/lit/ - Literature

hello. how are u? i m fine.
i dont write, but i was thinking about maybe considering writing something someday.
does n e 1 have any tips?
i want my work 2 b as epic as lord of the rings, as timeless as crime and punishment, as influential as atlas shrugged, n as best selling as harry potter.
n mebbe a choreographed dance # in the middle. i luv dabbing.
i dont have a lot of time n motivation 4 practice, and i dont read n e thing but isekai self inserts on wattpad.
ok, i dont read them, i just kinda skim them. i get the gist.
im looking 4 a quick fix so i can skip the boring middle part w all the work n sacrifice.
if u help me, i promise 2 remember u when i become rich n famous. u can come over 2 my mansion n e time.
thank u n have a nice day.

>>20337043
isn't the self marketing game pretty much reserved for people who are writing vampire romances on amazon? why would I not try to get traditionally published and then if I fail at that just go to RR and try to get paypigs?

I cried out of happiness for the first time in life right now. It’s so good, you’re overwhelmed by love and can’t deal with all those good emotions and just cry. First time in years that I’m genuinely enjoying living.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54100/wish-mountain-adventure-drama-fantasy-tragedy/chapter/902672/chapter-one-amaryllis

>>20337083
You good anon? You just orgasm or something?

>>20337108
He finally opened his writing document and thought about putting down the first word of his novel.

>>20337108
It was better than an orgasm. A male orgasm is like 5 seconds. I felt overwhelming good for minutes. I hope your life and everybody’s here goes well.

>>20337139
How high are you estrogen levels right now anon?

>>20337142
According to my check up they’re fine, so are my testosterone levels. I also have a 7 inches cock, shitty beard though.

>>20337139
>>20337142
>>20337149
Ugh. There's enough of this on /b/.
Let's not louse up /wg/ with it.

>>20337043
how do i stop myself from putting too many ideas that don't even go well together into my writing? i just get an idea i think is really fun and try to shove it into a narrative it doesn't belong in

>>20337083
happiness is a delusion as much as sadness is. you're riding an emotional high, but it isn't 'living'. you will come crashing down soon enough. living is in the in-between - the peaceful contentment. emotional highs and lows only serve to distort your cognition
enjoy the fall

>>20337181
seething is a delusion too

>>20337173
Set aside a seperate file and write down your ideas, then take a glance at them every once in a while and maybe you can develop whole stories around them to expand your universe, or write them as standalone ones. It helped me a ton.

>>20337149
What were your actual testosterone levels?
Don’t say healthy. Healthy doesn’t tell me much as the actual range for “healthy testosterone levels” can vary between 200-800 nano grams per decaliter, which is a huge variance.
Btw, 7.75” cock, great beard and mustache.
Never checked levels, I’d assume average.

writing general

>>20337043
is it possible to write a comedy novel in biblical language?

Here’s my shitty shit. Anons reply with links to your works so I can read them
https://pastebin.com/jPTErygB
>>20337246
I would read that.
>>20337173
Literally just take to pen and paper. You’ll get so tired of writing that you’ll only wanna stick to the essentials

>>20337277
Still purple.
A bunch of disconnected scenes, with an unexplained ending.
Was this a school assignment?

How is this?

Avh Voer joined the King’s army after a series of encroachments in Calias by the Kingdom of Erona left his home destroyed and his family in refuge. Avh learned spear work from his father who had served in the military prior to his life as a dairy farmer. War was declared between the two kingdoms a month after he had joined and continued for the next two years, Avh experienced the brutal realities of war. Avh told Crutch about the comrades he made and how after each battle the fewer of them were around. He achieved mastery of the spear and was promoted to sergeant. The war ended and he would spend most of his days drilling recruits. He felt empty and aimless. His hollow shell yearned for battle, for conquest. He felt guilty that he desired to fight and that he wanted the bloodshed. Some days he would volunteer for patrol duties just on the off chance he could fight an enemy. Peace was the worst. How could anyone live in such monotony? The alcohol and ayoka powder built him up just enough to bring him down. One day he decided he was going to kill himself and left the barracks.
He went down to the Masar River where it ran through the willows. As he was about to cast himself into the river he saw a nun in white and blue robes playing on a psaltery. She smiled and hummed to herself as the swirls of plucked strings danced through the willows. Avh walked up to the nun who continued playing. After a minute the song came to an end and she said in a gentle voice, “You wary one, come rest, your journey is far from over.” “I’m not on a journey, I live up the way.” She looked at him with hazel eyes. “Why then do you look lost?” Avh blinked and was about to say he was not in fact lost but he stayed silent. The nun picked at the psaltery letting out more calming notes. “Are you happy?’ Avh asked the nun. “Of course.” “How? Tell me how?!” Avh felt his hand shake. She stopped playing just for a moment, “I just am for I am blessed by Lum. Do you wish to be saved?” Avh was spiteful at the concept of religion, “How can I be saved? How can you be happy with this Lum? The horrors I have seen inflicted… the horrors I’ve inflicted…”
“Even the finest warrior is defeated when he goes against nature, by his own hand he is doomed. Having flaunted your excellence, your victories, the jubilation of battles have marred your soul. The misfortune of others you have caused has made you lose your humanity. You, who are so thirsty for battle and revenge, has guilt setting in thus you declare yourself an enemy to be destroyed. Now you have the audacity to ask how I’m happy? I’m happy because I’m not you.”
Avh fell to his knees, she was right. “Can I change?”
“No, but you can take the oaths and change your name.”

Avh Voer joined the King’s army after a series of encroachments in Calias by the Kingdom of Erona. He left his home destroyed and his family in refuge.* that correction wasnt saved =/

>>20337078
>traditionally published
because being traditionally published is pretty much reserved nowadays for trans lesbian persons of crime, or jews with connections in the industry

>>20337344
is this your first draft?

>>20337388
yes, it seems some of my corrections didnt save but its an excerpt from a flashback. It hasnt been revised yet as literature or prose

>>20337139
>A male orgasm is like 5 seconds
only if you're circumcised

>>20337246
hebrew would be fine. yahweh was a big jokey jokester who play a real funny one on his followers

>>20337411
you should at least make a second draft (especially for a piece so short) before posting it here, our time may not be all that valuable but you should still respect our use of it

Why can't I be my own agent and attend the meetings to sell my book? Why do I have to find some liberal arts major woman to "sell" my book for me?

>>20336543
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn! etc

Evil is evil, anon. Trying to make it 'le inhumanity' is pointless and overdone unless the 'villain' is eldritch and unfathomable in nature, completely incapable of understanding human suffering. Plus, 'chaotic' and 'pure evil' are simply incompatible. I know it doesn't fit with your vision, but you're going to need internal conflict to make the character interesting, and there's infinite potential in a 'collective human experience' motif. I would recommend revising the concept so that the fusion of minds has created an overwhelming impulse of some sort - he absolutely needs a goal. Saving / destroying humanity is also overdone, so think about what this "pure chaotic evil" might seek. Perhaps he just needs to vicariously experience the pain of others to feel alive (Tool has a great song about this.)

My only other piece of advice would be that if you did manage to meaningfully convey a truly 'other side' of human experience, you would instantly become the greatest writer of the 21st century. Good luck.

>>20337246
The Bible has a lot of comedy in it. For instance the moment when Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve realised they've fucked up and they hide from God. God's light passes over the area they're in like Sauron's eye and he says in his big booming God voice 'Where are thou?'

Something about that just cracks me up. Reminds me of my Dad looking for me when I did something I shouldn't. And the irony maybe that Adam and Eve fucked up everything for everyone thousands of years and this was the start of reality setting in.

>>20337497
i refuse to respect anybody who takes reviewing stories on this mongolian basket weaving forum seriously

>>20337563
>Omniscient God pretending to not immediately know where they are and what they've done while they try to dance around the issue
Comedy gold.

>>20337518
The western world is corrupted with fiat currency backed by the petro dollar and the US military monopoly on violence. This trickles down to Netflix being billions in debt yet somehow still functioning as a business. Doctors make you sick. Lawyers simplify the conviction process. You pay taxes to the government because the government owns you. The police protect property, not you.

HR stacies and the like are just the minions of a weak society.

>>20337565
And yet you're still here, seether.

