/lit/ - Literature

Rate my first sentence
>Ye Gods, I invoke thee now as the waves crash against this rock I am strewn upon.

Planning a novel on a man who is that disgusted by the nihilistic society he lives in he's planning on trying to bring religion and God back from the dead for purely utilitarian purposes with himself being a martyr. Was thinking Raskolnikov but more self-aware. What do you think?

Do y'all ever do anything? What a bunch of failures

>>19078636
ive written three shorts this week

>>19078664
You'll never be a good writer just a good enough one. You are a failure who can't cope w truth

>>19078636
i have written so many brilliant 4chan posts. some of them have even become timeless memes. ive dumped thousands upon thousands, maybe even millions of words on to this website.
but when i sit down with a word document open, all that comes out is "pee pee poo poo"

>>19078670
How do you know exactly? I’m not worried about fame or fortune but the excellence of being my best.

>>19078681
Nah because ik how you act around writing itself. You've got your brain too fucked up.

>>19078696
You talk in shorthand Twitterspeak. Why should I trust your truncated words?

>>19078636
No, none of us ever write anything. There were a small group of anons who did wrote, but they wrote anime and were driven away, so now, no one writes.

>>19078705
You’re in every thread. May I ask why you speak such balderdash?

>>19078709
He's right though?

I have a question. All of my references are done via endnotes, but I just went through my nonfiction manuscript and added a few footnotes, mainly for moving some parentheticals out of the main body text and one special case foreign word definition. Here's my problem: I have a bunch of foreign words that appear in many of the quotes, but I took to just putting the translation in a bracket next to the italicized foreign word, as shown:
>"Wordswordswords italicized foreign word [English translated word] wordswordswords."
However, since I used a footnote for that one definition, I'm wondering if I should go back and do it for every single instance of it, or if the way I have it works as is?

>>19078712
I’ve been here since /wg/ started late 2020. I have 8 publications. I care about improving this general with occasional critiques and advice. But no one, not even McCarthy, can teach writing. All we can do is give general advice and tell each other how to send submissions.

>>19078722
Yes, anon, its extremely easy to bullshit. Look, I'll even give you an example: I have 10 publications and no, I won't post any link. There.

>>19078724
Why would I post a link? You’re obviously trolling and would just attempt to drag my name through the mud for seeking attention like Card, WALDUN, or Gardner (pbuh)

>>19078618
8/10 I like it.

Can people give more feedback on my current short story?

The sun descended into the rim of the earth, as the van sped down the dirt track. Blair pulled the van into the empty lot, flinging dust into the air as he did so. The van was an ‘85 Chevy, a deep rust red and weathered. Tonight was sold out, if all went well there would be plenty of girls, and easy pickings. Blair had been with the band two months and he’d already been with more women than he had in his entire 19 years prior. He’d also seen more meanness, violence, and wickedness than he reckoned he’d ever hope to see in a lifetime. He and his fellow roadie Jefferson had already unloaded most of the equipment by the time the band’s tour bus arrived.

Blair wiped his brow with a cloth. First off the bus was Julius, the band’s drummer, he had to bow his head as he stepped out, the bus shifted on its axle as he stepped from the vehicle to the ground. Next, came Cameron, the lead singer and guitarist, he was laughing at some joke just told to him by Brown, who followed close behind. Brown was the bassist, a thin man with long dark hair, he nodded towards the roadies before following his compatriots off towards the stage. Blair looked at Jefferson and shrugged, they followed the rest inside.

The venue was an abandoned warehouse. It was far out of town, and had long ago housed supplies for an old steel mill, in whose shadow the warehouse sat, and in whose company it was alone on a flat stretch of otherwise featureless landscape.

Most of the window frames were empty or covered in cork boards. Graffiti had long since been scrubbed off or faded, the roof tiles rippled by the wind. Any glass left in the windows was cracked, and the red paint that once covered the walls was faded and flaked like the skin of an ancient mechanism. A hulking machine that had been used for reasons long forgotten now lay idle inside. It sat next to the stage like some broken guardian.

>>19078636
Im not gonna advertise my story on 4chan but ill continue to help inspiring writers here

>>19078826
Thanks for responding to my opening sentence. I’m glad you liked it. I’ll move onto your writing now.
>The sun descended into the rim of the earth,
Past the time might sound a little better.
>a deep rust red and weathered.
Awkward. Try saying “The Van was an ‘85 Chevy; it was weathered; it had a deep rust rest” which might make it flow better.
>Tonight was sold out, if all went well there would be plenty of girls, and easy pickings.
This is almost a run-on sentence which may not fit your style. Try “Tonight was sold out. If all went well, there would be plenty of girls. Easy pickings.”
>First off the bus was Julius, the band’s drummer, he had to bow his head as he stepped out, the bus shifted on its axle as he stepped from the vehicle to the ground.
Try “First off the bus was Julius, the band’s drummer; he had to bow his head as he stepped out. The bus shifted on its axle as he stepped from the vehicle to the ground”
>Next, came Cameron
Omit the comma. Try to cut up this other run-on sentence if you can; it’s a little jarring.
> The venue was an abandoned warehouse. It was far out of town, and had long ago housed supplies for an old steel mill, in whose shadow the warehouse sat, and in whose company it was alone on a flat stretch of otherwise featureless landscape.
I’ve actually been to venues like this and known people squatting in them. Please try to make it grimier and less industrial; that is usually a bit too backstory-like.
The last paragraph reads better, I like it. Overall, it needs work, but I think you have a good grasp of description. It just needs polishing and honing.

>>19078880
Past the rim* not time. Sorry, I’m a phone poster.

I just finished mother of learning. Take my advice. Don't read mother of learning.

Is all "rational fiction" so liberal with asspuls as this story? The last arc was legitimately awful.

>>19078880
Thanks anon, I'm glad I'm somewhat on the correct track. I will refine and repost later.

>tfw you spend 3½ hours in the middle of the night on 80 words

>>19079097
How much did you spend actually writing and not scrolling the internet anon be honest

How to awaken terror and dread in the reader or myself?

>>19079175
Take a part of your work that's sort of spooky already, and add onto the end "and then a skeleton popped out."

>>19078632
Sounds fun, does the story end with his death or do we get to see whether he succeeded/failed?

I have an account on RR just to leave half stars on random stories with no ratings yet.

>>19079175
>suddenly Doom music started playing

>>19079103
>hurr durr, no one here writes
>hurr durr everyone is just posing as writers

How bout you actually start writing some of your own stuff instead of just spamming the threads with shitposts?

What if you are ideas write manga are anime?

>>19079303
This. I just wrote for an hour tonight and did okay. 25 wpm is good for me, which means I’m in the groove at least.

>send historical fiction draft to beta readers
>world building, action scenes, and tiny historical details are met positively
>all of them think my characters are stale and inconsistent

>>19079404
Character building is for plebs but try to make it an NPC that any John Citizen or Jane Doe could project their own psyche into to make the story keep going.

>>19079269
I’m thinking he kills in a justifiable scenario in the eye of the law and is lauded as a sort of hero but once the guilt somewhat drives him mad (which he predicted) he’ll say he wanted to kill the person and could have let them go which turns the people (minus his friends) against him somewhat because there’s now a bit of doubt to his actions, this showing him that no person can replace God in society and that celebrity worship has gone too far to be stopped.

>>19078632
Won't read until you feature a dog unamused by aliens entertaining it.

>write your most famous work for practically your entire adult life, die before it's fully published
Is it worth it?

Any other anons care to look at my work here?
>>19078826

>>19079590
>b-b-b-buh I’m supposed to enjoy fame and fortune
That’s so dumb. Of course writers will be most famous after they die. Don’t worry about seeing the height of your career.

>>19079591
Read the first sentence and I don't like the comma. Take it out. Maybe switch the bit about the van to the beginning and put the bit about the sun after it.

>>19079596
B-but I want to go to conventions and get sex from hot nerd girls!

>>19079608
Same. In fact, that's the only way I can imagine meeting a girl to begin with.

>>19079604
I had this to begin with! I will do that - thank you anon.

>>19078826
i can't comment on the accuracy of the place like the other anon, but i like the mood and imagery a lot. some of the grammar interrupts the flow a bit, the commas like in the first sentence. but that could just be my own taste, maybe other people are ok with it.
it's good, i hope you keep going and post more

>>19079614
For me it's writing in my book about my feelings for my oneitis from high school, who will then read the book and come tell me she feels the same way towards me but never had the courage to do that, and then we get married and I can tell people I got a wife by writing a book about how much I loved her

>>19079628
I will anon, I have the entire thing written and I'm trying to polish it into a good/readable state at the moment. Feedback from these threads has been invaluable.

>>19079630
Why not just treat writing like an art form and a craft, and not a vessel for your vanity and Chandler tier lovequest?

>>19079641
Because you can't daydream about working hard.

>>19079630
good luck anon

>>19079630
i hope it happens

>>19079623
I think most of the problems here have to do with using too many commas, they break up the flow unnecessarily. I'd remove a few more. For example
> Tonight was sold out, if all went well there would be plenty of girls, and easy pickings
There's no need for "Tonight was sold out" to be connected to the rest, so just put a period there and let it be its own sentence.
>He’d also seen more meanness, violence, and wickedness than he reckoned he’d ever hope to see in a lifetime
Here remove the comma from before "and". Doesn't belong there.
>Next, came Cameron
Next came Cameron
> Blair looked at Jefferson and shrugged, they followed the rest inside.
Replace the comma with "and".
I'd say that's about it. Just too many commas.

>>19079630
so you're writing fiction

wrote this the other day, can i get some crit?
i set out to write a short piece about a character with a face on their hand inspired by vampire hunter D (hence the title), but had been reading Lovecraft and wanted to start it like he starts the Dunwich Horror and ended up spending most of the day writing this much. obviously its written in his voice, which i've never attempted before, but i didn't want to just ape him. it took me a really long time to find the right words and I honestly can't tell what to make of it; i think i like it but suspect that it might actually be shit, so feedback is much appreciated

>>19079673
Thank you anon.

>>19079686
It def gives off Lovecraft vibes, I think that first sentence is far too long though. It should surely be at least two?

Also when you write 'home deep beneath the road' I think 'deep within the earth' would be more in line with the rest of the text.

Also instead of 'sealocked' just say island.

>>19079694
>I think that first sentence is far too long though.
yeah i definitely agree. I think i should get rid of the "upon attempting to recollect where the road began", or at least change something there.
thanks friendo

So I read one of my sections at a large crit group and I must say I am utterly demoralized from the process. I feel like in person crit groups may be a waste of time. I read a 2000 word section, which is like a 3rd of a chapter and all they (10-12 people) had to say was there was too much exposition, they did not know what the point of anything was, a bunch of conflicting notes, one person liked a section of action description and another did not understand the exact same section.

It is a mil sci fi so I get that it is not everyone's tea, but I find it impossible to really edit the work based on feedback from people only getting a look at like 2% of the work. Do people really expect you to explain the entire plot every 1000 words, to explain what is going on in the MC's head at literally every moment? To not have any world building or concepts at all beyond a single sentence? Should I take story advice for an adult, hard mil sci fi story from people who write childrens books and soft fantasy?

I like getting out he house and talking about my work but I feel like if I follow advice from these people it will ruin the book.

>>19079828
Fellow Mil sci fi bro, it's going to be especially hard to get anyone to understand and appreciate your work since the hentr is going to be pretty much dead in the water just about everywhere ever. Just accept that you will be utterly and completely alone in your craft I guess, both as a reader and writer.

