/lit/ - Literature

kill yourself

>write 2000 words one day
>200 the next
Oh I hate this

When fire burns so bright I shut my eyes
Then turn and feel its heat upon my back
The shadows dance before and I surmise
I can make their forms out in the black.
The story of a life lived good and well
Was inked upon the ground in lieu of light.
Though where you stood beside I couldn't tell,
I knew that to be happy it was right.
A second spectre slinks the same-sort path
You whisper in my ear "It's your eclipse."
It darkens all I see to night and ash,
And grows with ev'ry word that leaves your lips.
When all I see is darkness and I'm suddenly alone.
I turn to face the fire, and both shadows were my own.

>>17819248
>burns
>was
>slinks
>were
SORT
OUT
YOUR
FUCKIN
TENSES

>>17819495
Pretty sure the way he uses was and were are fine in that context.

>>17819495
...

There’s a passage of time occurring between the stanzas and the volta, and the “was” in reference to the shadow marks a time before...

>>17818519
Got any tips for writing horror, /lit/?

>>17819741
not him, but someone told me to read the house taken over by cortazar and it was a good read indeed.

>>17819741
I'm going to tell you what Marquis de Sade said about Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho: explaining everything ruins it.

>>17819741
avoid jumpscares. there's nothing I hate more than reading and all of a sudden a jumpscare

>>17819593
No it weren't

>>17819691
It don't work that way

This is it. If I write one more word, it’ll be the furthest in this story I’ve ever been.

>>17819741
In horror, "show, don't tell" is even more vital than elsewhere. Avoid telling the readers how AAAH THIS IS SO TERRIBLE I'M GOING INSANE, but show them shit that actually spooks you and don't overexplain it.
>inb4 Lovecraft
Lovecraft gets a pass, because he tells so beautifully it works. His stories aren't very scary, but aesthetically pleasing.

Does anyone else ever get feelings of like “maybe I should do X instead of writing” or “maybe I was more cut out to do X than writing” or similar when it comes to creative activities?

>>17818519
Bros, how would you go from charitably sheltering a weakened Moon Goddess to impregnating her? I need ideas.

>>17820155
I had an art show for photography.
I used to get paid for graphic design.
I’ve played live music gigs.
Friends used to collect my note doodles.
Writing is just another method of expression, anon.

>>17820211
You sound like you’re pretty talented and have known you are for a while. I’m afraid I can’t say the same. I have multiple pulls that I think any one of would require a lot of investment to do well. I’m jealous.

>>17820211
wtf, switch graphic design for ad photography and we're p much the same

>>17818519
So, you can switch between 3rd and 1st person in the middle of a scene right? I'm trying to be disorienting.

I've not written a single word for 2 and a half days. Fuck. I keep telling myself I'm just having a couple days break, but then I hate it because I could have been doing something.
But then at the same time, I feel like why should I force myself to write if I don't really want to? Won't it be better if I wait until my motivation returns?

>>17820238
My regret is not focusing on one thing to truly become a master at something. I’m a lawyer now and all these creative outlets seem to kinda rotate when I get bored or things become hard. I wish I had been forced to play piano at a young age and had stuck with that instead of becoming this horrid amalgamation of mediocrity.
>>17820250
Nice! It’s fun, isn’t it?

>>17820288
No. True satisfaction and motivation comes after that first step. This is it, anon. If you take one more step, you’ll be the closest to self actualization you’ve ever been.

>>17820288
Relying on motivation has never worked out for me personally. It usually comes when I'm in the thick of writing something. I'd say not to force yourself, but you can sate your urge a little by doing something small.
Have you tried doing one sentence per day? How about one and a half? Leave the last sentence unfinished when you take a break. That way you can get back in the flow without much issue when you come back.

I have so may concepts for interesting tales, but I can never get past a first chapter. I can't string together scenes at all, passing time with a handful of words feels cheap to me, and I find it almost impossible to not devolve into über-descriptive minutiae. Any tips?

>>17820616
>Any tips?
Yeah
>devolve into über-descriptive minutiae
Do that

>>17820616
Take a look at the way the hobbit is structured. Each chapter is its own little adventure in a larger overarching adventure. He even says at the end of a chapter “this is the end of this story” or “that’s another story for another chapter/day” kind of thing. If you can only write one chapter of the story and you’re out, you need to brainstorm a bigger story that all your little stories can happen in.

>>17820086
BASED

>>17820616
Read about the Scene and Sequel philosophy to story writing.
As you probably know, there is no story without conflict, and with that in mind this is how Scenes and Sequels work. Bear in mind that Scenes and Sequels aren't necessarily tied to chapters, and by Sequel I'm referring to the original usage of the word, as in "what comes after", not "Book 2".

SCENE:
>1. Character has a goal and sets out to achieve it.
>2. Character meets opposition in the form of conflict.
>3. Character either fails to make any progress towards his goal, or things get even worse. The character must never succeed at this point until you're approaching that part of your story where you finally want to give him what he sets out to achieve, otherwise he is just moving from victory to victory, and it's boring.

Then, after the end of the scene, comes the SEQUEL:
>1. The aftermath of the scene. How does your character react and come to terms with what happened.
>2. Dilemma. How has the scene changed the direction he can take towards his goal, what choices does he now have in pursuit of it?
>3. Decision. He decides on a next course of action, then sets about it. Queue next scene.

Then you repeat this until the end. As I said, a scene should never end in victory for your character unless you're approaching the climax of your story where you finally want your character to win. Before then, the outcome of a scene should always be that things are either just as bad as before, or preferably get even worse.

>>17820632
I have a larger story in mind, but divvying it up into X amount of parts would be detrimental to how I want the events to flow, let alone the difficulty of having to try to find a way to conclude every episode. I try to emulate what other authors do, especially with books aimed at children and teenagers in mind, but to no avail.
>>17820624
Kinda hard when after hours of writing, you haven't even covered 30 minutes in-story. And the story is intended to take place over about a year, perhaps a few months if I compress it.

>>17820750
Just in case you're struggling with the concept, scenes and sequels really do apply to almost all stories. Take Star Wars A New Hope for instance, you could very roughly divide it into these scenes:

Scene 1
>Luke wants to go and fight with the rebels.
>His uncle says no, Luke, you need to keep working on the farm.

Sequel 1
>Luke decides fair enough and agrees to say.

Scene 2
>R2D2 shows the distress message and then goes missing, Luke goes to search for him.
>Get ambushed by sand people, knocked out, saved by Ben Kenobi, realizes that the Stormtroopers are going to find his farm.
>He returns home to find his family dead and farm burned to the ground.

Sequel 2
>Luke agrees to go with Obi-Wan

Scene 3
>Luke goes with Obi-Wan and meets Han.
>They're attacked and pursued by Stormtroopers
>They manage to escape but now they're wanted

Sequel 3
>They decide to keep going on to find Princess Leia

And etcetera, until the end where they finally win.

A long, epic journey approaches its conclusion. A lot of shit went down. What kind of an ending do you want to see?

>A. The dead stay dead. That's basically everyone, but life goes on for the rest of the world and maybe things will get better. We'll never know.
>B. Through the magic of friendship, the dead get a second chance at life. They remember nothing about what happened, but things are sure to be different this time.
>C. Cancelled.

>>17820864
>D. They save the world, but at what cost? There's no guarantee anything will get better in the long-term.

Have any of you found writing poetry to have a beneficial effect on your prose?

I’ve noticed that a lot of the authors I really admire also wrote poetry. I can admire poetry but I don’t really have any particular interest in writing poetry personally. That said, I want to do it if it will improve my prose for fiction.

