/lit/ - Literature

Beginner (ngl I didn't even begin yet). I have this goal of writting a story that happens in a few locations and with a specific number of characters in mind. Picture a story that'll happen in a very small town with a particular place like a mall/school as a main location.
Any tips on writting these kind of stories. I have literally no experience in writting.

Can you ever world build too much?

>>20099544
Make sure to really well establish all the areas and characters if they're the bulk of it. Make use of the smaller space in some way. It's not quite a 'bottle' thing by the sounds of it (a story that takes place only in one room), but establish each location, establish their uses, etc. Try not to frontload too much, though.

Finally finished the 1st draft of this. Now gonna put it away to work on something else.

>>20099566
Yes. If you world build so much you eventually won't write.

>Finish writing short story
>Do multiple revisions
>hey this is actually pretty good
>submit to magazine
>immediately regret it
>Oh god it's absolute fucking drivel why do I bother writing, they're going to pass it around the office and laugh at me
What the fuck is wrong with me

>>20099544
Personalities of the characters are everything when dealing with a limited cast in a restricted location. The 80's movie Clue is a great example. Get a rough idea of your cast of characters and then go.

Any advice for non-cringy magic? I am trying to write a world where magic is based around manipulation of a "god-particle" like the force but more dynamic

>>20099579
Any sort of "nobody leaves this house until we discover whodunnit" story can be a great thing to look at, they great ones make every character distinct, and they establish themselves from the first few minutes of meeting each.

>>20099585
That's already pretty cringy-sounding as-is. Elaborate on it, though.

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

Would love more opinions, am currently working on it at the moment.

>in that awkward moment where I'm trying to connect what I'm doing right now in the story to the next part, which I'm much more enthusiastic to get started on, without having it feel rushed.

>>20099574
found the binary HURF DURF IS WORDS ON PAGE OR NO retard. worldbuilding can be "too much" for a multitude of reasons. yes, the worst possible outcome is that it completely prevents you from writing. besides that, you run the risk of starting to believe that anyone else actually cares about your world building like you do. if you succumb to this thinking, whereby the built world becomes the main attraction of the writing yourself, you will start falling literally all over yourself trying to cram as much DUDE WORLD LORE into your writing as possible.
>should i insert WORLD NUGGET #464 uhhhhh... here? no... no, that's not right... i'll do it uhhhhhh here
>>20099585
nobody worth addressing gives the slightest shit about how your magic works. it'd be better if you bucked the trend and just assumed its existence to the point where nobody cares enough to launch into an eye-gouging paragraph description about how the god particle needs you to twist your hands three times before doing a pirouette and pulling your panties 3.7mm to the left to make sure Tyrone's God Cock can fit in without getting cockburn on your panties you pansy little tranny fucks just try fucking WRITING something for once

>>20099607
What I meant is you don't really need to world build as much as people think before you start writing. You just need to make the world SEEM thought-out, and only fill in what's needed or fill in some background stuff.

Would it be wrong to have the villain rape the hero to assert his dominance? Side question: is my friend gay if he’s turned on by the thought of male-on-male rape?

>>20099597
Essentially there's an original sin based origin where Heno created the universe which is held together by his Aura which gives the universe order. To punish his creations, he created entropy which breaks apart aura and causes suffering. By mastering aura you can manipulate matter and time to fight entropy.

>>20099680
Okay but what does that actually mean in practical terms?

>>20099598
I think a lot of unnecessary nothing happens on the tour.

Here's an example of a line I'd cut because it takes me out of the story.
>Standing there reminded ____ of the way narrators in History documentaries described pillars or doorways in places like Petra or some Egyptian tomb,
Just have
>The row of elevators in front of them could pass for freight elevators on Earth, clearly sized to accommodate individuals of a taller disposition, if not another species, as if some forgotten race of giants had left them in their inheritance.

But seriously your mc needs to experience the change posthaste. I don't know why you're fucking around with this tour and then going to sleep to have it happen. Just get to it already have them wave a demonic wand and do it. Do the tour after.
And I hope to fucking god you don't have an extended dress try on or, god forbid, makeup extravaganza. You'd think a succubus would naturally be sexy without slathering on gallons of makeup and perfume.

>>20099598
The blank space instead of a name for the main character is making this incredibly difficult for me to read. You also make too many references to celebrities and pop culture, it makes it hard to get invested in the story.

>The truth was, ____ was a filthy person. Not an outright bad person, as those things weren’t mutually exclusive, but he was definitely a degenerate. Perhaps his biggest sin of all was thinking that he was halfway decent. That his meager efforts to do things like the aforementioned door holding and donating to food drives around the holiday seasons when he’d been in the checkout lane at the grocery store were earning him spiritual brownie points. According to the projections in the profile it even looked like he’d have turned his shit around sometime in the next couple of years and lived a long, pointless, morally-okayish life. His spiritual “credit score” as it were, had just happened to be below the threshold needed to get in upstairs at the time of death. It really was that simple.

The tinkerer and the writer in ____ search for clues in the nomenclature of the documents, something in their diction, some fine print or asterisk that will help make more sense of this sliding scale of good and bad. He felt a need to understand the mechanical element responsible, or some key turning point in the plot of his life that would explain everything. What was it specifically that he had been doing wrong?

He was an underachiever. That coupled with an almost cosmic sense of entitlement that all of creation ought to accommodate him made him kind of look like a little shit on paper, but he’d always thought that was just humanity in a nutshell. Chief among his vices though was lust, and a very particular flavor at that. Coveting what a type of girl he knew he couldn’t have, ____ became a slave to his own obsessions. There were pictures, even links in here to his search history… Girls he’d fawned over. And then… chatroom logs from when he’d eventually dipped his toes into pretending to be one of them. If it could be said there was a common theme tying everything together here, quite frankly it was that ___ thought he deserved more out of life, despite the fact that he wasted most of it daydreaming and longing.
I really dislike this section, I get what you're trying to do but it's fucking boring to read cause you're just telling us what this character is like. If it were me, I would rewrite this as dialogue between the main character and the ogre looking guy

>>20099578
That's natural, that means what you wrote was kino

>>20099670
Would it be wrong? Absolutely
Should you do it? Absolutely
Is your friend gay? Absolutely
Are you gay? Absolutely

>>20099684
Idk how to be more specific but Im trying to write a scene where they build a ship powered by the energy but i dont know how to go about it. I guess it would be mind controlled but that seems kinda silly

>>20099670
Not wrong but more often than not it's a sign of bad writing. Why would the villain go straight into rape when there other ways to assert dominance and emasculate someone?
Yes. He is very gay.

>>20099718
I mean, I can't offer much advice on a magic system that you don't even seem to have much of a handle on the basis of. This sounds like you're going top-down on it and the top is pretty niche. You need a more broad way to explain how it all works.

>>20099689
I'll tinker with that, thank you. And there's meant to be a sort of melancholic feeling of having enough time to himself to really reflect on the implications of what's all happened when he finally winds up with some alone time, combined with the thought that he's going to wake up an entirely different person, the exact product of which he can make a pretty good guess but can't really be certain until he sees for himself.

>>20099692
I think I might have this be a dialogue between Amara and him then, since she's the one who has taken a special interest in his file. The idea being that the other guys there are just babysitting and are honestly a little ticked that they've even had to do this much for a single person in a building that sees something like 90-100k people a day.

>>20099730
Good point. Ill just have to think about it more

How can I learn Sitcom structure?

Any courses?

Thanks friends.

>>20099750
The origin for your magic doesn't have to be TOO related to how it actually functions, but how it functions is the key thing the audience will care about at first.

my prose sucks
what now

>>20099746
>there's meant to be a sort of melancholic feeling
With Amara emoting left and right I do not feel any sort of melancholy at all in the scene. Slash the tour in half and just get to him being mopey for a little bit. There's a bunch of infodump that isn't really helpful. Get him changed, then get her stuffed full of dick and on her first assignment, which may or may not go well.

>>20099585
I haven't actually read any of Sanderson's books but I found this insightful: https://www.brandonsanderson.com/sandersons-first-law/

>>20099718
Come up with things the magic can't do. Then show how they deal with that.
One way cringe can set in is when you fawn over how cool the magic is without adding any tension.
Maybe the magic has to be housed in unobtainium and they had to convince a museum to let them melt down a previous artifact. Or they had to steal it.
Maybe controlling the magic requires keeping a certain amount of order in your mind, a kind of comprehension, which strains short-term memory and thinking capacity. To build it they had to find someone mentally capable of taking in the entire design at once, and even then it's difficult.
Maybe there's a 10% chance every time they activate it that it warps the space around it and everyone near it dies a painful death, but it's still worth it to get to the stars.
I don't know if any of these fit your idea but I hope you get the gist. Nail down weaknesses, not just powers.

>>20099791
>Come up with things the magic can't do. Then show how they deal with that.
Thats a good idea but its kind of unlimited. However I do think its based on the spirtual strength of the individual

>>20099861
Well, show how a character does things, give us a point of reference for what somebody obscenely powerful can do relatively early on, then show what level your actual protagonist is on, something like that.