>>19079899
>hentr
Genre, fuck phone posting. But yeah, unless you can find the nearest workshop that specializes in scifi you're just kind boned. I think it's better to write then story on your own terms, rather than conform to other writers standards in my opinion. Writing is a solitary thing after all.

>>19079899
There is so much published mil sci fi out there though, I know there is market, not that my goal was ever best sellers, I just wanted to make a kino mil sci fi with literary chops that might be consumable for other weirdos. Like I am packing it full of woman characters, making it funny/absurd, its not just dour war shit 24/7. But normies are cringing at like one paragraph of combat action description.

>>19079910
I am mainly writing it for myself but I know I need some outside validation so that it is not just complete insane trash that does not make sense.

/tv/ tourist here, I posted this poem there and it got j& almost immediately. Maybe you fags would like it.


She's a cute and comely damsel
So in rhyme I will indulge
She's the queen of /tv/
a dreamgirl pixie
with a dainty little bulge

I post in threads about her
That the janitor forbids
He does it for free
but that won't stop me
I want her to have my kids

some say that isn't possible
I think that they are lying
Even so, it wouldn't be
because of lack of trying

A fair and lovely maiden
as delicate as a wafer
i want
i need
to feed my seed
into Hunter Schafer

>>19079686
I'm half expecting a Holder to show after reading the beginning.

>>19079291
i leave nasty reviews on goodreads. i love doing it. i only do it to genuinely shitty books, of course, but i love razzing the shit out of a living author because i know they will browse the reviews and read them all, especially a small unknown writer. i want them to know they're shit and i despise them. i want to destroy the competition psychologically. fortunately there is no dearth of shitty contemporary to roast.

>>19079404
what era/country? wordcount?
historical is absolute pain to write. i cant imagine how easy it is to write shit like fantasy where you can just make up everything with zero research needed.

>>19079686
>2nd person
you wrote it in the most annoying style possible. prose and story are reasonably good but it's just so fucking annoying to read that shit dude.
>>19079591
not the worst. you overuse commas and your prose is shit. characters have no presence. descriptions are alright. story itself seems immature teenager shit.

>>19080200
yeah lol i figured this would be an issue. it was intended to be a descriptive piece about a town and a strange man who inhabits it, so it felt right for the voice i was writing in to lead in with almost a twilight zone type intro, placing you directly in the situation while also establishing how the narrator got his knowledge. but the story itself is not going to be told as the narrator recounting what happened to himself in any sort of sequential narrative.
a lot of old horror stories do this sort of shit where a story will be told from the perspective of a man being warned by another man of the horrible thing that happened to his friend by reading the letters written by his friend and his friends mother and so on, so the perspective is a little confused. writing in that voice i wanted to evoke, this sort of thing just felt right and it wasn't until the line about breathing through fear that i was fully conscious of what i was doing

>>19079175
'The us of twins or triplets that are virtually indistinguishable from one another can lend a spooky, uncanny edge. Kafka does it.' - Paraphrased from Sebald's lectures on writing. Also perhaps relevant to you:

'Oddities are interesting.'

I really want to insert Laputa into the novel I'm writing but I feel I should call it something else. It's not an important part of the book, I just want to feature a destroyed sky island for the characters to come across. It's an out right ode less to Gulliver's Travels and more to Castle in the Sky--which outright calls its sky island Laputa. Should I just call the rock Laputa or is that in poor taste?

>>19080413
I don't know; as a reader who is not familiar with Gulliver's travels, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. I probably wouldn't have dwelled on the name for more than a minute or two, but perhaps if I was familiar w/Swift then I'd feel it was a little cheap.

Secondly: anyone else REALLY feel like Chris Chan is entering the collective consciousness right now? I know he's steeped in a fiasco that will likely put him in jail for years, but still... something about it is so strange. I guess I shouldn't expect anything normal concerning someone like Chris.

>writing rough draft on section that involves a character learning how to split loci of her consciousness between multiple beings and operate them simultaneously
I can already tell editing this for clarity is going to be confusing as hell. I think I might use similes to describe it, I guess the closest thing is virtual reality and being able to control both the virtual character and still walk around in the real world. Once you do that with over 2 minds in parallel I don't really know how to describe it. My best guess is that it feels like growing more arms, becoming more coordinated, and controlling multiple VR simulations while still operating your own self.

>>19080428
It feeling cheap is my fear. I think I'll change it to some two syllable name that keeps it sounding somewhat similar to the homage. Even if it's obvious.

And yes, it was really something to see Chris Chan discussed by Tucker Carlson on national television. I really had to double check that what I was seeing was real. Although, Carlson was mostly going off on him for being a degenerate tranny with no appreciate to his lore. It still introduced plenty of people to the name. I also imagine that this is Chris' peak media height and that he can't top that story.

>>19080550
>And yes, it was really something to see Chris Chan discussed by Tucker Carlson on national television.
Wait, what?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9PW_XVGWHw
Holy shit, how'd I miss this?

>>19080773
>Tucker thinks Chan is his actual surname

>>19080773
>>19081104
>Larry Bundy Jr. in the comments

>writing prologue and first chapter.
>know what it's about.
>still think my title is shit.
The only thing I got right now is "SUYAANISQATSI: you can (not) live".

>>19079404
Characters is what I've struggled with the most. I love good, multidimensional characters in other things, but I kinda fail to make mine interesting

>>19079590
I'm distrustful of any artist whose work only became celebrated after his death

The van sped down the dirt track as the sun descended past the rim of the earth. Blair pulled into the empty lot filling the air with dust. The van was a beat up ‘85 Chevy like the kind kidnappers in dreams drive. The show was sold out. If all went well there would be plenty of girls. Easy pickings. Blair had been with the band two months and he’d already been with more women than he had in his entire 19 years prior. He’d also seen more meanness, violence, and wickedness than he reckoned he’d ever hope to see in a lifetime. Only the promise of new girls at each show kept him from leaving. He and his fellow roadie Jefferson had already unloaded most of the equipment by the time the band’s tour bus arrived.

Blair wiped his brow with a cloth. First off the bus was Julius, the band’s drummer, he had to bow his head as he stepped out. The bus shifted on its axle as he moved from the vehicle to the ground. Next came Cameron, the lead singer and guitarist. He was laughing at some story or joke just told to him by Brown, who followed close behind. Brown was the bassist, a thin man with long dark hair. He nodded towards the roadies before following his compatriots off towards the stage. Blair looked at Jefferson and shrugged. They followed the rest inside.

The venue was an abandoned warehouse. It sat in the shadow of an old steel mill and they alone were distinct in that otherwise flat and featureless landscape. It was far from any town. Old steel containers leaked some vile black liquid about their corners, mixing with the dust there about giving that space a mottled gray patina.

Most of the window frames were empty or covered in cork boards. Graffiti had long since been scrubbed off or faded, roof tiles rippled by the wind. Any glass left in the windows was cracked, and the red paint that once covered the walls was faded and flaked like the skin of an ancient mechanism. A hulking machine that had been used for reasons long forgotten now lay idle inside. It sat next to the stage like some broken guardian.

There would be no time for a sound check. It was 7 and the gig started at 8. Fans had begun to arrive and mill about in the carpark. Jefferson and Blair made final checks to the equipment. They expected a full house, and they expected right.

Jefferson had just finished complaining that each day was starting to feel the same. That he’d been a roadie for 20 years, and that he didn’t have much more left in him when Julius, who had been examining the old machine, stepped out from the shadows.

“The universe is a mirror,” he said “We discern within it only things that we wish to see. The specifics of the image are divisible not in and of themselves, but in the mind of the person who looks at the reflection.” Blair rolled his eyes and uttered some complaint or slur under his breath. Julius ignored him and continued. “A day is only a day in one's mind. In truth it is one stream. Beads on a string being no individual thing to anything but the possessor of the string.” “This and that,” he said, gesturing towards various objects, “it is all one thing, except in here”, tapping the side of his head. Jefferson spat. “I can’t say I understand everything you just said, but I reckons it’s maybe somewhere close to true. Seems to me that my mind is losing that general ability to judge though”. Julius nodded and smiled, his eyes flared, themselves like beads pressed into clay. He left them to their work. They finished positioning a speaker towards the front of the stage.

Blair jumped off the stage into the front row and looked about. It wasn’t the best setup he’d seen, but it would do for tonight. Pleased with the work he set off after Jefferson into the room backstage where he’d sit and drink before they started letting fans in.

It was a full house. 500 hot bodies wall to wall. The flow of the music, the pulse of the rhythm, passed over and into everyone. It was as though life itself was manifest in the space between the sound and the dance. Blair smoothed his hands over the front of his shirt. He felt his sticky, damp sweat seeping through the material. His body was warmed from the other attendees pressing in close. He felt the beat of the music route its way up around and into him.

The band had been touring across the north-east United States ever since one of their hits had been featured in a movie, the movie having been out for 3 months already. Staying in hotels for the most part, they played rock clubs, discos, and bars, and just about anywhere else that a stage could be built. They sang the same set night after night to different audiences. Cameron had been a front man for lots of outfits in the past, but it wasn’t until he’d met Julius and formed Hairline Fracture that he’d started to really come into his own. He knew he’d play with them until he died of an overdose, or venereal disease, or maybe in some fight with a fan after a show. So long as he died doing this it was alright with him.

Cameron looked out across the audience and shook his head. The crowd was full of loose, aggressive people with nothing better to do that night than get drunk, in a fight, and attempt to take advantage of any other poor excuse for a human being they came across. The men had scraggly beards, short hair, and all wore jeans or jean jackets. Most of the women wore painted faces with low cut tops, and short skirts.

The last few songs were fast and loud, Cameron pushed his voice to its limit until it was on the verge of cracking, and his throat was dry. As the final song ended he yelled platitudes at the crowd. He told them that they were one of the best crowds he’d seen in years, how he was grateful that they’d come out tonight and he grinned as he winked at a group of girls in the front row.
He laughed as he left the stage, not out of egotism, but out of pure exhilaration. He was barely able to carry himself such was the energy coursing through him. Now the set was over the part of the night that he enjoyed most could begin.

>>19081270
Unless I think of some amazing title, I haven't named any stories until they were done. I start with tentative titles based on one theme. None published yet, but I think publishers often have better title ideas.

>wageslave
>feel excited to go home and write while at work
>get home
>exhausted and bitter, just want to overeat and hatepost online
holy fuck I want to rope.

>>19081688
A lot of writers have to make it past this, and I'm still going through it trying to get in my 40 hours of writing each week, 20 hours for the 5 weekdays and 10 hours each Saturday and Sunday. It can be tough to stick to, but least I have no other obligations.

>>19081688
Having "designated writing times" is as much a curse as it is a blessing. The whole time I'm stressing myself out by placing the impetus on myself to write, it's counterproductive

>>19082249
Don't worry yourself too much. Get up and do some stretches. Get a comfy blanket. Relax a little bit when you're stressing out. You can always work on it tomorrow.

>have to rewrite and edit 12k chapter that I spent 5 months because I realize it's shit now.
>still have to finish prologue.
>mfw gotta wageslave tomorrow.

>>19081688
I can sympathize with this. I want so badly to just quit the job and write, but I need an income somehow and I’m not sure what else I could do. It’s a catch-22 because you need the job to write but the job actually is counterproductive to writing. I don’t know about you but there’s other issues besides energy. It’s like work trains my brain to think in ways that are bad for writing, and dealing with the work and coworkers makes me so bitter and angry, I want to just shoot myself (not unironically, I might shoot myself, really, this is a cry for help, my life is miserable and I feel imprisoned).

