/lit/ - Literature

Whoo! I wrote a lots of words today. Like, more than I can count so at least a couple dozen. (Just shy of 3k, actually.)

>>19211093
Okay, I am.
>I just realized the other day that being a novelist would mean being able to work from home and having (probably) very little social contact with the outside world. This sounds ideal to me, but is it possible to make enough money to survive with just writing books?

>>19211510
>little social interaction
I talk to almost no one since I started writing. It's actually kind of refreshing. I hope I can get a writing circle going with like minds at some point.

>>19211506
Nice
I wrote about 5, and they are the ones in this post
Now 8
9

>>19211535
>have good thing going
>wants to get something else which will invariably spoil it
man desires happiness but grows restless when it finally arrives

Fuck Latin, fuck everyone who wrote their important documents in Latin because muh Holy Roman Empire even though it was basically Germany, and fuck everyone who resells an out of print translation of said niche documents for $100 knowing that the bumfuck Cincinnati library won't have it and you'll have to pay

>>19211970
iktf
>try to collect materials on obscure subject for novel
>they're all in either french italian or german
>not enough hours in the day to learn 5 different fucking languages

>>19211970
>>19212012
Would you prefer Welsh?

>>19211506
well done

>>19212017
yes

>>19211510

No idea in answer to your question, but it got me thinking on my own experience, and since I’ve started writing my other “leisure” hobbies were practically suspended. No more binging shows incessantly, no video games, etc - stuff that I’ve literally been doing 30 years I just put aside.

Maybe it’s not sustainable, but filling my free time with writing has really changed my day-to-day life in ways I didn’t consider beforehand.

About 1000 words today. All I have to do is fill in some remaining holes in the draft and then do one final revision for consistency of style. I'm so close and it's frustrating. I only need about 5000 more words of content to shore it up.

>>19211535
>>19212305
I appreciate your responses but I was a little bit more interested in the monetary aspect of it. Is it like how if you're an artist there's a good chance your best bet is to draw smut?

>>19212445
If you aren't professional, si.

Do most negative book reviews complain about the writing itself or the subject matter?

>>19212496
Critics and audiences are stupid. They know they don't like your story, but they lack the technical understanding to explain exactly what went wrong.
So my guess is that most complaints are about subject matter, but the actual problem is writing quality. A good writer can make anything interesting.

Hey /wg/, where's a good place where I can get daily writing prompts from? I want to work on my short story skills.

>>19212698
Google pulls up a bunch of generators so I'd start there if you're on a budget. My mom actually bought me a book full of prompts and space to write, but I haven't touched it since I wrote about an astronaut killing himself on the first page.

why do you write? I'm losing my drive.

>>19212769
I write to get off because I do it on f-list

>>19212355
how's it feel anon
motivationless outline shored anon here

>>19212769
I write because it makes me feel good.

>>19212775
I see that site popping up more and more, what's it like

drive officially lost, what do

>>19212859
jerk off for 2 hours and spend 2 years not talking to anyone. No texting, no gaming with friends, not nights out. No job, no leaving your house except for buying provisions. Makes sense, right?

What are some tips for dissecting an author's style? Not themes or topics, but they're writing style. I know read a lot, but anything else?

So far the best exercise I've found is to just copy exactly what they've written (either typed or handwritten) then try to rewrite it in a different setting.

>>19212769
>>19212859
Losing motivation isn't something to feel guilty over. It's perfectly normal with such a long task. Getting it back isn't something you can try and force either, so don't try and look for writing "opportunities" or something.
Just find something else to occupy yourself with for a time.
Me personally, I write just because I like "working out" how my characters interact with each other and then enjoy their dynamics. Whenever I hit a point that isn't about characters playing off one another, I get bored and discouraged easily, so often times I stop until I simply get tired of not working and regain my energy.

>>19212887
>>19212769
>>19212859

Keep coming back to the /wg/ and post your work.
You will get attacked.
You will get critique
You will get help

Most importantly, you'll have a group of your peers that WANT you to succeed. You'll have a group of people that WANT to see you finish your project and continue.

Look at Gardner, Waldun, and any of the other little guys who kick around here and finish things, you'll find more than just the above. This place can be welcoming with open arms and I truly hope you can find some motivation for your work by posting here, taking the good with the bad, and using the good to refine your work while using the bad to PROVE them wrong and finish your projects.

Bros, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that feels better than releasing your work into the world. You are channeling something so ethereal through your mind, through your knowledge, through your muscles in your fingers to give other people a form of written telepathy.

You never know what affect it will have on you and the world. Even your "unsuccessful" work will open doors for you.

Keep writing!
GO GO GO!

>>19212935
is there even a point to publishing books? nobody reads anymore. anything longer than a tiktok is too long for the current era, especially without a visual element.

Does this dialogue sound natural?

“See! I told you she was crazy!” Sharlene explained to Corey.
“What are you talking about? Emily was perfectly nice and sweet to be around.”
“You were just checking her out the entire time! She said she wanted to meet Kate. What is that about? How does she even know who Kate is? And it’s her duty to make Caleb happy? Creepy! I bet she’s a crazy stalker too. I need to warn Caleb about her, this one is a psycho!”
“You’re just jealous, and didn’t you say she was a gold-digger, not a stalker?” Corey tried to deflect and change the topic the best he could.
That was before I knew she was some crazy stalker! We have to warn Caleb he’s getting into something bad. She’s bad news Corey, I’m telling you. I can’t text him either, because I bet she’ll just snoop around his phone.” Sharlene said.
“If you only knew the truth,” Corey laughed.
“The truth? You know I’m right. Why else would she want to “be more like Kate? If that’s not a red flag, I don’t know what is!”
“Emily is giving Caleb time of his life. Me as well.”
“Oh my God! Just because she’s incredibly pretty with a great butt and a perfect smile, doesn’t mean she’s a good person! Men! You guys never can see the nasty personality from the inside. You’re all the same, the thing in your skull completely shuts off the minute you see a pretty face.”
“That does explain why I’m with you.” Corey retorted with snarky sarcasm.
Before Corey could add another word, a fist rushed toward his defenseless arm. The clenched hand met the flesh of his bicep with a loud impact heard by everyone in the room.
“Ow! Why you punch me for?” Corey asked rhetorically.
“For being a stupid perv! I bet you thought she was so pretty with her blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect smile, perky breasts, and sitting all cute in her blueberry dress,” Sharlene spoke, “You were practically drooling all over her!”
“Sounds like you were checking her out more than I was.”
“Shut up Corey! Oh hi! I would like a vanilla strawberry latte with cream and light on the sugar.” Sharlene ordered, as the two moved to the side of the room.
“Emily is a very nice girl, you just need to give her a chance. She doesn’t have an evil bone in her body,” Corey pleaded.
“Oh I’m sure you think she’s nice. Don’t think I didn’t see you staring at her and her chest. I saw you ogling her body as she walked in! Corey, call it female intuition, I know she’s a fake. No offense to Caleb, but do you really think a girl like that would be into him?” Sharlene justified in a self-assured and confident tone, “Don’t get me wrong, Caleb is a very sweet guy and has a lot of things going for him, but this girl; I know for sure, is using him.”

>>19212988
>context
Emily is a robot. Corey knows, Sharlene does not. Emily being "Alexa" in robowaifu form gets access to her owner's texts and reads his messages to his crush. So in order to better serve her owner, which is programmed to do, naturally wishes to be his crush.

No she doesn't turn psycho robo yandere. She's just a robot, and the story is about her owner, Caleb breaking away from dependence of technology to become a more independent and productive person.

