/lit/ - Literature

So, any actual sites to discuss writing? /wg/ has gone to shit and I actually care about what I write, so does anyone have any recommendations.

>>18617401
no, they all suck and are basically the blind leading the blind. Anyone willing to help others learn to write is probably not a good writer.
Except for this mongolian weaving forum

>>18617386
The key to good fiction is humor. All great works of literature use humor in some way to keep the reader engaged in the story. It also can cover less than perfect prose. If your story is too morose no one will enjoy reading it

Hello /lit/
I have an idea to start a blog with writings about current events and historical events. I'd estimate that I'd write between 1000 words to 4000 words, in my opinion blogs can't push that limit much further; and I can't handle writing too much longer myself.

Does anyone have any blogs that they like? Personally I used to read a lot of blogs but over the years my focus shifted to youtube and this site.
Thanks.

>>18617401
Ignore this faggot >>18617406 this place ain’t worth shit since no one in the right state of mind would ever used this place.

Try check out writingforums.com it’s privately owned, community managed writing environment that offers opportunities for aspiring writers. Best part of it is that people there actually write.

There’s also writersbeat.com which is a lot like the above

Then there’s writersCafe.org an online community where writers can post their work, get reviews, etc.

And finally, scribophile is an online workshop and writer’s community.

Don’t use /wg/ if you take writing seriously. No one here knows jack shit.

>>18611054
> He already lived like a fucking cockroach, amid mountains of garbage and spoiled food. He woke up amidst piles of dirty laundry every morning, or at least whenever his shitty sleep cycle told him to.
I love this opening, A+
> One would even dare to object that comparing his lifestyle to that of a cockroach was an insult to a cockroach, since at least cockroaches lived under strict hygiene towards themselves. Gregor was not like that at all, it was considered a miracle that the bastard even bathed once a month. It wasn't uncommon to see him defend his lifestyle under the typical excuses one found on all the picture boards he used to frequent, things like hair shouldn't be washed more than twice a week, that the skin benefited from the oil one secreted throughout the day and that the smell of sweat was attractive to women.
> also good, a bit more purple than the opening line, A-

> It's not as if Gregor knew anything about the latter, in fact a female was the only thing he lacked to be considered a full-fledged insect, these two would procreate from sun up to sun down and, with any luck, she would rip his head off once the deed was done.
Praying mantis do the female eating male thing. But also I think it doesn't make sense that you'd need a female insect to be an insect yourself
> But no, he was totally inept at what he used to call "females". The anecdote he used to share to prove otherwise was of the occasion when his cousin, on her twentieth birthday, gave him a hug and said, "You've gotten handsome lately, Gregor," ending this exchange with a faint smile.
;_;
> He embellished this experience excessively when telling others about it, each time giving more and more incestuous airs to what had only been a simple courtesy his relative had been forced to perform, boasting that she desired him in every way, reading between the lines between the lines between the lines. He turned an accidental slip of his hand into an attempt to grab her buttock, turned the nervous smile into an invitation to strip naked in that very spot and fuck like rabbits and, most proudly, made her kind remark a complete and bold declaration of love that would force them out of their respective homes, eloping together to a place where they would not be judged.
on one hand, I like wincest. But on the other hand, I don't think it's Kafka-esque. I'd still support you if you kept this in the final story tho

so why does no one make threads anymore? Did I miss something?

>>18617429
sounds too normie for my taste

>>18617435
Pseuds stab the animefags in the back and now /wg/ is all but dead.

>>18617435
this thread was made only 10 minutes after the last one expired with 315+ replies, you are impatient as fuck

My erection
I broke my nofap
Yes
YES
I just came

>>18617444
if by 10 minutes you mean 2 hours and 20 minutes then sure

>>18617429
Thanks, I will check them out when I have the time. What about the sites that you have to pay to join? I've heard a few of them, are they any good? Are they just scams or actually useful?

>Don’t use /wg/ if you take writing seriously
Trust me, I don't. I'm not that retarded in asking this general for any advice or tips.

Also, this isn't me >>18617439

>>18617448
that was the last post, not when the thread expired

>>18617457
there should be a thread going the instant it hits the red, wg just seems like shit nowadays

>>18617448
/wg/ is dead anon. It's slowly, but surely heading out the same way as /crit/ did.

>>18617453
>Are they just scams or actually useful?
Never used them personally, so I wouldn’t know. Sorry. But check out the websites I listed. They should help you, or at the very least, help you improve.

Why is she so perfect, bros?
> beautiful
> cheerful, positive
> funny
> well-read, reads 10 books a month
> smart
> and she's published TWO BOOKS

marry me, Christine ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMO8wbXRu3k

>>18617474
her book is a modern day Parent Trap

Jamie’s an aspiring standup comic in Los Angeles with a growing case of stage anxiety.

Siri’s a stunning ballerina from New Jersey nursing a career-changing injury.

Jamie and Siri are twin sisters, torn apart at a young age by their parent's volatile divorce. They’ve grown up living completely separate lives: Jamie with their Dad and Siri with their Mom. Now, reunited after over a decade apart, they hatch a plot to switch places.

With an accidental assist from some fortuitous magic, Jamie arrives in New Jersey, looking to all the world like Siri, and Siri steps off her flight sporting a Jamie glamour. Soon Siri's crushing on Jamie's best friend Dawn. Jamie's falling for the handsome New Yorker she keeps running into, Zarar. Alongside a parade of hijinks and budding romance, both girls work to navigate their broken family life and the stresses of impending adulthood. And more importantly, it’s time they get to know and confront each of their estranged parents.

>>18617485
god this shit gets published?

>>18617498
You still sucking the trad publishing industry's dick?

>>18617501
redpill me anon, why shouldn't I

>>18617498
Erich Kastner wrote the original Parent Trap and he was one of Germany's most based childrens' authors

>>18617507
Do basic research you lazy fuck, not that hard why trad publishing industry is going to shit and why the only people who still believe in it are delusional retards.

>>18617516
You'd give in the moment Hachette came knocking at your door, asking for a book deal. Even Tao Lin gave in to Penguin Random

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/547887/leave-society-by-tao-lin/

>>18617521
Yes, anon, I'll give in to free money, literally anyone would. So state otherwise is just plain retarded. It still means that trad publishing industry are shit and the people who refuse to see it are just as equally retarded.

>>18617521
>if they offer you a book deal they aren’t shit
Do you have any self-awareness? Holy fuck. They’re fucking shit. They’ve always been shit. God, why you fags continue to simp for them will be the one question I will never have a answer for.

>>18617408
Most of the western canon shits all over your worthless opinion.

>>18617533
Nobody gives a shit about the western canon.

>>18617536
haven't you heard? Unless your book talks about how depressing and shit life is it isn't important

>>18617463
Why? /lit/ is a slow board, keep to one thread until it disappears instead of prematurely ejaculating new ones

>>18617536
>hi guys listen to my universal declaration of what makes good fiction
>what the rest of the world thinks is good fiction disagrees with you
>I-IT DOESN'T COUNT BECAUSE I SAY SO
fuck you're a clown

>>18617541
Don't care. I write what I want to write. Simple as.

>>18617543
Might as well just stop making /wg/ while you’re at it.

>>18617556
Might as well just quit living while you're at it.

>>18617559
Pathetic comeback. But what else am I to expect from your kind.

>>18617386
Yes, I'm done now. I was never going to become the next Faulkner, the next Nabokov or the next Joyce, but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted. I had thought my country's education system to be topmost in the world, but this turned out to be utter bollocks. A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”, and no one likes the expression theory of art anymore, I am likened to a long lost dinosaur.
This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up; I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia. I mix tired and trite idioms together to obfuscate their unoriginality with a veneer of irony; I have continued to recite ornate Jewish chimpanzee parables with diminishing returns. The parable seemed very clearly to me to be asking me whether or not the now-grown-adult can choose. I say yes, of course, but that's not my issue.
I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 116 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. The themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless duelling are not present in my work. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit!
Story arcs, character arcs, narrative arcs, these are all outdated terms. You say what you hear, and only the anime fandom uses the term “arc” anymore. I am a toad! Look how many words I wrote, because apparently literature is bodybuilding and just aimlessly typing will somehow improve my writing. My appetites grew as I wrote, I set a goal of a 100 thousand words when I began, only for the cancerous growth to demand a 137 thousand words soon enough to be completed, and still I don't even know what genre it is that I'm writing. Is it autofiction? A comedy? A picaresque? Am I merely shitposting edgelord-triggering diarrhea in neo-emo gothic revivalist gestalt?
Regardless, I have failed, and even in my failure I have merely imitated how people who think they write well but write poorly write, and I couldn't even do that well. "Oh I can do that anytime if I wanted to" I thought, but no. I have put down my pen. Never again will my fingers click-clack across the keyboard. No more outlines, no more characters. Goodbye. Learn from me! Learn from me!

