/lit/ - Literature

Old thread is still up.

"At record high levels" or "at record-high levels"?

>>20091199
I think the second, but you can just use a differently structured sentence to avoid that altogether if you're not sure.

What if nobody likes my book?

I haven't been motivated for a year fucking kill me. What inspires you to write, anons? Is it certain music or reading the work of superior writers or anything?

>>20091267
If you like it that's enough, unless you're trying to make it a career.

>>20091268
heartbreak

Post your novel ideas. It's not like they're going anywhere.

I'm writing a scene with two characters where there’s physical interaction and also dialogue, but the two aren’t related. How do i keep it from getting boring? Right now it’s just
>dialogue, action
>dialogue, action
>dialogue, action

>>20091383
So they're talking while they're doing something together? Just write dialogue while using the narration to indicate what they're doing.
>"Such-and-such," X did something
>"So-and-so," Y continued doing their thing

>>20091359
pige

Flash fiction accomplished and posted. I'm very much looking forward to seeing the end of the year when I can compile them all into a short book which I can sell for $2.99 on Amazon.

>>20091160
>If you can covey with words, the feelings that you get watching this gif, then you can make it
Seething anger at both the injustice of being born in this cruel reality and the artists who created the work which reminded me of that fact.

>>20091268
i'm almost 34 years old and have never done anything worth anything in my life. lately i sit down and try to write because i want to make something. my life has been an absolute waste. i've spent the last ten years at the bottom of a hole. i don't know anything about the world or other people and barely anything about myself. i know it doesn't matter. i know it all gets forgotten. even Homer will be lost eventually. there's no way to preserve anything of myself forever. and even if i could, why bother? but something in me wants to struggle against all of that, even though it makes no sense. i want to write my name in wet concrete and have someone step on it.

>>20091199
second one is more common and sounds more natural.

>>20091383
You'd need to elaborate on what you mean to get any real advice.

>>20091550
write a short story about a man putting his writing inside a time capsule or wine bottle before he kills himself or before nuclear war.

>>20091550
at least you've had sex. I never had sex and I'm 36. Sure I wrote a book, i have a career job, I own a home, have no debts, and very comfortable. But i can't get sex. Which is more valuable than all the material goods and accomplishments I acquired.

>>20091590
brother you could go fuck a whore right now for a pittance. i know that's not the whole deal, the nukular family and dinner on the table and whatever, but you could bust a nut and feel a woman.

>>20091606
I dont' even know where to get one.

>>20091609
Escort threads on gif

someone post the /wg/ short story challenge. the one where you roll for genre and 4-6 words are randomly generated for prompt words.

>>20091550
Do some psychedelics man.

>>20091638
nvm ill make one

>>20091643
Kill yourself. My body is a temple.

Get to work, fellas.

>>20091643
Why? I am not this guy btw >>20091669 my body is not a temple, it's a fucking landfill. In my time I have done many drugs: weed, booze, speed, ecstasy, heroin, crack, coke, salvia etc. Why would a psychedelic help me?

>>20091173
Can someone recommend a basic grammar and rhetoric textbook? My writing's fine but apparently I make a ton of stupid grammatical errors.

>>20091690
perhaps you should take better care of your body

>>20091712
elements of style is nice for grammar. very short and is recommended by lots of writers. I think it might be even used in universities.

>>20091686
>2 (Comedy)
>Contribution
We'll see if I'm as funny as I think I am

>>20091712
The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know - June Casagrande
The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English - Roy Peter Clark
The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation - Bryan A. Garner
Writer's Digest Grammar Desk Reference: The Definitive Source for Clear and Concise Writing - Gary Lutz & Diane Stevenson

Every short story I finish I can see my writing improving. It's still shit obviously but making progress is enough. Feeling very content right now

>>20091721
>>20091723
What's the difference between grammar and rhetoric? Should I read a rhetoric book too?

I'm sorry guys, I've abandoned my story in favor of a new one. It wasn't a bad story, but it also wasn't terribly exciting either. It was going to be pretty middle of the road. Solid B+. I'll finish it on the side but now I'm going to focus on a new story with a premise I feel I can get more mileage out of.

>>20091806
grammar is correct language usage. rhetoric is persuasive language usage.

>>20091808
This better not be the Adah book. I was enjoying it.

>the silence was deafening

My new book is about a person who crosses dimensions who rides his motorcycle into the mist and ends up at a gigantic manor. He finds himself in a fantasy land that is similar to Victorian era England. There, some sort of evil spirit has possessed the visitors of the manor and they must lock themselves in the manor and perform the ritual to kill the possessed. The ritual is basically a game of Werewolf, where 3-4 random individuals among them are possessed, they act normal during the day, but each night they pick one target and kill them. The visitors of the manor fight back by voting to hang one person. The ritual grants special roles to individuals at random which allow them to do things like see who is possessed or see who isn't. Each character has a stats sheet consisting of a class and Logic, Charisma, Stealth, and Wisdom. The protagonist starts off with the lowest stats, but because of his ability to cross time and space, he keeps looping through the game when he dies and his stats improve

>>20091965
I forgot to mention the intuition stat, which is like how perceptive you are and how good your gut instincts are

>>20091965
So... have you written it yet?

>>20091977
I just had the idea yesterday, I'm creating all the characters and stats sheets today

>>20091960
Well, it was...

>>20091722
Alright, funny is up. If you work a government contractor day job you'll probably get a kick out of this. Otherwise, I may need to adjust styles for short comedy like this.

https://pastebin.com/r96er1hr

Anyone here had any success writing and then publishing/selling non-fiction? I am a prolific note taker and I really want to stop because it’s just a sink hole and none of the information I collect I can actually use. However, I read this book recently, it had some good advice, but for the most part it was extremely disappointing. It suggests obvious questions like “what would you do if you had all the money in the world?” “Okay, now what’s a more realistic budget you can work with?” – as if those are the first two questions you ask yourself! But it didn’t offer any constructive advice where to go next. I was seriously considering just writing my own “Questions” book.
What's the best approach?

>>20091160
I started writing a Euphoria fanfic, mainly just as a writing exercise. What does /wg/ think of it?

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37837783

>>20092035
i missed the punchline.

>>20092108
your prose is easy to understand. I just dont' know who these characters are because I never seen euphoria.

>>20092035
It reads like someone is telling a joke but I don't understand the punchline. I like your prose though, it's far better than mine

>write book
>Bunch of cliches because it oddly flows correctly

I had some time to kill and threw something together as an experiment. I'm often told that I have a very formal style of writing, so I wanted to try conversational narration. It leaves me with a rather "bleh" feeling, but I already have two other things on which I should be working.

>>20092198
>>20092129
I ended it poorly. The joke is supposed to be that big companies micromanage your time down to the minute increments. "Unproductive Time" is an actual timesheet project I can charge to at my company.

What do you do when things are clearly influencing your work?
I'm writing about a coal miner breaking his debt bonds and I'm getting extreme influences from No Country for Old Men. I know this is a bad thing, but then I remember that entire section in the middle of Moby Dick where it was clear Melville discovered Shakespeare for the first time and said fuck it, influences are going to shine through.
I'm really stuck. In my head I'm not a poser because I'm not aiming to ape it, but I'm trying at the same time to strangle any similarities. What do?

>700 words today word frens
>Its ok cos my average is still 1k
>I also made a bastardized version of tandoori chicken
I hope your words and food are well.

>>20092400
I think as long as you're not blatantly copying someone else's style it's fine. There are far worse writers than McCarthy to be influenced by.

>>20091160
I just published a book of anime-themed writing prompts. The artwork is mint, and I'm actually really proud of it.