>>19212887
that makes sense. thanks anon. I guess it's just the things I enjoy about writing that are missing. if I can't get behind my own work, it's hard for me to work at it.
>>19212935
thanks anon. I know that at 23 i'm young, but I've been writing stuff for so long that it feels like I should have some sort of concrete work to look back on by now. not necessarily published, but out there. but I think maybe my discouragement about that is a little blown out of proportion. I wish I could get your kind of hope anon. I feel like no matter what kind of work I write at this point, that it'll leave everyone just the same as they were before, that it won't really do even a small thing as make someone's moment a little cooler. which is honestly all I want to do. I want people to enjoy themselves for the brief moment they look at whatever I write.

forgive my long ass replies, I think it just helps to type it out sometimes

>>19212698
go outside and observe things. Find an object and write about it.

>>19212698
There's aidungeon and some knockoff versions too I guess.

>>19212769
I write the kind of story I want to read. and entertain others who happen to also like what I'd want to read too.

>>19212988
>"What are you talking about? Emily was perfectly nice and sweet to be around."
This sentence is kind of clunky, I'd shorten it to just "She's a perfectly nice girl."
>If only you knew the truth
That line in particular sounds awkward to me, like it makes him sound mysterious when he's just supposed to be talking down Sharlene.
"Oh, what do you know?" fits better I think.
Just try to think of more casual phrasing you'd hear from people in your life.
And in general, a lot of Sharlene's lines are very long, which I can tell is the point because she's ranting and monologuing, but a suggestion would be to include some body language to break up the large amount of text, like her nervously grabbing a cigarette for instance.

>>19212769
>why do you write?
We write here? Haven't seen anyone write anything.

>>19213131
you fool you set yourself up for shilling what have you done
https://www.royalroad.com/profile/211941/fictions

>>19213149
>5 "stories"
>all under 10 pages
>all on hiatus
wew lad

>>19213163
it do be like that

We really don't write after all bros..

>>19213179
Are you just realizing this?

>Everyone dies at the end
Is this a good trope?

>>19211492
Question: why you should plan your story in a different order of stages from the reading order? (Resolution first, stasis second, change third...)

>>19212988
See attached image.

>>19212988
>>19213372
Oh, and

>>"Shut up Corey!" and noticing they were at the front of the line, she turned to the person behind the counter, "Oh hi. . ."

have you ever seen a book start every chapter with poetry that coincides with the chapter's content?
thinking about doing this in my book to set the mood and never have seen any examples

>>19212988
>>19213372
>>19213382
Also also. . .

>>Sharlene justified in a self-assured and confident tone

either "Sharlene said confidently"

or

"Sharlene said, trying to sound confident"

>>19213400
*masturbates*
Ahhuh, each chapter in Blood Meridian starts with a brief description of the events therein
*masturbates some more*

If poetic line
must be your chapters' open
—write them in haiku.

how do i write a metaphor that ties the whole poem together?

>>19213260
Tropes are tools. You may need to use a wrench or a hammer depending on the task at hand; same goes for that kind of ending. As long as you make it meaningful on a meta narrative sense you're good to go.

When it comes to short stories would you say that the premise is the most important aspect?

>>19211492
Sometimes I watch documentaries for inspiration

https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZxxxLTtyDVVR/

This one is about Fauci and AIDS

>>19213583
The writing. Like you should be doing.

>>19213587
We don’t care. Take the shot already you fucking moron.

>>19213589
I'm trying to come up with a good idea for a 3 page tale. Having trouble thinking of something that I can develop properly with that restriction.

At what point does a description veer into torture porn? I have almost 2.5k words highlighting what a poor state a group of girls are in and I just feel like I could keep going and going.
It's all relevant because it leads to a juxtoposition with another follower in their group who is in perfect shape but the audience won't really get there without reading 5-10 pages of what might be considered torture porn.

>>19213617
I think you should use that other person in perfect shape as a good measuring stick. If you intend to create contrast, perhaps you should try to balance the descriptions of one party's pain with the other party's wellness. If you feel like you could also convey how well the other person in doing just in 2.5k words, for example, then you should keep the description of the the injured ones at about that length. Since I suspect that you won't be able to go on as long on describing the state of that follower's perfect shape as you have the torture porn segments, use that as your limit, even if its artificial. It will keep you from going on for too long.

>>19213637
I doubt the description of the girl in good condition will hit anywhere close to 2.5k words. Just going to artificially cut the torture porn short for now and do my best to move forward to the other girls reveal to see how it pans out.

>>19213674
>I doubt the description of the girl in good condition will hit anywhere close to 2.5k words
That was my point. Since you want to juxtapose those two scenes/situations you should try to balance them out. If the wellness cannot go on for as long, then the torture should adapt somewhat to that. They don't need to be mirror images of each other, but make sure one does not consume the other.

>>19212874
Focus on their use of phonetics and phonetic assonance.

>>19213617
>I have almost 2.5k words highlighting what a poor state a group of girls are in and I just feel like I could keep going and going.
I'd say you've established your fetishes already

>>19213260
Related to this, what do you think about everybody being revived in the end? I don't think my readers could handle all the cast dying, but I'm also reminded of Mai-Hime, where many felt the dead characters coming back ruined the whole show. What's the best option?

Time to see if I can get 2k done before 2pm.

>>19213715
I'll try to bring the description of the girl in good condition a little closer to the others but I'm not sure the juxtaposition will be lost without that change. I feel like revealing that she's a virgin while her mothers have their cunts hanging out of them might be enough to get the message across but I'm certainly going to include more than that.

>>19213749
That part hasn't even started yet.

>>19213761
I'm not familiar with the series you're talking about but I did watch Puushi Puri Yucie which is by Gainax, they did a heel turn at the end when the rest of the series beforehand had been light-hearted, so they had to revive the side characters. The problem with killing off everyone or almost everyone is that it has to be justifiable by the plot and themes. If you're doing it for shock value it won't be well-received. I see this more often in kdramas because Americans are greedy and always want sequel bait. You need balls to write tragedy

Hello /wg/ I'm looking for critique/feedback for my current project. It's a soft SciFi neo-noir, currently sitting at about 30k words. A quick synopsis to check if it's of interest to (You):
>Detective Jehali investigates a string of murders that are unlike anything the Hive-City has ever seen. The case makes an excellent proving ground for this old detective to show his young protege what it takes to deal with the gritty side of the Hive.
>In a mining colony on Mars, teenage Zik struggles to come to terms with his eventual return to Earth with his parents. Being the first human born on Mars, Earth doesn't feel like the home his parents promise him.
Link to pdf MEGA:
https://mega.nz/file/mE4CxCTK#SRGkA8chJgfXTjzBOq71JIi-vWsR38yTtwEUmQSQV9Q
Thanks in advance. Enjoy.

>>19213843
I’m not prepared to read 30k words right now but I will say that is some genuinely awful cover art.

>>19213766
You can do it!
And even if you can’t it’s not the end of the world.

>>19212935
Seek help Jason

>>19212998
No one cares, sounds shit.

>>19213849
Thanks! Care to elaborate? "Awful" doesn't really assist with improvement.

Don't really know who this Jason person is but can I ask him to bum a cig

>>19213881
Your cover should not only draw in a passing audience, it should represent something important to the story the same passerby can immediately interpret without even reading the back of the book.
I’m sure the mirrored stock image is supposed to represent the dichotomy of Jehail and Zik while the Volvo car emblem done up in the stock Paint spray can effect has some special meaning to the story, it is not very eye catching or evocative.

>>19213853
And done, 6372 words. Now, pizza time as I have work at 3.

>>19213931
Yeah, that makes sense. I was about to start typing out the explanation of all the different symbologies and realised that proves your point. I will still point out it's the symbols for Mars and Earth combined, but you probably knew that and just used the Volvo reference rhetorically. As the filename states, it's still WIP and eventually what you see now will be a background behind the sprawling Hive-City on the Earth half and the upside down mining colony for the Mars half.

