/lit/ - Literature

Previous thread:
>>16418914

that edition name is personally attacking me and I do not like it

>>16431009
Oh shit right. I forgot to do that.
>>16431016
>Pic related

Would going to a crossroads at midnight and writing something on a piece of paper summon a devil you could sell your soul to? It works for musicians...

>>16431023
At least you linked to this thread in the old one. Most people seemed to forget it.

>>16431027
What harm is there in trying?

>>16431027
I always liked the cross roads trope, if only because Robert johnson is based and recorded one of his albums in a hotel in my city. I feel like there’s plenty of room for the monkeys paw ending. Why not write about a writer going to the cross roads anon? If only to get the narcissism out on paper.

>>16431040
Write what you know, right?

>>16431043
The only things I can write about with absolute detail is getting drunk at punk bars and the law. This is why my one project is about law students getting drunk at a punk bar.

>>16431052
Neat. I might try the deal-with-the-devil type of thing then.

>>16431002
/wg/ is for trad Chads writing on parchment scrolls and publishing handwritten copies only.

Self publishing print on demand books with Amazon's KDP >>>> traditional publishing

All hail Bezos-sama

>>16431163
>actually let’s other people read his work
I haven’t let anyone read anything I’ve written, waiting for someone to find my manuscripts in a pile in a storage after I die.

>>16431188
The Pessoa method!

>>16431180
Show profits anon.

>>16431220
;_;

>>16431272
If you haven’t uploaded to amazon, it’s pretty fun to watch the KDP go up for the first time. I finally understood the rush so many influencers and content creators talk about of watching stats all day. Even if it was smut, it was p cool to see a few hundred people read my shitty stories. Makes me excited to shit something out for royal road.

>>16431280
I have only 14 page reads, but at least I have the dignity of it not being erotica. I sometimes think about writing it, but post nut clarity makes me think I'd be contributing to the fall of western civilization

>>16431280
I'm tempted anon, but I fear that fame would go to my head and eventually I would write to cater to the mass. I don't want to be a rich writer, I want to be one of the great

>>16431280
Yeah, it's pretty cool. The only stuff I ever published were mods for TK17 but boy it was amazing just to see hundreds and then thousands of downloads.

>>16431323
I once downloaded a mod for Skyrim that filled Whiterun with naked Lydias

>>16431002
How the fuck do I write?

>>16431380
You just did! Now do it again!

>>16431386
Ok so now how do I write a decent novel?

>>16431391
There is something inside you that wants to get out. Find out what that something is, then write it down. Then split it into a series of smaller segments, figure out the relationships between those segments. Map them out. Break it down into specific scenes, these scenes are your outline. The relationships between these scenes are the connecting tissue, if x then y etc.
I'd do it myself but I got laundry

>>16431405
The papers are full of semen now. What next?

>>16431505
Sounds like a pretty open and shut case to me. Mail it to a publisher, use funny stamps on the envelope for maximum effect.

What do you guys think of name Fervcoris for a fire wizard? Is it cringe?

>>16431539
Cool name, but the fire wizard part is a bit cringe

>>16431563
Don't worry, it's an ultra realistic, slice of life pomo masterpiece surpassing even ulysses in its grandiose mundanity. This "fire wizard" is actually just some old guy that grills all the time.

>>16430363
If anyone would care to critique it I would be happy

>>16431040
Wouldn't it entail less narcissism and more utter desperation?

>>16432066
Long-winded and cringe. Get rid of the parentheses, at least, and compress it.
You could be showing more anxiety with more coherent, absurd thoughts.

Do you know who Robert Johnson is? Don’t worry about it if you don’t, his life and music aren’t relevant here. But a certain legend about him is. According to this legend, Robert Johnson sat down at a crossroads at midnight to play his guitar, and a devil came to him. A bargain was struck, a man offering his soul in return for music the likes of which none had ever heard before. It worked out alright for him, as far as artistry is concerned. You don’t always measure success by wealth. It’s that part about the crossroads and the devil at midnight that I wanted to talk about. But first, let me tell you my story.

As a child my father would read me things like Baron Munchausen’s or MAD Magazine in place of what would be considered normal bedtime stories. To my mother’s annoyance I commandeered her ability to put words on paper – this was until I learned to write myself – and dictated to her the stories I wanted her to tell me. I would make comic books with more concern for quantity than quality. I would in elementary school participate in as many plays as I could, and with my friends I’d put together shows during recess. A friend’s family obtained a digital camera, and soon we were making movies as well. Throughout junior-high I would write short stories and poems and did fairly well in art class, too. My mother was always proud of me inheriting her painting ability, though nothing ever came of it. In high school I wrote a play, and through my teacher I got it performed at a small community theatre.

I never got a higher education, and I was held back twice, in the fourth grade and in my third year of high school. I could’ve done better if I did my homework and paid attention and didn’t ditch classes, same as everyone else. But I had other things to think about. I had biographies to read and movies to watch. After graduation I found myself working odd jobs while writing short stories, trying to make my second play and trying to get in film or theatre school. I even appeared in a local made-for-TV movie as an extra, pro bono. After two years of this my father told me to get my shit together and grow up. I told him to give me my share of my inheritance, like the prodigal son. I asked my grandparents on both sides of the family for the same. Altogether I was able to put together some $12,000 this way. I asked my friends to commit. Some did, some didn’t. Of those who did, some committed more than others. We had a budget of $36,000, an amateur crew with no experience, no solid ideas and a half-assed attitude. Two people quit within the first two weeks of filming, so all footage with them had to be dropped.

>>16432289
My first film was completed with loan money and ended up costing $43,000. It was about death and loss, a young man suffering from depression – played by myself – commits suicide. Filmed in black and white for artistic effect, the camera showed us the effect this had on those left behind; their coping with the loss and the shadow the lost loved one cast over their lives. Using trick shots I appeared huge, gigantic even, and loomed over all. As the story progressed I would shrink and bit by bit colour was added. The final shot is in full colour, with grass and butterflies, blue skies, sunshine, and untended grave and the laughter of those who have moved on. The actors didn’t know how to act and shots were either with a stationary camera that limited movement or shaky due to being handheld. Voices were captured so badly they had to be dubbed in afterwards. Don’t even ask about the wind… awful noise on a microphone.

The loan was paid back in full. The movie made hundreds of thousands for me. I was producer, writer, director, leading man almost. I was Orson Welles, I was Woody Allen. I was an auteur at 23. Film was my future. I dreamed fever dreams of what I would do with big budgets, I dreamed of how I would crush Hollywood under my heel with my genius and creative force. I would win Oscars for completing the films Kubrick had abandoned, I would be interviewed on my craft and I would be insightful and profound. This megalomania and delusion lasted for all of a week, but what a lovely week!

Taxes had to be paid. Reviews were terrible for the most part. No fame or fortune after all. No job offers. No admittance to the schools I wanted into. Back to entry-level jobs and whittling away the days by reading, by watching, by listening, by writing down ideas and trying to work them into something. Having become an auteur I tried to get my published short stories collected into a single volume. No publisher was interested. I self published it, with some of my art pieces as illustrations and a little commentary on each story. No fame or fortune for this either. Part-time work, stacking shelves or washing dishes to make ends meet. Text messages from mom asking if I was seeing anyone special. What use is a woman to a man on a mission? I thought to write a book. I had many ideas for books, so many they interfered with one another, and to write anything longer than short stories proved impossible to focus on. Fewer and fewer of my stories were of interest to publishers.

Should I continue this?

>>16432243
My goal wasn't to showcase anxiety tho.

>>16432298
Then why the wall of text? It doesn't serve any other purpose other than showing that the character is stuck inside his own head.

>>16431002
I'm one of the few people you'll meet who's written more books than they've read

>>16431970
Thanks for an idea anon. I will make him widely known as a grilled pork enthusiast, or even better, vegetarian that will never grill meat so everybody hates him.

>>16432289
get rid of the first let me tell you a story, maybe mention a little about how great an artist robert johnson was, characterises the narrator.

>My first film was completed with loan money and ended up costing $43,000

my first film was complete with $43,000 dollars of loan money

remove taxes had to be paid or move it around

remove it after self published


pretty good

>>16431539
cringe honestly how do you even pronunce that and why would that be his name, did his parents know he was going to be a wizard? gandalf might be unuironically better lol

>>16432299
Did you only read that one post? My bad, the continuation was in the next two posts in that thread. It's a love story

>>16432320
Oh. Shit. Disregard that part of my criticisms, then. Still think it could be compressed.

>>16432304
Gotcha

>>16431002
hey lads. i love reading so i want to try writing just to help me appreciate writing and writers but i have no experience in writing. how should i start at it? just create a couple character who have a chat? im not looking to write a novel, just a short story or something.

>>16432326
Hmm fair enough.

>>16432340
Yeah exactly. Get two characters talking to each other. Give them a problem to solve. Have fun with it.

>>16432362
thanks

>>16432340
Yes! Let us know how it goes, anon.

>>16432383
no worries. thanks.

>>16432396
“no worries. thanks.” He typed out, clicking on four distinct segments of a stoplight, and hit send. Opening up a new word document was the easy part, but he had no idea where to start beyond that. Who were his characters? What would they talk about? Why would they be doing that? He was interrupted by the door to his room opening and his roommates head popping through the crack.

“Yo, josh, I made extra spaghetti, if you want some come get it.” Josh decided that would be a much better use of his time instead of writing. He needs his energy to be productive anyway. Dinner was serve yourself, two giant pots sat on the stove, one with the pasta, and the other with a crimson read sauce. Paul knew how to cook Italian like he knew how to beat his meat blind. He did this special thing with jimmy dean breakfast sausage instead of beef, and thick slices of mozzarella thrown on top of the sauce after the heat was off so it’s just barely melted. Josh grabbed a bowl and filled it up. There was even some garlic bread on the counter. Fuck yeah. He headed in the direction of his room when Paul jumped in front of him.
“Do you want to eat in here? I just got a blu ray copy of Cars 2, and I gotta know if Car hitler was a Volkswagen.”
“Man, I’d love to, but I told strangers on the internet I’d write a story about two characters talking and subsequently having a conflict.”
“Oh I see, well, I appreciate your goals and aspirations and I can hold off on watching this until you get done. Just let me know, bud. Good luck!”
Scuttling back to his room he realized he couldn’t type and eat at the same time. Opening up a new tab and typing in you, automatically filling in youtube.com, and hitting enter, he scrolled through what the algorithm offered him. He settled on a white British man in a red shirt telling him about some random, unknown, historical place in a far off land. He started slowly, but eventually got up to speed scarfing down the large bowl of spaghetti. He still felt empty inside after the video ended, so he grabbed another bowl and clicked another video, this time watching a prerecording of a streamer playing a video game he doesn’t even play anymore. Now the bloating started. His blood sugar spiked. His eyes glazed over. He thought he’d just lay down for a minute. That story can wait.