Alright fellas, I have an idea which I want to put it on paper but I'm not sure who would read it. I'm just going to write it to stop thinking about it but from the realistic side, I want it to be at least read by someone other than me, if not appreciated

>>20337570
My favorite is that he had a chosen people for years and years but then decided he'd made a oopsy so he changed his chosen people to a different group. The headfake is masterful trolling.

how do you guys keep the time going in your stories, I've noticed that some stories can get to 100+ chapters and only pass like 5 days

>>20337139
huh? mine are at least 30-45 seconds

>>20337629
Less descriptions more actions

Since /writing/ is dead anyway I'll add another funny bible moment

>moses leads jews out of egypt
>a literal cloud of godsmoke appears atop a mountain
>moses goes into it for 40 days and nights where he receives the 10 commandments
>in that short amount of time tens of thousands of his followers, including his own brother Aeron, decide to build a golden calf so they can have endless day and night orgies around it
>moses comes down from the mountain with the tablets and is so angry he throws the tablets to the ground and breaks them
>he then orders the golden calf to be burned and he puts the pieces into drinking water
>he pleads to god to have mercy on the jews for being such fucking degenerates ungodly idiots
>1/3 of the Jews refuse to follow moses and God even after all the miracles (like parting the red sea and all the stuff that went down with Rameses in egypt)

The moment where Moses is so fucking angry he breaks the tablets that were hand written by God is pretty funny to be. Sad, but funny.

>>20337563
yeah, i just don't know how i could make it work without it seeming pretentious or fake, especially if the setting is relatively recently

>>20337629
sometimes you get a busy couple of days, sometimes you just sleep all day. know what I mean?

>>20337646
As long as you have fun with it and it makes you laugh it'll be worthwhile.

>>20337043
new essay just dropped

https://disintegrationsystem.blogspot.com/2022/05/guy-debord-and-demiurge.html

>>20337089
Hress Dunter returns... with children?

I'm going to start writing to have my story ruined, I need to end this shit already

>>20337658
I realised there were some big problems with the old version of Wish Mountain. The first was that it was written in third person, and I'm just not good at that. So I've just to first person and it's working a lot better. The second was that I have so much worldbuilding and story and character to give to the reader that its overwhelming.

So I realised the I needed characters that would enable me to slowly give out information and story at a pace that readers can digest. In doing that I came up with Amaryllis and Chicory, and their backstories and inclusion in the plot. Wish Mountain is an ensemble narrative (like Game of Thrones) and it's starting from level 0 with the two orphans.

Because they're A) children, and B) orphans that have lived in relative isolation from the world, I can actually put the reader right into the story in a way I wasn't doing before.

Just thought I'd share some insight since this is /writing/ after all.

>>20337688
do you find adding the genres to the title helps? any tips for views?

>>20337694
I'm the worst person to ask for that. I got to 22 followers with the former version of Wish Mountain. I added the genres to the title because I hope it might show up in the seach engine more.

Same reason people put 'litrpg' in the titles. I'm on the fence about trying to get reviews to fill out my story, since I did that before and honestly the reviews are very in-organic because everyone is trying to be nice so they get a nice review in return. I'm always nice but honest with my reviews, which has caused trouble in the past.

The main reason I'm even bothering to put my stuff on Royal Road is because I can't see a better alternative.

>>20337688
Cool, glad you reconfigured and retooled what you were doing to better build the world in an organic way. There's a reason a lot - not all - but a lot of fantasy stories start with some naive farmboy in some little patch of nowhere being dragged into the bigger world. The reader gets to discover it with him, and gets to experience the wonder of learning about how things are, which is a big part of the draw of the fantasy genre. And then the strength of 1st person is you aren't tempted to get into Big Exposition mode, which is easy to fall into in 3rd. Looking forward to reading it once you get a little more out in a few weeks.

>>20337078
What benefits do you think trad publishing has?

>>20337694
The way you build readers is by 1. posting relatively quickly, 3 times a week and 2. posting consistently. If you can't do 1, for whatever reason, you must do 2. Being inconsistent is a deathknell.

>>20337714
try scribblehub too, I find the analytics to be better (and free), the people are just as quiet but they have a lower bar.

>>20337720
Yeah completely agree. I read The Fellowship of the Ring, and whilst it took for fucking ever to get going, the time it took to set up the world makes everything feel grounded later on.

I'm currently sitting on 15 complete chapters. It's taken me months to get to this point though around work and life in general, so I'll have to be patient and post slowly. In the mean time? Memes.

>>20337731
I'm already posting 3 times a day and might start posting a 2rd or 3rd novel just to see if any of them can hit pay dirt, I feel like you really have to hit it with a lucky genre/story

I feel like I'm dithering too much on a not-that-crucial character detail to include that it's actively stopping me from writing. How the hell do I just pick what I should do?

>>20337747
When I get caught up in stuff like that I go for brevity. And I decide that if it becomes important later I'll add it in then. Set up the expectation that you don't have to explain everything to your reader right away, because you'll get to it later.

In chapter one of my story I don't even describe the appearance of my character except for her age and a bit about her height. It's only in the second chapter when it becomes relevant that I add in her general appearance and ethnicity.

>>20337747
If it's not something debilitating like a peg leg wtf cares.

>>20337756
Ah, no, it's not that sort of character detail, it's more a later on reveal that I'm unsure on what I should have the nature of it be, or if I should even have it in the first place. Basically protag seemingly died and came back with minimal memories, but I'm thinking of having the reveal be that the being who is the protagonist isn't QUITE the guy who he's visualising himself as, rather he's the guy's sword.

>>20337769
Like seems like a difficult switcheroo to pull off

>>20337776
Well, hence my dithering. I'm also thinking maybe it's more like a weird gestalt entity. Not a true resurrection, but the original guy is 'there'. The sword wasn't at all sentient or anything prior to the death, but magical bullshit meant it would be, etc.

>>20337739
Wait, wishmountainbro that was you these past couple threads asking if you should start posting with only 30k words drafted? Good luck, but I think you're making a mistake. You should focus on drafting while being free of the demands posting requires.

>>20337799
Yeah, you're probably right. I waited until I had the 30k done (as in drafted, re-drafted, and edited again for clarity), so it completes a full arc/act in the story. At least I can give people a satisfying beginning, middle, and end to one part of the narrative if they choose to invest the time in the story.

>>20337043
What's the word:

A person who believes in and has a strong sense of justice and upholding the law (but only when the law is just), but isn't necessarily a police/military/law personelle.

>>20337810
Vigilante?

>>20337810
Righteous? Though Righteousness also means one has a Righteousness under God.

>>20337810
Just

>>20337714
Want advice?
Tell me more about what you’re writing and I’ll help.

>>20337563
There's also the sequence where a preacher was laughing at the false gods and asked the other preachers if their gods were relieving themselves and that's why they aren't showing up

>>20337769
>>20337784
Seems like something that would be difficult to pull off from the protagonist point of view. It also seems as though it's a much more interesting conflict for another character to deal with rather than for the protagonist to deal with himself. Having a protagonist come to terms with his friend being this once inanimate object seems so much more satisfying than 4k words of a protagonist shuffling around the fact that he no longer has a body.
Not exactly what you are going for here, but I really like what Blacksouls 2 did with a similar idea. You meet up with a character who died in the first game only for it to be later revealed that this is not who you think it is. She is instead a ghoul that cannibalized your friends body and inherited all of her memories and personality. Ghouls in this universe are instinctually inclined to take on the role of the consumed and go on living as that person as if they had never died.
It seems like an abhorrent fate for this character you cared about but you can't really fault the ghoul, It was only acting on instinct and there was no malicious intent behind the transformation. There's also apart of you that just wants to accept that this is the same character since the guise is so convincing and it undoes the pain of her death.

>>20337900
See, my main inspiration was a game, actually. Ghost Trick, specifically. The audience will never really know the pre-death version of the character, so the reveal won't really change who they are, simply who they thought they were. I'm also debating whether I should even do that at all, admittedly.

>write and sat so much and so long i developed a huge hemorrhoid.

Do I go with bengay or do I get a surgeon to cut it out?

what stats do you actively track on your writing (ie. avg word per day, median words, planning time, etc)
I do words per day and I do a sum per month/quarter

>>20337959
Time. I set a timer and go back and forth between doing whatever I feel like and then spending 5-10 minute intervals writing. That way I can always be proud of the time spent and not worry about word count.