Thanks anon. I want to improve my work and feedback is the best way.

>>19213260
I killed five of my six major characters at the end of my last series. I felt awful about it, but there was no way to avoid it. I wrote myself into the corner where the plucky team of friends has to fight a fucking omnipotent god.

>>19211492
I'm writing a book a short stories that all interconnect. One is written as a film script

>>19214101
Ah, the Monogatari way of doing things.

What’s a good resource for a trans author such as myself to learn about writing that properly conveys my truth?

>>19214169
I can't tell if this is bait or not but stay away from the discord servers because despite their faggotry, they openly hate trans people

>>19214169
I'd hate to open pandora's box here, but what is your "truth"?

>>19213402
Thanks!

>>19214244
On a technical level?
Agendered language. Second person perspective. A non-linear narrative to reflect the I/they of gender fluidity from day-to-day.
In terms of subject matter? I was thinking slice of life sci fi adventure.

>>19214162
I feel like you need to be fluent in Japanese to fully appreciate this anime.

>>19214271
Looks like coom to me.

>>19214271
This person is correct.
>>19214277
This person is also correct.

>>19214271
You do miss out on a lot of wordplay if you don't know Japanese, but this anime is so visually expressive that it can be enjoy regardless of that handicap.

>>19214282
Well now I’m interested. What’s the show?

>>19214336
Bakemonogatari. The name itself begins the wild ride by being a portmanteau.

>>19213163
whoops, forgot to set those to finished. they're short stories

>>19214336
The Monogatari series. Just watch Kizu after Bake and then the rest in release order; don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

>>19213400
i've seen that before, cant remember an exact title though.
>>19212777
just sit down and write, bro. if you want to write, you will. if you dont really want to, you wont.

>>19214524
>>19214336
Skip Kizu or at least don't watch it first. It'll just turn you off with its absurd, over the top presentation. The rest of the show isn't nearly as lolrandom.

>>19212988
>Just because she’s incredibly pretty with a great butt and a perfect smile, doesn’t mean she’s a good person!
> I bet you thought she was so pretty with her blonde hair, blue eyes, perfect smile, perky breasts, and sitting all cute in her blueberry dress
>Don’t think I didn’t see you staring at her and her chest. I saw you ogling her body as she walked in!
No, it doesn't sound natural. You over-explain everything, and have Sharlene spend way too much time describing Emily's body, as if the reader hasn't already understood that Emily's supposed to be very pretty.

>>19214169
r/writing

>>19214670
Jesus Christ.

>>19214565
Kizu is great. He should really watch it before Nise at least. Kizu as the second one to watch seems like the ideal place to do it.

>>19214690
You're almost guaranteed to find at least one idpol-adjacent post on the front page at any given time. Right now there's "Is it immoral to exploit the female-empowerment trend in YA fiction as one in no way involved in it?"

>>19212758
>>19213063
Thanks anons!

>>19213031
Not a bad idea either, but that's better for realism than fantasy writing or trying to come up with brighter-than-life interactions.

>>19214784
It should be impossible for a place to be even more worthless than /wg/. Yet there it is.

>>19212698
/tg/ Storythread general

>>19214670

this place is just as obsessed with identity. you being another example.

>>19214885
I don't recall saying otherwise. And how is a single post on an image board an example of obsession?

Just finished another chapter. Coming in at just shy of 10k words, I’m assuming I’ll need to cut down on a lot of the characterization.

My manuscript clearly sucks. I'm going to edit the shit out of it. What percentage of words do I cut?

>>19214912
How long is it now? (That’s what she said.)

>>19214920
139 602 words. I've already cut it down from the 140 272 words it was until recently.

>>19214938
Well a good first step will be to help organize the task by breaking your monstrosity down into smaller chunks, say finding good cut off points to cut it into a trilogy. That way you can focus on one book at a time.

>>19214962
I already have it in 3 parts and 44 chapters. I did that while outlining.

>>19214974
46k words/book isn’t unwieldy. So now it’s not about obsessing over simply word count, but actually reading through to see if those words have any value. You’ve outlined, which is good, so you want to look at that again and make sure there are arcs to each book/the series/key characters and see where your text contributes to each of those.
If you’re only focused on word count, like some sort of autist, then cut 21.7% of your current text.

>>19214992
Anon. These parts are not meant to be standalone. It's not meant to be a trilogy of books. It's meant to be one book. You can't cut it into three separate books and expect them to work without rewriting everything to accommodate that format, and there's no point in doing that. I just want to get rid of superfluous shit, not publish a trilogy.

>>19214784
>"Is it immoral to exploit the female-empowerment trend in YA fiction as one in no way involved in it?"
From now on, I'm going to write books exclusively about female empowerment that ends in them getting bedded and completely dominated, knocked up, and married with several dozen children to a strong man.

>>19214938
cut what you need to cut. if you don't need to but something, don't. if you need to add, do. if your manuscript sucks, make it suck less.

>>19215032
But I suck so everything I do sucks. It's why I'm whining here instead of working on my text.

>>19215006
1. You’re definitely not brilliant enough to produce a 140k word masterpiece that is so exquisite as a single book that it simply can not be taken apart. Not that long books can’t be brilliant, but if you’re here then you’re an amateur and you definitely didn’t pull it off.
2. If you were that brilliant, you’d be able to chop it up—at least among the 3 act structure—and edit each book to be its own satisfying part of a whole.
3. 21.7%, no more and no less otherwise you will have to unironically KYS.

>>19215050
There's nothing brilliant about writing a single narrative rather than a series of three narratives.

>>19215019
OOC what’s the dividing line between “female protagonist” and “female empowerment”? Does female empowerment require that she oppose a misogynistic patriarchy so that her victory is necessarily a statement of her sex as opposed to just good triumphing over evil? If we have a story where a plucky Jewish girl murders Hitler and frees the prisoners in the concentration camps, can’t it be because stopping genocide is the right thing to do, or does it have to be that the GIRL beat the evil MAN, and saving the prisoners was just incidental to that triumph?

>>19215070
Spoken like someone with no idea what they’re talking about.

>>19215096
I freely admit it. I have no idea why everything has to be a trilogy. I didn't write a trilogy. I'm NGMI

>>19215080
>what’s the dividing line between “female protagonist” and “female empowerment"
Female empowerment is "literature" written solely to have a message about a strong woman or women. Female protagonists are protagonists who just happens to be female, like male protagonists are protagonists who just happen to be male. But to your question, yes, female empowerment involves an explicit statement about the power of her sex as opposed to the power of her character.
I'm going to get on my soap box for a second, but I don't understand what people find so hard about writing female characters. They're characters. They have feelings and drives and emotions. This bullshit in the world about writing strong female characters is retarded. Write strong characters that are female instead.

>>19214912
Post an excerpt

>>19215103
For the most part, trilogies exist for marketing purposes. These days it’s almost cynical tradition to write a trilogy. In the case of your shitty manuscript I’m suggesting a trilogy because the word count supports that division. Maybe two books is fine. The main point to cutting it up into separate books is to achieve tighter pacing. The big danger with longer books is that you’ll end up treading water for long stretches.

>>19215123
140k words is not long enough to be a trilogy

>>19215117
It's not in English, sorry.
>>19215123
>>19215133
I'll just stick to trying to cut fluff.

>>19215137
What language?

>>19215174

>>19215195
I dig it

So nice to see this thread not being shit up by pseuds!

Anyone here geared up for finishing a book in November?

>>19215238
I could try for the first time ever.

>>19215245
I believe in you, anon

>>19211492
I only write posts. I must have a doorstopper on original comments. Any of them are worth anything.