>>16432524
writing about writing is ultra cringe, write about something that interests you or get a prompt like pic rel for example

Someone give me a writing prompt + word to use in flash fiction. Here's a prompt for anyone who wants to plug out some words today: recovering pyromaniac is solicited to help fight out of control house fire.

>>16432544
I wasn’t that poster. I was inspired by him though, and I found joy in writing a meta story about him never getting around to writing a story. I’m sorry my writing gave you cringe, anon. I’ll try better next time to be more epic.

>>16432544
Was my story about the would-be film-maker also cringe because it mentioned writing?

>>16432550
Law student goes Dostoevsky levels of insane while studying for the bar exam during a pandemic.

Word to use: simulacra

>>16432550
sure, pic rel and the word piety

>>16432524
>He typed out, clicking on four distinct segments of a stoplight, and hit send.
I didn't read the whole thing, but this sentence makes the sequence of actions confusing and is exactly why you should read Techniques of the Selling Writer

>>16432572
the johnson one? nah

>>16432581
That's a relief. I'll write more of it tomorrow. Hoping to get it read in time to submit it to /lit/ quarterly.

>>16432588
ready*

>>16432292
yes

>>16432573
OK I'll post it later.

>>16432289
>>16432292
Depends on what it is you’re writing, is this a diary thing? In my opinion you need to make me care for the character and the setting before you drop all this info. For what purpose is he telling us all this, what has happened? I also think the narrator is a bit high on his own intellect, and needs some endearing quality to make him more bearable for the reader

Again, depends on what you intend for this piece, I do not know. And yeah continue

>>16432793
I was kind of planning to have it be a dude who is already at the crossroads, telling his story to someone he met who he's hoping might be the devil.
> I also think the narrator is a bit high on his own intellect
Yes, comparing himself to Welles, Allen and Kubrick is kind of meant to signal that he thinks he's too good for this world.
Not sure how to make him likable though.

My first Royal Road story is up. I hate each and every single one of you

here's an exercise for when you're taking a shit or otherwise have fifteen minutes to spare: dig out your favorite short story collections and examine the first and last sentences of each paragraph, especially the openers

Would be comfy to run a /lit/ book cafe together.

>>16431002
Would anyone read my story about a piracy network trying to extort money from some academics with an historical artefact (a diary of a lost French revolutionary), and in which the plot switches between the present and the past.

>>16433171
Readers are the easiest customers to take care of, and when it’s not busy, it’s fantastic.

>>16433365
Do you work in one? I'm curious if they are profitable or it's survival mode every month.

About to post BurgerPunk on Royal Road, should I make all the dialogue in comic sans?

>>16433232
I'll look it over but maybe not all depending on the length.

>>16433670
Oh I should have said: does my story about x sound like a good premise that would be worthy of reading?

>>16433650
Nah, I used to work in a little bistro.


Also I posted burgerpunk on RR. And I made the dialogue comic sans. FUCK /wg/ I JUST DID IT ANYWAY.

>>16433683
It's all about execution. Ideas are a dime a dozen.

>>16433758
Fair point. I think my story focuses on being epistolary and historiographic metafiction. But in so doing, I have barely written in an extradiegetic narratorial style, so that I feel like my voice is very much embodied (and that means no impressive prose, it's all vernacular and colloquial).

Is the approval process for RR really 48 hours?

Stop posting on Retard Road.

>>16433874
If I’m producing garbage, why would I not?

>>16433847
I submitted my story last night and by the time I woke up, it was approved

I havent written in a week and trying to write anything is making me physically ill.

>>16433884
Stop having such low self esteem.

>>16433952

what the fuck is a royal road

>>16434118
the path to your mothers pussy

>>16434118
It's like Fanfiction.net but for original works. Although you can also write fan fiction

Wattpad is similar to RoyalRoad too

Well I got 4 sections, each 1k words to post on RR whenever it gets approved. Just did some edits to take out some of the more... offensive chan related language. Look! I'm procrastinating my procrastination with more procrastination! Sorry for posting so much.

Do you have to wait for RR to approve every single chapter of your story, or only the first chapter?

>>16434234
>Just did some edits to take out some of the more... offensive chan related language
Will they not approve things based on language even if you appropriately designate your work as mature? I can understand if your whole book is nigger, bit too avant garde for royal road, but how about non gratuitous swearing or an explicit scene here or there.

>>16434255
Just the first chapter

>>16434255
I think just the first one according to the FAQ
>All new submissions are manually checked for appropriate tagging and plagiarism, so expect it to take between 12-24 hours for a submission to be approved. Please be patient.
>Once your fiction has been approved, you can find it by clicking Write again on the navigation bar
>Add additional chapters by clicking Add New Chapter

But you are right, this language is terribly vague on whether the approval is for every submission or for every story/book, or even just an accounts first post.

>>16434277
I kept most all the swearing in, just little things like (noun)fag and cunt etc. The things that are "problematic" as opposed to just cursing for cursing sake. I didn't really like them in there either, and it's ostracized one or two people I've shown it to before.

>>16431002
I've been wanting to start writing short stories or flash fiction. To prepare I've been watching videos of an author giving tutorials about writing craft and how to do so. Should I just start writing or should I be watching more about how to write? Even though I've watched many tutorials on the subject I feel very unprepared when it comes to getting something down and getting to it. Should I read more? Should I come up with more story ideas? Or am I procrastinating because I know whatever I write will be bad until I get better at it? (Or never get better)

>>16434312
>I want to get good at THING, should I do stuff that isn't doing THING, will that improve my ability to do THING that I have no experience in doing?

Jump in friend. I believe in you. You reminded me of this little speech by Ira Glass I'll watch every few months about The Gap. https://vimeo.com/85040589

>>16434140
Considering someone asks that exact same question in every single thread in the very same words, I'm pretty sure it's just the same guy trying to meme and you could not answer him every time. Because it's getting pretty dumb

>>16434345
im not trying to meme you retard, the last time i came into /lit/ was ages ago

>>16434334
That was encouraging, thank you. I'll go write some shit and then maybe one day it won't be shit if I keep learning. Maybe after the first I'll do some more reading and tuts then do another.

>>16434312
Use my prompt >>16432550
a couple hundred words of flash fiction, anything you want

>>16434345
I didn't know what Royal Road was until I came to this general on /lit/ and I've been writing for a couple of years. It's not a well-known website

What times do you guys write? I have been writing daily for this year so far and I usually write in the early evenings. However, lately I've been thinking I should maybe focus on the mornings.

>>16434389
Hmm ok I'll try it out. I'll probably post it on my basically empty writing.com account or maybe wattpad since I just signed up for it.

>>16434412
Mornings are great after a cup of coffee to get something big done, but most of my ideas come at 2am when I'm trying to head to bed and the anxiety moves from my head to my stomach. The "I really should go to bed" motivation and procrastination gets the juices flowing.

>>16434402
Anyone could learn that in five seconds on Google. As a general reminder, dumb newfag questions and spoonfeeders belong in reddit

>>16434438
Post it here too. Don't overthink it.

>>16434402
it's rather new to the web novel scene. I think it started up around 2016 or so in its current iteration (it hosted some korean tl novel before that)

>>16432573
A Dostoevsky level of insane takes some building up. This is as far as I got:

Ivan Popov pulled tight his thick cloak, shielding his face from the breath of a vagrant passing him on the sidewalk. There was a new order of pestilence and death in his college town. Any hour of day, one might find themselves brought to their court, tried, and if found guilty, sentenced to bear the infection. Death was a near certainty. And so why was Ivan not in his warm flat but on the street, where the pestilence rode the wind and drained through the gutters, testing him for the crime of weakness?
It was the damned papers. They were Ivan’s wallpaper, rug, and bed cover. The whitewashed, vandalized room of an insane asylum. There had been a time when the letters made sense to him. His well-organized mind stored the arguments and precedents with rigorous accumulation. But this morning he woke from a sharp pain in his right temple, and he couldn’t remember anything he had so ambitiously studied. Tylenol, a cup of water, a cup of coffee, biscuits, ejaculation—still gone.

It was difficult, but Ivan thought he remembered a time when the papers had not been there. Or had they been left up by the previous tenant, a law student by the name of Stuart? Craig? English chap. He’d studied for the bar exam there too, anxiety casting a cloud over the whole block, and escaped at the brink of dawn the morning after he wrote it, leaving behind all his belongings but an overly packed suitcase.

Did the papers belong to Ivan or not? He rubbed his right temple and pushed through the heavy front door of the Battering Ram, one of the last pubs open in his neighbourhood. The government closed the pubs at first sign of the pandemic. Nothing to be concerned about, of course. Just for a short time. Precautionary. Then they were opened again, as promised. Then they were closed again, and for a long time. Windows were boarded up, equipment liquidated. Now that the pestilence was truly, openly, admittedly out of control, no one cared about what was open and what was not. It was all over either way. May as well get a drink—and the Battering Ram was happy to oblige.

The copper simulacra of a cave bear stood on hind legs inside the lobby. Its yellow eyes followed Ivan’s hurried stride across the room until he shrugged off his cloak and revealed his face. Ivan had never seen the simulacra attack. He had never seen anyone in the Battering Ram cause trouble, either.

“You again! Still not scared, eh?” The barkeep chuckled to himself. His oiled moustache glinted in the lamplight.

“No, I’m not,” Ivan said and slumped onto a bar stool. “No, that’s not quite right. I am scared. Terrified, actually.”

