/lit/ - Literature

>>17853474
Why did you create this thread before the bump limit?

>>17853502
To escape the clutches of the anime fag obviously.

>>17853502
Because it makes animefag seethe

THERE ARE ONLY 296 REPLIES ON THE PREVIOUS THREAD

My smut fiction is selling well on amazon. yay.

>>17853530
oh wait, there's no loli on the OP image.

I'm sorry for my outburst, I forgive you OP. We all must do our part to shun the anime masturbator

>ree fuck weebs ree
Do people really not edit?

When creating a god, should I name him after our """real""" god, 'Monad', or make up a new name and lore?

>>17853710
who is monad

>>17853515
>>17853517
>>17853539
pure chemo.

>>17853718
Highest gnostic god

Reposting from previous thread. My roommate told me it was “gross” so I’ll probably be revising it again.

https://pastebin.com/cwQVnvbq

I posted the initial iteration of this idea three threads ago. Someone responded saying my MC's motivation was unclear and that the hook was weak. I tried rewriting it some, this time highlighting what will be my MC's primary motivation as the story unfolds - her love for her father and the desire get everyone off the planet to safety and establish a new home.

The MC is supposed to sound kind of bitter and whiny in the initial part, let me know if it comes on too strong. Also let me know if I'm pushing to much setting/world building in the second section, I just want to make it clear how far this planet has fallen, but maybe it would work better spread over a couple more pages.

>>17853718
You

>>17853718
Thirsty ass slut desperate for that Ergo pounding it from the back

How to go back to writing, anons? I'm completely disillusioned with literature. I want to write, don't even know really why, but I don't believe in literature anymore as a cultural relevant media.

>>17854169
Just put your booty in a chair and write something. Doesn’t have to be good, doesn’t have to go anywhere, just has to be something.

>>17854169
Then write for your own sake. Literature has been, and always will be, culturally relevant. If you are of the opinion otherwise then write for another reason. Don't make the thread any worse than it already is with your useless whimpering.

>>17854369
>just has to be something
That's the problem. It's nothing. It's not even trash, It's pointless.

>>17854373
If I write for my own sake, I feel guilty. By culturally relevant I mean that literature is kind of subservient to the other media. People nowadays don't write for books, they write for movies, comics, TV series, games, etc. A writer to be "sucessful" is to become a screenwriter. It's okay, we have musicians who do music for these media, designers who do drawings for these things, etctera, but writing is different. You can't "write books" and expect to be good on writing movies, or the contrary. And I feel that writers nowadays have more profit writing for these other media, because the most a book can get today is to be adapted to film.

>>17854475
Books make up a ton of money for writers. Even Sanderson, who has sold off the rights to his work a lot, makes most of his money from his books.
Your rights my net you 20-50K every few years depending on how big you are, but if you're writing and selling books consistently, you can make 100K a year, and you'll always have the residuals.
You're 0/2 so far.
Face the facts and ignore wherever those opinions are coming from.

>>17853474

I've been writing some short stories lately, but they all suck. Either I end up writing something in that stupid American MFA style or trip over my shoelaces trying to write something like Borges. What do?

>>17854169
>don't even know really why
Find out

>>17854517
I don't have Sanderson's personality or ambitions (I don't want to write genre fiction, or be perceived as a genre writer). Also, I'm not american. In my country literature is less valued than most.

>>17854523
I suspect I'm depressed. I'm becoming old, I didn't do the things I swear to do, and I feel as if I was a worthless lost case trying to use literature as a way to find purpose in life/to redeem myself. Basically, I feel like an imposter.

To be real I'm jealous of you. Having time to write, even more fiction, which is not useful for people, is a luxury. You have to have a lot of privilege.

>>17854572
The got guy is old as dirt and he is still writing and creating works. No, he isn't writing got novels but he is writing other things

>>17853474
connect the dots. best writer of out time.
milkfloat or not.
>inb4labryinth

>>17854572
You know people sell books in countries they don't live in, right?

>>17853515
>>17853517
>>17853530
>>17853539
Jesus Christ, you fags have got to be pathetic if a picture bothers you so much, to the point you have to make a new thread before the old one even hit the bump limit.

>>17853687
People here don’t event write, except the animefags. I don’t know what else you were expecting.

>>17854796
My point is exactly this. If his book series wasn't adapted to a TV series, you wouldn't be mentioning him. Now think about all the others obscure/unknown authors with possibly better works but that never saw the lens of a film camera.

>>17854808
How? Writing in english just to sell more? No. Nabokovs and Conrads are rare. Not everyone can write good literature in other language. And if your book is good enough, it'd be untranslatable/unadaptable to other languages/medias.

I sat there, looking at the screen. The pale blue of yotsuba B flowing into my retinas, causing all the same processes that blue light has come to be known for in the modern age. I thought of what to write. Reading about how other anonymous users of the same imageboard struggled with the simple feeling of needing to do something but being completely inhibited by something, a conflicting feeling. For myself, I continued to think about the work I needed to do tonight. Repetitious images and words flew through my head at rapid speed. Pleadings. Flinings. Editing. Contact. Clients. Formatting. Research. Building a legacy. Each idea having the possibility of splintering off into another slew of issues, none of which I wanted to deal with in that moment. In that moment I wanted to write something. Anything. So I started writing this, not knowing what it was, but I continued writing it for this long just because it is the post that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends. Some people started writing, not knowing what it was and they'll continue writing it forever just because-

I've been thinking of going back to an old idea from when I was a kid. I used to make little people out of twisty-ties about half-an-inch tall and write stories about them. I had this stupid idea that gunpowder wouldn't work for them (but apparently everything else was normal) so they used crossbows, bows, spears, and swords, as well as having mounted automatic crossbows and some pneumatic guns and such but these were very heavy. They most lived in fear of humans and hid from them and there was a general pact/oath they were all bound by to never reveal themselves to humans. I had them fighting robots made by a human lab that had discovered them, but also just generally going on adventures and such. Even had one where they had a duel with robots balanced on the edge of a house fan. Or a swordfight with each other inside a tube of electrical wires where one dodged a thrust, the guy ends up stabbing the electrical wire and electrocuting himself. Over time I added some bandit nations. Some of them had genocidal motivations against humanity, while most of the little people treated humanity like a force of nature that simply had to be endured (like hurricanes).

Anyway, these were very childish stories. I guess in some ways it is inherently childish. I was thinking of going back. I did write a bit of something when I was 17 or 18 (which was almost ten years ago) which had my old main character get swept into a human laboratory where they were studying the little people, and using tiny robots to keep them in order. The leader of the "resistance" had plans to gas the lab and kill as many humans as possible then shoot the survivors in the eyes with tiny capsacin arrows, but the others thought he was nuts for trying to go up against humanity, and the guy basically told them they were pussies for wanting to take the slaughter of their people laying down. That was probably the closest I ever had to something compelling.

I like the idea now of writing something where several nations of these little people live in the fields and tree copses of a cloverleaf on ramp by a highway. There would be interesting terrain and strategies for these small nations to wage war on each other for resources. Maybe it's just cause I'm reading game of thrones lately. I had a huge 300k words story that was completely separate but I haven't worked on it for like 4 years now, it was autistic unpublishable trash anyway...

>>17854972
Don't make the thread any worse than it already is with your useless blogpost.

>>17855017
ok sorry

>>17855021
Your post had to do with the writing process and explaining your ideas and internal struggles over those ideas. Don't let the other anon who's butmad about no one writing or the OP not being anime or whatever fucking bullshit hate they have for blogposts get you down. Write your dumb story about twisty tie men. Fuck it. Fuck >>17855017

>>17855040
>Writing genre fiction
What the fuck happen to this generals? We should be aiming to be the next Nabokovs, Conrads, Faulkner, Joyce, not this childish bullshit.

>>17854902
Someone mad that OP beat them to the new thread creation

>>17855102
He wasn't the one who created a new thread before the old one hit the bump limit, so....

>>17855080
Please point to authors from these threads that were even close to being Nabokovs, Conrads, Faulkner, Joyces

You will never be satisfied by the quality of these threads.
>no one posts work!
>people post work but it's anime trash!
>people post work but it's genre trash!
>people post work but it's bad!
>people post work but it's hosted on a website that's not pastebin!
>people post work but it's hosted on pastebin and it looks ugly because it's not formatted!
>people post work but it's posted in 6 sequential posts and takes up all the room!
>no one talks about the writing process!
>people keep posting blog posts instead of posting work!
>people keep talking about what they think instead of posting work!
>people keep recommending books instead of posting work!