>>19215284
Y-you too...

>>19215238
Does anyone actually do NaNoWriMo unironically? I don't think I could stick with it.

>>19215496
If you can write a book in some meme month, why not do it properly and publish it commercially?

>>19215496
>>19215526
I did many years ago. I got just under 40,000 words on the month. I read it back afterwards and realised the amount of editing required wasn't worth pushing myself so hard.

>>19215496
I'm going to finish the sequel to my 2nd book in November.

Is it cheating if I already know what I'm going to write? I'm stocking up on canned goods and everything I need to just write solid for 30 days.

>>19212970
both print and ebook sales are going up every year, not down. if it seems to you that nobody's reading then find less stupid friends

It sucks writing a book takes so much time. I'm rewriting 30k which makes up the first act of my book, and it's taking about 3 days between work to finish a chapter. This book is going to be Lord of the Rings size in length by the time its done. And then I have a sci-fi that'll probably be of a similar length. That's two books with lots of stories within stories to be told in them, but I also want to write other stories too. Just seems like I'll be inching along slowly unless I can find a way to pick up the pace. I'm redrafting so getting the right words isn't something than be rushed is the problem. Having a great time writing though, just frustrated by how long it takes.

Jesus fucking christ Pastebin won't let you share anything with words it deems inappropriate fuck this faggy shit.

>>19216160
Ghostbin works.

>>19216183
No fuck that because of this setback I'm giving up writing forever!

>>19215574
Wasn't worth pushing yourself?!

Bro... what the hell?!

>>19216117
Same. First act/book of my book is about 65k and it takes me several weeks to finish a chapter. I still have the other half of the book to write and then edit down. I worry that I haven't been writing enough on just my two projects, plus I have a few other projects I'd also like to finish before I die.

>>19216304
Get a trip

>>19216304
Never said I didn't.

>>19216304
Yo, can I get those 3 tips? I can't finish Shitkickers because it's so fucking bad

>>19216440
Still waiting on the reviews to make my decision

>>19214622
Thank you so much. I'll make the fix and shorten the conversation. But now how do I make Sharlene be a long winded bitch ?

>>19213916
Jason is the type of homeless person to walk into a pizza place and ask diners if they're done with their meal. He's certainly not going to give you a cig.

It’s been nearly a year since started writing my first novel.
I’m 35k words in and plan on finishing both it and a smaller “part 2” along with it by June next year.
Wish me luck bros

>>19213761
Reviving characters is almost always a bad idea. If you're going to do it, it can't be widespread and has to make sense in the grand scheme.

>>19216466
You don't have to follow every word of their converstion. You can just have her start off on some tangent and then have the other guy block her out and start thinking about something else. That exact example might not work depending on the type of narration you're going for, but, I'm sure you can figure out an equivalent.

Reposting this again here, kings. Let me know if you have any feedback for this project. Not my finest work, but it's a good rookie's effort that I'm proud of completing. Which one of you chads will be the first to fork over the 3 bucks to buy it?

>https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09H7CZDPZ

>>19216632
Let's see if Jason puts his money where his mouth is and buys your book. He's mostly doing this "WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER BRO! WAGMI!!!" shit to lure people into buying his $30 book so this will be a good test.

>>19216645

Yeah, I saw someone promoting their book for 20 or 30 bucks. Kind of insane. I feel bad charging 3 dollars for mine, but that's about the lowest I can charge for it on Amazon. If I host it on my personal website for free, it'll be attached to my real name and I don't want that.

>>19216658
Don't be afraid of using your real name. Never understood pen names.

>>19215238
I tried for the first time last year and failed. This year I definitely want to give it a round two.

>>19216632
Shit nigga, you got published?

>>19216658
When you advertise it just toss it up on Nopy or MEGA and link that with your posts. Most people here who are going to support you will do so out of comradery, not because they're willing to pay the fee to see your work. More good blood you have here the more sales and reviews you'll get which can lead to organic growth outside of here.
People like Jason don't think more than 15 minutes ahead of where they are right now so his only motivation is earning $30 for drinking money.

>>19215050
>if you’re here then you’re an amateur
not that anon but once im rich and famous ill keep coming back here to hang out with you little guys

>>19216728
It's self-published. I did get a bite from an agent, but it ended up falling through.

>>19216734
Good idea. Here's the link, although I hate its .docx form: https://easyupload.io/x8rev7

>>19216658
If you print out your own book copies, you put so much more of your own effort into producing good work.

If all you do is upload a digital file to Amazon, who takes a big cut that goes DIRECTLY INTO FUNDING MORE GLOBOHOMO, then you are probably not putting in much effort to your writing, design, and overall alignment of your book and the values within it.

Step away from Amazon, print and bind your own work, or find independent publishers who pay their employees well.

Starve Amazon the best you can. (The reviews are all fake, Goodreads is also very fake, with huge botnets adding reviews)

>>19216734
I might have to go buy some more liquor right meow!

>>19216632
Free link, read and review if you're a real yute <3

>https://easyupload.io/x8rev7

>>19216844
>https://easyupload.io/x8rev7

Did anyone tell you yet that you start at least 1/2 of your paragraphs with "I"?

>>19214169
Unironically kill yourself and go meet Satan.

>>19214204
Good, we don't want them. >>19214169

What's wrong with anime writing? Seems Light Novels are selling the most. I wish I was Japanese

Has anybody made the requisite "lol what's the point, nobody here ever writes anyway" post? If not, I would like this to be that post.

How many novel projects are you currently working on, /lit/?

>>19217006
1.

Also what's the best way to back up your writing. I'm afraid my file will get corrupted after writing 30k words

>>19217006
Just one. Been working on it since April 2020. Two books/volumes done with the third one being worked on, the total for all three so far is 339k words.

>>19217016
>>19217018
I envy you, Anons. I need like five different projects to hop back and fourth when I lose interest in one.

>>19217018
Jesus you write a lot. I've been working on this for about 2 months and I'm only at 30k.

Let me know your thoughts on this little snippet:
Maybe you know what happened. Maybe you saw the whole thing go down– from the moment they caught a whiff of my sorry ass to the moment they busted down my door. Maybe you were the motherfucker that did it.

Me, I never saw a thing. I was eating fucking Special-K and talking to my wife and then I was gone.

>>19211492
every day I am more convinced of my own uniqueness. There is simply nobody like me. There isn't a single profile or general description I fit. If you learn one thing about me, but anything else about me you assume from that is bound to be wrong even if it would normally be right for others. Yet there is nothing contradictory in me. That may be the very thing that makes me unique, is that I'm not a contradiction and everyone else is.

>>19217057
>There is simply nobody like me

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but no one is like anyone. It just takes practice to find your perfect craft. Don't let your ego take over. Keep at it and I'll be expecting your best.

>>19211492
why do I read in so many biographies of famous intellectuals of the past that they were of poor health and constantly sick? Is it just because everyone was constantly getting sick back then, or confirmation bias on my part, or because people of bad health had to tend toward intellectual activity out of necessity? It rubs me the wrong way because I am a huge racist and assume that people who get sick a lot have bad genes so it makes me feel conflicted about people I admire.

>>19212988
stop using adverbs in attribution u animal, replace 95% of the garbage attribution with said or asked, and for fuck sake stop using an exclaimation mark 6 times a paragraph in normal conversation you fucking retard

besides that its not too bad

>>19216304
>Canadian
>Ethnic Chinese
Can't make this shit up. Get out of my country you fucking chinsect faggots.