>>17820864
I choose
>E) Fuck off to somewhere comfy, and hope the skinwalkers never find you. If they do, the crawlspace is packed with at least a tonne of plastic explosives.

>>17820900
Never tried it, honestly, poetry isn't my thing. I just start a lot of little snippets and that's how I improve, I suppose.

>>17820971
Same here. I mean, I’ve just been kind of taken by the realization that most if not all of my really admired novelists wrote poetry, usually early on before they had success as novelists. While it’s not really my thing either, it makes me insecure, like maybe I should take a few years to write mostly poetry first too.

>>17818519
behead vtubers and their simpathizers

>>17820864
A is the only one that makes sense.

>>17820864
Everyone likes neat bows on things and everyone likes being left with the feeling that the world has more stories to tell. As long has you have enough characters left who experienced the mass death and change that happened to the world, all you need is a epilogue of those characters journeys back home and what they have to look forward to post journey.

>>17820616
Just write
Figuring this shit out is second draft stuff

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/37998/wish-mountain

Chapter Nine is out.

>>17821745
>Dumple Puffer leaned into Whimbo Bore's ear and said "I almost made it up wish mountain one time, but they covered the whole thing in butter so every step I took I'd slip down two steps. It was not cool or fun."

>>17821020
>>17821457
My story's just at a point where it can only either end in a total wipeout, all named characters die, or else some survive via a magical deus ex machina. Option A makes more sense, but I'm not sure if the audience can handle it. I'm worried it'll make me a cursed author whose future works will be avoided like plague

>>17820900
I don't like poetry, but studying it has really helped. Alliteration and assonance and such can really take your prose to the next level.

Has any of you submitted your texts to magazines or lit quarterly?

How did it go?

>>17822716
I wrote a flash fiction and was posted in a "men's" magazine.
They posted my twitter handle as the 'written by', and I had a couple older men contact me telling me they enjoyed my story.

I've never been posted anywhere else, despite numerous attempts.

ngmi

How do I design and describe a aesthetic for a world in a story? Futuristic, fantasy, antiquity, modernity, etc.

I keep a lot of paracetamol in my apartment.

I read a story once, about a woman who committed suicide by taking loads of paracetamol pills.

Apparently, it's extremely painful. Takes a week to kill you. After something like 8 hours from taking the pills nothing can be done to fix it. So you lie in a hospital bed with your family all around you for a week and they are like "why did you do this?"

and all you can say is "sorry."

>>17822716
I was published in the first lit quarterly on here. Was pretty cool to see a short story I wrote in an actual printed little booklet. Also helped pay the rent that month.

>end writing something
>"oh this is actually not too bad, I finally might have something here"
>leave it alone for a few days and go back to it
>"wow, it's fucking shit"

Everytime.

>>17818519

>Wrote a book over a year ago
>Figured it would be a good idea not to touch it for a month at least before I start editing
>Haven't touched it in a year
>Have a completely different conception of what I want to write now than I did back then
>Finally started reading and rewriting it a few days ago
>99% is absolute crap

Sad

>>17822793
start small. there is no real utility in spending a bunch of brainpower imagining the entire world. further, making everything concrete beforehand gives you less flexibility while writing. get the story down, flesh it out piece by piece, and reconcile new things when you create them, or after the fact

>>17822966
At least you can recognize it's shit. A lot of authors don't.

>>17823127
I dare not look at the project I wish to finish for fear I think the whole thing is garbage cringe that should be scrapped. I am a different man then I was at the time. I wish I could just do it and encapsulate that period of my life before i forget it all.

potatonigger here writing about golden age Ireland - 9th century.
Likely going to delete this and the other 3,000 words so far of the chapter tomorrow in the light of day when I see how shit is is, so I might as well put it up for someone to see before then

Why do you idiots scrap everything instead of putting some more effort into editing

>>17823384
No point in trying to embelish a house when its foundations are made of paper.

>>17823469
your foundation is the idea that's been floating around in your head. if the idea gets you excited, it's a good foundation. simple as.
the first draft is the framework around which you'll build your house. you should be constantly improving it because no matter what it's gonna start as little more than an ugly skeleton.

>>17823384
they're self sabotaging out of, I don't know, low self esteem or something. I can't imagine putting in all that work at the time, only to look at it later and try and rip it apart in a moment of self loathing. Seriously, look at the quality of things that get published. The bar is not very high. If you enjoyed writing it at the time odds are someone is going to enjoy reading it.

I fear that i have lost interest in a subject and its gonna take me a while to write about it again

How do you cope with this?

I fear that im gonna end up with a bunch of incomplete projects

>>17822966
There's a reason for this. When you write something the first time, what you're really perceiving is you new idea and the fresh mental image. Because you're so enthused by the novelty of your invention, you pay less attention to what you're actually writing which you see as flowing naturally out of your thoughts. When you return to it days later, the freshness of the image has faded, and all you are left with is the words which don't necessarily recompile into the image that they originally flowed out from. In other words, when you are first writing it, the words are an effect of an adequate cause, the thoughts it flows from, but when you read it later, it's reversed. It is an inadequate cause of an effect, the image produced by the words. It does not completely persist and evoke the image you had in mind. I would say this applies equally to style and meaning.
At least that's how I think it works.

>>17823587
This actually makes a lot of sense. But how do I recoup the freshness of my original idea?

>>17823384

At what point is it no longer editing but rewriting? If almost everything has to go, it may be better to start writing from scratch, not in the sense that you throw out the foundation or the skeleton of the house/story, you keep all of that in mind, but in the sense that rewriting the meat of the story is easier than editing junk.

Plus, chances are that by the time you finish writing something longer, you already have a different idea of what the story should be.

>>17823384
I've literally never scrapped anything ever. Everything is mostly on the first take and at most I might delete 10-20 words and rewrite it into something that I find better. Most I've deleted was about 2-3 paragraphs worth since it didn't flow right.

In my mind, I'm staring at a blank void.
How do I fill it with color and shapes?

>>17823875
Go outside, do new things, meet new people.

>>17823574
Fuck you doin here /btg/er

>>17823904
>Go outside
lockdown

I have these old drafts and failed stories lying around. I'd like to try reviving them, but at the same time I get stuck because I've already done so much in them. How do I freshen them up and feel like I'm doing something new with them?

>>17824701
Print them out and take a red pen to it. Try to disassociate yourself from it as if you were hired to fix someone else’s writing. Practice being an editor.

Is including a South park reference on a text about the EU a bad idea?

>>17824763
>Practice being an editor.
Oh, I'll pass, trying that crippled me for years as I wallowed in self-doubt.

>>17824769
Is that the style of the rest of the work? Do you drop references often? Does the reference work to make a very stark point?

>>17824775
Fix your diet and exercise and edit your work.

>>17824780
Alright, but I'm not sure how that'll help for drafts I knew weren't complete.

>>17824775
Well I don’t know what else to fucking tell you. The way you fix old work to make it less shit is editing it, and if you’re too attached to it the only way to disconnect is to take on a persona, and that’s what an editor does. Just skip reviving that work anon. Just burn it all. I’d rec you merge them or combine them, but that’s what an editor does too :/

>>17824793
>Just burn it all
Oh sorry, I tried that too but now I'm haunted by the ghosts of works I really liked and wished I could bring back to life.

>>17824701
I'm doing something similar. If you just want to revise them post more information and I'll try to help. What are the plot points? At what point do you feel the story has gone wrong? What is it you feel needs to change and what needs to stay in order to keep your story your story. Some points in revision can become a ship of Theseus in terms of story identity and maybe its better to come to port in something new, or maybe retaining some ethereal identity in the original draft is something very important to you. Just give me something to work with and I'll help you workshop your way through it if that's what you want.

