/lit/ - Literature

repostan from last thread

2,200 words. please excuse the placeholder names. let me know your thoughts and what the most glaring issues are.
synopsis: two siblings on a journey to spread the ashes of their little brother
https://ghostbin.com/z0fiZ

>>19123030
>>19120433
Hey, you can read the last anthology here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09CR5YF16/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Here’s our website: https://unrealpress.com/
Feedback appreciated of course, but more importantly, send your stories. I love reading shit and giving feedback. Also the stories in the OG anthology were pretty damn strong for a bunch of dudes from /lit/. That’s my primary motivation. Getting the talent on this board to write and getting that writing in front of people.Yeah, we’re a very small operation right now, but collectively we got our writing in front of and into the hands of lot more people than we would have alone.

Opening paragraph.

>>19123073
Based reminder.

I'm about to try my hand again at plot creation fellas. I got fucked last night so while I have some time I'm gonna give it a whirl.

>>19123363
The grammar in the first sentence threw me. "Humankind may have taken twenty centuries after the death of Christ to realize they were a mistake" sounds better.

>>19123363
>>19123464
Echoing this other anon, I like the story that's being conjured, the theme seems good, but maybe take a grammar pass.

>>19123363
I think the abstraction could be fine if it wasn't the opening. I'd grip with something specific.
>a character decides that the humanity was a mistake; or
>after (event) happened, no man would deny that humanity was a mistake
>describe what humans have destroyed or what had changed
>describe a specific threat of humanity's imminent destruction
If you can build the case in the first dozen lines and make the reader absolutely revolted at what humanity had become in your story, they could share the sentiment of the narrator.

Are copywriters allowed

>>19123525
>grammar pass.
It is grammatical. I’m trying to keep it all in past tense but he’s suggesting I not do that.
>>19123537
>humanity had become in your story,
Humanity is already doing it. It’s written ten years into the future. I wanted it to read like an opening narration, then it can plunge into the story proper. Perhaps I’ll rework it so it goes straight into how humans wait until the earth is completely unliveable to try undo their pollution and whatnot. I could open with a scene like: “The toxic smog of the drab countryside filled the lungs of Feng Li, who groaned as he heaved yet another sack of waste into the depot van. Its green colour contrasted with the grey surroundings; it was bound for the recycling plant some li away.”

>>19123586
>It is grammatical. I’m trying to keep it all in past tense but he’s suggesting I not do that.
You can keep their actions past tense, but it makes sense (at least in this excerpt) that their qualities or attributes can be written in the present tense.
>[...]may have taken centuries to realize [blank] was a mistake

So "to realize" instead of "to have realized" - not even sure of the correct terminology here but it sounds much better in my head.

Nothing that "has" to change as it is grammatically correct, but I agree with the other anon that it flows better.

>>19123586
>Humanity is already doing it
You need to convince your reader of that, because even today plenty of people think humanity is still worth preserving. Some anons on /lit/ discuss Zapffe and Ligotti's writing on pessimism and a potential moment in history where humanity agrees it has to see it's way out. However that's not due to the suffering you might have in mind that may have a chance at correcting, but rather that consciousness itself is a mistake. I'm not arguing you have to take that stance because even I don't. I'd say it's worth pondering over if all of humanity is having those feelings and finally decide to do something about it.

>>19123572
How about 1000 words a week? Balance it with your song writing and every 4 months or so you should have a completed song and story.

>>19123663
I’m a little confused. Isn’t realisation an action and not a quality or attribute?
>>19123695
>You need to convince your reader of that, because even today plenty of people think humanity is still worth preserving.
So I need to earn my statements rather than give them outright? My sentiments should be weaved into the narrative and seem convincing or just obvious? I agree that humans want to salvage ourselves despite it all, but there’s also a lot of self-hatred about the environment, particularly in the developed countries where activists go to climate change protests. They might blame the elite but I think deep down they know it’s a general carelessness that led us to where we are.
>Ligotti
I’ve read him. Not the biggest fan. I think I realised I sounded slightly like him when I started talking about the human race, but I think I differ from him a lot. My misanthropy is barely philosophical though, it’s a reaction to technology and industrialisation, like Ted Kaczynski. I’m also a Neo-Luddite like Pynchon was. I’ll have to check out Z. though.

>>19123572
15,000 words is a novella or novelette. I write short stories to around 7500 words, and lots of journals don’t take anything over 8000-10,000 words.
I set my daily word count to 1000 but you could do 200 words a day, which should really only take 30 minutes.

>>19123753
It's totally fair to make a statement and build your case from there. I think if you start with any specific event, idea or setting that helps illustrate that view then you will have a bit of ground to stand on for your opening. It's so readers can sympathize with your point of view even if they disagree, so they will read what else you have to say.
>Not the biggest fan
Same. I bring his sentiment into one characters as one of several views to consider, but it's not the one I have.
My gut tells me hope is something we ought to have. That being said, it's not hope's palliative features that I like, it's the resignation. I'm still learning how to discuss hope and how I feel about it.

>have this grand story in mind that I've been working on for years
>have all of these fleshed out characters and settings for them to live in, as well as a semblance of a timeline for the story
>have no real BBEG, nor do I really have a cohesive set of antagonists at all really besides some key ones
>still stuck on how I want magic to work in this world
How the fuck do I get myself out from in front of this giant writer's block? I've been trying to watch and read more stories that are in the same genre of fantasy I'm trying to write but I haven't found any concepts that I could adjust or build upon for my own story.

>>19123999
I get out of writer's block by asking questions and answering them, see where it goes.
>which goals of the protagonist are being obstructed?
>which goal has potential for the highest stakes?
>what kind of person would want to obstruct that goal?
>what kind of goals would that antagonist have, and what motivated him to become like he is? What is his weakness and quirk?
>is the villain relatable at all or is it more like a force of nature?
>is this character easy to hate for reasons other than stopping the protagonist?

One of the things I did to form the supervillain in my story was ask the question:
>What do I think the darkest evil consists of?
From a biblical standpoint, that is darkness that masquerades as light. Then I realized it's normally done by unmasking the evil after seeing its tells
>What if you couldn't unmask the evil?
>If you could never truly be sure, would that make it an even darker evil?
So this is what I went with: an antagonist that seems sincere on every level, forcing the protagonist to completely change how he sees himself to justify not working with the antagonist.

>>19123999
Oh I've been stuck on detailing how my story's ability works for a year already. And the antagonist conflict is loosely defined so I'll have to improvise a lot of it too.

>>19124101
This is really great advice Anon, I appreciate it.
As for the working iteration of the BBEG I have right now I would say it is a force of nature that creates smaller but still influential villains for each arc of the story. The literal world itself is the prison for the BBEG and within it is an overwhelmingly destructive deity that can't break itself free but can corrupt other notable characters in the world by giving them powers based on various vices or negative emotions, like Grief or Wrath or Fear. Not exactly a Seven Deadly Sins kind of deal but there are definitely aspects of it in some villains, although their names would obviously not be on the nose like that.
I moreso want this BBEG to be the root cause of several major issues in the story instead of being the direct antagonist right off the bat, and I plan on giving it an origin story that can draw some sympathy for it hopefully.

>"You’re one tricky son-of-a-bitch, warming up to me only to sell all my secrets to the enemy. But, men will be men, and in this city you can’t beat the ass of a noblewoman."
>"You’re one tricky son-of-a-bitch, warming up to me only to sell all my secrets to the enemy. But, men will be men, and in this city you can’t beat rich girl pussy."
God dammit, I like the second one so much better but it's really explicit.

>>19124492
How about:
>"You’re one tricky son-of-a-bitch, warming up to me only to sell all my secrets to the enemy. But, men will be men, and in this city you can’t beat the complete anal vore of your cock by my wealthy fucking shithole."

>seriously considering leaving 9-5 dead end wagie job of nearly 4 years to seriously pursue novel

Am I making a mistake? I already have a concrete outline and a couple pages done but I just never have the time. Even on days off I'm just too exhausted to write. Doesn't help that things at work in general have gotten increasingly monotonous to the point that my shifts are nothing but vapid noise. Would love intake from others in/once in my position. Money is no object, at least for now.

Thanks for reminding me about the hemingway app, anon. I was planning to something like that for clarity and force on this draft. Do be careful as you still want to maintain your writing voice so edit responsibly. My first draft has huge chunks of complex, unclear thoughts. Once I cleaned them up I found just the right places to add texture to my prose, sometimes as easy as thinking for one minute about how to feel something.
Actually, instead of thinking how to describe cold water running through my hands, I got up and ran cold water through my hands until I shivered and gasped. Remembering those sensory details are better than saying "feels cold" as I first wrote.

>>19124591
>money is no object
Life is rarely spent on risk. I say if you really think you can do it, fuck it. You'll have to change your standard of living a little, and make sure you try to get an agent and editor once the novel is complete. I wish I had your courage. Maybe in 10 years when I have enough to do the same thing.

>>19124591
>at least for now
Good, why make it worse. Also, how do you never have time, do you have no weekends, or that monotonous job is so exhausting that you can't spare a half an hour before sleep?

>>19124591
There's always time. Wake up an hour earlier than you need to and do it then. If you can't do it now you'll never do it.

>>19124591
>never have time
If you really care you can make time. I work 8-5, get home and write at least 5 hours, sleep 6 or 7 hours. Thankfully have a short commute. You can quit if you want to, but I'd get your work ethic improved or at least royalties coming in. It's difficult but at least not risky.