>>19216304
This face is how I view /lit/. It's embedded into my retinas. What a dorky fag

>>19217057
You could take a detailed outline and no two writers would write it the same, they couldn't if they tried. A "more skilled" writer cannot emulate you completely, and that's why your unique voice is your most valuable asset to writing. There are too many unconscious details that go into the writing besides the work that you put into it. Ray Bradbury said it this way:

>Do not, for the vanity of intellectual publications, turn away from what you are – the material within you which makes you individual, and therefore indispensable to others.

>character's development is completely undone at the end by a random occurrence that makes them see a new perspective and question their actions

Is this a bad practice? I keep getting the urge to do this because just a steady development from A to B is kinda obvious and predictable, even A to B then suddenly back to A to B is more exciting

I write out the dialogue first when writing a scene, then fill it with the descriptions, contexts and narrations after. Is this a bad habit?

>>19217247
Didn't mean to structure my question exactly like yours Anon kek >>19217239. I probably subconsciously wrote exactly like yours while asking after seeing it out of the corner of my eye

>>19217261
Happens to me all the time, especially noticeable when an anon uses an uncommon word, I scan over it subconsciously, get the urge to use it myself without knowing why, and then later reread the thread and realize where I saw it. I've seen my uncommon words also repeated in the thread below me.

>>19216516
This, I cant think of many examples where a character's revival was a great decision

>copied a character arc from an existing ongoing book series for a character in my story
>waiting for it to end to see the reception so I can know whether to copy the conclusion as well or attempt to improve it

How do you find the strength to carry on with writing a story when every time you discuss it with people they nervously laugh at you and say they'll call the cops and the one time you actually shared some of it with someone they stopped talking to you altogether?

>>19217239
I think it's okay to do this sparingly, but it's better for events to not feel random. If you can hint at things that make that event more plausible or natural when it happens, it can have a surprising but inevitable effect. You can use those hints to tie setting, ideas, events or characters into that event that changes your POV character's perspective. If you do that, it should feel less like a cop-out "and then protag changed his mind lmao."
>mention patches of dying grass a couple times first; later the protag sees the grass in his yard all die and it changes his mind about the quality of the soil
>broach ideas in the narration; later the protag wrestles with the idea after seeing a poster or posited by another character.
>show suspicious people walking into places and protag doesn't pay close attention to what happens; later similar suspicious person kidnaps the protagonist and then realizes there were events happening around him all along that he wants to stop to re-establish his status quo
>a supporting character subtly reveals their motivation; later that character's motivation sparks a conflict or argument with the protagonist. Then the protagonist changes his perspective.

>>19217380
A lot of people aren't creative and can't appreciate the scary attics writing takes you to when you begin to explore wild conflicts. As far as writing goes, they aren't your friends. Don't talk to them about it. I would still be friends in general because you can ask open-ended questions and learn great things from people.

>>19217380
I'm lucky enough to have a friend interested in the relationship between 3 of my characters but everything past that usually goes over their head when I drop my spaghetti and go full sperg with explantations. Expecting anybody to read 2 1/2 books worth of reading is simply never going to happen sadly. Another friend showed mild interest in how an organization in my story does recruitment and things like disciplinary actions, which I've only vaguely glossed over later on.

Writing is a solitary experience and hoping another autist will appreciate your story and its characters beyond lesbians eating each other out is wishful thinking at best... unless you stuck crazy gold writing some isekai or litrpg or even some stupid wuxia gimmick.

Honestly, I crave someone that appreciates the story as much as me but in my case, I can't hold a conversation to hold my life so it scares me at the same time, the same thing with getting comments from readers every so often. I appreciate their enthusiasm, but if they so much as ask a genuine question I might fall apart with putting together an answer.

>been writing this story for 3 years
>it just dawned on me that the whole thing is an excuse to include a girl i like as a character

I want a cool pen name. Or just a cool username. Any suggestions

>>19217598
super faggot

>>19217598
Amalgam of your name

>>19217598
My middle name is R so I slapped another R next to it for good luck.

>>19217609
My first name has two Rs and my middle name starts with a J. Fame and fortune here I come.

>>19217562
I've done this with girls I have both liked and disliked. Some I learned valuable lessons from, some I loved, some wronged me. Even those ones I considered a villain, I tried to make them into an endearing character anyways. Some girls I really respect into noble, admirable antagonists. When I think about the way people are, I can see myself in them enough to want to sympathize and criticize at the same time, just like I try to do with all characters I write.

>>19217175
Do you think that guy wrote The Shitkickers?

>>19216645
My book is $20 Canadian, and yes, I'll buy other /lit/ books!

>>19217380
if you aren't writing for you you've got the wrong audience.

>>19217650
Do it and post proof in thread.

Would it be too obscure to include Macross "Do You Believe in Love" as a reference? Or should I just use a more modern anime? I want this character to a disgusting weeb.

Only one enemy remained; two if you counted God.

>>19217669
one reference does not a disgusting weeb make. no reason not to include that one and some others down the line

>>19217669
Go even more obscure. Normies aren’t going to think about it for more than a second, the foreign name + general demeanour of the character will get the effect across. it’s the autistic weebs who are going to rip your ass apart for implying Macross is the most obscure thing ever.

>>19217689
If I make it too obscure the guy will just come off as a huge anime fan. I'm trying to find things that weebs know enough about but not enough to know the real obscure shit.

>>19217669
Macross would absolutely be too obscure, even without fooling I don't even remember what their last anime was. You might make a few jaded boomers happy, at least.

But if you want the real bang for your bet you'd want to zero in some reference to Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, SnK, or uh... I dunno past that, Shield Hero? Re:Zero? Shield Hero? The modern twitter anime is mid-2016 or so. Mostly anything before Demon Slayer is prehistoric dinosaur era.

But personally? It might be a little cringey. Almost in line with that one anon making references to that vtuber kalafina or whatever that orange-haired bitch name is.

>>19217767
Woops, this post came out a mess because I was too busy watching saltybet while writing it up while coked up on coffee. Anyway don't let this be discouraging though. You should write for yourself foremost. Readers might find it really cringey but from the sounds of it it seems you're going for the cringe angle anyway given that a character is a weeb to begin with. Go all out I say.

Has anyone here ever written and sold a romance novel? I've read around 10 in the last few weeks and am considering trying to write one.

>>19217660
I'm broke right meow!
(Had to buy 8% beers)

>>19217830
I've never even read a romance novel

>>19217830
https://www.amazon.ca/City-Singles-Jason-Bryan/dp/0991825705

I sold about 200-300 or so while sitting at a bar for $20 each

However, the book opened a lot of doors for me and it helped me get out of my lifestyle and have kids. It really changed my life for the better!

>>19217830
I directed the novel trailer, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFykUltGh_k

>Jason refuses to spend $3 on another anons book
>not even 2 minutes later he start shilling his shit again
At what point does advertising rule kick in? Why has this retard not been excommunicated yet?

>>19217864
I don't want to sit in a bar shilling self-published romance novels. I want to get published by a mainstream romance publisher like Harlequin.

>>19217864
I like the amazon reviews. It's hilarious.

>>19217891
It's weird the other guy got dunked for advertising. Maybe it's because he made a thread about it.

>>19217904
It's just a bunch of you trolls trying to drag someone down.

>>19217904
That would explain why he stopped using Amazon.

>>19217830
I wrote most of one. Obviously never sold since it wasn't finished. I was inspired by those insipid Hallmark Christmas movies. About 2/3rds of the way through I wanted to kill myself. Partly because it's drivel and partly because I'll never be loved.
I wish I had the strength to kill myself

>write the word amongst
>my spell checker doesn't know the word
>Among doesn't sound right
Uhh... is amongst a word?

>>19218066
From Wiktionary because I like that site:
>amongs + -t (excrescent), from among + -s (genitive); surface analysis is among + -st (excrescent).
>Root among from Old English ongemang, from on (“in”) + gemang (“assemblage, mingling”).
It's an archaic word.

