/lit/ - Literature

Don't give up.
Don't allow sadness to crush your spirit.
Strive to make the art that will change it all.
Push back against the failure of culture to maintain its strength.
Drag it kicking and screaming with you, if you have to.
Feel pity if you must. Feel sadness, feel rage, feel hopeless, and feel fury. Then write.

xth for I like it
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54622/the-kill-list

Who has had the most success on here? Come on, owe up about the numbers

>>20432918
F. Gardner. It's not even a contest.

>>20432959
That's a low damn bar.

>>20432918
F Gardner. Like it or not that’s where the bar is set.

>>20432959
>>20433011
>>20432918
Real talk. How the hell did a mentally ill flat earther become this board’s most known author? I watched that interview with him and everything about him just baffles me

Tonight I read "the Dose Makes the Poison" by K-anon aka Kit Williams in about two and a half hours. I had missed the whole l&mp magazine during its first run but these are collected before the hiatus.

>the Bad
The author could have done without the "word from the author" or at least left out the couple quotes that get used in the stories. It's nice to know but the background gives the impression that most of the stories are not far from autobiographical and there's not much variety in temperament or theme like some short story collections have. With enough work this all could have been a single novelette. There are 9 spelling mistakes I caught in its 58 pages. A few annoying redundancies like "zeitgeist, the spirit of the age" which you would hope anyone that reads books wouldn't need the definition. All but one quote is preceded by a name-drop which I think was unnecessary. There are not enough stories and this would be the equivalent of 2 or 3 short stories of standard word count.

>the Good
K-anon has an intimate feel to his stories especially the monologues to the reader. His voice is suicidal, cynical but compassionate. The stories are bleak and rife with disappointment, vexation and regret. Nature is a major theme in the work, both instinct and entropy as forces that drive our lives forward in our quests for duty and recognition. While some of the passages seem cliche, a few hit me quite hard. The vocabulary is quite good and I found the variety of sentence structure satisfying. The best stories in this are all right in the middle: Longing, the Balcony, Burial of a Field Mouse, and Half of a Melody.

I'd give it 3/5, I liked it but not much. K-anon's first romp in literary fiction is brief. I won't comment much on the poetry at the end but it was fine to me, ornate and without any tired rhyme scheme. It's clear he's well-read but needs to adjust his process to output more stories and really develop his themes into something powerful. He needs to learn from Chekhov (I sensed some inspiration from him in "Burial of a Field Mouse") and other great shortform authors to look more closely at a variety of experiences that people face.

This gives me an idea.....is there money to be made from wikis like the old CWC wiki? Because Gardner is fucking goldmine of sheer lunacy and that could be untapped potential.

>>20433037
After you're all done with /lit/ books, I'm curious what your rankings for are for them.

>>20433075
I'm not gonna read them all, some of them don't fit in my library. I was mainly going for literary leaning but I read Emily Project because AI is a theme I explore myself.
Eggplant is the best so far, I have high hopes for Woolston's "The Last Free Man" stories which I'm reading tomorrow.

>>20433024
Relentless shilling and incognito posting by shartner, see >>20433011 and >>20432959

For those that write commissions:
Where do you sell them? Where do you find readers?

>>20433115
I am not Faggot Gardner. Everyone knows he’s the answer to that question. He’s by far and wide the most known and I don’t even read his books.

Well well, if it isn't my old pal, dubyah gee. Why don't you go ahead and post your novel ideas? It's not like they're going anywhere.

>>20432863
Thank you

Decided to take a break from this shitfest and try this instead...
https://reddit.com/r/writing
...it's the same sort of shitfest!
Are writers just like this, then?
Wonder when I'm going to run across their F. Gardner...

Where do you guys post your work? Where can one cultivate a legit audience for fiction these days? The only place I'm really aware of is Royal Road (which has a forum). I know about WattPad too but that isn't a good place.

I know things like Substack and SubscribeStar exist too but those don't really have communities, just people independently making content.

Community to me seems like the key ingredient to getting new readers and people just caring in general. Those are the only places on the internet with real life to them. Does anything like that exist for fiction? Or is it just wishful thinking?

If I post something, will any of ya read it?

>>20433281
sure, no need to ask

>>20433261
There's plenty of reddit posters here that cross post.

>>20433296
Ok sweet, now I just gotta figure out how I'll post it here.

>>20433024
So, I actually read Call of the Arcade and thought it was pretty good. It just felt like a very VERY twist heavy horror story. Just my take on it.

>>20433307
PasteBin, catbox.moe, and Google Docs seem to be popular choices.

>>20433311
I haven’t read that one but I read Croc. It was fine. Gardner’s the biggest fish here so I guess that means he gets the most shit too.

>>20433297
That would explain a lot.
And https://writing.stackexchange.com/ is the same shitfest too. Ugh!
I guess writers be like this.

>>20433317
https://files.catbox.moe/hwte6q.pdf
there we go

I know my piece isn’t the finished product yet so I’m getting beta readers today. Mainly, I just have to think about goes my language is working and what the reader will see. Because it’s first person past tense, I think the biggest job is to try and weed out the repetitiveness and overuse of “I said,” “I thought,” and whatever. There’s also a bit of an inconsistency in verbiage and voice because I think in parts I had a nice idea for a line, and in others I thought to write the character’s thoughts. So, I can think about what’s wrong with it very clearly, but changing it for the better is another thing. But I did spend 4-5 hours writing it last night and 2-3 hours editing heavily. In the process, the story just created itself and I cut out whole paragraphs, reworked it, and made my characters less 2D by giving them motivations and backstory, whilst not sacrificing my initial premise and plot twist.