>>20092439
self published?

>>20092476
Yeah, but I pulled out all the stops. Had a publishing deal for the first book in the series, but c*vid ruined it, so I marched on, this being the fourth in the series. Been published pretty extensively in magazines and stuff, though.

>>20092482
is it easy to self publish on amazon?

>>20092490
So easy, it's not even like actual publishing.

>>20092490
For the most part, yes. But there are a lot of lazy fucks who upload poorly edited manuscripts with hastily designed covers. Self-pubbing properly takes a good deal of time and money. Uploading to Amazon takes about an hour if you've got your files in order.

>>20092495
The only question i have is the trim. what do you recommend the book size be?

>>20092499
Depends entirely on the genre. Standard novels are usually 5x7 or thereabouts, whereas Humour books, coffee table books, graphic novels, etc. will have different dimensions based on what their interior files require.

>>20091160
Anyone got any tips on writing comedy? Or book recommendations on the topic? In what way is the structure of a comedy different to that of a drama?

>>20092507
thanks. Guess i'll try it out.

>>20092522
Check out "The Hidden Tools of Comedy" by Steve Kaplan. It's focused mainly on screenwriting, but the principles apply to regular fiction just the same.

>>20092507
oh yea, what font would you recommend for a standard novel? i look online and there's dozens of suggestions. I just want the standard font.

>>20091160
Today I've decided I'm taking the plunge and committing. I really need the money to survive so this is basically life or death for me now... I've been toiling and tinkering with a premise and setting, and the associated main character for the world I've built, and I have plenty of stuff that gets the ball rolling in my "plot", if you can even call it that, but now I need to actually set about connecting all the dots. I have fourteen pages or so of the "beginning" written in novel form, with several dozens more of other various ideas and escapades scattered throughout that I'm going to be sampling and drawing from, including a timeline of the universe I've written.

>Why is writing dialogue so awkward?

I feel like I could just exposition dump for 30 pages but I'm trying to find ways of sprinkling it in through conversation.

>>20092549
Thanks. I've been watching this guy on youtube actually so I will definitely check out his book

>>20092522
>Anyone got any tips on writing comedy?
be funny
>Or book recommendations on the topic?
Second book of Aristotle's Poetics
> In what way is the structure of a comedy different to that of a drama?
It isn't.
You already made this thread and got good answers. Why are you asking the same questions instead of internalizing those answers and building upon that knowledge?

>>20092561
Just copy elden ring brother
That's going to be the next big trend in fantasy

>>20092561
Get a job. You'll starve without one.

>>20092571
link to the thread "i made and got good answers"?

I did make a thread but it died with no responses about a week ago

>>20092593
The archive doesn't go back that far, I'll check on archived.moe

>>20092593
Ahh here it is:
https://archived.moe/lit/thread/20067437/#20067437

>>20092605
Oh shit that is my thread. Gave up on it too soon. I was probably out picking up chicks or something. That'll be why...

>>20092638
You better have been making them laugh anon!

Please read.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rE7fR45CiN52_F9OUuaCOwCypmkOpn9yNL13enZBAL8/edit?usp=drivesdk

>>20091160
question for you guys: would you use a website/app for tracking and motivating yourself to write? imagine something like duolingo, with streaks and a daily word target or something.

>>20092664
Nope. I just go to Panera bread and for some reason I can hammer 4 pages in 2 hours

>>20088639
>But graphic novels are pretty dead these days due to wokeshit, so good luck.
It's not meant for Big 2 capeshit, but a few different indie publishers where woke shit ironically isn't as big a factor. The idea is very much in-tune with the Franco-Belgian comics world.

>>20092664
Nah, the only reason I don't hit quotas is because I write filler if I'm not "inspired".

Anyone have a list of meme books? I don't mean schizo shit or opposing political ideals, what i'm looking for is honest-to-god meme shit. "50 George Floyd Creepypastas that'll leave you breathless" tier garbage.

>>20092645
jesus christ anon

>>20092645
I cannot.

>>20092645

>>20092561
If Cormac McCarthy spent years and years barely able to afford a literal hovel in the woods, what chance do you have of making enough money to survive? Get a nice, cushy day job... or even better, a night job.

>>20092645
Needs more literary pyrotechnics. Things like this are excusable or even gleeful to find when superlatively written. It's not enough to be coherent and grammatically correct.

>>20091383
I personally prefer
>dialogue, dialogue, action, action, dialogue, action
which unlocks infinite ammo

No offense but do you all really take an entire day to write a page or two?

If I spent an entire day writing I could probably finish an entire book PKD style, or at least a solid enough draft

>>20092941
If i get 500 words from a four hour writing session, that's a win for me. That means every single one of those 500 words was specifically chosen, carefully weighed, shuffled around in its enclosing sentence, and tested against other synonyms for different permutations of different structures and syntaxes. They are, essentially, 500 publishable words. I often find I'm less happy with what I've written when I go all that much over 500 when it comes time the next day to sit down and look with fresh eyes.

>>20091160
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XN49hP4FZn48cLIpbAENNYnOGGxYKAVW/

>>20082900
>>20082957
>>20083086
a lot of help for my attempt at a guide to life. if anyone has any more indepth suggestions or topic suggestions they havent seen yet id appreciate it.

How do i make reader sustain interest in my text?

>>20093206
By writing well.

>>20093206
Maintain an aura of mystery. Lead them along a trail of breadcrumbs to what they assume is a revelation of great importance, and then A SKELETON POPS OUT

>>20093214
Sure, if you can't manage to write well, feel free to try distracting your reader from workmanlike or poor writing with tricks and gimmicks. None of that is a replacement for fundamentally good writing, however.

>>20091160
Is there such as a thing as being too edgy in your writing?

>>20093399
catcher

>>20093409
But Catcher in the Rye is beloved by high schoolers all over the world!

>>20091686
>Fantasy
>Pillow
Cracked this out in a bit. Felt it was a fun combo. Not the most in-depth but I wasn't quite in a "write 1000 words in an hour" mood.
https://pastebin.com/JCny7NQJ

>>20093594
>It was easier to fall asleep anywhere with a pillow strapped around the neck.
For the wizard currently snoozing peacefully

>>20093598
>There's a fucking newline there for some reason

>>20093594
Have you ever read a book before?

>>20093598
>>20093621
So any actual things that are wrong with it or are people just gonna say vague nothings.

>>20093625
There's nothing I can say that will create good taste where none exists. It's like you started reading an R.A. Salvatore "novel," stopped halfway through, and said to yourself, "Yeah, I'm done reading forever." It's shallow and there's nothing that even takes a noble at portraying an actual human experience.

Read a book or two. Please.

>>20093643
>noble
Nibble

>>20093643
So no actual explanations.

>>20091160

>>20093650
There is no explanation possible. That is what I'm trying to tell you. Nobody can reach into your thick skull and implant a sense for what good writing is. What you've written is coherent and depicts some events which occur against something that passes for a scene, along with a half-baked image or two. Your characters display no actual character. They may as well be made of cardboard. Short and flash fiction is not an excuse to write poorly. It's an exercise in constrained fiction, where you have to work really hard to show as much character in the most elegant possible way. For the record, statements of feelings and surface'y "he thought, she thought" declarations are not elegant ways to show facets of characters' personalities.

These exercises aren't supposed to be excuses to vomit some words onto a page and receive explanations on why they suck. You have to actually apply yourself to them and put some effort into the craft of writing itself.

>>20093594
>>20093625
Not them but I found the sleep mage ideas charming but the POV change was abrupt/unclear and unnecessary. Liked the writing style iself but would have been nice to have gotten more characterization on the sleep wizard and get the world/plot feel more intentional then generic traders/bandits he just happened to sleep near. I think 1k words just introducing one POV character and their situation is on the lean side so consider slowing the pace and building him up more.