>>20337910
My only issue is that I immediately jump to questioning how this sword doesn't know he's no longer human.
He must have the ability to sense characters around him and the ability to talk. Wouldn't be much of a character otherwise.
Does he also feel as though he's still moving his limbs? Do the people around him just play along with his delusions? What are his dreams and ambitions? Does being a sword conflict with these? How does he change after learning he's not a human anymore?
Even answering these myself, I find it hard to create a satisfying twist that props up a satisfying story. It almost feels as though I'd be forced to handle this as a gag side character that is later revealed to have a tragic past.

>>20337823
>>20337826
>>20337834
Bros... I swear it's like a combo of these three and I know it exists because I've used it before to describe a knight.

>>20337934
Consult your doctor instead of 4chan.

>>20337990
Valiant?

>>20337959
A chapter every 3 days.

>>20337990
Chivalric? Honorable? Egalitarian? Candor? Integrity?

>>20337990
Knight-Errant?

>>20337981
So the circumstances are such that his 'death' leads him to existing mostly in spirit form, and he manifests a body via magic stuff which is just the body of the original guy he thought he was. I'm thinking of having it play into his search for his identity because it's made clear that even the guy's closest friends barely knew him, so there's very little clues for what he was like, and the end result will be taking it as a sort of inheritance, maybe with the real soul of the dead guy giving one proper talk to the sword down the line.

>>20337089
If anyone wants to listen to the first chapter instead of reading it here is an audio version.

https://voca.ro/1dFNbU4vbMZ6

>>20337043
gf trying to encourage me to write again but l burnt everything years ago and l dont see the point

>>20338138
Stop masturbating

>>20338111
Before I listen to it, are you the one who did the voices and did you change your voice for each character? This has a big impact on whether or not I listen.

>>20338142
l dont masturbate much desu

>>20337645

Breaking the tablets was a prelude to the massacre him and Aaron were planning. It represents an abandonment of the law

>>20338149
Yes, and yes on changing voices for characters, but I fucking loathe when males try to do female voices in a tryhard way. So voicing the children for instance I just speak relatively normal, maybe a bit lighter but nothing ear-piercing like a lot of audiobooks.

Yahweh was a dragon

>>20337959
Shoot for a chapter a week, work on it a little every day at least (brainstorming, drafting, editing).

I no longer sweat word count on a daily basis or beat myself up if things are going slower than usual - focus on enjoying the process as much as possible.

>>20338185
I thought yahweh was a bull, or a calf.

What’s the point I’ll never be as good a writer as Rowling or Martin.

>>20338327
>Rowling
>good

>>20338327
You never know if you don't try.

>>20338327
you're mixing up the terms good and successful

>>20338345
I don't think either GRRM or Rowling are bad per se. Overhyped? Sure. Cockgobbled to hell and back by fans? Yeah. But I wouldn't call either overtly bad.

>>20337810
Zealot, if interpreted loosely, otherwise just a good man

>>20337934
roll up a copy of l'etranger and stick it up in there anon, you'll be alright

>>20338327
just do it for the money bro

I write movie scripts.
I wrote a huis clos about a stand up comedian stuck in purgatory with a sitcom audience (sitcom laugh tracks and other audience reaction audio, like sighs for example)
He's stuck on the stage with the sitcom audience, when he goes through the left curtain he goes out of the right curtain and vice versa like in the video game Portal.
At the end he finds a trapdoor and jumps in only to end up at the top of the screen and fall on the floor, he attemps suicide by jumping multiple times in a row like in that one russian gore video.
There's a lot of goofy stuff and jokes, mostly gross out humor, the main character is pretty stupid and gets progressively dirtier, like he takes eggs to the face and at one point, he snaps and tries to piss on the audience, but the piss goes through the "portal" and comes out of the back curtain directly onto his head, it's pretty funny imo.

I'm currently writing a 3 episode long western parody, where some autist larps as a cowboy in modern Paris and ends up going against actual gangsters, there's lots of funny characters like the sheriff, who is a lazy crooked cop that larps as a sheriff, or Mr Vegas, which is basically just Jerma's Mr Green (I want to recreate the bit where he has a heart attack and pukes on his cards yet still somehow wins big), Mr Vegas is the antagonist of episode 2.
https://youtu.be/5qXeJczqy8s

What do you guys think?

>>20338490
I had a scarily similar ide to the sitcom audience one. I kind of lost interest in the idea because of Wandavision doing the gist of the idea anyway. Your stuff sounds zany and not in the way that I like. Sounds like the kind of thing Daniel Radcliffe would be a part of.

>>20338490
They sound funny. The stand up one sounds like a short film rather than a full movie though.

>>20338500
It is a short film, it's gonna be 8 minutes long and I'm waiting for a reservation for the stage to shoot the suicide gore bit, I already did all the rest.
That shit should be coming out in july.
>>20338495
It's not a very original idea, I guess writing zany cringefest is what I do best, since I'm a loud obnoxious dumbass irl.

>>20338519
Zany is great if you can provide a bit of grounded reality to land the story. Something that contrasts well with the zaniness. But if you don't believe in objective truth and positive ways for a character to resolve their trauma, you can't really include it effectively in the story.

>>20338524
>grounded reality to land the story
I tried but that fucked up the passing too hard, I mean since the whole setup is kind of suffering porn anyway I just figured I'll add a bunch of goofy stuff to solidify the main character's role as a "Performer", I mean both the film and main character are named "Pagliacci", there has to be a lot of goofy shit in there to make this work.
>>20338524
>positive ways for a character to resolve their trauma
The credits play during the suicide scene, where the guy painfully falls through the portal multiple times in sync with clown music.
Curtain closes, title on screen, then Pagliacci comes back in a wheelchair covered in bandages and repeats the opening scene.
He does the pagliacci joke in both the opening scene and post credit.
I like the ending and think it's satisfying imo, heavy inspiration from the myth of sissyphus.

>>20338395
I know zealot carries a certain intensity to it, but this is the closest to what I had in mind. I suppose a zealot doesn't have to be law, but can be justice.
>>20338057
>>20338024
>>20337999
Thank you

>>20338562
Zeal is usually religious in nature hence the need to set alternate expectations if used for a Moral Good Guy. Most zealots are lawless or evil in modern lit.

It sounds like you're thinking of a "Paladin" type character. The adjective or descriptor you're looking for doesn't come to mind but I guarantee 10 minutes of frantically googling neutral/lawful good dnd alignments will dig it up for you.

>>20338579
Yeah you sort of get what I'm on about lol. Apparently the alignment would be "lawful moral" which just brings me back to square 1. I'll do some more googling later but thanks for more clues

>>20337563

The fall was a cosmic joke. And God intentionally played it upon himself. Like how Jesus knew Judas would betray him and had him do it anyways.

Why is beastiality okay but not incest?

>>20338617
their cases?

>>20336543
That's just a psychopath, anon. They're definitively inhuman, at least the more "pure" ones. A psychopathic intelligence with the power to achieve its goals without needing to resort to social manipulation is the thing you're describing.

It sounds so satisfying. Listen to it while you type on your keyboard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsEbtUcDw40

>>20337089
>putting tags in the title

>>20338783
Is it really that bad?

>>20338617
Beastiality I'd legal in some parts of the world (and animal prostitution too) but first degree incest is not legal anywhere

>>20339068
pretty sure cousin marriage is legal in some places and adult child incest is legal in others

>>20339073
I know this is the /lit/ board, but I'd expect at least some degree of critical thinking.

>>20339096
>expecting /wg/ to read

What are your thoughts on elegant writing? Because my story so far has a lot of fun concepts but they're written very factually and basic. For example if there's a turd on the ground i'd write something along the lines of
>There's a human turd on the ground.
Maybe an extra line about the character wondering why there's a shit on the ground or maybe a joke about some poor mutt having a butthole the size of a Pepsi can but generally I write it as it is. No "It's pungent stench is violating my orifices" type of word play.
So is simplifying information alright? Will people call me a room temperature IQ retard for writing at a 5th grade level?

"The Green Duck"

1/3

>>20339236

"The Green Duck"

2/3

>>20339239

"The Green Duck"

3/3

Didn't really go anywhere with this but thought it was funny.

>>20337043
my most recent article. thoughts?

