/lit/ - Literature

Seek help. 4chan should not be your close social circle.

>>19549226
Yes and I shouldn't be banned from the pub without a vaccine but here we are mother fucker

>>19549195
i live in canada, what's the point? everybody here's a braindead illiterate subhuman ape. literature here isn't possible

>>19549272
You have to try friend, you have to try!

>>19549195
How are you literate if most of your jobs were like site management or whatever. Did you read in your spare time?

>>19549250
based

>>19549303
>that pic
Each passing day north america is getting closer and closer into becoming another latin america shithole, it is like you fags are copy pasting it step by step their mistakes.

>>19549303
For 15 years I sold porn online and worked like 1 hour a day and pursued all of my interests and hobbies the rest of the time, I read a lot during this period and my favourite book of all time is Julian jaynes origins of consciousness and the Breakdown of the bicameral mind

My favourite fiction books will label me forever a pseud... I really liked the Hardy boys growing up and dean Koontz, American gods, all of the old Steve Jackson Ian Livingstone choose your own adventures... Antony beevor's Berlin... I read so much but books were like an anchor whenever I needed stability and calm away from hard partying I could get absorbed in a book and avoid drugs and alcohol long enough to get my life back on track, books are great!

>>19549331
Costa Rica is much more fun than Canada

>>19549330
It is harder and harder to be based, everyone is forced to conform!

>>19549195
Has anyone even given you feedback after reading your book? I feel like your novel has to be awful since you shill it and yourself so hard.

>>19549730
Oh yeah, liquor store and pot shop workers love it. I've got a lot of positive feedback but no way of converting it into online reviews

Ebook launches around Christmas... Going to do a 5 day free launch from like the 26th to 31st

>>19549762
hmmm I may snag that ebook

>>19549843
Nice! Hope you enjoy it anon!

>>19549347
>Costa Rica
Is that you, mike?

>>19549195
Seek help, Jason.

>>19550023
Man the 16th post you're getting slow!

>>19549195
Is your grey hair genetic or are you getting absolute no vitamin b-12?

>>19550111
Genetic

>>19549762
>>19549843
Title and genre, please. I am willing to take a look.

>>19549195
how does advertising budget work?

>>19549195

>Today I fixed my website because of an anon that kept calling me out for my laziness, thanks anon

My purpose, served.

>>19549250
>>19549344
>>19549347

so close...

>>19550756
I'll try better tomorrow!

>>19550756
I still think seek help should be a free space.

any links to your stuff? i like this thread

>>19549195
Seek help, and stop being a deadbeat father to your son.

>>19550713
Etsy says on the website they will take money from you when you make a sale?

I haven't made an Etsy sale yet :(

>>19550863
I literally played connect four with my kid tonight, so much fun!

>>19550855
Hahaha yes!

>>19550860
>>19550708
Gentlemen please search the book title the jannies hate when I post links

>>19550863

Jason's child is a daughter

These threads are better when it is less about how fucked up I am and more about how we are all working towards goals and finishing products!

>>19549195
Earlier this week I wrote out the bare bones dialogue, plot, and key events for the final scenes of the novella-length project I started working on in September

From January to late August I was working on a book-length project, which turned out well, but that one was also supposed to be novella-length. It wound up blowing up to around ninety thousand words because I had only a vague understanding of how long it would take me to finish "telling the story" properly

For my current project, I am challenging myself to tell the whole story within more tightly-strictured constraints (with regard to total word count, prose quality, and overall construction)

So, basically, I spent half the year training for distance and now I'm training for speed

None of it deserves to be published, so far, but I have seen improvements in technical skill levels across the board

>>19552627
That's awesome, sounds like you're not struggling and making good progress.

What's the book about? What have been your biggest challenges so far? What have you learned in the last 3-6 months that you didn't know before?

Good job anon!

gonna try and get some writing done for my next project and hopefully sell another ebook today
keep it up JB

>>19550855

Jason Bryan Bingo is based on Jason's posts, not his replies.

>>19552556

>These threads are better when it is less about how fucked up I am

Consistently disproven by previous threads. People find your insecurity, narcissism, racism, misogyny and financial instability much more interesting than what you create. Kind of like Hearts of Darkness, the documentary on the filming of Apocalypse Now. Many people liked it better than the movie itself.