All that said I found myself intrigued by the story but to the psued responders point you do have some "fat" you can cut in terms of extraneous descriptors and leaning towards overly "telly".

>>20093664
I agree that it's not my best writing (I mostly threw it together in half an hour with little thought beforehand) but I don't think it lacks quality entirely.

>>20093625
/lit/'s a slow board. You're not going to get good critique in ten minutes, you're going to get ten hours of crabs and bad advice followed by one useful bit of feedback.

>>20093594
Concentrating on one thing that could be improved, the perspective of this story moves around too much. We go from experiencing the world from Darmant's perspective hours ago when he was still awake ("It was easier to fall asleep anywhere with a pillow strapped around the neck"), to a scene that Darmant can't even see ("the wizard currently snoozing peacefully in a ditch beside a pitched battle between traders and bandits"), to some indefinite time in the past ("his mentor (a strange fellow, used his robes as a sleeping bag)"), to Darmant's dream ("It must be something on the edge of his consciousness, coming in from reality"), to the eyes of the girl ("An opportunistic scavenger, having spotted the battle, was looking for a place to hide").

Some of this is fine, but we're yanked from viewpoint to viewpoint nearly every paragraph.

>>20093686
>I don't think it lacks quality entirely.
This is probably because you don't read books, do you? What's the last book you read?

>>20092645
I wish it was longer

>>20093683
Ah, that's all fair enough. I dunno what I was really doing with the PoV change. I did want to sort of make it clear that the wizard was basically liable to sleep anywhere, and stuff just happens around him. I could definitely have made it more intentional though. I probably won't rewrite it because I'm hardly that attached to the thing, but I can see where I would probably redo things (less dry narration, focus more on the whimsy of the dream and the wizard, maybe even only have him wake up at the end to see what he actually DID).

>>20093687
I appreciate the useful feedback. I wanted to explore a more all-over-the-place mindset, so Darmant's narration was a lot more flittish, just randomly remembering bits of his life while trying to focus on the present. As I said here (>>20093695), I can see where a lot of the issues lie. If I were to do it again, I'd probably have it begin with the dream, and only wake up at the end to see what he'd done, remarking on one who fled (and was briefly alluded to earlier) before going off. And focus on characterising him as a bit more unconcerned and whimsical, in a dreamlike way himself.

>>20092645
Lol

The stairs start squarely utilitarian from the lobby. Once, they shuttled servicemen and delivery persons in bright orange vests through concrete accessways now empty. The sheen of heavy use on handrails. Grime from long-dead hands on walls. Rusted iron cheesegrater treads upon the stairs’ edges. The fragrance of old bare iron. We passed these easily.

Higher, our fortitude is tested. The ascent decays to rubble and scree, where water drips through wall-bound lichen clinging low to drainpipe exits and dampens the path upward. We pressed our lips to the pipe and drank the lichenous water and we scraped with our teeth the green into our waiting mouth. “Keep going,” our passenger said, and we choked it off at the base as we climbed with sure feet.

The persistent are rewarded, but not before navigating sections where the walls squeeze inward and the stairs grow slowly irregular and they jut out as tongues and eyes and, yes: genitalia, nipples; from wending stone petroglyphs—in chisel-rent scratchings, in powdery and resinous charcoal, in dried blood of ambiguous genesis—which from time to time flicker illuminant into spectres of bison, flautists, of great and forgotten wars, of six-limbed slatterns with slackened tongues and regal eyes, of men on precipices with gold-voiced advisors; our shadows danced against the hewn-granite cave walls as we climbed and leapt the spiral from one promontory to the next. We took our time scaling this section, and we did not fall.

We ascended the tower, passing through spaces where the petroglyphs died off for a time into darkness; transitioned to immaculate torchlit arches where blue-glazed brick prefaced adobe’s slow crumble; to streaked marble’s meandering sidle, up beneath its follies in red-shingle overhang; to draconian cobblestone battlements that give way to thick-lathered cerussite white handrails and mahogany wearing through its shellacked varnishing. Our stomach full of lichen and water, we passed through the bedrooms of aristocrats’ children adorned and festooned in bleached-white frill and delicate linen embroidery (sterile—so sterile), flophouses where the polioed cripples their braces lay on plywood shelves next to peg-leg prostheses, soot-blackened kerchiefs, workers’ slops; the smell of sick is everywhere amix with stale camphor and empty brown soda-lime laudanum bottles, a bedraggled doll with worn red felt hair… we passed windowed bakeries where in the corner was sawdust baked with flour and alum and sold to tight-corseted women with glassy-eyed children in sniffling tow.

>>20093735
>The stairs start squarely utilitarian from the lobby.
Stopped right there, if you don't know how to use a word correctly then please don't attempt to.

>>20093752
What word?

Can I just write about my boring, noneventful life and become a bestseller?

>>20093752
>utilitarian: Exhibiting or stressing utility over other values; practical.
>squarely: In a square form or manner.
What did he mean by this, bros?

>>20093768
Guess we'll never know until you write it

>>20092914
What do you mean,?

>>20093782
Other people could get away with it

>>20093785
I mean that the more esoteric the subject matter, the more "transgressive" it is (not that it's particularly offensive given where we are), the more "artistic merit" it needs to have. Think Nabokov and Lolita, then imagine if it were written like >>20093594. Yours isn't quite that bad, of course, but unless you're mostly writing for amusement, I'd try to pay more attention to the quality of your prose.

>>20092664
Sounds like a pretty decent app idea, Anon

>>20092664
Sounds exactly like the kind of zoomer trash that would sell like hotcakes. Not that anyone who downloads it would actually write.

Has anyone here ever actually published anything? I'm trying to get a good understanding of the differences between the various sites/platforms and what seems to be the best route to go.

How do I write a copyright page?

>>20093940
By being a lawyer. Luckily, you can just search "copyright boilerplate" and just copipe.

Mom texted me today, saying she doesn't need to use the library anymore since I write so well.

>>20093802
Guess I'll read Lolita again. I honestly have no idea how to make this more artistic. It's about eating cum on pancakes...

>>20094087
>I honestly have no idea how to make this more artistic. It's about eating cum on pancakes...
That's why it's so fucking fitting to go wild with it, honestly.

>>20094087
Jesus christ, let that story go. You aren't supposed to be stuck on a month on a short story.

>>20092138
Yeah I figured most of the people reading it wouldn't want me autistically recapping the different characters' backstories. In short:

Nate: sigmapilled football chad, senior in highschool. Prone to violence and has homosexual tendencies.

Jules: manic pixie dream tranny and Nate's classmate. Nate bullied her, but actually has a crush on her.

Nate's dad: successful contractor, got arrested at the end of season 2 for secretly recording his clandestine hookups with twinks. One of those hookups was Jules.

>>20094058
Year of hope for everyone, anon.

>>20094155
>Jules
>her
no. you even acknowledge reality in the next sentence by calling him a twink

>>20092571
>Second book of Aristotle's Poetics
But the last known copy was destroyed in a fire in some Italian monastery

Experimenting with more florid language by writing fan fiction for a roguelike.