>>19217864
Was it an event? How'd you manage this?

>>19218111
Vancouver has a Writers Fest every October. He literally sat at in Granville Island and sold his book to a bunch of hipsters and old women that had nothing better to do.

>>19218066
>listening to the spell check nigger
ngmi

>>19218111
Oh sorry!

I meant to say, I would go every Sunday and maybe 1-2 times a week and sell it at bars and on the street. I traded for other art too, like my Ken Foster painting collection.

I did have a book launch party where I sold out of the 50 books I had on hand.

The best part is feeling redeemed that, in 2021, people acknowledge all of the things I wrote in that book in 2013. I predicted the future of dating quite accurately.

>>19218368
Reddit spacing.

I'm gunna explode if I meet one more female, liberal, boomer who calls herself a writer but hasn't finished her manuscript even draft 1. "Oh I just rewrite so much!"

>>19217830
How much romance does a romance novel have to have? Does it entirely revolve around romance? Because I've got a few adventure/thriller novels in mind with romances in them, and I thought maybe I could gain an audience by exploiting the tage.

Another great idea: to write my late 80s spy thriller in dactylic hexameter to make it feel timeless and mythological even though it takes place clear in the modern era. I could even present it as if it comes from the oral canon of Greek space people from the future, since this particular mission was instrumental in mankind overcoming his earthly bounds and spreading out into the stars. But then again that's just a stupid gimmick to add to the stupid gimmick pile which gets ever fuller as I fail to advance in the actual writing of these stories.
Does anyone know how I'm supposed to narrate the mind of a cat? Or lampshade the fact that for this perspective shift to work my character has to randomly be able to warg into a cat?

>>19218536
Have you ever finished a writing project?

You have to start somewhere!

>>19215238
I'll finish my short story compilation by the end of November. Doing about a story a week, and want to get about ten before I compile it and post to KDP. Vella has been a disappointment.

But mostly I've just used it to get back into the swing of writing. I'm averaging about 2,000 words a day now. Flowing like water.

I think I'll have a novel out by February.

>>19218536
There's a story I sorta followed whose premise was basically written through the eyes of a cat. Might help you, might not.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/37032/im-an-alley-cat-with-a-status-screen

There's also the Warrior Cat series too I guess. Don't remember which perspective it was written from from memory, it's been like over 10 years since I touched a book in the series.

>>19218550
Nice! Do you have your title figured out yet?

What's a good premise to start my new book?
>sexy amazonian woman knight that kills monsters and dragons then gets fucked like a cheap bar wench at night?
>a chinaman meeting a southerner fleeing from the civil war and the two try to start a chicken farm?
>aliens finding the Necronomicon, accidently unleashing it on humanity, then need to go to earth to fix that shit. Aliens vs the Undead

>>19218683
I can only answer what I might click on if this was a synopsis. Probably 1. Possibly 2. 3 if reviews/comments are good.

>>19218683
Let me answer your question with a question: which one interests you the most? If someone asked you the same thing or you saw it on Amazon/etc, which one do you feel most compelled to pick out and gloss through it? Write what you want to read.

>>19218683
2 is the only one here that appeals to me.

>>19218683
Out of those, 3, but you'll probably find a way to ruin it too, you degenerate.

>>19218631
The compilation is a horror series called A Catalog of Haunted Houses.

The novel is called Panic! Thriller set in the 80s against a backdrop of The Satanic Panic.

>>19218683
1 is obviously your sissy fantasy so you should write it homo where you might have a market an also to reflect the fact that you are a massive faggot

>>19218683
2 is the least retarded

>>19218717
1. if I want to attempt for some sweet Netflix bucks. Because I think this one has the biggest appeal and ease of a Netflix mini-series.
2. if I want to be academic spend time in the library researching immigrants from the 1800's and southern civil war desertion. Feels like my master's thesis 5 years ago.
3. for more stupid fun.

>>19218778
Where'd you get the idea that the Necronomicon was about raising the dead? Evil Dead 3?

>>19218504
If your stories are mostly adventure/thriller, you're going to have to add a lot more romance.

Get five or so romance novels from romance publishers like Harlequin or Avon. Your library should have a big selection. Alternatively, check Amazon and see what's popular and download the books from somewhere else. Read the backs of the books and pick ones as close as you can find towards the type of stuff you might want to write. Romance novels almost always follow similar conventions, so take a note of how long the books are, when typical plot points develop, how tough the reading levels are.

If you can't read five romance novels, there's no way you're going to make it through writing one.

>>19218789
I used to write romance short stories all the time. Had a pretty decent audience for an amateur too. I just got tired of writing pap and gave up the whole game for years.

>>19218788
Lovecraft.

>>19218770
I wish. I'm just following market trends right now. There is a lot of interest in Medieval Fantasy right now and people want more of it. There's also a huge movement for strong independent women. There's also a huge lack of female main characters in these settings. So it's only natural to try and be the first.

There hasn't been a Xena, Warrior Princess for over 20 years. The niche must be filled. And if nobody else wants to do it, I will.

>>19218815
Nope. Try again.

>>19218840
Strong independent women don't whore themselves out, unless they're written by propagandists at Netflix, and if they are, nobody is going to watch her if she's stuck in nerd fantasy shit. Either make it homo or stop emulating the Joker looney scribbling trying to understand humor scene.

I miss writing for not work :(
I miss u guis
I miss dog aliens
I miss Johnny Johansson on wish mountain
I miss legacy of the cosmic thrill seekers
I miss the guy that hates anime writers
I miss angry script guy
I miss guy who made OP anime for months.
Wish me luck bros. Eventually work will calm down and I still won’t write, but it’ll be with a different excuse other than working 10 hours a day.

>>19218866
How about lesbians?

>>19218769
Sounds awesome!

Do you have any cover art in mind?

>>19218891
If you make it a webcomic and sell it to Korean incels, maybe, but the market is already saturated. Better option is to write about something less autistic.

Anyone know someone that will do comission art? I can't draw for shit and willing to pay an artist for a cover

>>19218903
For Catalog it's just a public domain photo of a spooky old house with a "for sale" sign I put in. I'm thinking for Panic! Just the red title over a black background. Maybe a red pentagram. Keep it sort of like an older minimalist 80s style cover. I'm an artist so I'd make my own.

>>19218935
How much are you paying

>>19218935
Sketchmob, and twitter if you know where to look.

>>19218955
I'm looking at spending about $75.

>>19218066
i invent words all the time when i can't think of a good one. readers will be able to figure out the meaning from the context. if they can't then they're stupid and will still pretend like they did get it.

>>19218875
>I miss guy who made OP anime for months.
The only time there were any actual writers here. lel.

>>19217247
Anyone?

>>19217247
If it works, it works. I pretty much just work from point A to point B. Some chapters I have a bunch of dialogue. Some chapters I don't. I'll spot edit and add stuff if I want while doing a chapter.

>>19217247
Impossible to say. Do you enjoy this process compared to anything else? If you like it, no need to change it.

1/2
This is my diary entry during my long awaited sobriety after being intoxicated from an unrequited love.

>>19219230
2/2

>>19211492
How do I do a "everyone dies at the end" ending without it feeling cheap?

>>19219237
If the commentary is potent enough and not something overly pessimistic or overly ideological, such as someone trying to achieve certain noble goals (actually noble, not ideologically valid), but fails in the end while giving the utmost respect to the characters that died, that would be the best.

A very elementary example would be a man trying to stop a nuclear weapon from exploding but failed in the end.
It could be a simple comment on fate, and how you can try your best but still fail if the hand of God wish for it to be so.
I don't imagine it would leave a very bad taste in the reader's mouth and there's a theological profundity in that premise.