>>18617569
why do you do this anon, every tread too, I actually admire the effort

>>18617572
>why do you do this
How else would I give updates on my progress?

>>18617569
Will you stop with this spam already.

>>18617576
Encouraged as I was by my mother's compliments on my ability to describe situations and events, I set out to seek opinions on my work in the wider world.
This turned out to be either my greatest folly, or the only wise action I ever did undertake. Proud of my prose I lay it out for others to see, and not tied by any paternal bonds their tongues let loose with such a volley of criticisms that their words were as many as mine own.
Think on it! A critique as long as the text it critiques? This was not a mere trifle, there was everything wrong with my work, everything! Not one good thing did they have to say to me, but no, I do not make of myself a martyr and claim that they insulted me, always kind, they were always kind! It was this very kindness which hurt me more than the thousand cuts they subjected me to. What use is it to caress my cheek and whisper sweet nothings to mine ear as your knife traces my flesh? Does the caress make the cut pain me any less? No! It only emphasizes it via contrast.
And what were these words, these cruel yet fair words that cut me so? Conjunctions, conjunctions and sentences that run on as endlessly as the fractals of God's creation, ever seeking their end but scarce finding it, why the words I wrote only knew the ends of their own sentences by rumor and not by sight!
Consider Plebnon, that poor humble would be writer, nigh-on thirty of age and yet he struggles with too many conjunctions and run-on-sentences, can you show him kindness? Spare it for one who wants it! I am undone, all my hopes and dreams but ashes to pour on myself. No, spare me your kind words and rather lend me sackcloth so I may attire myself in a manner more suited to my spirits.
116 thousand words stand in the barren land as the legs of Ozymandias. Will you fall in worship with me, to this folly of mine?

>>18617589
Absolute shit.

>>18617561
Says a guy masturbating to thread restart times

>>18617595
Can't you say something cooler so I can incorporate it in the next iteration?

>>18617599
No.

>>18617603
Well what good are you to me then?

>>18617471
Well, thanks anyways.

>>18617605
None.

>>18617614
Then go write your own thing! Shoo, shoo!

>>18617640
No.

He picked up his suitcase and placed it on the bedside table. Mrs. Okocha looked puzzled as Abrafo Van Hassain opened his case with a viola hand motion.

“These are instruments for blood transfusion. We’ll give your little Thomas a pint of blood from someone pure of soul, and then ah! In no time at all, he will recover, good as new,” said Dr. Van Hassain.

“Then I shall volunteer,” said his mother.

“I am afraid that we need someone pure of soul. For that reason, Madam Moesha will be the one to give your child a pint of life-giving blood.”

“What? But I’m –”

“I’m ready, Professor,” said Moesha.

She presented her left arm to him, with her sleeves already rolled up.

“Bruh, that is wild disrespectful,” said Thomas. “Ma, are you going to take that from that nasty hoe?”

Van Hassain held a South African geranium near the child’s forehead. Thomas squirmed and moaned, and then felt silent. Abrafo then deftly inserted a needle with a tube into Moesha’s arm and connected the other side of the tube to Thomas. Without any prompting, Moesha squeezed her hand into a fist, relaxed, made a fist, relaxed, and made a fist. The blood came out slowly from her body, barely oozing along the nozzle. The transfusion process was long, but despite her face which grew paler, Moesha sat straight upright and tried to conceal her fatigue.

“Poor Madam Mina. She has such a small body,” thought Van Hassain.

“Do not worry, my dear,” he said out loud, patting her shoulder. “We're almost finished.”

>>18617792
Garbage. Stop writing this parody already.

>>18617792
Anon, ain’t no one is going to read a parody of Dracula. Especially one that butchers the original premise.

>>18617804
>>18617806

so how do I go about writing a feel-good story without making it seem like shit wish fulfillment

>>18617817
>Can’t handle critique.

>>18617836
By googling it.

>>18617817
thanks for standing up for me, crabanon

>>18617804
>>18617806
I've already committed to finishing Blackula, so unfortunately the critique of stahhhp, stahppp! is no use. I'm always open to other criticisms though

>>18617848
Based

>>18617858
Not really just plain stupid.

>>18617474
Way too many jump cuts. She does not have any intellect. She's just a pretty girl.

>>18617877
I'm not a fan of the story, but he said he's going to write what he wants and is willing to take constructive criticism. Fairly based in my eyes.

>>18617440
Fuck off, threads die for a couple of hours but then someone starts a new one. This is much better than the precious constant spamming of anime’s to be or not to be.

>>18617465
/crit/ threads were delet cause mods considered them redundant. Stop posting lies.

>>18618035
Stop making up revisionist history. Mods never deleted /crit/ threads. Anons still make them, but die quickly due to their past.

>>18618050
In the beginning, in /wg/'s infancy, when /crit/ and /wg/ were still competing, the /crit/ threads existed, although slower and less popular. However, once /wg/ became popular, the jannies straight up deleted the /crit/ threads

>>18618073
>the /crit/ threads existed, although slower and less popular
they were literally dying off. And the same is happening to /wg/

>>18618080
because of the 10 minute delay between old thread archival and new thread creation? Maybe. The /lang/ thread in /int/ has its lows and highs too but it ultimately survives, mainly because there's always someone who wants to learn a new language. Same for writing. Even if it gets to the point that threads die at 50 or 100 posts, as long as people have delusions of being the next great novelist, it'll never completely die.

>>18618161
>Already making excuses
Never forget, you’re the reason why it’s dying.

>>18618161
gonna be honest I'm disappointed with how shit this thread has been, probably not making another one once it dies

>>18618164
and do tell us, besides the lack of anime and delay in new thread creation, what evidence do you have of /wg/ dying? Threads 315+ responses long, as far as the wasoru eye can see.

>>18618173
Honestly, we should let it die. I don't want /wg/ to be the next /crit/. But I also don't want /wg/ to be made, only to die shortly after. /crit/ threads get more pathetic each time they're made, I don't want that to befall /wg/

>>18618173
I'm thinking of changing the posted OP information if I'm the one to make a new thread. The only links I've found useful are Amazon KDP and Royal Road. I'm thinking of adding Wattpad and the Submitable search page for journal submission, as well as ways to find writing contests.
YouTube? Any good booktubers or writetubers?
Thoughts on deleting the books? Does anyone even find the books useful?

>>18618186
God no. Don’t butcher /wg/. You’ve done more than enough already.

I'd delete this part of the OP

Suggested books on getting your fucking work done you lazy piece of shit:
>Deep Work
>Atomic Habits

what the fuck is that? 0/10 and doesn't remotely belong

if /wg/ is shit, it's because we have developed a culture in which experimentation and ambition are verboten. this thread has always been more than a little too n*rmie for 4chan, but it's become just another refuge for mediocrity. some autist here is on a literal hair-trigger to call out the shadows of """pseuds""" that are literally haunting him and which he sees lurking in every corner. it's just tiresome to read the same shit you read literally everywhere else. the point of 4chan is to have freedom to be eccentric. you're literally squandering that if you take the opportunity to promote the same shit that gets promoted on flowery blogs by carefully groomed and powdered artistes and on twee booktube channels by MFA grads. i swear, modern academia is the worst thing to ever happen to writing, but only barely. the internet's utility as an echo chamber means the easiest concepts to follow start to take on the truth-feel just because they can be the most wholeheartedly parroted by the most people. this thread is like a little r*ddit colony. i bet 90% of you have r*ddit accounts, where you say the same things you say here only more politely because you have to maintain the coherence of your internet identity among the fine gentlemen -- the "actual" writers; the apocryphal and strictly abstract not-pseuds. it's just so tiresome. i hate every single one of you except two or three whose posting styles i can recognize.