>>20099756
Just watch Seinfeld until it clicks.

>>20099861
>However I do think its based on the spirtual strength of the individual
Perfect example of a good detail about how magic works that should be shared with the reader. This is because there is only one principle that should guide how detailed the magic system is (at least, how detailed of a presentation that makes it into the prose is, of course you should have a much more thorough understanding as the author): what can those details tell us about characterization and themes?

Take the spiritual strength = caster level notion. By establishing this, the reader can infer that any powerful magus must have a strong will. Nothing more needs to be said about that aspect of a character because it is always implied by their relative level as a magic user. Simultaneously, this also allows for depicting moment to moment changes in character. A wizard who has been established as powerful who suddenly cannot deploy that power can be inferred to be having a crisis of spirit without anything being written about his attitude or mental state. The reverse obviously applies as well with a character suddenly accessing a new level of power.

Does the reader need to know that magic is invoked by curling one's toes while chanting ziggity diggity doo and making the gesture of the seventh secret sign because the gesture is a resonant key that causes the vibrations produced by the chant to be channeled in the specific way to cause magical energy to manifest a fireball with a .5 meter radius and the explosive force of 1.67 kilograms of dynamite? No, that shit doesn't tell you anything about a character when someone starts flinging fireballs.

>>20099943
Yeah, a magic system's biggest strengths is how well it can relate to characterisation. I realise Sanderson is hit-or-miss, but Stormlight's magic system is entirely based around people taking and living up to oaths. You can tell what sort of person a Knight Radiant is like depending on their order and how far along they are, to an extent.

I only write fanfiction.

>>20100053
One of the bestselling books of the past few years was fanfiction with the names changed so don't feel too bad.

>>20100053
I write fanfiction sometimes, it's good practice

>>20100053
Same.
I have no clue where I'd post something else and who'd want to read it. Fan fiction gives me a guaranteed audience. It also makes me less self-conscious because I feel the bar is low.
Possibly all of this is silly and unrealistic.

>>20100053
Almost all original IPs are fanfictions with some of the characters and/or premises tweaked.

>>20100091
Fan fiction ideally makes good use of familiarity with the source material. When I write fan fiction I assume I don't have to introduce characters, and I may make it a game to explore them further in terms of elements established in canon. A pitch can be based on unexplored potential in the original.
I also like to base stories on incongruencies in the source material (particularly in video games, with their tension between gameplay and story). You can't do this in a (nominally) original work, commenting on something you yourself came up with is just navel gazing.
As far as I'm concerned The Magicians is fan fiction but Fifty Shades of Gray isn't. Creating something in terms of another work comes with its own pitfalls and potential, there's more going on than mere originality.

>>20100148
Fifty Shades' first book at least is about 90% the same text as the original fanfiction, mostly just names are changed.

>>20100154
That's why I picked it.

>>20100161
So it doesn't count as fanfiction because it uses a whole new premise from Twilight?

Has anyone ever gotten upset at one of your stories?

>>20100197
Maybe, but I dont pay it any mind.

I haven't read your story but agree with the sentiment of the comment.

>>20100197
kek

>>20100197
>comment like that on chapter 1
something tells me you deserved it

>>20100174
In >>20100148 I talked about things fan fiction can do. Fifty Shades can't do them because it severed itself from Twilight.
Fan fiction has a relation to the original work. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not just copying ideas, it's building on top of them.
I think you're too hung up on fan fiction as a pejorative category. Try seeing it as its own thing, not as any sort of value judgment that has to be agreed with or relativized. I'm not talking about that.

>>20100209
kek

>>20100224
Fair enough, but apart from the third book, they're lightly edited fanfiction. That doesn't necessarily mean they're bad (they're bad for other reasons), but I don't see how that divorces it from being fanfiction.

>>20100197
If it can produce emotions like that I'd like to read your story anon.

>>20100222
trips of truth

>>20100237
Again, it can't do any of the things fan fiction can. Twilight fan fiction can, for example, have scenes that resonate with scenes from Twilight. Fifty Shades can't do that because its audience hasn't read Twilight.
Art is made to be experienced. A link to another work enhances the experience.
Is a car still a car if you remove the wheels? For most practical purposes no, even if you can see the shape of what it used to be.
If anything, I'm saying Fifty Shades is bad for NOT being fan fiction. (But I haven't read it.)

>>20100053
I alternate between a historical fiction project and fan fiction (elder scrolls), feels really nice to be able to change tones depending on mood

>>20100292
I can see where you're coming from, but Fifty Shades' original version, Masters of the Universe, is "Twilight in the city if the vampires were just corporate CEOs", it has a lot of similar beats. It doesn't really bother introducing most of the fanfic characters because you don't have to introduce them in fanfic, only need to establish what's different (that's what the interview scene in Fifty Shades near the start is, it's just the "this is what's different from Twilight" scene), and this carries over to Fifty Shades, leaving the characters feeling even more incomplete. So I suppose it IS bad for not being fanfic, then, yeah.

>>20100246
ok here:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/37837783

For context, it's a Euphoria fic that I'm currently working on, so if you haven't seen the show some of it probably won't make a lot of sense.

>>20099566
Once you start getting into circumventing physics, you've likely gone too far. Good luck trying to clear all the contradictions.

>>20100325
Yeah, you should probably go commit die

>>20100325
>Jules laughed to herself
>herself
your work contains errors of fact. otherwise the chapter was milquetoast I don't see why anyone would have gotten so upset.

My magic system is all over the place. It's magic. Who actually gives a shit if it makes sense?

>>20100479
the reader when you pull something out of your ass to solve some problem and they're just sitting there dumbfounded because you unintentionally broke your book

>>20100479
If the system doesn't make sense jettison the system and have your magic be eldritch and unknowable

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jTSWfatyHRd6iFQzLQFZSkCTtf1EkuiFtyFh5yHtFI8/edit?usp=sharing


Would anyone like to read my short story?

>>20100559
You're that guy who wrote the story about how pancakes are better than waffles.

>>20100590
I am. you told me to write a new story. So this time i'm writing about someone intruding on someone else

>>20100605
I certainly did not tell you to write anything else, you braindead coomer.

>>20100631
There is no coomer bait in my stories. It is comedy.

>>20100559
You still suck at dialogue

>>20099517
New thread, new prompt words

>>20100559
godawful, and gross.

on top of that the dialogue is bad, subject matter is creepy and weird. and the words are not interesting enough to warrant so many of them.

>>20100559
>The girl opened the closed door of the boy's room
awful sentence brother
and please never write any coomer trash ever again

I wrote 1300 words today
Most of it is about a character narrating to the MC about the foundation of her ancestors' fortress. Funny little story, mostly inspired by Calvino's invisible cities and Gormenghst
(Also I'm ESL pls no bully)

>>20100672
okay reddit.

>>20100559
>terrible prose
>spells miasmatic wrong
>coomerbait
Give up

>>20100559
Ah I see you expanded the universe of "cum-pancake" what will be in store for us next time I wonder

>>20099598
>Her office is nice in a sort of high-fashion way, complete even with fanned out LCD screens that sit in stark juxtaposition with the beige CRT monitors adorning the legions of workstations just outside her door. Amara scoops up what looks to be the key fob to an Audi from a modern looking bowl carved from a single piece of some exotic espresso colored wood, and dons a very fashionable offwhite trench coat and fastens about her waist.
This also really takes me out of the story. Why are there LCD screens, CRT monitors and Audis in hell? Ignoring the brand name bullshit - which really is egregious, why are you doing it? - according to what you posted earlier hell is 100 years more advanced than earth why are they using this ancient technology?

>>20100382
>Yeah, you should probably go commit die
>>20100397
>your work contains errors of fact.

>>20100747
>spells miasmatic wrong
impossible, I spellchecked it.

>>20100819

>>20100831
>bitches about prose when it's simple and easy to read
>calls it coomer bait, but also complains about prose when it's easy to read
>clearly understands story, but bitches about prose.
>seething so much about how great my story is
>has to find the biggest nitpick to criticize it
Cope.

>>20100838
>posts garbage
>gets mad when people call it garbage
lmao please keep copeing and sneeding for my amusement

>>20100853
>seething this much still
>getting triggered by a short story on a mongolian basket weaving forum
LOL cope and dilate tranny

>>20100862
keep going anon, that'll show me

>>20100866
i can feel your anger

>>20100870
Oh? What exactly am I angry about? Cause you're clearly extremely assmad I called your poorly written coomerbait story shit. Seems like someone cant take criticism kek

>>20100877
>writes so many words
>SEE YOU CAN'T TAKE CRITICISM!!!
>RRRERREEEEEEEE
look how angry your'e getting reddit

>>20100886
Anon, if you spent this time writing instead of impotently seething at the computer screen your prose probably wouldn't be shit, but I can't say that for sure because you're clearly retarded

>>20100899
>muh writing must be artistic and filled with literary merit
>muh ART!!!
Holy fuck you really are seething.