Why did I tell my relative about my writing project? Now I have to show him when it's done and it has lewd shit in it

Schizo people with minds of gods
Had shot themselves a self doubt thought
"Do I belong here on this filthy earth? What about god? What about his births?"
Them with their minds a constant session
Abstract, fallacy, calculation, progression
Given by a figure known as satan
Little known they were not gonna be forgotten
By the world who hates them

Thinking riots preludes too;
Shanking forces, shifting views
Held down by voices and the world of eyes
everything at their demise....

"Shut down the voice" the man said
"He need not have ourselves!"
"Hes wasteful and prejudice to our surroundings"
"And his pressing will not prevail!
Then again the riots seized
Territory breaking feet
Happily in veiling views
Shooting gods in cracking coops

"Off!" The man said
"Why, your attitude is all messy!
"Why dont you keep me in your mind?"
"When all I have is fifty?"

Tally forces breaking off
Posing fifty, clicking cough
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
the man screamed.

>>19078715
I think footnotes are more professional.

>>19082577
Just tell them the truth and that you weren't writing anything and just making up lies so you won't feel like a piece of shit.

How do I read Hemingway? I went through 30 pages of The Sun Also Rises in 30 minutes

>>19079404
The real question is, how long do you have to develop a character before its considered stale? Do you show an entire range of personality in one chapter? Or just one interesting facet

>>19078526
Is it possible to make short stories about lolis being fucked published? Asking for a friend.

>>19082906
Move to Japan.

>>19082906
I think there are a lot of erotica sites that would accommodate that.

tfw rejected for publication again

>>19083006
Can you please tell which?

i feel like i am not allowed to write stories about miserable situations that i haven't experienced. e.g. poor people, when i grew up middle class.

I've been re-reading From Where We Dream by Robert Olen Butler. I'll post some notes I made on the first section.

-- The best writing uses moment to moment senses: signals in the body(I feel hot, cold), signals outside the body(I lean on a desk, I sit down), flashes of the past, flashes of the future and sensual selectivity (what we focus on is part of our emotions; landscape is character)
-- You must write every day. Getting into the trance is hard, and taking a break from it can lock you out until you forget how to get back
-- Functional fixedness is the term for when an action is associated with a place. You should have a place for only writing. If no place exists, change your font or screen colour or something.
-- A writer writes from the unconscious, not from the head, it is from immediate dreamlike states, not ideas, or concepts.
>"Think about how you go to sleep. You lie down and all that garbage just turns off (the meta-narrative, voice in your head, abstract, self-analytical). Suddenly an image comes, and another, and boy, then you’re gone. And that’s how you write."
-- Rewriting is re-dreaming. You reread your work as a blind man, fresh to it, and try to feel it all, and when you hit a snag in the reading of it, that is what must be changed, so you enter the trance and redream that passage.
-- Your unconscious will determine the form of any given vision. Do not force it.
-- A novel has two 'epiphanies' as Joyce calls them; the climax of the story, as Joyce said, but also one near the beginning where the yearning of the character becomes clear.
>"What I would suggest is that there are two epiphanies in any good work of fiction. Joyce’s is the second, the one often called the climax or crisis of a story. The first epiphany comes very near the beginning, where the sensual details accumulate around a moment in which the deepest yearning of the main character shines forth. The reader responds in a deep visceral way to that first epiphany—and that’s the epiphany missing from virtually every student manuscript I’ve read."

>>19083153
>"The difference between the desires expressed in entertainment fiction and literary fiction is only a difference of level. Instead of: I want a man, a woman, wealth, power, or to solve a mystery or to drive a stake through a vampire’s heart, a literary desire is on the order of: I yearn for self, I yearn for an identity, I yearn for a place in the universe, I yearn to connect to the other."
>"Most of the time, good fiction comes out of an inspiration that includes an intuition of yearning. In your unconscious, in your dreamspace, a character presents herself to you. She is a product of your own deepest white-hot center, but she is an other. When she presents herself, there will probably be a place involved, or an external circumstance, perhaps even a moment in our history—a crash, a war, the death of a mother—not your mother, understand, but the death of this character’s mother. There will probably be an event that comes to you somehow, which summons her up. This character is summoned into your unconscious. You recognize her there, those luminous events and places surround her; but however vivid she seems to you, you may not yet be ready to write her story if the yearning is not there. For me, the thing that triggers the moment in my unconscious when a character is ready to speak or be spoken of, ready to be a story, is a flash of intuition about that character’s yearning. What is it at her deepest level that she yearns for?
>Until a character with yearning has emerged from your unconscious, I don’t encourage you to write. Again, I emphasize intuition. It’s not that you come to some intellectual understanding. It’s an intuition of her wanting, a sense of her desiring. And then you’re ready to write."
-- When you have uncovered a character with yearning, discover what has upset the equilibrium of their world. Doing this is the search for the inciting incident.
-- Following the inciting incident is the point of attack. The inciting incident may have occured before the story begins. In Hamlet the murder of his father is the inciting incident, his ghost appearing to Hamlet is the point of attack.
-- Point of attack introduces conflict--the manifestation of the character's yearning
-- Conflict is internal or external; character vs world, society, other characters, or when it is internal the character vs themselves. The most exciting literary works have internal conflicts that run parallel to, or resonate through, an external conflict.
-- some sense impressions are so cliche as to be abstract e.g. heart beating fast. If you amend the sentence, The heart beating fast with passion, you have added a further abstraction, passion. To say with passion is to be abstract, it is an intellectual response to stimuli.

>>19083156
-- Abstract, summarizing, generalizing, and analytic language will induce the reader to fill in the blanks and thereby distance them from the work and the characters
>"The moment-to-moment, fresh, organically connected sense impressions of the work of art will draw the reader into it. In the emotional reaction to a work of art, you do not fill in from yourself; you leave yourself. You enter into the character and into the character’s sensibility and psychology and spirit and world."
-- You will find abstract and analytical passages in literature, but they are not used for surface effects or surface information. They have to do with the sensual presence of voice.
>"A similar experience can potentially occur in a work of literary art, because the narrator sits in your sensibility as a character. The voice of that character can offer the reader a sensual moment-to-moment experience. For a later session you all will have read my short story “Open Arms” [see appendix]. In the first sentence, the narrator says, “I have no hatred in me.” Well, hatred is an abstraction, and it’s a bit of an analysis. But the next sentence is “I’m almost certain of that.” With that “almost” we have a context in which we hear something different from what he’s saying. Dramatic irony is now at work. We have a place to stand that allows us to interpret differently from the way he interprets. His abstraction doesn’t engage our minds; it engages us in the response to his personality, which is a sensual response.
>You will find many voices, even in extended passages, that use some abstraction or analysis in literary fiction, but you will never find those modes of discourse used for surface effects or surface information. They have to do with the sensual presence of voice. This is especially true of first person narrators, but each third person voice also is absolutely distinctive. All writing, in fact, has a narrative persona—your cereal box this morning had a personality. All writing has within it a persona identifiable by diction, vocabulary, syntax. You don’t analyze it. You respond to it directly."
-- Narration can adjust our view of the world it creates, like film, medium shots, long shts, close-ups. It can also adjust time, speed it up or slow it down. Also, montage, juxtapositions. Filmic similarities in how narration can be used. Even dissolve can be used, like dissolving from one third person limited narration to another character's third person limited narration.

>>19083159
-- Dickens is used to exemplify time stopping, slow motion. In the example given we have dialogue, and then description and then the response to the dialogie. There are no full sentences, no active verbs, in the description. Active verbs signify the passage of time.
>“Keep still, you little devil, or I’ll cut your throat!”
>A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied around his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
>“Oh, don’t cut my throat, sir,” …
-- Summary is mostly bad, but it can be used well. Fast action is often summary. But it must always be sensual to be effective.
-- Planning a novel so you know exactly what happens all the time will make you write from your head and not your unconscious.
-- HOWEVER you can sort of make a plan. Every day you 'dreamscape' you enter the trance and see the characters and when they do something you write down a short description e.g. Jeff rapes Sally, John kicks the dog. When you have a lot of these notes, 200, on index cards, you can move them around into some sort of order. If you need to do research you do it now, for instance, for technical jobs like a nuclear physicist, and then then details can be naturally included. When you write you take the card and dream the scene and write. If as you dream you create something that means the sequence can no longer be followed, you take all the remaining cards and re-dream or re-sequence them, fill in gaps.
-- Writing from beginning to end works well. If you write out of sequence you can't make informed decisions about tone, character, voice, imagery, motif etc
-- The card method is good because it is in essence redrafting on the structural level before the work has been written. By writing a whole first draft and then revising the work, you may find you need something new on page 30 that throws the entire work out of sync and so work is much more time consuming.
-- The card model is perhaps not so good for short stories because most short stories only have a handful of scenes.
-- A drama teacher called Keith Johnstone says the improvising actor is like a man walking backwards. He moves forwards but with constant reference to where he has been and makes progress by looking back and reincorporating what is already present in the narrative.
-- You move forward in a narrative by recomposing, reincorporating the things that are already at work in the story.

>>19083142
That's bullshit, the problem is that inexperienced authors want to write about topics without having done the proper research so their voice sounds disingenuous

>>19083140
Sorry, I looked and realised all the ones I knew about ban paedophilia. Sorry, stupid paedo faggot.

>>19083171
>Disingenuous
>meaning: insincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
That's not the word you should have used, retard.

>>19083320
Oh, thanks anyway. Fag.

Steam rose from the giant robot’s heat vents. The metal moaned as it finally found time to rest. In the distance metal disks wedged into half destroyed buildings. Craters the size of sports domes littered the earth. Oozing pustules of bleeding fleshing biomass covered the streets. Cables buckled and vents hissed as the chest cavity opened. The pilot had finally done it by themselves. With no one else to turn to, they took protecting the world into their own hands. As the robot shook when the hatch was fully opened a set of beautiful eyes could be seen in the shadows. The cockpit flooded with light and there she set. Her long brown hair taking in the cool breeze. Dainty legs supporting her. Fifty pounds soaking wet. It was a border collie. And it had just saved the world from aliens. All it had wanted was vengeance and today she finally got it. Her family of humans tortured with the most advanced technology and subsequently brutally murdered. Millions enslaved and shipped off earth. She couldn’t save them all, but she had saved some. She wouldn’t be able to keep this up the rest of her life. Her bones were becoming brittle and no one had cut her claws in months. Her vet was brutally assaulted and raped during the initial riots and she just hadn’t bothered to go to the doctor since then.

>>19083369
You actually come here expecting help? How retarded are you?

>>19083596
Not as retarded as you it seems.

>>19078526
I have some weird (in my opinion good) ideas but really don't know how to execute them, currently eyeing the prospect of working on either travel of Marco polo style chronicle about a semi-fictionalized future U.S. Or something mystery/horror related.
My main problem apart from laziness is that I have very concrete ideas for 1 part of the story, while I really don't know how to do the rest. Basically, I have one part completely thought out, and the rest is blank.

>And then the enemy used another attack
>And then the protagonist dodged it
>And then the enemy used another attack
>And then the protagonist blocked it
>And then the protagonist won
>"Wow, that was a hard fight, he was so strong."
>Repeat for every single fight in the story
I hope you don't do this, put some effort into your writing scenes.