You are more interesting than your book, which I assume you will take as a compliment.

>>19553077
How would you know if you never read it? My 2013 book totally predicted the future of dating and The Shitkickers is predicting a more violent, less cops future that has already accelerated beyond what I imagined in just ,2021. Vancouver already has billboards warning people not to talk to strangers....

>>19553029
Have you tried newsletter promo? Another anon on here said of all the marketing he's done, newsletter promos were the cheapest and !oat effective!

>>19553149

>How would you know if you never read it?

Read the exerpt posted on your website. Based solely on quotes from that exerpt, describe Ken's persona.

If you can't, you will understand why your book had serious structural problems.

>>19553149

>Vancouver already has billboards warning people not to talk to strangers....

Nobody gives a shit about Vancouver, Jason.

>>19553355
Ken is a total normie NPC with little going through his mind until after it sinks in that his bike is stolen and he's not getting it back without violence

>>19553428

So you are admitting (via the NPC claim) that Ken isn't even a real person with a th distinct thoughts or character. Sovyou subject the reader to parsing the mundane morning tasks of Ken, who we don't and apparently shouldn't care about.

This kind of writing is acceptable as world building only if it is different from our world.

Instead we get a laundry. list of activities we don't care about actioned by a character we don't care about. Why are you doing this to the reader and what makes you think they would continue reading? What for? You have not given the reader any reason to soldier on. At the end of your exerpt we don't care what happens to Ken and everything that has happened so far is unimpactful and uninteresting.

Don't reply with "keep reading" when you have not established in the exerpt any reason why I should.

>>19553361
Vancouver was an amazing place to live in the 80s and 90s, after the 00s the culture rapidly flipped into this completely foreign and extremely conformist culture. As a result, the real quality of life has plummeted and it should be no shock that closing in on 2000 Canadians, mostly white and indigenous, 80% of them male, have died in one year in British Columbia. That's more than covid.

All by design.

What was a paradise, has a fatal case of boomerism. The pursuit of a comfortable life at the expense of all principles. It won't be long before we have favela-like communities in Vancouver, we already do have an expanding downtown east side that is nearly an autonomous zone, career criminals with 200+ prior arrests getting caught assaulting people and stealing bikes and back on the street in a few hours. So many crimes are never even reported to the police because they have such a backlog. Then the ambulance service is a whole other level of destroyed, while Oregon and Washington states combined had less than 100 "heat dome" deaths, British Columbia had over 800. We will never know the true total and it has been memory holed already. My country is fucked and my writing is how I express it!

Had Wendy's tendies last night, so good

>>19553455
Personally I find the way ken comes alive after the scene where he sees the bike thief riding his bike with a tramp sitting on the handlebars one of my favourite scenes. His psyche is awakened once the female manipulator shows up in the story.

His alcohol consumption feeds into his character development while also deteriorating everything good in his life.

>>19553481

Nobody cares about Vancouver, Jason. Telling me why you care doesn't mean I do or I should.

>>19553493

> ken comes alive
Often we get an insight into how a character thinks about a situation, person or experience is via the author, e.g. 'This is going to end badly," Ken thought. It helps us establish their character; their values, priorities and scruples. It helps us relate to the character or at least give context their actions.

The number of times the word "thought" shows up in your exerpt: ZERO

I don't know what Ken is thinking, all I know is what stuff is happening to him and what people I do also do not know (e.g. Nina) say to him. It's laborious reading because I have no actual character to connect with.

To show you have I have idea who the fuck Nina is at all, this is from your exerpt including the very first mention of Nina and what follows. Who is she? what does she do? what is her relationship to Ken? What is their history? Complete blank.

It's like reading a transcript of small talk among strangers.