Imagine being even attempting to critique an obvious shitpost.

>>20100886
Not him but your writing sucks dude. Your plots are straight out of some shitty hentai doujin, plus your prose and dialogue are just plain bad. I can tell you don't read at all. Find a different hobby.

>>20100901
See this is how I can tell you're mad. I haven't said anything about literary merit. All I did is call your prose shit and you launched into a 20 minute rant. What exactly are you trying to achieve? Cause all you've done is give me keks

>>20100914
>>20100912
seethe and dilate

Dictation versus typing. I've just discovered that Windows 11 has dictation capabilities. So obviously I'm quite excited about that and playing with it actively, I'm using it right now actually to type this post which is. Very fun for me. I have to say. I know it's not perfect but. I don't know. It's different and I've had a few drinks, so this is fun. Then he caught me thinking about, you know, dictation versus typing. It's well known that some people have. Dictated their works to others to be typed up. I think Ball has. Boris. Or her board has. All her board has. Jorge Borges. Yes. Finally, thank you. So that guy dictated his work. He didn't type it, he dictated it. And I wonder. Does that alter the quality of the work? Oh my God, this dictation ****. It even puts a question mark when my voice lilts upwards as though it's a question. Who? I left my voice sound, but it didn't make that a question. Well anyway.

Oh, wonderful. Saying

Makes me have a

Oh, that is wonderful. And it's funny too, because you have no idea what's going on, because whenever I say

Then he just makes a

Oh my God, that's hilarious. I wonder if any of you can figure out what I am saying that makes these blank spots. Anyway, let's not get carried away. My question is dictation versus typing. Do you think that alters the work in some way? Do you think that there are certain qualities that may emerge from dictation that may not be present in a work that is typed? And also, do you use dictation technology yourself?

I've been working on a comfy Morrowind fanfic, trying a very different voice/style than I've done previously (somewhere between Bertie Wooster and Flashman). Thoughts and feedback appreciated as eventually I'd like to keep refining it and eventually plop it on Royal Road. Entire first chapter linked below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WWUK-ey0MtgW9g81vHsWUGBd3lrGN5J23WIEo8-B5Xk/edit?usp=sharing

>>20101024
I don't hate it, which is impressive for Elder Scrolls fanfic. Your prose is pretty good and your dialogue is believable enough. How is it a morrowind fanfic if it takes place in Cyrodiil? Is this supposed to be how the Nerevarine ended up in Vvardenfell?

She flinched again, her smile becoming taut on Warren's computer screen. "Warren, I understand you're a bit more shy or quiet than other at-home-advisors, but that's okay. I'm a bit of a shy girl myself—well, except on the weekends!"

Warren stared at his keyboard; at his swollen knuckles and his bitten nails. His fingers trembled and felt distractingly itchy from the winter dryness that had invaded his small, dusty bedroom. He smelled vodka mixed with hardened plaque on his breath.

A knot grew in his throat.

Despite the long silence the team manager valiantly held her bubbliness in her smile and in her tone but not in her demoralized baby-blues.

"Anyway, these numbers need to be addressed. Especially since you were doing so well this first quarter. Remember, we want a quick call filled with assuredness, professionalism, fun, and empathy. Remember what empathy means?"

Warren bristled. "Yes."

"So? What does it mean?"

"Understanding how the customer feels. Understanding their emotions."

"Exactly. Just like your training explained, knowing and understanding how the customer feels is important in a service call. Knowing and feeling their frustration with their product can lead to…"

Warren imagined a pig when he looked at them. As Whatever-her-name droned on—the familiar rhythm of that patronizing corporate jargon turning into white noise—he conjured up all these people-pigs in his booze-pickled brain. Mind you, it resided in everyone he worked with, everyone he knew, and not just this modern company moll of a manager. All those faces he eyed in the webcam windows during virtual team meetings; gazes colored a hoary and spotted hue that reminded one of molded Jewish rye. Pigs. Sus domesticus. He used the identifier not wholly as a derogatory, but rather to compare their contentment and their agreeableness.

They lived satisfied wallowing amongst the frigid mud and the hot, revolting stink. They had slop for plumping and a weathered but suitable shed for slumber. They turned to tumescent technocrat employers for more feed, and the pork donned their brands like holy vestments; their votive prayers squealed dutifully. When the time came they allowed themselves to be poked and pumped by their handler's priapisms brimming with a viscous liquid nonsense. There were slogans; Chinese made baubles and t-shirts and internet contests; advertisements and free tickets to listen to sonorous pleas for more of the nonsense filling their rectums and when that finished they were sewn up tight. Then all that corpulence would give out, their fat hearts would become diastolic, and their snouts would vomit slurries of all that nothing—that cultural ejaculate devoid of spermatozoa—and only a fool would stick around and listen to their death-squeals.

And Warren knew he suffered life as a fool. A very tired fool living amongst the pigs and thus no better than them.

"...and that's why we always try to have empathy. Isn't that right, Warren?"

>>20101024
This is very good

>>20101024
>fanfiction
>good
lmao
>read it
>it's good
wtf

>>20101024
How long did it take you write this? Please don't tell me you pumped out something this good in an hour or two, I don't know if my fragile ego can take it.

>>20101208
Not him, but I don't think anyone can write 4000 words in an hour or two

>>20101217
A day or two then.

>>20101024
You have a good ear for sentence rhythm. I read the first page and left a few comments. Then I got bored and left. You are lucky I even opened something you called fanfiction. You have a good ear though for prose, I think, better than royal fucking road and fanfiction deserves, Set higher goals.

Is it acceptable to switch between first person and third person between chapters?

>>20101095
>morrowind fanfic if it takes place in Cyrodiil
Morrowind Era maybe is more accurate title. I'd like to take it to Morrowind eventually but the initial plot is to go to Elseweyr since there is some crazy cool Lore there and the mainline games will never touch it anyway.

>>20101183
>>20101172
Thank you kind anons, your words will motivate me to keep chugging. 3 chapters in now and it's looking to be novella length likely which I've only reached once before and hated but I learned a lot in the process.

>>20101208
I'm a 1k per day chump and did two serious revision passes on this before I was comfortable sharing it so about a week in the oven.

>>20101240
Thank you very much for your comments and for reading what you did - I am also working on a historical fiction novel that am pouring a lot of effort into that is more publishable but this is something I feel compelled to write (and is very fun topic for me as a huge lore nerd from Morrowind). I'll keep at it and maybe try pitching it to Bethesda someday though they probably wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole

"How much is he asking for anyway?"

Getter sucked his teeth. "Three hundred thousand."

"That's steep, but we'll pay it." The faces on the video screens all nodded one by one. "Who will I make the check out to, to a Mister..."

"Entwistle," said Getter. "And you misunderstand. He charges by the hour."

Getter leaned back and smiled, eyes half-shut as he reached out and muted his video screen with a single "click" of his finger. He saw them, out of the corner of his eye. Them: a helpless, hopeless swarm of buzzing insects with white teeth that glistened, with eyes that bulged and rolled as they frothed at the mouth and shouted silently over one another.

Time passed. Eventually, Getter glanced back at the screen and saw that all movement had ceased. Everyone was sitting back in their little chairs once more, an air of calculated embarrassment now loomed over the meeting.

You only pretend, Getter thought. Those three words almost tipped his hand, almost made the cool mask slip as he stared with icy eyes back into the flickering faces of each and every idiot executive that bastard Danton had sent his way. You only pretend to be humble, because you need me. You need him, too.

Getter unmuted his device.

"Have we dispensed with the hysterics? Is everyone in accordance? The man's not cheap, I know. But he'll either finish the job in three days time or be dead in four. Either way, the cost to hire a specialist is far less than what we'll pay if we do nothing."

One man, a little grimmer and slimmer than the rest, cleared his throat. "I think we'd all feel a little better if we understood what we're paying for. What methods does this Mister Entwistle employ?"

"A canny question." Getter propped one boot on the table, then the other. "How's this for an answer? The man is a death-dealer, through and through. Entwistle kills one man then moves to another, he goes from victim to victim like a dancing plague. He has no method, no plan. Picture a wind-up chainsaw with legs. We drop him in a populated area, wind him up, and cut him loose."

"He is known for inflicting mass casualties?" the grim man pressed.

"If you want a light touch, look elsewhere."

Some murmurs, some dissent, some hushed whispers. After the usual performative nonsense, the dark-haired woman says:

"And can he really do it? Will he be the one to finally dispose of our most hated enemy?"

Getter grinned.

"Not a chance. But he'll make him wish he was dead."

>>20101024
>read your story
>read my shitty story
Fuck... i can't write anymore...

>>20101275
>and is very fun topic for me as a huge lore nerd from Morrowind

Well, follow your passions. We all write for ourselves in the end if we are doing it right.

What are your guys thoughts on the webtoon publishing industry and writing webtoons for readers?

>>20101353
Isn't that more about art and fetish targeting rather than writing?