>>17824810
God damn it anon. What do you want? Do you want advice or do you just want me to say “that sucks I’m sorry” this was a problem I always had with women, they just want to complain about problems and not fix them and all I want to do is fix it. I hope you the best anon, maybe you should just hire an editor?
>I don’t want anyone to see how bad my work is.
God damn it anon.

>>17823494
>if the idea gets you excited, it's a good foundation. simple as
Until you realize that nothing about it makes sense. It's a phantom idea, a false enthusiasm, a lie. It's all a lie!

>>17824826
>What are the plot points? At what point do you feel the story has gone wrong? What is it you feel needs to change and what needs to stay in order to keep your story your story.
Thank you, that's kind of what I'm looking for, this is helpful.

>Some points in revision can become a ship of Theseus in terms of story identity and maybe its better to come to port in something new
Especially this part. There are many stories I've remade multiple times simply because there's a core concept or idea I really like but the elements are too sloppy to enable a proper execution. That's what gets me sometimes. It's "Why do I even care so much about this?".

Maybe I should make some kind of radical change to keep it fresh? For example, maybe I'm trying to write a story set in a locality I'm familiar with, but it bores me because I'm so familiar with it. I could fix it by changing the location to somewhere exotic. If I like the characters for a story but hate the plot, I could try changing the genre up, like turning a murder mystery into a romantic comedy, to see what I liked about the characters in the first place and why I thought that the original setup was so integral. Does that sound like a good idea?

>>17824836
>Do you want advice
Yes, actually. I really do feel like I'm stuck in a bog, I'm thankful that you're spending time on me.
>>I don’t want anyone to see how bad my work is.
H-haha, what made you think that?

>keep losing interest after ~15k words/act 1
I don't know how anons keep with a story.

>>17823675
Novelty by definition cannot be repeated. What you need is a good memory to keep in mind that original feeling, and then in the drafting process seek to reconstitute it. In a way this pushes you to be better. The reader does not share your mind can cannot peer into its contents. So trying to rekindle your original idea using the words rather than the image itself is a great way to spruce up your writing and increases the odds that a random reader will see your original vision.

>>17824919
>H-haha, what made you think that?
I was just having our conversation for us without having to spend time on going through the motions, anon. How about instead of editing them, you just figure out what you would do to improve from them for next time. A learning tool?
>that sounds like editing with extra steps
It was I was just trying to change your mind set to do the thing you don’t want to do.

>can get to 20k+ words for a novel I summarily abandon
>stare at 100 words for a short story
Why is it so hard for me to do the latter?

>>17824919
On trying something radical to "keep it fresh" I would ask why you feel the need for the story to remain "fresh". No story will really remain fresh when it is complete because revision is a necessity and you will work that idea down to a stub like writing all the graphite out of a pencil.

On changing the genre to mediate your contentment with character I would advise against it, unless it is a process you feel comfortable with and have prior success in using to get results. It sounds like you would end up with another crippled story that failed to grasp the original idea. More importantly, the characters are the story and the story is the characters. Changing one will give you a new story, not a fresh look at the old one. Free writing is advisable to let the characters talk to each other, but clearing and the slate and starting over is just a lot of work to return to the same point.

I would also advise against changing the setting to something "exotic". Setting is another one of the pillars of story, fitted along plot and character in holding up the narrative roof. Your desire to change one or two of these feels less like you want to freshen the story and more like you've trapped yourself and are trying to negotiate yourself out of writing that story.

Post something concrete here, like, "The story is about a dumpy cow named Moo Moo, who wants a name change, and has to negotiate his understanding of farm life as the farmer decides whether or not he should keep or sell him and his mother separate or as a pair."
If you do that I can help you with suggestions on the setting, characters, and plot in ways that you might find fresh or stale, but that will remain true enough to the audiences understanding of what your story is from a general glance (which is what you are going to be working with if you are writing both for the art of it or for money).

>>17819891
What about explaining nothing? Is that just as bad?

>>17825182
i'm sure he meant something like >>17820133

>>17825117
>I summarily abandon
it's easy because you are not committed to it

My idea is all over the place. How do I center myself in order to organize things into something coherent?

>>17825255
What is the idea? Without knowing what elements the idea is comprised of I can only offer you general tips that might or might not be of use. The most basic advice would be to create an outline. Decide which ideas can actually work together and which ones are even worth spending time on and then negotiating them into a narrative. The other general piece of advice is to "just write". Start putting parts of those ideas down on the page and then sort them out in revision.

She, Summer, is the scent of fireflies and fresh cut grass. She is the clacking of bicycle spokes, the hum of distant lawnmower engines, the sound of cicadas whirring, and of swaying trees in the gentle breeze. He watches from afar her blue eyes laugh, they lined religiously with heavy mascara that represent the Earth ablaze and the ashes from which all will begin anew. She sits on a blanket beneath a tree with her friends, on a stark green hill overlooking a valley in resplendent superbloom of goldenrod, sage, poppies, and blue violets. Glancing upward over her shoulder at him there miles away, the setting sun catches her sharply layered platinum blonde hair, and she smiles her imperceptible smile. Standing to wave, her lithe body sways as she calls out to him, "Frank!", her voice the only sound in the world. He does not respond, as he knows this to be merely a cold comfort, a dream. The movements of she and her friends are part of a cruel pantomime, and this vista is merely a pastiche of memories from different days.

Now alone with her, he folds his gangling form in half to sit on a log across from her, shielding his eyes from the sun setting red over the treeline. With her legs crossed, she looks out over the valley and the treeline, her back to him now. On his face is written a desperate sadness. "Isn't it beautiful, Frank?" Over the wildflowers dance butterflies, and a frenzy of birdsong like a secret code emanates from the nearby forest. "Isn't it?"

Frank trembles on the verge of tears, "...Where are you?"

"Frank! Did you pop a boner?!" laughed Summer.

"Where did you go?"

He frantically attempted to flatten out the bulge in his jeans. "That's just my pants! See?" he insisted. "They're just—really stiff!" Summer's friend Abby rolled around on the ground chortling maniacally.

"Dunno," she smiles, turning around to face him. "Maybe I'm up there!" She points at the sky, where storm clouds gather.

"Whoa! Lookit!"

"No way!"

A beautiful blue butterfly lay stricken by frigid raindrops, rivulets of water beating steadily over its gossamer wings to stick it flat against the concrete of the campus park. Stepping out from a public bathroom, and in his work uniform, Frank frustratedly wheeled his mop bucket over as if anticipating more mess to clean up. Summer hurried him by the shoulder, "Check it out, Frank! Huge, right?" He peered down his tall thin form at the poor little creature, in whom, still and lifeless, then existed no signs of ever having been more than a cheap dollar store decoration discarded after a child's birthday party.

Abby pushed her wireframe glasses up her retrousse nose authoritatively, commenting to no one in particular "That's a blue morpho, alright! Mor-pho men-e-laus."

He cocked his head to the side and softly smiled, "Its blue reminds me of your eyes." Summer looked in disbelief at Abby before squealing gleefully, jumping up and down.

Crouching, he peeled the morpho off the ground, then withdrew from his back pocket a miniature Holy Bible. In the pages of Psalms is where he pressed that butterfly, minding not at all that the corpse of God's lowliest of creatures would completely saturate them, as he offered freely the same warmth he felt that he had been blessed with.

"The sky... is—is that where you are?"

"Nah. Heaven."

Sniffling, he stands up and wipes tears from his eyes, "That would mean that you died!"

"So what!" she chuckles, kicking her legs, which dangle over the tailgate of a truck.