>>20093754
>>20093769
"Squarely utilitarian" sounds off to me because both are vague conceptual terms with multiple applications - is it a squarely cut utilitarian staircase (as in shape), is it squarely utilitarian conceptually (as in fitting extraordinarily tightly within the definition of utilitarian), or is it squarely utilitarian in it's placement in the room? I actually did read and enjoyed rest of piece so sorry for the meme post - it had soul and good visualization (some smell Sensory details could be a nice addition to show the contrast between the beginning and end)

>>20094279
i can see what youre trying to do, but it is a tad clunky.
>one stride took as long as one sword swing took as long as his uncorking and swallowing of a potion

the idea is to string along a series actions with a similar time frame, but it doesnt flow smoothly the way the time would during those actions, try using some more strange words for human actions

>his legs flew as his sword flew as his arm to his mouth with potions.

hope this helps

>>20092645
fucking classic

since others are posting their drafts/work I'll go ahead and try too...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11f4QBB86vwNEMPVKaWLIwgszLMlUNW6kkYLKaTOq3Fs/edit?usp=sharing

How do I find a writing mentor?

>>20094303
i get what you mean and appreciate the feedback, but honestly... i'm okay with that vaguery for the most part. i'm a gigantic asshole, and if any single reader has made it this far into my meandering, incomprehensible "story" (i use the word loosely), i think that most likely they'll be predisposed to forgive me for it. and besides, i like how abstract it is. any and all of those interpretations are fine by me. i am trying to leave the interpretation as much to the reader as is possible on the macro level, and i'm okay with it popping up every once in a while on a micro level as well.

none of this is to invalidate your criticism, which i do appreciate. and if it feels like it needs a little more resolution, it's because this is an excerpt from a passage 3 or 4 times that size.

cheers, anon.

>tfw had to doublecheck if one of the channels i was watching during my writing downtime was actually run by one of the >greene brothers because i'm bad at remembering names
god i hate those fags

>>20094368
That does help, thank you.
I want to emphasize the discreteness of the actions—there is a flow, but it's not quite smooth, any action can follow any other—and I want to clearly link them to specific game actions, so I don't think your example works. But I can make more of an effort to stretch and compress.

>>20094420
>watching Youtube

>>20094673
Where else can I find coal documentaries? And yes I am supplementing with books

i finished today the first "book" of my novel. feels fucking amazing. it's the longest project i think i've ever finished if i look at it as a standalone. it's only 30k, but they've been 30,000 hard-eked words squeezed from a stone. i've written more than a few short stories, but this is the longest on any one single piece i've worked and still felt like i had enough of that creative energy in the tank to see it through to completion.

feelsgoodman

>>20095095
Post it for us. I'd like to read it.

>>20095100
nah, not yet. i've posted certain pieces of it at certain times but at this point it's going to people whose taste i can vouch for and independently verify. the excerpt i posted above is from a section near the end. if you've been around, you might have seen me posting other sections over the previous months... one was a detailed phrenological analysis of a character, another was a 500 word sentence describing a room in which everything is shaped like a penis. i'm going for broke with this fucker.

>make the mistake of having a twitter because I know any future agent will expect me to have one
>saw a whole ass comment thread on there today where black people were saying "if you're white and you write about black characters you deserve backlash for it"
What the fuck is wrong with these people

>>20095213
They believe the world is a zero sum game and that white people have cheated the system by stealing everything they have from every other race. It's very tiresome. Write whatever you want and don't let anyone stop you.

>>20095213
>I know any future agent will expect me to have one
Is this actually true? I'd rather self publish than make a twitter account kek

>>20095213
>so, anon, what's your twitter profile?
>trust me, you don't want me anywhere near twitter

>>20091160
How do I learn to be more descriptive in my writing. I find when I'm trying to describing something, all I'm doing is using a whole bunch of adjectives. When I read it aloud there's no atmosphere; no soul.

>>20095233
Agents/publishers expect their authors to have social media presence in order to interact with readers, build a name for themselves, and advertise. Twitter is one of the big ones they want you to to have apparently.

>>20095213
What's wrong with it? The less nogs in fiction the better.

>>20095213
>write black characters, get backlash
>don't write black characters, get backlash

>>20095244
You really can't win can you? On one hand if you have a twitter account that only posts advertisements for your book it's incredibly inauthentic and lame, but on the other hand if you post your opinions and thoughts on things you look like an out of touch boomer and risk getting cancelled by mentally ill fifteen year olds. Social media was a mistake.

>>20095262
Giving mouthpieces to the masses was the biggest mistake.

>>20095240
try reading some poetry, anon. i think it can be really easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of rendering PRECISELY the image you see in your head, and you lose sight of the fact that the way you're describing it is (probably, depending on genre) more important than the fidelity of the description itself, if that makes sense.

i have caught myself on more than one occasion cross-referencing the image in my head, noting a detail, choosing the correct sequence of words for that detail, and ending up with a pile of adjectives which do indeed describe A Thing, but don't really meet my standard for what constitutes good writing.

this probably isn't helpful, i know. but loosen up on the reins maybe. let slide that perfection in accuracy demanded by that demented little autism-gnome inside your head and above all make sure you're paying attention to rhythm and flow; how verbs and consonants create patterns, break them up, establish new ones, quote the old, etc.

>>20093735
>The stairs start squarely utilitarian from the lobby.

I don't like it. I understand why you do though. Have you read Gary Lutz? It's like something he might do.

>Once, they shuttled servicemen and delivery persons in bright orange vests through concrete accessways now empty. The sheen of heavy use on handrails. Grime from long-dead hands on walls. Rusted iron cheesegrater treads upon the stairs’ edges. The fragrance of old bare iron. We passed these easily.

I feel like some sort of punctuation here could lift it a bit. Maybe like this? Or an em dash instead of parentheses (after now empty)?

Once, they shuttled servicemen and delivery persons in bright orange vests through concrete accessways now empty (The sheen of heavy use on handrails; grime from long-dead hands on walls; rusted iron cheesegrater treads upon the stairs’ edges; the fragrance of old bare iron). We passed these easily.

>our waiting mouth

Should be plural, 'mouths', right?

A very stylish piece of writing though overall. Very good.

>>20095240
>>20095275
Gonna add that metaphors help a lot with description. Aristotle talks a lot about this in Rhetoric Book 3.

>>20095240
Are you describing people or things? People are described through their actions. Sure you can have a brief physical appearance if you want but its their actions that define characters. That includes smoking pipes, wearing gaudy jewelry or different clothing.

Describing things, on the other hand, there's no real need. Less is more give a basic gist the reader will fill in the little details. If you need more details later in the scene put them in there.

>>20095254
I think we can all agree nignogs should be fictional creatures like orcs or goblins and its a real shame they aren't.

>>20095299
No. Niggers should be Niggers and Orcs should be Orcs. Orcs were not inspired by Niggers and Niggers do not act like Orcs do. It's peak upper-class neoliberal reddit to assume all niggers are slimy low IQ petty criminals and project that onto a fictional character archetype. Go outside for once in your life

>>20095327
I wish niggers didn't exist. Sorry I hurt your feelings niggerlover.

>>20095359
And I wish they never left Africa, but your dismissal of them as subhumans leaves you blind to the threat they pose.

>>20095213
>use 4chan
>baffled by retards spouting retarded nonsense online

>>20091160
Is there a dialogue edition of one of these threads? Because I've been meaning to improve and I'll probably start one if not

>>20095446
What do you mean? Wouldn't that just fall under writing?
I've posted things that were mostly dialogue by volume

>>20095446
You can just ask for advice on writing dialogue, though as this is /lit/ you'll get 90% people calling you a dumbass, 5% bad advice, 4% meme answers and 1% moderately okay advice you probably already knew.

>>20095446
All of the /wg/ threads are the same. Are you completely fresh from reddit?

>>20095446
All they'll tell you is to stalk normies and watch plays

>>20095446
What the fuck is with you redditors coming here not knowing basic shit? Lurk moar faggot.

>>20093735
>Higher, our fortitude is tested.