>>20433341
>“Your name means godly, you know that?”
The question comes out muffled from a box, a bit bigger than a shoebox. It’s wrapped
in layers of duct tape, packing tape, masking tape and newspapers. The voice is still able to
escape its layers. It continues, “Godly, saintly. That’s funny, right?”
>A flashlight sits next to the box on a big rock, illuminating the scene of a young woman,
a bit less than shoulder deep in a hole, digging. They dig in the center of a clearing deep in a
forest, sounds of animals and other creatures chirping and echoing around her, but she
doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care. The box has its own presence, next to the flashlight. Its own
aura, its own heat.

This is shit. You switched tenses, it's not interesting, the word choice needs work, and there isn't any feeling to it. It's all just a bunch of dialogue and quick exposition. If anyone needs a "show don't tell" lesson it's you.

>>20433341
Er...I have no idea what's going on.

>>20433387
Oh ok, sorry. I’ll fix it up.

>>20433099
Where do you find them? I don't see these titles in OP pastebin.

>>20433405
Not sure if that can be fixed.
What's in the box? Why can it talk to her if it's dead? Why does she go through all the trouble to bury/hide it only to kill herself?

>>20433281
I'm so fucking sick of you chicken shit niggers coming into MY THREAD posting "H-HEY UHM UWU C-C-CAN I POST MY STUFF? SORRY, I'M NEW AND NERVOUS!" Post it or shut the fuck up. You are intentionally wasting posts. This is not Reddit or Facebook or whatever faggot piece of shit site you rolled the fuck in from. This is fucking 4chan. You don't have to ask permission to post a fucking story. You just fucking post it. You stupid mother fucker. God damn you and all your inbred retard brethren coming into my thread asking permission to do anything is breaking my fucking balls. Do you ask your boss if you can take a shit? Do you ask a green light if it's okay to put your foot on the gas? It just shows a complete fucking lack of independent agency. You need to be ass pat and coddled and told "it's okay Junior, post it and we'll love and support you no matter what!" instead of squaring the fuck up and posting your story and asking for critique like LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE IN THIS THREAD HAS DONE. You fucking question asking, limp dicked, Carpal tunnel having, Google docs using, Reddit gold buying, anime watching, empty bookshelf having, Sandersoy studying, pill popping, square headed chocolate dipped buck toothed DOUBLE NIGGER.

Posting the start of a WIP short story:

"Are you hungry?" asked the bear-tofra.

"No, not really," replied the elf.

"Okay," the bear-tofra said after letting out a toothy yawn. "I'm gonna go grab some breakfast. The fish should be up too right about now."

The bear-man then shuffled his hefty, furry body out of their bed, leaving a big imprint behind, an imprint big enough for the elf to fit their entire body into and still have space to wriggle about, to toss and turn the way they did sometimes in their sleep. And yet, the elf remained on their own side of the bed, unmoving. They would get up soon enough, they supposed, but not right now.


(And yeah, yeah, I'm using the singular they/them for the elf. Not my fault English doesn't have any real neutral pronouns.)

Working on the 17th chapter of my fantasy novel.
One of my main characters is meeting a bunch of other nobles. I slipped in some cheeky bullshit about how some of them are arranged at the table, T across from A. C across from G. That was more for me, I don't expect anyone will notice or care since it doesn't align with any theme but having some kind of mental gravity to these nobles being the DNA of the country makes me smile.

I'm getting awfully close to the crowning ceremony chapter, which will mark the halfway point. From there, perspective will switch mostly to the other main character. It feels sad to leave the girl behind, I feel a lot more comfortable writing things from her perspective, all innocent and oblivious, ignorant to the signs. It was fun.

>>20433454
>perspective will switch mostly to the other main character
Good luck with that. It can be difficult to pull it off.

>nobody posts their work
>everyone just keeps jacking themselves off telling others how much work they done
>hurr my 550k words!
>imma on my 49th chapter!
>took 2 hours to write!

Holy fuck you stupid redditors. Just fucking post your work already. If you want someone to fucking give you a fucking blowjob go to fucking reddit. Get your shitty upvotes there. /wg/ is to shit on your work and tell you how shit your work is when you post it. This isn't a masturbatory hugbox.

>>20433429
Post an example of your own writing.
Your seething doesn't count.

>>20433461
I've been bouncing back and forth between the two mains all this time and yeah it is pretty difficult, especially with a core conflict being emotion vs logic, trying to sort their thoughts into those categories without coming off as too heavy handed is rough.

>>20433472
If I post it, I can’t send it to magazines. I’ll post it if I get rejected by all of them.

>>20433263
I've been trying to understand this. Just who are the type of people who go out and buy books? Especially new books by an author they've never even heard of. These people must be like fairies because I'm glad they give my book a chance, but at the same time. Why don't they read all of the greats which would take a lifetime of its own? It is different for webnovels in the sense that those seem to attract probably people on the go? Phone readers? Tablet readers are probably in greater quantities for normal published books, but phone readers have to dominate webnovels right? I'm also curious about how useful RR's forum is to creating a community. After all, releasing a book with marketing is barely a community right? The real community is the spread by word whoever reads your book does. Then that person also has to know another person who is into very niche books that aren't mainstream consumerism.