Drowned out under the noise of a concert, he falls to his knees clutching at her like a small child. "What do you want? Just tell me where to look! I'll go anywhere!"

She leads him through a primeval forest, slipping away from his grasping hands and turning around to laugh, hiking up her dress as they jump over ledges, run up rocky hills, hop over a creek. The matte painting sky poking through the chlorophyllous tree canopy recalls images of a previous life, of an innocence found only in Eden or the womb, and as he slowly raises his head they flicker before his eyes. "Tell me what dreams are."

"They're in here!" He follows her into a drainage pipe, where her voice and footsteps echo, and it is pitch black, but gradually heightens until they both begin running again. At the end of it, she pulls back a red curtain to reveal a bright white light. "Whatever you need—"

"A hug." Immediately his long arms wrap almost twice around her, and he throws his bodyweight into her, causing her to stumble back. As he blubbers incoherently, her countenance saddens.

"Please don't go in there, Summer," he cries, his face a mess of snot and tears, "Just hang on. Keep—keep dreaming!" She stares back at the blackness behind him, worried and far more desperate than he is. "Keep dreaming! GODDAMIT!" he spits, "Just stay alive!"

The harsh popcorn ceiling tells him that he will once again dry his eyes alone. From somewhere, he hears her sigh in noble resignation, "Okay," unsure if he made her say so but choosing to believe not.

>>17818519
I dont write novels, I'm not gay

I realized I can relate my character's personalities to dog breeds. Like a character who resembles a golden retriever in that they're way too trusting of people they met less than five minutes ago. Should I change my animal-oriented thinking?

How to know if a plot idea is good?

Have any of you attempted rewriting a famous work for practice, either by memory or directly?

>>17825683
I’ve tried http://www.typelit.io/ for a little bit. If I was still in college and had more free time I’d use it to type out and read famous books. It’s interesting to be that micro level with text. Not sure if it’s directly useful, but I sure felt like I learned something.

>>17825315
>>17825322
....I can't tell if this is parody or not

>>17825414
Make it a furry story easy money

>>17825640
Writing it and seeing if people like it

>>17825760
Oh shit I didn't know about that site. Thanks.

Does anyone else read their previous short stories or novels after a few years, and rewrite them? I feel that I wrote one a couple years back that had a good story and ideas behind it, but blundered it because I was less experienced.

>>17826115
You'll never be happy with them. Each work is genuine only when you leave it as it was. If you rewrite it now you'll lose something only Past You could have made.

>>17826115
Yeah. I'm rarely satisfied with the rewriting though, it always seem like I'm leaving a wisp of something inside of these old writings that I sometimes cannot improve. The more I alter it, the more it seems common and it loses its soul and I have trouble being invested in it even though it's better written now.

How do you guys deal with not being able to come up with anything to write at a certain part of the story?

>>17826184
Moving on to another part and letting Future Me worry about it. He's a sucker.

>>17826184
I just think of something irrelevant/funny and/or absurd and try to integrate it seamlessly into the story. Even if it's in the middle of a fight or a point where something important must happen, I just tweak the world to my whims and write about the things I want, rebound on it, then later edit the stuff if I feel like it. Example : Character A must confess something painful to character B but he can't do it because he gets sick which leads him to the pharmacy where he discusses with the son of the old pharmacist about bananas and leather jackets. On the way back, he buys some bananas and he decides to go see her. She was first mad at him but she smiled when she saw the bananas. And what was that stupid leather jacket her boyfriend was wearing? It de escalates the situation, and it really helps for my writing. I hate how sometimes the stuff you see in books is so serious, it doesn't feel real.

>>17826115
Move on, bud, move on

Any anons interested in a weekly short story club?

>>17824945
The way I see it is that my idea has to be bigger than what I can conceivably accomplish. I could not write a war and peace tier epic unless someone were to pay me many thousands of dollars to religiously throw myself at it at the exclusion of all else. But I like to choose projects that are as big as War and Peace as a reach goal. That way I always have something to write about. You can't write beyond a small idea, the length of your runway is constrained by your ultimate ambition rather than what you have put to paper.

You can also fuck things up in this way. Years ago I started a novel which I planned and planned, and had all these visions for. I sketched out dozen s of characters, had multiple divergent plot lines. Then about 40,000 words in I lost the thread of it, didn't know what to do next, and to make matters worse, had to get a job. So it's good to shoot for the stars but stay grounded if you know what I mean.

>>17826573
Explain.

>>17826700
glad you asked, just finished, see below.

>>17826573
If anyone is interested in participating here are the "rules" I guess you could call them, or the guidelines to follow.
>https://pastebin.com/Egg3B9m8

This will be the main account where the stories are posted and if it catches on maybe it could be added to the OP.


Vote for weeks 1's genre.
>https://www.strawpoll.me/42821455

I want a place where anons can post their stories somewhere without being rejected, something anons can look forward to while they participate in the general, like a side thing while working on their bigger projects.

We could even acknowledge them in the OP for their hard work. Like a short story of the week, and we could have 2nd and third place.

>>17826720
That could be fun...

>need to write villains
>fell like good vilains must be logical about their actions or at least be understandable
>making them understandable makes me feel empathy for them
>get attached and don't want to write them being evil anymore
I need help.

>>17825640
Ask
Nobody will steal your fucking idea

>>17825414
See >>17825852
Make them animal people.

>>17826720
Honestly, this might be too much commitment. Full-time writers say 1000 words a day is a good day, but the average anon probably isn't a full-time writer. A week to write a short story seems too quick.

And judging by the amount of anons who are reluctant to post their writing, then I think this thing won't take off.

>>17826720
Sounds interesting and could nudge people to finally post stuff, but I gotta be honest, >>17826943's right, a thousand a week is much too much, and no way you're getting five thousand a week. Thousand bi-monthly is more like it.

Am I allowed to to rewrite classic books and remix them. Sort of like taking War and Peace and making it set in Space Empire or taking Crime and Punishment and making Rasko a newly turned vampire who succumbs to sucking the blood of his aunts which is against vampire code and now he his conscious is eating him and shit

>>17827161
I've already finished the manuscript. It's going to be called Crime and Nourishment

>>17827161
Public domain books you can do whatever the hell you want with

>Idea for a short story
>almost 30,000 words in only to find out its only half-way done
>Scrap it and start over
>Story expands into something else entirely from its original idea
>Find myself liking it
>Story further expands but at a crossroad on how to write it.
>no idea how to begin, let alone on how to write it.
I need to take a small break, this shit ain't good for my health. I'm nauseous just thinking about it. And to think this started out as an Epistolary novel.

>>17823362
comfy
>>17826797
Do they have to be evil? Can't their logical actions just be in the direct way of the protagonist, therefore making them a villain from their perspective? He doesn't have to go around tying women to railway tracks

I started a short prompt based on a kid staring out the window. I think I did well in 2 hours.

>>17827623
Whoops, accidentally wrote a novel haha

>>17827663
This is funny to me because the setting feels like it’s set in the American south, but it’s clearly not. It’s good, but your dialogue doesn’t feel natural, esp the mom/son bit

Lads doing market research is giving me an ulcer, what the fuck do I do? How the fuck people read this shit? How the fuck people WRITE this shit?

>>17827626
>Do they have to be evil?
Evil is relative for me so I understand you, but I'm having difficulties creating enough antagonists that sound logical to me.

>>17827663
>invites
>impressed
SORT
OUT
YOUR
FUCKING
TENSES

Guess I'm scrapping two chapters and rewriting them both from scratch...

>>17827702
It felt a little weird to me too, but I just rolled with it.

>>17827722
That sentence was future tense. I knew exactly what I was doing.