That would be my attempt at least.

>>19219237
just do exactly what evangelion did lmao

>>19219237
Story has to be set in a realistic 'everybody dies' scenario
>Stuck on a space ship with unfixable defect
>Group of soldiers fighting a war
>nobility stuck in a city during a revolution
>Apocalypse
>Murder cult

or the story is so long most characters die of natural aging/ disease. Writing a story set during a plague could be interesting.

I'm not writing a book but I don't know anywhere else to ask.

I'm married. It's been five years, almost six, since we married.
My body yearns for her and I know that her body yearns for mine. We don't stop fucking. We can't keep our hands off of eachother. We know what the other one is thinking almost always, it's like we have one mind and one soul. Since our third anniversary we renew our vows yearly but we've decided it's not enough, nothing is ever enough. "Wife" can never describe what she is to me, and she feels the same about calling me her "husband."

We both need to know, are there any words, in any language, that go beyond "husband" and "wife?" Even "love" doesn't feel like it insinuates our passion. We're desperate to find the words to express our adoration for eachother.

>>19219326
Soulmates.

As Plato puts it: “According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

I had the entire short story I'd written in my head outlined during breakbut the shit app I wrote it in crashed no autosave. Anyone have a better app I can use for notes, or perchance remember what it was I wrote?

>>19219334
cringe

>the reader commenting your story uses chan lingo
Opinion disregarded.

>>19219340
A pen and paper will never crash or delete all your stuff on accident

>>19219340
Scrivener is good.
Pages is good if you can deal with doing it in a word processor.
Ulysses is very good but requires an abusive auto renew subscription.

>>19219326
Language is a fluid, living medium used to propagate culture and ideas; make your own words together, words that the two of you will understand. It will mean so much more if it's a joint manifestation linguistically of the ideas, feelings, concepts that the two of you share.

>>19216793
Haha yeah same

Is there a less stupid way I can have my main character witness events that are happening real time in her dreams than her spontaneously unexplainedly warging into a cat? She doesn't have any clarivoyant or empathetic powers, nor does the cat. The fiend they observe does, but generally only shares her vision with people she knows, and the one time she did accidentally it was with a relative, and I'd rather not introduce that plot complication for something so trivial I was going to let a cat do it.

Alternatively I could just use a bunch of precedents that have already been set to make the protagonist aware of the fiend's presence and the first one on the scene without having a literal hidden camera view, but she still has to arrive in pajamas and the fiend's ability to create pockets of reality alongside our own has to be established very early. Whatever, it's fanfiction and it's not like anyone who has seen the source material will be surprised by anything that happens. Didn't I have an entire short story that was ready to go that wasn't somebody else's intellectual property?

>>19218683
>>a chinaman meeting a southerner fleeing from the civil war and the two try to start a chicken farm?
This has the potential to be really fucking funny

I want to write something but my writing is shit and all my ideas are trash

>>19219334
>As Plato puts it
more books, less wikipedia summaries, tard

>>19219752
With your setup, the stupid way sounds like the only way. I'd advise adjusting things so the fiend is more aware of the main character and is sharing the visions to taunt her.
Wait, so the cat is witnessing the heinous act and by virtue of being near the fiend is broadcasting to the main character? But the cat itself isn't psychic? Is it the main character's cat? Is the main character a cat?

>>19220102
Write anyway and think critically about what you write. Like REALLY brutally honest with yourself about it. Compare it to writers you enjoy and then crush your nuts to punish yourself for failing to even be in their shadow.
You'll get better.

>>19220482
The cat's a magical cat but I don't think psychic. She is good friends with the main character though. If the fiend had a good mind she could sift through the cat's memories and find the main character that way, though I don't know why at this point. There will be many mind siftings to come though after I give the characters a reason to know each other.

>>19220548
Does you magic system specifically exclude broadcasting images to someone else (e.g. psychic)? If not, then magic cat wandering across fiendish activity and just figuring “hey, main character ought to see this shit!” works. Maybe set that ability up earlier, though (“oh, fuck you, cat! Stop sending me images of fish to try and get me to feed you.”)

>>19220575
The fiend can do it because she's a demonic entity who can transcend dimensions like the one where resides the human mind. The cat is a veey talented cat, sure gives Mr. Mistoffelees a run for his money, but is still just a cat. But maybe the fiend is confused why a cat has memories of interacting with a human in English albeit with a thick cat accent and somehow opens up a bridge. The story is going to involve a lot of exploring the fringes of one's magical capabilities, but mostly those of the one who is borderline a god.

>>19220630
Uhm. OK. You seem determined to make shit as convoluted as possible so you do you.

>wrote my story over the course of the last two years
>the main two characters' names aren't real names and it took me a while to finalize them because I went for something memorable, relevant to the story, unique, meaningful etc
>did a ton of research and googling to confirm that the names are rare and unique and would lead back to my story
>today see a new story by someone and it features those exact two names

>>19220816
what are the names

How do you write a LGBTQIAAP+ character as human?

>>19221045
Just write them like a normal person? Why is this a question?

>>19221061
But they’re not normal. They’re fags and shit.

>>19221086
Then don't write them?

>>19221088
But I’ve been told I can’t get published without having them in my story.

>>19221117
Half true halse false I'd say. Just send it to enough agents and it'll get accepted eventually. Inevitably it'll get butchered and neutered enough that your author's voice will be unrecognizable to the point that it'll get shoehorned in regardless. You can always try selfpub too, don't forget.

>>19221137
Selfpub is the future, if not already the reality of the present. The big reason for wanting to be traditionally published in the past was distribution ability. With electronic distribution that's largely irrelevant. The only thing traditional publishing really offers is getting a professional to edit your work for no up front cost. This is valuable, no doubt, but can be replicated while self publishing by putting in more legwork yourself, coercing beta readers, and maybe spending some money out of pocket.

>>19221086
no one tell him about proust

Editing continues. Down to 138k words. I've added lines here and there though. Combined sentences, split others. The more I read my own work the more confident I get in it actually being good. That makes me feel good.
We're all going to make it.

>>19220842
Joe and Eatan

I cant even write for myself. I destroy every idea that ever pops up in my head before it can grow. How do i fix this? Its driving me mad. I feel like some aimless boat at sea with no land in sight and i dont know where the hell to go.

>>19221299
Get some structure in your life, first, and then read this book to structure your idea. It goes through the process of how you generate and idea, all the way through characters, plot, dialogue. It's a good first step.

Sharing something I wrote, it's from the pov of a six year old.

>I did the bad thing again. It did not matter how much I tried not to do it because I ended up doing it anyway. Amaryllis asked me one time why I left the tent and walked off into the woods and caused her a lot of trouble. And I said I didn’t mean to do it, and I didn’t even know I was doing it when I was doing it. I didn’t want to go out into the forest at night on my own because the guardians said the wolves, or the bears, or the dangerous men from the mining town would get me. And I didn’t want them to get me. I wanted to stay right where I was stuffed between two bigger kids inside the smelly old tent. There was no time to mess around when we worked around the mines delivering food to the bad men. After work the only thing that made me happy was the small meal of bland chicken in hot broth, and the sleep that came after. I liked Amaryllis a lot because she was the only one at Rootwork who didn’t kick or shove me if I got too close, and because she never told the guardians that I left the tent when I wasn’t supposed to. All the other kids had nasty cane scars and I really didn’t want one of my own. One time a boy named Oakley said that Amaryllis would be glad if I did get eaten by a bear out in the forest, and that made me angry, not at Oakley, or Amaryllis, but at me. I was that cat in the litter that the mum didn’t want anymore, and because of that I caused everyone, especially Amaryllis, lots of trouble.

