Sanderson, third year at BYU

>>15987549
Thanks, I appreciate your in-depth responses. I'll take it all to heart. I really, really appreciate it.

>>15987636
lol

>>15987655
I get that /fictionlit/ hates him, but, still.

>>15987605
So to provide a bit more information on the story as a whole, it is to be written from multiple perspectives like ASOIAF was (I didn’t like the whole of the series, but I really like this facet of not having a specific main character, even though GRRM’s execution was poorly done). This mentor character is one of those perspectives, and he assumes the role of mentor over two of his adopted children (also pov characters). One of them has lost both of his legs, and yearns to explore the forest that lies outside his cabin in the woods, but the father, acting out of a sense of protection rather than spite, doesn’t permit him to, but rather keeps him close and teaches him all that he knows about medicine and sorcery. I’m trying to make him an actual character with flaws and dreams to follow, and not another Gandalf that misses the thematic elements of why Gandalf was made in the first place.

>>15987651
No big deal, Anon. Good luck. I bet you're actually pretty talented, you just need to tweak a few things and you'll write beautifully. Your professor seems to be hinting at that, too. He wouldn't spend so much time with you if you weren't worth it.

Current progress as an author:

2 short stories written.
1 sci-fi novelette written and close to being self-published (looking for readers for reviews).

Almost finished with writing out episode five of my five episode novel. I'll be releasing each episode (consisting of 60-90 pages) on Amazon. For the fitth episode the 'saga' I'll then put the previous four episodes, plus the fith, together in a physical book that can be purchased. This release method seems to be the best way to gain an audience. Apparently they respond to numbered series being released. This series is a comfy fantasy adventure.

Also outlining another novel, which I'm excited about. This novel is a comfy contemporary with supernatural elements.

>>15987846
Do you want to swap and review short stories?

>>15987885
How long is your story in words?

>tfw working on something really big right now
>tfw genuinely think it might be something magnificent

Or at least I hope it is.

>What is it?

It's kind of hard to describe. It's got poetry and prose in it. It's science fiction, but it's also extremely religious. The work I'm actively writing right now is only part of it, the whole thing is going to be much longer and it will probably take me years, even decades, to complete.

My dream is that it's the greatest work of art of the 21st century. That's a big dream. But I'm very ambitious.

>>15987890
About 2900

>>15987924
No promises, link to it and I might take a look tomorrow. I'm about to go to sleep so I don't want to commit to anything right now.

Finally decided to get serious with my writing, I finally have enough time to see if I can do this long term. Finished a few short stories & working on a few others. Those are mainly for publishers to check out my style of writing. Not too much of a market for short stories nowadays. The novel is what I'm working on the most. Feels good writing & don't care if I fail or not. Used to have a habit of deleting everything after I finish a story or I'd just burn the shit or crumple it up & throw it away. I'm more confident now & in retrospect I probably wrote some pretty good stuff that I should have held on too. Now whenever it's hard for me to write I just pick up a book I've been reading & it helps more often than not. Depending on what I'm writing sometimes I'll pick a specific book to read & it really helps, I've heard of other authors doing it as well and was a bit surprised.

>I want to be a writer bro
>I can only write out of inspiration bro
Is there any red flag bigger than someone who can only write out of inspiration? Do they expect to just get up and write an epic one day? I haven't met any serious aspiring writer who didn't (maybe figuratively) have a shelf of work only they've ever seen in their little private bookshelves.

>>15986858
I'd like to throw in my two cents here. I think oftentimes people put the needs of the plot over the needs of their characters. In other words, you set up how you want the plot to go and then you force the characters to do whatever's necessary to make those plot beats happen. The problem is that sometimes the things you make them do aren't the things those characters would realistically decide to do themselves.
I don't know if that's a problem in your writing but IMO making sure characters have agency is crucial towards creating an organic, satisfying work, and is something that readers can be surprisingly sensitive to even if they don't consciously notice it.

>>15988099
I'll say that one thing that tends to freeze me up under pressure sometimes is getting caught up in the notion that you're working on something that will absolutely be published and seen by others. In reality it's as you said, in treating writing as work there will undoubtedly be work that is shelved for repurpose later or even just sat on indefinitely.

>>15987668
It's not that, it's more that if there's any author out there that writes soulless plot driven stories, its Sanderson. All his stories rest on executing some plot twist based on the autistic rules of the world he's created. Not exactly soulful literature. If even he's saying that you're writing is lacking heart, then you're in trouble.

Anyway, read Olen Butler's book. He's big on the intuitive side of storytelling and actually details some methods to achieve it.

>>15987897
post something from it

I started writing a web novel a while back but stopped because it was too stressful trying to get chapters done every week (which, to be fair, is entirely my fault for being an internet-addled zoomer with no work ethic). I’m currently drafting a short story I want to do for practice and just to get into the habit of writing every day. I will probably publish it in chunks online as well.

I would describe it and my previous attempt both as “light fantasy”, they’re meant to be fun adventures in fictional worlds, none of this apocalyptic good vs evil stuff :^)

How logical do you guys try to be when you're writing a novel? For example, I have a big scene where a protagonist murders someone, which she then flees to a small town in the middle of nowhere. Is that enough in itself? Will the reader wonder if she left evidence to get caught in the future (not a plot I want) or am I over thinking it?

>>15988465
It does seem to leave a hole. Consequence is relevant when crime occurs.

If you explore guilt but don't want to expand on the investigation following the crime, you could have her go through papers and find a small article pertaining to her murder and highlighting that: either the police is following some absurd lead unrelated to her, or that the police is at a dead-end.