>>17827733
Reminds me of the time when I had to scrap a generic good boy who fell in love with a demon because two twin demons who are very sweet but have raunchy sex with their great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather was more interesting.

>>17827747
>would notice
>when he invited her
Clearly, you didn't.

>>17824173
You can still go outside, stupid fuck.

>>17827813
And get shot by Civil Protection?

>>17823362
I like the song

>>17827755
>Angeline will notice him, when he invites her
A thought written in future tense out of the dominant past tense. Yes, it's written the way I wanted.
>Angeline was sure to be impressed
I can switch "was" for "is".

>>17827894
WE ARE LIVING IN AMEEERICAAA

>>17819248
>that is when i carried you

>>17823127
This is how the cycle works. Even if you get published you will still hate your early work or everything older than a year or two, but it's in your best interest to pretend it's good because you're supposed to be the one person who thinks your work is good. Remember that just because you think it's bad now, at one point you thought it was good, and other people might be at that earlier stage in their life and could really enjoy things you no longer can.

>>17824173
Wait for the end of the lockdown. In the meanwhile do things online completely outside your normal work. Eg: if you're a lit major, take an online biology/design/sports course.

>>17827944
Not him and it is technically correct but it still reads a bit clunky. To be honest the other anon's "dialogue doesn't feel natural" could apply to the whole thing.

How do you cope with naming characters?

I always struggle to give them names, it feels too intimate and I always worry people will think the character is inspired by someone I know irl

>>17828261
dude characters are going to have names. it's not unusual. no one is going to care.

>>17827944
>A thought written in future tense
PAST future continuous tense

>Sister moulting after Maple Syrup Party
>An improvised story for /lit/

>Chapter 1
Morning. Sexy noises from sister's bedroom woke me up, that hoe is at it again I thought. Don't wanna see a naked dude in the hall again, better stay in bed. Fuck. This.

>Chapter 2
Slept until noon but sexy noises won't stop. Hungry as fuck, heh. So this happened: I went downstairs to the kitchen to make myself a chicken sandwich and holly molly what a mess, there's empty maple syrup bottles everywhere. Sister had a party last night, at home — I stayed in my room, as always — but didn't know their depravity would go this far, what kind of fucked up sex games were they having? Anyway, chicken sandwich done. Good. I better get the fuck out.

>Chapter 3
Got home late at night, boss asked me to stay an extra hour at the grocery store so he could go on napping. Asshole. So now I am at the tip of doorstep and what do I hear, once again? Sexy noises. Fucking. Whore. Why doesn't she go somewhere else if she wants to get her brains fucked out by a stranger? I pay rent to live here you disrespectful cunt. I went in to find the place still a holy mess, she did not clean shit, why would I expect otherwise? Not my mess, not my duty. Back to my room.

>Chapter 4
Okay, I'm done. Sexy noises all day and can't take it anymore. I already fapped twice to her moans but three make me feel guilty. So this happened: Knock knock open the door you fucking cunt, knock knock open. She did not open, why would I expect otherwise? Fortune have it I have a key, I made it months ago so I could borrow money from her desk just in case. Open the door. Oh, oh no no fuck no.

>>17828261
Don't name them. Ignore people like >>17828273 and name them by their title. They're known only as the Plumber, the Electrician, the Neighbor, etc.

>>17828261
Take a random word, go to anagram generator, choose the one that makes sense.

>>17828343
i used to do this when i was new and trying to be cool and edgy

>>17828491
Really? I'm a seasoned writer who can't remember any names. Titles are easier.

>>17828499
good for you if you can pull it off. more often than not it's just cringy

>>17827161
You're probably allowed to do this with any work as long as you're in America. Look up "The Wind Done Gone." Just be prepared to go to court over it if it's not public domain.

>>17827161
If it’s a parody, you can do it with any work, even if it’s still under a copyright

>>17820196
Her death is inevitable and she needs an heir to replace her.

I want to write 10,000 words today. Please post music that will allow me to accomplish this.

>>17820196
She falls victim to an aphrodisiac and the only way to cure it is to cum inside her.
She's really fucking horny because her mind wandered while she was recovering and now she wants to get knocked up.

>>17820196
Moon cycles = heat cycles

>>17820196
Easy. Tale as old as time. She has to rely on him, he has to care for her, and they fall in love.

>Says a fundamental reality about storytelling
>"Y-YOU'RE BEING REDUCTIONIST!"
Why are fags like this?

My story's setting is a mess, the fights are lame, and my characters are downright schizophrenic in their motivations.

Better luck next time...

>>17828499
>I'm a seasoned writer who can't remember any names

i just realized my post-apocalyptic weird fantasy city doesnt have any cars in it, be they derlict, untouched or alive and hungry. no bikes or skateboards neither. that doesn't feel right

i remember i originally intended there to be roaming packs of wild bicycles who would buck off and run over whoever tried to mount them, but that never made it in

i kind of want to put a shitty magic skateboard in there that randomly flickers its tangibility on and off sometimes, causing it to clip through whatever its grinding and throw the rider off before rattling violently and rocketing off like it was made by bethesda. hence it's called the "clipboard"

Are there some stories that are simply impossible to depict in a written form? A street race, for example.

What makes a good story? One which is entertaining or one pseudo enough to get nerds on youtube to make countless video essays on how much they like it with titles like "The Art of Storytelling" or some shit.

>>17830900
sight and sound can be encoded linguistically, but taste, touch and smell cannot. that and also anything that's not 3+1 dimensional. our brains can't process that

>>17830900
I wouldn't think so. I could write a story about a street race right now. The method by which to test what's impossible would be to prompt yourself with something and see if you can't write a story about it. Even then that doesn't strictly prove it's impossible it only shows you can't do it.

In his book The Periodic Table Primo Levi has a chapter about a single carbon atom as it goes on an adventure through millions of years, first stuck in a piece of rock, then floating around in the air, then getting absorbed into a plant and eaten into a dinosaur and then and on and on until it ends up in the glass of milk he's drinking and takes part in activating the brain signal that causes him to put down the last period of the last sentence of the story. Carbon has absolutely no characters, except the author's brief cameo at the end, no real action, but its riveting. If you can write a story about a single atom ffs you must be able to for anything.

People say music is hard to write about, particularly the issue of describing the arrangement of the sounds. But I've seen it done. It's merely hard.

>>17830950
See, you're talking about something very abstract. That's very easy to depict in a written form as opposed to something more concrete, like the tires screeching on the asphalt as they carry the metal coffins down the street. I have no clue how you can make a story about something like that and depict the actual action in an interesting, engaging way.

>>17827022
>a thousand a week is much too much
A thousand words a week? too much? 500 words shouldn't take more than an hour.

>>17826943
Yeah well, doesn't hurt to try. I see it more as a writing exercise, but I see your point, anons will probably think their work will be stolen lol.

>>17831086
A narrative is a sequence of events that share some kind of connection. There are certain elementary units of writing that are pre-narrative in form. For example, what you're talking about is the description of an event, tires screeching. This is not enough substance to make a story out of. All you can do is describe it but you can't tell as story about it. Any sequence of events is probably capable of being narrativized but it needs to unfold in some sort of sequence and there needs to be enough substance.

Hey, I'd like some feedback on my writing.
I'm a hobbyist novel writer, but this semester I signed up for a screenwriting course. Haven't really gotten into the class (and the class is kind of shit like how I imagine all new-age creative writing courses to be) but recently I was tasked with a freeform midterm and did my best to write something meaningful.
If you're interested, you can find it here: www.dropbox.com/s/dz7xkghq468d6ov/Midterm%20Trimmed.pdf?dl=0

>>17831203
>This is not enough substance to make a story out of
I never said otherwise, silly.