In a perfect world what do these threads even look like to you?
Does it look like a /critique/ thread? Because I fucking remember /crit/ threads. They would fucking die. They would plummet to page 10 and the content that was on them wasn't worth it's weight in captchas. Users posting unedited garbage that would receive no crit. No guidance to other anons on how to give quality feedback. Anons so stupid they didn't even know what to ask for even if they got it. Valuable feedback like 'based' and 'I like this' or 'I don't like this'. I remember them well and every single iteration of /crit/ was shit. Is that what you want? Because this is /wg/, not /crit/. If you want your pure fantasy land of a bunch of autistic misfits on a board about stringing together words, you can go ahead and try once again, like other anons have and watch it's quality sink lower than the quality that this board already is. Fuck you, anon.

>>17855080
fair. but shouldn't we take it a step further and instead aim not on abstractions but on being itself? should we not aim to BE our fictions?

>>17855163
based. i like this

How do I get better at prose? There are times I feel like I'm writing prose really well, but that's only 10% of the time.

>>17853474
I’m writing a screenplay. I think the concept is good (not that original to begin with but the way I’ll use it should be very interesting) but I feel like it’s ambitious for me. I think I’m not talented enough to pull it off. I want it to be multi-layared and take influence from esotericism, Debord, Baudrillard and pedo networks in Hollywood. This shit is depressing.

>>17855177
Read more of the prose you want to write like. Try typing like the prose you like or write a sentence and try rewriting it in as many different ways as you can. My prose changes dramatically when I find myself in a different place mentally. Like I channel a different person or character. Like acting or improving as a wacky character, but with the words I put one after another.

>>17855163
So, that’s your solution to accept your mediocrity? I remember a time where we would drive away the those who posted anime-inspired works or posted genre trash. It’s no wonder no one here is improving.

>>17854902
>seething

>>17855163
/crit/ and /poetrycrit/ could be very good, but what was key to them was the trade crit for crit rule, and the occasional agent/editor who would tell you what to do for what you were writing. I think the poetry ones did better because one guy would comb through the whole thread and tell you where scansion was off or what images didn't work, so even when they didn't have a crit for crit rule, they had some anon who read shit somewhat intelligently and everyone got some crit.
Looking over the rest of the thread I feel I should specify I'm just recounting old memories of crit threads and don't really care about whatever the fuck these new memes are.

>>17855177
from what i've seen among contemporary fiction writers, the trick is not to care about prose.

>>17853888
>What surprised her the most, was how little she felt of anything as she listened to her mother take her last few breaths.

>>17855196
I wrote the OP and I don’t remember any of the shit you’re trying to sell.

>>17855204
>Pointing out the obvious is now seething

What's with me wanting to be a writer and loving to come up with ideas but I hate writing

>>17855190
Finish your screenplay and then inject the things you want into it during the editing process. One step at a time, bud.

>>17855442
You haven’t written enough to enjoy the rote process as a practiced skill. It’s uncomfortable and new for you like a child learning how to shape a G chord on a guitar neck that’s too big for his hands.

>>17855442
writing uses intense focus whereas free-associative thinking uses sublimated focus.

I want to write a simple hero's journey. I've got the princess and I've got the baddies. Anything else I need?

>>17855616
A hero and a journey.

>>17853474
Can someone judge my writing pls?

> Old Judge Priest, our circuit judge, and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, would have naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good right arm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for the judge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn or a little later, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittled wood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was as plastic as sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown, full of tiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spread and burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then, with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small round disks and delicately pink each one with a fork—and then, if you were listening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of an iron lip.

>>17855632
Purple.

>>17855632
Is there a particular reason he's a circuit court judge and not a district or county court judge?

I'm sorry for my lawyer autism.

Wrote 900 or so words tonight. Finished off a section of the story, too, which was nice.

Still looking for an agent or a small press for my earlier book. No luck so far, though I did submit to a literary agency about two months ago and haven't heard back from them yet.

>>17855442
write really minimalistically to the point youre just listing your ideas of whats going to happen. flesh it out if you wanna, dont if you dont.

>>17855754
>Still looking for an agent or a small press for my earlier book.
Why a small press? Small presses tend to fill the niches that larger publishers neglect or ignore. And I thought, they focus on regional titles, narrow specializations and niche genres.

>No luck so far, though I did submit to a literary agency about two months ago and haven't heard back from them yet.
Anon, I think you should move on. It's unlikely they will take your story, besides I think if you haven't hear from them in weeks, assume they've passed you.

>>17854572
I think you have a lot of problems that whatever you think writing is, may not actually solve...

>>17855827
Nah they say they always respond, it just sometimes takes months. They are a somewhat notable agency, so I may not have good odds with them, but at least I will get a response.

I'm looking for someone who can help me get a sci-fi book published. An agent, an editor, something like that.

>>17855882
You should send it to multiple small presses then. I think that's what a few anons do, that or they self-published.

>>17855890
You wouldn't happen to know a good resource for looking them up, would you?

>>17855786
That is a good idea I'll probably try it out. However it's really prose that I struggle with. Frankly Im not very good or deep.

>>17855932
>You wouldn't happen to know a good resource for looking them up, would you?
I just look up the website on the publishing house. I think they tell you what you need to do, and what to send to their agents. Apologizes in using this, but its an example.

https://www.irenegoodman.com/our-team

>>17855177
Good prose is a combination of two things: patterns and precision. I believe an author should, first and foremost, let their natural speaking voice be their guide. You should mostly write the way you speak (obviously dialogue is a bit different). Listen to yourself when you're talking, note the differences when you're explaining something or when you're asking a question. Are you submissive, assertive, etc. etc. Let this voice be heard when you write. I also believe that your natural speaking voice can be enhanced through the effective execution of patterns and precision.

Humans are primed to recognize patterns. Moon cycles, seasons, planetary rotations. The ability to recognize and interpret patterns gives us an edge in the fight for survival. In writing, patterns take the form of sentences and paragraphs. You can establish patterns and break expected patterns. Poetry functions based on the former, and humor on the latter. Perhaps you are familiar with the comedic rule of threes: the same, the same, and perhaps the most similar of all... something different.

Note the pattern of the preceding paragraph. Thesis stated, thesis explained, thesis demonstrated. Classic rhetoric. I could dial this notion back out on a wider scope: following this pattern of classic rhetoric for two paragraphs only to break it in the third paragraph by having the "demonstration" utterly contradict the stated/explained thesis. Now note the pattern established in the first sentence of this paragraph: two P's followed with open-mouthed vowel sounds sandwiching a P followed by a closed-mouth consonant. That was an example of alliteration and assonance. It's a matter of taste, but I believe that sentence stands out, indicating to the reader that it is more important than the surroundings. Oftentimes sentences stick in our minds because the information they relate is notable, and other times they stick in our minds because they follow some sort of pattern. Hence why it is so much easier to remember song lyrics than a block of standard prose.

Never, ever let the desire to follow a pattern overwhelm the clarity of your work. Otherwise you will simply produce a block of muddled nonsense. Which leads to my next point: precision.
(1/2)

>>17855996
(2/2)
Two different words may very well share the same definition but have different meanings. Skinny vs lean, when describing a person, is a good example. When writing, it is important to choose the word which will most fully express your meaning. Consider these two descriptions of a man digging into a hole:
>He pushed the shovel down into the ground and scooped some out, throwing it behind him.
>He thrust the shovel into the soil, wrenched a load free, and heaved it back over his shoulder.
"Thrust", "wrench", and "heave" all have connotations of hard manual labor in a way that "push" and "scoop" do not, thusly creating a richer, more evocative image. You can "push" a pillow off a bed, but to say that you "heaved" it off the bed creates a silly image of someone struggling with a light load. Perhaps that is your goal, in which case "heave" would be the best word. Again, this is a matter of taste. If your reader has never encountered the word "heave" outside of your story, then they may get the idea that it indicates a gentle push.

I could go on and on but these are the basics. It is best for the writer to develop his own understanding of these two principles. You will note that most authors who are lauded for their prose typically have some of the following: they also write poetry, they speak multiple languages, and/or they possess a college degree in their native language. These sources represent a good starting point for any aspiring prose stylist.

The latest Karen target on the internet is a self-published writer. If she can get stuff onto KDP, so can you

https://www.amazon.com/Americant-Romance-Stephanie-Denaro-ebook/dp/B01BQJ0V1Q

How do I come up with solutions to the following problems:
Characters and a setting but not much of a plot.
Too much outlining to the point if feels like you straitjacketed yourself when it comes to writing the actual plot.

>>17856238
Your characters are more important than your plot

>>17856238
>Characters and a setting but not much of a plot.
Just steal one from the classics. Go back far enough and it stops being theft and becomes a tribute.

>>17856238
i'd start by looking for plot points that can be interpreted in a more character-driven manner.

>>17856221
>"racist and hateful"
Sounds like a winner already

Is KotH the embodiment of BurgerPunk? Do I just need to write the novel version of it?