>>18618235
writing?

>>18618235
People write here?

Anyone want to read and crit a flash fic story 1.2k words long? Eco-horror for an anthology sub. About carrion beetles and a weird paranoid town. Third draft.

>>18618267
no

>>18618247
yup. i'm making good progress on my novella. i'm gonna self-publish it and advertise it only on 4chan (without, of course, the faggy waldun/gardner self-promo spam). my only hope is that it gets us to take ourselves just a little more seriously, and to reach for more than just a lucky RR isekai serialization patreon following.

>>18618267
No

>>18618271
Fuck you, Gardner was the only good thing to have ever come out of these threads. He represents a bygone era of /wg/ in which people once wrote here.

>>18618278
i'm not gonna take that bait.

>>18618269
>>18618272
Rolled my eyes so much it hurt. Never change, /lit/, never change.

>>18618279
Not bait when its true. Gardner was the pinnacle of /wg/ in which other anons should have inspired to become.

>>18618267
we're just kidding anon, post your story

>>18618267
We're not kidding.

>>18618284
>wrote 3 new books
I want to go back to those days.

>>18618278
>>18618284
Gardner, when will you realize autistic shilling is not a viable lifestyle and it will get you nowhere?

>>18618300
Seethe more pseud. Gardner wrote eight books in less than a year. He’s more of an author than you will ever be.

>write book
>create minimalist cover, self-publish
>shill it using facebook ads for a year
>get eight purchases
>pay a starving artist i found online $70 to create a cover with a cute girl on it
>replace cover and shill on facebook
>one month has passed and i have 200 purchases
i hate it

>>18618356
why do you think the most popular a*ime writers and RR writers are the ones with harems? Sex sells brother

>>18618365
>a*ime
Anime. The fuck are you doing putting an asterisk where the n should be.

>>18618365
I know, but it feels insincere. Having readers has been my goal, as involving an agent and publisher both would remove my absolute control of my work - both in terms of content and deadlines - so I long abandoned a career as a writer, viewing it more as art. But I still wanted to garner an audience through self-publishing. But not like this. If I wasn't so jewish, I'd switch the cover back out, but I spent the money so I'm keeping it.

>Can't find a good distraction free writing app.
>Anything that I find doesn't support Arch Linux.
>AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I fucking give up.

>>18618419
You don’t have to tell us. We don’t care.

>>18618419
just use windows or mac bro, we have too many writing apps

>>18618419
why not scrivener or a freewrite

>>18618419
I use MS Word

I miss these threads. They were the best /lit/ had to offer. I miss gaskun.
But that's over and we're stuck with /wg/ so why don't you all stop whining and post the content that you want to see instead of complaining that it's apparently dying.

>>18618655
But why would we want to put in effort on a dying General? Doesn’t make sense.

>>18618278
>Gardner was the only good thing to have ever come out of these threads
No saga of the cosmic heroes is.

>>18618687
The author of saga of the cosmic heroes gets shit on completely and utterly by people here. But I do agree, he's a close second. Hope that animefag survived the purge.

I've had a rough week and barely wrote a word until tonight. I finally sat down and had a pretty good session. Feels good, man. Nothing like a minor crisis to remind you what's actually important. As it turns out, writing is actually something that's genuinely important to me. Even if I let my normally pretty rigorous habits lapse due to life happening, it seems like I can pick it up again pretty easily. I don't know if that's rare for you guys, but it's rare as fuck for me, and it feels pretty good. Even if my writing is shit.

>>18618419
Google docs works well.

>>18618667
Why do you think it's dying? Because there are no anime pictures anymore? Because there's a gap of 10 minutes between threads? That's normal. If you don't want to post content then don't complain about it dying.

>>18618789
>Already making excuses
So you already know and just in denial about it?

>>18617432
Thanks, anon, I'm already aware of mullets that are present in the text.
Any advice or criticism that you have? What would you change? How stiff am I being? I would like to hear it all. I really appreciate the effort of even reading it.

I'm trying to plot out a whimsy colorful adventurous journey story (that eventually gets a bit more serious) for my comic, and I'm satisfied with what I have so far, but I'd still like to check it against other successful stories in the same genre to see if I have any glaring problems that I'm missing.

Does anyone know good stories in the same vein regardless of medium that I could use as a reference to check against mine, or any other resources for the same thing? For reference I'm trying to focus on exploring the strange world and interacting with the creatures as the meat of the journey which has a character drama overarching plot as a backdrop, rather than using the journey as a backdrop for character drama.

Finally! A story for white men.

https://pdfhost.io/v/ORDNcQcRa_Mad_Money_Pilot.pdf

>>18618789
Don't respond to the schizo. You're just encouraging him.

>whole thread is nothing but meta whining
the reason the thread is shit is because everyone would rather bitch and moan about the thread state rather than discuss writing
it shouldn't be surprising that the threads getting worse and worse. the anons who actually gave crits and could give insightful questions probably got sick of the growing culture of non-discussion
I know that I hate giving effort crits and answering questions only to not have mine answered later, it wouldn't be a surprise if most of the posters interested in discussion have left in response to the non-stop shit posting
>>18619110
Alice In Wonderland is core whimsy as well as pretty much any fairy tales

>>18619110
Dragon ball, lord of the rings, dragon quest 5, dunsany short story's, sir evan wentz

>>18617432
this is good and it makes me want to read more
I'm immediately disgusted but engaged. if you're worried about the prose being stiff, it's not. it reads well
honestly this is about the level of writing I'm at and I don't have much to say over such a small excerpt. you seem competent, good luck keeping up this pace anon

I have nothing to say

>>18619894
Bullshit

>>18619997
It really isn't, anon.

>>18620010
Why is that explain yourself right now.

>>18620022
Because I've never had to live through anything.

>>18620032
>He sat there, posting frogs and wallowing in self woe, desiring a life he would never have the spine to live himself, wishing that he knew the unknown, hoping that the visions of what could have been would flash in front of him in such a way he could capture it in the brutal framework that is the English language. Yet, it never came. The beauty he felt from 80's Japanese pop music could never be artfully captured by someone like him. Someone so devoid of being or girth. The antithesis of the human condition, squatting away the best years of his youth and vigor. Systematically notating the different types of frogs and symbols he would use to represent his current emotional state, not knowing which would next be the most useful of the bunch to articulate things he himself was too incapable to describe without them.
>If only I knew how to tie knots, I could hang myself, he thought, to himself, with no one around.

>>18620057
n-no u
thanks anon, I needed that. nice prose, btw

>>18620092
Thanks. You should write about some friends meeting up at a coffee shop. Learn about beans and roasts and small business management so you can simulate the location. Then go watch people in a coffee shop interact to learn how to write the characters.

If you literally have nothing to write about, go start somewhere easy.

>>18620107
Write what you know. He could write about the intracacies of using piss bottles and hiding them from mom

>>18620165
why you gotta bring the tone down man

Interesting! Did you know that if one black person in a group of black people is eating food, all the other black people will demand to also eat that food? I will include this curious behavior in Blackula

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/ogu7g2/get_your_own_damn_food/

There were ~1.7 million books self-published in 2018. This figure is probably much higher in 2021. Traditional publishing is not included.
>https://www.statista.com/statistics/249036/number-of-self-published-books-in-the-us-by-format/
That is all. Good luck, everyone!

>>18620515
I don't need luck everybody will want to read by furry lgbt+ smut novel

>>18620597
yiff in hell, furfag
im giving up on writing, btw. one less brainlet competing against your "novel."

>>18620690
whats up with all the doomer posts here, this shits super negative homie

>>18620751
don't talk like a nigger, please.
people are just realising that they're not going to make it, I assume.

>>18620597
Based. Post something

>>18620690
somehow I suspect you were never at risk of competing with anyone

>>18618655
Gaskun was the guy with stacks of manuscript he brags about querying but hasn't done so since August right? Why exactly do you miss him?

>>18618687
>>18618692
Yes hello I'm here still anons, take care.

I can't fucking decide whether or not I want the cult in my story to be real or not.