>>20101353
Weirdly large amount of blatantly incestuous mom / son ads coming from those guys. Kids in the future are gonna be fucked up

>>20101353
excellent way to earn money

>>20101414
This is the worst way to earn money. You make pennies off ad revenue. Webtoon originals doesn't pay a living wage unless you're in the 1% even then its like 2000 a month and the deadlines are brutal. You don't sell a product like books where you make royalties off each sale. With online comics and webtoons, readers are so used to getting the product for free, they scoff at having to actually pay for something. On top of that, readers demand high level art for each panel. Each chapter is anywhere from 20-60 pages. Imagine doing 40 pages of low level commissions for little to nothing. Imagine writing a scene in a book, and now imagine drawing that same scene as a comic. You remove the need for imagination and in return you do 100 times more work.

I wrote myself into a corner.

>>20100712
>writes about some kids jerking eachother off

okay reddit

>>20101275
>A week

Meanwhile I spent three months on a single short story of similar length that wasn't even good enough to get shit on here.

Are you already published?

>>20100053
Vergil and Ovid wrote basically wrote fanfic for Rome

Editors can be helpful sometimes, I guess.

>>20101311
If you like it please take it as encouragement my good man. I have a mountain of dogshit short stories, an unsalvageable half book, and awful prose behind me to get whatever hard earned skill I have now. Getting words under your belt really does help.

>>20101570
>three months on a single short story
You may be over editing (a past vice of mine). If something doesn't come out rosey just start over from scratch, saving the old text somewhere for reference and to copy paste tasty chunks when you want it while writing it over.

And I'm not published but I feel encouraged by the feedback tonight that maybe it's not as crazy a distant goal as I felt it was.

>>20100479
>come up with a complex, multi-tiered magic system
>don't finish fleshing it out because i just want to work on my characters
Maybe I should just turn all my ideas into literary fiction.

>>20101701
The easiest magic system is using Eastern style magic. Ki is the best magic system.
>Everyone can use it
>but it's only practical for people that practice and hone it
>it's some natural shit
>don't explain shit
>just shoot shit out of their hands or augment their bodies somehow
>no pentagrams on the floor, no magical chants, no explosions or powers
Just simple FUCK YOU I SHOOT LAZER BEAMS AT YOU.

DBZ does it's magic system perfectly.

>>20101701
>I just want to work on my characters
I hope this means write the actual book and let the characters come to life and define themselves and not write some autistic family tree no one will give a fuck about.

>>20101719
Even as a kid I hated DBZ's magic system.
There was little to no character to the techniques and those who actually put in the work to develop interesting techniques paid for it for some reason, like how Yamcha developed every signature technique of his and just became a useless jobber for it. And then it all scaled up to the point threats became hard to grasp.
Maybe it was just Toriyama being the a hack but I'd rather have a magic system that will rein me in and prevent me from going into planet destroying arm wrestling bouts.

>>20101726
>let the characters come to life and define themselves
Of course.
Family trees are fun and all but I don't go that far into them unless it's necessary.

>>20101353
I don't know what webtoons are, but I do draw comics I publish in the internet.

It's super slow, so I've gone back to writing and selfpublishing on kindle.

>>20099517
Thoughts?

>>20101793
I thought it was pretty good and I don't really even like poetry. I think you have a typo though ("it where" in the 2nd stanza)

>>20099613
The stuff that goes into making a world feel well thought-out can almost completely come from studying things in the real world. Speculation breeds inauthenticity.

>>20101353
Somehow, me and their noble-girl/korean-woman-isekai'd-into-fantasy-noble-family-plays-6th-dimensional-hungry-hungry-hippos-to-survive-a-brutal-death genre have a spiritual bond of sorts.
I can't stop reading them and I can't stop finding them and they fucking pop up like mushrooms so I have to be careful with how many of them I pick up because I can't stop reading them.

>>20101701
>come up with a complex magic system that is intricately woven into the world
>use it constantly
>never explain any of the underlying details except for what the main character finds out through experimentation or old (and only half-correct) books
>first villain is literally gaming the system, never mention it, everyone just thinks he's insanely strong
>main character is actually totally misusing the system while thinking he's doing the same thing as everyone else, which is why he can do certain minor things that even the first villain can't despite being far weaker than him
>you can pretty much only realize any of this by paying absurd levels of attention and reading the entire story
Literally works for me bro, just write a story and stop indulging in worldbuilding autism.

>>20100782
Honestly I don’t know, thank you for your honest criticism. Right now I’m struggling to capture or articulate the aesthetic I see in my head. It’s meant to be a bit of a mixed bag between barely successfully re-engineered technology and areas in which they’ve far surpassed Earth in. Thank you, I’ll work on fixing that.

>>20101561
This story is getting worse. I'm waiting for the incest scene already.

>>20101633
You can get published. You write better than some random published 23 year old recent college graduate.

>>20099771
Dunno bro, let me know when you find out

>>20101024
This would do well as an in-game book. I wonder if there's a modding project that takes submissions from random strangers?

>dialogue is supposed to feel natural!"
>Write dialogue based on how I naturally speak with others
>your dialogue is shit! It's not natural!
Sheesh, how do people talk?

>>20101977
Like, uhh, yeah man, uhh, like, totally, uhh, fuck man, fuck, I err uhh, like, remember when, like, fuck I dunno that shit's so, like, fucking gay anyway man, like, like fuck man, I, uhh, I dunno

>>20101999
Perfect

>>20101977
natural doesn't mean realistic lol
common mistake a lot of writers make. natural dialogue is like, you know, when the things characters have to say are always relevant to the plot or their own interests. none of that small talk bullshit just straight up content you know. it's hard to explain man i just write it i don't philosophize on it.

since i began writing and seriously considering the techniques employed in it, i have been revisiting my favorite authors to try and cheat. Turns out the works of Sanderson, Rowling and Butcher and Doyle to name a few, a littered with broken rules, overuse of similes and substandard dialogue. Only one who's holding up thus far is my boy Pratchett. Writing has successfully ruined a good percentage of my childhood dreams, thanks /wg/.

>>20102037
Successful writers /=/ good writers. Successful books /=/ good books.

>>20102037
>try to read recreationally
>GASP! this author is using ADVERBS!

>>20102037
why won't this book for children use overcomplicated prose?!?!

Kaijuanon here
How does this sound? Context is that two monsters are facing down for the first time. One, while aware of his own considerable power, isn’t very keen on getting into a fight and would rather others leave him be. The other is very aggressive and really wants to kick someone else’s shit in because he considers it his life’s purpose.
>He didn’t really know what to make of the one standing before him. All he got was a sense of dread just by looking in his general direction, akin to the same sensation one would get when a bengal tiger stares you down. This guy was bigger than him, for sure, but the feeling he got just by looking at him made that size difference come across as absolutely gargantuan. The disparity he was feeling was best described as an ant staring down a whale
>Now, the other one looked upon this curious creature with almost a sense of wonder. Sure, in his life he had battled and dominated many foes, but he had never seen anything quite like this. And, to his mild delight, he could feel this one was much more capable of facing him than any of the others he had encountered before. Surely, he would gain great joy out of showing this thing who truly deserved to rule

>>20102049
Ditch the qualifiers and flab like "really" and "sure", along with other hedging, weak language. Improve your usage of verbs by adding variety - avoid using so many "was"s and other "to be" verbs. That ties in with show don't tell. Also, the passage overall reads more like intellectual schoolboys than anything dangerous or primal. Overall: needs work.

>>20100660
https://pastebin.com/h035MaDd
Rolled for Horror and got inspired by Perfume and Intervention but the tale kind of changed in the telling and turned into a horribly written low-rent rip off of Ghost (1990). Posting in the hopes someone will get some lol's out of it

>>20102049
>He didn’t really know what to make of
>All he got was a sense of
>just by looking in his general direction, akin to the same sensation one would get when
>for sure, but the feeling he got just by looking at him made
>come across as
>he was feeling was best described as
These words do nothing. Try to trim most of them. It's hard work but it pays off.
You can just say A is like B, not that A is akin to the sensation of B. Avoid indirection unless it has an effect you want.

>>20099568
is the implication he fucked his mother

>>20102044
You're equating storytelling and poetry. All novelists are failed poets, so already you should know that that poetry isn't the metric a novel is judged on.

>>20102037
Hard disagree on Rowling not holding up. Some of the wittiest shit ever written. Not in terms of high wit like Shakespeare, but in pure density. Some whimsical shit happening twice every sentence. Characters identified by a standout trait, every time. Pure consistency and writing like that is exhausting. Doesn't exactly exercise the adult mind but it's not supposed to.

>>20101024
>>20101240
i started to edit then remembered it's fanfic
as that anon said and i see you responded to, keep focus on your original work.

>>20102049
He wasn't used to looking up. Bengal-fire eyes turned downward on him. He saw curiosity and a smile and all of nature's cruel intentions, ignited from their hibernation, shining there. This one was of war and there was no other way for it. No choice for either.