If you are writing about real world tragic events, how many things should you change?

>>19124718
I keep the reactions, cause, and aftermath of the event and just frame it differently. I.e., in the Rwandan genocide, I emulate the cause, reactions, and aftermath and overlay it onto a different race and by someone else.

>>19124728
My story takes place during a war that actually happened, i changed the locations and people in it but im wondering if i should keep the countries and factions

There is also kind of a sci-fi/alt history spin on the entire thing so im just not sure

Help my dialogue is autistic

>>19124857
Say it out loud, or try and practice it with someone else.

>>19124857
Practice or work around it

I write in a journalist type of style

>>19124857
Alan Moore famously used to sit in front of a mirror and have conversations with himself while he pretended to be each character to get the flow/diction down right.

>>19124857
>>19124878
What if I do this and my dialogue is still crappy

>>19124896
Keep practicing.

>>19124896
Your dialogue should have variety. Each scene's conversation hopefully having different emotional goals and beats. Some will be arguments of competing ideas. Some conversations are more emotional than logical. If your characters sound the same you can change these things: pacing with word and sentence length, attitude, accent (vocabulary and word usage). You can use these not just to make the characters distinct but to reveal their feelings without the character or narrator explicitly saying how they feel. Subtlety can go a long way as a lot of conversations we have every day have layers of subtlety if we thought hard about it.

Try an exercise where you write a conversation without dialogue tags such as "he said." Can you tell the difference between the characters at all? Work on their voice until the character voice has a distinct role and feel, add the tags back in if that's your style.

>>19125071
Good advice, thanks

I feel like an off topic rant. This video and the attached comment crystalized a thought I've had for years about the nature of television auto advertisements. They never establish a recognizable entity to identify the brand with and remember it by. The only qualities that the commercials display are those standard to any well functioning car. The ads themselves are uniform and interchangeable and seem only to serve to remind one that the brand exists. Hello everyone, this is a Honda. It is a good car. It has good safety ratings. We have them for sale. Come buy one. Imagine briefly if these marketing departments did not exist. Would people stop buying cars? People buy cars because of the evident utility of vehicles. People drive cars everyday. People witness hundreds of people driving cars everyday. Cars are inescapable, even if you do not watch tv. Are they trying to persuade people to buy more cars than they need? Unlikely, as cars are the most expensive consumer products that people buy besides houses. That raises another good point. Why do house manufacturing companies not spend millions persuading people to buy houses? All of these cute McDonald's menu houses that keep popping up near me were manufactured by somebody, why don't they brand and advertise them? Hello everyone, this is a house. It is a good house. It keeps the rain out. We have them for sale. Come buy one. I can think of two reasons why auto manufacturers disseminate these superfluous ads. One is environmental competition, which is the same reason trees grow so tall. If one company pulls its ads, then it could be at a market disadvantage. This is nonsensical because the ads cannot have any logistical effect on persuading people to buy cars, and some popular brands do not advertise on tv. The other reason is to reinforce preexisting notions about favorite brands. Nothing beats being excited to buy your next Toyota when your current Toyota wrecks its transmission. (cont.)

Now, the only reason I see these commercials is because the tv in the breakroom at work is always on. If I clandestinely turn it off, the next person who walks in will turn it on. Which brings us to the third reason I just thought of. The only demographic that these stupid commercials could possibly influence are the people that insist on watching live tv.

The thing about life is that it's a constant struggle. And I mean that in the broadest, dumbest sense- at each moment, relegated to parts of our functioning removed from awareness, we go through the motions of breathing. The body can go without food for three weeks, water for three days, but deprived of air it would be lucky to last five minutes. The respiratory equilibrium we maintain with the environment is the unseen, ongoing performance that anchors us to consciousness.

So while all musicians have a good understanding of rhythm, the vocalist, brass, or woodwind player has perhaps a deeper, more intimate awareness of it. For in creating sound he relies on that perpetually diminishing and replenishing resource on which the lungs are dependent. Each note played is a sacrifice made by the animal body for the deity of communication. If music is sound arranged over time, each note placed on the groove mirrors the body's fidelity to this lifelong contract, and contains within it a fragment of that unspoken awareness of its place on the knife-edge between life and death.

gg/fpvVMGPGJ8
post your prose in here for crit

I'm posting my very first college writing assignment. 1/2

2/2

>>19123363
Seems kinda Jewy...

>>19125771
Not intended as prose per say, rate my fantasy world
https://pastebin.com/9JzBKBfh

>>19125873
Overwritten. Did the marker say you had awkward phrasing? They usually say that if the essay takes longer than a few moments to understand because they have to get through so many.

>>19125918
Let me read through some of these. Do all of these areas stand separately, or can they be subdivided? Are you going for milieu focus with these, meaning one thread of the story is getting in and then out of each area?
Also you listed Ashlands twice.

>>19125972
Some are related to each other, but there's no set geography besides the contiguous empire : tatters : oil wastes. Also some of them are memes just there for laughs.

>>19125993
>Warded Cities
I'm not a big fantasy reader so I can't tell you what is cliche, but I liked this. Not particularly fond of color-coded things but I guess that's okay. What really interests me is the reliance on vulnerable magic, technology trade-secrets and manipulation by poorly understood elite. There's a lot of potential here.
>Shadow Islands
Sounds dangerous. I can see how the sailors here may be opportunistic if not untrustworthy. I do wonder how many people stay on the islands themselves, or even ask what keeps them from searching for a new land. I'm sure there's a reason.
>Thousand Legions
Interesting to see how long this war has been going on. I can imagine the scenery looking very eroded if mountains have been crushed many times over. Perhaps something like the grand canyon, with a lot of ruins.
>Tatters and the Scar
Not sure why anyone would want to go here other than to reach the Scar. This is really cool chokepoint of the conflict.
>Oil Wastes
Similar feeling to the Tatters, I feel like no one would want to stay here long.
>Hermetic Houses
Weird, but could have cool drama here especially if someone needs their elixirs but ends up encouraged to marry a scion.
>Silent Hills
Sounds like the culture of the Netherlands or Tokyo, Japan filled with demons. Looks like a place to avoid.
>City of Bones
Reminds me of the Warded Cities but the extent of its power is known to be far greater, and one hell of a filibuster from the speaker. I feel like this place could be the most pernicious location in the story, perhaps even a hub of every other place besides maybe the Scar.
>High Way
Not interesting, how are these people different, do they believe anything unique?
>Bladegrass Plains
I like this but the etymology of Bladegrass, and invaders buying it up, might be too on the nose even if you weren't alluding to America.
>Painted Lands
Doesn't seem important. The use of color both here and Warded City makes me feel like something is related. If not maybe Warded City should have use less rainbow symbolism.
>the Icosahedral Throne, Protectorates, and Flameheart
This is a cool depiction of continuity of government, and I want to know their Emperor's endgame and how it ties into the main plot. The Protectorates sound remarkably peaceful and Flameheart reminds me of Corsica. Will Flameheart get its Napolean and overthrow the Throne?
>Screamy Bone Hordes and Ashlands
lel

You did pretty good at avoiding monolithic societies, but try to flesh them out if you think you can. The Throne/Protectorates/Flameheart has great depth, but even a place like City of Bones might have a variety of people within if there's no complex political dynamic. I would also make sure more of the locations are tied to each other in the story. For example, Ashland's current state could have some plot relevance to other locations.

Excerpt out of a time-loop story.

>>19126351
from*

>>19125771
Stop shilling your discord nobody's gonna join it.

What do you think of a story where a loli and a wolf girl gets comedically raped several as they try and traverse a dangerous city.

>>19125937
>overwritten
he said it was for college, not high school

>>19126491
And I graduated from college. I didn’t graduate by writing overwrought try hard shit.

>>19126501
Well then, you seem like an expert. How would I go about tempering my prolixity? Our essays were shared with the whole class, and people typically wrote about how looking for happiness in all the wrong places doesn't help you find your happily ever after and such drivel. Overwritten or not, mine was undoubtedly the best essay submitted in that class. Instructor noted 'Very substantive content!'.

>>19126344
cool thanks for some feedback

>>19125771
give mine a try, anon >>19123063

I'm writing a book on why modern work culture is fucking gay, however I'm finding the process painfully boring.
This is all I have so far. Is it painfully boring?

>>19126751
I think you should remove "producing an additional sting of his government's failure to integrate and assimilate." The text should be able to say that without directly saying it. Show, don't tell. Don't fret over the process. It's something you'll get better at with the more practice you have. The text is coherent but perhaps somewhat too purple. Don't write more than you should.

I observed those movie clips of the female action hero strangling a man into submission using her thighs, and I had a thinky think. Even against a particularly large woman, surely a normally built man would be able to fend her off, but maybe they're frozen into inaction by the sheer eroticism of the moment? Relatedly, given how belaboredly my first act contrasts the Applejack brutishness of my Viking protagonist with the Royal grace and elegance of her travelling companion, how cringe would it be if I suggested to the reader that maybe her childhood crush Pjotr wouldn't have fallen prey to the vampire seductress if only she had been prettier and more feminine?

>>19126789
It's (apparently) a fantasy setting, just say vampires are just stronger than humans in general, or say that vampires can manipulate people to be worse in a fight, like hypnosis or something.

>>19126804
She wouldn't be much of a seductress if she could just beat up Pjotr outright, now would she? If he had lost fair and square to a stronger foe, Erda wouldn't feel so much personal responsibility for his death, and there wouldn't be much of a story to tell.