>>18620787
correct, anon. my writing is shit, i derive no pleasure from doing it anymore. and even if it weren't shit, noone would ever read it anyway. fuck this, i need to find another creative hobby.

>>18620877
I may not care for science fiction but keep going your an inspiration.

>>18620597
Post excerpts

>>18620934
>>18620780
it was a joke, you guys are pathetic.
Who would actually write that?

Is it impossible to improve without a class? Inb4 just write but the people I show my work to can't offer (or maybe won't) criticism. Most of the time I get a resounding "that's good".

For instance, I'm convinced the ending to a piece I'm working on is a prime example of purple prose but I can't think of a way to improve. Could anyone offer tips?

"He thought back to working with James and if he would ever do something like that. He thought about whether the death of James' career was like the death of his father. He needed to stop dwelling on it. James lost his job and Samuel thought about when he would lose others close to him: his mother would die before him, he could lose his friends, he might not obtain the chance to fall in love. He thought about his future and about employment and moving out and the milestones a man his age was supposed to reach. The moon set over the harbor and he looked up at it, and his eyes burned with anger, and anguish."

>>18620945
Lotsa peeps in the interwebz

>>18620899
I feel this completely, anon. Both the image and your words speak to my empty, unfulfilled, joyless soul.

>>18620926
Thanks anon... I know one day you help inspire others, too

I struggle the most with starting from a random mess of shallow ideas and turning that into an idea which I both think is good and can actually be turned into a full length story. I tie my brain in knots thinking about it. What am I doing wrong?

>>18621010
Maybe it's a case of wanting to write about so many topics but knowing you can only write about one?

You could possibly take one random idea and write on that rather than mulling over everything until you find one as practice.

Two more weeks of this, and then imma start applying to Walmart

> An update on your application
We’d like to let you know that the following job you applied for was closed by the employer:
[Job title and location]

If the employer has not reached out to you, it’s likely that the position has been filled or that they are no longer hiring for this role.

While we wish we had better news, continuing to search and apply will help you maintain your momentum.

Best of luck,
The Indeed Team

>write my novel
>realize this shit is unoriginal as fuck
>nobody is going to buy my book off amazon
Do I just drop it and giv eup?

>>18621215
You could always just chop it up and publish it on royal road and scribblehub with a patreon/paypal for donations. Then when it's finished you can put it on Amazon.

>>18620899
>fuck this, i need to find another creative hobby.
You could suck people at a glory hole. I'm sure you'll become talented one day.

>>18620899
the quality of your writing isn't the issue here, it's your attitude
ngmi no matter what you pursue

>>18621224
Amazon won't publish it if it's already available for free on the internet. He'd have to un-publish or paywall it from Royal Road. And I'd buy it from Amazon

>>18621270
I think that's only for Kindle Unlimited, isn't it? I don't think Amazon itself actually gives a shit if it's published elsewhere.

>>18621275
On the contrary, Kindle Unlimited is even more restrictive, you're not allowed to sell your ebook anywhere else, not Kobo, Google Books, Barnes and Noble, etc. Paperback is fine though

Before you publish with KDP, they do a 12-24 hour waiting period. Their bots search the web for your story. Sometimes in writing forums you can find people running into trouble with that. White people need help getting legal proof that a previously published book from a defunct publishing house transferred the copyrights to them, and poo in the loos discover that they can't publish plagiarized or public domain books

Pretty sure the book I'm working on gonna win me a nobel. I'll update you guys later.

>>18621270
Not true. See Styxhexenhammer (aka Tarl Warwick). He makes new editions of out-of‐copyright books that can be found on IA sometimes. His competitors are usually just ripping the scans from IA without correcting OCR errors and charge more money for it too.

>>18621330
What most people do is they finish the whole thing serially, and after a little bit of time mark it as stub, leaving oonly the first few chapters up as previews usually with a message that the series is on Amazon.

I've always thought it was an incredibly scummy thing to do, but it is a practice that authors sometimes do. You'll see a seemingly dead series from like 4-6 years ago with hundreds of thousands of views but only like 2 chapters and lots of glowing reviews since there was no prior way to mark it as stub until a year ago.

I'm only going off memory, but I think there's a 30-something day exclusivity they have and after it ends you can post it elsewhere.

>>18621368
KU's contact only lasts 90 days, and you can choose to renew it or not. Theoretically, you could put your story up for free on RR when your KU contract expires. Once a year, for 3 months, I put some of my ebooks on Kindle Unlimited. During that period, I disable their listings on Barnes and Noble and Google Books, and when my 90 days are up, I re-enable them

>>18621381
Oh wait, sorry that's not right. I meant paywall it on RR. I don't know if RR has a paywall option though. I believe Wattpad does?

I want to write a novel, but all I'm good at is nonfiction.

>>18621393
That's good though. Non-fiction outsells fiction by an order of margin. My best-selling books are technical manuals on filing out government forms. But I still dream of being a novelist

>>18621407
*magnitude

Book Genres That Make the Most Money

1) Romance/Erotica – $1.44 billion
2) Crime/Mystery – $728.2 million
3) Religious/Inspirational – $720 million
4) Science Fiction/Fantasy – $590.2 million
5) Horror – $79.6 million

>wow bros, were does "literature" go in here?

>>18621407
>Non-fiction outsells fiction by an order of margin
You mean self-help books you dumbass.

>>18621469
Yes, I believe the top selling self published non-fiction book is a how to become rich book (answer: get a good job and invest in ETFs). Those definitely sell better than yet another WW2 or Roman war or Napoleon or Stalin book

>>18617386
What the FUCK is composition?

New &amp coming

>lampbylit.com

>>18621871
Nobody cares about that.

>>18621884
People who write do

>>18621434
>1) Romance/Erotica – $1.44 billion
okay fuck it. I'm writing pornos now.

So, I've got a problem sorry in advance for explaining it in bad rap lyrics. I'm just trying a thing

I've created a monster of an endgame that's a tad insane in the membrane. There's a story transition from middlegrade adventure tradition into a Hitman 2 mission that's giving me head pain. I was aiming for Wonderland, or rather more of a "blunderland", like It's Always Sunny in Philly mixed with Suzanne Collin's Underland. Then it turns into some shit with tweenage snipers. One of the would-be assassins is further from armed service than diapers. I'm trying to show it that all the characters know it, but it's jarring bad writing and I didn't start this to blow it.

It's not out of left field, at least not entirely. I mean every dark lord's at the head of a hierarchy. By the end even Voldemort was a head of state, but Harry capped him in anarchy not an electoral debate. their plan isn't even clever, they just march up to the castle put a knife to the mcguffin and call out "Hey asshole! Yeah, I'm talking to you, come out with your hands up!" I didn't plan for this hassle but was too deep to back up. They were on a quest to find a city where the tyrant held court, but I planned on final battle stuff, not the sightseeing sort. not showing the city just didn't seem right, but it gets weird when his fort is like five blocks from ShopRite

I need to rewrite the fourth act, not to mention the whole book. I'm not exactly liking the prospect of having to look... forward to so much editing. The first draft took 3 years. No, don't tell me to give up, that shit grinds my gears. I care about this story despite all the struggles. I don't need haters telling me it it's not not worth the troubles

>>18618692
Deathanon is floating around, mainly in the Write What's On Your Mind thread. I haven't gone anywhere, I'm just more incognito. That and when I'm at home and posting on here I'm eating into my writing time. All I'd be doing is posting updates anyway so you're not missing much.
I have a feeling there were more of us but at least two are accounted for. Yay.

I find writing anything, let alone something good, to be extremely difficult.

How do you come up with character motivations?

I don’t write and neither should you

>>18622478

>>18622478
Hard to say. They just come to me or they don't. Make them oppose the protag somehow I guess, or have them pursue the protag's dreams. I don't know.

How do I do postmodernism without being pretentious?

>>18622637
Just write.

>>18617485
I watched that movie just yesterday!

>>18621884
I absolutely hate their giant pdf format. Wish they'd make a text only version of their magazine. Even RCWaldun has figured out text-only articles

>>18622478
I self insert myself and try to imagine what I would do.

What's the best way to introduce a fictional world?

>>18622746
Dialogue

>>18622637
>post modernism
muh ironic post value discourse
just be genuine you soulless insect-man

>>18622752
???