>>17855442
Like 99% of the population, you're caught up with the perceived glamour of writing and you have random ideas but don't actually know how to write good

>>17856238
>Characters and a setting but not much of a plot
The plot should follow naturally from the characters and setting. If you're thinking about these things in static terms, stop. You don't have a setting or characters unless you can imagine them in motion.
>Too much outlining to the point if feels like you straitjacketed yourself when it comes to writing the actual plot
Literally just stop doing that. Use a spreadsheet where rows are major plot points and columns are which subplots or logical plot sections they belong to. One sentence per plot point.

Unraveled, the ribbons which bound my delicate constitution are loosed upon the ground and piled in concentric whorls. In the scant moment before my collapse I consider whether I’ll break first at the waist or neck.

>>17853888
I thought it was really good. What now? Where is this going?

>>17854972
Enough fooling around, write something down

>>17855632
First sentence too long and borderline nonsensical

>>17854911
>And if your book is good enough, it'd be untranslatable/unadaptable to other languages/medias.
lol

bump, based OP. These anime nerds need to go. Look at how they seethe when you take their safe space from them. They need to realize thy don't own this thread.

I just self published a novella with no expectation of success and aiming to build up a back catalogue, but geez the zero purchases sure don't help my motivation to work on the next one

I realize self-publishing is somewhat popular in these threads, but has anyone in them had any success at all doing this? Like, have any of you guys who have self-published sold any more than a few dozen copies of your books?

>>17856715
There was a Venezuelan Animefag who has a small following and sells like hundred of books. Don't know if he's lurking.

>>17853474
>Any progress
At 53k words now. I have moved on to writing segments describing my jealousy of people who were in romantic relationships prior to entering military service and therefore had someone waiting for them during leave other than their mothers.
>Are the themes of time, space, infinity, memory or pointless dueling present in your work?
Themes of continuity and succession from one generation to another are present.

I suspect the process of trying to break into the world of traditional publishing is just as soul destroying as being a failed self publisher

Here's my second story of the night.

>>17856715
>has anyone[..]had any success
no

>>17856746
;_;

>>17856715
you can contact john david card and ask him.

>>17856744
>meme words
>video games
>4chan
why did you even waste your time on this?

>>17856760
>Best Sellers Rank: #637,706 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
>#135 in Occult Rosicrucianism
>#302 in Hermetism & Rosicrucianism
>#696 in Consciousness & Thought (Kindle Store)

>>17856786
>#302 in Hermetism & Rosicrucianism
lol I don't k even know what this is, sounds like crazy people books

>>17856786
is there a way to put this in perspective. the kindle store seems like a pretty broad category.

Is writing in third person writing in past tense?

>>17856812
they are different things

>>17856792
It's magic, Anon. Hermeticism is a fancy word for magic.

>>17856812
He was running.
He is running.
I was running.
I am running.

>>17856812
As long as it doesn't include the word "suddenly"

can anyone recommend some short fiction to read? i enjoy long meandering scenes that don't really go anywhere so i feel really out of my element writing short fiction with a wordcount limit

>>17856827
>thread has Borges as the OP
Look no further.

>>17856795
If there are more than a half a million books selling better than yours I do not think that counts as "success."

>>17856813
>>17856822
I know, I meant does writing in third person imply writing in past tense?

For example:

>"blah blah" said anon, as he is running into the wall.
or
>"blah blah" said anon, as he was running into the wall.

The first one sounds awkward.

>>17856825
?

>>17856843
but in the context of self publishing?

>>17856846
Of course it sounds awkward because you mixed your tenses. It should be
>"blah, blah", says anon, as he runs into the wall

>>17856846
That’s because the first one should be says anon, not said because said is past tense.

>>17856857
>>17856858

A couple of years ago my best friend and I rode our bicycles across Canada, camping in remote locations along the way. I'm recounting the journey in a novel that depicts the day-by-day reality of the journey.

I've received some -very- good feedback from writers I personally know, but the 4chan crowd seems a little lukewarm on it.

Here's a segment from about 30k words in. Is this something you'd read more of? It's meant to address themes of mental health, modern alienation, general millennial malaise, and how a purposeful life and sense of belonging and togetherness can overcome these.

>https://pastebin.pl/view/8dbd31b6

>>17856860
Is there a problem?

>>17856865
I just didn't notice that. I have a grammar problem lol. Is writing in present tense common? I can't think of an example, the only way I see that sentence working is if it's used in dialogue.

>>17856873
Present first person is popular in YA fiction and romance. It’s fucking awful. It’s the most nails on chalkboard style inherent to its compositional fundamentals, imo. There’s an aesthetic reversion where I wish that the text hadn’t been written after I read it.

>>17856873
I would never do such a thing and don't think I've ever read anything that does either.

>>17856768
Probably one of those 1000wph "super-productive" anons

>>17856882
lol

There's been some good 1st-persons and even some good 1st-person/3rd-person switcheroos but yeah, the YA and bodice ripper genres have given the format a terrible name

>>17855286
Yeah that’s why he called it gross.

Third story.

>>17856948
>1 sentence paragraphs
>ALL CAPS
>"Annnnnnnnnnd"
>stuttering

You're wasting your time kid.

>>17853474
Published pic related almost two years ago
It got shortlisted for an award but didn't win
Hoping to have another book out later this year
I'm still nowhere near being able to quit my day job but progress is being made

>>17856948
dafuq is this shit lol

ngmi

>>17856997
Is this copypasta? Lol i've seen this like 10 times

>>17857006
Just writing a bunch of short stories. I took a small break and I need to start writing again. And I thought this would help. Don't you write short stories after a break?

>>17857006
Just writing a bunch of short stories. I took a small break and I need to start writing again. And I thought this would help. Don't you write short stories after a break? Anyways, here's my fourth.

>>17857051
>second person

>>17856458
>I thought it was really good. What now? Where is this going?

I intend for it to be a space opera type thing. Current plan is the MC is a “pathfinder” or something yet to be named, she’s basically a space wizard that can see wormholes which is the only way to travel faster than light in this universe. The space wizards don’t actually have any other abilities they are glorified navigators, but extremely valuable.

There is a prophet type alien who leads a small crew to go find the MC and they lie to her about how they’ll contact the nearby government to come rescue her village and that she’s a space wizard. They tell her she is to be joining a religious order where she’ll gain the power and influence she needs to save her little village and other similar little villages. In reality they kidnap her so that she can be conscripted into the service of this fascist type government that controls a nearby sector of their galaxy and needs the pathfinders to expand their radius of control.

Her goal of course is to escape and go rescue her dad and the rest of the villagers once she discovers she’s been lied to and manipulated.

>>17857051
Not recently. Work's cranked up.

Not a big fan of this one. All exposition no action.

I want to write a serious, mature novel but everything I think of is along anime lines. The ideas I come up with are something you might find in a mature anime or light novel, but not a real novel. Why is this happening and how do I change it?

>>17857762
Focus more on characters emotions and feeling, rather than jumping from set piece to set piece.
Have something happen to a character, and explore more on how they would feel about it, how they would handle the situation, and what the outcome would be.
Also, allow your characters time to reflect on what is happening. Don't be afraid to slow the story down to a crawl to allow the reader time to breathe.

It's okay if your story has 'Anime-esque Tropes', just don't rely on them to tell your entire story.
If your characters are fighting kaiju in giant robots, then take some time to explore how the battles are effecting the 'everyday man', rather than just having a huge fight with no repercussion for any collateral damage, does that make sense?

>>17855644
>>17855646
>>17856458
Hahah you boobs, i tricked you! it is not my own writing, for it came from the book escape of mr. trimm! Ha ha ha hahahahah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caGMK3QYM-c

>>17857873
Hm. How do I put this? I think my primary hurdle is that the inspiration that happens between deciding to write a story and getting something on the page is anime-esque. It’s as if there’s things I’ll want to include in my writing that I might’ve been inspired from a light novel or an anime or something but I don’t really know how to go about it without the typical fantasy, harem, self insert anime tropes, which I don’t want to do. I really like stories that are mostly realistic but drip in very small elements of fantasy or the paranormal, but I don’t really want to write those stories myself. The light novel author always has a card up his sleeve in the form of a new girl, or a time travel arc, or whatever but to write a serious novel, I feel like I can’t rely on any of that to tell my story.

>>17856394
I know I dont know how to express my themes

>>17857056
The only literature I've seen use second person is erotica
> She looks at you with timid eyes and then puts your cock in her mouth

>>17858010
>I want to make a serious mature novel
How about you write a classic music piece as your first month music study? Or create a lifelike sculpture after learning the basic tools?
Also, light novels or pulp fiction are not inferior, they take a lot of skill and effort. Nor do they have to speak of lesser matters.

>>17858127
What argh yer themes, matey?

Should I exaggerate the bad qualities in someone I disliked to give my story more of a "villain"? Do you think he'd be offended? I seriously doubt he'd ever read the book and I'm naturally changing everyone's names but my own.