>>19084566
B-but muh anime

Those words. They sting. They rip you apart like a papershredder. Emma used to be the light in the tunnel, but lately, things have been dim like an autumn evening. Thirty years of shared joy and grief, in sickness and health. High school sweethearts turned middle-age strangers. She doesn’t remember my existence, and I can’t forget hers, I can’t forget a single thing. But I don’t want to forget. The grief has become my friend. She is forever gone, if there are forever things in this universe. Goodbye Emma. Thank you for all the memories.

>>19084566
Of course, I don't, why would I use and then 5 times, I learned to not do that when I was trying to write as a kid.
>>19084604
good piece.

>writing about someone who becomes a father and how holding his own child for the first time completely changes his view of the world

>my narrator has been wandering around in the dark for like 10 pages now
>no outside imagery, everything needs to come from within him
>I'm actually having a lot of fun driving him slowly insane
>don't really want it to end
Was it Gaddis who took 90 or whatever pages for a character to walk through a doorway? Maybe I should read Gaddis.

Once we gathered the amount of energy necessary, we would use the digital terminal of the souls of the Traitors as a way to force the rewriting of the attributes of our plane through the synthetizing of a skeletal cross imbued by the essence of the Elohim, then, in the same way as the metaphysical strings of reality are sustained and manifested rigidly by the sacrifice of the Traitors which forms a symbolical skeleton of the Multiverse, this bone cross could ritually represent the skeleton of reality as the recipient of the nailed and sacrificed Shem Hamephorash, producing the so awaited rewriting after using the amount of energy to electrify this gateway and validate the sacrifice bonding it to the first atom. Two things curtailed our success at that time: first the amount of energy needed to ignite the rewriting of the code of the Absolute through the gateway opened by the mind of the slain Traitors synthesized into bone, and second the pain and suffering needed to enthrall significantly the material Multiverse to us once nailed to the tangible allegorical bones of the treason, and how our shattered minds could survive the unfathomable bodily sacrifice to enjoy the fruits of power.

>>19083153
>>19083156
>>19083159
>>19083164
A long read, but ultimately helpful. I think now I'll have to readdress my own character's presentation of his internal conflict and how it is layered on the external conflict

>>19084703
Volter Kilpi spent 40 pages describing a man going from one end of the room to another, then another 40 pages for another man selecting a pipe.

>present tense
>third person
Thoughts on this?

>>19084740
Write in whatever tense configuration you want to. I personally enjoy writing first person present tense. People who get filtered by something as tangential as narrative perspective and tense aren't worth pandering to.

>>19084604
Not good, the cliche here is infinitely lulz

>>19083159
Thanks for these posts anon, but can you explain "sensual" prose and what this author means to say about abstraction? Is abstraction useful or is he asking us to avoid it? I got lost at that part.

>>19084759
how should I improve it?

>>19084747
>first person present tense
daring, bold, based.

>>19084776
Write with less cliche.

>>19084740
Wrote my first 3 books like this. I had a lot of fun doing it.

Is there a /wg/ discord server yet? Should I make one? :p

>>19084712
I really, strongly dislike this. What is the digital terminal of the souls of the Traitors? In what way does a soul relate to a terminal? If it's the digital terminal that does the rewriting, why do you need the skeletal cross? You go on to say that the skeletal cross through which the digital terminal of the souls of the Traitors operates rewrites the "metaphysical strings of reality" (god, I fucking hate you) in the same way that the cross does. This is a problem of self-reference. It's illogical and nonsensical not because of the obscurantist way in which you've described the relationship between this machine and reality, but because it's fundamentally nonsensical.
>tangible allegorical bones
There's no such thing as a tangible allegory. An allegory is an abstract representation, and something that can't exist tangibly in reality. It is by definition an abstraction FROM reality.

Once you strip away the obscurantism, this is just completely devoid of any meaning. Nothing is expressed. It's just words. There are some authors who can pull this off, but they do it through making the experience of reading palatable through adept (usually masterful, if we're still talking about this dynamic actually working) mechanical use of language. If I'm going to read something like this and not come away hating your guts, you really need to impress me. Your passage needs to be immaculately written and have some form of beauty to the writing itself. This has absolutely nothing I can sink my teeth into on literally any level.

>>19084976
>You go on to say that the skeletal cross through which the digital terminal of the souls of the Traitors operates rewrites the "metaphysical strings of reality" (god, I fucking hate you) in the same way that the cross does
Rather, that the cross, through which the terminal operates, rewrites reality in the same way that the terminal itself does. This makes no sense, genuinely. It's not that I'm not a smart enough reader or that I haven't looked closely enough. It makes no sense at all.

>>19084935
gg/fpvVMGPGJ8

I REQUIRE
OPINIONS
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A7xDXOgqMkbx1dOQOrFNDWVB5PRaOa0XauO3hLuXRmI/edit?usp=sharing

THANKS

>>19084833
I've only read 11 books in my life so idk what's cliche. I will read more though.

>>19085056
You lost me at "his eyes were murky windows."

>>19084976
Number Six Six Six checked the screen on the closer mainframe of the crosstation: Yahweh’s soul would soon begin to be tortured crucified to the digital bone cross on the coded matrix stored on the heart of the cruciform cruiser, and soon the first aliens to experience the new step on the saga towards Matter Absolute would reach the planet below and would, through the psychic beam shot by the new model of crosstation, link their minds to the simulation running on the cross, entering mentally it, so that the Gigagalactic technicians could produce their report to the Alliance on the safety of the procedure (for almost a billion years it was a shiny specialty of the Monolith to provide the data for “inspections” on the safety of their procedures). On this prototypical matrix an entire digital Universe was coded, and onto this Universe, the tortured soul of the voluntarily guinea-pig Archbishop was to be tortured in unfathomably intense frequencies, and every digital particle representing the atoms of this simulated reality were coded as to recognize this pain as their creator, forming a simulation of a Messiah Apotheosis occurring on an entirely digital Universe. Once the minds of the aliens were plugged to the matrix, they would be themselves turned into entities saved by the digital messianic soul sacrificed there. The sacrificed and receiver of suffering would be the soul of Yahweh, but the one who would harvest the fruits of the power and veneration generated would be the physical shell. The Monolith was experimenting on this subject in the last thousands of years, and had finally perfected the craft that would provide even more immense quantities of messianic energy, bringing the day were the Apotheosis could be unleashed closer and closer much faster.

>>19085075

>>19085092
Yeah, I'm not sure what feedback I can give you except that I'm not gripped. The hook is weak, and the narrative tone you reach for isn't ever really buttressed by genuine competence, if that makes any sense. You're reaching for that kind of writer's gravitas as if it's a goal rather than a byproduct of the mastery of language. I know that probably doesn't make any sense at all, but it's the best way I can describe my experience of reading it. For whatever it's worth, this isn't exactly an uncommon dynamic with new writers. It is, in my opinion, a major factor in the development of the current paradigm in prose of simple, workmanlike language use. I think that whole doctrine arose in frustrated professors by way of one too many neophytes reaching for the linguistic sophistication of their favorite Big Famous Writer.

I'd suggest that you give it a try. Some people drip a bunch of obvious literary talent with every sentence they commit to a page. I'm gonna be completely, brutally honest with you here, but that's not a dynamic I'm seeing here. The good news is that hard work beats talent with enough work invested. A good start would be making sure everything is grammatically correct and formatted well. Tabs (or your preferred whitespace) before paragraphs. Double newline after paragraph ends. Make sure you've got a good command of the basics.

Manuscript rejected by 2nd publisher today.

>>19085230
Your writing probably has that unmistakable "I post frogs on the internet" vibe to it.

>>19085230
don't give up

>>19085191
>it didn't give off the rambling mindlessness vibe that I was going for
oops
but yeah thanks for reading, very appreciated

>>19085191
>It is, in my opinion, a major factor in the development of the current paradigm in prose of simple, workmanlike language use. I think that whole doctrine arose in frustrated professors by way of one too many neophytes reaching for the linguistic sophistication of their favorite Big Famous Writer.
That's an interesting thought I haven't had before.

>>19085285
i'd disagree though. workmanlike language is what most writing is these days, the YA bullshit is too simple and lazy
it's less of a backfire and more of a byproduct of readers and writers getting more and more stupid

>>19085285
You can have that one. It's on the house.

>>19085260
I opened the Word file on January 6th, 2021. I wrote 140 thousand words over the following months, and on August 28th I began sending my manuscript to publishers. Two have already rejected me. My work has the unmistakable "I post frogs on the internet" vibe to it. The long road I've taken has led me to the beginning, I am as ever, a hack fit only for copypastas on the internet. I am, in a single acronym, NGMI.

>>19085293
Then, is a constant and dedicated effort toward "flowering up" one's prose is an essential part of growth in writing?

>>19085301
How many editing passes have you made? Shelf it for a while. Come back once you've managed to move on from it and go through it with a fine tooth comb... preferably with an eye for cutting out some of the bulk. I obviously can't say for sure because I haven't seen your writing, but that word count over that short a time makes me very suspicious of how much of that word count is composed of good, publishable words.

>>19085305
no. if you're self inflating, or flowering up, to achieve writing growth, that's not writing growth. Writing growth is realizing the style that you are the most gravitated towards and working with it. If you are a pulp, then pulp. If you are trash then trash. You can switch at any time, it just takes effort. Me writing will always just be me trying to hit my own style and discover it, not trying to exactly copy anyone elses or reach some sort of standard.

>>19085319
Good take. Uncommonly good take.

>>19085319
>>19085322
I wanted to say that flowery writing that actually works will always be a process of subtraction. It's the act of writing naturally (since "flowery" writing is what comes naturally to you, being in tune with your natural inclinations and aesthetic taste) and whittling it down into something that works. If you're adding linguistic complexity to your language, I'm tempted to say you're wasting your time. The goal should always be just expressing your own vision as it is absent any intrusion from "shoulds" and other miscellany. The goal should be, as you say, getting in tune with your own taste and producing according to it. Not the taste that you think you should have because you read Pynchon, but the intersection between your taste and your natural ability.

>>19085322
>>19085319
like on that note that's not to say I think that people trying to work up to X style, even if it's Literally The King James FUcking Bible style, is bad
do it
just try to make it yours and not theirs while your at it, really try, give it a spin
might actually be yours by the time you're a few months in

>>19085329
that being said this is my style
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A7xDXOgqMkbx1dOQOrFNDWVB5PRaOa0XauO3hLuXRmI/edit?usp=sharing
and it's killing me so don't do this DON'T do that
literally just make pulp stuff I beg you

>>19085311
I finished it well over a month before I began sending it anywhere, and I edited the individual chapters during the writing process so it's impossible to measure "editing passes" have been made. I know I rewrote the opening paragraph 5 times as the last change I made.
I've done everything I have the ability to do by myself. If there's nothing of value here by now there never will be.

>>19085345
Then move on. I'm sure you've learned tons in the process. Chalk it up, take as much time as you need to recover, and if that's really what your own objective assessment of the work is rather than just the depresso-brain firing off, you move on.

>>19081318
>>19081320
>>19081322
Feedback anyone?

>>19085352
My assessment was that this is good enough. Clearly two publishers disagree. That doesn't mean I'm just going to give up like you're suggesting.

>>19085230
My manuscript was rejected by 24 publishers before I got a deal. Don't stop anon.

how bad is this passage ?