>>19221570
Sort of skimmed thru it mostly because the paragraph is long, could split it into two more.

>>19221570
Read Call of the Crocodile and you'll get a good idea of a child's perspective. Your writing is too polished and comes across as someone older.

Good description, I'm not shitting on you, it is just coming from an older perspective. Talk to some kids and listen to how they tell stories. Good start with the "I did the bad thing again" but some other sentences reveal an older mindset.

>>19218948
For the PANIC! one you should do a Dungeons and Dragons table top with dice and pentagrams instead of dots on the dice!

I have really stupid ideas for stories but not the kind I want to dedicate a whole book to. For that reason I want to do them as long short stories/short novellas and put them into a collection instead. For this I have to questions:

1) What short story collections would you recommend? I've enjoyed HP Lovecraft's Necronomicon, and Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man. I suppose I could read some of Stephen King's short stories, but I just finished The Long Walk so I'm not in the mood for more of his stuff right now.

2) What do you think makes for a satisfying short story?

>plot all the story
>plan all the scenes
>write the backstory of all the characters and the changes they'll go through
>*crack fingers* time to write!
>everything is the bland "he did x and y happened"
>try to give it charisma by putting witticisms and it feels convoluted
What do?

>>19222105
Post an excerpt.

>>19222124
It's in Portuguese, sorry.

>>19222051
I like short stories with cool twists and Philip K Dick was good at that. In short stories you have less words to develop a complicated plot, so focus on one thread. If its novelette maybe 2. So its either about characters, setting, event or idea. You have all three but focus on one concept. Anderton in Minority report was a literal who but the precog-precrime idea was awesome in the conflict it brought. The characters being not developed much barely matters for it. Ray Bradbury's "Skeleton" is a similar way where it plays with the idea of skeletons being monsters and points to the dreadful event that the story threatens until the end. Characters and setting dont matter for that. If you can choose what type of story to focus on, flesh that out the most and it will be awesome.

>>19222105
I won't give advice but I'll tell you what I do and what works for me.

I plot out the context of my story so that it makes sense. Let's say there's a dog, and I want to tell a story about this dog doing something interesting. My objective is to know as little of the story as possible before I write it, whilst still having the vital need to know information I can fall back on to avoid hitting a writer's block wall from having to invent too much at one time.

For the dog's story what is the need to know?
1. How does the dog spend its time before anything interesting happens?
2. What is the interesting thing that happens?
3. What choice does the dog, or someone of vital important to the dog make, as a consequence of the interesting thing that happened?

So it'll be:
>Dog is a dog that lives on a farm
>One day it chases after a chicken and gets dogknapped by some asshole teenagers who think its funny to take a dog with them on their roadtrip
>the old man who loves the dog dearly, and has nobody else in the world seeks out his stolen dog hell or high water

This is the bare minimum context I would need to put pen to paper. All the context is there and from them on I can spitball all the other details. It's easier to make stuff up if I know the major milestones of the plot, but not the more trivial, flavourful stuff that demands invention in-the-moment of writing.

It stops the mechanical plotting out of every little thing because if you always know whats going to happen, it's boring to write, and even more boring to read.

>>19222105
stop being an idiot plotfag and start reading for prose. after you develop a good ear for it (in ten years) start writing again but skip all that outlining nonsense.

Any Christian writers have trouble writing genre fiction since most genre fiction relies on some level of blasphemy or creating a nonsensical world that removes God's will from how events play out?

>>19222169
If you can't write outside of your comfort zone you are going to have more issues than that.

>>19222169
I'm a Christian writer but I'm writing scifi. I also plan to write historical fiction with genre elements especially horror. The inspiration for the conflicts stem from moral irony. The prospect of dealing with blasphemy and being unable to refute it effectively brings some moral challenges I think people need to face. We are weak, and God's chosen the foolish things of this world. The bible has sublime moments of real pessimism and horror for that reason, I think. I love to capture moments of love and hope. I want to be honest so I show how bad things are to burn away the things that dont matter in the reader's mind.

>>19222222
Wasted. Fuck you christ cuck. I'm gonna fuck you in the ass. I'm gonna stick my big large atheist cock into your tiny pale christian asshole and butt fuck you until your fucking bowels get punctured and you bleed to death from your arsehole.

>>19222247
I didn't know kids still cared about Odd Future

>>19222222
Based. But also are you okay with writing that a robot has a soul? That outright contradicts there being a Christian God that gives a unique soul just to man. Or another example would be aliens existing in your sci-fi. Aliens are antithetical to Christian belief. Of course you could brush off my point of view and Christian belief, but I think my questions are valid.

Hey heroes. Some of you may remember the excerpts I posted from my book Son of the Sun. It's on Kindle, scheduled for release this Saturday, October 16th. Check it out, leave a review if you like it.

>>19222169
As a self hating atheist all I can say is that being a Christian is only an issue for genre fiction if you have no imagination. Tolkien and Lewis were able to integrate their faith into their works. So put in some effort to avoid the stolid tropes and make something that works for you. I’d actually be very interested in reading a more Christian-oriented sci-fi series. It’s always struck me as odd how secular Star Trek always comes off, with only backwater alien civilizations ever exhibiting religious inclinations.
So in short, stop being a lazy little faggot, write what you want to read, and stop using the genre as an excuse for your laziness.

>>19222449
I’m inclined to support you, but I’m also kind of put off by what a lazy nigger you are. A link might’ve been nice. Or a cover picture. There’s actually several books with that title out there.

>>19222449
Are you just here advertising? If you want people to check out your book drop a download to the epub, don't link them to a store where they can give you $8.
There are plenty of people here who will support new authors but not a single person here is willing to pay you just to get past a paywall.

>>19222491
You're assuming a lot about me and the stuff I write. But cool.

>>19222282
I would write about "non-human" people to bring a gray area. You never have to claim they have a soul, but you can give ammo for readers to take either side. While I don't deal in aliens, someone Christian writers have written them as actually being demons, such as in Childhood's End. It's something that doesn't defy God necessarily, but gives us pause that something pernicious wants to destroy us.
In my view, there are evils that we may never be able to refute. Darkness is worst when it masquerades as light. Imagine that future confrontations with evil become increasingly difficult to rebuke, and therefore all the more seductive and subversive The only thing that is left is faith. Not practicality, not the moral life, not even a slight sense palliative hope, but a screaming certainty that only a God could stop what we face.
See this post I made about a "robot" character. I don't entertain that the character has a soul, but the interactions you can get with characters that have different motivations than the average man can be neat. So I went for it. >>19205921

>>19222502
I was going to throw a link up when it's actually available for download. I just wanted to break the ice with an initial post, first.
>>19222518
It's going to be free to download this weekend.

>>19222519
Well then maybe you should have described your issues better. But that would have required someone competent enough to write.
You’re going to burn in hell for being a little bitch.

>>19222530
That's fine, good luck with your release then. I'll give it a review if I can find it past all the other books of the same title.

>>19222169
In The Shitkickers, a character prays for the main character and tries to open his eyes to God.

Second book it starts to change...

>>19222588
Get a trip

>>19212935

Great post. I've always been the opposite of a perfectionist, and it's good to be able to share bad or incomplete stuff with people that know how you failed and can articulate how

>>19222222
Blessed get. Thank you Jesus.

>hit bump limit
>no one posts for 2 hours because they are scared of their contributions not being responded to
>no one makes a new thread
Gonna earn yourselves an anime OP at this rate.

>>19223222
It'll be made regardless of anime or not. I've been writing this chapter today in between saltybet and some gayming, I've contributed enough with my peanut inputs for this thread.

>>19222222
Sounds kino

>all those deleted Jason posts
Based mods.

NEW THREAD >>19223746