>>17858295
Did I bother you or something? I don’t think it’s controversial to say that light novels aren’t quite as mature as novels. That’s not a denigrating accusation, but just true as I see it. I wasn’t meaning to imply they’re not valuable for what they are. I only meant that it’s not what I want to write. And I’m talking about a mature novel, not a classic masterpiece work of art here.

>>17858373
It's not what I said. I said that expecting too much from your early works is foolhardy, because it's likely that you don't yet have enough experience with dramaturgy and prose. Writing as good as you can right now is how your improve.

Also, what do you mean by a mature novel?

>>17857082
My interest in your story just vanished.

>>17858437
That’s fine

I feel too distracted to write.
I've been doing some decent money on patreon for writing shit but my series is about to end. I've started two other series while that one ends so I can try to keep people interested and/or atract new supporters. I love writing, but I keep thinking I'm a guy who just got lucky once and people won't be interested in my other stuff. I'd keep writing even if I wasn't making money, but I can't help but wish I could do this for a living. It's keeping me too distracted to think of my own stories.

Sorry for the rant. Might have been better to take to a Write What's on Your Mind thread, but I wonder if any of you has any advice to forget about stupid money shit and focus on my own stuff.

>>17858415
>Also, what do you mean by a mature novel?
I mean a novel with mature themes, characters, events. I don’t want to write a book with high school characters, harems, fantasy, and things like that. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just not what I want to write and yet, that’s how my ideas come to me, probably because I’m too exposed to that flavor of story telling even though I read a lot of novels. There’s a sweet spot between the two that I want to hone in on and I just can’t seem to get there.

>>17858610
So, you want to write a contemporary novel without harems and high school? Write as you can and improve towards where you want. My story is about giant robots and beautiful women, yet it developed to be more about cosmology and what I think about future of humanity because I always wrote what I cared about instead of searching for the magic headstart.

>>17858610
Shut the fuck up you sound like the biggest pseud on the board
Stop getting philosophical about the idea of having a completed story and what kind of content you would want to have in that story and just complete a fucking story

>>17858644
I agree with this guy, because you'll probably end up where this guy is >>17858643

Either way you win.

>>17858644
I see I struck a nerve because I denigrated your precious anime books.

>>17858610
> I want to write mature stuff
> I only read things I don't find mature because mature stuff doesn't interest me (understand : novels authors are shit and I can do better than them)
> But I want to write
> Ah shit, why doesn't it come to me?
Stop being a pseud and just fucking write what yoiu like, goddamn

>>17858668
I watched one anime 5 years ago and it was TTGL
I do not think my stories have anything to do with anime
In fact the word anime does not ever come to my mind except when you say it which you have done completely unprompted
I am forced to conclude that /a/ is living rent-free in your head and that taking posts on this site seriously has crippled your ability to produce anything of any value
Again my recommendation is to shut the fuck up and go write

I'm so excited to submit my last assignment in May and have a solid 3+ months to write my first draft.

>>17858750
What's it about

>>17858610
You are the antithesis of what a writer is. You will never write a compelling novel about something you have no interest in. Your desire to do so is clearly based on standards of 'success' as a writer of literary fiction, rather than a result of the true creative force that drives great writers. It also just tells me you haven't really lived and you're probably quite long. Try to take an interest in other people and in life and your interests might change. Give it time.

>>17858784
An unbelievably selfish woman. She muses over her past in diary form, first person POV. She refuses to settle for anything and has destroyed the lives of a ton of people in the process. Deeply believes that doing so was justified in her 'pursuit of love and happiness'. Very self-deluded which becomes increasingly apparent as the novel goes on and she does more and more terrible things, so the reader goes from initially empathising with a neglected child bullied by her mother to sort of feeling horrified at how destructive she becomes. Sort of a modern day Emma Bovary, shades of Anais Nin.

There are a few elements that I really think are original, which I won't share here, but the outline is completely finished and I've got a lot of hope of getting it published. Fingers crossed.

How long, roughly, do you think action scenes should be in genre fiction? I have a feeling that mine are too long. I keep them under 2500 words, but that feels like a lot. Do any of you write thrillers, or know how long they tend to be in that genre?

>>17858854
Sounds good to me sir, that's similar to the kind of book I want to write after I finish my current one
I would likely never read yours because of the female protagonist but good luck with it

>>17858788
> skims over the part where I say in plain English that I read a lot of what I’m trying to write
> “Dude, you have no interest in it”
> continues to project bullshit
Just admit that you’re upset I didn’t praise your beloved anime novels as a pinnacle of literature. I’m sorry I triggered you, anon but that wasn’t my intent.

>>17858788
Also I’m 28 and I’m almost certain that I’ve “lived” far more than you have. But again, thanks for the giant sweeping generalization and projection. Really helpful, though I’m not sure if you even meant to be.

>>17858685
Another one who totally skipped the plain English where I said I read a lot of what I want to write. Did you even read? No wonder the rest of this board talks about this general as shit.

>>17858876
Don't completely shut yourself off to female protagonists. That would rule out Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Middlemarch, and scores of other really brilliant books.

>>17858860
As long as it matters to characters. If you put arbitrary lengths, the reader might notice the marionette strings and lose immersion.

>>17858884
>>17858891
I am not any of the people who has responded to you so far but based on these posts alone and a cursory glance of your earlier ones you seem super insecure. Who cares dude, this is a writing thread on 4chans literature board. If you think you can go write a great novel go write one, you'll either succeed or fail. Thinking anybody here could give you any meaningful advice on writing a great piece of literary fiction is itself immature. Stop getting so irate at what anonymous people think about a book you yourself say you can't write. Lmao

>>17857762
>>17858610
>>17858010
I refuse to believe these aren't troll posts
>I just can't seem to get there
Gee, you don't say

>>17858860
That's like avoiding books with male protags because they tend to be psycopaths, or simply as dense as a rock.

>>17858923
What I am is a little peeved because I came here, which I never do, asking for sincere advice from people I presumed not only write but could understand what I’m saying and in reply I got “You’re not a writer. You’ll never be a writer.” from people who apparently don’t even read and that includes yourself. Go back and read my posts once again. I never asked for advice on how to write a “great novel” I asked a pretty specific question about inspiration and themes. You guys didn’t like it I guess. Okay, fine. It’s not like I’ll be coming back here but I just wanted to point out how absolutely awful these replies have been, mostly because of the peeve.

>>17858952
Except for that one guy. Whoever you are, thanks for responding seriously.

Okay, so you know about technology eras? Like Textile industry > steam and railroads > steel and electricity > current industrial age > information and nuclear age > What do you think will be 6 and 7?

>>17858952
Then prove them wrong, stop getting upset over anonymous replies, it's not masculine. Just gives me more reason to think your self worth is tied to the opinions of others. Literally nobody in these threads is successful or they wouldn't be here, yourself included. If you really want to get better do what literally all good writers did and read widely and deeply, including most of the classics

>>17858981
The Age of Islamic Stasis, millennia of absolutely no progress that will only end when a massive natural disaster causes the global caliphate to collapse at the cost of sending mankind back to the stone age.

I wrote another page of Blackula. I'm at the part where Van Helsing (Van Hassain) is going to meet Mina and John (Moesha and Jamarcus) Harker

>>17858915
I'm married to a man and women are so far removed from my personal life that I feel no desire to read about them

>>17859137
>”this is it,” muttered Van Hassain, “if I kill one more vampire, it’ll be the longest vampire kill streak that’s ever been.”

>>17858935
i can't tell what's what anymore chief

54k words reached. I don't need to be anywhere tomorrow so should I
A) Make coffee and tea and keep writing all night
or
B) Watch a movie or something

>>17859430
Don't burn out. Stop midway through a scene so you can pick it up easier tomorrow then put it out of your mind completely and watch a film with good plot, characterisation etc. If you pull an all nighter you'll just get diminishing returns and you'll be tired tomorrow

>>17856715
>I realize self-publishing is somewhat popular in these threads,
News to me. On a technical basis, tradpublishing is what peusds prefer, but they're just that. Pesuds.

>>17859430
Enjoy something about the field your work is in to recharge.

>>17859612
Uuno Turhapuro armeijan leivissä seems like the right choice then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rij_6Sl0C84

I am going to reach 50k words today. 20kish more to go afterwards. Then I have to do heavy edits, then line edits, but then... Then I get to submit it... Maybe by the end of May... Almost there...

>>17859685
Good luck!

>>17856863

tfw no feedback :(

Art of Fiction - John Gardner:
>She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting
>two snakes were fighting

>verbs with auxiliaries ["were fighting"] are never as sharp in focus as verbs without auxiliaries, since the former indicate indefinite time, whereas the latter [e.g., "fought"] suggest a given instant

Thoughts? I disagree, I like "two snakes were fighting" better because it sounds more natural than "two snakes fought" even if it does contain a "helping" verb. Plus I don't think there's anything wrong with indicating an indefinite amount of time

>>17859810
I like "were fighting" better too. I guess we're never gonna make it.
>>17859741
I at least read it even if I don't have anything to offer you.