>the way you had always imagined the tragedy, you were far from the houses. on some hilltop watching the most enormous moon ever in the still sunlit sky, so majestic and distant. until distance was lost, almost suddenly. braking that eternal courting of nothingness, which had seemingly just started. it approached enormous, white, dazzling. that moon. invading the scenery.
>a soft crash first, then its gale. you had always imagined it had plunged. the moon had fallen to the land. the empty land had reclaimed its daughter.
>and you imagined yourself watching as nothing stayed still in its place. and you imagined yourself becoming nothing, as the land you clinged to had already rejected you. way before you reached it.
>were you ever prepared for the womb of the sky, were you ever prepared for the womb of the earth? you wondered as heaven curled up in the memories of what you'd imagined it to be, in a memory you couldn't have remembered. the moon had fallen and you were left with solitude. not even the ruins on the hillside, abandoned generations beforehand cried any longer. the abyss invaded and you'd asked for it. and everyone had asked for it. and despite the loudest screams ever, nobody managed to resist silence. as faraway and dying you had listened to the gods of the underworld laughing.
>reminded of where you all were, of where we all were, when foundations were laid, when the morning stars and sons of gods first sang together, for joy: simply still nowhere. reminded of where you were, or maybe weren't, in that moment.

>>19085375
I've been thinking of Joyce's 22 rejections to cheer myself up. You've got guts, kid.

>>19085328
>>19085319
>>19085343
My style is much more dialogue focused. Several times I often think I should have just gone into screenwriting, but I think most film makers are hacks and they probably feel the same way about writers. I had been hoping for a while to write like Fitzgerald, but I'm not sure my natural style is anything like that. If I focus I can write in a similar vein, but it takes a concentrated effort.

>character orchestrates a massive potentially world ending mastermind plan in an effort to make his waifu real

Rate my villain motivation

>>19085368
I didn't say give up. I said move on. The implication was to move on from the results. If it's up to your standards, then by all means keep shopping it. But move on creatively.

>>19085378
Poor but far from the worst work I've seen posted in wg. Do you want specific feedback?

>>19085368
Were they big 5 publishers or midsize? Do you have an agent?

>my "writing ideas" note has stuff from 3 months ago that I haven't emptied out yet
Uh oh

>>19085459
How many different ways can you rephrase “dog meets aliens”?

>>19085404
>screenwriting hacks
I saw the scifi movie Push recently and stopped watching halfway through because although cool things happened there was so much idiot-plotting and suddenly removing consequences and challenges I just wanted to scream.

>>19083159
>-- Abstract, summarizing, generalizing, and analytic language will induce the reader to fill in the blanks and thereby distance them from the work and the characters
>>"The moment-to-moment, fresh, organically connected sense impressions of the work of art will draw the reader into it. In the emotional reaction to a work of art, you do not fill in from yourself; you leave yourself. You enter into the character and into the character’s sensibility and psychology and spirit and world."
interesting take

>>19085456
>big 5
By the standards of my country I'd say they're on the bigger side.
>Do you have an agent
No. Literary agents aren't really done here.

>>19084766
Sensual prose is something that appeals to us...sensually. Think of show and not tell, it seems like that, in essence.

Abstraction, generalisation, summarisation, analysis, these are things he thinks are not good because they remove the reader from the dreamstate of the story, if that makes sense. It's because with these things, abstractions, summary etc. they require the reader to do some work of their own to fill in the blanks, as he says, and so they are not being directly lead by the story in a moment to moment basis. When a reader is being properly lead by a story there should be no room for them to wonder about details, their attention should already be fixed on concrete details the writer presents to them.

-- Abstract, summarizing, generalizing, and analytic language will induce the reader to fill in the blanks and thereby distance them from the work and the characters

However there are exceptions. Like he says fast action is almost always summary, but when used there must be some sensual details in there to pull the reader in. He uses an example of Henry James to show this:

>That solemn piece of upholstery, the curtain of the Comédie Française, had fallen upon the first act of the piece, and our two Americans had taken advantage of the interval to pass out of the huge, hot theatre, in company with the other occupants of the stalls …

This is all a summary, but it has some details to it for the reader to latch onto, the solemn piece of upholstery, the hot theatre. After this also, James moves into a 'close up' on a character in dialogue and this is very much a moment to moment description. It's a nice transition.

This book is interesting, but it is very much MY WAY like he is very prescriptive, he has his idea of what art is and there's not much room for anything else. That said I do think there is a lot of useful things in here, the section on the cinema of the mind, on yearning, these are excellent, and the index card model is interesting and may be of use.

>>19084715
Glad it gave you something to chew on.

>2.5 hours
>another 500 words into my short story
steady on, lads. i'm feeling it.

>>19085358
Its good. I can tell you got some influence from blood meridian right? Some minor flaw I read was that the names(Jefferson, julius) are a little bit too generic. Otherwise keep writing and practicing. You'll make it

and lots of good meat in this thread to copy and paste into my "advice" document

>>19078705
>were driven away
Driven away to where? I write anime and I want to talk to fellow anime-writers but every place I try to find is infested with trannies.

>>19078705
i write but i wont ever share it here

>>19085589
At what point can a lit reader take what's going on in the story and apply it to themselves? Is that something that naturally happens if we first focus on gripping them in the story rather than forcing them to the consider something as they read? I want to try my best not to be heavy handed or didactic, I'm even doing POV of the "antagonist" regularly.

>>19085343
https://youtu.be/5V2CWPy9XGE

>>19085717
>finally get inspired this morning after reading the thread to get back on the horse and write
>I'm at work for the next 6 hours

>>19085800
>somehow encouragement flowed into my veins in the morning
>hell yeah can't wait to put the pen down after work
>the feeling simmers over time and dread is back staring over my shoulder
i know that feel, bro.
take a shitter break, scrawl some notes, anything so you have something to hold on to later.

>perception of what's good and bad has warped into something that's probably madness
>descriptions are unhinged and nonflowing
>dialogue is a pain in the ass
>actions are also a pain
>outline just is a series of events
>not even sure if I'm motivated enough to write this, let alone if anyone is motivated enough to read it
ever wish you could just let go of your memories and history related to reading, writing and just reset everything

>>19082803
Slowly. Each word matters. God, I wish I could write more like him. I was rereading Farewell to Arms and it's amazing the things Hemingway can do with so little.

>>19085785
Wisest decision

>>19085792
Apply it to themselves? Do you mean to experience it themselves? I think when prose is properly descriptive then the reader does experience it themselves, in a way.

>>19085452
definitely wouldn't mind

>>19085821
I feel exactly like that, anon. I've been reading and studying writing for so long that everything nowadays looks silly, plain or far-fetched.

>>19085858
anyone know what to do about this? how do I slap myself back into normalcy?
or can being this far gone in numbness to self be beneficial for writing?
>>19085343 is what I'm starting to sound like, don't think it's doing me any favors

>>19085878
really?
if that's your piece, i'm sorry to say that it sounds like it's written by someone new to writing

>>19085887
then who knows, maybe all this drags you down if you go too hard

Just like make book.

>>19085898
go back to /agdg/

>>19080413
Call it Atupal or something

>>19085907
what is that

>>19085916
the amateur game dev general in /vg/

>>19085887
oh forgot, any pointers as to why? I'm very lost.

>>19085927
i'll give it a closer read and write up my thoughts for you in a few hours. we'll see if the first impression stands.

>>19085936
neat, thanks

>>19085821
>descriptions are unhinged and nonflowing
Unhinged is completely fine. Lack of flow is not fine. Take the prosepill and just focus on writing well – to your own standard of what good writing is. If the writing itself works on a basic level, there's a good chance that the rest will just kind of fall into place.

>>19085846
No I mean when a reader feels theyve learned something from the story and it changes them. Is it best to just write an immersive story or does letting the reader distance themselves help in that regard?

>>19085999
I think I see. Well, in the book Butler says he think art should be purely an aesthetic experience. In the same way a statue would evoke feelings in you or a painting or a piece of music. The analytical stuff, the criticism, this is good too but it is secondary and I think he believes that if you go through a piece of work rigidly, like an academician, looking for meaning and 'what does it mean?' then you are not directly engaged. I'm not really sure how to answer your question, honestly. When I reflect on work that is really engaging, it naturally comes at breathing points in the book; at the end of a chapter, as a powerful paragraph comes to an end, at the end of the book...

>>19086034
I will also add, that Butler would want those ideas out of your head entirely, I think, according to his measure of the process. He does not want writers to look to induce effects in their readers, to put ideas in their heads. He mentions writers like Sartre or genre writers of pulp as authors who come up with ideas first -- I want to show the meaningless of the universe! Or, I want my readers to be very scared! -- and considers this to be poor form as they are not true to the creations of their mind, rather they are using their intellect to form stories and not the unconscious.

Keep in mind this is just one guy's opinion though. It's an interesting book and he has his own peculiar views on things, though they are compelling.

Anyone else can't escape the daunting feeling of too much writing going on with no one there to read it

Feels like everything I write is going straight from my brain into a forgotten void and like nothing will ever change it

>>19086051
>He does not want writers to look to induce effects in their readers, to put ideas in their heads.
I agree with him. I never approached a book with an aim like this and don't like it when I see people approach writing in this way.
>He mentions writers like Sartre or genre writers of pulp as authors who come up with ideas first -- I want to show the meaningless of the universe! Or, I want my readers to be very scared! -- and considers this to be poor form as they are not true to the creations of their mind, rather they are using their intellect to form stories and not the unconscious.
Agree again for the same reasons. The favorite stories I've written are ones where I've daydreamed a scene that stuck with me and later developed that scene into a piece.

Looking around an enthusiastic crowd looking for that certain someone turned out to be a difficult task. I was squeezing the microphone in my hand tightly and let my singing reign free with my eyes panning around the audience. “I’m a queen! Everyone here loves me!” I thought.
But it was only thoughts, for there was one face in the crowd unlike any other. A dull nervous face in the midst of joyful people. That face started approaching and for a moment everyone else disappeared. No sounds, dead quiet. Only that face approaching with a menacing stare. He pulled something metal out of his waist. “Gun” flashed through my mind instantly. He pointed it at me and I heard a loud bang which echoed in the silent void I was in. Something very hot entered my chest and I collapsed on my back. The audience re-appeared and started running and screaming when they realized what had happened. My hand was still squeezing the microphone.
“Honey I could never ever hurt you!” was heard through the speakers. My whole body was numb, all I could do was stare at the bright lights around me and listen to the crowd screaming. My band members were surrounding my view, I couldn’t make out their faces but I knew it was them. Everything started feeling okay, I was at peace. But that’s when I started coughing blood on the stage and myself. It was incredibly unpleasant. Darkness started creeping in. There was a light in the darkness and it called to me. My body felt like it was surrounded by a warm gel. Complete serenity and comfort. No sounds, just void, it was time to go.
“She’s awake.” was the first thing I heard when I was pulled out of the void, it was an unfamiliar voice. Everything looked blurry so I couldn’t make out any shapes.
“Hello?” I tried to whisper but even that was barely audible.
“Welcome.” the voice whispered peacefully, enchantingly.

>>19086051
>He does not want writers to look to induce effects in their readers, to put ideas in their heads.
i like it when this happens when i'm reading something

>>19085345
>I edited the individual chapters during the writing process so it's impossible to measure "editing passes" have been made
So you have made zero editing passes. Everyone edits while drafting, that's normal. But spot editing while writing the initial draft is not an editing pass. You need to actually edit your book.