>>19126818
I guess just go with the latter idea then, it would fit in with the seductress thing.

>>19126829
It feels so cringe though, like a creepy male author who has probably never touched a woman. I can give Erda the required motivation by having Pjotr's parents be good to her and him be a sickly boy over whom she serves a protector role. But then I don't know why she would want anything Count von Sexy has to offer.

>>19126851
Maybe make her conflicted then?

>>19126855
Guess I'm going to have to read my Jane Austen again to figure out how women think.

>>19123063
first off, what's with the names? i thought they made the whole thing three times harder to follow. maybe you're trying to emulate the faux-realism of 19th century literature where they use initials or ___ as a conceit for establishing a "real" setting but it's annoying here because the story is so clipped and short and the characters talk so similarly (and so little) that it's difficult to tell them apart--and this is only made worse by your pov switching. speaking of which, the pov switching detracted from the catharsis of the whole thing. it feels like a cheap, authorial move, "i want the reader to sympathize with my character so i'll put him in his head". there's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it would be better if there was some dramatic irony in it, if thoughts contradicted actions or actions contradicted speech and you allowed the reader to figure out how the character is really feeling, to piece it together himself, instead of telling it to him straight. you already know how to do this, the bit about SV coming back with the jerrycan, soaked with sweat, contrasted with the flashback that follows is poignant, ironic and beautiful. we know exactly how he's feeling without you having to perform craniotomies. but then you have CT say thanks and it would be better if he didn't, if he instead cut straight to "why didn't you wake me up?" which means "don't think this makes up for anything you son of a bitch" and "i don't forgive you" whereas "thanks" just means thanks, and therefore doesn't really mean anything. likewise the "i'm sorry" shouldn't literally be "i'm sorry", it should be something which both the reader and the characters understand as "i'm sorry".

structurally the story works but could be better. we know CT is going to flip out at some point (the clenched knuckles turning white is too much of a cliche here, made more painful by how many times you repeat it) and when he does its painfully by-the-book. it's exactly how the reader would expect him to flip out which means the character isn't alive, he's become an abstraction, like a mannequin on display. if he was alive he would flip out in a way only he could flip out. same thing with the parallelism with the bike and getting his jaw broken--it's too close to the real deal, something the reader could come up with, and if that's true than why should i bother reading your stuff? pick something farther away, something that adds another layer of meaning--and for god's sakes make CT share some of the blame, which is to say, make his overprotection sting with a specific scene. give SV some ammunition to fight back beyond a line or two of dialogue.

i would take my notes and whatever you got last thread, compile them, read through them, make a list of all the changes you want to make and then rewrite the whole story from scratch with those changes in mind. don't tinker with the story. when you burn the cake you make a new one; adding frosting isn't going to help.

>>19125881
>>19125873
It seems that you seek happiness by painstakingly crafting each sentence into what you perceive to be a clever turn of phrase.
Listen, you have potential as a writer, but what you've written reminds me of myself when I was still trying to impress everyone. There are ways to write well without trying to show everyone how smart you are. Ironically, what you're doing actually has the opposite effect on people who know what good writing looks like; it makes it seem like you're so caught up in what others perceive of you that whatever you're trying to communicate gets diluted in this self-awareness.
Read a lot more and don't be afraid to be ambitious with language, but things like 'I am agreeable' and 'heeding the injunction' are pretty poor ways of doing it in my opinion. You can do it.

>>19126473
What do you think this is, reddit? We're not going to freak out about it

Would a band of female vampire warriors who fight with the speed and skill of Jedi but who turn to ash if a silver weapon makes contact with their bare skin, who make battle with trained vampire hunters who know this and are armed to the teeth with silver, have any excuse not to cover every inch of their body with something hard but fight with one tit out like an Amazon? I'm chalking down the fact that they fight with japanese weapons to the rule of cool, but a naginata is not a boob.

>>19125319
>>19125323
yea

>>19125319
the reason you don't see it for houses is because there isn't a company that's selling houses to consumers. plus its too expensive a product for its purchase to be influenced by a 30 second tv commercial. it's the same reason they don't advertise private jets or small businesses for sale.

as for car commercials, the point is repetition, i.e the priming effect. when you go to the lot, the first thing you're going to notice is the honda because of the commercial that's been drilled into your head. same thing with cereal. the product is basically the same, all that matters is which brand has been primed better into your subconscious to stir recognition in the moment of purchase. what's interesting is that if this is true, then the same effect could potentially be used on your own to change your own behavior (or the behavior of others)

>>19123999
Don't explain it. They just occasionally use magic. The end. You'll thank me for this later.

I've read 10 books since 2016. Am I ready to be an author now? Or should I read more

>>19127268
I've read 100 books in the past year. I suppose it's not really a matter of breadth but depth.

>>19127194
Yet another case of anime watcher who wants to write anime. No one wants it, no one will read it.

>>19127454
Noughts nostalgia is going to be massive this decade. Remember Kill Bill? People are going to hunger for works that harken back to a time when Japan things were awesome.

I just noticed a potential major dungoof in my timeline. If the leader of my 9th century vamp clique is a displaced soul from a thousand years thence, if she has ample battlefield experience and is an excellent chemist, and if they have enthralled a master smith to make them unique weapons, there is no excuse for them to not have at the very least crude matchlock firearms. That means that Charlemagne must have heard of the half-naked warrior ladies with tubes of fire, that the Chinese boomsticks wouldn't be too big of a deal and maybe the silk road wouldn't have been as important with no reason to go west of Westeros and discover America, and the Battle of Agincourt would have been fought with five hundred years of firearms technology. This is why time travel stories are always bad, even if they're metaphysical. But if I scrap the idea, how will the Sibyl of 1989 discover her love of capitalism in the anime club of two 90s school shooters and henceforth influence the Velvet Revolution?

>>19127454
Let's not forget that an anime writer is still richer and more successful than you.

I'm facing a logistics problem.
> 3 factions A, B and C
> B and C are allies
> B holds the city to the north of the region
> A plans to claim it and march in from the south
> C is situated further to the southeast of both
> If A marches straight to the city, and B tries to notify C, by the time C would even arrive in the region around the city they'd be over a week late with everything except maybe their airships.
I was planning for C's main army to be B's first line of defense but as things stand, I can't do it and still have it all make sense.

>>19127811
Just write.

>>19127811
If you have airships in your story at all in any context, you can have anything at all no matter how ridiculous. Just write in a long-distance high-speed communication method that gets the job done.

>>19127002
anon, i clearly said those are placeholder names. i'll give them real names once i figure out what's wrong with that draft, which your post helps a lot in.

>the characters talk so similarly
how do they come across as to you? i tried to make SV bitter and guilty by projecting his careless by criticizing every little thing, and CT as just full of repressed anger and also grief. how did PX seem to you?
>it feels like a cheap, authorial move
totally agree here, but i can't think of any other way to make the readers sympathize with a big brother. and your point about letting the reader figure it out for himself... it doesn't help that i'm still confused between "trust your readers' intelligence" and "readers can't read between the lines and you need to hold their hand".
your point on dramatic irony gives me a lot to think about.
shame about the knuckle motif. i was kinda happy about that. at what point did the repetition become annoying? a little too many? did i use the same exact words every time?

>it's exactly how the reader would expect him
>something the reader could come up with
i knew someone would say this finally. i'm just no good with this thing. what would you do? it'll be really helpful if i can get some pointers on this.

was it disappointing that i set him up to blow up only to have him not do that, and continue suppressing his anger? is that the problem? is it better if i just made him flip out? i thought that's what the reader would expect so i didn't do that. and i guess i just don't feel confident writing a scene that tense. i don't want to be melodramatic either and i keep shooting down ideas before they even take form.

>it's too close to the real deal
>pick something farther away, something that adds another layer of meaning
ok i think i understand now, and this is very good advice
>make CT share some of the blame
another good point

>whatever you got last thread
sadly there was none, but thanks a bunch for reading and being the first one to give feedback.

i'll definitely keep your pointers in my /crit/ file. but rewriting... yeah, maybe. i've been grasping at straws writing this and i can't come up with shit and i fully expected it to come out flat and predicable and all that. i got nothing in my pen apart from the idea of brotherly love. i guess i just miss my brothers a little bit. they're still alive thankfully.

thanks again, this is really helpful. i appreciate it if you can also answer my questions above.

Are you /music/ or /silence/ mode, wg?

>>19127811
Have C be known for rapid deployment and A be known for slower but massively dense deployment, allowing for C to get there faster than (and maybe even skirmish with) A.

Is 1000 words a day a good goal to set for oneself, or is it too unambitious?

>>19128007
Silence mode, unless there's too much noise around.

>>19128014
It's fine.

>>19128014
Unless you've made this a job for yourself just write as much as you want to. Obviously you should just write™ but when you're at 400 words and you're starting to shit the bed don't force out another 600 just to say you did. It's the same idea as the actual length of the novel, you don't need to have 120k words just because some redheaded dyke on YouTube regurgitated some rule she learned in school. Setting these arbitrary standards for yourself will only hurt your writing in the long run.

>>19125873
>>19125881
Try hitting the enter key once in a while

>>19128014
If you have a job already yes. For full-time I'd go more than that. Word count isnt always the best gauge, time spent is better imo. Actively write, engage your sentences and outline to see what you need and editing. You gott make sure you don't rabbit hole on research for too long though, do that on your reading time.