---

"Hey, Nina!" The Aussie shouts, his finger swirls in the air
for another round.
"Nooo... nooo!" Jeff says.
Nina pushes aside the stools to slap the bar top.
Ken snaps his head up.
"Mike, Jeff-"
Nina whips her head around to look at Ken, his face a
portrait of inebriation and despair, "-Ken?"
"Ugh," Ken groans.
"You look positively flummoxed," Jeff says.
"Whatever that means," grumbles Aussie Mike in his
gravel-and-dead-frog tone.
"Hey drunkies, eyes over here, you won't believe what
happened-"
Nina wiggles her phone at the boys.
Grinning, she taps on the phone and waits, losing her
smile and tapping again. With Jeff and Aussie Mike losing
interest fast, she fumbles around trying to get a video to play.
Ken's droopy eyes see she's not making progress.
"Your next hot online date?" Jeff asks, finishing his drink
with a few gulps.
"Mate, one- one m-m-more round," mumbles Aussie
Mike.
"Yes!" Nina exclaims with a smile; an image loads up and
freezes. A kaleidoscope of shadows and lights, the triangle play
icon over the middle. Tapping on the unresponsive play button
over and over, Nina tosses the phone on the bar.
"Ugh!" she whines, "I hate this loaner phone!"
"Loaner?" Ken asks.
"Yeah- shit, were you here the other day?"
"No, he wasn't; he was off with the mysterious girlfriend,
Allie, who we never see," says Jeff in his most smarmy tone.
Ken shrugs and nods.
"Some crackhead grabbed my purse from under the
bathroom stall," Nina lifts up her new tiny black purse hanging
off her shoulder.

>>19553566
Yeah they are drinking buddies and not major characters, the "small talk among strangers" is a good way to describe drinking pals who don't always have social connections to others outside of the bar.

>>19553650

>Yeah they are drinking buddies

And we have no idea what Ken's thoughts are on these buddies. How he views them. Even WHY they are his drinking buddies. They just exist. Zero exposition. Zero relevance.

>>19553657
Yeah they are really only involved in the first 2 chapters, then Ken turns into a monster and the story really gets into how he changes.

>>19549195
>fuckin' white male trying to make a living as a writer in Piss Earth
Why bother?

>>19553817
>Yeah they are really only involved in the first 2 chapters, then Ken turns into a monster and the story really gets into how he changes.
Then why are they there? What purpose do they serve ? What do we get out of these pages of dialog between characters that have no relevance to the story?
I have no idea who Nina is, why she exists, and why I need to be read into her conversations with Ken. Enlighten me.

>>19553866
I feel like it is the only way I can keep independent writers alive, because I will be able to show people how to make a small cottage business of writing and producing books. Who knows, maybe someone will take the Jason method and produce a deep work or art?

Man, we gotta try to self-express and make art despite all of the obstacles against us.

i just skimmed the sample, ok i'm actually feeling it. screw this mfa doofus trying to nitpick the shit. it's like urban lit but by a white dude.

>>19553942
I think you hit on it, it was small talk and to show the carefree lifestyles of the drinking pals, how ken isn't himself after his bike theft. The juxtaposition of the carefree pals and ken's mental destabilization

>>19554021
Yeah I just posted a few threads back in /wg/ about how I had recently started revising my first novel manuscript, and realizing that the first 100 pages were boring. I had wasted a year meticulously converting filler into set-up and jamming the climax with pay-offs because I felt it was good writing and it really showed depth to my characters.

Good example: there is a nerd character and a jock character. They do not like each other, and in my novel, they spend three days (prior to the start of the actual story, mind you) arguing in the locker room and passing each other in the hallway and having thoughts about each other, and hating each other more and more as conditions deteriorate inside the school.

When I was revising, I simply went to the scene where these two characters first meet in open conflict. In the original version, this was the pay-off that I was talking about for the set-ups I described. The reader was meant to read this scene with every previous interaction in mind, to understand the mindsets at play here. I changed their internal monologue to reflect the opinion they have of each other, and changed their behavior. There was probably thirty pages of material designed entirely to build up to this moment. Example:
>jock doesn't understand how harshly his actions affect the nerd, who is already dealing with other self esteem issues
>nerd is an asshole himself and has a bit of a hygiene problem
And here is how I chose to express that in my latest revision:
Chris was only throwing ice cream out to his friends. Mark was not Chris's friend. In fact, the only attention he ever received from Chris came in the form of humiliation and insult. Yesterday, he would have never considered asking Chris for favors. But today, things had changed. People had changed.
Seized by the spirit of the moment, he began leaping up and down, shouting at Chris.
"Hey! Hey! Yo, dude! Over here!"