>>15974415
I’m currently trying to come up the overall title for a series of books I’m writing at the moment, though I’m having trouble. It’s a fantasy romance set in a magical forest. I’ve came up with the names of the individual novels (some examples are “amidst wooden giants” and “cities of grass”), but I can’t find a satisfying title for the whole series. Some ideas I have are “beyond the endless horizons”, “beneath a sea of stars”, “braving a new world”, “the land above the hill”, and “braving the crooked path”. I actually kinda like the last one, but what to know your opinion on the matter.

>>15988465
>or that the police is at a dead-end.
This is what I'm thinking of, but I'm trying to integrate the notion of, "most murders go unsolved" in a way that isn't blunt, like I'm not telling the reader that (excuse that plot hole) so I think a combination of having the police perhaps arrest the wrong person, or be going down a lead that isn't connected to her.

>>15988352
I'm just not sure it's ready yet. Even when I've finished the initial writing I can already tell that I'm going to have to do a significant amount of editing. Maybe I'm just gun-shy about this particular work because it's my baby and I want to treat it with the utmost care.

I'll post something I've posted before. This was a narrative poem I wrote back in 2019 that's set in the same universe as this big work of mine, and features many of the same characters. This poem was fun to write because it takes place in the Spring and fields of flowers are a prominent dramatic motif in it, so I sculpted the meter of the poem to try and capture the sensation of flowers swaying back and forth in the Spring breeze. That's why the primary metrical construction of this particular poem was an unrhymed couplet consisting of one fourteen-syllable line followed by one thirteen-syllable line.

I like to think I've improved as both a writer and a poet since I wrote this, even though it was only a few months ago. Or, at least this is what I hope.

>>15988099
>Do they expect to just get up and write an epic one day?
I don't think it's always about that and more of a "I will write 1k words every day" vs "I might spend weeks thinking and overthinking the shit and only start writing when it just happens and then pour 10k words in a day"

>>15988465
If the scene is about "protagonist murders someone, which she then flees to a small town in the middle of nowhere" I stick to that but if the story goes for long enough, I will eventually consider the consequences of ALL the smaller actions; and then either change a detail or two, or include the consequences as a new development, even if it isn't key to the main story.

>Will the reader wonder if she left evidence to get caught in the future
Seems pretty obvious. One can kill that plotline by hinting the murder was done well enough or the protagonist being too fucked to care. As another anon noted, some news about the police following a dead-end lead is pretty good too, hell it even can add some humour.

>>15974415
Me and my friends are working together to translate some anarchists work that you really can't find anywhere online and hardly you can find a physical copy

The list of works that we are/will be translating:
Anarchism by Errico Malatesta
Anarchy after leftism by Bob Black
The abolition of work by Bob Black
Against organizationalism anarchism as both theory and critique of organization by Jason MacQuinn
Post left anarchism leaving the left behind by Jason MacQuinn
Illegalism why pay for a revolution on the installment plan when you can steal on by Paul Simos
Toward the creative nothing by Renzo Novatore

As you can see it will be a fun quarantine

>>15975853
damn, that's actually really good.

>>15989094
>chad artist gets more positive feedback than virgin writers in a thread about writing
Life is so unfair.

If you dont write every single day how much of a failure are you

Just wanted to mention I had my first 500-word day yesterday cause of this thread, thank you friends. I know that's not really much but it's a nice little milestone for me as I get going on my first novel.

>>15989786
Do shitposts and text messages count?

>>15983979

Cause that way I can procastinate

>>15985291
I feel you. You can try to give yourself hope and say the rewrites will make it better but who fucking knows. It just sucks ass writing anything and telling yourself that your characters sound the same or the plot is meandering.

>>15974415
My writing is so bad I can't even get published in Lit quarterly. As such I have decided to abandon the pursuit of writing and instead become a hedonist.

>>15985291
What is the cure for this? Just get fucked up or high before writing to get it out of your system?

>>15990297
Get fucked up I suppose. There's a video of David Milch Idea of a Writer where he says "The thing about being a writer, I am of an age where the whole idea about being a writer was how well did you hold your liquor. And write. It was a given that you were supposed to be drunk. Because Hemingway was a drunk. Faulkner was a drunk. Fitzgerald was a drunk. All my teachers were drunks. Richard Yates - big drunk. Kurt Vonnegut - tremendous, tremendous consumer of cannabis. And I was an alcoholic anyway."

>>15974415
Does a character driven story need to be first person? I was planning on switching from third person to first person in between two parts, and then back to third for the conclusion, but I don't know if that is viable. For context, the story is following mental descent and recovery (OCD/Disassociation/Psychosis).

>>15990475
Why would the POV matter for that? It's basically like the camera in a movie, the story can be the same.

>>15990475
Any POV is fine, but flipping back and forth is generally just annoying.

>>15990043
Good job, anon! Keep it up

>>15990548
>>15990520
Not back and forth. I was just thinking about switching over once for the lowest part. If it's not that big of a deal, then I don't really want to write in 1st person. I was just told that the ideal POV for a character driven story is 1st since it's "more personal," but I'm not sure how true that is.

>>15985610
quite disrespectful tone, im embarrassed for you to share this thread with others

>>15990565
First person is more intimate in a sense, yes, but I would also argue that it's technically the more challenging of the two.