>>19127811

What if faction C somehow knows (spies) that A is planning to attack at a certain time?

>>19127845
re: names, yeah that's my bad i didn't read your post too carefully, just jumped straight to the pastebin

re: characters, px is cute but the story is not about him. he is a macguffin that sets up the story. the bit about him trying to assuage his brother by conceding 2nd place, is enough. the story, as it is now, is about the relationship between SV and CT. their dialogue reads the same but this isn't necessarily a bad thing, brothers do talk alike sometimes. it only stood out here because the names sounded so similar, it's like naming two characters john and johnson, you had better have something that differentiates them so the reader doesn't mix them up.

re: generating sympathy, the problem is you wait too long. we should like SV way before we find out he killed his brother. we should feel like CT is being too harsh on him--the jerrycan bit is perfect for this, if CT overreacts (because of wasted time or whatever) and SV doesn't bite back but just takes it, we're instantly on his side. then by the time we get to the reveal, we empathize with him, we feel his guilt. you can even make him weep and it won't feel melodramatic or sentimental (ok it might, but that's because literature has become more cynical over the years).

re: reader's intelligence, you should always assume that the reader is at least as smart as you are but this has nothing at all to do with letting the reader figure things out, what that means is let the reader try and predict what's going to happen, help them along with clues, then twist the outcome. this is what aristotle was talking about in poetics, the reversal and the revelation is exactly this. this is also how you get rid of the obvious, the stuff that the reader could come up with on his own. you take those reader expectations and address them, fulfill some of them, but then reject the easy answers. this applies to almost everything. the knuckle motif is easy, which means you have to reject it or twist it in some way. same for the "i'm sorry" same for the bike accident. the way you come up with answers is you sit down and you daydream, you make lists, you go for a long walk, you free-write, you work on other stuff, you read, you sleep on it, you stand on your head. patience, in a word.

re: flip out, he did flip out--or what would you call him swerving away from the trucks? the reader has seen this in the movies, so there has to be some kind of twist to it. CT flips out and maybe he's the one that says "i'm sorry", not SV, and now "i'm sorry" means "i forgive you".

i encourage you to rewrite. don't worry too much about the details yet. you have to sketch these things out a few times before you get the pose and the shapes right. post it again and i'll crit you again, as many times as it takes. be patient. the feeling is there, i know because i have two little brothers of my own that i would die for, which is why i really love this story and want to see it work.

So how do I train myself to write genre fiction and not character fiction?
What I really enjoy are character interactions and dialog. But now I've centered myself on a work which by its nature is more plot heavy, and that isn't really my speciality. I'm more of a "beginning and end" sort of writer and I let my characters act in there natural state to fill in the middle.
Essentially what I'm saying is my work tends to evolve naturally and now I'm faced with having to beat out a whole story without the crutch of my characters' decisions to lean on.

https://pastebin.com/ci1BE2mu

Here's something I produced out of sudden inspiration. I write these mini scenes at random as a result of worldbuilding my setting and visualizing it in my head.
However this was the first I've actually came back to, expanded and revised, since I tend to ditch them. I was looking for critique on where to improve since I got thoroughly ignored on the /tg/ storythread. Thanks in advance if you decide to show interest.

>>19128181
>the problem is you wait too long. we should like SV way before we find out he killed his brother.
that's actually intentional because i was aiming for a cool twist. i tried to paint SV as the antagonist by making him say mean shit all the time so the reader would side with CT (who is hurt), and /then/ have it turn around by revealing SV's guilt and such. kinda like paulie in rocky, you know. he's an asshole, but, there's that but. so what's the problem? was there not enough time/setup for this switch i wanted?

>re: flip out, he did flip out
oh yeah, he did.

and thanks for the crit offer, anon. i'll rework it.

>>19128189
Genre fiction still relies on character interactions though.

>>19128334
Yes, it does. But rather than dropping my characters into a setting and letting the natural world play out around them, I find myself having to work out an increasingly complex and foreign plot beat.

>>19128352
Are you trying to make an epic fantasy with all the kingdoms, their factions and conflicts that require planning? Does reader need to know all those details about the stage the characters play on?

>>19128189
Seems like you got the part that genre writers are struggling with right. Honestly this is a much better position than the reversed, since genre fiction usually is pretty much the same thing in a different skin. And yes, i’m writing genre fiction.

>>19128352
I like a bit of both genre and literary. Give unique setting, ideas and events for the characters to live around and then focus mostly on how they change as result. No adventure necessary, just apply engaging stimuli and see what happens.

>>19128363
No, that's my bread and butter and the sort of thing I can happily crank out.
Right now it's an almost myopic focus on a former solider roped into another job, but the premise of the job and what it is doing to the other characters/world that is escaping me. I feel like I need to know exactly what, how and why all the events surrounding the operation occur without directly exposing my protag to it.
>>19128378
That's the trouble, friend. This is my first novel where the "event" is what is important and impactful and the characters are simply victim to it. Does that make sense?

>>19128537
If the event is more important, spend more time investigating why the event happened and what actually happened, and less about what the characters do. In general the event unbalances the status quo and the protagonist tries to restore it. For a novel you do need multiple threads even if the event is the focus, so do give attention to setting, character and ideas.

>>19128228
I do the same thing with writing mini-scenes and forgetting about them. Not sure if it's a good habit but occasionally I'll come back and get something from them.
>The black stuff—like mold, or tar but so dark it absorbed all light—had spread to the lower limbs
I would make the description of the mold and the fact that it spread to the lower limbs their own sentences.
>half of us had emptied their stomachs right where they stood
I think "our stomachs" and "we stood" sounds better.
>a bastard sword with a wide, chopping blade and flat point
I'm not sure what part of the story you're in at this point but I would suggest describing Tom's sword sooner so you don't interrupt the action.
>a foul-smelling unguent on Skinny's arm
Since you say Skinny's name in the sentence before it seems strange hearing it again. I would just say "his arm."
One thing to watch out for is extra prefatory words that don't need to be there.
>but I learned it was the cost for his spells
For example, I don't think you need the "but I learned," in there.
There were also a few sentences in there that were grammatically incorrect. Just be sure to watch out for that when proofreading
Overall, though, I think it was pretty well written. These types of strange magical action scenes are hard to write and you did a really good job keeping it interesting. And with incorporating parts of your fantasy world like having magic users be calld, "the Talented" in a natural way.

>>19126751
I agree with that other anon about not writing too much. You have some clever descriptors in there (I particularly liked the comment about the manager's belly) but they lose their luster when every sentence is like that. I would suggest having some simpler sentences or descriptions otherwise you might burn out the reader.

>>19128537
>it's an almost myopic focus on a former solider roped into another job, but the premise of the job and what it is doing to the other characters/world that is escaping me. I feel like I need to know exactly what, how and why all the events surrounding the operation occur without directly exposing my protag to it.
I'm having this exact problem in my current historical fantasy story. I have characters and I know where I want them to go, but generating the plot to get them there that follows the themes of the piece is really trying my strengths as a writer

>>19128640
This is good advice. Another struggle is the fact that I'd like to obscure many of the details/truths about the event from both the characters and the reader. Thank you.
>>19129180
I get that. Some advice I would give is that truth is truly stranger than fiction so don't be afraid to have something sort of bizarre and inexplicable happen to push events forward. I know it can feel a little deus ex machina but if Franz Ferdinand's driver hadn't taken a wrong turn the world would be completely different today.

>>19129180
What kind of historical fantasy?

>>19128704
>I think "our stomachs" and "we stood" sounds better.
Yeah, I forgot to change it since it was originally "the rest of the group" as subject

>I'm not sure what part of the story you're in at this point
Me neither. I just threw this down and I wanted to remember the sword. Blackbeard, Tom and everyone else are name I made up on the spot and I started to figure them out as characters during this.

>Since you say Skinny's name in the sentence before
My thoughts exactly, but then I mentioned Doc and I wasn't sure just using a pronoun would make it clear it was Skinny's arm

>The rest
Man I swear the absolutely worst thing that can happen is bad grammar. I genuinely get angry, especially because I pride myself in being basically bilingual in English. Oh well, just needs proof reading.

Thanks for your time, I'm glad I'm lacking in writing ability rather than storytelling. At least I can fix the former

How do writers here approach writing an evil or an otherwise immoral main character?

At what point do you know you have to discard a character?

>>19123030
>art can never be new
My cunt penis disagrees

>>19129550
when he dies or get betrayed

>>19129597
I don't think I can do enough with the character I'm thinking of discarding to get him into that position, though.

How do I create a satisfying conflict for a story under 1500 words? Normally once I've gotten my protagonist down the rest of the story beats come naturally from them, but now I've got several concepts I've come up with for this format and no idea where to go with them.

>>19129524
I just write what I would do

Pros and cons of writing many projects simultaneously? Is my writing energy, creative power, whatever it is that makes me want to write, multitaskable? What would i answer to a wise old man that puffs: ”Thou shall write only one project at a time!” ?

I want to try 1st person omniscient. What am i into?

>>19129717
Nigga just do whatever you want. It's not criminal

>>19129524
One of my characters was based on the likelihood of Norman Stansfield, and I started cringing and hating writing his outrageous violent outbursts toward the deuteragonist who simply cannot catch a break with getting dragged in the mud with her constant suffering. I ended up toning him down a little and wrote him more in the background in the closure of the deuteragonist's character arc.