>>20433517
A lot of people like new things, and struggle reading classics. I'll be honest, I never finished A Tale of Two Cities because Dicken's prose, word choice, and style bored me. I could not relate to his story at all, since it was written for those living 300 years ago.

>>20433517
We had to read "the greats" in school.
They were boring and cringe.
I'm happy to give an unknown author a chance if I can read part of the book first.
The "look inside" portion on Amazon is usually sufficient.

>>20427534
>>20428004
>its still not in the sticky
dont complain when someone asks

so most of you guys are going straight to self publishing? nobody here uses RR or SH?

>>20433317
how come nobody just links to their royalroad or scribblehub? that seems more plagarism proof to me

>>20433604
There's one guy that did it.

If anyone is in the Joyce reading group threads right now, I just want to say Dubliners has given me a new appreciation for short stories and how to really write them well. I didn't really have the patience to read them before, especially anthologies, but I seem to like this one. They all share a theme and are all written before Joyce decided the English language was going to be his cocksleeve, so it's lucid and coherent while still being rife with good themes.

Does anyone have good resource to help learn how to "deep read" and analyze stories beyond just the surface level?

>>20433604
How do you plagiarize my shitty draft when my final with all the edits you guys give me will never be posted?

>>20433658
how to read a book by mortimer adler

>>20433480
What the fuck is a magazine?

>>20433709
A literary magazine or periodical. New to reading and writing, chuddy?

>>20433517
>I'm also curious about how useful RR's forum is to creating a community
Forum is shit. You build in comments sections if anything.
>Then that person also has to know another person who is into very niche books that aren't mainstream consumerism.
No. They just talk about it here or on reddit or discord or somewhere. It doesn't have to be IRL.
>Why don't they read all of the greats which would take a lifetime of its own?
Is there anyone more boring than a person who in their whole life has only read like five books off a college prep reading list? Some people like to trek through the wilderness.
>Just who are the type of people who go out and buy books?
Buying a self published book gives money straight to an author. No coorporate vampires but Amazon. People are far more generous with that in mind.

>>20433712
A periodiwhat?

>>20433741
A periodical, one of those things women get. Duh.

does anybody here actually use scrivener?

>>20433517
>I'm also curious about how useful RR's forum is to creating a community
It's "good" for getting a few more views by shitposting and not much else.

>>20433049
Gardner is practically at Lovecraft levels of lore due to his sheer output. I didn’t even realize he was at 11 books now. I thought it was just Crocodile, Arcade and Kappa. If you go that route there should be plenty to work with for a FGardnerWiki.

>>20433810
Kek. F would flip if someone actually did that. He’s tone deaf to his own autism and how he’s perceived. Denial or simple stupidity. He’s like the stereotypical tryhard artist who genuinely thinks his work is art. Like Squidward.

>>20433825
Good. That’ll make it even more hilarious.

>>20433604
I used to. I'm not afraid of someone plagiarising my works because who'd steal my anime fics?

Plootfags be like
https://voca.ro/13aWiiiktv4k

>>20433825
So much potential. From what I’ve heard Gardner is:

>even more egotistical than Chrischan
>gets angrier at his trolls than Chrischan
>writes way more than Christhan and has more source material to work with
>weirder beliefs than Chrischan

Please post it directly to this thread or the next /wg/ if you make the wiki.

>>20433831
You're not the only anime fic writer here though.

I find myself struggling to resist the subconscious temptation to write a self insert character

>>20433880
Write what you want

>>20433880
Writing about a writer is quite something.

>>20433888
I don't want to write a self insert
but I find myself writing characters (especially the protagonist) behaving the way that I would behave instead of the way they should behave

>>20433517
I'm not even concerned about books. Books are like foreign, unfamiliar territory to a lot of young people. A lot more reading gets done on the internet, through a phone or computer, these days. My theory for this is people now feel more "at home" reading online, using their familiar devices, because that's where their life pretty much is now.

The reason that the kindle/nook thing never REALLY took off is because a tablet is just another weird object in someone's hand. No one really wants that. They want everything on one device. Also: tablets don't have the aesthetic value or social proof of an actual book. Everyone thinks you're cooler if you read real books. Tablets are like the worst of both worlds in that way. You don't get the access or familiarity that reading online affords you and you're also kind of lame.

About people reading new stories online - the appeal is largely because people are now able to filter for exactly what they want. That's not exactly possible with regular books. However, you can go on RR or WattPad, set your criteria, and instantly get something pretty close to what you've imagined in. This is now the same thing for games, movies, shows, etc. Everything is now readymade, easily accessible, and "binge-able" for you. People on /lit/ makes threads within this theme every day. This the direction of stories and pretty much everything else.

The reason people need these extra filters is there's so much more content now. People need a guarantee that what they're consuming is worth their time. Before they buy it also helps if they're already "bought in" mentally. They have to like you, trust you, and know what you're doing is quality (in their eyes) in order to get invested. This is true for fans of musicians, artists, YT personalities, etc. Almost always it's accomplished because someone consumed free content the creator put out and then wanted the extra stuff offered to the people who are bought in (patreon, irl books, concerts, etc).

That's the new model for things. The people that are going to just buy a book are disappearing.

I let them out upon the floor, and one of the cocks seized lustily upon my India-rubber over-shoe, and would have swallowed it (and myself), for aught I know, had not a friend who stood by seized him, and absolutely choked him off!