>>20337043
another recent article, albeit a month or so older

>>20337043
one more, back from February

>>20339263
>that any, and all
An unnecessary comma in the first sentence. Not a good look.

>>20339215
It's an alright choice to make, and I tend toward that style myself.
I do think it's worth experimenting with elegant descriptions as a weapon in your arsenal. Reading Nabokov made me appreciate the power of a good choice of words. Pnin is full of wonderful descriptions, some very concise.
You can use them for moments you want to be particularly pungent, and if you're on the lookout you sometimes discover them by chance.

>>20339321
What about the ideas presented? That's more what I'm concerned about

>>20339356
Thanks anon, this is a really nice answer and exactly what I was looking for.

>>20339370
Your ideas are a diamond dozen. 85% of the people who share your beliefs can write just as well, if not better than you. The market you are attempting to penetrate was oversaturated in 2017 and has even less room for you now than it did then.

>>20337277
>digits
Feels forced. Like you really really didn't want to use a too "common" of a word. The word choice doesn't fit with the rest of the paragraph either.
>blocked out
The phrasing is clunky. Leave out the "out".
>holding the silhouette
You can't hold a silhouette.
>minuscule
Use basic words. Doesn't fit.
>Looking down from the shuttle shaped sun he spies his mother
What? Is the boy a solar deity or something? How can he look DOWN from the sun? Earlier he was looking UP at the sun. And how does the sun become "shuttle shaped" unless looked up at and through the toy? And in that case the toy wouldn't be a space shuttle anymore but a wooden board with a cutout of a space shuttle in the middle of it. Not to mention that just a sentence earlier you said that the toy "blocked out" the sun.
>...mother in a red dress, shoulders exposed, tanned. Now green, sunspots playing tricks on his eyes.
Switch the order of the things you mention about the mother. The red dress should come last, so that the changing colors would be more easily attributed to the dress and not her tan. Unless you did this intentionally as a nod to her potential extraterrestriality (space ship --> aliens --> changing skin color?).
>Now green, sunspots
Is the comma misused here? There is a comma error in the next sentence, at least:
>His father stands at the grill, wavering in the heat wearing slacks and leather shoes.
There should be a comma after "heat" and before "wearing".
>a leaf, freshly fallen, fluttering on the breeze
Leaves flutter IN the breeze, I think. It seems that scents and sounds can be carried and float ON the breeze, where as actual physical objects flutter IN it? Anyway, there are only 19,700 results for the ON variant. And IN is more commonly used with 369,000 results. But I guess the leaf could also be ON it, since it is "freshly fallen", and thus can be picked up by the wind. I don't know.
>beady blue eyes
Remove "beady". Overused.

>His freshly trimmed nails make contact with the doorbell
If his nails are indeed "freshly trimmed", they wouldn't "make contact with the doorbell". You usually press a doorbells with your fingertips. Try it for yourself. The nails remain contactless.
>the door swings inward violently, nearly making the boy piss himself
What?
>their deafening silent gaze melting through his glasses and boring a hole into his soul
I don't know about the "deafening silent gaze"... Also boring and melting seem like different types of operations to me. Boring requires physical contact with an object, while melting relies on radiation. So the use of both in the same sentence and in reference to the same thing seems kinda clunky?
>the crowd melts away and the lights go out
Melting? Again?

>>20339263
You need to work on your structure and your prose. This is not optional. Ideas alone won't carry you. Nevertheless I'll start with them.

It took me multiple reads to get why you call Debord materialist and presentist, and it really shouldn't have. It might help to efficiently explain in fewer words than you use now and then spend more time interrogating it.
You're implicitly saying the spectacle exists but it's Good, Actually. That's a strange position, and it deserves to be more concrete! At the very least give an example.
I'd expect a link between gnostic ideas of a fake world and Debord's, given your theme, and I didn't see you go there. But I don't know if there really is something to say about that, maybe it's a dud.

In high school they drilled a very particular essay structure into me. It didn't stick, but I see now why they tried: your essay doesn't hook me. I already read Guy Debord's Wikipedia article once, so the start contains nothing new. Why then should I keep reading?
You have to convince me that it's worth my time. Start with a provocative hint at what's to come. This can be a question that your essay answers, or a tantalizingly brief summary, or it can be something else.
Delineate the background information into one or more paragraphs to make it easier to skim or skip to the meat. At the same time try to make it entertaining to read, not a chore (but note that this takes skill).
Use paragraphs, in general.

Scott Alexander is very good at writing online essays that people want to read. Take a look at his advice: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/02/20/writing-advice/
Don't try to follow it blindly, but notice how much he talks about form, not content. People remember him for his content, but he wouldn't have gotten anywhere without the form.

Now for the prose. This is going to take the form of a hundred nitpicks. I'll keep going until the character limit.
>Famed Marxist and charlatan Guy Debord is famous for
"Famed" and "famous" are redundant. Remove one. You may have to rework the rest of the sentence.
"Charlatan" is a nice contrast, but it implies insincerity.
>expounding
Is he really famous for expounding his theory, not for the theory itself?
>This type of illusory thinking predicated that society was
You slip into past tense here. Stick to one. Probably present tense.
>were inasmuch as phony
Right meaning, but not how you use that word in a sentence.
>Hence, it follows, that
"It follows that"
>which I tell you
Sometimes appropriate for speech, but pointless in writing.
>more difficult than one can assume
There are no limits to what I can assume. "would assume" might work.
>Much like any self-respecting Marxist would assume, the history of all mankind is the history of material struggles
This is a strong explicit position they try to justify, not an assumption! Do Christians "assume" that Jesus died for their sins?
>, But
Should be a period.
>what does this mean [...] many others.
Questions end with question marks.

>>20337277
>>20339703
>Naked, he penetrates her with the force of the Holy Rocket, piercing the green earth into land which no man has ever been, the virgin sky
What?
>Beard hair covers her visage
lol.
>his nails pressing into her skin leaving crescent moon marks
This is good

Overall, you have a good grasp of literary cliches and phrases. But what's lacking is the exposition to justify the use of said cliches and phrases. So in the end it just feels really repetitive. Leave out extremely visual elements such as "filled out the entryway" etc., if you are not going to do the work to further immerse the reader in the scene by describing it in more detail and with less reliance on common tropes. Otherwise, the whole thing just falls flat. And the point isn't to list a bunch of adjectives... If you look at any good writer, you'll notice that there's sort of a set up before the filling-out-of-entryways happens, which would, in this case, be the punch line.
And as for the rest of the text... it's very tiring to read. There's just this constant barrage of short sentences with even less exposition than before. And it is not enough for the reader to grasp what's going on. "Congratulated. Photographed. Anointed to the annals of history. Awaited, now arriving, awarded." And it goes on like this for the rest of the thing. And if you haven't somehow already lost the reader at the start, you're going to lose them now. This is barely readable.
Honestly, this seems like something an AI would write.

>>20339263
Expanding to see one giant text block just put me off even trying to read it to be honest.

>>20337277
This reads like a screenplay

>>20339263
>Famed X is famous for..
Nah

Which is better for a text written in third person limited?
>The smoke seeped into the night sky
or
>The smoke seemed to seep into the night sky

>>20339785
The first.

>>20339785
Every word needs a strong reason to exist. "seemed to" does not add anything here.

>>20337078
Essentially, yes. If you aren't writing one of 6 genres then you aren't going to move copy without a very substantial built in fanbase, but if you have that you're better off trad publishing because they'll pay you a nice too big advance (they will not make it back).
If you're writing a couple of those genres, like LitRPG, you're better off double dipping by releasing it as a web serial then as a novel.
Every single person ITT coping about trad pub is going to self publish a novel and it's not going to move any copy and they're going to be depressed. Every single one. It's a little sad but mostly annoying because they won't listen.

>>20339890
what are they supposed to listen?. not self publish at all and have their work in their mind?.