>>19127454
brando sando and the entire progression fantasy genre laughing at you

>>19129676
If you have little space to do so, just write one thread of conflict (e.g. character vs nature). In that short section, you can have multiple try-fail cycles. Regardless of the success, there should be higher stakes by complicating the situation.
>anon cant get out of the frying pan, and it gets hotter!
>anon gets out of the frying pan, but falls into the fire!
Your conflict is satisfying as tension raises this way, and paid of when momentary victories are made. After a few struggles, you have your resolution. It needs to be surprising but inevitable. If you betray your reader by giving them reason to believe something the whole book with zero hints, they will get mad. If someone gets shot at the end, did you show Chekhov's gun 3 times? How you resolve says the most about you as a writer. Also, conflict/tension can be subtle and in literature it often is. A character vs self or society often you see tension by seeing how they interact changes. Tension doesnt necessarily have to be a threat towards safety like putting gradually larger bombs on stage, it could be the character's integrity vs a deluge of different things they have to consider.

Thoughts on my dialogue? I feel like I might have overdone the le edgy humor a bit.

>>19130391
Wrong pic

>ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for months now are finally starting to translate to writing down scenes and organizing a coherent structure
Feeling good, never done this before

>>19129676
Maybe write out your ideas in a longer format, then gradually trim the fat to get to 1500 worderinos.

>>19123030
>Wanted to write for an entire year and finish my novel
>Played vidya instead.
>My publisher is going to have me hanged so I'm writing 10 pages per day
>It's actually better than the 1 page per day meme because once you start you get addicted and you can't stop
I feel like I'm both dying and having a great time.

>>19130403
Not much to say. Just remember to have dialogue tags so the reader doesn't instantly lose track of who's talking.

>>19130430
>using the word "hanged" correctly in a sentence
First I've seen all year. Also yeah I've found deadlines don't matter so much as long as you let them know what delay to expect.

>>19130403
It's fine, not particularly autistic

>>19130430
taking long breaks inbetween writing has that effect. Right now I'm kinda burnt but I need to finish this story I'm working on before November

I wrote most of this while high. https://pastebin.com/DUfJi0yJ

>>19130403
how do you shrug a sentence

>>19130551
What's the point of churning even more genre garbage out into the world?

>>19130593
He shrugs as he says it

If anyone has any advice for this action sequence I'm writing, I'd love to hear it.

>>19130626
To make you seethe harder.

>>19130626
What's the point of being a bitter nigger about it?

>>19130631
That's not what's written.

The most common complaint I see about writing in fiction plots online, whether it's books, TV shows, movies, manga, comics etc, is "get to the point" or "get back to the plot", however I wonder how seriously that feedback should be taken.

In game design, it's the developer's responsibilities to not let the player ruin the game for themselves, which is what they will try to do at every opportunity, I wonder how many similarities are there to writers, are audiences trying to optimize the fun out of the story by just wanting it to be over with? Is there maybe even an element of them subconsciously not realizing the non-plot related stuff still matters, or that it will end up being memorable and that they'll like it later when they had time to process the story when it's over.

Now I'm not advocating for "filler" or pointless sidetracking, I just finished a draft of my laser-focused plot story and I'm wondering if there's merit in adding breathers and flavor, stuff that doesn't directly contribute to bringing the plot to its conclusion.

>>19130593
I think it's fine as written

>>19129510
>wasn't sure just using a pronoun would make it clear it was Skinny's arm
Since we already know Skinny has a hurt arm, the reader should be able to figure it out.
>I'm lacking in writing ability rather than storytelling
Your writing is a lot better than a lot of stuff on here my own stuff included. Even though it was a short paragraph, Blackbeard left a strong impression and you already get the sense of the personalities of the few member we meet. If you were saying English was your second language I couldn't tell at all.

>>19130645
This is common practice, anon. It's a dialogue tag, meant to show who's speaking. Same as something like
>"Good Job!" Jim smiled
You can't "smile a sentence", it just shows that he was smiling as he said it.

>>19130403
LE HECKIN GUNS ARE BAD!!!!!!!!!!!

>>19130661
>The most common complaint I see about writing in fiction plots online, whether it's books, TV shows, movies, manga, comics etc, is "get to the point" or "get back to the plot", however I wonder how seriously that feedback should be taken.
And yet you'll also have people lauding the navel gazing of A Song of Ice and Fire for its brilliant world building. What audiences want and what critics think they want are two different things.
>if there's merit in adding breathers and flavor, stuff that doesn't directly contribute to bringing the plot to its conclusion.
The key is to use these things to build up the characters. Jerking yourself off with your sumptuous, pages long description of a ramen feast means nothing. But intersperse that with details how about the character(s) feel about a ramen feast (brings them back to college days or cheap eating? They can't believe peasant food could be so good? Is this a favorite restaurant of theirs? Why? Do they even know what ramen is? Does the character feel this is a needless distraction from the plot? Do they regret that they'll have to eat fast or just see food as something for making turds?) is how you go from masturbating to jerking off the readers because now you're giving them the opportunity to know more about the characters, instead of them just being a faceless, nameless figure in a sea of description.

>>19130633
>The bounty killer
Cringe. "The man" works just fine. It worked for Eastwood.
>drops it." Caelan said
Learn how dialogue tags work. That should be a comma.
>sure of a trick
Don't explain what we're seeing. Cut that sentence.
>and tilted his head to the other man
More over-explanation. The dialogue already said this.
>though he already knew there wasn't
Then why did he check? Cut that.
>That was when
Never do this. And making it follow a period makes things slower, not fast and exciting. Try "The man's fixed gaze shifter to Slad, and Caelan reached for the gun."
>his right
Why omit the word hand? You didn't mention the left one.
>pieces of the adhesive were still on the barrel
Instead of focusing on this flabbergasting detail, why not go into the sensorial experience of having something taped to your skin stripped away?
>drew it over his head
What? Why? That's not how aiming works.
>The shotgun
What shotgun?
>the outlaw
Which one? There are many, if I'm reading this correctly. That is to say, if you're refering to Caelan. If you're referring to the bounty hunter, just cut this and skip to where he actually aims right.
>Four congested explosions...
This is an action scene. You want to make it quick. Don't do so many periods, use more commas.
>A slight ring followed the last one as the shell from the fourth bullet knocked against a piece of mortar
Synthetise. "A slight ring followed the fourth bullet as it knocked against a piece of mortar."
>Cae
No.
The ending with the looks is just painful to read. Watch less movies and think more about how real people in the real world would react.

>>19130689
This. Saying someone "shrugged" a statement implies that it wasn't just their shoulders/body that shrugged but the words themselves. A flat "meh" delivery, dull, disinterested eyes. A statement tossed off with no regard for its meaning and forgotten as soon as it was uttered. The speaker didn't just shrug. Everything about that moment was a shrug.
Or you can expose yourself as an utter brainlet and say "a shrug doesn't involve speaking" because you're a robot who knows certain rules and dammit nobody better defy them.

>>19130689
No, nigger, no. Learn how dialogue tags work. You have to think of them as part of the dialogue, as if the quotation marks weren't there. For example, in
>"Good job," Jim smiled
the comma is wrong, because Jim smiling is not a way of speaking and therefore is not a part of the previous clause. It should be
>"Good job." Jim smiled.
Two different sentences.
Smiling is not a way of speaking. Shrugging is not a way of speaking. Think instead of copying other bad writers.

I am not sure if you know any of this is the most important thing to do with the pure garbage they are poisoning us with the fact that they are not a culture but a remnant of something slightly different from the same time that they are not a culture but a remnant of something slightly different

>>19130748
Mandela Effect?

I want to write a book about wild animals living in a human situation.

A fantasy kind of thing with kings, queens, wars, etc. How do I do this without coming off as a furry?

>>19130795
I think this concept already exists in several pieces of media. You could look to those for inspiration, possibly. Also, to answer your question, you can't.

A friend of mine said the bible belongs in the fiction section. I punched him. Now I'm grounded. Jesus was real, wasn't he? And God loves me?

>>19130896
Ask him where the Qur'an goes.

>>19130896
Your friend is a retard, and your aggression will only cause him to double down. You're both wrong.

>>19130795
You mean like Warrior Cats or do you mean civilised anthropomorphism?

>>19130795
Your one and only hail mary is to make them Kemon Friends. But hey, furries have as much buying power as a medieval monarch or a eccentric CEO. Pick your poison very wisely.

>>19130724
This must be autism. Do you not know that words can have meanings/implications beyond their immediate definition? Jim smiling implies that he was happy as he said it.
In the same way, the guy in anon's post shrugs to show indifference, both in tone and in body language.

I finally found the cure to my crippling insomnia: just open up a word processor and try to write down any of the story in my head.

>>19130919
The latter.

>>19130944
Keep doing all the coping explanations you want, and then keep wondering why you aren't a professional.

>>19131001
>Get hyped writing
>Insomnia persists but at least you'll get shit done
Not that I'll get any money for it, but it's comforting.

>>19129343
Late medieval. I have cannons and catapults, but everyone is still fighting with sword and shield as well. I don't know or think I want to put magic into the mix. I might save that for the follow up series.

>>19123030
I have a story with 10 "main" characters and 5 different routes happening and intertwining at the same time. Will the readers mess up? Every character tells a different part of the story. A bit like painting a picture of a city in decay and a great shadow taking over.