>>19086051
Interesting. Not that I'm necessarily challenging Butler's view, in fact I think Ray Bradbury had similar advice, but it seems to fly in the face of why some literature is written at all. My background is genre fiction, and those in genre had characterized literary fiction as something more serious than genre. The view is that literature seeks to affect the reader on a personal level, enlighten them to something that is either real or very well could be. Finishing good literature might just change your life. In contrast, genre fiction is largely for fun and we can close the book easily and return to normalcy.
Is there really no room in literature to show the reader your dreams in the hopes that they might dream them too after reading? I can see why a conscious effort to argue is didactic and less immersive, but surely the author can afford to desire to change someone with their writing.

>>19085907
Do it fgt. Write

>>19086198
Every author really wants to change people, make them see new things, give them new ideas, and they want to be famous and have their notebooks kept in museums in a thousand years. Butler just says that at the time of writing these thoughts are counter-productive, that nothing should be in mind other than getting down the pure experience of the vision. If you try to imagine a scene right now with all the sense details, as if you were living it, I think if you were instead actively thinking about how to insert things into this image in your mind, then you aren't really imagining it, your mind is elsewhere, and so genuine details is lost and almost corrupted.

You mentioning what literature is made me think of this bit from the book, which I liked very much. I like Walker Percy a lot too.

>Walker Percy made a wonderful point about the semiotics of the novel: he thinks that a novel, for all its length, is just an extremely long name for a complex, evolving emotion that has no name but that. I’ve often thought that if someone were to ask me what’s the meaning of my novel Fair Warning, the only answer is: read it again. Fair Warning is a 75,000-word name for a complex, evolving emotion or state of being or state of the universe—and, therefore, even what it’s the name of is not statable. The Maori of New Zealand have a name for a hill that translates as “The Place Where Tomatia, the Man with Big Knees, Who Slid, Climbed, and Swallowed Mountains, Known As Land-Eater, Played on the Flute to His Loved One.” And that’s rather like a novel. What’s the name of that mountain? Well, it’s this. To ask, What does that name mean? is meaningless. It has no other meaning; the name is irreducible. So too are the novel and the short story, irreducible names.

>>19078618
Let's see some more, I think it's cool, but it's not much to go off of.

>>19078826
Highly visual, but almost has that overly-wordy feel, the anon here >>19078880 has some good notes, but I'd personally go even further - could just be personal taste, I like my prose sparse, but removing a lot of the commas as other anons mentioned does seem to help.

Example:
>The sun descended into the rim of the earth, as the van sped down the dirt track. Blair pulled the van into the empty lot, flinging dust into the air as he did so. The van was an ‘85 Chevy, a deep rust red and weathered

It works already, but I usually avoid "canned" phrases (e.g. rim of the earth) and shorten a lot in general.

>The sun descended into the earth. Blair sped his weathered and rusty red '85 Chevy down the dirt track, flinging dust into the air as he pulled into the empty lot.

I might be simplifying too much, so just my thoughts, but your second pass >>19081318 includes some details I think are unnecessary, like
>like the kind kidnappers in dreams drive
Of course, it all depends on where the story goes, but don't just tell me something's dream-like - describe it in a dreamlike way.

>>19079686
2nd person gives it an editorial or magazine feel, but I'm having trouble figuring out the main idea or thesis for the writing. I guess it feels like so much description compared to action or plot development. Phrases like
>which you've not seen since you started this cursed journey
also stick out, maybe even more so than the really long descriptions. If anything, the 2nd person style makes it interesting, but to also include subjective thoughts ("cursed journey," "you walk with vigor," etc.) detract from the 2nd person nature. If you keep it second person, keep the descriptions short yet vivid, and focus on developing the action, I think you can make something a lot stronger. I do like your use of metaphor in your descriptions though.

>>19083153
Thanks for this anon, really helpful advice. The quality of time's movement through writing is not something I've ever really given much thought, but it makes sense. I've been reading Murakami, and now that you've mentioned some of this, I realize his ability to freeze time for descriptions (rather than feeling like a real-time description of a scene, akin to a narrator in a film) makes his work highly visual, yet easy enough to follow.

Picrel is something I started a while back, but just want to know if it's worth revisiting/finishing. I feel like I was trying for a Ray Bradbury style of writing (if just a bit more humorous, like Douglas Adams), but

>>19086157
Didn't he say he spent a month on it after finishing? That's one, not zero

>>19078618
>against this rock I am strewn upon
This flows poorly and is aesthetically ugly.

>>19086258
Thanks, that's helpful.

>>19086258
>they want to be famous
I want to be completely anonymous. I want to write something that cements me into the western canon, but I want to never take credit for it. I want the authorship of my works to be something nobody ever discovers, and I want to take that secret to my grave.

>>19083153

Okay so I have finished re-reading From Where We Dream by Robert Olen Butler now. All in all, very interesting and a number of things to think about and to try myself. The notes I posted earlier all came from the first part of the book, which is comprised of five chapters. I took no notes on the other sections as they are different, they are not lectures as the first part was, they are workshops with students and studies of stories. In them he guides students through visions and points out to them all the ways they go wrong with their descriptions--abstraction, summary etc. I found no real purpose for notes there, as interesting as it was.

The only other notes I took was a bit about useful reference books. The pictorial dictionary is something I've actually been looking for for a long time, though I did not know how to search for what I wanted. Also one quote, though it only reiterates what was said before, really.

-- Useful reference books to own: The Oxford-Duden Pictorial English Dictionary has drawings of everything and their names, so if you write about a pier and need to know the terminology for a thing you envision, you go to this book find the pier and all the terms associated with it. The Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate and the Random House Webster’s Unabridged both tell you when a word entered the language, so if you are writing historical fiction you can use the proper term for the age. The Pantone Book of Color has thousands of colour names. American Costume, 1915–1970 can show you what people wore day to day. Beyond Jennifer and Jason, Madison and Montana, which gives the period popularity, connotation, classical meaning, and so forth of hundreds of names. A Field Guide to American Houses, which will give you a view of and the accurate names for architectural features of common domiciles. Another, called American Shelter, is also useful in this regard. The New Dictionary of American Slang and the Thesaurus of American Slang, both edited by Robert Chapman.

"Your ambition as an artist is to give voice to the deep, inchoate vision of the world that resides dynamically in your unconscious. That’s what you must keep focused on; that’s the only ambition worth anything to you as an artist. The desire to give voice and the desire to be published sometimes feel like the same thing, but they’re not. The dream that comes from your white-hot center and the dream of fame—they are not the same."

In the last thread I also recommended to read Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose which a few people said they would read it. The later sections of this book are similar to that in that they are breakdowns of stories, what works and what doesn't.

>>19086413
fuck that shit how am i going to get a girlfriend if i dont get famous

>>19078526
Just wrote this - too nonsensical?

>Fucking cunt whore. Piece of shit worthless trash bitch. Puta fea.

>She didn’t look so tough now, blindfolded, gagged, and tied a chair. She wasn’t struggling or trying to shout anymore, but she was breathing hard, sweating bad. I guess she didn’t know that I wasn’t gonna hurt her. Not too bad, anyway. But I guess I didn’t really know that at the time either.

>I rubbed my wrist. The same wrist that once led to my right hand. The tourniquet no longer felt tight, but my brain was still sending signals to clench my fingers, even just wriggle them a bit. But I felt nothing, not even air. It was like grabbing an emptiness that spread throughout my entire body.

>I snapped out of it once that emptiness reached my mind. I directed my attention back towards her. She sat there, head down, resigned to her fate. Not a single excited movement, save from when she flinched as I laid my good hand on her stomach.

>Fingers. I felt fingers. My fingers.

>“What the fuck is going on,” I muttered, less a question than a statement. As I rubbed the fingers I felt through the fabric of the shirt, I could swear I could feel the sensation coming back to my right hand.

>*Mmmh!*

>She squirmed a bit. The sensation went away, and I decided that she didn’t need the gag anymore.

>First, I took off her blindfold. She looked at me, fear in her big, blue eyes. I was scared she’d start shouting if I removed her gag, but I felt she’d be cooperative as I moved my hand behind her neck.

>*CLIP!*

>The ball gag came off. She breathed heavily trying to catch her breath, maintaining eye contact, I guess in fear that I might put the gag back on. Not that I’d really be able to. I only had one hand.

>My own ball gag was still draped around my neck. With no right hand, getting out of my restraints was surprisingly easy, although there were now certain tasks that required much greater effort.

>I looked at her again. She was still catching her breath. I suppose we were both victims, but she could sense I was still furious at her.

>“Are you gonna untie-”

>I brought my finger to my mouth, silently shushing her.

>The fear came back to her face. She looked around briefly to take in her surroundings – a seemingly old factory basement, drenched in darkness save for a lone, solitary bulb – and she spoke again, quietly, but urgently.

>“I promise, I can explain.”

>>19085761
whats your story? Im also looking for anime-writers but most of them only write isekai and care solely for the visual style rather than making something that reads good

>>19086572
It's a battle harem in a magic school in Europe, set in the ~1960s-70s of a world where WWI never happened (alongside other small changes). Definitely not isekai, but I suppose I can't claim pure anime because most of the characters are European.

My inspirations are Magical Index for narrative structure, a few different battle harems for characters, and Unbreakable Machine Doll for atmosphere.

>>19086307
He didn't say he actually edited during that month. And the reality is: if you spend 4 months writing a book you will probably need to spend an addtional 4 months editing it.

>>19086646
>I can't claim pure anime because most of the characters are European
most anime characters are drawn to look like europeans

>>19085720
Yes, thanks anon.

>>19086646
sounds really interesting. I like stories that are set in that era of history rather than stories set far in the future. I hope i stumble across your story one day

>>19086567
You can't just write a deranged Freudian nightmare and then be like
>Too nonsensical? :P

Not sure if the narrator is also supposed to be a woman, but it would be better that way,story-wise, but it sounds like a male perspective. I also don't know how you will tie together some of these elements, and not sure how surreal this is supposed to be.

>>19086796
Not sure if I see how this is "Freudian." I wrote it from a male perspective originally, but now that you mention a female perspective, I might want to do that. Honestly I didn't really have an outline or overall direction, but I wanted to just write something provocative lol. As I kept writing though, I thought a bit about body horror (though I may treat that more metaphorically, and not like some sci-fi thing, as could be interpreted here), as well as the sort of resignment to death that sorta comes after the height of fear.

Halfway through writing this I considered writing focusing it towards a sorta metaphorical look at what it would be like to be an animal (a slaughterhouse animal, an lab animal used for testing, etc.), within a writing vehicle of something horror or sci-fi, but for the excerpt, I'm curious more about how this reads on its own, rather than how it necessarily fits into a larger story.

>>19086840
Unintentionally or not, from the beginning it feels like it borrows heavily from pornographic bondage imagery, so it's psychosexual there. And the way the scene is described contributes to that, further making it more Freudian, definitely doesn't read like the perspective of a woman. The "slaughterhouse animal" perspective does not come outeither.

>>19086697
Yeah, I know. But there's certain cultural motifs in anime (especially in a school setting) that are exclusive. Like senpai-kouhai relationships are stronger than the upperclassmen-underclassmen ones of most Western schools.
The "not-quite-our-reality-but-close" setting lets me handwave a lot of that and include things that are closer to the inspiration material, though.
>>19086740
I hope you enjoy it once it's out there! I'm still completely undecided on a title, but I have part of an opening scene written up if you (or anyone else) wanted to give feedback.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/193UtXcTgpWBhkh7zLYLNCr_I9GL-xVEpJDca6OI2dC8/edit

>>19086854
Again, I didn't assign a particular gender to the narrator, but I agree a female perspective would be more interesting. The most overtly sexual element is that the gags are "ball gags," but I was already considering changing that.