>>17859741
Honestly, I don't really care about contemporary.

>A short memoir essay:
I was too embarrassed to ask anyone in his family where he was buried. I went to the cemetery listed in his obituary. A bent, gray-haired woman in the mortuary office printed out a map of the cemetery and circled a zone. I walked the rows for what felt like hours before I found it. On a gentle hillside, the grave sloped to the right. It was a beautiful stone, engraved with an alpine lake and mountains, the sort of place he liked to hike. October 15, 2015. I’d told myself not to think about, not to calculate how it was almost exactly six months after he had emailed me. Not to think about how I had no idea until ten months after he’d been dead and gone. I stared through the stone for some time before I left, promising to return with flowers.
I poured over the email, trying to find any secret message of what he would do. He’d written, “I need to apologize to you. I'm sorry for abruptly breaking off communications with you and for not explaining. After the incident at my house last summer, I was afraid and felt really guilty, as if I'd tried to deceive my parents or something. At the time I didn't know how I should respond, so I stopped communicating all together. I'm sorry if what I did was hurtful to you at all. I hope that life and everything has been going well for you.”
Of course, there was no secret message. It was right there, staring at me. Apologizing, making restitution, trying to reconnect. And I’d brushed it aside.
When I returned to his grave, snow covered the ground. A winter bouquet of evergreen and artificial holly rested at the top of the grave. I cleared some of the snow away. A fold of soggy paper and plastic was wedged into the corner of the grave. It was a popular cemetery and not uncommon for trash to occasionally accumulate. As I pulled out the scrap, the wet tatters of an envelope fell away. Not just litter. I saw writing through the paper beneath. I knew I was stepping across a line into a sacred realm where I had no right to be, but I made my justifications. It was out in the open. It was right there. And I wanted to know anything so bad. I unfolded the paper. There were two distinct paragraphs, hand-written in pen, now blurred and blotted in the winter snow.
“Happy Birthday. We love you so much. It’s a beautiful fall day and we miss you so. Love, Mom.”
Below, scribbled in narrow print:
“You are constantly in our hearts and thoughts. How we wish you were here. Life is poorer and paler without you to share it with. Love, Dad.”
I gently folded the paper closed. Covering it as best I could with the plastic, I returned it to the corner of the grave, below the flowers.
I could see his face. Dad. I didn’t know his name. He hadn’t said a word to me when he found me that summer hiding in his home, nor when I babbled my apologies to him before fleeing. He never knew me. He'd never recognize me in a crowd. But we’d both stood in this spot, and we’d both found ourselves incomplete.

Is it worth paying $20 to submit to the Craft short literary contest, or will I inevitably get BTFO? Or paying for any contest for that matter?

Anyone know where I can find Aimee Chanellor's husband's child erotica writings? Is it on archive of our own or deviantart

>>17860189
I can't imagine why you'd pay for such a thing.

>>17859810
These are the kinds of tweaks that ngmi pseuds love to focus on. The reality is that either works and that some narrators will say it one way and others the other. The reader won't give a shit as long as the right narrator is saying it the right way. What readers care about at any given moment while reading a story is whether or not a scene as a whole is tight and is connected by some logic to the scene before it, and what they care about once they're done with the story is whether or not the ending satisfied them and gave them something to think about and remember the rest of the story by. There's the "art of fiction."

>>17859810
Isn't this just bitching about passive tense? I think it's fine, although it depends what follows. I feel like if they kept going with:
>two snakes were fighting. One snake had bit the other. They were coiled together, snapping and hissing. Blood was dripping onto the ground.
Would get a lot more tedious than if it had some active tense, eg:
>two snakes were fighting. One lunged and bit the other. Coiled together, they snapped and hissed. Blood dripped onto the ground.
So yeah, seems like a bit of a superficial fix, but that's what makes for popular "quick tips" and shit.

Chapter 21 released.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased
Hope everyone is making progress. I've got to say, I never fully understood why people said to split up drafting and editing in different chunks. I understood theoretically, but doing this now its a completely different mindset for doing both, I can't really draft on the days I edit. Actual editing, not spot line editing. Its weird. Two completely different frames of mind.

>>17858307
Me themes matey? Oh idk just ye know that technology is taking over our lives and makes us incredibly unhappy

>>17856279
I think I know what you're saying, but could you give an example?

>>17856400
>You don't have a setting or characters unless you can imagine them in motion.
Could you elaborate more on this?
>Literally just stop doing that
How do I save an over-outlined story?

>>17860710
Think the Unabomber already did a piece on that

>>17860752
>elaborate more
i arrived at the thought through a misreading of your post. i thought you had too much plot and not enough character interaction. But what I was saying might still have some resonance; a plot point that is purely transactional can be reinterpreted through character interaction and vice versa, depending on the origin of the symbolic exchange. this occurs a lot while writing connective tissue like scene transitions where you need to pass off some key, here you have the option to make it an action or build it into a moment of character interaction. essentially what i'm describing is the difference between phatic expression and emphatic expression.

What actually might help you is thinking about the symbolic order of what you have already written, because often this structure will propagate the rest of your story through deterministic reasoning. I confess though that this method of building plot is dismal compared to the freedom and naturality that comes with writing character and dialogue.

Throwaway essay I wrote critiquing the ideological weaponization of cuteness.

>The sugar encrusted world shown in the media contrasts jarringly with a society in turmoil and near omnipresent political tension. Softness captures us like a tub of honey; the moment that it charms you it sucks you in deeper. And why would you want to leave such delicious quicksand? There are many instances. Consider a contemporary avatar of adorableness, the irresistible green little burrito known as baby Yoda. Becoming an instant sensation online, baby Yoda indeed shows an aptitude for the force. The force, that is, of hypnotism, of mesmerizing distraction from reality.

https://write.as/xylyagqduupt5.md

>>17861401
a tub of honey doesn't work like quicksand, you can literally swim in it

https://youtu.be/cG8AuhDvh4o

>>17856712
Post link

>>17856712
I'll buy your ebook if it isn't too expensive

>>17856863
It's a little meandering for my tastes. But you've got some vivid imagery in there, and the prose is natural and you have a solid narrator voice.

What are words and phrases similar in meaning to "peering beyond the veil"? I need to figure out a more concise title like thing with the same meaning. I can't come up with a nice way to say it at all
>crossing the astral plane
>the border between life and death
>limbo (not what im going for)

Looking for like, some way to describe a place where dead memories, souls, whatevers, swim around

>>17858788
>You will never write a compelling novel about something you have no interest in.
>mfw not interested in anything but writing

>>17856863
boring, honestly. it's fine as your personal journal. i wouldn't read it as a novel. the sentence structure lacks variation in the beginning paragraphs. it caught my interest only by line 19 and then i didn't care anymore.
>It's meant to address themes of
i don't see any of these from this excerpt.
other than that it's fine.

>be me
>working on a 800 words per day habit
>jump around in story so I'll need to fix that in pre-editing
>finally think of a good way to start my story
>800 words a day two weeks later
>11,200 words later
>start pre-editing by reading that first chapter
>.... It turns out for about 9 or so days I was possessed by the spirit of Ayn Rand as one of my main characters goes on an rant about the US school system while the other character is just passively accepting everything as true
I think I'm just going to have to start over and bring my crucifix to ward off the spirit of author mouth pieces

>>17862466
I think a healthy practice (I don't follow it myself but I should) is to read exclusively nonfiction immediately before and while writing a fiction novel. I made the mistake of reading Blood Meridian while in the middle of my children's novel and my prose has gone way off the fucking rails.

>>17862338
Write about writing then?

Fuck it, I'll make a shameless self-insert fanfiction where I get to bang my waifu.

>>17860091
Someone pls giv feedback :(

>>17862781
based

>>17862781
Do it

>>17862466
>>jump around in story so I'll need to fix that in pre-editing
Is that something people do? Jump around a story at random, writing scenes as if there was setup before?

>>17861401
The high-handed, vaguely-apocalyptic philosophical tone you're taking is in direct contrast to the profoundly mundane observation that you're making. "Cute sells" is not a secret, almost every single piece of family entertainment produced in the last 70 years has included some kind of marketable side-character designed specifically to look adorable and lend itself easily to mass-production templates. Disney had been employing this strategy for over 70 years before they came up with Baby Yoda.

If you ever get struck by a lightning bolt of pure inspiration which leads to profound philosophical insight, 9 times out of 10 the source of this sudden insight is something so mind-numbingly obvious that no one but you has ever felt the need to point it out before.

>>17862908
I've done it and it creates some great scenes, but the hard part becomes connecting them. I have like 20k words on a story that basically just makes me freeze when I open the doc because there's so much reorganizing and planning I have to do now that I did the first bit off the cuff.