As a young poet I went to a likely location to seek inspiration. There, amid ruins overrun by nature, on the shores of a lake I sat at the campfire of a fellow artist, a man much my senior.
"A man's life progresses through the elements," he said to me, "and you are following the path as sure as I have walked it."
"Do tell!" I implored him, opening a notebook.
"At the first are all men tied to Earth. A child cares little for anything beyond their immediate needs, and so it is with the peasants and plebeians, the men and women who till the soil or while away their time at menial labor, content. But next comes the loftiness of Air, the flights of fancy and imagination, dreams of betterment of oneself and the freedom of seeking after the impossible. Men bound to Air fly about from one thing to another, unrooted, half-awake and half-asleep. They accomplish nothing but study everything, superficially."
I nodded my head at this and jotted it down, thinking there was some superficial wisdom in it. The man continued.
"Next comes Fire, the element of passion. A man finds his calling and dedicates himself to it to the exclusion of all else; all his energies are given to his chosen art or craft or cause, and this Fire in time will consume him. Such men may produce works of merit and worth, but they will not do so for long."
"Indeed, indeed. Fire is dangerous," I admitted and beckoned for him to continue.
"Then at last comes Water, and Water is wisdom. Water flows downhill, through the path of least resistance. Water wears down all opposition in time, leaving behind permanent marks in the world. Wisdom overrides passion, there is focus that is lacking in Air, there is a connection to the Earth again."
"I see," I said, "then Water is the supreme element in your system?"
"On the contrary, boy. Water is in the gravest of dangers, for if it ever reaches the sea, it becomes mixed with a greater body of Water, and thus is the man and all his works mixed with the teeming millions, forgotten by all, indistinguishable from the works of any other. But if Water should cease to flow, it would only grow stagnant and foul, of no value to anyone."
"What hope is there, then?" I asked, dropping in my absentminded stupor a blotch of ink over my notes.
"To evaporate, my boy. To turn to Steam and rise to the Heavens."
"And how is this done?"
"Like so!" said the man, and dropped his pants. He pissed on our campfire a mighty stream of urine, a deep yellow in color and mighty in fragrance, and indeed this piss rose up from the flames in a Steam.
Thus did I abandon poetry and art and got a real job, for madness was all that awaited down the road of these fanciful things.

>>20430088
Rent free. Try, try, and try again. I rarely grasp what it is I'm reaching for, if ever. I'm just going to keep reaching, reading, and improving though. Nobody has ever improved at anything without stepping outside their comfort zone. When's the last time you stepped out of yours?

The black swirls again. The sun’s accelerating path across one grey horizon, to the black another, to one grey, to blue. To black, as always, it returns. Twilights bring technicolor wisps swaddling sky’s vivid pastel with their soggy bottoms. Time is an invariant smear. A bony wrist reaching up to clasp the sky; a film reel on repeat, stuttering still shots.

I want for this to stop. I want peace, and quiet from what’s external. I want only for the world to cease from its constant hubbub and tireless delirium. I want nothing from it but to be left to my own devices, to be unmolested, to find warm-pattering shelter from winds gone mad with their own wherewithal to do it.

The circle has no vertex; the serpent eats its tail; there lay a labyrinth at the heart of Byzantium.

I want to live with the free and timelessly eternal spirit of the unbroken thread, whose slip-frayed fibers—frayed; unbroken!—are the freed tiger and YES his cage as well. I want to die and live again.

Shattered pangaea drifts. Water-logged illusion. Time passes but still I persist.

Would that some apocryphal god could reach down and split my swollen head in two. That’d solve the mystery, or what little’s left of it. Just ax me in twain! split me, end from glistening end! Just make it quick. If I’m to lose a leg, let it be below the knee. If I’m scheduled bisection, just let it be quick! Erect a mirror, such that in my last dilated moments I see my own true nature. Such a thing is hidden; and if life is but a series of hasty-scrawled instructions, hinting at a puzzle-paper’s unfolding—corner by puerile, numbered corner—allow me the solution before I expire. What rotten fruit sits nestled in the squirts and tracts of my brain? I would know its nature, should I be thrall to its whim. Is that so much to ask? Is there some secret antenna, receiving divine instruction? I have, from time to time, heard hollow echoes of Hasidic prayer drift from nowhere discernible to haunt my goyim’s ear. Is there within me a small nugget of gold, perhaps engraved with Masonic symbols, that is the ancient secret of undertakers and emergency-room physicians? Is it a tax-deductible addition to their income? That would seem to inculpate accountants—ergo attorneys—worldwide; throughout human history, none of the above have been recorded to let easy money pass by. The possibility that there could be merely flesh encased in bone seems increasingly unlikely.

Above all: what kind of god erects a universe whose rules hide beyond transformations and entanglements? If reality is deterministic, then God is all-powerful. If its machinations cower and shrink away to the beck and call of probability, then God is no agent, no architect, no mover at all. I may as well split my own head open, powerless I be, for if reality is probabilistic then God is even more bystander than I. O! faithless Heisenberg; O! schizoid Oppenheimer. The tunnel yawns wide and the hour’s gone short.

>>20433517
Once you get published by REAL publishing house your book will be read by thousands.

>>20434136
LOL! I can’t believe anons actually still believe this.
You realize if you get trad published you must still do your own advertising, right?
They only advertise for authors who are already well known, like s. king

>>20434147
>You realize if you get trad published you must still do your own advertising, right?
Maybe in burgerland but in Europe that's not the case.