Would swap the comma for a colon.

>Higher: our fortitude is tested.

>>20095446
>Is there an x edition of one of these threads?
lmao

>>20095590
>>20095488
>>20095476
>>20095472
>>20095464
>>20095457
Alright better question: what have you been reading recently that you consider to have good dialogue?

>>20095743
Discworld, but that's a hard bar to aspire to because Pratchett's kinda masterful at it. I remember somebody somewhere saying that dialogue is such that "characters need some lines that only they would say", as a good way to use it for characterisation.

>>20094409
Without a fucking name, I'm not reading it.

>>20095756
Even if you're terrible at names (like I am) just throw something in or use a name generator if you really need to.

Someone's upset :^)

>>20095756
>>20095766
I was using that as a placeholder, but noted. I’ll have to think of something.

>>20095862
Make it as pretentious as possible. Choose words that sound nice together but don't actually have a meaning when combined.

>>20095275
>accuracy demanded by that demented little autism-gnome inside your head
Hits home for me. At an application level one or my quick and dirty tricks is to catch myself anytime I'm about to give the shape, color, or number of something (for example I'd take a hatchet to anything like "the dining area was a long rectangular room was filled with 6 brown oak tables").

Describing a scene via unnamed background characters/actions and pervasive smells seems to help too

>>20095285
Solid advice too

>>20091686
rolled:
>Comedy
>Pillow
let's give it a shot

>>20092645
>>20092645
Anon here. I wrote another story with the same characters. Please read.

https://litter.catbox.moe/ew84ng.pdf

>>20093768
Yeah just look at Charles Bukowski.

>>20096115
what was he hiding?

>>20096172
That's the mystery

>>20091160
This gif makes me aroused and gives me a overpowering sense of longing for affection.

>>20096182
isn't the reader supposed to figure out what the mystery is even if they are never explicitly told? i wasn't able to

>>20096215
You need to reread it then!

>>20096115
Interesting. Does this take place at an earlier time than the other thing?

>>20096237
maybe it's because i didn't read the other one

>>20096275
it's all self contained stories!
>>20096264
Maybe.

>>20096284
Well, I feel like her obliviousness implies that story happens at an earlier date

>>20095895
I'll come up with something. Right now I am trying to bridge together scenes and also do the right amount of exposition so that the story isn't completely lost on anyone who isn't reading my mind. I feel like the worldbuilding I've done requires a lot of information to really come together, which is difficult to feed to the reader. Just trying to get as many opinions as I can really.

How do I write my MC going around the english countryside and killing rapegangs without having him seem like a racist targeting muslims?

How long does it take to be able to read your older stuff like someone else wrote it
for me about 15 weeks

>>20096319
don't mention the races of the people he's killing? I don't know

>>20096341
About an hour. Once the thrill of writing wears off, reading it again makes me realize it's cringy.

>>20096319
just call them asian lol

I have a slight problem:
I don't really have a plot/story in mind when I'm writing, instead I'll come up with an interesting opening to a story and write that, but I'll struggle afterwards trying to see where it can go. Do I just keep writing and see where it takes me?

>>20096497
Give a summery of what you have so far. Let us fill in the pieces.

>>20096497
That's a method, it's called discovery writing. It's better used for more character-driven narratives, but you should at least try and coalesce some points you've brought up into a coherent story. You can also discovery write to get a good grasp on your characters and general idea of the setting and tone, and then go into writing a broad-strokes outline from there.

>>20093199
Glad to see my post helped you. Why are you using a spreadsheet though? Just use a google doc, it's far easier to jump around the document and you can slowly build the document up into a full manuscript.

>>20096341
15 weeks seems about right actually.

Anyone know about finding agents in Canada looking to get your book to publishers?

>>20096514
This one is probably my favorite.
>Gene is a ghost hunter, who also works at one of the biggest accounting firms in the city. He goes ghost hunting with his pal every weekend. He ghost hunts partly because he loves the thrill and excitement of it, which is in stark contrast compared to his boring and monotonous accounting job, but also because he believes in the invisible, and wants to uncover the invisible, finding the hidden story that's not being told.
>He's at the office Monday morning, thinking about his previous Sunday night which he spent searching through a haunted brickworks factory that was abandoned in the 1890s. Still feeling energized from the previous night, he decides to use his ghost hunting skills and investigate the ambiguous origins of where it is he actually works, and who it is he actually works for. This leads him to some shocking discoveries, and thus he begins the hunt for truth, uncovering the secrets of his previously boring, but now exciting accounting job.
>However, when ghost hunting, it sometimes becomes a question of who is the one doing the hunting: is it the visible man carrying a flashlight in one hand and a rosary cross in the other, or the invisible horror lurking silently in the shadows? Who knew that one of the largest accounting firms in the city can be haunted too?

This is a summary of what I've got, but I don't really know what's next. I'm having trouble thinking of the actual details. What are the shocking truths he uncovers, what the overall huge conspiracy of his job is, and if there's an eventual twist that happens.

>>20096646
Vampire accountant that founded and still run the firm. If you're gonna make ghosts real, roll in other undead.

>>20096646
>Gene is a ghost hunter, who also works at one of the biggest accounting firms in the city. He goes ghost hunting with his pal every weekend. He ghost hunts partly because he loves the thrill and excitement of it, which is in stark contrast compared to his boring and monotonous accounting job, but also because he believes in the invisible, and wants to uncover the invisible, finding the hidden story that's not being told.
This is fucking terrible. You have a lot of filler words and too much telling.

I would probably talk about his day job accounting, then at night what ghost hunting entails.

>>20096115
Wait. so is she touching his dick directly or not? There's soemthing missing here. it feels like he's holding down his boner, under his pants, but at the same time it's exposed.

>>20094202
SHE is a girl, thoughever.

>>20096652
Of course, thanks anon. That's perfect. I didn't even think of adding other supernatural stuff.
>>20096658
Its a summary anon, not the actual written story, and I have gone into detail on the ghost hunting.

>>20096667
It's also just a fun little thing to have him try some ghost hunting stuff and the boss just goes "...I'm a vampire, that's not what I..."

>>20096667
okay nevermind then.

>>20096089
alright, I've finished mine, but Pastebin won't let me post because it has naughty words that it's filters don't like. I don't want to flood the general with it, because it's about 1200 words long. What should I post it on? If no one says anything, I'll just record myself reading it and post to vocaroo or something
>>20092035
>>20092349
I liked it, and I enjoyed the UT gag, however it feels like it kind of ended abruptly. Nothing felt stale, but I feel like it just needed something to end it all with a bang, like the guy spending his entire hour dedicated to useless small talk. I don't know, and I worry that with my story I can't talk too much

What should I keep in mind when trying to make go-nowhere stories about insufferable people enjoyable for the reader, rather than an exercise in boredom and frustration?

>had to put a disclaimer on the woman beating chapter for when it releases in September
It's kind of funny that, of all the insanely violent things that happen in my webnovel, I know in advance that the protagonist clocking a bitch who absolutely deserves it will be the most controversial.

Is it too cliche to have my main character be kidnapped at night?

>>20095213
90% of what human beings say isn't about communicating the information contained in the words themselves, it's about communicating a more general message like "I'm on your team", "You can trust me", "I trust you", etc.
Websites like Twitter are built upon abusing this and other inbuilt tendencies of human communication with the primary aim of pissing you off so that you'll spend more time arguing on Twitter. Treat the site like a brain parasite.

>post 1 quick thread on reddit
>less than a minute
>93 views of the thread.

Okay fuck you guys. I need to sell my books.

>>20096935
It depends on context. Kidnapped by who for why?