The barkeep slid a notepad and pencil across the polished dark wood countertop. Ivan’s hands took them and automatically began the ritual…

>>16434692
I love it, I actually want to know what happens next. Good job anon. And on that note I'll get back to studying. Just knocked out 700 words of burgerpunk. I feel like I accomplished something before I dive back into the depths of the legal simulacra.

>>16434759
Thank you for the kind words. Good luck my friend and well done getting out words today.

>>16434499
It's bad and long, here you go:

It had been years since I've smelled that smell. The burning ash, the flaming cinders, it had all been a flash in my mind as if it were a spark in the darkness. I had razed those fields and brought them to the ground. I'm not sure why the rest of village decided to let me live in spite of causing one of the worst famines this community had ever known but they spared me all the same.
It was a night dimly lit by the moon when I decided that I had lived the fantasy in my head to carry out the act that I had lived inside my head for as long as I can remember. I don't know why I was fascinated by the flames. Perhaps it was that it signified rebirth but also death in the same swift motion. Whatever it was it had been kept inside for long enough and it was time to fulfill my egregious act. I stole out to the stables hiding among the shadows. All had been to bed except for the stable boy who was meant to keep watch. I had noticed a pattern of how often he would be neglectful of his duties and it was fairly often that I would find him dosing and by chance, this was a night he would often regret going forward. I took the lantern and carried it out into the fields of wheat. Even in the moonlight I could tell how much work and effort it had taken this community to sow and grow these plants. Why was it that it was the very thing that I wanted to see ablaze?
Before I could give thought to this notion it had already begun. The field went up and that was that. I stood there watching, dumbfounded. It was something that I had never seen before, but it wasn't what I expected. I had hoped to be elated by the flames, romanized by its power but all I felt was helplessness as my village rushed to save what they had built. I had expected them to kill me on sight but they simply pushed me down to get to the fire quicker. It had not been about me in the way that I had envisioned, what I saw was a community coming together to save something the same way they had strove to create it.
It had been years in that cell after what had happened. I was used for whatever tasks I could accomplish when locked away. Each day it ate at me, why did they keep me around? An obvious danger and a nuisance. I had wondered this until that fateful night. It was never revealed to me if this had been on purpose or an accident but now the very same thing had happened. I could smell and see the smoke from my barred cell. The village fields had once again been all aflame. Then something happened that I could never have anticipated. "You there!" The man exclaimed as he opened the lock on my cell. "Get out here now!" What was happening? A pale was shoved into my chest as I was pushed out the door of the jailhouse. The commotion was all around as members of the community rushed to throw water and contain the flames. Without much though I began to help in same way.

>>16434912
Part 2
The flames were oppressive, as if one were being drowned by waves of an ocean that could drown you without ever crashing down. Each time the fire soared it felt like a crushing defeat. However as the time went on and more joined the cause the oppressor was beaten back. It had been hours before it was finally under control and the panic was all but gone. I had expected to be thrown back into confinement but something happened that I did not expect. They were letting me free. Stunned I could no more than stand mouth agape as the reality stood before me. Why had I felt alienated from these people for so long before I myself had committed that act? That feeling felt so far away now as I realized that they were never my enemy but were always a part of me. The flames were my enemy but I was always too blind to see it.

>>16434692
That was quite nice to read. Felt interesting and almost like a small interaction out of c & p

>>16434912
>>16434923
Very nice! I like it. Favorite bit: waves of an ocean that could drown you without ever crashing down. Intense feeling from that. You should do more flash fiction. Come back tomorrow for another prompt, here or the next /wg/.

>>16434961
Thank you. I'm trying to do a flash fiction every day or two from /wg/ prompts.

>>16435091
Ok I'm down. I'd like to get better so thank you. If there's something obvious to you that is bad about please let me know I'm aware that I'm a beginner.

>>16431002
r8 pls

The midday sun shined above the hills over Sevastopol, giving Alexei perfect visibility over the intricate network of trenches dug before the Malakhov redoubt. The only thing he could do was wait; wait in the sweltering hot pillbox cramped with three soldiers; wait as they each simmered in their own sweat; wait for those imperial bastards to launch an assault.
“They’ll dig for the entire day just like yesterday, won’t they?” Peter broke the silence, turning to Alexei. Looking at his comrade, Alexei felt like he was gazing into a mirror: his tired eyes met those of a gaunt soldier in what once was a green uniform and a green beret, now matted with sweat and pitch black oil, and almost hunched over his Gatling gun.
“They won’t come out of their holes until they are just barely outside the range of our cannons” said Alexei. “Can you blame them after all?” Piped up Yuri. “They figured out the hard way in Odessa that charging straight ahead into a hail of russian bullets isn’t exactly a good idea!” He added, grasping the gun and pretending to fire into droves of imaginary enemies advancing toward him.
Peter sighed. “I just wish they would get this over with already and attack. I swear, waiting like this is enough to make a man lose his mind.”
“The more time they waste down there the more chances we have of actually getting some decent reinforcements” said Alexei. “Yeah!” added Yuri, “We just have to hope the imperials don’t bring out their own reinforcements! I really don’t want to have to deal with one of those fucking dr-“ “Silence!” exclaimed Alexei as from one of the freshly dug trenches suddenly peeked out what was without any doubt the brass spike of a Pickelhaube.
A switch flipped in the three soldiers and they all instinctively pointed their guns at it; nobody dared to move a single muscle, waiting for the owner of the helmet to show his face above the ground. Before they could even see the double headed dragon depicted on the helmet, however, the sound of thunder roared above them; in a blink the trench exploded in a cloud of dust and smoke, the mutilated corpse of an imperial soldier sprawled a few inches away from the crater.

>>16435341
“Take that you sons of bitches!” Yelled Alexei in a terrible german. “Yeah!” Echoed Yuri, “Eat shit!"
“Thank God for the artillery!” Said Peter, raising his eyes to the low ceiling. Then, turning to Alexei once more, “This is the signal we were waiting for right?”
“Yes; now they-” The sound of a trumpet came from somewhere in the trenches; “Here they come!”
Countless imperials poured out of the earthworks, yelling and screaming as they charged toward the small bastion; bullet rifles were fired against the sandbags behind which Alexei, Peter and Yuri where holed up. “Fire at will!” Ordered Alexei; in an instant the three Gatling guns came to life vomiting out a storm of lead. Blood stained the ground everywhere as rows of men were mercilessly mowed down; cannon shells landed in the advancing front, blasting apart both the living and the dead.
Alexei couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t feel anything, but his own gun; each bullet recoiled in his body, when all of a sudden it refused to shoot anymore.
“Fuck! It’s jammed!”
In the split second Alexei took to remove the stuck cartridge, he catched only one word:
“Grenade!”

>>16435345
>in a terrible german
Accent?
>he catched only one word
Did you mean he caught or is this ok grammatically?
Otherwise very immersive, I enjoyed reading it.

>>16435460
>Accent?
No, I meant he said that in german
>Did you mean he caught or is this ok grammatically?
English is not my first language so I'm not sure I understand the difference
>Otherwise very immersive, I enjoyed reading it.
Thank you

>>16431391
If you have zero writing experience, start with short stories. If you already have an idea for a novel, then write out one scene from it as a self-contained short story. Practice the basics with short stories. Once you get more confident, aim for longer word counts.

Don't fall for the meme that you *have* to write a novel to be a writer, and that short stories are the lesser art form. They're complementary, and there's novellas (longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel) too in-between.

If you have no idea what to write about, think about something that make you feel a feel. Writing fiction is about evoking images and sensations into your reader's mind, and the best way to involve them is to write about something that you're involved with/into, physically and/or emotionally, as well. Your writing will be genuine.

The book cafe opens today. A couple dozen muffins all dotted with blueberries are cooling on the side. Customers will be offered a range of hot drinks, from black coffee to blacker coffee. The three books I read last year are perched proudly on the shelf, retailing higher than their original value. My notes in the margins barely spill into the text. The rest of the stock has been sorted by size and colour I think, or maybe how amusing I thought the author's name was. Sometimes the difference between the author and the title was too hard so they got thrown in the pile in the middle of the shop floor. I might burn them later, it'll keep the customers nice and warm.

>>16434303
>cunt
I thought that was the quintessential British swear word/insult, and didn't carry as much of a negative connotation as "fag"?

>>16435856
I’m not british and burgerpunk is as American as it can be. We’ll see if the mods get the joke or not soon enough.

>>16435887
>burgerpunk
So what is your story about?

>>16435912
A pizza delivery driver and a recently fired burger flipper go on a road trip in an exaggerated, ironic scifi version of now.

>>16435951
>in an exaggerated, ironic scifi version of now.
But the modern day is already an exaggerated, ironic scifi version of itself

>>16435967
Yes.

Could someone who has a subscription to the Paris Review pastebin this interview for me (or something), please? (most of the interview is not available unless one has a subscription)
https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/6253/the-art-of-fiction-no-221-ursula-k-le-guin

>>16435819
Comfy. Post more.

>>16435341
>>16435345
I like it. You write well, but I would say it lacks voice/tone, so it's a bit dry. Only describing the physical details. I'd like to see character internal thoughts mixed in, hint at some backstory, how he feels about these particular comrades and the situation.

>>16435200
You can work on technical aspects, like a few points where commas are needed or where a word is used too much (drowned, drown maybe). The storytelling and character development were good and that's more important than technical details.

>>16435967
But for a more honest answer I think I’m hiding behind humor, absurdity, and irony so that I can laugh off any negative critique. I also see it as something I can work a lot with, experiment with different writing styles and perspectives all while exercising the imagination of think about what would be even worse than what we already have, but still gives the essence of our societal gripes anyway.

>>16434476
No one's forcing you to answer anyone's questions. You're not working for free nor are you a janny. If a post on the thread annoys you and you don't wish to answer, then don't

I'm seriously considering making a patreon for my writing. I know a writer who pulls in a decent $1500 a month from it which is not a bad passive income.
My one fatal mistake is that I am an elusive fag who thinks he's above self-marketing on social media.
Not only that but my thinking is stuck in the mold antiquated publishing business structure that is not long for this world. A view which sees traditional publishing contracts as the only financially viable and respectable path for a writer, when these contracts are fewer and father between with each passing day and newfangled digital business models have come forward.