>>20339247
Two repetitions of "the floor" in one sentence is annoying, but three repetitions of "the floor" in one sentence would have been gut busting. Otherwise, the garbage part was kinda funny

>>20337043
Telling everyone some tips as a master writer

- words are cheap, delete delete delete, or better yet make a document called “graveyard” where you cut and paste everything you’ve written you either don’t like or don’t believe fits in the story
-if you’re a good writer you’ll have good taste, if you have good taste then you’ll immediately hate everything you’ve written the many first times you do, delete delete cut and paste in graveyard and keep rewriting until it becomes acceptable to YOU
- if you don’t like your writing that means you know you could have done better. Take yourself up on that bet.
- words ARE CHEAP
- have pride in the amount of pages you’ve trashed
- look up Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for writing
- editing is rewriting the whole thing from scratch.
-Trying to fix a rough draft by focusing on correcting grammar issues is like polishing a turd.
- WORDS ARE CHEAP FUCKING DELETE THAT SHIT AND START AGAIN

>>20339785
The one with less words

>>20340029
I suppose you thought that was terribly clever.

>>20340029
brother everything word that comes out of my hands are midas touched and perfectly fit for every situation
"delete delete delete"? Maybe for horrible writers like you

>>20340029
Not terrible advice, but it doesn't address any of my personal weaknesses.
>master writer
By what measure?

>>20339785
The smoke seeped into the night sky
Thick smoke replaced the night sky. Stars faded like embers to ash.

so should i go for a niche or just follow what seems popular in royalroad?

>>20340126
do what you want

>>20339924
Stop coping about trad pub. We can talk about the state of the industry but the fact is that there's a massive gap in quality between what's produced here and something that ought to be published. The only exception is when you're writing the equivalent of YA fantasy in Isekai. Which is allowed to be garbage because it's for children.
How poisoned is your spirit when you interpret "self pub is a near guarantee of obscurity" as "never release your story".

>>20340113
He is Kurt Vonnegut

>>20340180
who?

>>20339890
If emilyanon can sell 23 of his shit book I can sell 1

>>20340105
This is what all beginners think. They sit down and they MUST come up with something amazing without realizing every single one of their favorite authors had to write a shitton to get as good as they are now and newbies sit down believing they’ll reach those levels without putting in the work. Post your writing.

>>20340212
Is selling a single hard copy book better than five people reading the whole thing off a screen?
One of those is easier to accomplish than the other.

>>20340113
What are your personal weaknesses?

>by what metric

I posted a script here once and got good reviews

>>20340242
I hope you're the wizard and the mirror duck guy. That was very well written

>>20340151
And trad pub isn't a near guarantee of obscurity?

>>20340208
The man who wrote the story about the guy who did the thing in the place?

>>20340286
The guy who took the thing and did that in the place?

>>20339241
Where is the narrator? Hell?

>>20340286
The story about the guy who got taken to the planet and had sex with the hot babe? What was it called?

>>20340331
Something about sirens?

>>20340336
No, the other one

Has anyone stole an idea from another anon? They didn't do anything with if for months so you're taking it.

>>20340338
I remember the one where they go to an island where the dictator punishes all crimes by impaling people on a hook and they talk a lot about how the hook is the solution to everything

>>20340231
Yes. One gets the additional benefit of a dollar. Unless you're a parteon master then online is infinitely better

>>20340346
I have taken requests from fellow imageboard posters but I've only stolen from published works

>>20340346
>>20340366
It's not stealing, it's "lifting"

>>20339942

Duly noted, that is really funny

>>20340325

No clue, I kind of just imagined it like the city from that movie The Mask

Another bit I wrote recently

>>20340409
This is all over the place

>>20340231
There’s no benefit to selling either versions of your text.
It’s just a sale anon.
One just means it’s on a shelf.
One just means it’s in a pdf.

>>20340475
I meant putting it up for free online

>>20340443

How so?

>>20340479
I would only put it up for free with conditions.
I would not put a book up for free and hope there’s viewer retention when I hope to actually sel a non free book.

>>20340029
These are good points, thank you Anon

I am not a master writer, however these are some of my tips. If you have discord on your phone or something like that, make yourself a private channel dedicated purely to your writing. Make subcategories for all of your ideas. My best thoughts and most vivid descriptions or poetic lines come to me when I'm doing anything but writing, so it's nice to be able to just go sort things in there and draw from them later.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DRlv01MC7xhMr06IDZ-Y1BBDQkuc7cdsb34GJe5JFwU/edit?usp=sharing

I'm in the process of trying to rework the beginning... I think the tone falls short/flat of what I'm going for. I want to create a feeling of the absurd, where the protagonist is out of their depth and more nervous than scared.

(Hell-Anon, by the way)

>>20340505
Conditions like...? I assume you mean something like a Patreon where you give subs some special benefit or something along those lines?

>when you finally write this necessary section that you’ve been dreading
Phew. It’s done. until manic editing off course

>>20340524
Just read the new section.
Only wish there was more of it!
But I understand; you gotta edit at some point.

>>20340482
Statues don't have buckling knees. What does a giant obease sun even mean? Is there such a thing as a skinny sun? No idea what burnt-seeming means either. The word choices are terrible. Why would parent have orphanages take their children in chaos? I get it's a dream, but even dreams are somewhat logical in their pacing. I'm sure you've dremed before or have a nightmare, you're doing things that make sense in your worldview even if it's impossible.

>>20340229
never

>>20340650
weak

am writing a novel
in the novel i have a scene where the bad guys are leading 4 women who have their hands bound
don't worry, the good guys will rescue them
the scene alludes to rape though no rape happens
is this scene too adult for y/a?

>>20340628

No, it isn't a dream until the end part. Everything is supposed to be farcically downtrodden and desperate; it's intended to be funny and imagistic.

An obese sun is the opposite of what the sun is supposed to look like.

>>20337083
What triggered it?

>>20340675
He read the first chapter of my novel

>>20340683
post it

>>20340669
that's even worse then. Since I the reader is utterly confused by your intent it needs to be completely rewritten.

Also god is the only part of the dream, you need to have a new paragraph.

>>20340665
I have a scene where one of my main cast buck breaks the captain of a captured enemy party in order to emasculate them and make them shit themselves in fear. Trying to skirt the thin line between brutality/disturbingness and gratuitous violence/edgyness. Ain't easy, I'll tell ya that.

>>20340686
I can’t yet. It needs a few more tweaks before it fully changes the world

>>20340711
brother post it as BL women love male on male rape for some reason

>>20340665
I have my MC get molested by her prison guard and another get raped repeatedly.

>almost reaching that 1k view milestone
>still feel empty
wtf I thought success was supposed to make me feel better!

>>20340729
1k views? This your first time putting your work out?

>>20340729
You people are impossible to please

You guys enjoy Nick Land and/or Curtis Yarvin?
I like their model of writing.

>>20340795
yea but i'm almost 20 chapters in so its not like I had a hit or anything
>>20340798
its just feels worthless..

I want to write action stories with different settings and power levels. One is based around realistic standards, the other is based around fantasy standards where you can handily outrun a bullet train.

How do I stop feeling bad that I'm "gimping" the weaker character? Should I choose one powerlevel and stick to it and never write the other one?

>>20340409
Unlike that other anon, I really liked this fragment. It's really good. "Burnt-seeming" is the only part that really needs fixing, but I get what you were trying to do. Just flip the words around, write them in the normal order.

Again, everything makes sense -- the obese sun, the statues with buckling knees, and even parents wanting to give away their children. What comes to my mind, at least, is total hedonistic chaos where the people's kids get in the way of all the depraved fuckin' and suckin' the parents, adults, people want to do. And the world is coming to an end. If people are not being filled with shit, piss, and cum, they're gorging up all the food they can eat. In a Russian folktale a Fox eats all the Bears honey. The sun is shining warm and bright. "Let us lie down here in the sunshine, and if either of us has eaten the honey, the sun will soon sweat it out of us." In other countries, instead of honey, it is butter. The obese sun is an obvious connection, in my mind.

>>20340809
I have goals, but the happiness is in the journey anon.
It doesn’t matter than I’ve had a few million eyes glance at my work.
It’s about the people that stick around that you can really create something great for.
Though I have a goal of a BSR of sub 30,000.

>>20340811
Are these two separate stories? Or do you mean a single story wherein some characters are mundane in capability, and others are fantastical?

>>20340809
>It feels worthless
Then it is.

>>20340819
BSR?
where are you currently at?

One day after the world burns to the ground. Your book will survive to be discovered. And hailed as a masterpiece deserving to be part of the western canon.

>>20340826
Unreleased anon.
I’ll publish numbers here anonymously when I’m ready.

>>20340844
yea but what does BSR mean?