When Chris saw the kid leaping up and down at the back of the crowd and shouting for ice cream, his first instinct was to throw him one. But as he prepared to toss it over, he suddenly realized who it was.
That Mark kid from gym class. Chris didn’t know him very well. Couldn't remember a word the kid had ever said. But he could see exactly what type of person he was. A nerd. A red-faced, sweaty ginger nerd with highwater jeans and an oversized t-shirt. Chris had the locker right next to him, and he guessed that Mark did not even realize that sweat went sour when it dried out. The big prank after gym class was to spray him in the face with Axe.
And now he had the unparalleled fucking audacity to call Chris “dude,” right in front of everyone. As if they were friends. As if they could ever be friends.

So its a little more tell than show, but you see how that might be more entertaining than thirty pages of showing?

>>19554218
I think there are multiple styles to writing as there are many different sounds to music. I think if you read The Shitkickers you'd find the tell comes in a series of memories while the story is more show.

>>19554218
You didn't mention if your total word count dropped much through your revision?

Finally ready to start peddling Sci-Fi schlock to the nerds of the world

>>19554305
Are you trying to hurt my feelings Jason? Because if that's the case: congratulations, you just spoiled my evening. I thought we were friends. I thought we were working together to build a community of like-minded authors who would breathe new life into the world of literature. A few threads ago, I told you about my novel, and you said you were excited to see the different nerd and jock characters. And today I showed you. And you didn't seem excited.

I know /lit/ can never replace the home that you lost when Vancouver succumbed to the liberal menace, but sometimes it seems like we're the only ones even making an effort. Why won't you love us back Jason?

>>19554819
Which flavour schlock for scifi?

I've half written a story abput a space DJ who accidentally contacts a lizard alien race who are looking for a song to hatch the egg of their messiah

>>19554868
I thought we were pals? Don't feel bad bro, will buy you some shots of whiskey when we meet someday!

>>19554874
It's actually rather anachronistic schlock; I've incorporated elements of Steampunk, Cyberpunk and High Fantasy. They have the internet and there's neon lights everywhere, but still use swords and airships.
The main premise of the story is a mining operation digging an enormous hole in the ground. They aren't digging for ore, they are searching for something - but the miners themselves don't know what they're looking for. Only the mysterious businessman who funds the operation does. They don't ask questions, because the pay is excellent, but they go missing or die all the time. The strangest thing is that there are always armed men stationed at the bottom of the pit.
One day, a girl appears on the mining site, takes a rope and a pickaxe and literally just rappels all the way to the bottom. The protagonist - the most skilled miner of the lot - is told to go down and fish her out. When he finds her, she has just mined into a cave containing what they are looking for (not revealing that yet).
Right after the pair realizes what they have discovered, the armed guards arrive and the girl disappears into the cave. The protagonist thinks they'll go after her, but instead they turn their weapons on him and he's forced to follow the girl.

>>19555007
That sounds cool! As far as pacing goes, is the point where the armed guards force the miner to follow the girl going to be the end of act 1 or what % through the story?

>>19555051
that's a good question which I haven't quite decided on yet. I personally think it would be a bit boring to stick with the everyday life of the miner for too long - if we take him following the girl as the traditional "Heroes call to adventure", then I think it would make sense to get to that scene quite quickly. Like I said, it's still not quite decided. What's your opinion?

>>19555063
Sounds like a nice hook; I want to keep reading.

How can I connect with you anon bro? I'm also an anon struggling to make it.

>>19555095
Thank you! I hope I do a good job with it; although I call it schlock in case i turn out to be a hack, I do hope it ends up being a good story that people enjoy

>>19555125
Believe in yourself, fren.

>>19555099
Post what you're working on? We are all pals here

>>19555587
Seek help.