>>20434147
Is this how you cope with having work of such poor quality that it will never be accepted by a publishing house?

>>20433517
I only read classics and literal whos off /lit/ that have zero reviews. The reason I do so is to support /lit/ authors and to evaluate books first and without any other prior evaluation, to both give them a boost and let me review the book without any preconceived notions.

>>20434149
That's not exactly the case in burgerland either. If you're getting like a 12k advance from some shoestring footprint, yeah, you're going to have to do a lot of hustle. If it's a bigger project, you'll be in discussions for an advertising campaign and expected to be available for certain things.

>>20432863
I have not
I will not
Its coming
Everyday
Overcoming
My feels
My words

>>20433320
>It was fine.
It was completely unedited. Gardner didn't know how to format dialogue tags. He STILL doesn't know how to format dialogue tags. It's not even close to being "good."

>>20434174
How does he do it then?

>>20434175
Advertising. First mover advantage. Being so hilariously bad that people shill it ironically. Self-shilling for literal years.

>>20434179
No I mean the dialogue

>>20434181
>"I am feeling a lot of fear right now" Otto sighed.

>>20434184
So no commas. But why? Surely everyone who has passed elementary school knows this is wrong.

>>20434190
Because he's a hack. I really try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but like many on /lit/ these days, he's probably just unaware of basic conventions of the written English language.

>>20434206
Don't shit on hacks. They might be uninspired copywriters or ghost writers, but they're at least competent. Many beloved pulp writers are also considered hacks.

Threadly reminder, do not reply to Frank

>>20433414
So I had talked to Nesmer in /wg/, Emilyanon in /wg/ when he was editing coverart. I learned about Williams from l&mp and Woolston because Nesmer reviewed him on Goodreads. I know there are other /lit/anons even know some of what they published but there's no true comprehensive way to find these authors other than keep your ear to the ground.

>>20433517
I mostly read classics but I give time for contemporary once a month or two so I understand the Overton window of what people are reading. Also a lot if them are women, I was chatting with a woman at work about books and she brought up how she preordered McCarthy's "Stella Maris." People read not just as a hobby but it brings them into a community where they feel belonging and reading contemporaries engages you with contemporary concerns and styles even if classics are evergreen. I understand your fear that you might pick up a book and be afraid that it's shit but I wouldnt be too jaded about modern writing like that anon that seethes over agents.

Wish I had better ideas

>>20434338
I've got great ideas. Right now I'm writing a scene about an older man creeping on a boy in his early teens and reading bible passages that feature eating shit (Isaiah 36:12 and Ezekiel 4:12)

>>20434358
Maybe I should wing it

>>20434338
How much do you read? I read short stories poets, history, science, novels of all kinds. I try to be a social butterfly and talk to all kinds of people offline and on. Get familiar with another niche community. Go to a Pro-mod race. Go to a synagogue I dunno. Sometimes I pick up cheap used non-fiction purely from the persona of the author because if they have an infamous belief I can pick their brain and see how they view themselves because some of those books they talk about themselves and what inspired them to do the infamous thing. Then I have myself the foundation of a villain.
For many other things just relax, take what you are working with and put it on the page. Compare, contrast, synthesize etc. Ideas dont just come to you, your mind correlates its contents. If you organize the thoughts you want to engage and follow the trail, or even respond to and develop aphorisms you like, you are coming up with ideas.

>>20432854
Don't forget...
You WILL make interesting and unforgettable characters.
You WILL create amazing worlds.
You WILL not rush your book.
You WILL finish your book.
You WILL realize that your time spent on this book is worth it.
And most importantly...
You WILL love what you're writing.

>>20433472
Hey this guy swears a lot he's very cool

>>20434338
It's over

>>20434358
There's no such thing as a good idea. There are only ideas rendered in varying degrees of precision. For any given idea, there exists a precision thereof such that it can be compelling. There is no idea good enough to supercede its rendering. There is no idea bad enough to drag down its execution. Nabokov wrote a modern classic from the point of view of an unrepentant pedophile. That's it. That's the idea. Ideas don't matter.

>>20433261
/wg/ to get critiqued by bozos
/r/writing to ask for permission to write a black trans neurodivergent character when you yourself are a cis eskimo and a different type of neurodivergent

>>20434430
Why don't you go execute some of you ideas right now, sport?

>>20433341
>muffled from a box, a bit bigger than a shoebox
No need for the comma
>sounds of animals and other creatures
What other creatures? Do you mean birds and other creatures?
>She drags herself back over to the hole while hitting the top of the pack over her knuckle
Hardly 'while'. 'and' would be better.
Otherwise, very good, anon! Nice, clean prose, clear sense of who is what is where, not many bells and whistles. Great stuff. For improvement, I'd recommend writing an actual story with a plot. Make it pulpy, make it genre, whatever, just something that includes action, plot points, a defined character that wants something. This one feels like a creative writing exercise, and there's nothing wrong with that, but to bridge the gap between 'nicely written' and 'a good read' you need a bit less esoteric and a lot more practical.

>>20433341
>she does this
>she does that
>she says this
>she thinks that
I get that it's very much in-vogue right now to diminish the medium of writing as much as is possible, but where's the description? I get very little sense that I'm reading a short story rather than just being dictated a series of actions, objects, and some of these actions' and objects' general characteristics. This is more an enumeration of things than it is a piece of writing. Minimalism needs to die.