>>19130403
Your dialogue tags are wrong. End quotes with a comma and the following word with a lowercase letter unless it's a name.

>>19131162
Fuck, it's too late over here and my English went to sleep already. The question is, will this overwhelm the readers? First book was 500 pages long, the second will be 500 too

>>19131165
Wrong. The following word can be uppercase if it's a new sentence. Example:
>"Okay." He finally got it right.

>>19131180
You know what I mean.

>>19131162
This is the norm for any story that happens in any area larger than a small log cabin.

I know I can't openly advertise my story as straight shota on amazon without them deleting it, so how do I get the word out to /ss/ enthusiasts that that's what it secretly is? Also amazon sucks and there is nothing more natural than a boy and a woman.

>>19131196
Incest with age difference?

>>19130921
This is the exact image that inspired me to want to write this story. I don't know what you would call this anthropomorphism but it seems a lot more sophisticated than the little bit of furry artwork I have seen.

>>19131236
Are you retarded? That's a fable. Read Aesop, Reynard and Orwell.

>>19130795
>>19131236
Don't make the story anime or furry. Don't oversexualize your characters. And use a picture like that one for the cover, I wouldn't think furshit if I saw that, I would think of a classy old fashioned fantasy novel or kids book, something like Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, the Animals of Farthing Wood. Also get a really british sounding pen name. Good luck anon

>>19131207
That might work, I'm not exactly planning incest but I might go there

>>19131251
It is a political cartoon illustrated by John Tenniel about the scramble for Africa.

>>19131303
I'm talking about what you're looking for. Now educate yourself on the history of the furry genre. You must read AT LEAST these before trying to come up with what the past has already done.
620 - Aesop's Fables
1174 - Roman de Renart (Reynard the Fox)
1200 - The Owl and the Nightingale
1400 - Canterbury Tales
1697 - Contes de temps passé (Puss in Boots)
1726 - Gulliver's Travels
1794 - Goethe's Reynard the Fox
1857 - Grimms' Fairy Tales
1865 - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
1877 - Black Beauty
1881 - Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings
1894 - The Jungle Book
1896 - The Island of Dr. Moreau
1900 - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
1902 - Peter Rabbit
1903 - The Call of the Wild
1906 - White Fang
1908 - The Wind in the Willows
1915 - The Metamorphosis
1920 - The Story of Doctor Dolittle
1923 - Bambi
1945 - Animal Farm
1945 - Stuart Little
1951 - Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
1952 - Charlotte's Web
1962 - Little Fuzzy
1967 - The Fox and the Hound
1968 - The Last Unicorn
1970 - Fantastic Mr Fox
1970 - Jonathan Livingston Seagull
1972 - Watership Down

>>19131292
Thank you I will do my best.

Ingredients to a Good Modern Story!
>Vapid ironic humor
>Pop culture references and nostalgiabait
>Vague 2deep4u lore
>Shipper pandering
>"Just be yourself" message
>Glorification of some mental illness
If you're feeling particularly "daring"
>"The Writer's Barely Disguised Fetish"
>Anti-Christian imagery
>DUDE GORE LMAO
>Shock value character deaths
>Totally not obvious allusions to some politician(s)
Any questions?

>>19131477
>Ingredients to a Good Modern Story!
Here's my hot takes
>>Vapid ironic humor
What about farce and absurdist comedy? t. Totally not writing a farce comedy right now
>>Pop culture references and nostalgiabait
Cringe, agreed
>>Vague 2deep4u lore
Faggy. Flesh it out or throw it out
>>Shipper pandering
Romance is based. Shipping is gay.
>>"Just be yourself" message
Extremely unbased. John Green made a living off it and he deserves to be put through a saw mill
>>Glorification of some mental illness
Real mental illness is uncomfortable and disturbing as fuck. Incredibly gay
>>"The Writer's Barely Disguised Fetish"
Alright I do this sometimes. But I don't make my characters go piss in the text
>>Anti-Christian imagery
But why?
>>DUDE GORE LMAO
Anything tonally inappropriate gets a 0/11 from me
>>Shock value character deaths
Schlock writing for bad writers.
>>Totally not obvious allusions to some politician(s)
Lazy writing. Make original characters

>>19131477
How do I write a successful drumpf allegory?

>>19131567
Unironically Nazi germany.

>>19130706
Thanks so much for the feedback anon, it's really appreciated. The bounty killer thing is a reference to Spaghetti Westerns but I can see how it can sound odd. Probably should've mentioned as well that the man bounty killer was using a shotgun.
>just painful to read
Kek, it's tough to see how silly something sounds when you write it but I think you're right here.
It seems like you didn't care for it, but thanks again for taking the time to respond, I think it genuinely helps me.

>>19131567
Fat, orange Hitler baby

This may not be the best place to ask, but I have a technical question. What would be the ecological impact if it rained blood and viscera all across the world for several days?

>>19131768
it'd be metal as fuck as in blood contains iron

>>19131768
If presume the film it would leave on plants would cause them to be unable to photosynthesize or absorb anything else for a while. Fresh water would become temporarily polluted and tons of water and beach life would die. Major cities would be backed up for days from all the accidents, plane crashes, infrastructure destruction, etc.

Basically it would be fucking awful and everything would die.

>>19131798
It's a roughly Renaissance period that is going through the apocalypse, so death is to be expected. I'm mainly concerned with how it will affect the people trying to survive in the weeks immediately following.

Out of curiosity, how does /lit/ base its criticism?
Off of what publishers expect from their experience?
Their own opinions?
What the average reader would want?

>binned first two pages because excessive tell dont show and worldbuilding that in hindsightcould have easily been conveyed in passing by characters
this is tough

>>19131951
For critiquing other works? My basis for critique usually boils down to adding dialogue marks, merging dialogue sentences with other non-dialogue sentences, merging one-sentence paragraphs with other paragraphs, and splitting up titanic-sized paragraphs that are like 10ish sentences long into separate paragraphs.

For my own work: my work is fundamentally unpublishable and I have no interest in making money off it anyway. I don't know what my readers want because I seldom get input, so I guess I just write stuff that's loosely adherent to the above—avoiding full stop one paragraphs if I can help it and maintaining easy to digest prose.

>>19131959
I wouldn't bin it, get the show and tell out of your system and then find a more natural place to put that info in the second draft.

>>19130633
Anon already gave great tips, but in general you want action scenes to be faster and less technical, so use shorter words and sentences than usual. If you want to talk about fighting technique or weapons, don't do that in the action scene. Think of the scene as an argument, and each action is part of it. Show the emotions and motivations of characters, not the techniques and guns.

Trying to think up ideas for an arthurian xianxia story. It feels like every damn progression fantasy story needs a magic school.

>>19132215
>arthurian xianxia story
sounds pretty based desu. why not just make the round table/camelot the school for fledging squires? each knight has their own little group to train and teach like xiansia sifus and they compete against each other in the school and on quests to bring glory to their house.

I reached the end of my first draft of my 4th novel this year-ish, and didn't feel an ounce of satisfaction from reaching that milestone. There was no giddiness as I penned the last sentence

>“I suppose this is the kind of problem I’m an expert at,” he said, and loaded a slug into the chamber.

All I feel is the emptiness of knowing I have to edit.

>>19132215
How could you possibly struggle to think up ideas? Just go read the original myths and apply your chink autism to them

>>19132285
I'm reading TH White right now and fuck is that a trip

Don't know where I'm going with this, but I enjoyed the process. What do you guys think?

>>19132371

>>19132371
>begat
stopped reading there.

What the point of having this General if no one writes?

>>19132415
So people can pretend they're doing something with their lives even though they aren't doing nothing.

>>19132406
why?
>>19132415
i just posted something i wrote. what’s the point of posting if you don’t read the general?

>>19132415
you have a need, a need for seethe:

>>19132371
>>19132373
>>19125918
>>19125873
>>19125881
>>19123363
>>19128228
>>19130403
>>19130551
>>19130633

>>19132415
At this point, /wg/ is more of a social club than a writing general. Though it’s to be expected. With little to no writers here.

>>19132415
I write, I just started writing again after a month's hiatus. Got a chap out the other day and started on the next chapter. I contribute where I feel in but I don't particularly care for critique, so I don't often post excerpts. I'm kinda tempted to start posting chaps as i publish them because these posts always irk me.

>>19132437
Same. Was thinking of joining a writer's forums at this point. Would be better than this place.

>>19132125
Thanks anon, I really appreciate you reading and the advice. I struggle a lot with action scenes so I think the argument analogy will help a lot.

>>19132371
>>19132373
can i get some feedback

>>19132509
I don’t care about the boy or the snake. The boy is just a vehicle for world building. Your depictions of beauty lack a grounded simile or metaphor to make me understand it’s vast scope.
>The sparkling majestic pulsating light of eternal radiance henceforth sucked my dick.
What’s the point? What’s the plot? Why do I care about another Genisis story? This shit doesn’t even have dogs or aliens in it.

>>19132449
Just don’t join a writing discord server. It’s turns out they’re all faggots.

>>19132415
What's the point of complaining in every single thread when you don't contribute?

>>19131196
kys

What's YOUR ick in writing, r/writing?

>>19132569
At the very least they write. The same can’t be said about /wg/.

Right now I just keep drafting without taking the time to look back at what I've written, I'm just pushing the story forward. I don't want to concern myself with perfecting or even leaving in a presentable state what I've written so far; is this a bad move on my part?