In third person, you describe the events the way they happen, what the characters may be feeling and thinking, and so on, it's fairly straightforward, and you're at complete liberty how you'll go about it. But in FP, it's all filtered through the lens of the narrator character. Every line, every word choice, the atmosphere, tempo, must be faithful to who this character is and their experience, first and foremost, before it's about delivering the story. You still have to establish all the elements you would in third person, yet oftentimes it'd come across as unnatural for a person to be talking about their surroundings or someone's clothes in detail, for example. There are a lot of problems that not many even stop to consider.

Dreadfully many adopt FP, because it SEEMS easier. You basically just print down your own thoughts as they come to you, right? There's the first amateur pitfall, blurring the distinction between who the character is and who the author is. They should never be the same, unless it's your autobiography you're making! The ease of FP is mostly just a fallacy, and the final product highlights the immaturity and flaws of its maker even clearer than TP ever would.

>>15990565
Just because it's more personal doesn't mean it's better for character driven stories. The extra perspective from the 3rd can offer a better contrast between reality and the characters head.

>>15990660
>Every line, every word choice, the atmosphere, tempo, must be faithful to who this character is and their experience, first and foremost, before it's about delivering the story.
One has to do that from the limited 3rd person either way.

>>15990664
That's actually a very good point. Thank you.
>>15990660
Thanks for this. I've always disliked FP because it felt clunkier whenever I went back and read what I wrote. Your point about the technical difficulties with FP was very valuable.

>>15990254
>>15990297
Surprisingly I actually did manage to write a page or two after posting that. Only took me two hours of existential crisis.
>What is the cure for this?
If you find it, tell me.
>get fucked up or high
I feel like that would severely affect the quality of the writing.

Pretty sure the only way to do it is through willpower, there really is no other sustainable long-term solution.

I have notepad, and I want something with formatting so I don't feel like a Jr High student writing fanfiction.

I'm afraid of using freeware that's google/duck duck go's first suggestions because I'm convinced they'll steal my work (somehow)

What programs do YOU folks use?

>>15992158
2002 version of Word. Only thing I've ever used.

>>15992158
Go to /g/, find the friendly Windows thread, look at the OP, find out how to easily pirate Word, done. Alternatively use something like FocusWriter if you can get over your paranoia.

>>15992158
Libreoffice Writer is a trustworthy free Word alternative, if you're looking for that. More trustworthy than Word itself.

>>15992175
>>15992197


Appreciate the input, will promptly research and/or pirate 2002 version of Word upon my wake.
But for now, I will sleep. Goodnight

>>15992217
You don't necessarily have to use the same version I do but it's what I'm comfortable with.

>>15992158
write in markdown using atom

>>15988702
Technically speaking, this is pretty good anon, and very beautiful. But it just seems too derivative of past great narrative poems. I think you need to think long and hard on the plot elements and make sure it doesn't just read like you're LARPing.

>>15974415

>>15992907
Well, that's only the very beginning of that one. Things get much stranger the further along the poem goes.

As I said, I think I've gotten better as both a writer and a poet since that time, and the big work I'm writing now will, hopefully, reflect that.

>>15988099
It's only a red flag if it's an excuse.

opening paragraph here bros, any tips or comments welcome. 10k into this, I've never attempted to write anything of my own accord this long. I see so many flaws but... I kinda like what I'm telling too. It's nice.

>>15974702
im so bad at rhythms and such, i tried to figure out what iambic heptameter was just from reading but it seems like poetry in general just completely goes over my head.

>>15990475
You can discuss a first person view from third person. I would just stick with that, unless you want to divorce the first person view from reality, in which case you should not flip at convenience but maybe write each event twice. But that'll get annoying if it isn't excellent. You should probably just do third.

Is there genuinely money in smut?

>>15995224
It's written in the present tense, which I find weird. Also, unless you have some reason to hide his name, you should be using his name in the first sentence. Speaking of, the sentence structure on that first sentence feels kinda archaic: "had he" vs "he had"...I'd probably use "on this beach" as opposed to "over this beach"

I was trying to write a novel, but I got discouraged because
a) I don't wanna write a novel. I wanna write a series of short stories because no one reads fucking novels and I want to feel like I have an actual audience and that I'm writing something I would actually finish myself
And
b) It got all convoluted and weird with different characters telling different parts and I started it at random points in the middle with all this exposition needed for the sci-fi/superhero/technomagic/whatever elements...

Now I don't know what the fuck am doing...

>>15996578
Appreciate the feedback. The slightly archaic style is what I'm going for, and makes sense within the larger narrative.

What are the prospects regarding writing for money in [current year]?
At what level of saturation is the market? What level of skill and productivity need be met to regularly make money as an author?

>>15997301
Cool, definitely had the feel of that.

>>15997307
Here's twp examples of someone successful without traditional publishing
https://www.patreon.com/puddles4263
https://www.patreon.com/DefianceNovels

Read the first bit of either one. It's not very good. One guy makes about 7 grand a month writing full time, the other probably around 12 grand.

They are not particularly good writers, the main thing they do is put out a lot of content to keep their existing readers interested.

The second guy puts out approximately 14K words per week. So he writes a novel's worth of words every five weeks or so.

So take that for what you will. Certainly seeing that makes me more hopeful for my own chances.

>>15997363
Yeah, it is inspiring to know the pulp mindset of rapid authorship is still around.

>>15997337
I'm writing according to a genre that I have roughly sketched out in my head, vaguely titled [by me lmao] as 'parable realism'. I must do some sort of essay on the tenets of it in detail along with works I think constitute it. Very similar to magical realism, but errs more toward a kind of archaic mysticism than magic, as such. Stuff like Bela Tarr's films and Cormac McCarthy's writings you know, with that kind of grandiosity and messing with archetypes.