>>20434472
Ideas? Never had one in my life.

Just finished my first book (although I plan to rewrite/edit parts for at least a month), it is so terribly written but I guess nobody is going to read it anyway.

>>20434499
Congrats on the book, anon! Edited or not, just writing a book-amount of words is a nice achievement.
The self-pity is a bit daft, though.

>>20434499
Post some of it here fren

Hey bros, I don`t know if it belongs in this thread, but I wrote a poem for the first time. Would appreciate a r8.
It is set from the perspective of an American M1 Abrams tank crewman fighting in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Title: "War isn`t all that Reddit said it would be"

There was supposed to be more pomp and flair,
White gloves and shined boots,
like the processions in D.C.,
Or dusty faces and screaming heroes,
like the war films on T.V.,
But at the tip of the spear,
the bhearna bhaoil*,
There was not mud,
nor stormclouds,
nor onslaught of hail,
And one two zero,
mils of power,
Were not so different from uncle`s rifle,
except for only,
a nation louder,
And with a flash of yellow,
it was just the same sharp bellow,
when a Russian hit their powder.

*the bhearna bhaoil = line from the Irish national anthem (I`m Irish), roughly translates as "the breech of battle"

885 more words to fill my monthly quota. I'm going for it today.

>>20434513
Delete all the line breaks and see if your punctuation makes sense and governs the flow of the poem the way you want it to. I like the idea behind it and it's okay at some points, but it seems like you don't know how to read a poem. I would suggest reading a lot of poetry if you want to jump into writing poems. These days, and with the diminishing attention span of the average person, poetry is actually having something of a renaissance. A slight one, sure, but poetry is getting a jolt. Standards are rising, and to anyone who reads poetry, this will frankly seem stilted and neophytic.

Learn the conventions of the medium, then choose how to break them. If you break them haphazardly, it's going to seem like you never knew them in the first place. This takes you from artist or iconoclast and deposits you in the very large folder of amateurs. Cheers, anon, and good luck.

Had this thought today: so many modern writers (and writing manuals) try to encourage fiction which emulates the effect of television or movies but...why? Television and movies already exist, if the reader wanted that experience, they already have it.

And that led me to question what the strengths of literature are. What can literature do that television and movies can't? Here are a few that I came up with:
1. Private. You can't experience them with other people like you can with a movie or tv show
2. Direct exposition of thoughts and feelings (you can achieve a similar effect with voiceover narration but it's not as common and usually hard to pull off right)
3. Cheap to produce and distribute (especially with the internet)
4. Allows for authorial reflection and digression

#1 and #3 seem to suggest that writers should focus on very private or sensitive issues and huge concepts and premises that would take Hollywood billions to produce as a movie or tv show. #2 and #4 suggest that stories should move away from iceberg theory and return to victorian and modernist forms of exploring the inner world of the characters or the author's own thoughts.

I know literary works do a lot of this already, but I feel that even genre fiction would be improved by going this route.

>>20434430
By definition then there are good and bad ideas, determined by your personal ability to execute that idea. A good idea is one you can render well, a bad idea is one you struggle to develop.
But it's more than just what you personally can describe best, it's also what your reader will understand best, and people understand things by relating to them, so the closer a story is to describing them personally the more they'll appreciate it.
Assuming you have no specific audience in mind, or know nothing about what your audience is like, it's best to assume they're extremely similar to you, because according to the laws of statistics it's highly unlikely for you to be unique.
Therefor quality of an idea is how closely it relates to you, with the perfect idea being a direct description of your innate character.
But since it's impossible to know yourself, you instead are reduced to constructing a metaphor which most simply embodies your existence.
Unfortunately this is also extremely difficult, so the only method left is to pick any random metaphor and just pouring your entire attention and obsession into describing it, with the goal of embodying yourself not in the story, but in the telling of it.

Or in other words, there are objectively good ideas, but trying to think of them is a waste of time since you'll get the same result just by writing about anything in sufficient detail.

>>20434533
>exploring the inner world of the characters or the author's own thoughts
The problem is, this kind of shit is often boring as hell and only stalls progression for no value. Literary fiction is already full of works that are just the author's aimless cognitive masturbation. The job of genre fiction is to entertain, not try to be "deep"

>>20434533
>What can literature do that television and movies can't?
The same thing painting and music can do that movies can't. They can manipulate their media directly. Film is the confluence of many different artistic forms. As such, no film can have the consistency and specificity in detail and precision of visual as can painting. No film can explore the auditory experience in exactly the same way that pure music can without detracting from its other elements. In this way, the MEDIUM of literature is self-justifying. It promotes purity of the written word. There's no need to compare it to film because literature, until recently, has never really concerned itself with what film sets out to do. It's just as ridiculous as asking what the strength of literature is with respect to music. They just aren't comparable, and the shame is that literature is currently pretending that if it can only diminish the medium itself to the point of invisibility, it might be mistaken for film. Film is, of course, under the same pressures, ironically, as it gets driven further into Michael Bay WOW IT'S LIKE I'M REALLY THERE SNIFFING SPIDERMAN'S FARTS THRU HIS SPANDEX as the camera shakes and scenes shift every two seconds.

>>20434533
The most important strength of a book is that your can make the reader write most of the story for you. All you need is a rough description of events. This is distinct from the budget/difficulty factor because it means your story will be custom tailored to fit each reader instead of being stuck to one particular form, no matter it's level of quality.