>>19555592
Thanks for the bump and supporting the club

I've finally decided upon the themes of my dragonfucker romance novel and fleshed out the antagonists, it's all sorta coming together in my mind right now. Now I need to study other novels to learn how to actually write

>>19556230
I must add being a virgin myself I will not write any actual dragonfucking it will just be very heartfelt romance

>>19556237
Sounds based

>>19555063
I thought about this one last night and only this morning did more ideas hit me:

1. Book starts with the miner being forced at gunpoint to follow the girl and then the entire act 1 is a flashback of how things lead to that point

2. Start book with mner dismissing concerns from fellow miners and build up of mystery, maybe the miner has a hidden addiction or huge child support bill or a nother motivation to look the other way to keep money flowing in, so he can't just leave, act 1 is showing his character and prepping him for the journey into the mine

3. Tell girls backstory through series of her missions to find the mine and go after the secret while the miner describes his daily life and journals odd occurances but he has to keep working because of "x" reason, similar to #2 but more focused on the mysterious girl and her infiltration of the site

>>19553154
well at this point I've got nobody to send newsletters to, but I'll try anything if it works

currently I'm giving out free pdfs of my books to people who email me (nesmer.ogden@gmail.com) in the hopes that they'll give it a shot, see something they like, and feel inclined to give me a dollar and a review for the ebook on amazon. even if people don't like it I want to keep a dialogue going with readers to improve and put out things that are going to get more attention.
I think very much of eggplant as my first work, and only better things will come. if I can convince a handful of anons on /lit/ of the same through through the quality of my writing, then I think I should be okay.

>>19549195
>What have you been working on today, anon?
Yesterday I self-published my first book on Amazon.
I've sold a whopping 3 books.
Today I skipped mass because I wasn't feeling well. I still managed to cut some wood for the stove, tho.

>>19549250
Based.

>>19557784
Paid Fiverr newsletters... Cheap and apparently really worth it!

>>19552985
>What's the book about?
The previous project was speculative science fiction about AI. The current project is more of a mental psychodrama between two people with some background scifi elements. The "ethics question" in this one is drone warfare
>What have been your biggest challenges so far?
The previous book was my most difficult successfully completed project so far. And... well, the hardest part was "writing something with no porn in it"... well, it would be more accurate to say that my attitude was "try and write something that's even more entertaining than the usual porn, but without any sex in it!" ...
>What have you learned in the last 3-6 months that you didn't know before?
1. That I'm capable of telling an interesting story without having to bribe the reader with porn to get them interested enough to keep reading. I was worried that that level of "artistic merit" was beyond my skill level, but I made the jump and landed safely
2. That my usual writing process can be applied to things other than raunchy filth without too much tweaking. Regardless of the content of the story, I want to seduce the reader. On some level the written word is the closest we can get to telepathy - I think Stephen King said something to this effect in his book on writing. As long as you read, you're experiencing the thoughts of another, absent mind - even if the author has been dead for centuries, you can immerse yourself in their brain by reading their work and allowing your own brain to be led down the trains of thought that once existed only in the original author's head. My goal as an author, at this level of ability, is to coax the reader into letting me into their head and then make them feel something genuine.

>>19558314
I feel like drone warfare is a great topic. How does war change when the rich could have a private army of robots that follow no rules?

Did you previously make an income writing porn or just you found an audience for porn and decided to see if you could write non porn?

That's awesome that you challenged yourself to see if you could write without porn. Over the last several years I've heard so much about "you should just write bigfoot erotica did you hear about that person making 30k a month?"

That's a cool perspective to take about the telepathy. I think that attitude of mind transference is a good way to motivate you to write in the most clear, concise, and emotionally-stirring way, rather than outputting schlock. Nothing wrong with outputting schlock if that is your thing but I feel like you can take yourself seriously if your writing comes from the heart than comes from the desire strictly from income. Life in 2021 makes it very hard to stick to your principles so if you're still based in your writing you're fighting the good fight anon! Congrats!

Do you spend any time sketching characters or working on the cover? Do you do any other art that supports your writing? How do your friends or family react to your writing efforts?