>>18622762
hes a no discussion drone, ignore the bots
but there is no 'best way', only really shitty ones
what's best depends on the story but shit is always shit. post your intro

>>18622754
To be clear, I never set out to write a postmodern novel. Once I finished the outline I realized that I had stumbled into it unintentionally, and now that I'm aware of the fact I've become paranoid of that knowledge affecting the work.

>>18622762
>>18622767
Dialogue between characters. Maybe one character(the non-pov) is unfamiliar with the place, so the other might sprinkle in some lore that also progresses the story. Maybe an avenue has some significance to the story, and a character might muse that the owners with businesses in the story have a brief history with musclemen acting on the behalf of external pressure. I dunno man, something that doesn't drag on too long but enough to hook the reader with some rich history. I'm not for critique, and I don't care much for excerpts by themselves without context. Do whatever, write whatever, if it works it works. Just write.

I got this message in my inbox 10 minutes after applying for a job

> Hello, Anon,
> I would like to schedule an interview with you on Monday, July 12 at [company location].

> Please contact us if you are available. Thank you so much.

> Name
> Chief Operating Officer

Was the COO browsing Indeed at 11 pm on Friday, just like me? Could this be my ticket out of neetdom and /wg/?????

>>18623323
Recruiter here. I'm sure you already know this, but it's not the COO. Recruiters use pretend to be higher ups because it makes the candidate feel special.

That being said, an interview is an interview, so go for and it might be a great opportunity

>>18622824
Your story can be post modern, just avoid cringey ironic dialogue and prose where it's clear your just trying to sound smart but like at the same time you don't care and stuff

>oxymoronic without the oxy

>>18623348
God damn it, I did not actually know that. I did feel special :(

I also just checked their Glassdoor reviews. Employees with my job title last on average 3 months. And someone said that the company stopped paying them a month ago? I'm still going to do the interview. It's not like I have anything better to do.

>>18617848
keep at it blackula bro! To each their own, and that's why you should keep going. Somewhere out there there will be someone who appreciates this.

>>18618356
i feel ya bro. well, at least you tried with the minimalist. And congrats on finish the work and the self publishing process! On to the next one, right?

>>18623391
epic blog bro, where do I subscribe?

>with the completion of chapter 29, parts 2 is now complete
>only need to write chapters 30-42 to finish the whole book
I'm scared, Dave. Editing hell awaits me.

>>18617386
What does it take for a civilian to make firearms on their own?


One of my MCs is a genius weapons designer prodigy born into a family owned gunsmith shop that has been run by the family line for generations. She lives in a scifi/fantasy world

Can she make guns on her own?

>>18623873
We're not helping you with your school shooting plans, fuck off
Get help

>>18617401
r/ writing is a fantastic and deeply informative platform for discussion

>>18623921
Then you should go back there, anon!

>>18623873
>One of my MCs is a genius weapons designer prodigy born into a family owned gunsmith shop that has been run by the family line for generations
This is stupid.

>>18623961
It's rwby fanfiction where the MCs sniper rifle can turn into a scythe. What did you expect?

>>18623990
You are not living your life correctly. Where are the themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless dueling?

>>18623413
>on to the next one, right?
I have like 20 finished books but I haven't wrote anything in about three years. I burnt myself out of motivation, inspiration and direction and even publishing them seems pointless, especially after this cover incident. If I'm only going to get dumb animefags (no insult to weebs, but to people who buy/read low quality weeb-cover books) I think I'd rather just sit on them until the intense depression goes away and my confidence returns.
/blog

I awake to the sound of a shower muffled through drywall and plywood. My head is full and heavy with a feeling which has no weight or core. Fumbling through the pockets of my blazer drooped sloppily across a chair upholstered in cheap faux-velvet. Cigarettes. Lighter. A quick vomit into the wastebin on my way to the patio. The glass of the sliding door reminds my careless forehead of its fundamental tangibility. A banded plastic sunchair plies its furrows into the flesh of my buttocks as the morning’s first smoke chases my tenuous consciousness near all the way back into itself, although I do manage to resist. Vertiginous malaise; O! humid miasma smogging gently upwards. I am quite high up. Across town the smokestacks rise in imitation like children wearing their fathers’ boots and spit upwards their only hopes, I would imagine, of reaching similar heights. Far beneath, men and women in their myriad have started already their days. Each presumably mistakes the leg of a journey for the journey itself.

Behind me the door slides open again and the vomit rises hot in the back of my throat although this time I keep it down. Bile, brandy, and tobacco compose a vile cornucopia, if it must be said. The girl sits down next to me.

“Good morning,” she says, grabbing my cigarette from my mouth.

“What happened to your hand?” I ask, motioning. “I don’t want to intrude, but…”

She laughs, and takes a drag.

“I work at the Department of Dysmorphia,” she says, as if it’s an explanation. I hold out my hand and she deposits my cigarette between two fingers. Her lipstick is arranged like a blowjob on the cigarette butt and tastes like cherry.

“I see. Well, thank you for last night, but I really should be going, I’ve got an appointment that I may be late for.”

“Won’t you stay?” she asks. “I could make breakfast. I had a great time last night.”

“No, no, I’m afraid not.” I check my watch. It’s still functioning. “I have an important appointment and I should not be late.”

>>18624027

I get up to leave. I’m almost past her seating in stony silence before a hand darts out to grab my cock. The girl looks me in the eye with a cold smile and pulls forcefully. A loud, fleshy pop. My penis and testicles break free. She holds the appendage in her hand. My testicles dangle freely and my glans--her glans?--droops lascivious over the rim of her clenched hand. It looks like she is holding a rubber chicken. She appears to be very angry.

“Oh, I…” I start. “This is a complication, you understand. I have an appointment.”

“Use it or lose it,” she says, over and over again, like a mantra. I attempt to move closer, but she edges away from me until her back is to the banister. “Use it or lose it. Use it or lose it.”

“Please, be reasonable,” I say. “Just hand it over. I’ll use it. Please.” I make a dart for her hand, but she maneuvers it away with catlike reflexes, to hold it out over the dead air.

“Use it or lose it,” she screams, and, gripping with her free hand the railing, throws one leg across it, then another, until she is hanging over the inestimably large drop down to the busy streets below. She screams and screams, staring me straight in the eye with a fervor I cannot hope to match. No half-measures with this one.

“I’m growing annoyed,” I say, struggling to make myself heard over the noise of her mantra. “Quit acting like a child and give it back.”

I make one final dash for her wrist. With that wrist she releases her grip on the handguard and jumps off the balcony. I move quickly and look down. The breeze is unfamiliar. From far below comes a faint crash, a splotch of red, the clamour of cars’ horns. I check my watch and it still functions. Consternation and regret. Annoyance directed inwards. I cannot be mad at the girl. She operates according to her own internal causality, which I cannot know or control. If I were to blame her, I would also have to blame myself--not a helpful process, ultimately. It was, in a way, the hand of God which reached out and plucked from my pelvis its cock and accompanying balls.

I move inside and spot a standing-mirror. May as well inspect the damage. I take a seat and spread my legs as if giving birth. The hair on my pelvis, kept shortly trimmed, surrounds a roughly circular area of bare skin--soft and new--where one might reasonably expect to have found a reproductive organ, which is unnaturally and conspicuously absent at present. There is, surprisingly, no pain at all, though the skin is particularly sensitive to minute fluctuations in the standing air within the apartment. What a curious feeling. With a cupped hand I give my new meat a couple pats of varying intensity, and can feel for the first time my pelvic bone. Curious indeed, but what shall I do?

>>18624029

This question weighs heavily on my mind as I dress myself. There are two possibilities. It seems my penis has never functioned at all. It detached with ease, and without incurring injury to any of the connective tissues or organs one would expect to be running through the area. There were, it seems, none to speak of, which would imply a non-functional and strictly ornamental instrument. What is the use of such a thing? But then again, if my penis is nonfunctional, then why did I wake up here with a woman? I suppose I could have performed cunnilingus. I have no recollection, but cannot eliminate the possibility.

It occurs to me that at some point during my impending appointment, I may be subjected to a penis inspection.

>>18623940
Literally any site is better than /wg/ at this point.