>>20434547
>The problem is, this kind of shit is often boring as hell and only stalls progression for no value.
I feel like this is only true for people that don't actually read. The kind of people that skip the whaling chapters in Moby Dick (the best part of the book imo) or the digression on the Parisian sewer system in Notre Dame de Paris or the frequent authorial asides in Vanity Fair. Even in genre fiction there is a great deal of introspection and many of them are written in free indirect style.

>>20434504
Thanks, not really self pity as i'm not sure if I want anyone to read it anyway. I wrote it for myself, well for myself in ten years or so years time.

>>20434505
No, but thank you for your interest.

>>20434533
That's literary fiction, the fiction that focuses on the characters foremost and uses the plot / story / action etc. as a tool to push the character's story forward, while genre fiction is vice versa. Imo genre fiction is more popular first because it's easier to write and second because its easier to consume. It isn't genre fiction's purpose to be deep and introspective, it's to be fast paced, action oriented and have a big plot with big characters that do big, flashy things.

I'll say from personal experience that writing litfic is harder at least for me, especially in the realm of fantasy.

>>20434582
Free indirect style is fucking based. Most fun way to give characterization bar none, especially if you can juggle what specific characters do and don't know, their personal feels, morals etc. Hard as shit, but equally as fun.

>>20434533
You are right that mediums have strengths and weaknesses. On the topic of writing TV it's because visual media have much more popularity but it took a century to get to this point. This also made the rise of litrpg along with "reads like a movie" novels.
There's nothing specifically wrong with this because TV and movies also have stories as fictional novels do. The issue is people misunderstanding the strengths of those medium. Movies can't do 3rd person as effectively as a novel can and they often fail at stream of consciousness or capturing dense cross-references. Movies have camera techniques, books have literary devices and there's a little overlap it's just a different art. Video games are the same. Novels can't paint a complex picture as fast as a movie does it instantaneously, novels have to build theme and then connotate the big idea into a single image.
>>20434526
I'm hopeful that the popularity in poetry continues to rise with lit in turn. I think there's a cultural seachange overdue after all civilization has been through even in the past 20 years. We are changing and I hope as people mature with their views on technology and social media (many are still endlessly naive about how easy it is to be conned or exposed via tech) they can begin to appreciate the book again.

>>20434591
I'm not sure that introspection or rather exposure of the character's inner thoughts automatically implies depth. I can't think of a single genre fiction novel that I've read that doesn't make heavy use of free indirect style. It's become a staple in genre fiction because they don't have any authorial digressions or reflections so without it there would be nothing but a sequence of actions and dialogue (like in a movie script). I guess ultimately I'm just railing against iceberg theory, but it's given me some insight into the traps I fall into in my own writing.

>>20434591
>That's literary fiction, the fiction that focuses on the characters foremost
I don't know if I agree. To me, literary fiction is anything that's sufficiently well written. Any master of the medium is by necessity writing literary fiction, because at its broadest closure it is fiction that cares about the quality of its writing. Many, many trashy novels focus on the characters foremost. Literary fiction is good writing. Sometimes genre fiction can also be literary fiction, but otherwise, it's everything that sucks and uses writing as a vehicle to get movie deals, to peddle patreon scams, to fill the clits of Middle American fatties with blood, to entice the WOW THAT'S SO TOTALLY EPIC WHAT A GREAT IDEA s*yfaces in Brendan Sandersneed's fanbase, etc. Literary fiction is everything that's good. Genre fiction is everything that's commercial. If a writer is under 50 or so and making money off his writing, and/or if he has sold his "book" to Hollywood, he's a genre fiction author. Simple as.

>>20434526
This is the best advice i`ve ever gotten on the internet and almost fully explains the issues that I thought the poem had.
>Delete all the line breaks and see if your punctuation makes sense and governs the flow of the poem the way you want it to.
This is genius and I`m furious that I never thought of it this way before.
Thank you so much fren.

>>20434626
So you're just using this as a coping mechanism for your own lack of success?
>I-if you make it you're a sellout! Only hunger artists like myself produce valid literature!
You're pathetic.

>>20434630
Who are you quoting? I don't believe I wrote that!

>>20434636
You did, anon. You did.
>If a writer is under 50 or so and making money off his writing, and/or if he has sold his "book" to Hollywood, he's a genre fiction author

>>20434640
Sure. I don't believe we know yet who are the authors worthy of that distinction. Unless you think Franzen will be recalled as one of the greats in 200 years, of course.

>>20434630
>So you're just using this as a coping mechanism for your own lack of success?
Also, calm down there Sigmund. Who says I give a shit about success? I have nothing to cope for. I just want to write, and to write as well as I can. If I never find success, I ultimately don't give a shit. It'd be nice to get some recognition for my hard work eventually, but I don't mind if it never happens—monetarily or otherwise. All I care about is putting the work in and doing the best I can to show up and be present every day when I sit down to write. Work for the sake of your love for the job, fren.

>>20434627
Final update. Ofc I`m not yet happy with it, as I need to go and read a whole shitload of poetry to git gud, but it seems less disjointed.

He signed up for the pomp and flair,
The tight white gloves and the close-cropped hair,
of a procession in D.C.,
or the dark dusty faces, the heroes and aces,
of a war film on T.V.,
But at the tip of the spear,
the bhearna bhaoil,
there wasn`t shouting,
nor storming,
nor onslaught of hail,
And one two zero,
the tungsten-tipped phantom,
seemed now not so different,
from uncle Will`s magnum,
With her deafening crack,
and the smoke that would cloud her,
his steed was like the Colt,
only a nation louder,
And with a flash of yellow,
it was the same sharp bellow,
when a Russian hit their powder.