>>17831134
Yes and I too can blast out 1k words an hour of mindless drivel, but we're talking quality work here anon

Is there a market for novellas on the 90-100 page anymore?

Maybe if you write two you can sell them together in one book. I have this cool copy of The Secret Sharer / Heart of Darkness.

>>17832037
why? are you going to write one?

>>17832060
meant for >>17832037

>>17832064
I wrote a short story which feels like it's running way too fast and the scenes are way too short
I feel it'd be much better if I gave it an actual plot and gave the scenes more time to breath

>>17831414
Well whatever you're saying is fucking stupid

>>17832100
Wow, rude. You clearly don't know what I'm talking about, so why are you dispensing advice? I'm asking about a cool action scene, not whatever "narrative" baloney you have in mind.

>>17832115
Ignore it, there are anons here that are like that. They'll shit on everything for no reason.

>>17822716
Got published in my school's lit mag, although only in the online version. I've read some of the stuff that gets submitted, so I don't place a lot of stock in it.

When revising do you edit it as you read through it or just read it, take notes, and edit later?

>>17832115
You were the rude one. I don't know what you're talking about because you're not explaining it well. And action scenes should be easy to describe what's the issue? Go play videogames if you want action, stories are about narrative.

>>17832180
See, I don't read the same stories as you. I'm all about light novels and chinese web novels, you see, and those have a ton of action.

>>17832136
You were right.

I'm about...to write...

Done with my first short story standing at around 2000 words

>>17832557
Cool, post it

>>17831417
Learn to edit.

>>17832563
>>17832557

Don't, I'll steal the idea.

>There's a sticky note app on windows.

>>17832659
every now and then it crashes and you lose all your notes. it's also fucking heavy for some reason.

>>17830912
Good advice is not the same as the advice that people want to hear.

>>17832232
That's fine. Didn't mean to bully you I'm just feeling a bit aggro tonight.

How do you operationalize themes?

Do you phrase a statement?
Do you set up a question?
Do you establish binary opposite perspectives?
Do you create a hypothesis/thesis/antithesis/synthesis?

I don't mean how you actual express it on the narrative, just how you perceive it in a way that is an helpful reference.

>>17832828
>How do you operationalize themes
what.

>>17832844
How do you conceptualize your theme?

Do you just think "my story is about survival of the fittest" and leave it at that?

>>17832828
I think about what is the "lesson" I want to "teach" the reader

A good theme should showcase your own perspective as an argument, just avoid being obvious and preachy

Does anybody know of any good resources to find literary agents and small presses? I know that some places like that exist already, like that MSWL website, but every fucking agent on there is atrocious and the things they say they want make me cringe. I'd like to find agents and small presses that are actually good.

>>17832828
>E.) All of the above

>>17832828
I try not to overthink it. I'm not developing a software application I'm writing a story. It's an intuitive, free-form act. I make it up as I go along. More accurately, I belive in the almost mystical/schizo idea that the story already exists in a kind of Platonic realm and that I am merely uncovering it or channeling it. It tells me what it wants and I follow. But just as fresh water running through rusty pipes will come out dirty, so too if I lack the proper skill to bring the story out. It is not that it is a bad story, it is that my reception apparatus lacks the proper bandwidth to extract the signal from the noise, or I'm tuned in to the wrong frequency and picking up a shittier story in storyland rather than a better one.

>>17820081
>No it weren't
>It don't work that way
There's some irony here

>>17832563

I'm happy with it but I think I'm going try and polish it up and refine it a bit more before I actually send it off anywhere. How long did it take you lot to write your first? I had the idea in my head for a while but once I got writing it took me a good week to finish it since I knew where to take it and end it

>>17833187
>once I got writing it took me a good week to finish it since I knew where to take it and end it
Anons ITT would lead you to believe writing a short story in a week is impossible. They claim it takes a week to write 1000 words of "quality work" lmao.

>>17833201
Wasn’t there an animefag that wrote four stories around 1,000 words in one thread? How come he could write that in hours but other can’t?

>>17833221
idk, was there? I won't believe it till I see it. weebs like to say shit to make themselves look good because they're hated by all and they're trying to integrate themselves into society.

>>17833201
Well go ahead, big guy, nut up or shut up

Reminder that 1k words a day is a good, consistent goal assuming you're working off an outline and aren't just shitting out letters.

>>17833320
It's not hard anon. It's possible to write a decent story in a week that's >1k. I've been writing for 20 minutes and am already at 250 words. Just believe in yourself and you can achieve anything.

>>17833379
I used to do that, but then I fell out of practice and now I feel self conscious and beat myself up for all the years I wasn't writing...

>>17833379
Well fire away, Hemingway, let's see what you got

I wrote 5k words today and I'm pretty confident in most of them. I plan to do it tomorrow, too. If I did it for five days or so after that, I'd be done with my draft. Of course work will prevent that from being the case. Anyhow, if you don't have a single day a week where you can write a few thousand words, fix your life or accept that you don't have time in your life to write.

>>17832828
Yes
Yes
No
No

why. cant. i. just. write.

>>17832861
>Do you just think "my story is about survival of the fittest" and leave it at that?
Basically, yes. But I have several of these.

>>17833987
ten minutes a day could change your life. also stop cranking your wiener.

>>17832177
Why waste time making notes? The only time that makes any sense is if the editor is someone else.

1500 more words to go and I'll have 50k words.

To the anons who took the time a while back to give me some real advice (including things I didn't want to hear) I just want to say thanks. You've lit a real fire under my ass. I still detest things like story and characters but I'm working through it. Currently closely following the """"story genius"""" book recommended in the OP (what a fucking terrible title though) and I am going to give the piece I'm working on a more traditional backbone. Granted, the plan is still to devolve into "nonsense," but I see now that I need to guide a reader towards the inevitable, free associative madness which will be the notochord to the story's spine.

All this that I've said will also probably end up needing to be revised and adjusted, but that's okay. Seriously, thanks. You guys gave me a new lease on my writing life.

This is the dumbest shit I've written. Why do people write isekai? Why can't they just write a normal fantasy?

Non native english speaker here, i want to ask something

"Let's make it happens" is wrong and it should be "Let's make it happen" while "let's see what happens" is correct while "let's see what happen" is wrong, why is that?

>>17818519
YO YO YO WAZZUP!

Very important person here, watchaself before you reck yourself muh dudes and dudettes. Yo, you gotta chek out my new chapter on my books on FICTIONPRESS called SYNTH-PILL. Just search that shit and read my works broski!

Lol, jk jk.

Really though, be super cool if you read my books, senpai!

>>17834938
I looked it up because I'm bored. This is what I found:
>As I brushed my teeth and got dressed for work, slightly spiking my sense of fashion to get more on Victor's wavelength, I let Reverend Jim Lee show play in the background. I was eager to hear his take on being thrown off his interview on yesterdays news. "So I tried getting my message out there last night, before the reporters jumped me because I tell the truth. The children of the lie has to interrupt me ,because I tell the truth. I've been to some of these inner circles and it is a loop. Black people have all lost their morals, and not all, not all, NOT ALL! But most. I talk with these young people all the time and it makes me sad, because their ideals are that of a fallen state, we're in a fallen state, you have got to be born again." For a moment I was distracted.
This is pure dreck. Have you even done one single proofread? Have you read a book on the last decade? I don't know why you retards think this is worthy of anyone's attention. Buy an ad like the rest of the shit hacks who just want to make a quick buck out of forcing yourself as a meme. Or, you could, you know, write something worth sharing.