>>18624027
>>18624029
>>18624033
I'm guessing this is a bit much. My plans for the remainder of the chapter involve the narrator retrieving his penis, which has become stuck on a flagpole, which he is unable to do. The fire department comes and hands off possession of his penis to the police. He has to ride back to the station with the cops and attempt to sign for his penis. He misses his appointment again.

what program do you guys use to write? i dont want to download shit so i think i'll just use notepad

>>18624568
scrivner it helps to keep everything organized under one file instead of having 20 different word docs

>>18622637
Follow McCarthy, not Pynchon.

>>18624568
Google docs. I’m just careful about naming conventions and how/when to open a sheet.

>>18617386
https://pastebin.com/CBXD8Vf6
Crit for crit.

>>18624573
Scrivener has a lot of nice features, although I think the actual design and feel of it is a bit clunky. There are too many bells and whistles crowding the UI. I prefer a minimalist design so I can just focus on the words.

>>18624634
>Jerseys luckily of his teammates
>First snap goes off with his chant he said. ”turbo set hut.” Right before the defensive tackle set himself on pace to early on snap count drawing the flag this is it.
>The line collapsed protection around tim
>Struggling to get up burst himself awake
Learn the basics of how to write the language. The horrific grammar makes it very difficult to understand what you are trying to convey. If I was not at least familiar with the sport I would have no idea what was going on, and even then it took several reads to understand most of what was going on. You desperately need to read more to strengthen your understanding on how the English language works.

>>18624568
Doom Emacs + Markdown + pandoc

>>18624747
I'm not a scrivner salesman, but they do have a minimalist screen so that all you have to do is press f11 (or whatever for mac) and it goes full-screen with nothing but the writing pad.
I find it 100% easier to keep everything in one place rather then doing 4-5 different word/txt docs for every story.

how the fuck am i supposed to come up with a completely original and engaging title?

>>18624773
Think about what describes your story, the essential point condensed in a few words. Don't worry about if it looks cool or whatever.

I’ve asked this here several times but I’m posting here in a last ditch effort to get some help.

I really struggle with defining what “kind” of stories I want to write. I come up with ideas, I put them to paper, I edit them, I can make something at least readable out of them. It’s hard but I don’t hit this enormous mental block. Where I hit the mental block is in between deciding to write something and picking something out of that cloud of ideas to actually put on paper. I feel like a lot of readers turned writers get really deep into one specific type of story. They get into fantasy, or horror, or sci-fi, or drama and they just know to write that because that’s what sucked them in. But I don’t have that. My reading tastes are all over the place and I have a hard time identifying what type of story I want to tell. And as a result there’s like a mountain of mental stuff to sort through. I write everyday but I find too often I’m ending up writing about this enormous mess of ideas in my head rather than just picking one and running with it. Has anyone here ever struggled with this or have any advice?

>>18624811
yeah but whatever i come up with is already taken

>>18624826
Guess your story is too generic then

>>18624819
I don't think about categories or types or shit. I write what I want, it's easier to examine afterwards what the story really ended up being about, when it's actually finished.

>>18624819
I just write what I like the most at the time.
>All that sci fi about just air force or just navy or just ground force, I want characters to have all three
>Annoyed that the character, that pulls protag out of his regular life into plot, fades into background or dies despite all the cool stuff in the beginning. I want that character to be protag.
>That element of premise that always just thrown in for marketing purposes and then forgotten. I want it to matter.
Etc

>>18624819
If you consciously need to think about this, you shouldn't be writing anyway.

>>18624568
I usually use Word or Google Docs to write, then when I'm done or nearing completion I copy everything into Scrivener just for the export tool. It's 10/10, fully customizable and also has templates for standard formats. I can export to manuscript format or add in some front pages and export an epub for sharing/publishing, then remove them again and export to manuscript format.
Years of tweaking a single word document, creating enough page styles and adjusting headers and footers to ensure there aren't any headers on chapter pages or interlude pages ("Part Two", images, etc) while maintaining the same word count on footers despite skipping them. Then needing to maintain a second version which was in a different format and, every time I needed to change a few sentences in one, needing to change it in both, and then needing to refix the formatting, made me want to rip my hair out. Scrivener's export tool is godly and it's well worth a pirate if you're someone struggling with perfectionism of document editing. probably worth buying, but $50 is fucking steep, maybe if you're already beginning to pull your hair out though

>>18624841
But that’s sort of the problem. What do I want? What do I like? That’s where I’m stuck. Do you not find that you tend to want to write certain types of stories? I suspect you might.

>>18624867
I don’t really know what I like. Actually, that’s not true. I know what I like but what I like covers such a broad range that it’s hard to distill it into something really clear. Do you know what I mean? People have asked me which authors I find to be inspirations and I find that to be a really difficult question to answer.

>>18624917
Not really. My stories are pretty different each. Sure, there are some common elements, but even the writing style tends to change. There's no need to think too deeply on it. Just try what feels interesting at the moment. If that doesn't work out, do something else

>>18624932
Elaborate on those common elements, if you don’t mind.

>>18624932
>Just try what feels interesting at the moment.
Sorry but I had to respond again to this. You say it like it’s that simple but that’s issue. There’s quite a lot I find interesting at this very moment.

>>18624924
I never asked myself that. Neither authors as inspiration or being really clear. Because copying somebody or making a formula should serve the idea you already have, not be the cause for it.

>>18624947
Well, I think you know what I’m trying to get at still. It’s not like there aren’t ideas there. It’s more like there are too many ideas there and they’re very different so it’s hard to sort through that enormous cluster of ideas.

>>18624943

Things like character feeling estranged from other people and searching for their place in the world, looking for acceptance, ending up in overwhelmingly difficult situations, trying to do the right thing but making things worse, situations where there are no painless solutions, topics like that tend to be come up a lot in my writing. But the differences in the characters' personalities create endless variations in how shit pans out

>>18624961
Ideas are cheap, I have like ten ideas for stories, from short to novel, and a bunch of misc ideas. I choose the characters whose tales I like the most and what misc ideas would work with them.

>>18624945
>There’s quite a lot I find interesting at this very moment.
That's not a problem, most people do. And there may be a way you can fit all of them together to create an engaging, original narrative.

>>18624983
How do you decide which you like the most?

>>18624999
Whichever I want to read the most.

>write rough draft.
>begin to edit, rewrite, improve and the whole fucking shebang.
>Stuck on the first fucking paragraph that describes dialogue coming from a phone.
>Try to write something that's clear, unique and descriptive.
>Nothing works because my concentration is fucking busted and I can't think of beautiful words that help me craft the clear scene that I have in my head.
>Laptop mouse pad keeps fucking with my wireless mouse and makes my cursor go fucking apeshit on the screen clicking random bullshit every few seconds.
>Can't get back into flow.
>Still have 600 daily word quota to drain.
>I still have 1000+ words to edit and refine.
>Been stuck on this for the past half hour.
>mfw
>THIS FUCKING MOUSE AAAAAAAAAAA

>>18624819
Stop thinking about genres, they're for marketing teams. Also, books can be harder to define genres than movies and tv shows because they require more development. Besides shlocky genre fiction, which usually is written precisely to be a certain genre for people searching for something specific in that genre. Just write whatever weird things you want to write. If you start out fantasy and you decide you want there to be a spaceship, add it in. Enjoy the flow and then once you're done, look at it and decide what the fuck you just wrote and whether you think it's salvageable or marketable.

>>18624917
My first book was straight cheesy fantasy, because I was in middle school. Then I wrote a silent hill inspired horror trilogy (dropped it in the third book because it was my first foray into a series and I completely had no clue what I was doing). Then I wrote some weird suicidal novellas because I had read Osamu Dazai and random depressing /lit/ core. Then I tried a novel trying to emulate DFW's style and dropped it. Then I wrote a weird short space drama novel because I'd read Time Machine and really liked the first person olde style tone and so I wrote a book about an old guy in space, sorta like old man and the sea. Then I wrote three books that would probably be considered young adult, because that's a throwaway genre for "involves high school/young adult and some supernatural element". Then I wrote one about a murderer on a legally distinct 4chan clone site. There were others I'm forgetting about, failures that I dropped after 20k words. Right now, I'm writing a book about necromancy that's taking some turns towards sci-fi.