>>20101110
big paragraphs are clunk short parts have camp potential dialog reads like compton-burnett

>>20099517
How do you describe places if you can't imagine what it looks like?

>>20102265
Imagine harder

>>20101110
I don't know if I've ever liked names in fiction. I do my best to let everyone remain nameless. My narrators usually don't have names either, and if they do, they're very casually dropped into the work with no fanfare. I much prefer working with characters like "the girl," or "the sergeant." I sometimes wish I had no name myself. I crave pure anonymity.

>>20102256
>>20102295
Thanks for reading and advice. I agree about the clunk. I'll probably gut and rewrite a lot of it or just move on to another story.

>>20102093
Probably a dick move but I tried rewriting it as an exercise: https://pastebin.com/VwrpSixD.. In the end, it's still a little too on the nose for my taste.

>>20102135
I left it purposefully ambiguous. Admittedly the ending needs a lot of work (I'm not even sure if the bit about her trying to groom her lovers into the MC's father got through).

>>20102037
>read lowbrow fantasy trash
>"whoa what the hell this is actually bad???"
who'd've thunk!

>he regurgitates harry twotter fanfiction
>still identifies as an author
the absolute state of /wg/

>>20102325
it did
to clarify, i didn't like my saying "implication" because i don't think it's implied at all, not even ambiguously.
if you upped the ambiguity thirsty nerds sure would love it.

>>20102047
>I use adverbs extremely liberally
>I just used one in this sentence without thinking it

>>20102768
Adverbs poison the soul, deviously. You may not even notice you're using them unnecessarily. They add nothing to your words, redundantly.

>>20102795
I suppose no adverbs have ever found themselves in great poetry, then. How long do you think it would take me to prove that idea wrong?

>>20102846
Anon I need you stop taking this so seriously, it definitely makes you seem like an unfunny type. You should approach /wg/ more humorously, casually.

>>20102848
I refuse.

>>20102852
Do you refuse candidly? Empathically? Indubitably?

>>20102848
>>20102852
And just to elaborate a bit, there is a reason why I refuse. Way back when, in the early days of 4chan, we used to LARP as stormfags, not because they were racist, but just because they were so aggressively retarded about everything they did. We were all a lot younger, and stumbling upon a group of people who were so genuinely dumb was novel when combined with the glee of transgression for transgression's sake. Fast forward to current year and the lesson is that you should take care mimicking retards, because the genuine article will eventually come along and think he's in good company.

These things have a habit of happening.
>what do i do bros
>t.bh f.am
>etc
I'm going to keep responding aggressively to shit opinions and shitposts because it just shows newfags that this is how it's always been. Over time, they get integrated into the cultural lexicon.

>>20102865
based oldfag

>>20102865
I don't know about you, but I used to larp as a stormfag because it was very annoying and made other people angry, which is probably the exact same reason anyone pretends all adverbs are bad.

>>20103042
Yeah, and before you know it, people will be mounting 3000 character defenses of the idea that adverbs are inherently bad, like they do LITERALLY everywhere else, and we'll have nobody to blame but the tricksters who decided to shitpost the quality down just a little bit more.

>>20102161
In case you're wondering, the story behind the two is
>One is a genetically modified frog monster, and is one of the protagonists of the story. He's not very keen on getting into a fight, but is perfectly willing to fight with everything he has
>The other is an unfrozen dinosaur thingamajig who's stronger than everyone else in the story. He lives for the battle and the battle lives for him.
How do you describe the "Aura" they give off?

>>20103339
>How do you describe the "Aura" they give off?
"Adolescent"

>>20103360
I don't get what that means

>>20103367
I'm just being a dick because genetically modified frog monsters and unfrozen dinosaurs make my eyes glaze over.

>>20103435
You ever read Baki?

>>20102865
>larping as stormfags
lets get one thing clear. jews are an abominable people, the basis for their religion is the genital mutilation of infants and the belief that others, goyim, are cattle to be exploited as slaves. their religion is unforgivable. as people they've made their money through usury, coin clipping and slavery over the centuries. are there good jews? of course. they are, unfortunately, vanishingly few, and even if individuals are good their religion as a whole - including the tenants and beliefs of their religion - is inherently evil and needs to be exterminated.

>>20099517
First person present tense and first person past tense

Which is superior?

>>20103538
Take a break from the internet, friend

>>20103588
Everything should be written in past tense.

>>20103588
They have different effects. Which effect do you want?
Past tense is my default choice but not my only choice.

>>20103590
Literally everything he said is a fact. It's not 2007 anymore. We have over a decade of autistically documented evidence of this shit just from this website alone. You have no excuse to not know this.

>>20103596
>receiving your worldview from 4chan
Ah. There's the problem.

Go outside and touch some grass. It's good for you.

>>20103339
I'm not that interested. I just wanted to show that there are shorter and more evocative ways to say the same things. You don't have to go full McCarthy-pastiche, but try not to be aggressively bland with the voice when you're writing a story from the perspective of a fucking giant dinosaur.

>>20103538
I have been wanting to study this sentiment more and present it in literature but I keep getting discouraged by traditionalists who have flamed me unless it's completely on the nose. I'm going forward with the project anyways because I am certain it's relevant to this century. It's just frustrating trying to learn anything from traditionalists who expect you to see everything like they do. I basically only have the Evola recommended reading graphic.

>>20103603
Personal question. Are you circumcised?
Maybe I'll rephrase. Did you parents violate your human rights and mutilate your genitals as part of a jewish blood ritual sacrifice to their god?

>>20103647
This is off-topic. Take your meds

Little ditty I managed before bed. I’m trying to create better sleep habits lately.

Sleep at night beginning
Beginning again. I try,
Try and try
Putting down the pencil
Sleep, I

Journal of thoughts
Journal of curiosities
Blue neon news to me
To me, my line dies

Last night’s fervor
Today’s morning haze
Starts here, I, it starts
Beginning now, try
The body pays; mistakes. Surely to pay, surely to pay for late beginnings and early, early days

>>20103532
The only nip I fuck with is Kitano

>>20103653
The topic is jews and their crimes against humanity.

>>20103610
I know

>>20103635
The crux of it is being able to argue as the devil's advocate, really. Conspiracy theorists aren't always dumb, per se. Some of them are actually very smart. They'll draw from multiple disciplines, weave together a narrative, concoct convincing arguments... but it always is so much complex, intelligent nuance built around one irrational, core belief. Don't ask traditionalists for justification. Find out their core belief and build your own framework around it. If you have any chance of realistically rendering it in full fidelity, you really do kind of have to become the traditionalist yourself.

>>20103675
Thanks, I think I already am in the camp just not on every point, its some of the core beliefs around the controversy that give me pause. I want to take those frustrations and place it in historical context because I think its a timeless worry that we may have a chance to save our world from corruption. That is a very real urgency and validity to that feeling and I want readers to understand why so many people feel that way.

>>20102265
How the hell did you even conceptualise it if you can't imagine what it looks like?

I became bereft of inspiration after the muse that sparked in me the will to write decided to leave. I still have ideas swirling in my mind, loudly screaming to be left out but I am afraid of letting them go and being alone with my true thoughts with no buffer to protect me from myself.
Now all there is of me is a farce of a human being, a pretender who calls himself a writer and yet writes nothing.
All I have left are ideas that I say (and lie) to myself one day will be put on a page and the perceived intellectual identity of a writer I gave myself as a way to mask the feelings of inadequacy and loneliness.
Sometimes I hope for some courage or bravery that would allow me to recover my will and once again be something, someone, more and yet I wonder that if given such courage and bravery would I remain or put an end to my suffering soul. I am a coward who wishes to be brave but being brave scares me more than anything else.
With no other option I keep going. A husk. A shell. Perhaps looking to find a new muse that would justify my existence but no such thing can be found at the dark rooms of an empty house or at the end of an alcohol bottle, the search is bound to be never ending. The only thing that comforts me is knowing that never ending has a time limit of me and I doubt that will take long.

can someone give me a non cringeworthy example of fanfiction?

>>20103778
No, because fanfic isn't /lit/, it's >>>/trash/

>>20103778
>>20103784

>>20103778
The Aeneid is fanfic of Homer
The Divine Comedy is fanfic also

>>20103588
First person past tense. Present tense is almost always YA garbage.

Kaijuanon. How does this sound for a fight?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGkh1W5cbH4
(For the mood)
>This place was something he had never thought of, even in his wildest dreams. A place where the air was dry and heavy with a smell that he could only describe as the ocean but magnified, and the ground almost felt like it didn't want him standing on it.
>And right in front of him stood that "Guy." He had no idea who this was, nor did he know of his exact intentions, but he felt something emanating from him. Something utterly indescribable, but whatever it was it was making him take a defensive stance.
>Before he could even react, the distance between them was closed, with the other one staring him down directly. Instinctively, he lashed out and struck him in the side of the head as hard as he could, sending his now-foe spinning. The brief relief that washed over him turned to fear not a moment later as his foe spun around and inflicted upon him something he couldn't even perceive. Whatever just happened, he was now sailing through the air, with truly terrible pain wracking the side of his head. He heard a slight booming noise from further away, and before he knew what was happening he had stopped, his body being swung away from him as his head stood still as stone. He didn't know why he stopped, but he got his answer when he looked up and saw the hand of his aggressor gripping him by the top of his head. Before he even knew what was happening, the foe grinned at him, let go, and he suddenly felt an intense pain and pressure blast into his abdomen, and his vision went blurry as the landscape spun round and round.
>The last thing he felt before unconsciousness took him was a bunch of tiny things being sprinkled on his chest.