Basic premise is a young man struggling to come to terms with and attempting to break free from a village defined by rituals and power structures.

>>15985196
>One before writing, in order to see if I can bring the story to an actual end (and make sure its really a story and not just a cool idea for a setting or something)

I can never make it this far. All I ever have are ideas for a setting or the like. I've never been able to come up with the outline of an actual story.

>>15997523
I find that what helps me when building a framework is to create a protagonist first. Not even give him personality traits, but define him in a sentence
>the son of a widowed woman, he becomes the childhood playmate of the young master of the most powerful family in town because his mother is recruited as a nursemaid

Then I relate all the ideas I have back to the protagonist before I write down the next one

Instead of just having an idea that there will be a travelling monk character that I find cool, I force myself to relate him to the protagonist's situation.

>he is a fortune teller who divines the future of the young master
>notices protag's mother standing on the roadside, holding him
>discerns he has a great fate
>his sister, whom he is visiting, is the nanny for the young master, and his mother is hired because of this

by creating the connection between this idea and the protagonist, I've affixed it into the story I'm trying to write. That way, all my worldbuilding ends up being relevant, and the act of brainstorming ideas for setting, plot, themes inevitably fleshes out the story more.

>writing fantasy/scifi mix book
>get stuck on action scenes because I dislike reading them, let alone writing them

Am I simply retarded?

>>15997735
Thanks, I will think about this. Though I'm afraid I'll end up with better defined characters that do nothing.

>>15998325
Defined characters act more easily in your writing. I find that when I define someone more thoroughly, what they would do becomes clear, and thus outlining their actions within the story becomes simple.

>>15995224
In the same boat at 13k. Haven't revised at all, but I annotate physical copies of each chapter once I finish it. Gives me something to do as I build up willpower for the next chapter.

>>15997384
It's also inspiring to know that YA novels can get published.

>>15998427
Well YA is where all the steak and potatoes are at.
Well, erotica is the genre that makes the most money by far, but I think YA has the best effort:results ratio.
Middle school/early high school kids are old enough to appreciate world building and other simple results of care and effort, but young enough to not know something is trite, derivative, or just bad taste.

>>15995224
Is the repetition of water deliberate?
First sentence needs rewording.
'Geological' is out of place vs the rest of the word choices
x was almost like y is a massive cliche
turmoils is simultaneously not the right way to pluralize turmoil, and redundant with battle.
I'm confused on the perfect stillness line. You've established the river as active, full of sound and motion. Doesn't work for me to then finish with perfect stillness. Seems more like an attempt to be clever.
Your use of commas is inconsistent.

Overall, pretty good for something on the first draft. Just needs some cleaning up.

>>15997745
Why would you force yourself to write something you don't like and are bad at? Action is not some kind of basic requirement. Hell, fantasy/scifi setting should give various other, more interesting ways to solve conflicts. That could be the one thing that makes your book stand out.

>>15999336
This. Why not have them play a children's card game instead?

>>15999336
Two of my three pov's are fighters: a cowardly mercenary on the run and an agent of the empire hunting a deranged former comrade. The former gives me fun ways to skirt around fights while the latter doesn't mind using violence before speech. I relegate most action to him, keeping it short enough to convey his character and the scene's tone. Sort of helps.

Too crucial for my story overall would be my answer.

>>15999532
Well then maybe your story just isn't suited to you.

Is anyone else incredibly and irrationally afraid to post their ideas, thinking someone may steal them?
I know I'm a nothing special anonymous poster, as every one here is.
But after pouring real effort into coming up something for the first time over the past few months and just now starting to write it out, my greatest fear is that someone will take the idea before I'm able to complete it and do something it it first.
It's not that I think I have an intellectual treasure on my hands or anything, and I'm not seriously overestimating how good my idea is either.
I just don't want to lose it, and it holds me back from posting in critique threads and such.
Ideas and concepts get posted here every day, no problem.
I'm just afraid of being unlucky.

>>15999552
Not really, no. Ideas are cheap; skill in execution is what matters.

>>15999552
My idea is to write a story about a young alcohilic male
>t. 50% of writers

>>15999552
I unironically used to write out little blurbs specifically meant for critique on prose and nothing else because I shared your irrational fear. None of them were from any story I was actually working on. It's one thing to know that time old adage of "every idea's been done before, don't worry" and another thing to actually understand it, you know? Just something you have to beat into your head

>>15999659
not very bim bim bim

>>15998436
Of course. But when I see countless "readers" stuck in YA-land anyway, and I skim a YA novel or two to get a feel for the quality needed to be published (and read), I am often reassured.

>>15997363
>The second guy puts out approximately 14k words per week.
>consistently averaging that word count week after week
Regardless of the quality I have to applaud the work ethic. Good lord. You know what lads, I think I'll dedicate the entirety of the coming day towards writing.

>>15997363
>12 grand for that
Alright fine time to get writing.

Do you show others your first drafts, anons?

>>16000068
I don't even read my first drafts

>>16000108

>>15998494
THanks man will work on this. Good constructive feedback.

>>16000148
Yeah, like that.

>>15996578
Not that anon but I'm curious what people would consider a good reason to hide names of characters, and a good execution.

I did it with all of my POV characters during their first appearance (to somewhat emulate getting to know them slowly) but it felt weird going from pronouns to name.