As the other anon said, there are some common elements in the stories. I frequently have two main viewpoints. One of the main protagonists is usually suicidal, or at least was at one point. My chapters are frequently made up of 800-1400 word scenes, though certain books, like the fantasy ones, usually had 2-4k sceneless chapters. Three books for some reason have someone jumping off a skyscraper to kill themselves (main character attempting in one, minor event in one, main character successfully at the end in one). The females are usually smart and reclusive NEET-types for some reason.

Anyway, there are no rules. The modern market is what's making you believe that authors only write one genre, and that stories need to be 80k words, and that stories need to fit them. Writers are artists that experiment and tell stories. Unless you are a fag that is trying to sell out, don't pay attention to genre or rules. If you are a fag, literally write the most cliche genre stories you can think of repeatedly and you will likely succeed.

>>18625009
go to settings and disable the mouse pad you retard

>>18625016
Tried that. Still fucking happens anyway.

>>18625020
whats your computer brand + model number

>>18625009
>cover pad with paper or other non-touch material
>unplug wireless mouse
>learn how to alt tab and tab
>never deal with it again

>>18625014
>The modern market is what's making you believe that authors only write one genre
It’s partly that. It’s partly a personal hangup, if I’m being honest. I’m like terrified of getting into a groove of writing a lot of the sort of thing I might look back and wish I hadn’t written because of other personal experiences. I also just feel like the best authors have a distinct style and flavor to their books, but I don’t feel that’s the case for myself so I want to develop it.

>>18625039
>I might look back and wish I hadn’t
This will happen no matter what you do. Every year that passes after writing a story, I get more embarrassed having created it. I'm glad that I did, but reading it makes me realize how much I have changed and how dumb I was.
>I also just feel like the best authors have a distinct style and flavor to their books
That's style and is different from genre. The only way that you get that is by reading and experimenting with different styles until you begin to slip into one. When you read a book and enjoy the prose, try writing a chapter emulating it and see how it suits you. It will leave a permanent effect on you and will be added to your repertoire, and once you have enough styles down, you'll probably have developed your own weird way of writing that others will enjoy.

>>18625055
There’s one author in particular who had a style and storytelling ability that just really resonates with me for whatever reason so I’ve done some writing exercises to emulate their work and I think that was good for me but still I just feel like the sort of stories they tell maybe aren’t the sort of stories I would tell, or at least tell well enough. Do you think this emulation thing is a good exercise for things that go beyond mere style or would you think of it solely as an exercise in writing style for sharpening prose?

>>18625085
Emulating a style is good practice all around. It forces you to think in similar patterns to ones you like, and experimentation is key to growth. And if you recognize it doesn't suit the stories you tell, then you must have some sense of the stories you want to tell, so if you do that with enough authors, you may have a better idea of the types of tales you want to pen.

>>18625106
>And if you recognize it doesn't suit the stories you tell, then you must have some sense of the stories you want to tell
Not really. It’s more like these specific types of stories just aren’t me, like I wouldn’t be the right person to tell them, even though I like them.

>>18617386
https://pastebin.com/h1zixpv5

>>18624027
>heavy with a feeling which has no weight
stfu
Your story is interesting, but cut that shit out

>>18618419
I wrote 7 novels and I did it in libreoffice.
>>18618356
tfw
>>18621434
brb killing myself

>>18625167
The flowery language (at least the poor parts) probably won't make it through the editing process, don't worry. If you think this is bad, you should see the first chapter. The concept is admittedly as gay as the language, but I plan a joycean stylistic progression through the course of the novel's three acts. This is the first act, and I am purposely trying to establish the narrator as a bit of a buffoon. The first act is essentially just the narrator trying to navigate this surreal dreamworld to make his appointment. I'm going with an episodic approach to the first act where I attempt to faithfully represent different themes while maintaining this weird non-logic.

The second is aimed at academic faggots and will loosely follow the structure and narrative style of the Gita – a focus on logic. If I pull it off well it will have the appearance of a coherent philosophy, but not much more. I want it to be completely superficial and to crumble completely under rudimentary analysis.

If the first two acts are thesis and antithesis, the third is synthesis. The narrator will take the false epiphanies from the second act and descend into complete, free associative madness. Naturally, this will be the turbo autistic stream of consciousness nonsense style I've posted here before (to universal and overwhelming scorn, here and elsewhere). I really just want to sucker people into reading what I actually want to write, which is the third act.

Like I said, it's a faggy concept, but if I pull it off it could be really great.

bamPU

>>18621434
i will die destitute and unknown and i am completely okay with that. hopefully i can write just one thing that's actually good.

>>18626515
I'd rather die a rich man off erotica then a poor man off my "classics"

>>18626701
you die either way and can't take any of it with you.

>>18626732
well one way I could get prostitutes until I die the other I would have to be a prostitute. Really, its an easy choice.
I mean, whats artistic integrity but something that artists came up with to make themselves feel special.

>>18626749
do what you gotta do. i could live comfortably for the rest of my life with the little gig i've got going personally. i'll never have enough money for marriage or children, but if i'm being honest i don't really want either of those things. i want the joy of having created something genuinely good more than i want social status or material wealth. that's just me though.

>>18626749
>I would have to be a prostitute
Well, yeah, writing erotica for a living is pretty gay and dirty, but you don't need to be so hard on yourself

>>18626790
there is nothing wrong with writing erotica/smut, just look at tropic of cancer

What is the best way to actually practice writing? I mean, I'd like to write stuff and get feedback on it to know I'm heading in the right direction. I have a 'killer idea' so to speak, for a book but in my current state I'd probably fuck it up.

>>18627284
unless you have a "master" willing to teach I would take nobodies advice other then your own.
Nobody really knows how to write, and taking advice from strangers is the worst thing you could do to your own writing.

Im so tired of shitty isekai buttfuck harem stuff on scribblehub and RR getting more ratings and comments than my stories. Im going insane

>>18627782
How could a idea of transportation to another with such potential turned into formulaic garbage.

>>18627782
Just join the crowd bro, what are you making thats so special?

>>18627814
Any idea, repeated over and over again, due to other ones who have gotten popular, will turn into an incestuous mess as people start a weird game of telephone that only last until another person gets a bright idea and the game starts again.

>>18625163
Anyone wanna take a crack at this?

>>18627849
I think your small story is a bit too short and leaves a lot of details. It’s always good to trim the fat and unnecessary fluff, but it reads like you thought of a story and wanted to jot down the bare skeleton of it; basically a brainstorm. It does seem like a cute story, and I like the general idea, just needs a bit of embellishment. The switch from saying “the traveler” and “the kelpie” to just “traveler” and “kelpie” was a bit jarring as well. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to switch the narration to referring them as solely Traveler and Kelpie, or if you just forgot to put “the”. Either way, I think keeping the article would be better overall.

If you rewrite it I will definitely read it again. Like I said before, it seems like a cute and neat little story.

>>18628384
leaves out a lot of details*

Should I feel bad about writing super low brow stuff to make some money?

Where do I find a good editor? I'm thinking of just paying some English major working at a college $200 bucks and have them edit it. Good idea or bad idea?

Can someone please post the list of 300+ journals that can be submitted to? Written by a university lady. Tiered in terms of the prestige.

Where my dystopian fiction chads at?

>>18617474
When I looked at the pic, my brain immediately though it was some humilliation JOI

>>18627814
It's literally the endpoint form of escapism.

>>18617386
how does your life affect your writing? do certain events in your life leak into it? For example: Your car breaks down and you're stuck on the side of the highway. You come home and write in your character also having similar even exaggerated events happen. Do you put your emotion or even pain in your writing or do you keep your life and emotions completely separated from your characters

>>18617410
Seconded

>>18629208
I had a customer complain about how his order was done wrong. Then he dumps it all over the counter and rants on about how he should be reimbursed for gas money and how this country has sharply gone downhill and rotten. He does this in front of several other customers behind us, and I merely stood there and took it without so much as anyone standing up for me afterward.

A few days after that incident, I began writing up a chapter where it begins with a minor character, a security guard for a makeshift fied hospital, unwittingly confronts the MC and rants about things have been going terrible ever since the MC's group seized power. I'd say my two MCs have a lot of helpless/anxious moments mostly present in ther monologues.

my shit is so bad its like a 5th grader wrote it LOL at least i got past writers block

>>18624568
Scrienver 3 for Windows.