>>17834903
The first set of examples is just down to the conjugation of "to happen." Maybe someone else can explain it better, but at a certain point it's really just how the language works, and somewhat arbitrarily. That's probably not a satisfying answer, but there's no great truth a language rests on, just what its speakers have collectively agreed should be its conventions. In French, you wouldn't say "je est," you'd say "je suis." There's nothing about either conjugation which makes it implicitly more fitting, it's just the way the language developed.

For the second, the use of "what" is a stand-in for a genderless, external object whose nature is unknown. You use it in the same way. You wouldn't say he happen or she happen (to be...), it's he or she happens (to be...). I'm a layman so maybe someone else has a more rigorous explanation but that's the best I've got.

>>17834938
I remember this from a while back and avoided it because it was on Fictionpress. That place is ancient. Looks like it's infested with Google ads now.

Anyway, I checked it out and was going to read the first chapter entirely but then I came across this:
>His black mouth had small sharp yellow teeth; his was spit was gore, colored by the flees he had eaten.
I get what you were going for with "gore" but I imagined the fleshy bloody stuff. Also:
>was spit was
You should've cleaned up this up before starting the sequel.

>>17835001
>>17835079
He's probably never going to check this thread again. Just another self promotion.

>I came up with a running gag that's repeated three times over the course of the story but ultimately doesn't go anywhere
How do I into payoff?

>>17835054
>you wouldn't say "je est," you'd say "je suis."
Infinite J’est

>>17835186
Milady.

>>17818519
Not ready for writing properly but I try to do around 300 words passage of anything poetic, philosophical or story-worthy that comes to my mind at least every day. Then from that hopefully i can expand them to about 2000 words per paragraph

>>17835233
> 2000 words per paragraph
Jesus Christ why

“What unit you from?”
“555th Motorized”
“Wife’s brother is in the 530th as a combat medic. Wedin, you know him?”
“No”
“You heard any news from the front?”
“No”
“I heard the Morbs are planning some sort of big offensive, using some fancy new war machines they got from the Chinese”
“You got any smokes?”
“Yeah, but its gonna cost you”
“How much?”
“Well, the standard shit - flour, canned meat, booze, or 2000 marks”
“I got none of that”
“Too bad”

>>17835337
>flour, canned meat, booze, or 2000 marks”
Cut this out and it’s good.

>Mixed metaphors! You can't do that!

>>17835356
I wanna know why though

Not getting defensive i just want to hear your side

>>17835255
I think he means he wants to derive 2000 words worth of text from every 300 word paragraph
Not to write 2000 word paragraphs

Well I did it. 50k words. That's half of what I'm planning, and I did it in less than 3 full months. I'll have a book this year. I really will.

>>17820081
They since it's plural.

>>17835429
Ahh, yeah that makes more sense.

>>17835386
I found it pretty expository. He already says “the standard shit,” so you can assume that the other guy already knows what’s what. It kinda just comes across like you’re trying to bring the reader up to speed on what the standard fare for a cigarette is. Obviously, dialogue should be as natural as possible, so imo the reader shouldn’t have to understand everything, because they’re merely peering into the world, if that makes sense. They can miss a few things here and there, cigarette bartering is fairly inconsequential.

>>17835464
Ah yeah, good call anon

I got a lore i wrote down for this story but im never gonna state it fully, just bits and pieces

I have a lot of trouble with dialogue so i made the MC borderline autistic

>>17835499
>I got a lore i wrote down for this story but im never gonna state it fully, just bits and pieces
That's a good call. Don't give away too much.
>I have a lot of trouble with dialogue so i made the MC borderline autistic
lmao, I like this technique

If you can't summarize your story in a single sentence, what even are you writing about?

God can there be any duller activity than writing a book?

>>17835671
>A man goes to serve in the military and confronts what is best and worst in himself.
Your turn.

The branches unclose their dead, and the cardinals their squeak,
the garden shakes as the sun nears, the waters brighten.
The air is mild as a ribbon, by the swings—
I live without the feeling, I go back to bed
and browse my fantasies. The moon grey
above the lake boats freezing in my spine.
The oak trees nod over the wicker chairs.

>>17835671
I can do you one better and summarize it in two words:
Narcisism vindicated

The branches unclose their dead, and the cardinals their squeak,
the garden shakes as the sun nears, the waters brighten.
The air is mild as a ribbon, by the swings—
I live without the feeling, I go back to bed
and browse my fantasies. The moon grey
over the lake boats freezing in my spine.
The oak trees leaning on the wicker chairs.

>>17835729
Why do it if you think it's dull? Go back to flipping burgers

>>17835671
Mechas in the Yugoslav Wars

>>17835885
Very based.

>>17835845
That's not much of a story.

>>17835671
>a detective starts receiving incomprehensible letters from his daughter's abductor, sending him on a mission up the proverbial river

>>17835923
Why can't it be a real river? One of those rivers with hippos in it. Hippos are cute and dangerous at the same time and would allow you to call the book The Hippopotomac.

>>17835941
because stuffy academic fags won't swah wahjak and omg poggers over it unless you insert some arbitrary reference to [old thing]

>>17835941
for real though plot trajectory is mostly solved at this point and there's no point in reinventing the wheel when you can just look back and lift it from shakespeare, the greeks, conrad, etc. it's just a reference to the story structure

>>17835917
I can see how you'd think that without further context but that's the central theme.

>>17836069
A theme isn't much of a story either.

>>17836075
Neither is your point of much value.

>>17836235
I see that you think a theme is a story. OK!

The sky was alight with sunfire. Wrathful beams fell from the heavens, dousing great, gliding cumuli in purple and orange flames. The celestial conflagration engulfed the entire horizon, as if the sun knew of and raged against its imminent extinguishing.
All was lost and undone. The inferno tore across everything its path. No mercy was shown, no quarter was to be given. There were no survivors to speak of, not even the sun itself. It fell below the treeline and was banished. The flickering flames it left behind were soon to follow, turning to fading embers before disappearing entirely. Only the eternal black of soot and ash remained. The universe died.
Tiny sprouts of light broke through the field of empty blackness. Tens, hundreds, thousands of them grew from nothing, as if seeded there by some cosmic farmer of stars. Before long the whole nightsky was to be littered with them, like pesky, scavenging cockroaches emerging from the ruins and into the irradiated fallout.

>>17836405
A story is about a theme. To summarize is to succinctly state what something is about. Given that a story is about its theme, stating the theme is a valid way to summarize your story.

Now kindly fuck off before I sperg out on you at even greater extremes.

>>17836441
Hey, you're the one feeling threatened, not me.

>>17835001
OK!

But that is actually how people talk in real life though. Their not eloquently superb gentlemen with three digit iq and slight autism. Thats just here. Just like some books are written like the game blasphemy, some are written like rick and morty. Y-you know! We gotta do the thing! Like the thing that needs doing!

Un-fucking-belieavable. I actually squeezed in 2600 words today. I'm at 51k words now. You guys keep going too. We're all gonna make it eventually. Don't stop believing.

>>17836564
>Just like some books are written like the game blasphemy, some are written like rick and morty.
Can someone please explain to me what this retard is even saying?

>>17836646
"Well, SOMEONE has to write the world's drivel!"

Sometimes, I only copy and paste what I wrote the day before to hit the word count limit. Good enough?

I'm writing about a character who's supposed to be a big shot in the business world. What are some good resources to read up on for depicting a CEO or whatever?

>>17836738
If you wanna get in their headspace definitely look to memoirs. I don't have any specific recommendations though

>>17836738
Watch documentaries on psychopaths.

>>17836747
Yeah, headspace and also a better sense of what they do all the time.
>>17836752
Funny you mention that, I was actually going to have him suffer and cry because he's an empathic person.