>>17862908
I think it was John Steinbeck who said he just skips the parts he has trouble writing and later discovers that those parts weren't necessary. You can actually see his progression on this subject if you read his novels chronologically. In Dubious Battle had a shitload of mundane scenes of characters traveling from one place to another, Cannery Row has traveling scenes but Steinbeck obviously makes an effort to include interesting observations/actions, The Grapes of Wrath is pretty much all travel but contains few scenes of straight-up driving without some sort of monologue relating these scenes to the overall theme of class struggle.

Very often I'll personally skip a scene which seemed necessary to move the plot forward and move on to the next chronological scene which interests me, and later on I'll go back and realize the transition wasn't as jarring as I initially thought, or that the exposition I was writing only served to answer questions which no one would ask. I wouldn't just jump around willy-nilly though, that seems like it would be pretty disorienting.

>>17862908
I skip scenes where I introduce new important characters or locations. Their introduction to the story should service their role in the story, not the other way around.

>>17862966
Oh that's fascinating. Thanks anon. I think this will help quite a bit when I do actually get back to writing.

>>17860999
Indeed and it's also inspired by Huxley but it examines more modern technology

Levi struggled but managed to keep up with what might prevent his body from temporarily but very violently, convulsing by taking his horse pills, he did the same with his online correspondence chess games. He had been for some reason rather into the unusual openings. He saw that if grandmasters were somehow winning games with them but do not recommend people play them, they might be hiding something. All Levi had to do was to analyze the positions with a computer and follow the continuations, perhaps use its positions as well. So he continued to do, or at least try.

Within his social life he saw that people were suggesting ideas to him. To him this meant the transmission of social disease. But he was more terrified of not the social contagion or disease like if it were a rise in teen suicides as a by-product of the increase of screen-time but social egotism itself, the one further back. “Social egotism is strikingly more horrifying in nature because it is the light at the end of the tunnel, headed right towards us!” – he thought.

At the same time, in the back of his mind, were the mechanical operations that structured his understanding of Russian reflexology. Reflexology was his only defense against what life could throw at him and when something made it through he instead focused on his chess. He was told by his father who was ignorant of his son’s universe of discourse and many others that there was nothing you can do about it, so don’t worry about it. However, he felt that he could put up a defense to protect himself from people.

The outside could be described as possessing a quality of being driven but chaotic, violent to the point of being vicious. It is that way because it must deconstruct at some point. This destructive power of it often acts as as if it were in self-interest and interested in that only. The outside can be vigorous, destructive, apathetic, delusional, hateful, peaceful, self-centered, lethargic or inactive. Levi knew that what governed the woods of the outside wasn't necessarily just the causes and effects of Newtonian mechanics but the stimuli and reflexes in-between.

>>17862896
Not my cup of tea. Writing is decent but seems melodramatic. Someone might like it though.

>>17860091
1) the ending doesn't make sense.

2) you have to write more of what actually happened, the hints aren't working.

3) fucking format them paragraphs, bud.

>>17862908
First I'd like to say that I would absolutely love it if I had a linear writing system where I sit down, plan it, plan the characters, plan the world to sufficient detail and from all that start writing.
Unfortunately that means that if I tried to do that, I would NEVER start writing. There will always be one more character to flesh out, one more world building event to detail, one more thing to chronicle in the timeline. Its just how my brain works unfortunately. So instead I just write. I see a great scene but that scene happens at the 2/5ths mark or 6/7ths mark. If I don't write it and worry about the bits surrounding it, I just don't write. So the deal I've given myself is the following: Go ahead and write it. The worst thing that happens is I will scrap it. Is it sad that I have scrapped over 500k worth of words? Yes but at the same time at least I got practice and wrote fucking something rather then get stuck trying to figure out if a static character's hair is 'light brown' or 'mousy brown'.

This is my fifth and final short story. I think I gotten back my usual writing tempo that I can head back to my story. Hope you all enjoy it. I also wish each and everyone of you are doing good on your writing.

Why do weebs come here? I don't get it. Is it because they can't draw their little cartoons that they want to write them instead? If that's so, why not go to the sci-fi writing thread? Or better yet, make their own anime writing general. That's a splendid idea. What say you weebs?

>>17863702
>Why do weebs come here?
4chan 2021

>>17862781
This is basically my novel except I also help her overcome her childhood trauma, and gain back her self-esteem. Then we go on a treasure hunt. Also in my novel I am initially a fish.

>>17863702
Anon, you can stop being delusional, everyone in /lit/ knows the weebs are the only writers here. Just because you made a thread early and post a non-anime pic in the OP doesn’t change the fact that the Writing General is where the weebs write their stories.

>>17863702
And if you must extend your weebness to writing, then you could at least do the tiniest bit of research and not name your character "rice porridge".

>>17863743
Fuck off, OP

>>17863702
you have it right that they can't draw. they can't go back to /a/ because it would never be allowed in the first place.

>>17863743
/lit/ is more than just words.

>>17863711
It's the newfags and tourist.

>>17860091
I don't know who the narrator is, who the dead guy is, why mom and dad are important, and I'm not interested in finding out

>>17863743
I want to tell you you're wrong, but even I am a weeb deep down and cannot ever be anything else.

I wrote some more Blackula

I smoked a cigarette and browsed the news. A story about niggers, written by a nigger, talked about how niggers needed more etc. The needs of a nigger are endless. A nigger on every TV channel. A nigger in every movie. Nothing but nigger music for niggers and those who wish to be niggers. That is almost worse than being a nigger. At least a nigger does not want to be a nigger. A nigger does not want to be a nigger so badly he will kill everyone who is not a nigger just so that he might not be reminded that he is a nigger. I was glad to be alone again in my room, where no nigger had ever been. There are few places like this left in the world. When the nigger was freed the world became the nigger's slave.

At night the niggers come out, brave in the absence of light, as if the night were an accomplice to the niggers, lending shadow to the misdeeds of the darkies. Beneath the luminescence of gaudy streetlights the gangs of niggers, in feral nigger packs, would stumble and howl, liquored up on cheap nigger drinksand enthused by the scantily clad negresses. In the day these niggers were more docile. The tumult of the niggers grew tedious and I decided to leave, to walk perhaps to a place where no niggers ever went. To do this I needed to walk down the niggerstained streets and wait in a subway overrun by niggers. Every nigger looked at me as if waiting for me to call them what they, as niggers, knew what I, as not a nigger, knew them to be. Most of the passengers were niggers or niglets. Each nigger stared at the other niggers with the suspicion that infects every nigger due to the violence inherent in each nigger and no one knows what a nigger is capable of more than a nigger. That is why niggers always leer as they do, for niggers assume that everyone has a propensity for violence equal to a nigger's.

>>17864146
In the fresh blossoming night air after I had risen from the stench of the niggersoiled subway I felt a peace that can only be known when all niggers are absent. Perhaps this is why niggers are so disgruntled, they never have the chance to leave niggers behind. Perhaps these types of free and fresh nights are not available to niggers who must leer with niggerhate in their niggerheads and niggerhearts all the days of their niggardly lives. But now the streets were clean, vacant of all niggers and the cacophony of niggers. I had come out of that nigger-Gehenna where the golems of the niggerloving kikes waste and writhe. I was lost in the coolness of a midnight devoid of darkies.

It was almost ruined, knowing I would have to return to the niggers. Knowing that everywhere else, niggers were muddying everything with their niggerhands and their niggernotions. But for now there was the peace of no niggers.

>>17864146
>copypasta
fuck off

First draft complete. Finally! Going to let it sit for a week or two before I edit. Keep writing.

>>17864192
>Keep writing
O-okay

>>17864192
Congrats anon, keep it up

>Any progress on your novels?
Some. I'm trying to write at least a page a day but I know I'm the kind of person that performs worse when I put pressure on myself to do things consistently, so I'm trying to take it as it comes. Ironically, that's caused me to write more recently.
>Time
Yeah. Not time travel, but the main setting is about 150 years from now (Martian State in Valles Marineris of all places), with the occasional flashback to about 15 years from now (first expedition of humans to Mars), so there'll be a little bit of time jumping.
If you're asking about time as a theme, yes. I'm interested in exploring how the imperfect nature of our universe is affected by the passage of time. If the time is necessary for existence to be the way it is by providing constant change, and this passage brings about a state of imperfection in us and nature, can something that is perfect ever change? How can one change positively in light of this fact? I'd argue that perfection is an ideal that can't be attained in reality, but one that we should strive for nonetheless. Some of my characters agree, others disagree.
>Space
It's set on Mars, so... ja. Logline is that a solar flare occurs one evening, causing everyone about to die at that moment to gain cosmic powers instead. This flare seems like a freak act of God (it pretty much is) but the first astronauts to set foot on Mars found "something" drifting in space on their way there that gave details of the event. Hence a little bit of jumping.
>Infinity
The idea that nothing but oneness can be infinite is a pretty core theme. A few of my religious characters subscribe to this doctrine wholly.
>Memory
This is probably something I'd need to include more of. I find worldbuilding is my forte over making fleshed out characters, so it'd be worth me delving into their memories and seeing what could influence their personas.
>Pointless dueling.
It's a book set on Mars about superpowers. You fucking bet.