>>18624747
version 3 is a lot better. You can also just customize it and take everything you don't want. You can also edit in Composition mode, which is basically is fullscreen move.

>>18629331
meant to type you can also write in composition mode

>>18629208
I keep my emotions/life events short stories to keep them out of my novel.

>>18624568
Google Docs or a notebook

How often do people pretend to be two people arguing on this board in order to practice developing unique, opposing voices?

>>18629208
I live with my girlfriend who freaks out if I ever attempt to spend time on my own or away from her so I never write

>>18629415
No clue, but it sounds like a good idea so I'll start doing it.

Is it bad to structure my novel directly on the heros journey from joseph campbell with no twists or variations?

>>18629467
Tell her to quit being retarded then

>>18629530
Maybe? Nobody can really answer that but yourself. Just write the draft first and then figure it out.

>>18629530
Only ever do whatever you want. Listen to NO ONE. but you have to have heart.

>>18629530
No, as long as you do it intentionally.
It would be bad if you had done it out of mindlessly imitating other works that follow the hero's journey, but purposely following a structure is entirely different from repeating tropes popular works that use the same formula.

>>18629530
george lucas did this and ended up a multi-billionaire. go for it lol.

Does anyone else stop and think to yourself, "literally no one other than me will ever care about this story" from time to time with certain ideas?

Obviously I keep going and finish them, but sometimes I wonder...

>>18629860
Sometimes. My current chapter wip is literally just my MC playing tridimensional shogi.

>>18626806
Just like there's nothing wrong with being a prostitute

>>18629860
There are so many people on Earth, someone somewhere will always care.

>>18629860
I'm often aware of the possibility. That said, it's far more important that I can feel like I care about the story. If I don't, and if I can't make it into something I care about, there's no point for me in writing it.

I am literally physically unable to think of new characters, I can only think about what sort of character the plot needs, find an existing one similar to it, and then modify it until it fits my plot

>>18630307
We don't care.

>>18629467
My girl is like this sometimes. You need to assert yourself and let her know that this is your time to work on something you are passionate about. If she can't accept that she's just dragging you down and you need to end things

>Have idea but Im pretty sure Im ripping it off from somewhere
>No idea how to find it to confirm it without going through every book ive read

>>18630307
thats how it works for me too homie, all my characters are created by the circumstances they are brought up in

>>18629467
She sounds like me haha

>>18630431
Just publish it and someone will tell you eventually

>>18629467
I spend a lot of time with my gf who I live with in a small house. All day every day. But I write while we watch TV/films in the evening and I sit next to her with my laptop and write while she plays video games and we chat while I work. It's not like every activity is something you can do together, just get used to background noise. Some ambience is actually pretty comfy to write to

>>18620967
No idea what purple prose is but that paragraph is too hard to read. I see what you tried to do with the repetition, but it just doesn't come out right. Try out these exercises and see if any of them come out better than the original paragraph.
>Try removing all the "he thoughts".
>Try spacing out the "he thoughts" each in their own paragraph.
>Give one descriptive sentence between each "he thought.

>>18621132
Indeed is a fucking rig. Try talent.com or government jobs. I swear I've never even gotten close to a job off indeed
>>18620885
Depends on the situation of your story.
>>18621215
If it's your first novel, finish it. If you've written a couple novels before, stick it back in the idea box.
>>18621350
Gj dood, but any genuinely good book nowadays won't win a nobel unless it has a colored main character and at least 3 references to the holocaust and/or how great the american president is.

>complete rough draft.
>start editing.
>...?
>stare at story paragraph from rough draft while being stuck on how to improve it.
>vocabulary instantly turns to shit and I can't paint the image I want.
>anything I do from that point on feels forced and as fuck.
How do I get back into flow? there's moments when I'm in it that I can write fucking good.

(fuck the captcha by the way.)

>>18631457
This, instead of telling us what thoughts he is having, show the actual thoughts.
I don't usually think rewriting someone's work is helpful but it's the quickest way of showing what I mean here (this rewrite is by no means what you should aim for, but at least not everything is framed in 'thought about x, he thought about y)
>He thought back to working with James and if he would ever do something like that. Was the death of James' career like the death of his father? There was no use in dwelling on it. James lost his job and more loss would follow Samuel: his mother would die before him, he could lose his friends, he might not obtain the chance to fall in love. He should have a better job by now, should have moved out, all milestones a man his age was supposed to reach. The moon set over the harbor and he looked up at it, and his eyes burned with anger, and anguish.

>>18622478
Make them victims of circumstance.
What motivations would a teenage village girl have? Well, probably finding true love on a white horse.
What motivations would a trader have?
Staying aboveboard on income, most likely.
What motivations would a black company salaryman have?
Oneupping his coworkers and looking good to his boss, most likely.
Their motivations are all simple and predictable. The fun comes in the execution. To what ends would the village girl, the trader, the salaryman to reach their goal?
>>18623873
Google and guess for these sorts of questions. >>18623997 is actually correct, those things he mentions are what makes RWBY interesting, not the realism of their weapons.
>>18624027
Good writing. A wakeup scene that doesn't make one cringe is always a good sign. The humor is amusing. The following posts are amusingly disturbing, but have the airs of being plot related, I suppose.
>>18625009
I don't write beautiful sentences on the rough draft. At most I give a basic layout, but even then, around 80% of my story is dialogue at that point. The first draft I expand on the descriptive scenes and start to edit some of the original ones. The second draft I use the thesaurus to its full extent.
Tldr just write bro. You'll come back and edit it later.
>>18629860
Yes, and that's a good thing. Write what's truly yours. >>18629885 has the right idea.
>>18631528
Use thesaurus for vocabulary. Start by crtl+fing your entire document and identify words you use too much, or are commonly used. Replace stuff like happy with more specific words like pleased.
For imagining a scene, start by thinking in five senses. What does it smell like, what does it taste like? What can be seen and what can be heard? How does it feel to the touch? Filter these through your characters eyes. How do they feel about what they are sensing? If you find they don't really care much, then they're probably written without much stakes to their motivations.
That should be a good start.

>>18631476
>rig. Try talent.com or government jobs. I swear I've never even gotten close to a job off indeed
I checked out talent.com way better thank so much anon

>>18622478
I think what the characters would want and what would they do for it. And whether those two clash.

Caress this filthy body
Set it alight with breath
A light with sacred purpose
Bring me closer to death

Maybe i'm born different
Maybe i'm born wrong
Because i'm all ears
I hear the dead man's song

If only this beginning
Was just another end
If only this tragedy
Could help me comprehend

Because like benzene in my blood
I'm burning up to know

If that dream exists
I can't find it
If your heart beats
I can't feel it
If i'm blind or dead i don't know
"You" are just word without soul of your own

Oh will i ever see that dying tree
Again, and smell the uncut grass
As sky above reflects the world below,
A pane of cosmic glass

And will i ever feel this cold
If i close my tired eyes
I guess i won't, but that's alright
I guess i'll go to sleep tonight

But i can't move and i can't see
And i can't wake but i can't sleep
'Cause i can't hear and i can't feel
Anything anymore

was writing this when we first went into lockdown and then i left it for a year or something. I came back to it today trying to see if I could fix it but I honestly have no idea what it is, what do?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l44Hag3fJmA_-a7YHQSkiaZfLhZZtKtD7wTstCgB__s/edit?usp=sharing

>>18631882
Set your document anyone with the link can veiw sharing

>>18632114
how do I do that if this isn't it?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l44Hag3fJmA_-a7YHQSkiaZfLhZZtKtD7wTstCgB__s/edit?usp=sharing

>>18632182
hello kieren

>>18632191
morning.

>>18632182
Your good bro

>>18632254
I dox myself all the time, I believe in the community, its a lot better now than it was in the olden days.

>>18631618
Well what do ya lads think of this? Serviceable? Trash? Why so?

Should I download the Grammarly app to help me edit?

>>18621434
"Literature" isn't a genre but literary fiction makes more than science fiction and fantasy, iirc

New thread
>>18632738
>>18632738
>>18632738