How does it read overall?

>>19086878
Can't really assess it as-is, to much try-hard intrigue, but it is ultimately hollow, as you yourself admit

How do I learn to write like Hemingway and Carver? Honest question. I spent so long trying to mimic Pynchon, Tolstoy, and Bernhard that I now want to find a more straight-to-the-point kind of style.

How did the great classic novelists of previous generations attain said greatness without a myriad of "How To" books, deep study of literature or the principles of good storytelling? Surely they didn't have nearly the same amount of resources available as we do today. What was their secret?

>>19087019
observation, mimicry, experimentation, i imagine

>>19087019
By the way, your use of myriad reminds me of when I was in university and a professor told me to never say 'a myriad of', which I didn't really understand then. You can say it that way, and I wish I had known that then to throw in his face, but anyway ... interesting.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/myriad

Has a fraud ever written truly great lit? By fraud I mean someone with no literary education or intellectual pretensions?

>>19087019
Most big writers of the 1700 - 1960s had groups they would get together with and share their writing and talk about writing. They were mostly other writers who were successful in their field. A few outliers exist (Cormac comes to mind) but that's what I would guess bred success.

>>19087095
Hopefully me. I only have a physical science degree, a milquetoast background with virtually no family left, and read a lot of books, including the KJV bible over a dozen times. Kind of a weak literary pedigree in my opinion, ngmi but gonna make something.

>>19087099
Almost like yesteryears’ /wg/. Gotta love the internet.

Is commissioning people to do lewds of my characters a good way to self-promote

>>19087272
You could always join a local writer's guild and see if there's anything worth pursuing there. Most of the stuff I've seen are submission contests. Maybe make your own book of the month club and start from there, using each book as a springboard to start conversations about the writing craft.

>>19083153
I'm not sure how useful this will be, I've only just found it, but it's Robert Olen Butler writing a story in real time with commentary on his process throughout. From the comment section it sounds as though this takes place over about 30 hours...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIcnmiT0Mc8

>>19087019
They just wrote. Something /wg/ will never do.

>>19081318
That's good stuff, you could cover write for j.p Tracey or that bloke who writes Jack reacher.
How much of this story have you written?

>2 days off in a row
Wish me luck gents. I've trashed three drafts of this story already, but fourth times a charm surely.

I gotta question regarding trad publishing and the law; So when a new author gets a deal with a publisher your agent tells you to set up an llc to receive payments for your work. Say for instance you live in a high tax state like California, is it possible and more importantly, legal, to set up an llc in a low or no tax state like Texas where you can receive those payments there but still live in your state (California) without getting taxed. Or is this illegal? I'd rather not move but I will if I have to.
>>19087019
Just B urself :^) in all seriousness just write and later reread what you wrote and fix anything that reads badly until it reads well. Eventually you'll recognize what is bad and what is good instictually and you'll have become a good writer.

>>19086567
>She didn't look so tough now
is a bit of a cliche, consider revising that. And after the line
>save from when she flinched as I laid my good hand on her stomach
maybe describe what you're feeling first before the line
>Fingers. I felt fingers. My fingers.

Something like:
>I could feel something there - slender, living digits beneath her shirt.
Then go to
>Fingers. I felt fingers. My fingers.

It would also help reinforce the narrator being a woman.

Overall, evocative and mysterious, but with so many elements, I'd hope some of those will end be being resolved, rather than mystery for mystery's sake.

>>19086567
Consider trying this again in the third person. With first person here I think you are leaning too much on the voice of the narrator. Much of this story is telling, and you know the adage. Be specific in your details. Feel it through. For instance, when her gag is removed, that is a scene that is full of little details, but you instead summarised it and glanced past it. I think the details of this scene as is written should actually be much longer than it is and much more full of detail. Really imagine it.

I have a question.
Is it going to be bad if the setting for the story is set in a utopia for over half the story, but the first chapter is a dystopia? At the beginning of Chapter 1, I try to nest the feelings that dominate the majority of the story as much as possible, but I'm afraid readers might think I was actually promising synthetic lizardpanthers the size of horses every chapter. In a way I do promise monsters, but they show up at the final act.

I feel like the reader deserves to be shown how bad the dystopia was rather than told so they can be grateful that it's gone and understand some of the character motivations better from the start.

>>19087299
I don't see how it would hurt

>>19087815
I really like the line you suggested:

>I could feel something there - slender, living digits beneath her shirt.

... I almost want to add that verbatim, if you don't mind, but I don't know how to fix that first cliche line just yet, I didn't see it as a cliche as first.

>>19087840
To me, the 1st person is very important since it's meant to be a very subjective story (even going as far as an unreliable narrator sort of thing), but I agree many of the details - particularly location - are very sparse.

For the part when the gag is removed, do you mean:

>First, I took off her blindfold. She looked at me, fear in her big, blue eyes. I was scared she’d start shouting if I removed her gag, but I felt she’d be cooperative as I moved my hand behind her neck.

or

>The ball gag came off. She breathed heavily trying to catch her breath, maintaining eye contact, I guess in fear that I might put the gag back on. Not that I’d really be able to. I only had one hand.

Or even both? Maybe replacing the line:

>[...] I felt she’d be cooperative as I moved my hand behind her neck.

...with something more visually evocative - not just "I felt she'd be cooperative" - might improve the scene, some action that shows the state of mind of the character that's still tied up, but I'll have to think about what that should be.

I've thought about adding a bit more location and setting descriptions, but I still would like to convey that there aren't many location details apart from feeling like a dark, industrial setting illuminated by a single light. Maybe I could add something earlier on about how they feel immersed in blackness.

>>19087961
Okay, keep first person if you think it is really vital. I believe someone trying to create something has every right to say fuck you to all criticism or suggestion. So, good for you.

As for the gag, I was thinking of the second bit you mention when it is removed. It's just one example among many in that piece where I feel more concrete, real details could have been given.

You removed her gag. How? You have one hand and a stump. DId you fumble, did you fingers ache at the strap, did you need to hold your stump against her body to steady yourself, could you smell her, her perfume, her sweat, piss, could you see her makeup running, did you find yourself staring down her top or wondering about her hair, could you feel her sweat on you, against your skin, soaking through your shirt?

Each moment offers many possibilities for genuine and striking and unique detail. These are best. Strive for these, and always look for dead words in your writing, cliches, like 'big, blue eyes'. Things like that don't mean anything anymore, those phrases are dead, used up, and convey nothing that is real and only serve to distract the reader.

>>19087566
This is quite good. I'm on the second video now, skipping between 1.5 and 2 speed (thank you, Youtube). Obviously I have fuck all else to do but I am finding it quite fascinating to see how he makes his decisions and the story to slowly form.

>>19088019
There are usually certain things I might be set on, but I do appreciate comments, ultimately I'm not trying to write only for myself, so criticism/feedback is essential.

>You removed her gag. How? You have one hand and a stump. Did you fumble, did your fingers ache at the strap, did you need to hold your stump against her body to steady yourself, could you smell her, her perfume, her sweat, piss, could you see her makeup running, did you find yourself staring down her top or wondering about her hair, could you feel her sweat on you, against your skin, soaking through your shirt?

I very much agree here that there's a lot to be desired, I'll definitely want to address this scene here to give a better picture. Putting a hand up behind a neck and having the ball gag just "clip" off is the level of detail I expect from a video game, not a literary piece. "Big blue eye" also felt like a massive cliche at the time, I just didn't have a better phrase when I first wrote it, but definitely would like to.

>genuine and striking and unique detail

...is definitely what I'd like to strive for, and hadn't even considered senses like smells, body heat/temperatures.

hey anon, do you keep a word limit for your chapters?

>>19088078
I don't, although I do prefer them on the shorter side. I think most would prefer to read in chunks that match the chapters, so for like a paperback-sized book, if you have multiple 20+, 30+, or 40+ page chapters back-to-back, the book will feel exhausting. If anything, having those short, 5-10 page chapters (even shorter sometimes) lets you breeze through a book.

>>19088078
somewhat, the closest I'll do for a word limit is avoiding having it above 5k.

do you guys just use word for writing?

>>19088152
I use Scrivener

>>19088078
I usually finish around 3-5k nowadays. I used to mandate 10k chapters of myself but it's too demanding for a normal reader to digest at a time. I don't keep count like I used to, though it does bother me when chapters are shorter than they "should" be as opposed to longer.
>>19088152
I use Word. There's a few people who use Scrivener and Google docs

>>19088152
I use Word, but with two monitors. Writing in front of me, outline on the right.

>>19078618
>against this rock I am strewn upon
Clunky. Think of a more imaginative way to describe the rock, we can infer that the character is on the rock because of how he's praying to the gods

>>19083142
As long as you do your research it's probably fine. Unless you're in the YA genre in which case you're fucked if you and your main character aren't black and trans, etc.

>>19088152
im in markdown

>>19083153
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_thought_theory

"When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters however ... the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves."

—Sigmund Freud, cited in Dijksterhuis

rate this premise
man with depression and psychosis forms a plan with his therapist to keep a journal of his daily life, and to find at least one thing to motivate him towards improvement. He resounds a further plan within himself (not telling the therapist) to kill himself if he goes one day without finding one positive motivation to write in his journal.
good or bad? would you read it

How do I write perfectly? I’ve been told that doing more than one draft or revising is a waste of time and the mark of an amateur.

>>19088317
Freud was a fraud

Please rate my first ever poem.

A flesh-colored lion rises from the ground
It moves and lifts its head up from the sand
Whereupon it smiles. “Say, warrior,
What brings you to this noble grove?
My altar has long been unworshiped at…”
Anxiously it looks in my direction.
I raise a hand to quell its fears.

“Dear Lion, your majesty,
Your chivalry, your honesty,
Attracted me to your grove.
I come, not as a worshiper,
But as a devotee.”

Stunned, the lion can only look in the opposite direction.
Over the edge of a cliff. The sea, embroiled in a snafu,
Eats away at its root. Tears well up in its eyes.
“If that is so, then I must turn you away.
I am old and have not much left to teach,
That my successors cannot also…”

“Lion, it is your wisdom that I seek.
Not your prowess, no—for then I might
indeed be better served by a younger lion.
Your life experience and unique worldview
Draws me to your counsel. If I said otherwise,
It was only to avoid making offense.
If you would still have me, say so.”

The lion bared its teeth. “You imbecile!
I knew all along what you wanted.
You want to mine my wisdom
and make it your own?
Then it won’t be mine.
I shall turn you away now.
Be grateful I didn’t eat you.
Now go.”

Sadly, I turn around. But then
I have an idea. Turning around
Again I draw my sword. The lion
has not seen me. I cut off his head
With one fell stroke, with one
swift motion his tail, slice off
his limbs, leaving only
an unappended torso.

“Your wisdom was worthless then,”
Said I and, knowing I lie,
Head home with my tail between my legs.

>>19088358
What was the shift in the protag's life that made him feel like he had to do this? And what's going to make me believe he really would kill himself if nothing positive happened? Does he have a history of suicide attempts? Do we not get to see all his struggles before he gets to this point?