>>19133195
Nah, it's fine. It's better if you remember to take care with characters.

>>19132973
Hero who is morally good by today's establishment standards

>>19133268
My main concern now is that I'm afraid I'm not giving my characters enough of a voice. I fear they might all be a little interchangeable in how they express themselves; they may sound all a little too much like me. Am I being paranoid or is this something I should be worried about? Which are the best ways to remedy this?

>>19132973

>autobiographical

>>19133761
S-sorry...

>>19133333
Holy quints. Also, I had the same until I wrote halfway and retroactively rationalized character motivations. Based on what made sense within what I already wrote, they grew to stand on their own.
For example, a typical geek that would live in his workshop if it wasn't for his friend pushing him further, became a career man who aimed to get out of obscurity through the familly of famous scientist.
He paid a *friend* by pulling his studies in the higher education that friend wanted in exchange of matchmaking with that family's daughter. But, surprise, just being a skillful craftsman doesn't automatically result in love, so he worked to impress. But as he worked, he became conflicted between treating this as a stepping stone and actually liking her.

>>19132433
Those don’t count, though. They suck.

Have any of you submitted fiction to a University publication? I’m no longer a student, but I did take a job on my University’s administration. I’d like to publish some short fiction through the University if I can but it seems as though all of the available publications are undergraduate only journals, not even for graduate students. There’s a site where anyone can submit stories but it’s a black hole and gets no viewers, no critique.

>>19134197
Maybe you should post your work and see how well you fare.
>>19134207
Try Submittable and look for University publications; they usually say something like “Do not submit if you are a current student at X University” because they try to keep it open to the public. I’m not sure where you’re looking.

>>19134207
submittable. university lit mags often list their calls for submissions there. just be sure to read their guidelines.

>>19134207
No and I probably would refuse no matter what. One of the reasons I started to write was because the college allowed outsiders to destroy their property and did absolutely nothing about it, like they were in on it or something.

>>19134224
>>19134232
> Submittable
This appears to be grant management software which I have to pay for to use at all. Am I missing something?

>>19134262
they rebranded recently. it's all filled with literary calls to submission, don't worry.

>>19134262
and no you don't need to pay if you're looking to submit your stories. they're rebranding for B2B.

>>19134262
>I have to pay for to use at all
I have 6 acceptances and don’t pay for subscriptions. There might be submission fees but it’s like donating to the journal for their time to consider work.

>>19132289
Like in a bad way? I thought his presentation of the Arthur story was very straightforward.

>>19133036
Actually, I think the past few threads have been extremely productive in writing quantity.

>>19123030
Just checking in guys. I've written 5000 words in the last 2 days. I have not been consistent lately but I'm at 70K now. Story nearly complete and I have a few interstitial scenes to flesh out. After this draft is done I will be asking for some advice on the work so far.

Thanks for your inspiration, chaps.

>>19134603
right on, anonymous.

>still standing at 4 rejections
>writing two texts while I wait in vain for the manuscript to be accepted, one at 11k words and the other at 7k. I hope I don't end up like Sanderson and write a dozen books before getting even one published.

>>19123030
>Wrote my first novel at 28
>TFW finishing my second novel at 34
I'm not gonna make it, am I?

>>19134707
I've come to accept that success can take 3-5+ years. While it's cool to get appreciated early, it's also cool to spend a lot of time developing and working with little concern for the business side of things. When you do get appreciated you might have more than one book to sell. However some early writing should stay in the trunk, it can damage your reputation if you release old, unsalvageable stories but some do it anyways.

>>19134800
Some people dont start writing until they retire and not all lauded writers are prolific, it's okay. I'm writing my first novel at 32 but with more experiences compared to me in my 20s.

>>19130633
I largely agree with >>19132125 – You're describing a lot of what happened, but almost nothing of how the characters feel about it. It reads more like stage directions for a play or movie than a literature piece. Which isn't to say what's there is bad in and of itself, but that it should be supplemented and replaced in some parts by more of what the characters are feeling.

>>19134800
I've got 5 more months to have a book published at 28, If I don't get my first one out by 30 I'll just give up after 5 more years

How seriously do you take your writing? I'm at that stage in which I only see it as a fun exercise and as a way to test myself and get out a story idea I think is interesting. I have little hope of seeing it published or of making it as an author. I think I'll only treat this as a hobby unless I get a huge break.

>>19135324
Art is art. It's not something I treat a trifle, whether or not I'll ever get paid for it is a completely different matter.

>>19135324
I try to take it seriously in the sense that, every time I sit down at the page I'm aiming to tell the best story and strongest emotions possible.

This one is going to be pretty unorthodox. I'd be so grateful if you would analyze a /mu/ fiasco. They took offence to my word choices. What went wrong? How would you rewrite the initial statement so that it conveys exactly the same ideas, but without triggering them? They made it very clear that my vocabulary was at fault, not the details of my opinion.

>>19134287
Have you read it recently? Arthur turns into a fish and has to get a doctor to see a patient and nearly gets eaten, gets turned into a bird and listens to other birds swearing about n*ggers and the government, there's a section where King Pellinore and a knight have a joust where they get lost and can't see each other and then finally wrassle on the ground for hours in a comedic fashion. Not to mention his tutor who wasn't a tutor but a mental patient.

>>19135537
"You're a fucking retard. If I say that modern metal largely sucks and that there are barely any good songs, and you say that there are still enough good songs in modern metal, and that if I don't know them then I just don't listen to it enough, then what I have to do is show that modern metal is overwhelmingly bad, while you have to provide a decent number of examples of good, accessible modern metal songs. If you can give me 6-7 examples I can agree with, I'll gladly admit you're right."

>>19130677
Thanks for the injection of dopamine. Critics and compliments go a long way to make someone pumped to write more

>>19135552
Of course I read it bro! Once and Future King is a mandatory read. It inspired me to read Gawain and the Green Knight, and then I watched that vomit inducing abomination of a movie and wanted to fucking hang myself. Anyways, Sword in the Stone should have plenty of material for you to draw from for your story.

>>19133295
So George Floyd?

>>19135552
Of course I read it bro! Once and Future King is a mandatory read. It inspired me to read Gawain and the Green Knight, and then I watched that vomit inducing abomination of a movie and wanted to fucking hang myself. Anyways, Sword in the Stone should have plenty of material for you to draw from for your story.
>>19135537
Seems like /mu/ is still retardedly easy to troll.

>>19131477
>>Vapid ironic humor
Check.
>>Pop culture references and nostalgiabait
Yep
>>Vague 2deep4u lore
Yep
>>Shipper pandering
>>"Just be yourself" message
Miss
>>Glorification of some mental illness
Yep
>>"The Writer's Barely Disguised Fetish"
Yep
>>Anti-Christian imagery
Yep. Also pro-Christian
>>DUDE GORE LMAO
miss
>>Shock value character deaths
Define shock value. People die and it isn't fair.
>>Totally not obvious allusions to some politician(s)
Yep.
Do I pass? It's a XIXth century vampire novel tho

>>19131505
>Flesh it out or throw it out
Flesh it out, then don't tell. Let people think about it. Leave gaps for people to fill with their imagination

>>19135324
I don't give it the time it deserves as I still have a day job, but from a literary standpoint I'm serious about what I want to say to the point that the writing process challenged the my beliefs too. Not serious in that I dont think it poses a challenge to some galaxybrain or is a revolutionary voice. I can only speak to what I've seen and heard.

>>19133036
no. They mostly just patted each other on the back for being massive faggots.

>>19135324
I pour my heart into it but I'm not afraid of deleting or quarantining what the bad parts after the second or third read. I may complain all the time about my own style, but that's a technique issue that I hope age can correct.

>>19135596
Thank you.

Don't die, /wg/... think of all the books you have to work on

>>19137441
I finished my book. Now I'm writing a short story for the Unreal anthology

Anyone know a book or a resource or anything where I could find common medieval/fantasy terms, sayings, and phrases?

>be stuck on a plot point for my B story
>in the middle of jerking off, I suddenly discover the solution
>stop jerking off to finish it
Don't ever say I'm not dedicated
>>19137539
lordsandladies.org
medieval.stormthecastle.com

I proudly present a parable for pondering and puzzlement and perplexitude predicated upon personal participation and a profligate partiality to pretentious prolixity. Previously, as I was petting my pretty pussycat, I perceived a putrid pungency. I promptly pinpointed the precise place where this pugnacious and penetrating perfume is produced. One pales at its permeation when pulling personal pelage from a plugged perspiration purgation pipe. I purposed to point out this perturbing peculiarity to my parents so they could procure a purifying prescription for my poor precious pudding, but upon propounding to press my proboscis into her pelt post the passing of a period of pensive paranoia, the pestiferous problem was propitiously prevailed over presumably through prudent and proper preening practices. I have since postulated that the principle of palpable poor presentation was a parole of perianal protein. Of the possible prospects of proclaiming a parallel to this predicament in the process of pleasant propinquity with pets, I propose the poverty of perspicacity to profess.

>>19137859
Poser

>>19137943
*Loser

I think, over the course my writing career, I will only write 9–12 books (not including short stories), enough that I have a nice, well-rounded bibliography but not so many that quality diminishes. This means my first two books can be kind of shitty as I'm just starting out and am still finding my own voice, but I already have plans for my high-point: an absolute doorstopper

>>19137966
I've already designed the dust jacket for my fifth book but I'm currently stumped on what font to use for my ninth

>>19137989
I know you're making fun of me but what's wrong with planning out what books I want to write?