>>20096982
She's a cop investigating a crime, brings some clues to some shady merchants, merchants decide to kidnap her because she's asking too many questions and getting more suspicious.

>>20094412
This dick ain't gonna suck itself.

>>20096999
Nah it's fine. I see kidnappings during the day a lot in media too (usually the character is walking to their car or something). Just give a believable reason as to why she's out and about at night. I'd say let the segment go on for a while so the kidnapping is actually a surprise to the reader

>>20097018
The story is she goes to sleep and the town of merchants/bandits breaks into her room at night and drags her to their dungeon.

>>20096883
Readers have no sense of right and wrong and they'll support literally anything, up to and including genocide with chemical weapons, if the prose is compelling and distant enough and the protagonist has heckin' deep thoughts while he loads the sarin into the truck.

>>20097022
Anon please don't tell me your rape fetish is going to appear

>>20097025
>tfw webnovel literally has the protagonist commit a gas attack
>it's basically fantasy HCN gas
I look forward to testing this theory.

>>20091268
anime

>>20091268
It's corny, but I write because I need to. If I don't write, I feel like shit. I could add in some fluff about my ambition and how I want to add my voice to the running dialogue of humanity, but it's just that: fluff. What keeps me returning to my desk every day is my knowledge that if I don't, I'll feel like shit. Even when I don't want to and I'd rather spend all day jerking my dick and playing video games, I know that if I don't get my writing in, I'll feel like shit that I didn't.

>>20095280
>Should be plural, 'mouths', right?
It SHOULD be... but at that point, my narrator is having a bit of trouble with the perception of time and with separating it into isolable, discrete units of time. It's part of the reason why the tenses switch so much throughout the passage. He is at some undefined midpoint in time as he watches all versions of himself ascending the stairway.

Thanks for the suggestions, anon. I'll definitely go back and do some line editing with that first paragraph. I think it rubs me the wrong way too upon rereading.

>>20091268
You cant let motivation be your sole driver when it comes to writing.

Ive been writing a manuscript for a novel and I force myself to sit down and write a few pages every night even if I dont feel like it.

If you go solely off of motivation, nothing will ever get done.

>>20097277
But if you're wrenching the words out, they're gonna be hot garbage

>>20097386
But they'll be on paper to be edited later. You can't improve a blank page.

>>20097386
So don't wrench. Sit there and make the attempt. You can't control or predict whether you get into that flow state or not. All you can do is to show up and be present in the attempt. If it's bad, delete it. Change the goal from sitting down and achieving X amount of words, and change it to sitting down and applying X amount of focused, undistracted time. Make the feel-good metric something other than word count, otherwise your incentive is always going to be cranking out the maximum amount of words in the minimum, leading to humblebrags like >>20093594 where your pride is obviously in the raw number of words you can commit to paper per hour rather than their quality.

>>20097386

exactly what >>20097403 said.

the first draft of anything is gonna be hot garbage lol, I just finished up about 1/3rd of my novel and I guarantee you most of those passages will be completely revised.

cast away your inhibitions and just write, thats the only thing you can do as a writer, write. majority of the art and prose and beauty of your work will come through in the editing.

>>20097455
This is a good point too, dont set an arbitrary number of how many words you wanna write or whatever.

If i dont feel like writing, ill sit down and just start typing on my typewriter and after a page or so it starts to turn into something good and something I like. its like starting the engine on a car that has been sitting out in the cold.

>>20097472
Also, stop while youre ahead. That way you dont get writers block. Always know what you are gonna write the next day.

>>20096551
there were so many topics...okay
just googled how to link within a document.

AMA I just signed with a literary agent (srs)

>>20097987
Was he circumcised?

>>20097082
Of course. Rape is great to move a story forward

Just remembered I was supposed to be writing. Almost done moving into a new house and will finally have some peace and quiet. No one trains their dogs anymore.

>>20094409
I don't like it but can't really put my finger on exactly why it is I don't like it. It seems like you're going for that very contemporary sparsity/paucity of prose but... failing? It's like you're trying very hard to do the Clear And Concise meme but find yourself in meandering, lukewarm sentences whose simple structure and length necessitate an ear for the rhythm and tone of poetry... which is precluded by either your limitations as a writer or by the derived, twice-removed intrusions of On Writing books.

I just don't know what you're going for, but it seems like the worst of all worlds. To be clear, while I do reference a paucity of prose above, I don't believe that paucity is necessarily and in itself bad, as much as it tends to breed generic writers who have been convinced by sales numbers and MFA professors that the only thing that matters is what your words represent and depict. Try to find your voice—not asa storyteller or an author, but as a WRITER.

I just don't see much voice coming through, and I think you can do better. Stretch yourself a little. You'll never get anywhere parading around different permutations of the same, safe, unadventurous writing. Try and fail. Reach and come up short. Write something distinguishable from what everyone else writes.

>>20097139
>mfw cherry and almond flavor comes from amygdalin
>every mol of benzaldehyde also comes with an equivalent of cyanide
I forget why cherries dont kill people but benzaldehyde has a very low detection limit.

>>20098017
Interesting feedback. One thing that's bleeding through a little I think is that for about the first half or so I had begun writing in first person as an experiment and realized it didn't feel right for some reason, especially in regards to writing dialogue. I have a World constructed that has a lot of backstory and technical/mechanical explanations for magic and historical events, and I feel like there's a lot there but I'm struggling to find a way to use the right amount of exposition. I'm trying to find just the right amount of "lost" that I want the reader to feel, in a sense putting them in the same position as the protagonist as a complete newcomer scrambling to catch up to their new surroundings.

>>20098017
>not asa storyteller or an author, but as a WRITER.

what the fuck does that even mean? i think you're talking shit.

>>20098084
>not as a songwriter or a performer, but as a MUSICIAN

>>20098073
>I have a World constructed
Scratch everything. This is why your writing suffers. You're another casualty to the worldbuilding meme.

>>20098095
Care to explain for someone completely oblivious?

>>20098103
Don't put effort into the things that Brandon Sanderson does. Put effort into the things James Joyce does.

>>20098103
He's memeing you. The "Don't worldbuild" meme is a cope method used by uninteresting writers. But on the other hand, if you world build too much, you lose sight of the main story you're telling. You should aim to build the world around the story and let it permeate.

>>20098103
The meme is that people, and novice writers especially, get so caught up in the world building and all of the backstory and the technology and magic and the number of nipples orc females have that they forget that, above all, a writer is a writer first. The world you've built is something only you care about. It's background noise, and writing such that you are actively trying to shoehorn as much of it in as possible takes you out of the moment. That attitude precludes good writing. It's like you're in the public restroom at the biggest Dennys in America, and it's full of 400 pound absolute units who all at once are simultaneously voiding their entire bowels. It's a cacophony of shitting and grunting and farting, and you're there in your stall with your phone and the world's smallest violin, trying to record yourself playing an imitation of Für Else as the 400 pound men fill the room with the sounds and smells of farting and shitting.

The world is background noise. You're trying to amplify it in the hopes that people will like your rendition and will happily ignore the shitting and farting which otherwise dominates the recording.

>>20098103
Basically, your worldbuilding is a stage for characters to live their lives. Decorations can feed a backstory, or structure an episodic road/war story, but they do not make stories interesting, your skill at showing character wants and needs does.

>>20098107
Hey, if you want to ape an overweight, 40-something guy wearing a cheap blazer over a graphic tee, be my guest. Everything about him is tasteless. Completely without taste, without sense for any aesthetic at all. The greatest irony is that, contrary to what >>20098109 believes, worldbuilding itself is the greatest possible fucking cope. It's essentially raising a gigantic white flag that says, "Okay, maybe I can't write to save my life, but check out this theme park!"