>>15996856
>A
Not true at all. Most readers, read novels. Short-stories are a niche. Outside of that, focusing on readers this early seems pointless. Even if you write the best novel/short-story ever, and even if you get published (or self-publish with a decent marketing budget); the chance it will have more than a hundred readers is still stupidly low.
>B
How deep are you in? It gets easier to sort through all the mess when you are actually done, so unless it's a complete chaos which even confused yourself too much, rather just finish it and see.

>>15999552
Once you finish your work, you might be able to realize just how worthless ideas are.

Of course someone might take it if it's actually good and fits to what someone else is doing but their execution will be always different from yours. Even if two people had to work from a very strickt outline for the plot, gimmicks, characters and themes, each would write a totally different story in the end.

>>15976541
Link is dead

>>15977549
1000 words a month if you are writing a novel is bad. What he really needs is a typewriter, and to type his first draft quickly, then edit. Is he really trying to make it perfect on his first go? That isn't likely to work.

>>16000513
To add to my point, if your friend is going to take so long in making his first draft his only draft, imagine his pain when he finally sends the finished work in and gets rejected. It might make him quit. Writers have to write more, not less!

>>16000513
> type his first draft quickly, then edit
It's a pretty common advice and logical but I still don't get how people work that way. It's not that jumping from sentence to sentence is an issue for me, just the result doesn't feel compelling enough without some finer touches, and the finer touches can have a butterfly effect and reframe the whole thing, shit could even lead to a different story when you give it time. Giving that up just to finish would suck out the fun for me.

And sure, there is always the revisions but if you start with a barebones version, the process becomes clinical and calculated way too soon.

writing fast is an issue. Just,

>>16000646
Yikes, can't even delete a post to fix leftovers. When did that happen?

>>16000646
>shit could even lead to a different story when you give it time
Failure to commit to one path is probably the main reason why most people can't ever finish shit

>>15999532
Do as you will, but I sure wouldn't write books about doctors if I disliked everything about medicine

>>16000687
Yeah, it was definitely an issue for my kiddy stories. Later it was more about the details of the path. Knowing where you're going still leaves lots of room for detours, adjusting the pace and so on.

>>16000646
If small ideas from your story make you want to reframe the whole thing, then it suggests you weren't very serious about the story to begin with, and that you had no serious belief in it. With heavy editing, of course you will omit hundreds of pages (if you are writing a novel), and they will probably be pages that you love. So use them for another story. Don't think everything you write is gold. You can only make it gold through heavy heavy editing. Assume that you aren't God's gift to the earth. Oh, and read absolute shit next to a masterpiece. Like twilight/the sound and the Fury.. It will do wonders for your confidence.

I really liked how this thread ended up, anons. /lit/ is in dire need of good threads, and this is one of them. Let's turn it into a real general.

>>15974415
>was told to write some stuff for a small online music mag that a friend of a friend of a friend is running.
>They've liked a few articles i wrote
>said fuck-it and wrote a short story about being an e-girl that gets haunted by a bunch of gnomes that come out of her phone's USB port.
>it gets published, first time in a few years I've actually been able to get a story online
>feel empty
Did being distant acquaintances with the editor rob me of the joy that actually comes with getting a work published?

>red some William McGonagall poems
>now worry that's how all of mine come across

>>16001454
>red
It's too late, anon. He's infected you. You'll be writing the sequel to The Tay Bridge Disaster before long.

Some advice I've heard is "If you're writing a boring narrative throw a monkey wrench into the works." You don't necessarily want to shit on your character but instead introduce something novel or intriguing for you sort through and for your reader to experience.

>>16001535
What if you're writing your thing... and then someone is hit in the face with a pie?

>>16001454
post excerpts nao.

>>15974565
I didn't read what you said because I don't care but that skin in the painting is wonderful.

>>15981632
What the fuck is this?

>>15982180
Don’t rewrite back to some historical bullshit. Incorporate the past into the “this has happened before” trope, bleeding into her current reality and revealing the way to defeat Baba Yaga. Lampshade Baba Yaga, you can market to that.

>>16002543
Yeah, just the mention of her makes me curious about the thing. Though might be just nostalgia over Russian fairy tales.

Incorporating her into a modern setting sounds tricky; one of the most Baba Yaga things is the house, which is freaky and scary when you're living in a 18th century village cut of from basically everything and have to move through the forest. In a modern setting it would require some shitty gimmick to remove the protagonist from civilisation.

Besides, she generally works better as a neutral force of nature instead of main antagonist.

>>16002520
It's a page where you can download an unauthorized copy of Gertrude Stein's "How to Write" in the epub file format.

>>15983935
Doesn’t sound like big publishing houses market at all these days. Besides a top 10 at Barnes and Noble email or something. Am I wrong?

>>15983935
>all your advertising and marketing is done for you
lol if you actually believe this.

>>15985163
haven't read it yet but thanks for posting. love

>sit down to write
>start cold sweating and feeling agitated
Help

>>15992158
>What programs do YOU folks use?
Latex (MiKTeX), way more based than W*rd. https://miktex.org/download

You can use Overleaf to get a taste of how LaTeX works before you install anything.
(Though it's cloud-based, so don't put anything you're paranoid about being stolen there.)
The site has a lot of nice tutorials:
https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Creating_a_document_in_LaTeX
https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/sections_and_chapters

See >>15985766 on how to get quotation marks right.

>>15974565
Unironically doing it right anon. Proud to share a board with you.