>>20340808
I appreciate Yarvin's style but often find him annoying and disingenuous. Ultimately it's not separable so I don't try to emulate him.
He also has a pretty bad case of programmerbrain that being well-read failed to cure.

>>20340822
Different stories, different settings. I'm trying to look for authors who did this sort of thing for reassurance.

I can tell you that it DOES matter how many eyes are viewing your story, people who say that have never published a story only for it to have 10 views after 5 chapters

>>20340847
Oh, it stands for best seller rank.
I misunderstood your question.
I’d generally consider anything below 100,000 to be a good BSR.
Anything below 20,000 to be great.

>>20340872
The difference between a single person telling me they like it and several hundred people doing that is smaller than I'd have expected.
The difference between one and zero is pretty big though.

>>20340866
Oh, I don't have any real idea. Scale of action scenes shouldn't ever really matter for how tense they are. A superhero's action scenes will be grander in scope than a martial artist's, which'll be grander than random guy thrown into a situation. Deal more with the tension of the scene rather than the spectacle when you're doing more grounded stuff.

>>20340865
You find him disingenuous?
Surprising. I found his dissection of political change accurate and funny.

>>20340882
I'm really not into the kindle part yet, I'm still writing my story but how are you going to get those numbers by marketing and good genres?

>>20340890
Anything is better than radio silence, and a higher sample size is nice, to see that it's not just a fluke, but after a point the numbers aren't really meaningful.

>>20340898
>Oh, I don't have any real idea.
Figured, that's what has me stuck in indecision about what to write.

>>20340901
Yes essentially, without the details that’s about it.
I’d say 1-3 years of some presence prior to a book release could be the difference between 100 lifetime sales and 100,000.
Best of luck anon.

>>20340933
I never understood what people talk about when they say 'marketing before a book release'. What am I marketing then, the notion that I might one day release a book that someone might maybe like? Sounds kinda iffy to me. I might be wrong though, I'm no marketeer.

>>20340978
I'm not the guy but I think he means just having an online presence whether that's releasing the book online piece by piece or having prior books released

>still 1k+ words a day stronk
>some chud is telling me i need to create a following on twatter before i ever write
MEERKATERS OUT!

>>20340899
He wrote a post about the elections saying that yes, they were rigged: mail votes are a weaker signal than in-person votes and therefore the emulated civil war is no longer valid. That's doubtful on its own merits (that same week I read a piece by another conservative who lamented that the left had far more people who were significantly invested in politics), but more than that, it's insulting to the rank-and-file who believe that people went around in black vans ripping up ballots. It reminds me of a protestant minister who admitted mid-sermon that of course Jesus had not literally resurrected anyone. It's patronizing.
(When I made this complaint a year ago somebody wrote up a very nice effortpost.)
It's not always that blatant. In another piece he argued that being rich didn't make you powerful, and his only example was that buying the New York Times wouldn't be enough to change people's minds on <hot-button political issue>. Is that really the only kind of power that matters? Surely he knows there's life outside the culture war, but he didn't admit it, and I don't know why.
It's exhausting.

>>20340978
You’re not marketing you’re going to put out a book.
You make what you enjoy online for free.
Then at some point your fans are notified you have a book.
Simple as.
If they like what you made before, and you’re honest, they’ll like your book.
Not complicated.

i feel the muse leaving me
i feel my writing start to whither
oh no

>>20341005
Ah I get it now. Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant.

>>20341026
Literally touch grass.

>>20341030
we went on a 2 hour walk outside and we are still lost....

>>20341034
Then you don’t really understand what you’re writing about if that’s the case.

>>20341064
i never understand what i'm writing after 40k words
planning gets rid of all excitement for me

>>20341185
Au contraire, I've got every single plot point and thing my characters will do planned out. I used to discovery write but found myself hitting dead ends or failing to write compelling scenes or longer story arcs. I'm coming up to 60k words rn, half of which is sparsely edited and whenever I'm revising / editing stuff its a LOT easier for me now. To each their own though, what works for me might not work for you and vice versa. Hope you can nab your muse again soon fren.

I either write nothing at all, or write a shitload in one go. Its a gift and a curse, but mostly the latter

>>20341222
to me, my outline is just like a really, really rough draft. i put down a little about each scene
and to write my outline, it's all discovery writing

>>20341241
I can kind of agree with that, actually. Although, since I'm writing a really huge story (planning on writing the same universe for years to come), I've got a lot of notes on specific stuff like character motivations and how each of their storylines will play out, as well as a bunch of random ideas I've had for later use.

>>20341283
I wouldn’t publish more than 2 books in a series before I know people like it.
Get one finished and have the second one halfway through the first draft by the time the first one is published.
No more because it may just be a waste of time.
A little less is fine if you want to see if just the first one works.

>>20340866
The weaker characters can make up for it with intelligence, restrictions require smart solutions.
>>20341030
But anon THEY PAVED PARADISE AND PUT UP A PARKING LOT.
(OHHH BOP BOP BOP.)

>>20341445
Fair point. I like to have stuff planned out for the long term either way, just in case. Plus, even if they don't like it, I wouldn't ever abandon the world I'm building entirely. Shit's been floating around in my head for the past god knows how long, I'd never forgive myself if I never put it to paper. As for the actual publishing bit I'm planning on writing out the whole first one then dumping it on Scribblehub and Royal Road, and anywhere else I can find since it's fantasy. I've seen the type of stuff that gets posted there, so I think its a good place to get feedback and build up a reader base.

What is the slowest paced genre and why is it Historical Fiction?

>>20341755
Because it has the most nuance. A single historical event, like the sack of Constantinople, can be hundreds of years in the making and have repercussions for hundreds more. Now imagine writing a story about dozens of important historical events. But in terms of scope, scale and majesty, there's nothing in any other genre that comes close.

Darkness was falling across Zeresh, creeping through the alleyways and down the canals. Arki was strolling around one of the city's harbors, as he used to do when the sun was low. More than twelve years ago the docks were brimming with life from dawn to dusk where one could hear sailors from all over the known world speaking in colorful languages. Now, all he could hear was the brutish orders given by captains from Elyria, being hidden by the thick fog that had engulfed their ships.

As he walked past two women merrily teasing a young bravo, he took a turn to the left and found himself in a tight alleyway decorated by tapestries and lanterns hanging from the balconies above. One turn to the right and two to the left had him faced with a dead end three metres above a canal. Arki tried to look across, but the fog prevented him from doing so. After looking around, he noticed a small gap to the right of the alleyway's end. As he took a closer look, he finally found what he was looking for: a staircase leading to the canal.

The stairs had fallen victims of time, and thus only one of Arki's boots could fit on one stair at a time. And so he continued his descent, carefully manuevering his fingers inside cracks in the wall, where the joints of a ladder used to be. Even though he couldn't see the surface of the canal, the fog protected him from potential prying eyes.

After another step, Arki quickly lost his footing and felt his left boot getting soaked.

What should I write about if I want to be a trad pub YA author??

>>20342175
litrpg

>>20342175
Lesbian black girl witches

>>20342182
Funny because i read on twitter that black sapphic (lesbian) stuff is requested by agents then rejected because they don’t find it relatable
But they acquire the white girl stuff

>>20342181
LitRPG is almost entirely web-novels that get picked up by publishers who're themselves people who wrote LitRPGs or just get self-published.

>>20342175
Why would you want to be trad published?

so what would be considered success in web-novel publishing? And none of that "success is whatever you want it to be" bullshit

>>20342303
Getting regular readers and a steadily-growing reader-base.

>>20342211
So you can see your book in the WHSmith window when you're walking to Greggs

>>20342303
What do you mean by web novel? If you're talking about self publishing on Kindle or the like, there's people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

What do you think, /wg/?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F6bVlYzye0OPMSSXq02ALTeXEBhJVYJ84Fddql2jjkU/edit?usp=sharing

I wrote this during my BA in English, and have not written in several years, lately, I've been considering getting back into writing, but I suppose I'm looking for some type of gauge as to where I stand currently based on my previous work.

Is there a solution to the problem of jobbing, i.e. threats set up only to be knocked down

>>20342392
Have threats cause problems and injuries, even lasting ones. Have them force your protagonists to do something different, etc.

>>20337277

Read my stuff please
>>20342388

>>20342449
>14 minutes
>has panic attack
you are one thirsty bitch

What is word choice and how do you improve it? Clearly it's not a thesaurus because then it becomes purple. And Melville always wrote in a way that was simple and avoided overly complex specific words only known to wordsmiths that have nothing better to do than combine random letters together and claim it is a new word.