>>16436252
Do it. Fuck this writers pride and romanticizing of two hundred year old standards. You can sell the fuck out and still make decent art.

Hahaha, it got approved.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36209/burgerpunk-pizza-time

>>16436353
Yeah I mean, why the hell not? I'd just have to think of some kind of incentive's structure for you to fork over $10 shekels to me rather than $5 a month. It may or may not be the literary equivalent of an onlyfans but if that's the case, I'm still going spread eagle.
I've been doing this for free for years, I need to make a case that I can do it for money and deliver exclusive value to my patrons.

>>16436213
>what would be even worse than what we already have
I think we've actually hit rock bottom.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-05/usc-business-professor-controversy-chinese-word-english-slur

I'd like to create a character as larger than life and epic as Heath Ledger's Joker or Judge Holden. A true sublime villain. A baddie whose charisma reaches even his enemies and detractors. The philosopher AS villain

Heath Ledger's joker for example manages to be both sagacious and uncouth. He manages to say things like
>“Their morals, their code; it's a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. You'll see- I'll show you. When the chips are down these, uh, civilized people? They'll eat each other. See I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve.”
And
"“If You’re Good At Something, Never Do It For Free.”
He manages to make you think while still coming off as menacing. To me nothing gives me a better thrill in literature or film than a compelling villain. Someone who goes beyond good and evil, who defies moral codes and lives by their own. This is contrasted with a poorly conceived villain, who merely exists as a foil for the hero and as a a generic stand in for moral wrongdoing. A villain with dimensionality is brilliant because it causes positive emotions in an otherwise negative frame, which is what causes the audience to doubt their assumptions and see beyond simplistic moral binaries.
Holden achieves much of the same effect as a philosopher villain. He is not just the most evil, but the most wise.

>>16436252
The traditional publishing industry seems to be in a pretty weird spot right now. Fiction writers who are good at gaining a following online realized that they can self-publish and take a larger share of the profit, and very few people actually go out to buy a new release unless it's the next Stephen King or Dan Brown novel

I think within the next decade a lot of writing is going to be swapped over to serialized and digital formats. New authors are given horrendous deals by publishers, if they're lucky enough to even get one. And nobody wants to wait years anymore for the next fantasy novel to drop in a series they've been following. They want a new chapter to read every week or so, and authors want more than a few cents per copy sold

>>16436653
I can just see it now
>omg I just binge read this serial it was SO. GOOD.

>>16436675
I mean, you quite literally can already see that now. Readers on RR admit to reading hundreds of chapters over the span of a couple days. They like the format because after the binging you can expect to have more chapters within a few days.

If you binge a 600 page fantasy novel in a day well, it's going to be a year or two at least until you get to continue the story

>>16436653
Right, this trend is consistent with the general disruptive trend of digital economics. The old model is left in a dysfunctional, confused state, while the new model takes advantage of technological efficiencies to greatly outpace it.
Look at what is happening to cable TV, or the now long gone landline telecommunications business. They're left huffing and puffing miles behind Sillicon Valley.
Margins in the publishing industry are vanishingly small. It costs about as much to promote and market and distribute the average author's book as much as the predicted return in doing so. The cycle becomes self-fulfilling; the august old publishing houses are afraid of making risks because they can't make the hit, but as the old chestnut goes, no risk, no reward. And so they automatically exclude any new up and comers who might actually be a breakout success.
The result funnels publication opportunties to a minority of established writers. The old publishing houses are coasting on their prestige alone.
The problem is the new system is much more complicated and difficult to navigate, and there is precisely no blueprint for it. It used to be you just mailed your stuff to someone and they said yes or no. Now you need to self-market, build a following, engage with an audience (anathema to me), and so on. It's not as straightforward or predictable.

>>16436750
>can't make the hit
take the hit
But the typo is still telling lol

>>16436750
god damn it McLuhan

>>16436628
>Joker
Cringe and ngmi

>>16436812
HL's Joker's a cool bro, an anonymous poster on 4chan isn't going to convince me otherwise.

>>16436823
I'm not convincing you, retard. Whether you live all your life thinking capeshit is the quintessential of art or realize they are trash and cringe at your obsession with them is not my business. I call someone cringe when they are cringe.

>>16431002
>/wg/ + /crit/
Why did you start merging these? It seems to me that /crit/ serves (or should serve) a different purpose from this place. The last one or two threads were duds since a bunch of fags came in and spewed their garbage without bothering to critique, but that's just what happens every now and then.

So, I'm trying to figure out how to make a novel concept I'm interested in work.

Basically, the framing device for the narrative is a historian traveling across the land and gathering first-hand accounts of a phenomenon so that he can better understand the topic and write a book about it. It's a very fictionalized and somewhat fantastical account of a real historical person who spent a large part of his life trying to gather information on his subject.

My issue lies in having a hard time coming up with conflict and an overarching narrative, since everything is, essentially, happening in the past. I've thought about adding recurring characters, and perhaps related issues he encounter in people and villages on his travels that he helps solved with the information he's gained, but I really have no idea how I'm going to build any sort of tension and keep reader interest beyond fascination with the topic and somewhat pastoral setting.

I'd appreciate any thoughts, or perhaps recommendations for novels that have done something similar

>>16436791
Hey don't shoot the messenger! Even if the medium is the message!

>>16436857
Blah muther fucking blah. I'm a better writer than you and always will be. Show some respect to your betters. You do not even comprehend whose you stand before.

I wish coming up with a story still excited me

>>16436972
Each general individually seemed to die quickly with the rampant endless summer of Covid. It was suggested to merge them because the crit thread had died a few back and it just kinda happened. You could make a crit thread if you think it would be more useful.

>>16436984
It’s the heroes journey but he’s constantly fighting bureaucracy and culture shock to get anything he wants done. This form wasn’t in triplicate. That group says the ground is sacred and he can’t dig. His flight was delayed so he took a boat, but then a storm hits. Etc.

>>16437216
No airplanes since it's set in the 1300s, but I'll try to think of similar roadblocks that would be interesting and make sense

I self-publish because I ain't got no time to beg some 25 year old English major editor at a Jew York publishing house to please please please publish my book and wait 6 months for a rejection, repeat 10000x. Why even bother, when you can submit to Amazon KDP and it's available to the entire world in 48-72 hours?

>>16437907
Because no one in the entire world is going to read it without you shilling full time for it.

>>16437958
As opposed to what, no one ever reading my book because some trust fund kid who only got an editor job because her uncle pulled some strings doesn't want to invest in my book?

/5eg/, if a character was a descendant of PunPun would that be justification for Divine Soul?

>>16438010

>>16437999
There are a few of them, if hundreds of agents aren't into it, it unlikely had any chance either way.

>>16438079
So, I don't understand this logic. I should query and talk to possibly hundreds of agents, who will be my gatekeeper to an editor, who will publish my book and, let's be realistic here, do my own advertising and promotion

or

Skip the whole agents and editors step and get the same result anyway

>>16438098
If they see big bucks potential with it, they'll help with advertising, plus getting respectable reviews will be easier. With an advance (that again, can look decent for works with potential) you have more money to spend on it too. You generally have a totally different reputation bonus, self-published authors need to work for years in hopes of achieving.

Also it's not like you can skip on editors either way, unless you don't give any fucks and just want a work out.

>cut the shitty people out of my life
>spend months excavating my soul from layers of piled on shit while dodging corona
>finally 2000 words into writing something that I think I can stick with
>my new gf likes it
>she edits it
>the edits are purely aesthetic
>I feel encouraged and start mapping a larger story

I don't like sharing my work but I feel happy anons.

>>16438215
>new gf
You ALMOST got me.

>>16438225

Well, I guess it's been about a year. I think we started dating last fall. But it's still new to me, the last person I dated with I was with for six years and I was unhappy for about four of those. That was a horrible experience I'm channeling into my current writing, being snagged by a relationship you know you should have given up years ago and not having the balls to do it because you don't believe you can. How that ultimately deteriorates until the apathy eats you alive but she was really in on it all along and tries to destroy you for finally quitting her.

I FUCKING FINISHED SOMETHING I'VE BEEN WORKING ON SINCE DECEMBER OF LAST YEAR

It's finished. I mean, I still need to edit it. But I have groped and plotted and struggled through it, for months and months, and it is done, at last.

it clocks in, finally, at a little more than 139,000 words. I'm surprised at how big it got. I did not expect it to get so big. But the more I wrote, the more I wanted to poke into every nook and cranny of the characters, to bring them alive, to make them like real people. I think I may have done that.

And it still has a huge and enormous conclusion, a huge finale, because it is, after all, science fiction.

>>16438282

That sounds dope anon. What's it called? Pussy-eaters in space?

>>16438282
140,000 words in under a year is pretty good, anon. Congrats. I still have a lot of chapters to read, but it's nice to know that I can expect a completed story when I get around to it

>>16436378
This is just the opening chapter to Snow Crash. Your lack of originality puts you at home in RR.

>>16438340
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/36209/burgerpunk-pizza-time

It literally is but at least anon got the views they were craving. Oh well.

>>16438340
I realized that two months after I wrote that. I hadn’t read it before. After I downloaded snow crash and read the first 30 pages I just started at the wall laughing for about half an hour. I refuse to read the rest of it because I really hope i accidentally rewrite the whole thing.

>>16438387

There are worse people to accidentally mimic than Neal Stephenson. Looking forward to you accidentally rewriting Anathema.

>>16431280
i uploaded a couple videos to youtube and collectively got 200k views. I put no effort into them, and that fact killed all motivation I ever had from there on. Seeing the total watch time shoot to years of life stolen away proved to me that effort has nothing to do with success.

im still writing anyway for some reason

>>16438137
That's not what I've heard from first time, traditional publishing authors, at least 10 years ago when I was reading about it. A lot of them expected that their publishing house would do all the things you said they would, and what a normal person would expect they would -- but in reality, the authors had to do all of their own promotional work, networking, conferences, readings, etc. Things have changed since 10 years, especially with the advent of common person reviewers like GoodReads, customer reviews on BN and Amazon. Who even reads the NYT, Time Magazine, or New Yorker reviews? I'm seeing less and less of a place for the traditional publisher

>>16438697
>effort has nothing to do with success
Obviously? Do Muricans really buy into the hard work meme?