>>17864144
You really are wasting your time. NGMI.

>>17864144
>>17864748
Don't listen to him anon, just learn to edit. Most drafts are terrible and you shouldn't feel bad for that.

>>17864192
>12k words
You really shouldn't need to let it sit for weeks. Short story editing is not the same kind of ordeal as novel editing.

Can anyone give me practical advice on how to make a living writing full-time?

I’ve been writing another novel but I want to quit my day job in order to write, not necessarily my novel but just write in general.

>>17853515
Basado but not basado

>>17865826
You should first find bit parts in mags and the like and try to build a resume there while on the job.

It just kinda hit me how far I've become alienated from modern literature. I read a book review about a new novel that is apparently nothing but graphic descriptions about a lonely guy masturbating while watching and fantasizing about gay porn. Sounds like anon's diary, but this got published and the review was very positive too. I'm just like what the hell, it's all so tiresome

>>17866212
What do you mean? Books and art in general has always been fucked up.

>>17853474
Does anyone have a link which quotes what Borges regarded as the four essential themes in writing? I distinctly remember one was "the double".

>>17866268
Define "always" and "fucked up"

>>17866380
Since we started writing stuff down and even before we figure words out, we always dreamt up of gross sex stuff. Our mythologies are filled with rape, the Hebrew Bible has a section where it celebrates sexual love, and something like The 120 Days of Sodom was made in 1785. Really, a guy just talking anuses for a novel sounds relatively boring and only somewhat disgusting.

>>17853474
>Borges Edition
thinking about stealing an idea from one of his short stories desu

>>17866546
You're glossing over a lot of details and history here for questionable reasons. De Sadie's book was scandalous when it came out, far from standard art, and it remains scandalous for many to this day. But we're talking about a book that puts biblical sinners to shame with its detailed depravity yet isn't treated as scandalous in the least by anyone, just a regular debut novel.

>>17866684
Maybe this is because I may be missing context, but a novel just detailing this random guy's porn habits doesn't really sound anything really disturbing.

>>17858952
if asshurt could produce solid literature you'd be timeless

I haven't written anything in a while, so I decided to write a story with mechs that isn't about mechs.
https://pastebin.com/quzTVwqp

Do any of you have a day job as a writer like a columnist or a freelancer? Would you recommend it or no?

>>17866704
It's not about being disturbing. Just, this got published and favorably reviewed, while most of your manuscripts don't even get a rejection message. Let that sink in

>>17867831
whats the name of the author? wondering about his early life

>>17867831
People can always submit to Jeff Bezo's publishing house

>>17867831
And? Just focus on your thing and ignore everything else. It'll just pain you to compare yourself to others.

>>17866212
You've found my autobiography

>>17867831
most manuscripts have zero impact and the authors didn't know how to create a story

Do you think deliberately edgy lit could be commercially successful? I was thinking and I realized that while there's a huge market for edge among zoomers and millenials (look at the popularity of edgy and violent anime and vidya), it's not really being exploited by Western authors.

>>17867831
Cool story, fuck off, Fagotrov

>>17868733
because of all that money that zoomers and millennials float around, right?

Last 3 digits of this post is how many words I have to write tonight

>>17868733
look, if 50 shades of grey can make it, any one can make it

>>17868877
yeah, this

50S isn't even good erotica, it was almost universally panned by the erotica segment. Stephanie Meyer just sucked off the right studio exec is all, and got all the power of the Hollywood hype machine pushing that shit onto the pleb masses

why are y'all even bothering with writing books? just make low content journals, calendars, and coloring books. they'll probably make you more money too

>>17863274
>This is my fifth and final short story.
What’s your secret? Nobody here can’t even write one flash fiction. Yet you’re able to write five short stories in such quick succession.

>>17869061
Just write. I've already written 90K words this month and that's a slow month.

Shilling another essay. A discerning reader might see Chesterton's influences. I went through a brief imitative phase of his.

https://write.as/yz2yv3cn07284.md

>>17868985
This is obviously a troll, but even if you were in earnest it would be pointless to answer a question like this, because the question assumes there's some ulterior motive for writing a novel. The simple answer is, I like reading novels. Other people like reading novels. It gives me pleasure to read novels, and so whenever I come up with a cool idea my first instinct is to frame it in the concept of a novel. I had an idea which I thought was so fascinating that I simply could not ignore it, and I chose to express it in the way that seemed most natural to me. I could attempt to explain further why I enjoy novels, but why bother? It only raises more questions.

But a bit more seriously, why I believe narrative fiction has value: right now I'm working on a novel which seeks to address political issues. Yes, I could very easily organize my ideas into a listicle or a youtube rant, but these mediums thrive on constant novelty. Even if I spoke the absolute undeniable truth and it turned out to be the key to saving the world, it would be forgotten by anyone who reads it in a few minutes. Whereas, if I embed my message in a story loaded with pathos and action, I can trick anyone who might ordinarily be hostile to my message into letting their guard down. Perhaps I may even compel them to reach the same conclusions I have.

What kind of explicit elements can I include in a story without running afoul of patreon?
For example, I think incest isn't allowed so I'd have to use stepsiblings. Or are cousins okay?
Highschool students aren't allowed so they have to be in college. Or can they all be third years?

>>17853474
I've been working on this for 3years and 30mins do I have a future in writing professor?
The ballad of the tranny Janies family :(

Just another one of the universe's equivalence of a parasite worm taper
You're no escaper
It's not in your nature
On top of that
You sell out mankind's freedom's for paper
Face it dude
You'll never be a woman you're just a gapper
Hottest thing about you is your 21 year old dike neighbour
Any real man tells you he love's you
Trust me he's a faker
Yo dat girl with the Adams apple and stubble, haay I want to date her !
Want a bun in the oven freak ?
Go ask a baker
Time to dilate now miss
Stick in a tater
You may as well a stuck your dick into an industrial grater
Who's the poor woman who carried you in labour?
Your mom dude ?
You must subconsciously hate her
Was it her or (you)
Mindfucked by a pedo tavistock institute caper
Pioneered by those hook noses that take off Seder
Cult fanatics just like the Mormons or Quaker
Slaves to an agenda without the mules and 40 acre
Has she apologised yet Dude ?
You should make her
Next suicide service for a budd
You should take her
Show her your friends face GRAB HER BY THE HEAD AND SHAKE HER.
say you're ment to come into the world to make it greater
Not
Watch your buds kill themselves and your self-esteem evaporate like vapor
No wonder the dark side eats you up like vader
At least that piece a shit managed to keep his own sabor

This is dynamite fishing for you I need no baiter
My words hit your head like a aimbot noobtube grenader
I'll get into your head and leave a fuckn crater
Ok stop
Hold up 4chan DJ cross the fader
There's a 40% probability this cunts gona off himself later

;)

>>17869061
Anyone can write shit-tier shorts like those

>>17869908
don't know about Patreon, but here are the banned list on Amazon KDP

> pedophilia
> underage
> beastiality, but human-animal hybrids like centaurs and werewolfs are ok
> incest, including pseudoincest like stepsiblings
> rape that is for arousal, noncon, dubcon

>>17869948
pyw

>>17869955
>KDP
?

>dubcon
?

>rape that is for arousal
by rights that should fuckin discount most every novel featuring an instance of rape on the market then

>>17870028
> KDP
Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon's self publishing service

> dubcon
dubious consent. For example
> I don't really want to have sex with this man, he is smelly, I wish he'd stop patting my back, but I don't want to be rude, oh my, his cock is inside me, this isn't so bad, it is a little nice

> not my raperinos
them's the rules. Also, for the incest, don't use the word "Daddy" in your book title, the KDP bots don't like it. It is fine in the book's text

>>17870062
>them's the rules
Yeah well, I'm just pointing out that most any kind of rape in literature is for titillation

>dubious consent
Another kek. Dubcon fucking built the soft porn lit empire. They weren't called "bodice rippers" for nothing.

>Kindle Direct Publishing
Thanks

>>17869955
>incest, including pseudoincest like stepsiblings
I just bought a couple of books like this? The fuck are you talking about? Hell, there's even stepdaddy and step-daughter erotica.

>>17870081
there's the rules for the big, real publishers and there's rules for the little guy, unfortunately. Penguin Random House is allowed to publish public domain material, but we are not. They're allowed to have hot rape sex in their books, we're not

>>17870095
if you browse through the erotica writer boards, you'll see that people have gotten banned off Amazon for uncle/aunt/niece/adopted child stories. Even people who have been writing for years and top the bestseller lists. Amazon will run an automated scan through your title and metadata, but for the interior content, they rely on customer complaints.