>>20342481
Generally speaking, simplistic workman words can always be reused no matter how many times you want (and, said, if, etc.), but larger words you want to avoid using TOO many times in close succession. Often it's easier to write the sentences differently than simply repeat the word in different ways.

>>20342392
It isn't a problem.
Embrace it.
Have it lead to the protagonists getting fawned over.
Stroke the reader's ego, they need it.

>>20342528
This advice is boring and awful but unfortunately accurate. Readers love seeing the protagonists win and getting their dicks sucked.

I'm trying to do this thing where I give each member of the cast legitimate exposure when it comes to letting them have cool moments. NOBODY is a jobber or just background noise here. But I feel like I'm not doing that, as our protagonist is a bit of a fight hog now that I look at it, with a total of 10 fights, with more if you count rematches. I'm trying to sort of slowly build up a cast and then have them do things. None of the characters I've mentioned just become background characters after he fights or beats them. In fact, I haven't even mentioned most of the cast, as I'm just discussing the ones that are introduced through his fights.
It's stupid I know.

>>20342481
>What is word choice and how do you improve it?
For diction and the best thing to do is read more so you have a wider vocabulary. Using "complex" or uncommon words is fine- it is only when their use is stilted or appears artificial to the reader that the prose become purple (when clarity is sacrificed).

>>20342388
Overall I saw a lot of promise in terms of flow and clarity. The lack of specificity jumped out as the area to work on to me. I liked that you utilized Telling to speed things along but slowing things down more would have strengthened it to ground us in the POV. The story itself I didn't care for as it was just a copy/paste of The Exorcist.

If you want to write more I suspect you could get quite good. Suggest you check out Shaelinwrites video on "specificity" YouTube.

Qualifiers for this post:
>a YouTube recommendation on /wg/??!!?!?@
>a libtard woman probably a lesbian
>I've never read anything she wrote and can't vouch for it's quality
>encouragement by this anon to write should not be seen as an endorsement

>>20342582
That just means you'll have way too many fight scenes that don't really mean much.

>>20342392
Antagonists with their own long-term goals that aren't just "kill people and steal the crown jewels because I am very evil" or "stop Dude McManbeef at all costs" and who're therefore part of a larger world?

There's a war on, your protagonist is trying to save some villagers, an enemy commander is trying to take the adjacent hill because it allows direct plunging fire into a nearby port. The commander doesn't want to kill your protagonist except insofar as he blocks their advance, and he only needs to delay the advance by an hour or so while the villagers evacuate.

Or Lady Dipshit is insecure and worries about her husband's loyalty. Lady Manipulative wants to hide her own affair with Lord Dipshit, and is nudging Lady Dipshit towards conflict with Dame Protagonist. Meanwhile, Dame Protagonist is trying to secure support for her Orphanage for the Children of Dead Lepers or Whatever and avoid losing the fortune she inherited from her leprous father.

>>20342622
Basically, make it so that antagonists have better things to do than tangle with the protagonists.

>>20342370
What is this and why is this important?

>>20342595
I mean, I think I should've said that there's a lot of other stuff that happens outside of the protagonist's antics

>>20342645
Fair, though you'll probably wanna keep your main cast size relatively small in that case. Chapters focusing on other characters are fine, but if you spread yourself too thin it'll just feel like there's too many lines going on at once.

>>20342678
I try to make it sort of an ensemble cast that slowly gets bigger

>>20342687
It does depend on your sort of story length and whatnot, but there's a reason five-man groups are a thing. Going too far over five is probably gonna leave things feeling muddled.

>>20342397
I like Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "No, and"/"Yes, but" style of writing. Try that out.

>>20342709
How's that really relevant?

>>20342191
Really? In the west?
Where? How do I get in on this?

>>20342715
I dunno, there's only two publishers that I know of that seem to be putting out LitRPG stuff, Aethon and Mountaindale Press. The latter isn't really webnovel stuff far as I can tell, it's run by Dakota and Danielle Krout, the former is a fairly prolific LitRPG guy.

>>20337181
faggot

Writing a query letter is worse than writing a novel. I've finally broken down and hired the Query Shark to help me, because I just can't wrap my head around the art.

>>20342712
It's a method ramping up stakes and introducing tension.

Yes, the protagonist wins but something else goes wrong and now they have to deal with that or they're hurt now in a way that makes the next fight tougher.

The alternative would be the protagonist fails and now things are even harder/worse than before.

>>20342831
Oh, right, I didn't know what you meant.

>>20342827
I cannot for the life of me find it, but some time ago a video got posted of an English guy reviewing a stack of query letters he received in the mail and explaining why he would or wouldn't follow up with them. It was very informative.

>>20339426
>diamond dozen
this fucking board man

>>20342827
>>20342869
https://youtu.be/aduzco1VJZE
And as soon as I say that I find it. Fuck me.

I have an idea for a fantasy novel but I'm still torn between writing it as a 1st person journal type of thing or just doing a classic third person story

>>20342875
Oh yeah, I've seen a few of his videos.
Even still, I just have this mental block stopping me from implementing all the advice that's out there.

I know what I should and shouldn't do. I have a mental image of what I should write. But then I sit down to type one, and it just comes out with all the same problems in a different way.

So I'm hoping having the Shark critique and work with me on my actual letter will help. She can tear apart specific sections and I can see what I did wrong.

>>20342878
Wish Mountain anon here.

Basically I wrote about 20 chapters of my first go round of Wish Mountain in third person. For me personally it didn't work because I think it takes a certain kind of writer to do third-limited or third-omniscient well. The problem with writing in third person I found is being overwhelmed at all times by the wealth of information that can be delivered to the reader.

The narrator knows everything about everything, yet at the same time needs to put all the information into a funnel that can be read in a digestable way by the reader. I failed at this in my first go round because I just couldn't strike a balance or find the sweet spot for maintaining a consisent third person perspective.

On the contrary with my second go round I changed the point of view to first person and I've very happy with the results. Writing in first makes it so you have to keep to a ground-level with the character's POV you're writing from, and it's like having a set movie camera in their head that automatically limits and gives perspective to their world. Not only that, but they have to think and engage in the world and it is just common sense to justify their thoughts and actions as much as possible throughout the chapter.

Third person can be done well but I would find a writer you admire who writes in third and try and learn the exact art of doing it. For me personally I just found that I don't have the talent to write in third person because there's just too much that goes into it, so first person is more of an every-man level of writing that is more on my level.

>>20342878
First person allows you to control what the audience sees, i.e., your narrator can paint his version of events. Third person lets you develop many characters separately at the same time. If you get really into it, third person omniscient narration can lead to extremely well rounded characters but at the cost of "pedantic telling instead of showing".

>>20342875
>getting rejected without even reading

lol, yeah, trad publishing is totally the way to go. What a bunch of cucklords.

>>20342875
Ugh. What a doucebag.
I'm gonna stick with self-publishing.
Seems like, with all the known drawbacks, it's more likely to succeed.

>>20342963
What zoomer narcissism that you believe anything you do is automatically worthy of review.

>>20342875
This man probably has nothing else in his life to give any satisfaction than the rush of power he gets when he discards someone's work for petty reasons.

>>20343044
>be literary agent
>your whole job is to read the manuscripts sent to you and decide if you can sell them to publishers
>don't even bother to do that
Sure, narcissism.

Where do I go to write smut for money?

>>20343228
The step before that is deciding what manuscripts are most likely to be productive to spend your limited time reading

>>20343380
Amazon

I have a 20,000 word story/novella that I'm sitting on. I believe it is really good. I'm not going to post it I'm sorry but I'm paranoid.

Every journal has a limit of 5000 words, only a few competitions even go to 10,000 and those are all done for the year. I don't think a publisher would bother with a novella in 2022?

Where should I take this?

>>20343393
Which he decides completely arbitrarily.

How do I salvage my irredeemable fantasy trash?

>>20343413
Re-write it from memory.

>>20343406
He decides it from knowledge of the publishing market and the experience of looking at thousands of submissions which allows him to recognize probable red flags. You think its arbitrary because you're a fag with a coconut's capacity for theory of mind.

>>20343493
Literary agents are parasites. You are simping for a parasite.