>>19137966
>so far only writing three books with related theme but unrelated plot and genre
>next four books are dark fantasy
>not sure what happens after

>>19137992
I didn't intend to be mean spirited, it's just that life usually tends to get in the way of life plans, not only that but you'll drastically change as a person as you age, do you plan to be beholden to the plans of a you from decades ago

I spent the last two years planning my next five years out to make a video game, then I fell in love and scrapped it to make something in another medium

>>19134857
Thanks anon, I appreciate you reading. Like I said it's a tricky thing for me to balance the actions, character emotion, and description in these scenes. Your feedback is helpful to hear.

Do you think it's a mistake to address a theme by having a character in it explicitly discuss the theme?

I'm working on an outline and one of the characters has to get some information that's been imbedded into a video game he has to play through to get the info, and the game was developed by a guy who got de-personed by the internet machine, so he made essentially an art piece along the themes of a loss of identity.

That character is overt about it, as a means of shining a light on the other thematic plots occuring

>>19138319
Blake Snyder says you should have a character state the theme on like page 4 of a screenplay. He was a hack though.

>>19137966
Going off of what stories I have planned, I think by the time I'm 50 (I'm 24 now) I'll have written 16 books, assuming I don't fuck around until then.
>3 book series (done)
>1 standalone (progress)
>5 book series (progress)
>6 book episodic series (short little fun things, planning)
>3 book series (continuation of 5, possibly not going to happen)
It's interesting to look at what your future plans are for books now, and see if or how they change in the next few years. I want to write a few more standalones, but I just have more ideas for series and continuing characters.

A dog did look out and see
Something strange beyond the trees
It barked and yapped
On the window it tapped
But his humans didn’t want to believe

Hark he did bark
Upon the thing out there
Blood red wine skies
Filled with swirling clouds
Struck fear in any man
Sliver gleaming
In the far off distance
Caused shivers thusly
And he did flop and shake
His collar did ring
A door did swing open
A small boy with scars
An IV still mounded
Looked out upon the deck
To see the skies
And to see the silver
And to miss the grey masses
As tiny specks upon the hills
Bark and woof with strength
But the boy stood confused
Wishing not to go in
Father is on his tenth glass of gin
And mother passed out
From the pills at ten am
I’m scared cried the boy
His warmth gave solace
Soft golden fur fought
Against the darkness looming
Power lines sparked
The wind picked up
Echos of thunder soon followed
The power goes out
The boy falls to the floor
He licked the boys cheek
Without a word
Without a bark
They knew they only had each other

How can I combine an "in medias res" starting point with a Hero's Journey plot? Starting in the midst of the action means I never get to show the "ordinary world."

>>19138647
Flashbacks are a thing but why would you bother? Hero's Journey isn't something you're legally required to emulate and I doubt you have anything to say about it either.

>>19138647
star wars

>>19137441
>think of all the books you have to work on
We write?

>>19138647
Flashbacks. Characters talking about what it was like. Books within books. Depictions of things contrasted with what they were like before.
>”did I ever tell you what it was like before the aliens came?”
>journal entry: may 18th, the sky’s are so clear, no aliens in sight
>the sky was clear, almost like before the aliens came

Do we still have people here who write smut for cash? How easy is that market to break into? I've heard it's one of the easiest ones to get into.
I genuinely feel inspired to write an erotic/romantic novel aimed at females aged 30-45. Specifically Asian. Though if I'm not making any money out of it, I don't see the point.

>>19138654
>>19138658
>flashbacks

>>19138829
So 50 Shades and its ilk. They are not exactly smut.

>>19138915
There is no other way if you insist on this course of action.

>>19138647
Just start at the point you think of as most relevant. If you formalize writing too much you'll turn into a chinese cultivation writer that get paid for daily quantity.

Lads if I post my copy(copywriting) ads would you critique them for me

>>19138829
Smut is easy to make money off of. Smut for women I don't know about though. You need to find a fetish and cater to it.

>>19138943
I don't think men read a lot of smut, right? Not that I want to write literal smut. But something that could masquerade as sufficiently high brow.
What I'm really curious about is how to actually find these demographics.

>>19138968
https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&query=futanari

>>19138968
>I don't think men read a lot of smut
Not just men, girls read smut too.

>>19139009
not just the men but the women and the children too

I struggle with defining my main character, but I have no problem for side character motivation, backstories goal they just flow out of me for side characters.

>>19139011
Children, sometimes, but it's illegal for the author if proven.

>>19138999
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/116867.Romance_Novels_with_Asian_Heroines_Upcoming_and_Current
wow, almost all of them have white men.

Do anons have any advice for for creating minor antagonists? I have the big bad of my series arc, and it's divided into three smaller parts which have their own lesser bads, but I'm having trouble coming up with episodic antagonists and situations for each volume of it I plan to write in order to advance the plot towards those overarching opponents.

There are some LN series that do a great job of this but I can't seem to find inspiration for pulling it off myself.

>>19139029
Think of a cool guy. Then make him do something utterly repulsive like give off NTR vibes. You've written a successful japanese villain.

>>19139057
Also they must blame society for anything they've done wrong.

>>19123030

disjoint subtypes
In a specialization
hierarchy, these
are unique and
nonoverlapping subtype
entity set.

>>19139099
Do you have a single fact to back that up?

Just wrote this desu

Now I can manage writing 900 words in 30 minutes. What’s your high score, /wg/?

>>19139366
I'm incredibly slow but I'm still very new to writing. I'm lucky to get down 400 words per day as a neet who spends all day at his desk.
I like to pretend It's because I'm really particular about my writing but it's probably just my inexperience and low attention span.

How do I deal with the fact that the protagonist of my For Whom the Bell Tolls derivative is literally Seeley Booth? He was only figuratively Seeley Booth before, but now that it's time for Storytime on the Heather, he can't remain silent about his very large wife who is a brilliant scientist and who is also a zombie like everyone else left in America any longer.

>>19138319
If your explicit discussion of that theme has a lot of talk about lessons, it might come off as didactic. So I'd caution how you do it.

>>19138927
You could start with the POV of another hero in action, instead of the current hero who has yet to start their journey. It gives a chance for the reader to see what adventures to expect without relying on a flashback, which also gets the job done sometimes.
In short, this >>19138655

>>19139377
>I'm incredibly slow but I'm still very new to writing. I'm lucky to get down 400 words per day as a neet who spends all day at his desk.
Try using pomodoro timers and don’t let yourself have distractions like 4chan, YouTube, or vidya. It really helps me.
>I like to pretend It's because I'm really particular about my writing but it's probably just my inexperience and low attention span.
You should think of writing as a part of yourself telling a story to yourself on the first draft. You can always revise it and change things, don’t worry about trying to perfect it right off the bar or to capture lighting in a bottle. It’s much more slow and developmental than you’d think.

>>19123030
Do you guys have any guide on writing side characters/ main characters you consider good?

>>19139901
Here's my personal guide to writing good characters: don't use guides to write characters.

>>19139901
Read a history book or an autobiography, understand how real people are.

As for me, 6221 words now on new chap. Very happy, even decided to make this bit its own Vol because I want to do a fight between a dragon and an airship.

Fuck it, /wg/. It's time to post my writing (soon).

Also new thread when

>>19140007
Redpill on action writing? How'd the scene turn out?

>>19140007
I'm looking for an injection of fiction, not exactly trying to make my characters true to life people. Relatability, coherent thinking process and making sense in their own world are still important of course, but I want fun and unrealistic characters, not a bunch who have too much thing to monologue about or whatever kind of people you expect to find in a history book. Understand how real people are from autobiography and history books certainly aren't very biased toward a perspective of what people are like at all. How many books I must read before I can come to the insight of what characters have great chemistry together and what-not? The point of the question is to ask for a narrowing down of selection, not widening it up.
>>19139933
Even though we have books for prose and poetry on OP?

Well whatever, I will thanks you guys anyway. I thought you guys know more than those cliche responses though.

>>19140119
>Even though we have books for prose and poetry on OP?
I didn't put them there

>>19139901
>Do you guys have any guide on writing side characters/ main characters you consider good?
Observe people. I think Balzac is fantastic for fully fleshed out and multidimensional characters who set the bar for a lot of Archetypes, as well as remaining neither wholly good or wholly evil.

Working on a sci-fi book right now and I want to be mathematically clever. It's a murder mystery story, and the main character is a detective in a mega city.

What I want to do is end up with his badge number being E11107 (he calls himself Elliot), but I also want to include some trickery like on credit card numbers

The scheme so far is the leading letter denotes rank (A is the chief, E is a beat cop, other letters will be various special organizations as I need to figure it out), and the rest of the digits are in hex (it's a big city, lots of cops) but the last digit is an output of the calculation of the digits leading up to it

If I just sum E+1+1+1+0 mod 16, I would get a 2, not a 7 though. E-1-1-1-0 would be a B, which also doesn't work

So can someone think of something more clever than just having an arbitrary +5 that would make E11107 a legal badge number?

>>19130017
Thank you. You've made me realize that the format caused me to unintentionally design the characters to be static. I couldn't write them as protagonists because they just aren't protagonists. It's a group of Virgils with no Dante.

>>19130430
What genre do you write? I imagine it’s genre fiction because there’s no way you can pump out literary poetic prose ten pages at a time without writing 8 hours at a time.

new thread :(?