You might get away with it for a couple months, maybe even a couple of years if your book is not popular. But all it takes is one reader to rat you out to Amazon and at best, your book is blocked and worst case scenario, your publishing account is gone

>>17870098
>there's the rules for the big, real publishers and there's rules for the little guy
Yeah I know the score. Just random bitchin.

So... I haven't done any creative writing since high school, but for some reason in the middle of the night I had a book idea and am starting to flesh out an outline for it. If I pitched you guys the idea, would you give your honest thoughts and shit on it for me before I waste my time writing it, self-publishing on Amazon, and not selling a single copy?

>>17856025
>"Thrust", "wrench", and "heave"
The connotation they have is *momentum*, not just "hard manual labor". Get your precision up bro.

>>17870180
Sure. Go.

>>17870180
if you publish your book, I'd buy it. Even if it's shit, I wouldn't leave a 1-star review

Cop Car. Guy dies and his soul gets transferred into an experiential cop car and averts a supernatural conspiracy.

>>17870192
>Private corporation colonizes Mars, states too busy with ideological conflicts to be concerned about space
>In a bid to keep up, state space programs allow Mars to remain in corporate control but move to colonize other planets
>To ease global tensions, space programs work together to found colonies.
>Lasts for some period of time before tension between outer colonies and Earth/inner colonies (i.e. Mars, inner Asteroid belt, stations inside the belt) occur as outer colonies (Everything outside the belt) see themselves as mere resource slaves
>On the edge of hostilities breaking out, rare solar events occurs, knocking out electrical grid on Earth and inner colonies/stations, causing millions to die. Outer colonies survive just fine and begin to thrive on their own without Earth interference.
>Decades pass as Earth devolves into a dark age. Rather than interstate tensions forming on Earth, loose confederations form around a central global government that helps put down innerstate rebellions and bring the peace at last. Outer colonies pretend Earth and inner colonies don't exist due to the communications blackout.
>100 years post Solar event: Not enough resources on Earth to complete the task of repairing. Emergency bid to re-establish contact with surviving colonies begins
>Book is basically an adventure with group of protagonists colony hopping to secure trade and resources to help rebuild Earth, something the outer colonies are relatively opposed to.
I think it could be neat to flesh out the cultures that develop in isolation from what were once melting pots founded by cooperating space agencies and their citizens into now rather homogenous cultures and everything that comes with it. If it did okay, book 2 would be the inevitable inner colony and Earth conflict with the outer colonies.

>>17870197
Don't do that, anon, don't give me hope.

>>17870026
So you can steal it?

>>17853474
>Any progress on your novels?
Yes, after literal years of stalling, I finally began and knocked out four chapters. They're poorly written, and it's just a first draft, but it's something.

On the other hand, I'm fucking terrified because I don't know how to write anymore. Plus, the plot for my novel which I love is borderline hackneyed sci-fi stuff and I'm scared I'll never be taken seriously by anyone in my personal or professional life.

>>17870255
sounds like asimov's foundation

>>17870305
Right author, wrong series. That's the Caves of Steel setting.

>>17870255
>Book is basically an adventure with group of protagonists colony hopping to secure trade and resources to help rebuild Earth, something the outer colonies are relatively opposed to
The rest of your setting has been done over and over since literally the 50s, but this aspect is interesting. I don't know how you will make it interesting to read though. For all that they truly make the world go round, trade talks are terribly boring in actuality.

>>17870255
interdasting, I like the premise, it's probably how the humans in Star Wars look so diverse but experience no racism or anything, because they've been thrown out to space and became a homogeneous culture

>>17870332
I thought it would go something like HG Wells's Time Machine, main characters and his friends would go to Earth and find that they're all pale molerat people who live underground or some shiet

>>17870332
I wasn't really focusing on the trade talks so much as the cultural clash between old cultures on Earth and newer cultures founded on the outer colonies, like Anglo-Russian pidgin speakers on Ganymede or German-Japanese with Anglo roughneck influence (from hydrocarbon refining) on Titan. Major themes would be stuff like community independence and communitarianism forced by the remoteness of the colonies after being closed off from the inner ones and how that dynamic shift from what people on Earth were experiencing during the crisis causes friction between the two outgroups almost more so than before the event. You're right though, the setting is nothing new. The thought was more a theme exploration and maybe a synthesis to the underlying theme of Romance of the Three Kingdoms (That which is united must divide, that which is divided must unite but what if what is united is truly divided)

>>17870346
Nah, a hundred years isn't long enough for that I don't think, but it's plenty long for cultural hybridization and pidgins to form.

>>17870346
Again, done before; in Asimov's setting, Earth people have become so accustomed to living underground they all actually have acute agoraphobia from birth, hence the novel's title, "Caves of Steel".

They've also overpopulated Earth to the extent that they have to live in tiny apartments with communal bathrooms, eat in communal dining halls, and ration food, clothing, and entertainment. And actual chicken meat is super rare, they mostly eat lab cultures. If you're caught up with recent trends on living in the NY/SF conurbations and the Impossible Burger, it really makes you think...

>it also features a hipster culture where people wore spectacles simply because they were like so retro yo
>Asimov was fuckin decades ahead of his time

>>17870367
>the underlying theme of Romance of the Three Kingdoms
is just war and politics, lol

>cultural clash
Yeah, Asimov explored how some of the Space colonists suffer from acute haphephobia in the sequel The Naked Sun, as a result of solely webcamming all their lives. Again, really makes you think...

Asimov framed these sci-fi explorations in the context of a detective mystery; both the novels in the duology revolve around a detective from Earth. That provides most of the conflict and suspense. You'll need something similarly gripping to focus your novel on. Nobody will give two shits about exploring the cultural blah blah all on its own.

>>17870343
Whoops sorry, missed you. For the in groups, yeah. Like the tensions on individual colonies would be pretty well non-existent out of necessity, but disdain and distrust of inner worlders would definitely exist on the outer colonies. Like one of the common themes would be that even though peoples ancestors on Ganymede hailed from Russia and the United States, they wouldn't like Americans or Russians despite having that common thread holding them together. Kind of dovetailing on the idea that just because you share the same roots doesn't make you the same.

>>17870401
>You'll need something similarly gripping to focus your novel on
I mean, isn't saving Earth something gripping? I'm not entirely sure what kind of hook I could throw in there beyond adventure and intrigue.

>>17870414
You'd save Earth too by switching to low-energy bulbs, and recycling and composting more. Is a novel centered on depicting you doing all that every day going to sell well? Unlikely.

>>17870474
Thanks for doing what I asked instead of being a yes man. I no longer want to write the novel.

>>17870474
Come on man, think big. The entire earth's infrastructure is down. MC probably has to do some heroic hands-on repair work, kill some radiation mutated giant monsters, travel across dangerous terrain

New Thread
>>17870490
New Thread
>>17870490

Get in here and write!!!

>>17870481
Just saving your time there bud, you'd have dropped it after 20,000 words of notes and 1,000 hours of Wiki research anyway

Unless you do as >>17870482 says, which is what I'm getting at.

>>17870493
Nice thread! Cool OP! Thanks for making it!

>>17870500
This, I love well made threads, really sets the tone for writing!

>>17870505
But nobody is writing but animefags?

>>17870493
>another non anime OP
based

>>17870500
>>17870505
This, I love non anime OP's, the anime weebs are ruining our art.

>>17870497
that guy doesn't have to start off with his longwinded """"world building""" history about Earth and Neptune and Uranus, he should start off with the main character going to Earth with a ragtag team of friends who are going to rebuild the communication and energy infrastructure and get Earth out of the second Dark Ages

>>17870497
I mean it's an adventure story at heart. I thought that was a given. Regardless, I asked people to shit on it in order to save me the time of writing I don't have and the hope of readers I will never get and you did just that. Keep on keeping on, fampai. The more I think about it, the setting doesn't lend itself towards literature in our current times and I cbf trying to get a Netflix deal because I'm a literal who. Just gonna leave my thin prologue outline in Google Drive to be stolen by some guy that shouldn't be reading private documents instead.

>>17853532
>>17853532
Hey anon, did you advertised it? What did you do?

>>17870493
Animefags seething already

Short one-shot I whipped up over the course of today instead of writing my next chapter due now, well, today, since it's midnight. I think one day I will expand it into a short story, but maybe not any time soon.

The premise is based on a dream I had a few months ago. I had to write names of those I see in dreams(Woah) into a notebook and invoke their death. I had to do it every day, too, else I would be killed by my handler so to speak.

With that said, it's supposed to be supernatural/urban fantasy. Maybe psychosocial/drama, but that might be difficult to gather since that synopsis I described won't be gathered too much from the text.

https://justpaste.me/PsychoWriter

Don't really care for critique, but feel free to do it if you want I guess. I just want it out of my head and harddrive and for others to see. I did very light edits along the way in Scrinever and in Grammarly, but I might've overlooked some things here and there.