So many of you people, for some reason I really will never understand, self-select for this role. Why is it, really? Did you not know that you can be a good writer AND write science fiction and fantasy? It's like you use every possible excuse in the book to excuse yourselves from making the slightest possible attempt at the form of writing. You'll concern yourselves with everything BUT the mastery of language itself. I just don't get it. Why set the bar so low for yourselves?

>>20098168

>>20098168
I'm on your side in this. Too much worldbuilding is bad though. I even said that in my post. You still need to have an idea of your setting and how those things influence your story; that requires some worldbuilding. If you autistically plan for 9000 years of history plus 80 magic systems and this and that societal norm, you're getting lost in the sauce. The sauce enhances the meat and potatoes. It should never be the main course.

>>20098168
>Hey, if you want to ape an overweight, 40-something guy wearing a cheap blazer over a graphic tee, be my guest.
I literally just said not to do that. That's why I said not to do what Sanderson does. For fuck's sake.

>>20098194
>>20098201
It looks like I'm trying to bite off the wrong heads. In my own defense, I was pretty hungry.

>>20098207
You're not you when you're hungry. Have a Snickers.

As a disclaimer, I admittedly hate science fiction and fantasy. That said I will stand by the points I've made... maybe just with the intensity ratcheted down a notch or five.

>>20098215
You shouldn't just go around hating things. It makes you a lesser person.

>>20098228
I write because I hate.

>>20098168
Language is important, but there's nothing wrong with theme parks.

>>20098228
Hatred is a great character motivator. You can blend it with ambition and have one of those MCs that girls schlick themselves to all the time.

>>20098119
I am attempting to do that, it's complicated though when I feel like I as the writer can see the big picture of what the 'world' is like, and I am treading carefully in how I dole out new information so as to not overwhelm the reader with an exposition dump, but also not make them feel completely lost.

The setting my story is primary in Hell, or at least my take on Hell, which has a very sort of industrial/corporate feel to it. I have explanations for why it's structured that way beyond just being some aesthetic decision with no real reason. The explanations are directly tied to what the main character winds up doing for a living, and what spurs the story along. I could write a primer on the history and politics and all the bullshit of the world which I'm sure would appeal to the sort of people who enjoy sitting in Barnes and Noble reading lore-specific books for random franchises, but I'm trying to make that feel organic by using dialogue and the surroundings to bring the reader along for the ride. I suppose the hardest part right now is being able to accurately assess how lost the reader is with how lost I think the reader is.

>>20098236
Language isn't seen as important enough. It's not everything though, true. When I'm not busy being bombastic on behalf of my one-man crusade, I will happily recognize that writing is a broad and diverse field with many different niches to fit into. However, standards have dropped too far. This is my opinion, not a cosmic truth. I recognize that. But reasonably-stated opinions rarely get recognized. A little bit of drama stirred up isn't necessarily an evil, in my opinion. But maybe that's just because I care about it so much.
>>20098244
Have you got all of this info written up? If so, consider shelfing it for a year or so. Write short stories—not for publishing necessarily; that's no longer the route towards publishing a novel it once was—but to develop the skills that'll eventually let you build not only the world you're so passionate about, but the things which will draw people into it. The stakes are lower, and it's good practice. My two cents.

>>20098261
I have several episodic short stories later in the plot for the character between time skips while I've "felt out" what the main character is like and how they interact with their change of setting. I also have a sort of deep-history Timeline style document written up with a brief history of the universe, which in my setting is a spin on the sort of Judeo-Christian/Paradise Lost fall from heaven sort of thing.

I just want to write cheesy romance about teenagers and I'm sick of pretending I don't

>>20098307
Who says you can't write comfy fiction? I want to write about a slightly bonkers mechanic girl and her team trying to make their ship the fastest in the galaxy

>>20098311
But I must have higher aspirations
I must write the great American novel

>>20098316
Winnie the Pooh is a Great American Novel
Mouse and the Mole is the greatest animated series of all time
Frog & Toad sells billions of copies every second
Need I go on

>>20098261
Yeah, I was only objecting to the claim that worldbuilding is a cope in and of itself. I wouldn't accuse Tolkien or Pratchett of neglecting language.

>>20098323
Pratchett's worldbuilding feels odd where it seems like he just set up the world to be so strange that whatever he threw in to flesh out a new piece of the world can always fit.

>>20098351
This is the correct way of doing it. It's why One Piece is a huge success.

>>20098372
Oh I wasn't disparaging I was just pointing it out. Pratchett wrote a world where "sentient shopping mall spontaneously arrives into existence" can happen and besides maybe a few blinks of surprise from the reader you just kinda go with it.

>>20098372
>It's why One Piece is a huge success
I'd imagine that the more primary factors of its success are because of lowered standards associated with comic books and cartoons rather than anything universal which translates over to literature.

>>20098119
>>20098168
>>20098194
>>20098261
For context, I'll summarize my plot and maybe you can tell me if it's just shit.
>Hell is a physical dimension where a large chunk of the human population arrives after death.
>The powers that be (the Fallen Angels who were there first) decided it was far more interesting to lord over the humans than it was to torture them
>Hell is essentially a Blade Runneresque industrial shithole complete with its own government and economy meant to mimic Earth's, but has overtaken Earth by about a hundred years.
>The main character is a guy who was something of a loser in his human life, but lived a second life online roleplaying as girls. He is offered a second chance to basically become something of a succubus and make something of himself in Hell, even if it means basically taking a "Monkey's Paw" sort of deal.

>>20098316
Is it really so bad to be encouraged to aim higher? Why can't a teenage romance be so complex and nuanced in its comfiness and so faithfully and vividly written that it can't be the GAN? This is what I don't get. Things like "fantasy" and "comfy" seem to have just become euphemisms for "shit," and excuses to write poorly. They don't HAVE to be written poorly, but they so often are.

>>20098416
The thing is higher stakes are 'easier' to get a reader invested in, so lower stake stories need to become higher quality to get people into them, and given lower stakes, you probably need to focus more on making compelling characters as opposed to a compelling narrative. There's less points of success in a low stakes story.

>>20098392
>I'd imagine that the more primary factors of its success are because of lowered standards associated with comic books and cartoons
If you think about this for 5 seconds you'll realize that if this were the case, literally every comic or cartoon would be as successful. But they're not, anon.

>sometimes I write like a literary god
>sometimes I write like a retarded bear

How do I achieve consistency?

>>20098451
Scrap the shit and try rewriting it later until it's good.

>>20098446
No, the fact that ANY are successful confirms that this is indeed the case.

>>20098483
Your views are incoherent.

>>20098168
Big talk wagey, but you'll still call him 'sir' when Sanderking hands you his Lambo keys to valet park.

>>20098414
That plots fine but it demands full sex scenes if that's what you're doing with it. Like, there's no reason to have that plot if you fade to black on the good bits. You start with the character announcing he's died. You have a -very- brief statement from him saying he'd regretted how he's lived his life, maybe alluding to doing what he did but then bam, he's in hell. He doesn't know he's in hell at first but its pretty clear that's where he is. Put him in a demonic waiting room. Uncomfortable chairs, the A/C unit isn't blowing so its hot, other people in there waiting too, and they're evil/nuts/people who clearly belong in hell. Have him talk to the receptionist who's behind like prison glass and he gets to fill out some paperwork - a useless time waste of course when he finally turns it in they glance at it and then throw it somewhere never to be seen again. Eventually when his name gets called he goes into this corporate maze cubicle hellhole and he meets his caseworker/parole officer. That's when you can do the exposition dump of what he spent his life doing and then they give him the choice.
I'd also recommend when they turn him into some slutty succubus the transformation hurts like hell. S/he then gets to give the caseworker a degrading sloppy blowjob and gets tossed out on her new assignment with a cum covered face. Welcome to hell. Sounds like a fun story anon.