>>16438806
A LOT depends on the initial advance. If it's just some 20-30k pittance, they are unlikely to do much beyond the bare minimum. If it's some six figures shit, they will obviously try to recoup the investment by helping you with marketing and using their networks.

Though generally, yeah, authors have to do a lot more shillng and networking than most expect no matter the road.

>especially with the advent of common person reviewers like GoodReads, customer reviews on BN and Amazon
These are much easier to get as a nobody with a publisher than a complete nobody. And even if too many people don't read reviews or interviews in newspapers, getting your name out still gives a decent boost.

Let's not underestimate the distribution and translation either. Getting a store or library to carry self-published shit and having to pay for the printing is suboptimal to say the least.

>>16438828
That's true, even muh pure indie bookstores won't even touch books that aren't backed by traditional publishers. Then again, they're being crushed by the Amazon behemoth so ...

>>16438330
It's a big work. I won't tell you the title now, because my ambition, my dream, is to get it published. I want to be a real writer.

I dream of being a great artist, a real writer, and a real poet. I dream of being somebody who is still read a thousand years from now. I dream of grand things, beautiful things.

So I won't tell you the name of it. But I'll give you a clue, if that will do. Something people can search through the archives, and know that I, indeed, was here:

Air, Water, Fire, and Earth!

I went to post my second chapter on RoyalRoad, but it looks like they removed Comic Sans as an option. Like, my first chapter still has it, and I assume I could just add the tags. But it's not there anymore.

I accidentally made them realize something stupid was on their website.

idea
>read out my works on youtube/othe social media
>sell physical copies online as supplements/merchandise

trying to "force words out" is mentally exhausting and usually fruitless and avoiding writing fills me with anxiety and guilt

I'm 130k words into my second novel and I'm so exhausted and no longer enjoying it. I've been working on it for 2 years now and I'm not even 75% done. I'm also going to have to rewrite everything.

I'm starting to think I wasn't cut out to be a writer

>>16439018
Is your voice amazingly great to pull it off?

>>16436164
>it lacks voice/tone, so it's a bit dry. Only describing the physical details. I'd like to see character internal thoughts mixed in, hint at some backstory, how he feels about these particular comrades and the situation.
Having as much empathy as a pile of rocks probably doesn't help with that lol, I'll work on it, thank you

>>16439076
Heh, I'm starting the get the feel more often too during working on second revision of my second novel. Though it's not as bad yet and just a sort of missing spark, when I don't look forward to write the next page and the next chapter.

>>16439015
At least you have something on RR. Only the best, elite, most exclusive writers have their works on there

>>16439105
Anon, what have I done? What about all those poor children writers out there, who no longer have a fun and lighthearted font to put their prose in? How can I sleep at night knowing that the wacky words designed for monitors without antialiasing are no longer available to child writers around the world.


I’m a monster.

>>16439126
don't ever change your first chapter. You'll lose the Comic Sans

>>16439132
;-; I already did. I couldn’t stand the inconsistency. It is forever lost.


Or I suppose I could pull it into dream weaver or soemthin’.

I don't know what Snow Patrol is, so I can't tell if Burger Punk is a rip off of it, but I like the Brooklyn feel of it

>>16438828
>If it's just some 20-30k pittance, they are unlikely to do much beyond the bare minimum. If it's some six figures shit,
Something tells me you have rather unrealistic expectations for book publishing

>>16439165
Oh I know, most writers aren't getting much. Which makes sense too, most don't write stories that have any hopes to appeal beyond a tiny niche.

>>16421589

So in the oc meme thread about a famous author critiquing his writer the op included ""You write like you're avenging your childhood on the world."" as one of the "critiques"

I know its just part of a meme, but is that an actual valid criticism that people actually use in real life?
Is there anything wrong with writing" like you're avenging your childhood on the world."?

>>16439180
Have you ever published a book or known irl person who published a book? All your posts sound like aspirational wish fulfillment

>>16431027
Probably. You have to do it with intention and a receptive heart. it doesn't matter what you write in the letter or if you make mistakes, what matters is the feeling you have when you're writing it. Put some blood (literally blood) and burn it afterwards.
T. /fitlitx/ and /succgen/ (on x) lurker. That's the method they supposedly summon succubus's with. Perharps there's some psychological explanation but anyways.

Is there hope for writing in a language that is not english? Working on two short stories rn in portuguese, one about a lost man who finds his masculinity after going to war and fighting alongside 3 other guys who embody the King, Magician and Lover archetypes (the protag is the Warrior). The another is about a guy who forms a renaissance-themed study group and witness as a friend summons a succubus and is slowly consumed by some sort of addiction to spiritual sex, based on /succgen/ lurking and the liber lilith.

>>16439182
A while ago, someone on /lit/ gave out free copies of his ebook. It was repetitive as shit, but I didn't have the heart to give him 1 star on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Whats-that-coming-over-hill/dp/1654372293

I got to chapter 3, and from what I can see, this guy has trauma and mental scars, and he's using his writing and author avatar to deal with it
> Mommy was emotionally distant
> Daddy beat him with a belt
> Daddy divorced his mom
> Daddy never visits during supposedly mandatory custody visits
> Daddy doesn't love me
> single mom keeps getting new bfs
> You're not my real Daddy
> Grows up
> Daddy ignores even in adulthood
> Falls in love with messed up, similarly depressed waifu
> Stalks her

On one hand, if writing helps people deal with their mental issues, they should. But on the other hand, it's boring as shit and has no literary value

>>16439186
>Have you ever published a book
Nope.
>known irl person who published a book?
A few. Although most with small publishers, and generally small works that were meant for the local market or niche biographies, so neither even cracked the 20k mark.
>All your posts sound like aspirational wish fulfillment
You can look up the data yourself. Also what is even that aspirational about it? 75% of writers with traditional publishers won't even make minimum wage.

>>16439225
>it's boring as shit and has no literary value

why?
How would you make it interesting?

>>16439239
Just off the top of my head, explain the motivations and reasons for Mom and Dad characters not loving the author/their son

> Mom
instead of being woman who gets beat up by husband and then fucks every man in a 5 mile radius, author could go into her choices and circumstances that got her into situation. What is she like, did she change or grow as a person

> Daddy
Why was he such an angry person, what made him beat his son, barely pay child support, not visit him, did he find a new purpose in life after the divorce

What word count do you typically average out at on any given day? I'm just curious to see how prolific anons here can be, since I consider myself extremely slow at it. The most I get is around 1200 in a day of writing.

>>16439278
10-12k on good days, 3-6k on slow days, somewhere in between if I'm busy.

>>16439278
When I actually get shit done, about 2-4k sometimes going up to 10k. But there are often weeks when I write like 200 a day and sometimes even less ... so the real average is probably sub 500.

>>16439278
200 on average

>>16439288
Were you always that fast or was it just something that came with time?

>>16439305
I used to be faster. I wrote a 22k word story in one day.

>>16432524
I liked this, felt sincere without taking itself too serious

>>16439225
They shouldn't publish*
My first stories were complete shit as were everyone else's but they helped me to cope with reality and discover that I wanted to write.
But they were garbage and I wouldn't put them anywhere online. Plenty of garbage already there.

>>16432524
This shit is better than most of the critique thread posts that got lost here.

>>16431002
Hey, I just want to know if this makes sense, or if I got too abstract, or meandering:

A woman sick with the virus, body sloughing with exhaustion and illness. Realizing she's about to die when she collapses with the food she was trying to bring to her husband. Forcing herself with every inch of willpower she could scrape together just to make it to the bed. Her last act, an act of devotion. Had she found him dead? Had he brushed a strand of hair out of her lifeless eyes before he succumbed himself?

Forehead to forehead forever.

The Hasanlu Lovers recreated over and over and over again.

Every atrocity humanity has ever perpetrated, every rape, every murder, every genocide, every war; all the greed and hate, and it all fades away, only secondary to what humanity can be, embodied by only two nameless figures, huddled together and alone.

Love in its purest, most beautiful form. Stripped of every cliché, of every insincerity, of every expectation and ideation. Abstract meaning, reduced to a symbol. The kind of things people used to paint on cave walls. Something everyone will understand, forever.

This place is not a place of honor.

When I leave, I close the door, gently.

> Jamarcus meets Count Blackula

The driver pulled the carriage under a tall, wide archway. He helped me out of the coach, put my luggage in front of the castle door, and drove away into the night. I was alone, standing next to a massive, stone door, which I now noticed had no bell or knocker.

Fear and doubt crept over me. Who were these people and what kind of place was I in? Other paralegals don’t have to go on overseas expeditions to help foreigners purchase London real estate. Paralegal! My bae Moesha would quickly correct me. I’m now a real lawyer. Just before I left London, I learned that I passed my bar exam. As a Black man, I was very proud of my achievement. This qualification was not only the culmination of many years of education and hard work, but also revenge against people who had doubted me and discriminated against me and my ancestors.

The sound of footsteps drew me out of my thoughts. A light came on underneath the door and I could hear the clanks of bolts being unlocked. The doors creaked open, as if they hadn’t been in use in years. In the doorway stood a tall man in all black clothing. He spoke English in a strange accent.

“Welcome to my house,” he said.

He looked and sounded just like the driver. I wondered if they were the same person.

“Count Blackula?” I asked tentatively.

“I am Blackula,” he said, bowing. “Please, come in, brother. You must eat and rest.”

Blackula took both my hands in his. His gesture was one of friendship, but his hands felt very cold, like death.

He stepped out and carried my suitcases inside. I felt bad, as he was an older man, but he insisted.

“No, brother. You are my guest. My … servants are not available, so allow me make you comfortable myself.”

Our footsteps echoed in the dark castle. Blackula led me up a wide, winding staircase, down a long corridor, up another staircase, and finally to my room. To my relief, the door opened to a cheery, well-lit room with a large bed, a fireplace burning with fresh logs, and a table with dinner laid out. All my fears went away.

“Your en suite bathroom is over there. After your long journey, I’m sure you’ll need to refresh yourself,” said the Count. “When you’re finished, we can have dinner together.”

Couldn’t find write what’s on your mind thread.