>>19558945
>How does war change
war... war never changes

>>19558314
>I feel like drone warfare is a great topic
Thanks! It struck me as a good framing device for the story... the basic plot outline is a villain struggling through a painful redemption arc for the sake of someone they betrayed, I want people to really question what it means for combat and for violence itself to be honorable
>Did you previously make an income writing porn or just you found an audience for porn and decided to see if you could write non porn?
I've never tried to make any money off my writing, although I've fantasized about it. Mostly due to a healthy sense of shame. In terms of word count alone, I've written at least five million of amateur garbage, since I started when I was a teenager. And I was good enough at it - for a kid my age -that girls would take the initiative to flirt with me because they found my writing clever, or sexy, or amusing. So I kept at it, because it was a reliable way of impressing people. But it's only in the past year or so that the flattery has gone from "wow, you're so talented, are you a writer? haha" / "you should write a book!" / "it was so interesting", etc etc, to "do you have a P*treon/substack/somewhere I can pay you for more of this?" / "[specific thing] really blew me away" / "I had to look up what x, y, z meant on my own but it was all super interesting stuff!", etc etc. I'm still not convinced any of it is worth paying money to read, but... Since this year's projects went/are going well, I assigned myself more writing challenges for 2022, each designed to force me to strengthen a particular weakness in my abilities. I think after I get through that self imposed curriculum, I may be able to meet my own standards & start working on books with the end goal of publishing them
>$30k monthly for bigfoot erotica
KEK yeah I won't lie I've been tempted to sell out, nothing against the hustle, as long as you aren't betraying your own artistic principles and you're writing smut with soul... may the dick in my heart point the way
>Do you spend any time sketching characters or working on the cover? Do you do any other art that supports your writing? How do your friends or family react to your writing efforts?
I can make rough pencil sketches but that's about it. Recently bought myself a pad of tracing paper so I can try making some very crude animations. My friends who draw well occasionally do me the great honor of drawing things based off my work, and I cherish those illustrations enormously. I'll definitely commission one of them to do cover art if/when I feel confident enough to publish something. I don't have a family and I have few friends, but those friends have always been supportive of my writing. Some of them are even enthusiastic about it. I was always writing primarily to relieve my own loneliness; my respect for the craft itself grew as I grew older, and now I want to devote myself to honing it, because I have been blessed with friends who want the best *from* me & the best *for* me.

How do people even find anything on Amazon? It's a nightmare, it's not good at all. If you don't know exactly what you want then there's no point using it, the search engine and the filters are useless. You can't just click around and find something you like and the categories are bloated with unrelated shit. I don't understand how anyone gets organic traffic from within Amazon and I imagine it is largely driven from other websites that link to the work.

>>19557581
>another motivation to look the other way to keep money flowing in
This is the case. No spoilers yet ;)

>>19556230
Dargons R cool

>>19559651
Goddamn based

>>19559708
Publishrocket

>>19559708
Your post should be a general on /lit/ with the amount of chatter I've heard about publishrocket and other services offering analytics about categories and tags on Amazon

>>19560945
Did you draw that?

>>19559656
Wow dude you sound like you have a SOLID base to start with, can you support yourself in your efforts to write full time? With your level of discipline it sounds like you could make a living for yourself. After transitioning to a low income lifestyle I've managed to keep myself afloat through gigs, books sold, and donations. I figure I MUST release my third book on valentines if I want to survive this summer when I have to move. Got to expect like $1500 a month in rent so I have to claw back on amazon prime and scrimp and safe on budget booze and discount weed.

Man if you can get your bills taken care of for like 3 months in a row I bet you could make the magic happen. Life in 2021 is designed on purpose to be so hard to be a laid-back creative. Everything is meant to extract non-creative energy from you.

Holy shit dude do some crude animations of your favourite /lit/ posters or, hell, trace my cover and show this guy kicking as a project :)

I feel it would be a huge marketing advantage to be able to do little animations

Good luck anon you have such in-depth posts.

>>19559880
C'mon...a hint!?

>>19549195
Hahahahahahahahahahaha

>>19562341
Laugh at the guy living the dream and encouraging others to work on their projects?

Get soul bro

all the retards ITT hating on OP need to fuck off. at least he's trying. give him a break.

I'm currently editing the second book in my big sci-fi story. Then when the editing is done (though I'll edit even more after that, here and there), I'm going to write a short story that continues the broader story. Then, when the short story is done, I'll start the third book.

I've been in contact with a small press over getting the first book published. I've also sent out a bunch of query letters to literary agents, most of which have been returned in the negative. But I got a few interesting bites here and there, including one agent/manager who invited me to query him again in the spring. I also have a physical query letter out to a small press that I haven't heard back from yet.

Things are moving forward. I'm going to bring this great work into the world. I've already written almost 260,000 words and I'm just getting started.

>>19549195
Good luck with the extradition

>>19563044
Long live Emperor Julian!

>>19562560
>all the retards ITT hating on OP need to fuck off. at least he's trying. give him a break

we're just jealous incels