Hey /lit/, i have started writing my first fanfic, is based on the index/railgun franchise, only 2 small chapter since I only started today, your unfiltered opinion is welcomed.

https://pastebin.com/Efsj14Rv

>>16003200
Something exclusive to fanfic is you can essentially strip a lot of exposition out, since you're writing for an audience that presumably already knows the basics of the universe and characters

>>16003305
I wanted to but for some reason my mind just won't let me introduce a character w/o exposition. It feels naked for some reason.

>>16003200
>One could even confuse her for an effeminate looking guy
BASED

I haven't watched the series, so I don't know if you're writing about an alternative setting, but I agree with what >>16003305 said in regards to info-dumping.
In any case, opening the story with a long stretch about the character's life is old-fashioned. It's more engaging to use a short introduction, or start in medias res, and then trickle in details as they're needed. It's also more coherent with the "show, don't tell" principle: a long introduction is a whole lot of "telling", and very little "showing".

>She must have been really tired.

You went from omniscient narrator to documentary narrator.

>Around an hour later, the colour on Mikoto’s face changed a little, [it was like she was having a bad dream. The dream wasn’t actually bad but it was ominous,] she was floating in ether and there was nothing but emptiness.

Cut out the part between square brackets. Have faith in your writing and the reader, and don't explain yourself. Writing is like telling a joke: if you have to explain it, it's bad, and if it's explained, it's ruined.

>Suddenly a lot of books started surrounding her forming a cylindrical pattern around her. It was hard to grasp what these books were but they’re were probably 100,000 of them, not that she could keep count since she was busy panicking.

The ideas are nice, but it needs to sound less like notes about a story, and more like a story. Unless you're deliberately going for a pulpy style, where the narrator makes remarks to themselves -- but that only works for first person. For examples, look in the comments of this video: https://youtu.be/HiOY9EynHdw

You could rephrase the above as something like,

>Hundred of thousands of books, more than she could count, coiled around her in a cylindrical pattern.

Not sure what you mean with:
>It was hard to grasp what these books were
Are you talking about their titles or contents? Or the fact that they may not actually be books?

There's a few places where you're missing punctuation, or where you should be using a period instead of a comma, such as:

>Well[,] I tried to wake you up normally[,] but it wasn’t working[.] So I [had?] to try other methods[,] but forget about that, it’s getting late, don’t you have practice today?

Try reading these sentences out loud. If you find yourself using a long pause, then it's a sign you should be using a period.

>>16003541
Holy shit, thanks for proofreading. English ia not my first language so I tend to make a lot of mistakes. I'll try to follow your advices.

>>15984890
Where are you selling your work?

>>15986068
Scrivener or die.

>>15986453
He’s right tho

>>16003200
It might be the first fanfiction I read (sans Divine Comedy) and I don't know the original. And I'm pretty tired. And last time I cared about 14 year old girls was over a decade ago. Also I'm going to skim through it. Sooo, take whatever I say with as many grains of salt you need.

For one, the prose parts read like narration in some nature documentary. Also there is a lot of pointless details that sap energy out of it. If you absolutely want to give the reader information, you'll find a more elegant way to do it than shit that reads like police describing a suspect.

>"There she was welcomed by the three other people whom she shared the home with. A middle-aged man in his 30’s, a beautiful woman who"
Wait, this isn't nature documentary style anymore. Is Mikoto a fucking robot?
>She donned my favourite Gekota pajamas
This got interesting and creepy and I hope this isn't just a mistake but she is actually watched by someone.
>She suddenly opened her eyes in shock and found the reason for her breathlessness
Cute idea but wouldn't someone struggling to breathe open their eyes first, from the shock alone?
>Touma took the kick with zero defence and ended up on the other side of the room.
Holy kek. This does sound like an anime.
>A depraved idea ran through Mikoto’s mind
Aww, man. Here I expected something actually depraved. Seems like the wrong word to use, even with muh artistic liberty.

Chapter 1 generally reads way better and feels more cohesive while the prologue seemed all over the place.

The dialogue is functional and authentic enuff, just has too many redundancies. Written dialogue isn't supposed to be like normal speech but a more condensed version of it.
>“Can’t allow all of this to get under her head.”, she thought to herself.
Isn't it "in her head" or "under her skin"?
Also the way I got Burger rules, the period inside speech tags should be a comma. "Something like this," she said. And it's generally better to avoid quotation marks for thoughts, you can include the shit into the prose. Would have the side effect of it reading more personal too.

Generally there were fuckloads of typos and the likes too, but that's something to worry about later anyway.

>It was painful but surreal like she could feel every neuron in her body.
A pretty interesting idea actually but I feel it could be phrased better.
>Junko knew what was about to happen she rushed towards Mikoto.
Why the fuck would you kill the tension like that. Annoying point of view break too.

The story itself … well, between all the bloat, the key part I got is that some other chick knows about her dream, then some other chicks attack her. Functional but not groundbreaking stuff. I liked how the warning of the silhouette was regarding Mikoto herself and not some boring ass "save X".

Also considering the time it took you, it's not half as bad and seems salvageable with editing. Keep writing, m8.

>>16003592
I write just free web novels on royal road these days. Readers can donate if they feel like it. I'm sorry, but I won't link anything here, since it's such a cozy, shill-free thread.

>>16003894
I've been looking to get into this, just to get my feet wet. Any advice? Should I pre-write the entire novel so I can post consistently?