>>20343380
If you want to work on individual commissions involving horrible internet fetishes for comically low pay, go ask >>>/trash/wfg (once they've managed to make a new thread). Some of the writefags there regularly have commissions to work on.

Outright advertising your services will probably make them sperg out, but you can ask where they find horny wallets.

>>20343497
At no point did I defend the role that literary agents play—my opinion of them is not high. The fact remains that any submission, to any entity along the potential publishing chain, is going to go through a similar filtering process. Instead of internalizing that information, understanding why that process exists, and using that knowledge productively, you choose to be a salty retard.

>>20343532
>I'm not defending this harelipped faggot on a power trip, I swear!
Yes you are. You are advocating for dismissing work without reading it. This is the extent of your argument. Calling people retards doesn't make your side any more appealing, parasite-simper.

>>20343541
Bro you're deadass being cringe rn fr

I had a professor of history tell me once that my writing of a history novel was bad "because it begins myths." What a fag. How many skalds made myths out of historical events? I bet he doesn't give them the same criticism.

>>20343968
I don't get what you're saying. Myth as in misconception?

>>20344042
I don't know. Ask him. It's the word he used.

>>20343968
If he means what I think he means; "writing a historical novel is bad because it leads to muddying the truth of / making light of important historical events", then you're right on the money, he's a fag. Don't let it demoralize you though, there's always gonna be someone that eats shit about anything you write.

>>20344096
Thanks, anon. Those are wise words. I recall Oakley Hall said something along the lines that fiction is about the truth, not fact. I will always take that to heart when I write about the past, present, or future. Godspeed.

If you pour your heart and soul into a work, then realise it's shit, but continue to strive to write better, you are going to make it in some sense.

>>20344351
You are absolutely going to make it in the most important way possible, self improvement. As long as you constantly strive to become better tomorrow than you were yesterday, you're bound to find some success, big or small. If people who shit out copy pasted litrpg tropes with the only difference being their generic character's generic fantasy / anime names, you can sure as shit find success if you refine your writing and read a lot.

>>20344351
What if you realise it's shit, drop it, and work on something else that's even worse but more fun to write?

>>20343968
historical fiction is a whole genre
there's lots of amazing historical fiction books

>>20343968
Because most people aren't trained historians and create things unsubstantiated to fit their story,and people read it thinking it's accurate

From my diary

So, circling back, like snakes or rivers or chinese dragons or chicks running in hurried circles around busy ankles; if my life is going to be, after my most pragmatic self-psychiatrising emergency surgical attempts at saving the life if not the limbs of my juvinile idea, an aesthetic project or work – and I think actually it is fair enough to say that it is, if I person considers themselves to be a writer and believes that means necessarily that they will one day write something, and that belief is held in ernest so that the ‘down-time’ in the life of an ‘artiste’ is all abstractly apart of the preperations and preliminary probings towards writing that something – Then it’s truthfulness, as an attribute, is not my most mainline concern. You cannot fit the whole truth and nothing but the truth in a single book and even if you could, and you could write that book, it would be dull as hell to do so and not especially per sonal a production. If the dreamy were here they might say “but you can write YOUR truth” and of course you can, and everyone incessently is, so that the writing of truth takes the form of the spartan or cock-fightish competition between rival bacterial colonies in a cave or a jar, whereby all growths vie for largeness until one grows so large that it either asphixiates or crushes all the competition, depending on the exactitude of the science, and and or the actual existence of such a scenario, neither of which I care to become certain on. Say it with me now; WE DO NOT WANT PLATITUDES! And we certainly don’t want everyone ever to pose as Plato and present us with their poseies of platitudes. It isn’t even that we’ve had enough – have you had enough of rain, for your entire life? You can’t have done, but I expect you seek shelter from it, and you’ve got so good at sheltering from the rain over the course of your life that these days you are hardly ever soaked by the rain. It is like that. If a truth or a crate of truth falls out of the project quite by accident like white goods off the back of a truck in a deprived area, that would be a happy accident, rather than a sad one. I wear black clothes anyway, I would not be wearing them for having told a truth on the day the truth came out. It seems to me, and if I might be bold I’ll say that it should really seem to you too, at this big age, that no one person can do all things. There are Great Novels, the lists of those great novels are often greatly similar, but there is no monopoly – there is no one man. There is no word clearly king of this sentence. Letters collect into words, which string into sentences, which can be hearded into paragraphs which are corralled into chapters which may be docily gathered into books like lambs brought in from the night.

>>20344846
Books go into shops, libraries, heads, and footnotes. The tower rises! Literature clambers up itself, a pedestrian passing below might point and shout “babelesque!” and they would be right, but babelesquery is similarity to the Tower of Babel – it does not SHARE in it’s folly, and in it’s guilt. The weight of the sin of the Tower of Babel was I imagine significantly heavier than the sin of anyone with a kiln firing bricks in the area at the time. “I just make the bricks, I know not what they do.” I am proud of that. If you helped to make a tower and it turned into a monster I am not convinced it was all your fault. Perhaps, and this might be the kind of careless blasphemey which is a hazard when doing any typing, you could say that the Babel project, had a soul of it’s own – which was plunged to hell forever. Like the tributary rivers I called up before, contributing to a larger body is not filling it – it is the tiniest part of that collaborative task. Blotting the holocaust from my mind for a moment, I’m going to assert that it would be extremely difficult to equate “contribution to” with “responsibility for.” I talked about shedding skin and hair earlier – are all the lost hairs of humanity responsible for the dirtying of the world? Is to be born with a head which can grow hair, as we overwhelmingly are, to be branded a discarder, a sullyer? This strong feeling boils up into the boiling down of itself into a vastly simplified and salt-of-the-earthified maxim which is broadly applicable to all endevour, though we were considering writing. The best a person can do is chip in their best crack at something they like, safe – truly blissfully at ease – in the knowledge that it will only go into the heap with all the others’ attempts. We can only hope (and we neednt even hope especially intensely, we only need maybe 2/3rds of full power, our hands are cleaned – we washed our hands) and wish (perhaps with a greater portion of our essence, but not with so much of our heart that we have to go around without a heart, unsurvivably) that all (or most, or some) of the others’ attempts bare whatever the hallmarks are of the best of their ability and intentions. Literature (or any aesthetic expession) is Babelesque because the tower of Babel got nowhere. You cannot write your way into heaven, from earth. You cannot even write your way off of the earth. This land is your land, take that as if you’ve been given a room at an inn – “this is your room” contains no element of choice – you will lay here, for your allotted time. you will vacate here, when your time is ended. When you are gone this will be someone else’s allotted time and place. Heaven is for God, who man only looks like – there is a distinctive gap there, which the imitation cannot bridge, even with all the will in the World, because the task requires the will which is in heavens domain, and not of the worlds.

>>20344846
>>20344849
This is a paragraph.

You make a new one by pressing the "enter" key, which may also be labelled "return" on your keyboard.

Paragraphs are used to split up ideas into readable chunks. You can split them up into even smaller chunks using full stops, or periods. This paragraph has three sentences and they're all reasonably short.

When you don't split your ideas up, they are harder to understand. This doesn't mean you are a mature writer for mature readers. It means you are an obscurantist writer and it makes your readers suffer unnecessarily.

>>20343397
If you believe it is good, why not attempt to break it neatly into 4 parts. Submit the first part to a journal, if they are excited by it and accept it, reveal it's the first part of 4 and suggest they serialise it across 4 issues.

>>20344900
Thanks champ, it is one paragraph, from my diary, which contains several paragraphs.

I could have broken it up here but I only really want to air the content, not the form.

>>20342872
Newfag

>>20344930
Better nip it in the butt

>>20343228
No, a lit agent's job is to represent their clients.

I agree that I don't like them, particularly any lit agent under the age of 40 (because they're all woke nonsense factories), but still, they aren't there to read your stuff. Their there to represent those that catch their interest.

>>20345105
How do you catch someone's interest if they have no intention of reading the actual work itself?

>>20342913
Yeah I feel similarly to this. I don't know that I have the skill (yet) to portray an objective world from multiple perspectives as much as just putting everything through one perspective that I put all of my work into being as good as possible.

>>20342919
The whole "avoid telling not showing" thing seems to be in vogue currently

New thread >>20345513

actual new thread
>>20344778