>He looked down at the bloodied, dried out, dusty thing laying beneath him, and a sense of great disappointment washed over him. He could feel how strong this one was, and yet he fell with almost as much ease as the others, only managing to knock him off balance for a slight moment. His usual enthusiastic grin faded as he realized that if this was the best this new world had to offer, he'd never find anything resembling the rush of true battle ever again.

>>20103778
This guy's non-fanfiction (published on fanfiction websites because it pertains to fandom culture) is solid literature:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bavitz
https://www.fanfiction.net/~bavitz
He also wrote Madoka Magica fan fiction. I haven't read it because I haven't watched it, but I honestly can't imagine it's bad.

This author writes very competently: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNew/works
Maybe the subject matter is cringe.

I loved Chili and the Chocolate Factory: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13451176/1/Chili-and-the-Chocolate-Factory-Fudge-Revelation
But it's based on Roald Dahl's children's books, so I can't promise you won't find it cringe.

>>20103812
I'd like to add:
Rozencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Stoppard
and
Grendel by Gardner.

>>20103784
I changed my mind, I don't write fanfic anymore, I now write tie-in fiction!

>>20104020
There was a good bit of waffling around about uncertainty/lack of clarity- made it hard to be absorbed. For example
>A place where the air was dry and heavy with a smell that he could only describe as the ocean but magnified, and the ground almost felt like it didn't want him standing on it.
"Could only describe" and "almost" are red flags to me that the descriptors are imprecise, a possible reimagining with more concrete language of that line from me: The briny air stunk of something he could not place, like something burned beneath, and the ground itself felt ready give out beneath his weight.

>>20104442
>>20103812
Isn’t there a near endless tradition of classical reinterpretations throughout the whole history of the medium?

>>20103778
Ulysses
Well actually that is a bit cringe

If you use the background information of someone's work as reference to your own story it's a reinterpretation and not fanfiction.
Like Percy Jackson is a greek mythology interpretation and not fanfic.

>too
>also
If you could only use one which would you choose? Assuming the sense of "too" to mean "in addition" rather than "in excess of"

>>20104605
also

>>20100980
I use the opposite, text to speech, to help me know whether my dialogue sounds stilted, awkward or autistic. It's not perfect but I don't live alone so I can't say it out loud.

>>20104614
Good taste. I would also go with also. It's more versatile and more aesthetic. "too" always looked goofy to me, like "to" if it had too many chromosomes.

>>20104603
A lot of fan fiction reinterprets (particularly AU fan fiction). AFAIK Percy Jackson assumes at least basic familiarity with Greek mythology, i.e. you know it exists. That context is part of its appeal, and it would be less interesting to someone who never heard of ancient Greece.

>>20104742
I also think there's sort of a statute of how long it's been. Myths are stories, yes, but they're more an eclectic collection of stories that give some vague idea of what various characters involved were like so it's like "is using dragons fanfiction" when you get to that point I think. It's an ambiguous line, sure, but it's still good to note.

>>20104546
For context, he's on a salt flat.

>>20103778
Paradise lost

>non cringeworthy
oh, never mind

>>20104752
I understand what you mean but think of it this way. Fanfic is basically using already established characters so you don't have to explain a lot of things since the reader already knows or is able to extrapolate most of the background info by knowing the source material. In this way just using dragons wouldn't be fanfiction but using greek, chinese or any other mythology would.

>post first chapter of story a week ago
>This is great anon!
>post same chapter this week
>THIS IS FUCKING SHIT

What do?

>>20105011
Post it a third time. Tie-breaker round

>>20105011
>posting the same chapter twice
>people notice
stop being an attentionwhore

Does anyone want to read the Third Story in the compendium of The Misadventures of The Boy and The Girl?

>>20104605
also because my dyslexic brain confuses to and too too much so I have come to fucking hate it

>>20105045
lol no

>>20105045
STOP ASKING QUESTIONS
POST IT OR SHUT THE FUCK UP

>>20103653
>Take your meds

>>20105576
this is why i ask
>>20105567

How come it always feels extra cheap to make a tragic character female?

Would it make good writing to refer to a character in improper grammar. Similar to how in dialogue it might show them talking "liek dis with no good gramur or spelen". I'm going for the narration as a whole changes so it can instantly be known who is being referred to. The point isn't to have it as extreme as my example, but it would be a difference from normal narration.

How does one write "Strong?"
Like, let me explain. There's one character in the story who's just fucking bullshit levels of powerful, and I'm wondering how to give him this almost mythical presence. How does this sound? Note, I'm describing many of the characters and aspects of them, be it their abilities or their personality
>The waves have stilled in a mere moment, their typhoon halted in it's path
>The poison has been cured, no longer flowing through the veins of any being
>The nightmare has ended, the freedom of the victim is assured
>The lovers have been divided, never to see each other the same ever again
>The machine has malfunctioned, it's body pushed to the point of breaking
>The mother has failed her children, her weakness unable to nourish
>The wanderer's journey has ended, for it fears what the unknown shall do
>The guardian has burned, those who it cared for left to mourn
>The blade has broken, it's slicing abilities barely cutting peaches now
>And beyond all of them, he stands. He is strong. Very strong indeed, and it is with this strength, he feels an obligation to use it. Not for good or for evil, but just to use it.

>>20105907
Why don't you just show him doing something that demonstrates how badass he is?

>>20105722
Because males are designed to care about females

>>20105921
I'm talking about the aftermath of his fights. The fucker literally KOs our MC in two moves.

>>20105934
>The fucker literally KOs our MC in two moves.

Well there you go. Using narration to explain that the guy is OP is just a fancy version of "le power level is over 9000". There are times when narrative exposition is good to use, and this isn't one of them.

When do you guys decide to drop your story? I Wha tkeeps you going?/ I'm getting lazy and starting to think my story is so shit it shouldn't see the light of day.

>>20105045
Yes, more cum pancake stories? Bring it

>>20106044
>starting to think my story is so shit it shouldn't see the light of day.
Post some of it here and let us decide.

>>20105958
I literally just posted that in this thread.
I wanted to find a way to say that this guy’s power is fucking insane. Like, it’s one thing to just say “His power is this high!” But it’s another to say something about the nature of strength and what it does

I have written over five hundred thousand words of nonsexual adventure and romance roleplay. Roleplayers are garbage writers and even more garbager people.
Anyway, my long break is over and now I'm graduating to regular fiction. I will never need to work another day in my life - I don't need money, so my goal is two fold: a(u)rtistic expression and community engagement. I have decided serial fiction is what I will pursue.
I have experience in the fanfiction scene and I would rather not gain more experience there, so it will be original work. But my fanfiction background has informed me on the value of serial fiction. I am firm on this being my most enjoyable option.

So I plead ask for advice from serial writers. With my main goal being community engagement, I think Royal Road is a good starting zone for me. Fictionpress seems like a graveyard of engagement and Tumblr looks like a tough nut to crack. With this criteria in mind, where else should I look to crosspost?
I won't face problems due to content, so I'm really only asking for the best garden bed to lay my seeds to flourish.

GIVE ME YOUR FUCKING WORD COUNT RIGHT NOW OR I SHOOT YOUR FUCKIIIINGGGGG HANDSSSSSSSSSSSS

>>20106139
Contrast works best here. My default metaphor for strength is always mountains. You gotta pick something that screams "insurmountable" and pick something equally surmountable to compare it to.

>>20106044
or at least let us laugh at it, please

>>20106242
I mean, you know what “Black Air Force Activity” means?
This guy is that 25/8

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QLsgCkPQvpYspvf-dyefxEFbZDiI3UQX36_RiGJJ1ns/edit?usp=sharing

Here's a third story of The Misadventures of The Boy and The Girl!

>>20106199
Tik tok is the go-to right now

>>20106242
Speaking of which, I think it’s time I say something a little interesting.
A major plot point is trying to figure out exactly how he’s so powerful. Everyone else has a reason behind their powers and abilities, but him? Nothing about his strength makes any sense. HOW can an unfrozen dinosaur with a simplistic thermal manipulation ability be more powerful than gravity manipulators, particle beams, and fucking magic?