>>16003863
Thanks for reading. In the actual light novels, mikoto's gekota mascot obsession is a big part of her so I though I would go into a little detail. I'll try to do better.
The neuron part is because mikoto is canonically an electromaster, she can manipulate electricity and can hence induce magnetism and hence create a railgun (hence the name) with an arcade coin. I'm planning to make her slowly realise her power. As for the edits in spelling and such, I'm doing this for the entertainment of the general I browse and I haven't shown a lot of effort. But as I write more I'll try to proof read as much as I can.

>>16003179
LaTeX is good at what it does, but why would you use it for this kind of project?
You won't get much use out of the formula typesetting, weird symbols, internal references, programmability, and so on, but you will have to deal with the bad ergonomics and general idiosyncracies (like the quotes thing).
I use org-mode.

>>16003963
I do everything about it the way nobody really should do, so I'm kinda bad at giving advice.

Most web novel authors don't do any editing or planning whatsoever, so preparing in any way will definitely make your work stand out positively in terms of quality. I do write my stories fully in advance, and dedicate time to editing, because I want to only show the best I can. And quality is the one thing no one has complained about so far, thankfully.

However, by my observations, 99% of web novel readers actually don't give much of a damn about quality, but prefer quantity, long-running serials with frequent, small updates. So I would recommend planning and pacing your work accordingly from the start.

Also, actually having a full story planned and being certain to finish it are also a major perk, because 99% of the writers just ghost their audience.

>>16003200
Are you the same guy who wrote >>>/a/206559883 and >>>/a/206568607 ?

>>16004102
No thats a different anon

>>16003568


>With half a [slice of] bread in her mouth, Mikoto left her house in hurry [...]
Slice of bread* -- "half a bread" makes me think she has half of a loaf of bread. Also in the next sentence it's "reserved strict punishment[s]".

>Mikoto recognised her, it was her senior, the 3rd year student, Hozake Junko. Her appearance may lead other to believe that she is a high-class lady who looks down upon others, but the reality coudn’t be further from the truth. A kind and gentle soul, Hozake is often referred by many as the sweetest girl in Tokiwadae.

>I’m late for [practice] [...] she has her morning [practise] too
You should choose between American English and British English, and consistently use one. Of the two, AmE is the more universal choice, due to their cultural hegemony. For the main differences, see: http://www.thewriter.com/what-we-think/style-guide/british-vs-american-english/

Make sure the punctuation is consistent. For the rules on punctuation, see here:
https://www.thepunctuationguide.com/quotation-marks.html
The main difference is that AmE favors commas and periods inside quotation marks.
>[...] I’ll talk to you later”,
becomes
>[...] I’ll talk to you later,”
You used it correctly here:
“Mikoto, I’ve meaning to talk to you about something.”

Remember to use periods only if you want to start a new sentence after the quotation mark, or at the end of the paragraph. Here you should replace that period with a comma, and take out the comma outside.
>[...] just some problems with the clock on my phone.”, she said with a smile on her face.

Put a space after ellipses, and always use three dots. You can put a space between the dots too, if you want some more breathing room.
>“It’s...uuhh..I don’t know how to say this...uhh..”
>“It’s... uuhh... I don’t know how to say this... uhh...”
>“It’s. . . uuhh. . . I don’t know how to say this. . . uhh. . .”
There's also a specific, single character for ellipses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

>Mikoto rushed past Hozake in a flash and was well [past her hearing range] [until] [she] called out to her.
The pronouns get a bit ambiguous here. You can either change that "she" to something like "the other student". "Hearing range" is too technical, the word you're looking for is "out of earshot".
Also, it should be "when", not "until".
>[...] why is she walking so leisurely[?]”[.]
Needs a question mark, remove the period.
>the time on her phone was [messed up], it was 15 minutes [further].
"Messed up" means "disorderly", I'd use "wrong". Also, use "ahead" for the time. Clocks that show the wrong time are "behind/ahead" or "slow/fast".

>“That bitch!” was basically the expression you could make out of her face.
For a second I thought Mikoto was talking about Junko, usually "bitch" is reserved for people. It'd be better to show us her reaction, instead of telling us her thoughts:
>She scowled at the phone, and had to restrain herself from throwing it at the floor.

>thread is most lively and responsive when confronted with fanfiction
Based department

Just wanted to post and not be a lurker.

I'm writing a story that contains a lot of things (lol). It's about a species of humans who have powers, but are being subjugated slowly and are losing them over time. Thats the main plot, but it isn't revealed initially. The story itself follows a group of 12 children (with powers) who were brought to a facility with roughly 80 others who also have powers, and they were going to be used to wage war against regular humans. They end up escaping, and seeing the modern world very much for what it is (because they don't have social conditioning and such). The earth as we know it is only a fraction of a much larger planet, think of the pictures of flat earth, and then place that on a larger sphere (roughly the size of Saturn or Neptune). There are other facilites, each with their own children, and the main 12 have to decide whether or not to free the others, possibly throwing earth into even more chaos (because as their presence becomes known, people actually begin to wake up (in the /pol/ sense)), or let them remain captive and potentially turned into their enemies. As things ramp up, ww3 is on the horizon, and their main antagonist (a jew) mass produces cyborgs in an attempt to stop them.

There is a lot more than this, but I'd like to think that if I was able to publish this, I would get killed for it. Thats my larp for the day. Thanks for reading.

>>16004372
"Existing universes are easier to digest, particularly when complementing visuals are there. The mind's eye is less strained on how the characters appear and can focus on what they do and how they interact" said Ben Shapiro, briefly parting his cheeks from his sister's inner cleavage

>>15997363
What the hell is litRPG? Wuxia? What?

New one, hop on:
>>16005171
>>16005171
>>16005171
Let us make it as good as this one was.