>immigrant family, broken home
>dad was a criminal, in and out of life, financially supportive when he could. Complicated character but mostly absent or couldn’t bond
>mom salt of earth working 9 to 5, alone in this new country
>be an actual schizoid growing up between both countries. Personality disorder agitated because of what seems like instability. Not knowing what people expect of me. Losing friends early on because of the manifestation of my illness
>Identity issues, I remember being young and being greeted with warmth. Ever since I was 12, strangers eyes feel like they’re prosecuting me
>From 12 on full on schizophrenia. Silent mostly. No friends. Don’t know how to bond with anyone.
>Turn 14-15, realize there’s more to the world but my access to education and my isolation is crippling
>*Some Al Franken political book*
>Seems like a good start. Liked him on SNL.
>get filtered by the word bias.
>I took it upon myself to try and understand the word bias. Literally couldn’t. Mom doesn’t speak English. No one else around. Re-read all definitions but to no avail. Thought to myself “when I eventually get what it means, I could study myself and see what it took to grasp a concept.”(not exact words but to the effect)
>Kept wondering what books I could read (to this day why I sympathize for free access to forums and internet for everyone. Pages like this are a life saver)
>See an alt kid at school I think is cool reading Brain Droppings
>loved George Carlin’s standup. I think I was surprised a book could have such a title. Wondered what it could be about.
>Holy shit, this shit is awesome
>Go on to read all of Carlin’s books
>They’re all political and shit I kinda agree with. It was like an American grandfather. Some solid advice and insight.
>Run into the word “euphemism”
>Now, looking back this was really a kind of legitimate philosophical essay. I didn’t really think much of it and people may make fun of it as just an old man rambling, but he really delve into what the word euphemism meant.
>Not only that, he showed me how to dissect words and their political consequence
>I adopt his writing style because it seems the most effective kind in today age. Poking fun at everyone, at myself, try to have no boundaries.
>FastFwd today, no one thinks I’m insightful or daring, just a pretentious arrogant prick
>Mfw

rip Carlin <3

>>16439631
What is the point of this? "Haha niggers"? It's boring, unoriginal and unfunny. The character talks like an 18th century white lawyer, except for a few words changed here and there. Like, what? It's just dumb.

>>16439905

>>16439905
>Poking fun at everyone, at myself, try to have no boundaries.
Isn't something Carlin did. Or anyone really does. Most pick a save zone and stick their nose out of it from time to time but they all have obvious blind spots and boundaries.

Going all in will ruin any career. Someone smart enough to pull it off, is smart enough not to do it.

>>16439603
>if I got too abstract, or meandering:
Yes. The imagery goes to absurdities. I also dislike the frequent passive language and your apparent allergy to verbs.

>>16439952
>when the criticism is better written than the work it is about

>>16438261
Happy for you. Share your writing sometime.

>>16438905
You are a real writer. It doesn't depend on being paid.

>>16439018
Example of great reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJRxtTgn210.. I have a sense it's hard to convert YouTube views to sales.

>>16436164
>You can work on technical aspects, like a few points where commas are needed or where a word is used too much (drowned, drown maybe). The storytelling and character development were good and that's more important than technical details
Ok, thank you. I always struggle not to use the same words too often. Maybe I can read up on comma placement because I'm clueless.

>>16435497
Oh ok I think you mean in terrible german instead of a terrible german.

I'm working on an old story of mine that's about 10 years old. I had orrignally written in high school for fun then revised it to get into a CW course. I feel like a lot of my language is weak and I'm telling more than showing. Let me know needs work.

Moccasin Island:

Getting out of bed had always proved difficult for the boy. Dawn was still a few hours away and the boy's father had bustled back and forth by the bunk bed that he had slept in. They had rented a cabin for the weekend at a campground in town that included a living room with a small kitchen and a futon by a TV, a short hallway with a bunk bed nestled in the left wall and a bathroom door on the right. A bedroom lay at the end of the hall where the father had slept the night before.

"C'mon son, it’s time to get up," The man said peeling the sheets back and away from the boy’s bed.

With a shiver, the boy rose with blurred vision and a foggy head. Slowly and still dreaming, the boy got dressed. He slid his blue jeans over his legs and his leaf-patterned long sleeve shirt over his chest. After squirming into a pair of rubber waders which buckled over his shoulders, he pulled on a matching rain jacket and sat at the small table with his father and grandfather where they each focused on a small bowl of cereal.

The father checked his wristwatch, "3:21. We better get a move on." So they did. Parked just outside the cabin was a large blue pick-up truck. Attached to the back was an 18-foot camouflaged boat. The man had been busy long before the boy had gotten up as each of the three bags of duck decoys, the three shotguns, all three blind bags, and a long ten-foot canoe had all been strapped down inside and on top of the boat.

>>16440383
The boy took his place in the backseat of the truck, taking off his jacket and propping it between him and the door. The boy's father and his grandfather talked about business. Most of which the boy did not understand except for a few choice phrases like,"If he can't start showing up I'm firin' him, just like that." And "You here some guy fell on that last job?...no safety harness?... Oh its a shit show out there, you aint kiddin’." The boy’s father and grandfather worked on elevators and were eager to talk about all things concerning them when there was nothing else to fill the space, which was often a blessing for the boy as it allowed him to sleep for at least another few minutes.
As the boy dozed quietly in the back seat of the Ford pick-up, the scenery shifted from sparsely populated buildings to crowded live oaks and slash-pines on the left and wide open pastures to right. The man pulled the truck off towards a late night gas station and woke the boy to ask him if he wanted anything to drink. As always, the boy, who was half awake, asked for chocolate milk and his father delivered. When the man finished refilling the boat he pulled out and back onto the road.

Eventually, the man spied a dirt path and turned the truck down it. At the end of the road stood a shack that read "Bob's Tackle and Boat Ramp". After pulling the truck around so that the boat behind it faced the sloping concrete ramp that descended into the black water, he got out of the truck, untightened the ratchet straps that held the boat down, then climbed back into the driver’s seat.

The man lined up the camouflaged jon boat to the ramp as the diesel engine the truck roared in the black morning. In the span of a few breaths the boy watched the trailer slip below the surface of the water before they unhooked the bow from the aluminum framed trailer and pushed the boat off into the water letting it glide weightlessly on top. The boy had been instructed to hold a rope that was tied to the bow clip. As the trailer pulled out of the ramp the boy kept the rope tight in his hand as he struggled with the weight.

When the man had parked the truck and trailer, he walked to the boat. He clamored over the mess of decoys and the canoe until he took his seat at the back. With a key turn and a rumble the boat came alive with a loud roar. Getting into the boat, as always, proved difficult and was made awkward by the large amount of equipment, decoys mostly, that crowded the boat’s insides.

As the boy fumbled for his seat the old man cursed as he shoved the boat off. The dark cool air touched the boy’s face; freezing his cheeks and making his eyes water as the boat began to gain speed.

>>16440395
>>16440383
Even in almost total darkness the man knew where to turn and what to avoid. The boat seemed to glide across the glassy lake and the boy could not help but wish it would not end. They continued this way for only a quarter of an hour before the man found what he was looking for. A large steep dike, where the vegetation had been cut away and the grass matted down by all the hunters who had come before them.
"We're here," the man said almost gleefully.

The boy however, had been disappointed by the shortness of the boat ride. He looked up. Even though the sky was still the same dark color he could still make out the blanket of purple cotton above. He was thankful for the overcast.

The man assigned the boy to ferry equipment from the boat to the other side of the dike while he and the grandfather carried the canoe.

Once this had been accomplished the father and the grandfather arranged everything just so. This way the two could paddle without interruption. The boy sat in the middle of the canoe. Sandwiched between two decoy bags and curled in a cramped tight ball as the two men paddled down the narrow creek.

In the darkness, the boy could make out sawgrass bushes that spread out and lined the shore on both sides. Behind the bushes, the boy could make out the small bright lights of other hunters, moving around and getting into their blinds.

“Don’t move around so much,” said the old man anxiously,
“All it takes is one wrong move and we’ll be drownt in the river.”

The old man had a point; each of them wore a pair of rubber waders to keep them from getting wet and help them stay warm. However, in the deep water of the creek the waders, if submerged, would fill with water and function as nothing more than a lead weight. Understandably, the boy, who was sitting in an unstable, rocky, canoe, could not help but be a little anxious himself.

They found a cut in the sawgrass, and pointed the canoe in towards it. They paddled hard and let it slide into the thick grass. They checked the depth with a paddle and carefully got out, one at a time starting with the father and ending with his son.
They waded through the marsh for a small bit until the man found a spot he liked. The boy could barely make it out, but from his point of view, the marsh broke into a clearing. On the edges, trailing away from the grass the trio stood in, was thick hydrilla topped with Lily pads that covered the surface of the water. It trailed off into open water with a small clump of grass in the center.

“We’ll set up in the grass, and spread the decoys so that the landing area is pointed away from the wind.”

>>16440404
So they did. Thirty minutes before “shootin’ time” which was an hour before sunrise they finished. Fifteen minutes later they took each shotgun out of the case. The boy’s clutched his familiar Remmington 20 gauge tightly as he waited for the “OK” to load it. Three minutes before shooting time the boy, his father, and grandfather loaded three shells into their guns.
“Now, we’ve already been buzzed by a couple o’ birds, so rule of thumb is, ‘If it flies it dies’.”

Flies it dies, the boy thought, turning the words over and over in his mind. If it flies it dies.

Then came the aerial assault. A lone blue-winged teal drake zoomed past their clump in the center. The man waited for a moment for it to circle around. Then as it came back into view, the man raised his shotgun followed the bird for a moment and then squeezed the trigger.

With a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning, the bird tumbled, slapping into the water hard enough to splash the boy with a few drops.

If it flies it dies.

From all around them came echoes of other guns from the hunters on the other side of the grass. On the sky’s ash gray canvas , shapes of other birds zoomed over the horizon coming in at every direction, and every angle. Groups of twos and threes swarmed the trio, blue-winged teal, green-winged teal, ring-necks, red-heads, mottles, hybrids, any duck that flew into range of their guns fell.
“One, two, three…” the man counted, not wanting to go over the limit and receive a hefty fine from a Florida Fish and Wildlife Game Warden.