I'm 29 and have never written anything, but I like the idea of it.
Is it too late for me to make it?

>>17836702
Fair enough. But still, even writing commercial fiction doesn't excuse trying to promote your literally unedited first draft as a "book" you want people to actually engage with. You might not respect the medium, but at least respect the people you're trying to get to actually read the thing; and this has nothing to do with the "way people talk in real life." Faulkner wrote his characters in the most uneducated, deep-south vernacular you can possibly imagine. There's nothing wrong with writing the way people talk. There is something wrong with using that as an excuse for trite, surface-level schlock.

When it comes down to it, if someone really wants to hear the way people talk in real life, they would just go have a conversation... in real life. That way, when you're bored to fucking death by what the other guy is saying, you at least have the opportunity to change the subject. "Real life" is characterized mostly by the mundane, the drudgery, the endless and meaningless small talk that fills the moments between your instagram posts. I can't speak for everyone, but I can say that I don't know anyone who would leap at the chance to read a book composed of the kind of shit people talk about in the "real world." It literally insults the guy you end up roping into reading a few lines of it when on top of it all there obviously hasn't even been a rudimentary run-through for grammar. That's not writing, it's just literal drivel. No art, no nothing.

>>17836774
I’m 29 too and although I’ve written a bunch of shorts, I’ve never submitted anything. We can make it bro

>>17836774
>https://www.letmegooglethat.com/?q=writers+who+started+late

How long do you want your novels to be? I'm at 37k words and I can see myself finishing at around 50k. Is that too short?

>>17836796
50k is on the line of novel / novella. Crying of Lot 49 is considered a novel but it comes in a little under 50k. Probably just depends on how dense it is.

>>17836794
A lot of these people were only published later in their lives, but had been working on writing for decades prior.
I'm saying I have written nothing. This would be a completely new hobby for me.

>>17836796
I am aiming for 80k or more

>>17836831
Take the very oldest and add their age to yours. Think you'll be dead by then?

>>17836796
It's silly to have word count be the constraint. The true answer is as many words as it takes. My current project is clocking in at a mind-numbing 200,000 words. It's true that long books scare publishers away, but I'm not prioritizing that.

>>17836954
And I'll ask the same thing I asked in your other thread
Why not cut it into pieces?
Publishers hate long books but they love franchises

>>17837007
Not him but some things just don't function well when cut up into smaller pieces. Sometimes they just need to be that one, big, continuous flow of the story.

>>17837030
Which is why you publish the full cut after you've become successful

>>17837007
If I submit it and someone says they like it but I have to split it into two books for them to publish it, I'd consider that. In theory that's also a good business strategy because you charge the same price for two books rather than one. But I a. don't care about the money and b. what the other anon said. I think it would ruin disrupt the flow.

>>17837134
>charge the same price for two books
For each book I mean

>>17836954
what genre? I'm assuming an epic fantasy or sprawling scifi from the length

>>17837030
>Sometimes they just need to be that one, big, continuous flow of the story.
can you give one example of a 200k+ word novel that would lose its essence if it were cut into two or more books? genuine question.

>>17837214
It's actually a nonfiction scholarly work. It basically has zero future, but I actually already got some professors attention about it so I'm hoping they endorse me to their publishers .

>>17837250
If War and Peace was broken up into two books. One called War and the other called Peace, it just wouldn't be the same. There would be peace in the War book and War in the Peace book.

>>17836796
My sci-fi space opera is currently at 245k words and I'm in the process of wrapping up the first volume by approximately the ~270k mark and maybe more. I don't have the slightest idea in word count where it could end. Might be at 600k words, night be a million words. I'll find out when I get there least I die or become homeless before then.

https://pastebin.com/SiNLdk1J

Could someone give this a read and tell me what you think? I typed it up this afternoon, I’m not entirely sure where it’s going yet, was just something that came into my mind after watching interstellar yesterday.

The idea of an inhabitable planet orbiting a black hole felt really intriguing to me, I’m just worried if I keep going with it, it’ll end up being something too similar to Star Wars...

Don’t focus too hard on how bad the names are, they were just some random ones I came up with to get something on the page.

As is Sunday tradition, I'm back with my fourth installment in the France travel writing series on my Substack. I feel like this one won't be for the 4chan crowd, but we'll see. It's less personal and fixates on one overarching theme (pedophilia, rape, feminism in French literary circles). Next week's entry will be a lot more personal and anecdote heavy.

>https://goodperson.substack.com/p/france-iv

If you dig it, please consider subscribing. If not, let me know what you make of it.

Cheers, boys.

>>17837610
I'll subscribe to your mom's bedroom today lmao

>>17837610
why do the jannies allow faggots like you to just plug yourselves apropos of nothing? fuck off, retard. i fucking hate this NOTICE ME NOTICE ME generation.

>>17835146
The joy is that there is no pay off. It's just for you.

Is outlining writing?

>>17837007
>they love franchises
Only if you're a known quantity. They're not going to want a series if you aren't already published (unless your first book ends up being a hit in which case they'll ask after that happens)

>>17838532
Why do you keep asking retarded ass questions you can google?

>>17838532
It’s a step in the process

>>17835440
>whoosh

>>17835499
Nuh uh, bad call IMO. One does not write like one talks IRL. Writing more description instead of "as how one would converse" would have been more appropriate.

>>17838781
pyw

>>17838834
He's not going to post his work, why do you even bother?

>>17828881
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mNzMpro_3E

>Don't want the characters in my novel to just be white or black or asian
>Come up with this idea that perhaps those ethnicities don't exist in my setting, and that perhaps all the people in it are of ethnicities that are unique enough that they can only draw certain parallels to real life.

It sounds cool in paper but in practice it's kinda hard. Coming up with entirely new ethnicities that make sense is kinda tough, to be honest. I've already kinda copped out on one because I've made some people "unnaturally pale" because they live in an area without much sunlight, and I know people are going to think just regular white people or vampires or something. I mean I understand why they would think that, but that's also what I'm trying to avoid.

>>17839115
Jesus Christ, I refuse to believe people focus way too much on race.

>>17839164
I want it to be part of my world building, what's wrong with that? I want people to look at my characters and see them as something other than versions of the people who already exist on this world, but simply moved to another.

>>17839178
You’re setting yourself up for failure that’s what.

>>17839187
I don't shy away from something just because I'll probably fail.

>>17839178
How about you write your story first and worry about the details later? Set up the foundation

>>17839196
Anon, you’re not going to make it.

New thread

>>17839206

>>17837286
War and peace was published serially

>>17834878
>burger joint wage
>missing = loss of ~100 dollars
>four hour shift
Where the fuck are they paying people 25 smackos an hour to flip burgers, and why is this retard complaining?

Oh right, its written by a socially crippled weirdo who can't properly function. Just like 99.9999% of all weeb shit.

>>17839641
That's the hourly adult wage for a casual employee in Australia, around $19 USD. It's still a shit ton more than the American minimum wage. Our NEET bucks are $359 USD per 2 weeks.

How do I avoid getting #cancelled? I have avoided writing anything for years because I fear the mob.

>>17826720
>one day and 17 hours ago
>zero votes
seems like nobody's interested

How do you best plan to write a novel when you have to deal with devastating emotional breakdowns all the time?

Idea: characters live in a setting where each time the body recuperates from a wound it becomes more resilient to said wound, so guys punch each other on the balls to get balls of steel. How overall interesting this idea is?

>>17839902
Make the main character of the story have emotional breakdowns when you do

>>17840630
That's going to make scenes look very schizophrenic and it'll upset me further when I try to write a happy scene
Is that your plan?