>>20106525
Two potential reasons
1. dinosaurs are cool
2. your dino did 100 push ups, 100 sit ups, 100 squats and ran 10 kilometers every single day

>>20106525
>HOW can an unfrozen dinosaur with a simplistic thermal manipulation ability be more powerful than gravity manipulators, particle beams, and fucking magic?
I assume you've watched Shin Godzilla if you're this deep into the Kaiju hole, but incase you haven't it has a similar power level issue.
Godzilla is repeatedly foiled by its inability to manage its own thermals but it has the ability to constantly evolve away its weaknesses.
Maybe not ape it one for one, but have his thermal manipulation be a hint towards his greater potential in the same way Shin Godzilla handled it.

>>20106592
>>20106602
The weird part is that it’s a power he barely uses. He just brute forces everyone

Does writing crappy porn count towards my word requirement.

>>20106721
Works for this guy
>>20106378

>>20100559
I havent even read this yet but the replies to this post make me think its a before its time comedic masterpiece

>>20106378
seek help

need a good rec on basic grammar. i barely know what the fuck verbs and nouns are.

>>20106721
I'm writing an erotic vampire seduction story, so yes

I have about 45k words done on my book. I've been working on it for about six months.

I don't want to post anything in here but does anyone want to trade critiques and edits on their work? Especially if anyone else is working with at least novella-length material, which is pretty hard to get feedback on. Even sympathetic/interested writers and friends who enjoy the book don't want to get burned out by reading it too much, and I've been editing the entire thing rather than going chapter-by-chapter and such, so I can't post excerpts or anything.

Will post burner email or send PDFs if anyone is interested. The book is essentially Weird History, if that's even a real genre. Basically an epic about settlers in the 19th century but with a lot of drugs and strange technology.

>>20106970

And yet you're using them correctly in your post

Just write and worry about technical shit later

>>20105907

>He is strong. Very strong indeed, and it is with this strength, he feels an obligation to use it. Not for good or for evil, but just to use it.

Everything else is fairly solid but this feels like a cop out. It should say he is strong and elaborate. You built up the momentum, keep it going. "Beyond all of them, he stands" feels weak. It could just say
>He stands. He is strong. His strength comes from.... blah blah blah. With this strength, he feels an obligation to use it
(everyone getting stronger feels like this btw, elaborate).
>Not for good or evil, but just to use it.
Feels like a cop out; he should have a keen sense of morality at this point? Or at least not feel "obligated"?

>>20107014
post excerpt pussy

>>20106237
234k as of today

>>20107014
If you can post a short excerpt, I can use it to decide the rest is worth reading. My own work was posted above >>20099568.

How do I know if my protagonist's goal is strong enough?
Right now his goal is to help another character with something... is that a good goal? (It's more specific but is the goal of helping someone else accomplish their goal a strong enough goal for my main character?)

>>20107110
It's fine as long you use the opportunity to properly explore why your protagonist wants to help the other character. If there isn't an interesting and significant reason why, then it probably isn't a good goal.

>>20107110
My protagonists main goal is to obey the minister of the state home for orphans he grew up in without any personal will, and I think it makes for a strong character because of what I put him through

>>20107110
The dramatic potential of a goal is proportional to how much it conflicts with the other goals of the character. If your character wants to help someone, you need to come up with all the other things he wants that are in direct conflict with that (this will obviously depend on what specifically he's helping him with). Ideally it should be something both internal and external. e.g maybe helping his friend is beginning to strain his relationship with his family or is affecting his work or is even straining his friendship.

>>20107143
Thank you I think this is a good way of looking at it and I'll remember your advice
>>20107149
That sounds like an interesting story!

>>20107171
Thanks for the advice I'm screenshotting these to remember later. The protagonist's goal is to help someone who he thinks is on his side but ends up being an opponent. Is that strong or too convoluted?

>>20107179
That is not a very strong goal, because it implies he didn't actually know the person he wanted to help very well. There's no emotional investment.

On the other hand, if there was a strong emotional investment, you risk losing the reader if they feel the betrayal removes momentum from the story. The goal ended up false. It's a risky idea.

>>20107197
(in the strong emotional investment route) If I were able to hold off the betrayal until right before the climax would that work?

>tfw can't stop writing about lesbians

>>20099578
Nah bro, have more faith in yourself. One often, if not always, has that feeling when submitting something (test, essay, order...) You actually inspired me to look for a place where I can send in something and get it published

>TFW you're writing an experimental short story where a hero is seemingly celebrating his son's birthday but it's actually all about the regrets he had because his son died, and he knows he neglected his child

>>20107082
>>20107105

>post excerpt

Maybe I will, but instead for now here is just a short/unfinished monologue/rant I wrote. It's just a guy on his porch talking about some local miscreant.

A hurricane that shows up every 80 years and causes an event to happen. Is it sentient? Does it have a name? I'm going somewhere here but I don't think it's anywhere great

>>20107915
What kind of event? Something supernatural in nature? Do people prepare for this as best they can? Do some people try to run into the hurricane to see what it is? Work from there.

>>20107915
I would recommend watching the classic film Sharknado for inspiration. Sounds right up your alley.

>>20107924
I'm thinking of a Man vs Nature angle. Maybe every time it shows up, it spawns a monster in the swamps (another idea for a horror short story I had). Against the hurricane itself, it's pretty hard to fight against a storm that size or weather in general. I started by learning about the twister Henry Darger wrote about called Sweetie Pie in one of his stories. Somewhere in this is a real good sense of dread and foreboding.

>>20106865
Plz help

>>20107946
How devastating is the hurricane itself? Is whatever 'event' it causes more or less dangerous, if only because it lingers? Why would your story's characters be caught up in it?

>>20107946
You could make it like the rockets in Gravity's Rainbow, where the actual motives of it are ambiguous to the reader and the book is about the protagonist's suspicion/paranoia that it might be alive and have some plan to do horrible things (possibly to him specifically.)

>>20107952
There's a thought. Maybe it lingers over the town or county and causes events that way, instead of bringing them in. So not only do they have to contend with a hurricane that won't go away, they have to contend with the supernatural.
>>20107963
So then you'd have a generational angle. The MC might know this hurricane from stories his grandfather told about experiencing it when he was a boy. Allows you to skip the personification and go right into the ambiguity of incredible weather.

>>20108100
It could be a world where the only real 'magic' comes from this hurricane, so advancements in technology come rapidly during its presence, but its danger is just as real as its potential for aid?

>>20106970
Verbs = action, occurrence, state of being
Nouns = name of object(s), places, actions, qualities, states of existence, ideas
Teachers erroneously say it's "Verb = doing, nouns = thing" but as you can see there's some more muddying of these things and lots of verbs don't have a "doing" about them, and some nouns describe or name actions.

>>20108105
Sounds close to the Everstorm from Stormlight Archives. For a story closer to a thriller or supernatural realism, as opposed to a fantasy, the hurricane could coincide with the climax of the story as a rend in reality. Whatever happens, people know it's happened before so there's no reason to not prepare for the arrival. That would affect a whole society. Not to mention, why would people even live near where the hurricane could land?

There were otters by the river. They avoided people so you never saw them, but they left marks in the snow where the slid around on their bellies. Otters just want to have fun.
There's an animal a man can respect. To live effortlessly, in leisure, to dwell in your element, to be surrounded by your loved ones. What else is needed?
But it still bothers me that I never find them. Is it God's way of telling me that happiness eludes me due to some fault in my making? If so, shouldn't He offer to repair it? Or at least help me see what I'm doing wrong.
I left poison bait for the otters, just to spite Him. The bait was eaten by something, but I didn't find otters, even dead ones. A childish rage.
This town is too small even for the few people still living in it. The bank closed down, so now you need to go to another town entirely for that sort of service. Only one grocery store left, when once there were three. Plenty of old hunters around. Shouldn't be too hard to get them to help me track and kill the otters.
The happiness of these animals mocks me. If I end theirs, will mine begin? Unlikely, but a man needs a hobby. There sure isn't any work to be found. Can't sell the place and move neither, nobody's buying. Mom is still in the home, but she doesn't remember me and wouldn't know if I left. The neighbors would. They'd say I abandoned her.
The otters abandon their old, I'm sure. Nobody judges. Not in the wild. But we live in a society.

>>20107229
Maybe. As long as it makes sense in retrospect and doesn't come across as a total asspull

>>20104831
>Paradise Lost

What if I told you my work in progress is a fanfic/reinterpritation of that fanfic...

>>20099598
Making some progress, and doing some restructuring to move things along.

>>20108407
Maybe it's a global storm. Or it's every other place is crappy, and this place is only SOMETIMES crappy.

>>20108567
People live near volcanoes because of the fertile land, right? Could be something like that.

>>20108620
Yeah, but volcanoes don't really go off regularly.

Is it possible to write well if you think feelings are cringe.

Not in an edgy teen way, it's just that my life is so devoid of feelings that trying to portray them on my characters feels disingenuous, I don't mind feelings in others' writing, I just couldn't make stuff like that myself. Are there any authors who got big despite ignoring feelings and by focusing on plot and storytelling?

>>20108685
Write in first person and have your mc be emotionless.