If it flies it dies. The boy thought, bringing his gun to his shoulder after a quick reload, closing one eye and looking down the barrel at the small bead at the end, leading the next victim, and casually pulling the trigger. He felt the thump of the gun on his shoulder and the instinctive pull of its pump as he cycled the next shell and chose his next bird.

If it flies it dies.

When they had shot eighteen birds they stood back and regarded their work. The bodies lay scattered around the clearing, floating on the surface of the water. When they had been collected and counted to assure they had the right amount, they packed up the decoys by twelves and placed them in bags. They repacked the canoe and paddled out into the creek. A light drizzle began to fall on their heads.
Ahead of them and behind them, the hunters filed out of the sawgrass. Silently, like a funeral procession they all paddled towards the bank of the dike.
“Right out of ‘The Last of the Mohicans’” said the man.

The boy agreed, although he had no idea what or who the Mohicans were.

Someone give me a writing prompt + word to use in flash fiction. Here's a prompt anyone can use: a perfume designer picks up a unique scent and tries to find the source.

>https://pastebin.com/YbaYWMjp
7762 characters forming 1341 words which might collectively come together to make precisely 0 sense.

>>16440504
I like your prompt, I'll try it out later.
Another prompt: Tropical island vacation but there's a mythical creature that the natives warned you about that shows up.

>>16439905
rest in piss

>>16440784
Looking forward to it, and thanks for the prompt. I'll post mine later today. Are you the anon who wrote the pyromaniac story? If not, here's another prompt for him: a flock of birds raids a cargo ship carrying maple syrup.

Would y'all be disappointed if the epic showdown at the end of the fantasy novel turned out to just be a conversation? The whole book is action-packed but I'm looking to end on an unexpected vibe. He does kill the baddie after the talk but it ends up being effortless.

>>16440970
Could be cool, but depends a lot on the conversation itself. If the MC just makes an ass of himself there, victory, and the whole story, will seem hollow

>>16440970
Epic showdowns are only about the hero showing that he deserves to win, narratively. You can do that with a conversation, certainly.

How strange is too strange? In the novel I'm writing dreams and reality mixed frequently as the main character is sort of a schizo. But I fear that the readers will be alienated by too much strangeness

>>16439947
I agree with your overall point of having boundaries and not sabotaging yourself but at the same time you sound like a prude. And it’s been a while since I read those books, but Carlin was definitely self aware and pointed to the fact out whose mouth his ideas were coming from. I think it was him that became happy when he learned about entropy and the heat death of the universe. He held few dogma and even some of those he was unsure of. Sure he had a long career and played it safe at times, but he was also arrested for indecency for what said. He played a trucker blowing priest. He didn’t poke fun of everyone?

check this out and tell me if its super gay (bad) or just normal gay (ok)

He was looking at this thing on the bed, all pathetic and flat. For a second, he could swear it was breathing.

Three Days Prior

He’s sitting in a metal chair, staring at a monitor, somehow not seeing it consciously but responding to it all the same. Arrows creep from below the bottom screen and his fingers fly through atypical awareness, his body decomposed into exactly the fit of movements required to tap along and nothing else. He’s fat now, but he still remembers a time where he could tap along on his feet, too.
They say it’s dancing, but it’s not. To him, it more resembles worm charming, or the desperate splays of a medicine man, ecstatic, holy, turned to a channel only he can hear, daring the clouds and their bounteous rain to defy him.
He’s thinking about his brother, __, and about the last time they’d seen each other. He’d swung hard with a right cross and caught him under the ribs at the door, cutting out his usual ‘hey faggot’. __ just smiled, paused a beat, and swept him flat. God, he loved him.
His smile fades. Pain creeps in with the memory. His fingers stumble. His mind returns. “Fuck”.
He’d been writing letters to a Norwegian cannibal that exclusively at men’s penises. He was hoping for something...something he couldn’t name. Something that’d upend his entire provincial experience of life, bringing him back before a time where the presence of others would make him shake like a leaf. That was three months ago.
His mouth was dry. Upon leaving the room, he now ran into his mother, who greeted him with a tired smile and a kiss. He can’t return it, it’d caught him flat-footed, and by the time he registered that she was already pulling back and the moment had passed.


It sounds like running in his head. Night after night, whenever he closes his eyes, a sound like a horse’s gallop smashing the inside side of his skull. The doctor had said something about Aspirin.
He looked at the long, blue wall and thought about all the nothing it had seen from him, about how little true humanity he evinced from his parasitic existence, and how, if the wall had any say in it at all, it’d fall down and smash him flat as a merciful coda for his pathetic life. The rain was coming down over his window, clean, in long streaks breaking the lamp light into strands like an invisible hand palpating reality before pulling its digits down. He turned.
Violent, awkward orange blobs lay sploshed against his sight. He wasn’t pressing on them, but they hurt like he was. His eyelids were heavy but sleep wasn’t coming.
He sits up and looks at his darkened monitor. He feels a dull urge all over – in his grainy, dry mouth, in his dumb, throbbing bones – to wash it all away in a fantasy of lights. He needs sleep but it doesn’t need him.

>>16441184
Sounds quite difficult to pull off. My advice, make sure the dreams/reality mix is integral to the story and the reader cares a lot when it happens.

>>16441212
And just like that, it’s 3. Too late to sleep before his appointment. The videos he was watching stopped making sense more or less immediately, but he lets the colors float and mix inches from his eyes out of habit. That was it. That was the short-hand summary of his life. A quiet whirr at the back of his mind that almost sounded like a source of meaning and a growing awareness that it was not.

The sound belongs to a YouTube video about the Illuminati. He rolled his eyes and leaned back, adjusting to the screen. Of all the big theories, it stood out in his mind as easily the weakest; obvious to the point of parody. Everyone knew the rich were conspicuously fucked. They were all raping and fucking each other and beating infants into a thin Adrenochrome slurry and underpaying their taxes...whatever. It was already understood and internalized and burrowed inside, festering like an itch he couldn’t scratch. You couldn’t do anything about that. As soon as there were people, children, and money there was a relation involving all three with the surplus product of sex.

The sun was still under the horizon but the sky was a deep-sea shade of blue. The only relation between him and sex involved the word ‘lack’. He wasn’t bitter about it, sex itself was a non-issue for him, but what it represented – what he was hoping followed it – was domestic bliss. This kind of thing was stolen from him, from everybody, by a brutal machine that ate people and spit out parts, partial objects, flying organs and severed digits, yawning cuts of thigh and pinch-red lips, nothing but nothing-human, the pain was the point.

They were more valuable to business, now, so the machine carved up and cut out the cervix and with it their only physical connecting to living God. They lived lives they couldn't stand, doing things even he could easily do, pining for, but never knowing, the basic marital comforts nearly all of their mated ancestors had known.

Most would expect a married couple to contribute two sources of income to the family. But something about the presence of a second job, whether by the expanded freedom granted by the wages earned or the unruly company of other men, is more or less instantly fatal to the ideas of commitment, decency, and respectability.

The whore is cheap and our world is a parade of prostitution.

>>16439929
Yes, the point is that it's Dracula with black people. It's written to capture the black power audience

>>16441342
Not a lot of that on 4chung

>>16439370
>>16439357
Thanks anons. I thought it was fun.

>>16440383
Honestly, it's procedural (dry) and there's no tension to pull me along. You need to get to the soul of the characters and write with a stronger voice that expresses internal emotion and conflict. Story is about emotions and getting a view of the world from another perspective. This is a bird's eye view, distant. The best part by far is the third section where we get into the boy's head a bit.

>>16441212
It's intriguing but muddled, like fragments of a diary. I suggest a clear narrative line (goals, movement) and good scene setting for introspective subject matter. Need to ground the story. Another way is to convey some of the info in dialog. Opposite issue of the story above.

>>16441358
I've read some news articles where schools and libraries make a deliberate effort to buy books with black protagonists, amplify black voices, read only books with blacks in them, etc. My gut feeling is normal books, but the characters are black and talk about black things sometimes, is going to be a growing market

>>16432524
This is actually pretty charming, Anon, I really like the genuine, authentic feel it has. While I can tell you're new to writing and probably don't read all that often, it's not so bad as to distract from your writing. Honestly, it's refreshing to read something without any pretentions of grandeur. I was particularly amused by the conversation, because I thought you were going to have her characters argue about having characters argue in a short story—you got a good laugh out of me when they just agreed and went about their business. Also, that Cars 2 bit was great.

This is pretty promising, and I think you could be a pretty good comedy writer with some practice. Good luck!

>>16441591
Thanks anon! I couldn't help giggling to myself when I realized they should subvert the expectation of person to person conflict. I'll keep practicing!

Wrote a neat little 500 words for Burgerpunk. Time to get back to studying.

>>16431405
>>16435574
Not that anon, but this is really great advice. It makes me want to pick up writing again, myself. I've been writing academically for so long, though, I don't know if I can get back into using subtlety and description after spending so much time stripping them out of my writing. Maybe I'll write something for the next thread.

I'm pleasantly surprised a thread this constructive can exist on /lit/, and I look forward to the next one.

>>16442335
After writing for lawyers for so long it's strange how everything but my dialogue sounds stifled and straight forward, like a motion for summary judgement. It's been hard getting back into a more relaxed writing style, for sure. You can do it anon.

>>16442565
Honestly, I can relate to this a lot too. Drafting complaints and motions made my fiction writing a lot more rigid when I got back into it. I rarely make mistakes when it comes to grammar now, at least

>>16442335
Don't necessarily have to go overboard with description either. Some writers like Elmore Leonard got a lot of mileage out of writing very dryly and simply

>>16443827
Lately I've been enjoying some novels that have very minimal description. I think a lot of writers fall into the trap of thinking that everything needs to be vividly described, when it doesn't really matter that much for pulpy stuff. It's different if you're a great prose stylist and can give me chills over a description of a stained glass window like Proust did, but most writers are not able to pull that off

>join writing workshop
>read what others have written
>get insecure

any books for this feel or should i write it

>>16444045
It's gonna be okay friend. Watch this:

https://vimeo.com/85040589

>>16444045
>enroll in creative writing class
>read other students' submissions
>feel superior

>>16444133
>enroll in a creative writing class
>read work from other students
>feel superior
>realize that your work is barely better
>depression again

>>16441197
>He played a trucker blowing priest. He didn’t poke fun of everyone?
Would he make the same joke about an iman or a rabbi? Or joke about fucking the kids of the audience and being able to get away with it for being a rich white man? How dumb they are for paying for it? Someone who got away with way more controversial shit like Eminem wouldn't joke about niggers or male entitlement. Some female comic who might do that, wouldn't joke about something that would tilt her core audience too much, etc, etc.