>>19088358
The first part is a solid starting point. The second bit about the personal suicide pact seems far-fetched and emotionally untrue, as if suicide there is some sort of logical thing, rather than the slow accumulation of pain until the explosive finale, which is what I imagine most suicides truly are. I could, however, see someone saying they would do that, but as an actual plan they carry out? Not so much. It depends on how you did it I suppose, but overall there's plenty to work with in the first scenario alone.

>>19088385
That's actually pretty cool. Makes me think of Kafka. Considered putting that into prose instead of poetry?

>>19088398
well I do want to explore his past and beliefs, but i'm the type to do it more through hints or through the characters distorted view of what really happened, over the course of several chapters
I'm hoping the present time events the character writes about (like maybe meeting a girl, or getting into trouble with his job) and his description of them being colored by his psychosis will hold the readers attention until more is slowly revealed
>>19088405
I promise I've thought about that anon, and I'm hoping to write in more substance than what comes across in my synopsis. I know mental health and "muh suicidal thoughts" gets thrown around a lot online until it loses meaning, and I want my story to bring more depth and seriousness than that. I'm not just typing those words for an emotional response, I want to get into my characters mind.

>>19088377
Sounds like poor advice - sometimes you can write a first draft that's nearly complete, but most professionals will revise multiple times

>manuscript is 69,000 words
>planning document is 23,000 words
Who here /series/

>>19088377
>write perfectly
Not all readers are looking for the same thing. You need to find the "voice" that you resonate the best with. It tells stories with a certain kinds of moods and expresses how you really feel. It pushes forth rich ideas informed from your experiences, but sometimes surprises you with feelings you hid from yourself. You will have to write books for years to understand the story you tell best. Maybe 2 years, maybe more than 5 but you will find it if you keep writing.
>draft
Whoever told you this isn't an outliner. Even writers who don't outline ( I call them pantsers) still have to edit to ensure that all the pieces are there. The flow, the correctly utilized literary devices, the consistent plot, characterization, and many other things. No one is perfect and for most novels you can do a lot of work in the 2nd and 3rd draft. For bigger novels you need to pay attention up front or a plot hole might necessitate rewriting way too much. A line-by-line edit and even wordsmithing every single word for textured speech and all the other things words do will make your book bring in more royalties longterm. Some people may not relate to your story in a few decades but there's no substitute for good writing.

>write
>look at it later
>hate it
God it sounded so good in my head.

is it still bad taste to start a sentence in a 1st person narration with "and" or is that just something English teachers bitch about?

Does anyone know of a software for writing by dictation?

>>19088467
I have an outline for a 4 book dark fantasy series, but I want to write 3 one-off books dealing with history as a theme first, all in different genres. The series has a lot more characters, and there's also things I need to answer personally before I know how it all ends. My hope is that I can have more experience and coherence on my feelings about its themes by the time I start writing it.

>>19082504
tfw
>>19082249
i get that. you get stressed during the designated time and cant' write. i hate it so much. i already barely have the energy to do chores, paperwork type stuff (paying bills, arrangements, etc). i barely get any exercise at all either. i'm just so drained all the time. my shitty job isn't even that stressful, it's just the fact of how much of my day it takes up (IE all the productive hours where I'm not half-asleep from barely edging out 8 hours a night in the best case scenario.) an hour in the morning to get ready, 30 min commute in, 8.5 hours at work (unpaid lunch, mandatory to take it), 45 min back, then you have to cook eat shower and unwind so that's another hour minimum.
>>19081713
that's a lot man. are you productive for all of those hours, and that is in addition to a regular fulltime job? it's just so awful.

is there an adjective that describes "something that is going to be studied" or "something that should be studied"?

>>19088467
What's your plan for if your series bombs? I want to make a series myself, and I'm having a horrible time trying to commit because it feels like so much effort potentially wasted.

>>19088541
Dragon Professional by Nuance

>>19088590
I should note that the only reason I'm writing a series is because I'm telling the very involved story of a king's time on the throne, from his early 20s to his late 70s ala The Once and Future King. If I keep it tight I can make it 3 books. Otherwise, I'm seeing about 4 or 5 in my future.
And bombs how? As in, what happens if I don't like it? I'm usually in love with whatever my finished product is. I never think it's a magnum opus or anything, but I do always think it's my best effort when it's finished.
If you're going to do a series, I can't recommend it enough. It's a long haul for sure (my last series took 5 years to finish three books), but it feels so good to look back and be like "God damn, I was 2X when I wrote this book, and now I'm 2X. My style and grasp of literature has changed so much."

>>19088626
Yeah, that's the part I struggle with. It's hard to comprehend spending 5-10 years on an overarching story arc. It feels like it'd become a burden sooner or later.

My story is epistolary and my first letter/chapter is 800 words
is that too short?

What should I do about niggers in my story?

>>19089045
put them in a trump hat so they become based.

Which is better World building or character backstory how much of either is necessary? When should I consider plot?

For those who have a pen name, how did you come up with it?

>>19089045
just pretend they don't exist

>>19088456
>>19088495
The /wg/ discord people said to just write it right the first time. Are they retards?

>>19089152
I used my middle names

>>19089158
>People who don’t write
>Are they right
Can you think for yourself?

>>19089173
That crocodile book guy was one of them. He writes. He also tried to organize them for a counter strike or some shit. I think it’s a cult over there. But they do write, or at least one of them did.

>>19088358
No aliens or dogs out of 10

>>19088358
>>19089211

last shot at getting crit
I know I got it from some of you through other means but I'm the kind of person who comes up for crit air maybe once every few months so whatever
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A7xDXOgqMkbx1dOQOrFNDWVB5PRaOa0XauO3hLuXRmI/edit

which websites do you guys submit stories to

>>19089564
I crosspost on Royalroad, Spacebattles, and Scribblehub

>>19089567
I had a writing friend who went to Spacebattles and never came out
Even at age 30 all he ever writes is fanfiction

>>19089567
I'm checking them all out
why is scribblehub full of weebs?

>Tfw I’ll never top this kind of immersive prose and encyclopaedic knowledge

>>19089847
I had this as a kid. Had one for Return of the King too.

>>19089372
I read the first page and then skimmed some of the rest. It's not clear to me at all what is actually happening in it. What am I intended to be visualising as I read this?

>>19089847
Star Wars = Dune ripoff

>>19090277
well, most of it's plot and character development is based on hidden fortress. The asthetics and world building that relate back to dune are minor in comparison to the hero's journey characteristics. At least when it comes to it being related to /wg/.

>>19088757
Depends on the size of the story you want to tell. For my first series there were times I thought to myself that I'd never finish the story, but I knew going into it that I wanted to tell a big story so I went in without the burden mindset. If you're already thinking that taking that amount of time to work on a series will be a burden, you're going into it with the wrong mindset completely. It's just like writing any other book: it's a marathon and a labor, but it means something by the end.

I can feel the fangs receding into my brain now. You ever start to get that feeling that if you don't write you will die? I try to keep that despair when I'm away.

>>19090554
I get that feeling when my emotions get really bottled up. Maybe that's why I haven't written in a month or so

>was considering publishing this story chapter-by-chapter as a serial once I had some chapters built up to gauge interest
>find a publishing site that actually seems decent
>now not sure which way to go
This is probably putting the cart before the horse quite a bit because I don't have that much written, but I'm torn. On one hand I think if it were published all at once it would be a more appealing end product, but on the other hand I won't get the feedback on whether my manuscript is "good enough" until it's complete.

>>19078526
Newfag here
Been writing for a long time and decided to drop by. I'm currently revising a draft for a novel, and having a few people read along and give advice to me (though none of them are dedicated beta readers, so i take their criticisms with a grain of salt)
I'm mostly content with some aspects of my novel, but there are a couple issues I fear I'm incurring into
-Too large a cast of characters. Though there are only two protagonists and a handful of other important characters with their own small arc, there's a huge cast surrounding them which don't really have a great importance in this first book. I am planning on writing a series (maybe even a long one), and the way i've set it up, while the main characters remain the same two, the rest of the cast sort of gains or loses relevance depending on which arc or book we're talking about. The more relevant characters in the first book become more secondary in the second or third, while those who barely get a line in the first may become fundamental later on. However, my fear is that the reader might get lost between the many characters, or even forget them. A way I thought to try and remedy is to have a sort of diagetic list of these characters as an addendum to the first chapter (since such a list would actually exist in-world), but then again, that might look a bit on the nose
-Sometimes I may have a bit too much exposition in certain scenes. This is because I'm having a bit of trouble to discern how much information about the world or the events the reader actually needs to understand what is happening.
-Worldbuilding in general. Since I put a lot of thought into it, it's not something I can explain in few words, and not all of it is necessary. Again, I was thinking of pulling a Herbert and adding a few addendums to flesh out aspects of the world brought on in the actual story.
-Genre. In terms of tropes and general characteristics, I'm close to a lot of YA urban fantasy stuff, but the way it is written, set, and the spin I give it would probably not sit well in that genre. If someone asked me "who this book is for" i wouldn't know what to tell them, really. Probably still a "young adult" demographic, but I honestly see little to no similarity between my story and most YA stuff other than that

Also I gotta say finding beta readers who actually read what you send them is the bane of my fucking existence
If you don't have time don't ask me to send my draft to you holy shit

>>19087648
It's actually complete but the entire thing is 10 pages and I'm not sure how to post it here.

>>19088152
I use google docs.

>>19089152
Last names of two persons I greatly admire.

>>19090762
New thread

>>19090612
You waste time worrying about being "good enough" since 99% of the posted works are horrible trash. Just try to write something you're personally satisfied with.

>>19089372
First, the beginning could use revision.
I had to read for a while before I understood what was going on. Most readers will not do that. You don't have to explain everything, but making the general situation at the beginning more clear would keep the reader more engaged.

Some parts, especially in that opening scene, are just too oblique, and they come off as you trying really hard to be artistic. For example:
>I felt the acid attempt to rise, scratching at my throat, all foreclaw and backclaw, scurrying up a chimney, whisking, flying, sputtering nonsense against the brick trying to escape against teeth. My skin felt hot, it wavered underneath the clothes until my own body was self condensed. Someone blew an ashtray onto my shoulder, and my arm whipped out, elbow and shoulder locked in a battering ram of knuckles against a face. Screams stripped the walls of their glitter, hands reached out, no longer shining nails, but razing, reaching talons. I pressed a forearm down, trying to run past as the open back of the woman’s dress slammed into her standing drink, bits of glass attempting to reach my face, my eyelids.
The action here is unclear. What does "sputtering nonsense against the brick trying to escape against teeth" even mean?

In general, beware of trying to sound good. Write for truth, to describe the situation elegantly and accurately, and take care not to throw too much at the reader.

In just the first sentence of the above paragraph we've got the following images:
1. acid "scratching" like an animal w/claws
2. the animalistic acid "scurrying up a chimney"
3. acid is flying--that sounds like a different kind of animal entirely
4. acid is "sputtering nonsense..."
5. ...against a brick trying to escape teeth?
The first two descriptions of the acid go together, but the rest do not. This is what throwing too much at the reader looks like--there are so many unrelated descriptors that it's hard to follow. Sitting in the middle of that paragraph packed with unclear images, it is terrifically easy as a reader to skip ahead after the first or second line, or to stop reading entirely.

I don't have time to give you more detail, but I will quickly add that I liked the set-up, that telling the reader the year is unnecessary, and that my main piece of advice is to simplify and focus on clarity and accuracy over beauty/being clever.