>>20108685
Although most books on writing will say no, I think there are several writers that ignore emotion and are still very successful. Mostly it's about choosing the right genre. Sci-fi, fantasy and historical novels can get away with little to no emotion (e.g see the works of Crichton). There the objective is really to educate as much as entertain or provide escape.

>tfw cant stop writing about how much I love God

>>20108720

>>20099568
I thought this was great. I think you really nailed the noir vibe.

>>20108685
Greg Egan is really bad at writing characters and not that good at writing emotions. All of his sympathetic characters are basically the same, and can't help but view everything through an analytic lens.
He gets away with it by doing other things well. I'm not aware of any other writers who are better at his brand of autistically hard sci-fi. He probably loves mathematics more than he loves writing.
I should note that he writes a lot about subjective experience, he just doesn't manage to make it convincingly emotional.
This deficiency makes his work worse. You should try to do feelings, but it's not hopeless if you fail.

>>20106592
He didn’t. He trained by beating the shit out of people.
The first thing he did was physically open his mother’s vagina and escape the womb himself

>>20100559
GIBE ME ACCESS I WANT TO READ THE COOMBAIT RRREEEEEEEE

>>20108788
Thanks, that really means a lot.

>>20101503
Only an idiot tries to do everything himself. You commission good artists to turn your retarded ideas into comics, then sit back and let them kill themselves making money for you. You spend 15 minutes writing the script for that week, and the rest of the time "promoting", ie. telling everyone online how awesome you are. Just make sure your name is a lot bigger on every cover than the artist's name, so that there's no confusion of who's really calling the shots.

>>20107390
i enjoyed this, brief as it is
it's rough, but in some places that's to its benefit.
would read more.
looks like you wrote it on a phone? always interesting to see.
keep at it.

>>20108720
>start writing about secret super soldiers/witches running cryptid factories/ambiguously lesbian magical girls
>they all eventually turn into stories about how much we all should love God

>>20108720
>>20109358
based

>>20107047
He fights not for good or evil. He fights because he feels it's his purpose. What are you to do with such mammoth power?

Emilyanon, if you're still around, I want you to know that the portuguese seafood restaurant scene made me chuckle. Also, I don't get why almost every action is described by three sentences.

What are the words to describe the difference between a sequence of events in chronological order vs. the sequence of those events as they appear in the story where you might move through time via flashback or reminiscence

>>20109454
I think you'd just refer to the latter as "plot order". As for the difference... I don't think there's really words for it. Why're you asking?

>>20099544
Try to keep track of where everyone is and what they're doing when they're not part of the action.

>>20099568
>sucked on the olive stems
Anon, have you ever seen an olive?

>>20099670
It's not wrong, per se, but the villain needs to have a clear motivation to do it. Otherwise it'll just feel like you're trying to shock and disgust the reader just for the sake of being shocking and disgusting. And yes, your friend is gay.

>>20099680
>>20099861
How about your aura allows you to locally decrease entropy, which is what actually does the "magic stuff," but at a cost of increasing entropy elsewhere by a greater amount (as dictated by real-world thermodynamics). Depending on how much entropy is involved, it could range from just wrinkling a nearby sheet of paper to turning a whole civilization into a homogeneous paste.

>>20102795
"Adverbs poison the soul," Tom said toxically.

>>20103592
Don't you mean everything should have been written in past tense?

>>20107332
Have you heard the CW McCall song "Roses for Mama"? It's got a similar twist.

>>20107390
Was the narrator 18 at the time? If so why was he running in the same group as some 12 year old?

>>20109491
Good catch. I was trying to refer to the pick they usually stick through the olives.

>>20109315

Thanks man, this is basically the format I started writing prose with and I have tons of them - just long monologues or maybe two guys yelling at each other.

I write everything on my phone, incl. My book. Obsidian for research and notes, Notepad Free for sketches and Word/OneDrive for the current draft.

>>20109491
>Was the narrator 18 at the time? If so why was he running in the same group as some 12 year old?

I meant to fix the age gap a bit and have it more like 14 and 17, something like that.

>>20109404

Find GF with lvl 99 skills

No seriously. Does he have a woman? Family? Allies?

>>20110105
>more like 14 and 17
But then the bit about drinking at 18 doesn't make sense either. If I were you I'd just make them about the same age.

>>20110131

Other than that what did you think?

>>20110113
He's a fucking super dinosaur who was preserved in a salt field for millions of years. He doesn't care

>>20110285
Is he even really sapient? Does he HAVE higher thought or is he mostly instinctual?

>>20110328
That's actually a question that's constantly asked about many of the monsters.
In fact, a rather huge moment is the protagonist Kaiju revealing that he is, in fact, a sapient creature who has higher thought processes, shown when he actively seeks out a certain individual for a specific reason

>>20110469
So what's the answer for THIS one? Is he just instinctually seeking to dominate and show his strength, or is he seeking something deeper?

>>20110167
It's a bit hard to follow. Who was the "someone" telling the kids about the laws? Which kids were planning to join the circus? Was that prior to '73 when the narrator was younger? Why were the kids fed up with Danny when the narrator only gives examples of him bothering the sheriff and damaging files?

>>20110478
The protagonist is searching for meaning. The antagonist has his own meaning, and it's to dominate shit because he feels an inherent obligation to. Like a higher calling

>>20109433
You have no idea how happy it makes me that someone is actually sticking with it. You're probably reading an older version too. I've done a lot of edits. (A lot less spelling errors).

> I don't get why almost every action is described by three sentences.
i don't either. This is why I needed beta readers. I never caught this or noticed.

>>20100397
>the chapter was milquetoast
Could you elaborate? I'm working on chapter 2 right now and trying to write better.

>say...there is a woman sitting in her study or in her kitchen, and her own heart is beating wildly in empathy. She is weeping, she is growing ardent— that's an abstraction, but that's what we're talking right now— over such sentences as "Her heart beat wild with passion." Does that not prove that this is literature? How is that not art if it can induce that kind of reaction in a reader? It is not art, because her emotional response is a result of her filling in the blanks left by that abstraction. The direct, visceral response to the text results from her filling in from her own fantasies, her own past, and her own aspirations. Abstract, summarizing, generalizing, and analytic language will induce the reader to fill in the blanks and thereby distance her from the work and the characters. The moment-to-moment, fresh, organically connected sense impressions of the work of art will draw the reader into it.

Agree or disagree?

>>20110636
I'm reading the pdf you posted here a month or two ago. It's been a nice break from the stress.
Where/when can I find an updated version?

HAPPENING

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HsLfrpEAfB8

Can I still write the fun story I wanted to write in my early 20s despite knowing full well what I'm ripping off of, which paralyzed me with shame and prevented me from writing it while every other hack made off with accolades and patreon bucks?

>>20110756
Because nothing happened aside from Jules and Nate agreeing to a date and Nate ducking out the back to avoid his father. You used 2.5k words to have 5 conversations 3 of which were worthless. I realize its fanfic so these characters all have histories or whatever - I've never seen or even heard of the show before you posted this - but that should be a past is prologue type thing it seems more like you're only rehashing existing relationships for readers who already know those relationships. Have your characters do something.

>>20110908
Thanks anon that sounds accurate. I think I was trying to avoid writing one of those fanfics where the characters meet up and fuck in like the first two paragraphs and I made it so nothing happened instead. Next chapter will have hot jock-on-tranny action I promise.

Can someone motivate me to actually work on my play

@20110866
No one cares Frank

>>20110852
https://litter.catbox.moe/8ry9aw.pdf

Here you go anon. But if you find anything wrong or you have some good suggestions let me know. Glad you're enjoying it.

I do think it collapses near the end though. There's 3 chapters near the end that been trying to edit and change but to no avail. I'm waiting for a few weeks off so I can look at it with fresh eyes.

>>20110953
there's a smoking hot babe who's willing to do nude stuff but you'll never get to fuck her live on stage if you don't write the sex scenes

>>20101024
In college I worked as an editor for my school's literary magazine. If I had picked this up then, I would have made up my mind that this is publishable-grade writing by the first page. I've read entire published novels with worse prose than what you have here.

As other have already noted, your writing has some excellent charisma and silky smooth flow. My only content criticism is that the writing deteriorated near the end, and it was difficult to figure out what was happening when the character was bound on the bed.

Idk if you care, but some nitpicky typographical stuff:
>Punctuation always goes inside the quotation, even when the quote ends the sentence.
>Use m-dash for interruptions and parenthetical asides, not hyphens

Good work, Anon!

>>20111018
There's no sex scenes though, it's about an engineer and fireman in a locomotive.

>>20111050
make it
a firewoman
a firewoman with a firecrotch

>>20110835
What is art? Is the enormous poop I just took art because it made my heart beat wild with passion?

>>20110866
Does he have thought blocking? Why is he stopping mid-sentence?

Well I made my pitch. Wish me luck lads

>>20111229
Good luck :)

>>20099598
Added a large chunk today, feeling good about things.

>>20111111
witnessed

>>20111292
>>20111292
Her'es your bread