>>16443827
Good suggestion! I suppose the reason people instinctively assume that more is better is because that by mentioning more details, they can paint a more vivid picture, or they can show the reader exactly what they have in mind. However, it's quite the opposite.

To make an analogy with cooking, description is like fat, you have to find the right amount. When making risotto, if you don't use any butter, it's gonna burn, and if you use too much, the rice will be swimming in grease, but if you use the right amount, then it's going to have that a rich, creamy mouthfeel that you can't get enough of, and the butter will compliment the flavor of rice, instead of overpowering it.

With writing, it's better to write less than more. Make sure each detail (same considerations apply to events/scenes) serves a purpose: it's unusual, it's likely to make an impression on the reader, it builds up tension, it's comical... don't mention any detail that can be obviously inferred from context, or is completely inconsequential. Overwhelming the reader with detail must be done with judgement (e.g., you're deliberately doing it for stylistic effect), because you run the risk of turning your prose opaque, and losing the attention, or worse, interest, of the reader.

>Elmore Leonard
Any recommendations on where to start/works you liked?

How many words and/or stanzas are necessary to make a poem novel rather than a short story or novella? This is my first time doing poetry and there's a very particular story I want to tell, but I want to go out of my way to make sure it's considered a novel just by virtue of making people take it more seriously than would take a short story.

>>16444045
Been thinking of joining a writers workshop. Where do you find the good ones, if there is such a thing?

>>16444834
My university had a few, some were course restricted but others anyone could join. If there is a college near by, search it on facebook followed by "creative writing". If there is no college near by, still rely on facebook

>>16444578
This is great advice.

>>16444899
>having to use facebook

Guys, what's are some potential plotlines you can get out of animalesque, semi-intelligent characters(something on a similar level to chimps, elephants, dolphins...)? Due to their nature, the themes that can be explored have to be somewhat centered around very basic primal ideas like predation, territory, reproduction, lifecycle, survival, etc but how can I take those elements and craft a more dramatic narrative that feels unique, intriguing and engaging that resonates emotionally with humans beyond what you usually get out of a nature documentary where it's mostly showcasing typical eating/mating/parenting behavior?

>>16445688
Gettin' yiffy.

>>16445688
Like what? An animal that is basically a human? Like Redwall, Wind in the Willows, Watership Down? or Garfield

>>16445688
How about a Disaster film plot, in this case something like a forced migration, it gives you the archetypal quest scenario with a clear goal and room for all sort of shenanigans through the journey.

Now that I think about it, Land before Time did it, and the Animals of Farthing Wood, and Ice Age, and Dinosaur, and Watership Down... Oh damn.

>>16445688
Jack London have some great books written in the perspective of dogs. Mostly like you said, explore their nature of wilderness and rivalry.

Or if you want something less realistic, try the Warriors, which is about cats if they live in accordance with Athurian laws. I have fond memories reading them as a child.

>>16444578
I started with Rum Punch but my absolute favorite by his is Freaky Deaky. Swag is a great start, pretty short and reads very quick and witty. Hope you enjoy, anon

What's the ideal chapter number? I will take no lame answers like "it depends" or "no such thing". Just be petty for a second and throw out an actual number that feels right on a visceral level

>>16446101
10 to 15

Ima go with 13

>>16445866
ANIMALS OF FARTING WOODS HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>16446101
17-22

3-6k words seems like the ideal length to read them fast without the shit being too cut off and 100k words is enough to tell a complete story.

>>16446101
10

>>16446101
69 always feels right

>>16446233
This desu, although maybe 10% less on all numbers.

>>16444370
>would he make the same joke about an imam or rabbi

His family was Irish catholic. He wouldn't be very convincing as either of those. And yes, he was extensively anti-religion. Him and Hitchens used to be the atheism-pill back in the day.

I was thinking about the possibilities of digital interactivity within the medium and it looks like RR has some of those capabilities. Images and hyperlinks, multiple spaces and formatting type things. Feel like I could actually pull some House of Leaves type experimental things on there.

>>16446101
It...varies wildly depending on what you're writing. There's no ideal number. As I Lay Dying has 59 chapters, and The Sound and the Fury has 4. AILD is the shorter novel.

>>16446233
>and 100k words is enough to tell a complete story.
>tfw 100k words and it's only the first arc
h-heh yeah

>>16446337
There's this pretty sweet interactive essay by Paul Ford that does stuff like that.
As for me, I'm a traditionalist. I like paper books. I like conventional presentations. It's all about sequences of words and nothing else. No need to get it all attention deficity with added wizbangs and dodads.

>>16446417
Forgot to link it
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-paul-ford-what-is-code/

>>16444156
>enroll in a creative writing class
>read work from other students
>feel superior
>realize that your work is barely better
>depression again
>read something so unbelievably bad that you're amazed the author is able to breathe and walk at the same time
>never feel inferior again

>>16446336
>He wouldn't be very convincing as either of those.
Why not? It's not like hypocrisy is limited to Christ-fags. Obviously it takes some extra care and effort to joke about stuff you're not part of but that's also playing it safe if you don't do it.

And being anti-religion is generally not that controversial in the mostly liberal circles he operated in, even back in the day. While making fun of DEBATE ME, BRO atheists would cost him some audience memebers.

Also just for the record, I'm not hating on him or anything. Dude was obviously cool and made intelligent comedy.

>>16446359
How many dozens of view point characters do you have?

>Southland won again
>I missed the entire second half

man techniques of the selling writer is really BTFO'ta me every couple of pages, I'm trying to write a few short stories everyday while reading it, literally sub thousand words, but at least I feel like I got a starting point, all my old writing feels like a robot procedurally generated it now

>>16446681

Is this based or not based?

>>16436057
use this

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

also works on firefox

>>16446912
Feels like a sort of group therapy instead of an artistic project.

>>16446912
It's based. I'm still working on my dragon short. You better include it nigger.

https://deadline.com/2020/09/yara-shahidi-tinkerbell-peter-pan-and-wendy-movie-casting-1203011493/

I'm telling you guys, keep everything about your writing exactly the same, but make some of your characters black. This trend is hot

>>16446943
This is cool, but doesn't work with the Paris Review

>barely progressing with like 200 words a day for weeks
>finally seem to get going
>it looks like a lot
>741
Ah well, I guess tiny progress is still progress. But thinking back when I could finish a chapter in a day does sap the joy out of the current crawl even more.

Gonna be publishing a 200,000+ Fantasy for $2.99 on KDP soon(price since I'm a literal who ho had no established audience.) It's so long because I wanted my first book to be a complete, satisfying package. Is that good?

>>16448436
Sounds fine. What are you doing for cover art?

>>16448494
I had an artist do an illustration as the cover.

>>16448542
I don't know how I feel about putting the finishing version of the illustration out without even publishing the book first but here is one of the WIP versions. The final version doesn't have the main guy with the luggage bag but it's got full color and a lot of finer details. I really liked how it turned out for just $100.

>>16448563
The cover looks litrpg. If so you should promote the book hard in Facebook groups.

>>16448571
Only thought about doing Amazon ads but I'll go hard on the Facebook groups too. Solid advice, thank you.

>>16431188
Coward

>>16448563
That's actually a pretty nice looking wip, it reminds me of the sf masterwork covers, like pic related

>>16448631
Thank you. Once I get it published, I'll swing around back here and figure out how to send some free copies to whoever's willing to read it.

>>16448600
There are like eight of them absolutely worth posting to. The bigs ones you have to msg the admins in advance to schedule your book promo. Gamelit and Litrpg books are two of the groups that I remember. Search for gamelit groups too, it's an alternative name to litrpg.

>>16446101
The human attention span is ~15 minutes on average. More than 20 minutes of the same stimulus and people start to clock out. That's e.g why movies are arranged in sequences of 15-20 minutes of continuous action.

The upper limit of attention (assuming you switch things up every 15-20 minutes) is about 1.5-3 hours. That's about how long a person can sit still (also why movies rarely go beyond that in runtime).

Now a book, unlike a movie, can be read in multiple sittings so the upper limit rule doesn't really apply (it does apply for short stories, poetry, news articles etc., since they are generally meant to be read in one sitting). But we can use the smaller limit to define the ideal chapter length, since presumably we want readers to read a chapter in one sitting, or if they read more than one, to sustain their interest for multiple chapters.

The average reading speed is ~300wpm (for college graduates it's 350-450). 15 min * 300-450 = 4500-6750 words/chapter. So for a novel of 60k words thats ~9-13 chapters, which is about what you see in most fiction.

>>16448823
Got it.

>>16448436
If you sign up your book for KDP Select for 90 days, you can make your ebook free to download for 5 days of your choosing. Then we can download your book for free

>>16449831
Ok

Any resources for writing graphic novels/comics that aren't braindead drivel?

>>16449940
Resources that aren't braindead drivel? Or comics that aren't braindead drivel?

Either way that "Making Comics" book is a good start. Shows how to use all the tools in the box. Writing something beyond the standard of the medium requires studying stuff outside of it, i.e good literature, philosophy etc.. For example, a lot of the stuff in Moore's Watchmen comes from his study of Burroughs (in particular the repeated symbolism) combined with his critic of Reaganism. Another example, outside of comic books, is the 1st season of True Detective which was inspired by the works of Thomas Ligotti. The latter seasons seem to lack the same punch probably because they didn't rest on a literary foundation.

New thread:
>>16450692
>>16450692
>>16450692
>>16450692

>>16436653
>>16436675
Wasn't the portrait of dorian grey published chapter-by-chapter in a weekly newspaper? How's it any different?

>>16432091
I suppose that depends on the writer, or even the character they are writing.