Now, the point in all this is it starts in a small room and details are dribbled out. The above can happen over like 5-10k words, maybe even more if you get lost in the weeds. I wouldn't do it in less otherwise you won't be doing the corporate hellscape justice.

>>20098234
This. SO much THIS

how do i learn to write good prose? i have a complex idea that i believe is marketable but not the skills to write it. my idea was to basically my fav authors writing and just steal their sentence structure but not the topics or anything, just how they form their sentences

>>20098460
Fair enough.

>>20098619
You've almost got it. If you read enough you'll get a feel for how to construct sentences. Read a lot, write a lot.
You can't literally hollow out sentences and insert another meaning, sentences relate to each other and structure entangles with meaning. But you can and should nick patterns. It'll happen unconsciously if you keep at it.

>>20098650
Not the same guy, but I feel like I don't really know what qualifies as 'good prose'. I've seen some text that just fail to keep me interested, but often it's more what's being written over how it's being written that keeps me reading.

>>20098619
>>20098657
I used to be a staunch advocate for utilitarian prose, being an engineer, but I've really leaned into the metaphor side recently. It adds so much color to a story when tempered with appropriate subtext and the understatements in dialogue. I think good prose is something that pulls you into The Zone and reads smoothly while being distinct in itself.

>>20098611
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11f4QBB86vwNEMPVKaWLIwgszLMlUNW6kkYLKaTOq3Fs/edit?usp=sharing

Here's the link to what I've already started, similar to some of the things you've suggested already. Basically the main character is 'recruited' for the role specifically because it's gotten increasingly more difficult to sell people on sex as society has gotten more and more depraved and porn-addicted. The agency the main character works for sends agents to Earth to basically fulfill various wishes, whether that's granted musical talent or corporate espionage. The main character's dilemma I suppose comes from basically realizing that 'she' is actually really good at this, the double life he led online already doing the same thing from behind a screen all cultivated in this person who is actually really good at pushing all the right buttons, and this new station in Hell actually means having a very, very high quality of life compared to the average person, especially compared to how he'd have wound up if he'd turned the offer down.

>>20098675
I feel like the best way to do prose, that I'm starting to understand, is have your text be so workman and utilitarian that it's practically 'invisible' and simply carries the story along without distraction, as Sanderson does for the most part, or being metaphorical and adding in flowery, engrossing bits here and there. My own style that I seem to have gotten is workman actions, more engrossing descriptions.

>>20098697
>as Sanderson does
his prose is shit though. there's no such thing as "invisible" prose unless you're looking at a wall. there is no possible way you will ever be able to convince me that i am not reading words on a piece of paper or screen. you are sticking your fucking head and the sand and pretending the world goes away when you try to write "invisible prose." i realize that you're probably high off the scent of your own low cunning and trying to bait me (as you, or one of you simpering animeshits were last thread) but for the benefit of anyone who may actually read what you're writing and actually take it seriously: read a book.

descriptions are not engrossing. there is nothing engrossing about pulling out your thesaurus to render in detail the cut of your blue-haired orc queen's bodice. words themselves are as pointless as concepts and ideas. it is the way you use the words which matters. it's not what you're describing or how deep into the dictionary you had to look to find the words you use. it's the way you use them.

fantasyshits will literally never understand this.

>>20098697
I think utilitarian prose is fine, but is poorly exploited by lazy writers. Flowery prose is fine too, but poorly lavished by boring writers. Example of my thoughts. I'm at a part where my MC is marching his army to the north border to fight his enemy there. The utilitarian prose carries him there along with some thoughts of his because nothing exciting is happening there. No need to say "They marched like Templars through the sands of SNORE". It isn't until he's alone on the wall-walk at night looking at the trees that I put flowery to work, talking about seas of trees and the sea monsters (his enemy) lurking in the water, etc. Because now I have something interesting to highlight. He's scared of the battle, if not at least apprehensive, and it pays to be prosaic here because now I have a moment I can slow down and focus on without saying "He looked at the trees and was scared." Boring. I'll go to sleep writing that. Let me draw the audience in with imagery of deep sea monsters, an extremely common fear, and let the audience feel what the MC feels.

>>20098730
So match the prose to the mood? I can see that working out.

>>20098735
It seems stunningly obvious but, yeah. I guess talking it aloud gets you places.

>>20098677
I don't like the fact that he is treated as special, that he gets to talk to the chief, that they explain that this is a special assignment. Frankly to me it sounds like garden variety soul stealing and not a special assignment. Amara can be bubbly and nice - she should have a little more meanness behind her niceness, I would think - but I don't feel like he doesn't gets the full dehumanizing hell treatment with his interaction with the chief. I don't see why the chief would be involved with what is essentially just a pervert.

>>20098758
It's more the fact that he's on a hold while someone from another department (Amara) is on her way there to take custody of the situation. They are meant to seem like disgruntled babysitters, you're exactly right, to them he isn't special. They're meant to be annoyed that someone is even costing them this much time. As for Amara, I'm trying to capture a sort of honey/vinegar dynamic with her. It's a bit manipulative, but she's not trying to exploit the main character into taking a shit deal. She knows the main character is going to be thanking her, but needs him to actually be honest with himself. She has ulterior motives from a career perspective but she's basically trying to reinstate the "succubus" thing which had been a previously antiquated role, it's far more profitable for their department to focus their efforts on other human vices surrounding greed these days. She's taking a gamble on the main character.

>>20098748
I generally try to do that (more fast-paced scenes hand smaller sentences or even sentence fragments, lavish scenes will take their time, etc.) but it's a good thing to keep in your head.

>>20098778
I think you missed the mark. The offending line:
>A recruiter from HR is coming down here right now with an… opportunity, real hush hush black book type stuff, above my paygrade. You must be real fuckin’ special…
He should call him a worthless piece of shit, if anything, if he's a disgruntled babysitter None of this you're super secret special nonsense.

>>20098808
You’re right, I need to do a better job of conveying the disdain or outright disgust on their end. Thank you Anon.

>>20098820
Not the same guy, but disdain and disgust are better conveyed with tone and expression/body language, so what's being said isn't quite as important as the how, or how they look while saying it.

Fuck it. I'll do it. I'll write a boy meets girl story. Why not? Nobody will ever read it anyway.

What are the elements that make a good fictional character?

>>20099031
Compelling drive based in a deep seated want for something

>>20098838
>>20098808
Okay so I'm trying to convey the idea that someone's file being flagged for holding is exceptionally rare, really reserved for like applied sciences/engineering people (people that society can actually use and whose talents are in real demand) and the most vile of serial killers and violent offenders who wind up being taken elsewhere for other reasons. The Chief is peeved because he's babysitting the main character while waiting to hand over custody and can't understand for the life of him why this scumbag is somehow special when he seems like any other profile. It's not so much 'disgust' as it is a mixture of impatience/disdain/annoyance.

>>20099108
In that case, have him be short-tempered, snap at the guy for wasting his time, have him display an annoyed tic maybe (foot-tapping or something), make him immediately leave when he's able to because goddamn he couldn't care less.

>>20098917
Good for you anon. Don't forget to post here.

>>20091690
I'm not fully arguing to do it for this reason. But you should google it. There are new studies saying it can help depressed minds.
I mean, you should probably finish the list. It definitely won't hurt you trying shrooms since you did all the hard drugs already.

New thread
>>20099517
>>20099517