>>15979313
>I'm trying to gauge the difference between the "write what you know" of the human condition vs actual lived experience
There is no difference. Anything you really know about "the human condition" must be affirmed by encounters with the limits of existence. If you find yourself guessing about love, hate, jealousy, grief, etc. you aren't writing what you know. The application of the maxim "write what you know" is different for different parts of writing: a writer is expected to faithfully represent diction and dialect, to vividly represent the details of some time and place, and to intimately represent character. If you find yourself doubting the fidelity of your representations, you are most likely writing out of your ass, so to speak. But, direct experience is not always necessary. Research is sufficient for some fiction writing, but only when the writer can discern the truth of a primary source and capture the dramatic essence of the facts. It's like exercising: don't curl a barbell if your back cramps and your wrist hurts. If you feel too little or too much resistance against the facts, you aren't writing what you know. In the latter, you know you don't know. In the former, you don't know that you don't know. So write what you know.

>>15997363
"Information was power. It could both be the sword with which you impale your enemy, or the sword you impale yourself upon. That was what was going through Zac’s head as he walked through the woods with a small hatchet in his hand, his face glowing with a sheen of perspiration and irritation."
This is hot dogshit.

>>16005357
Pretty hard to edit 14 thousand words per week. It's about as good as you'd expect.

>>16005166
LitRPG is basically if you turned your dnd campaign into a novel but kept the statsheets in it. It's atrocious.

Wuxia is low fantasy martial arts stories ala Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it's also used as a catchall for Chinese web fantasy in general

>>16005369
It's not a matter of editing. A sheen of irritation? It's very bad writing through and through, even for a first draft.

>>16005357
t. Zac

>>15974702
Somewhat reminds me of the Little Prince.
>>15979244
>>15979337
This story will live or die by it's characters, they better be good. Too bad he doesn't have one last conversation with his friend at the end who tries to persuade him to pass on.
>>15983935
Publishing houses are useless unless you already have a solid base of core fans. It's smarter to get as much clout for your first book that you can because that gives you bargaining chips when you market your second book to publishers. Much safer to bet on a guy who can already demonstare sales and proof of concept then some nobody who depends on the publisher for everything like a baby who shit his diaper.

>>15985163
A primer must be simple and easy to understand.
The way you wrote this first draft makes it sound like you complicated simple things, on purpose, to sound smart.
That's bad because readers will spend more time trying to understand you, instead of learning--the reason for a primer's existence.

An example:
~~To demonstrate this, try and recall~~ [Remember] the last ~~good~~ story you read[.] ~~, saw or heard.~~ It may be difficult to remember ~~particular details~~ the names or descriptions of the characters, the individual plot events, [or] the descriptions of the setting--but ~~you'll~~ notice ~~that~~ what ~~always~~ sticks out in the mind[.] ~~are the moments of~~ Intense emotion[.] ~~, the catharsis--especially at the climax--which all contain, by necessity, the elements listed above.~~

>>15986118
rewrite it all over again

>>15986858

>>15986858

>Soul

Consider 'What is art?' by Tolstoy. tl;dr he gets pissed off about 'artifical' art created purely by profit-driven motives, or people trying to show off their skill, and 'true' art, which he defines as the communication of an emotional experience from one human being to another.

For myself, having my best friend die was a soul crushing experience, and in the story I'm writing the protagonist undergoes a similar emotional journey to my own. I want the reader to understand and know what it felt like. So that would be the 'soul' of my writing. I'm not just making up a series of events for the sake of entertainment.

Tolstoy describes 'counterfiet' art as when, after someone makes true art, other read it and then attempt to replicate the emotional journey it contained, despite these new authors never having actually experienced the experience they are writing about. Like trying to write a war story when you've never been to war; you're just attempting to copy the emotional experience of another human being, instead of adding your own unique experiences. To truly create, your writing has to contain some of your own emotional experience, your 'soul'. It's what makes the writing feel truly human.

I wouldn't say that all writing needs to have 'soul', and Tolstoy is just one opinion of many, but I believe this is what your professor was speaking about.

I like to think about what love means, but when people ask me, I don't ever have a concise definition, just a few phrases I threw around a lot when I was stupid and naive and had no idea what I was talking about. I still don't actually know anything about love, except for what I've learned from a few mistakes, and I've probably just very crudely restated what's been much more thoroughly developed by more experienced, wiser people before me. But for my own purposes I wanted to write out what it means to me at this point in my life, since it's central to my goals and my view on it has changed significantly from when I first started thinking about it.

I wrote about 2000 words trying to work out my current definition of love. Like I said, I know nothing about love and I feel like this has been a vanity project restating others' ideas I got from books, though I have drawn from my own very limited experience. At the very least I wrote out my complete ideas and it's something I'll be able to look back on if I ever do gain any significant knowledge and experience of love and see how my views have changed. Reading it back, it all seems a bit trite and obviously comes from someone who's investigating an ideal rather than a lived experience. It was a good exercise, at least

My original definition:
>Love is fervent mutual obsession, eventually manifesting in a lifelong commitment and nuclear family.

New definition:
>This occupation is a lifelong devotion to honestly strive towards fulfilling love’s image; to diligently carry out the spiritual, mental, and physical work necessary to cultivate a connection; to accept freely the suffering our imperfect human faculties bring upon us as we blunder through life’s difficulties together; to, most of all, always trust each other, always respect each other, always hold close to our hearts the loving desires and emotions that we were blessed with, and always cling to our higher ideal and the knowledge that our love is divine