>>20434483
It wasn’t really intentional for it be minimalist, that’s just what felt right for the story. But I get what you’re saying.
>>20434473
Thanks! I’ll follow your advice.

Poetry? Alright, sure. I think I've got an in-setting nationalistic song somewhere...

>I’ll be your demon, your devil, your bulwark for hate
>Spit your accusations at me, I’ll just say Ikesia above all else

>In the face of all tyranny I shall exact retribution
>I’ll bathe in hellfire to shield the fate of my nation

>You can hate us, accurse us, but we’ll never bend or break
>Just another tyrant’s croney, your strength so frail and fake

>>20434768
>It wasn’t really intentional for it be minimalist
It never is, because the restrained, contemporary minimalism is a step below gospel these days. That you should write minimalistic fiction is a function of its constant overexposure.
>that’s just what felt right for the story
It always does, because it's all most people know.

Hey, wrote a draft of a start to celebrate leaving my job. Can you give opinions?

https://pastebin.com/02TftkEN


>>20434740
very tight rhythm! I think there are a few places where the rhythm is constrained. I made a recording for you:

(im not sure how to read bhearna bhaoil, and sorry for the accent.)
I think there's a problem in the first lines of the rhythm, something seems off. the rest flows like lightning, except "when a russian. Hit their powder" I had to stop there for dramatic effect.

https://vocaroo.com/1eilbL0EFbq7

>>20434785

https://vocaroo.com/1aq6uJdm8u61

I think you should continue it! When I stopped at 'fake' I was waiting for the next line.

>>20434533
5. you can write literature very fast.

I find it tough to do stream of thought literature with anything else other than writings. You can sing or dance to express what you're currently thinking, but that doesn't preserve as well when trying to pass it around.

Writing though? that shit stays, and is less reliant on the reader's own associations and cultural upbringing. You can transfer writing much more easily between cultures and the essence tends to remain, other forms for me tend to dissipate.

As to why copy the effect of TV or movies? We gotta eat. When there's a market demand, someone's gonna fill it, and that works for both high-brow literature and slop. If you want people to read you you better write something they like, whether that means doing cheap effects or giving them tours of the soul.

>>20434789
What would you have done different? What other types of descriptors would you use?

>>20434533
>3. Cheap to produce and distribute (especially with the internet)

I actually had a moment yesterday where i thought about something related to this for a sec.

Mainly, should i make the more fantastical characters appear less in the story so that it is more easy to make in a live-action format. Less cgi and make-up.

Thankfully i quickly realized this was a completely insane train of thought. The story should be put first and not some possible adaptations that propably are shit anyway.

>>20434819
I hope you're not quitting work to become a writer.

>>20434819
I was already a bit leery at this point due to the spotty, rough, "I haven't edited this even once," state of the writing, but once I read the word Spotify, I was done.

>>20434850
that bad?
no, im quitting to either work as a techie or a professional dancer, haven't chosen yet.

>>20434864
Well ignoring the bad grammar and mispellings, which can be fixed, it's a story about nothing that draws no attention.

>>20434863
yeah fair.
I wanted to let you guys read the rough, I think i;m doing emotional venting more than actual creating.

why the hate for spotify though? The recommendation algorithms are becoming so smart they might as well be a character in a story.

>>20434585
Then why bother telling people you're done? You need praise God to reddit

>>20434831
I would have liked to see some risk, a bit of poetry and flow to the prose. Despite the subject matter, the prose is very safe and conservative. It's out of sorts with a protagonist who stuffs herself with a vibrator while engaging in self-harm.

>>20434867
>it's a story about nothing

that's a good description. Rereading.

>>20434864
>techie or a professional dancer, haven't chosen yet.
Why are you dabbling in writing, dance, and tech? You won’t get good at any of them unless you focus on one and make it your life mission.

>>20434868
>why the hate for spotify though?
It's not necessarily for Spotify in particular as much as it is for a very contemporary kind of fiction addressing topics whose dynamics are still developing. Including Spotify in your writing immediately reminds me of the droves of pandemic-centric fiction normies shat out. It's just not possible to have a perspective on these things that won't be hilariously myopic within twenty years. It's also just kitschy.

>>20434872
I can really use this. Thank you.
Why do you try to come off so rude?

>>20434888
>Why do you try to come off so rude?
I don't "try" to be rude as much as I am a rude person. Don't take it personal; it isn't.

>>20434626
>sufficiently well written
Define that. Literary theory actually looks at literariness as the effects it creates with language, so you’re not wrong. But it makes unfamiliar of the familiar, new of the old, and estranges a reader from the everyday language that keeps them within a political continuity.

>>20434877
"get good"
I am good enough to draw a living from whatever coding job I want - that's not hyperbole, I am a decent coder. Not the best, but I will not starve.
I don't believe in narrowing down. I think that just like Ido Portal's method seems to work excellently with highly variable movements, we should let the mind work in as many directions as possible. Mastery should come after becoming agile in the mind.
So I am a decent tap dancer, and a decent breakdancer, and a decent ballet dancer. Not great at any of them, but I tend to be able to switch the dances much better than anyone else can, so I do great as a comedy dancer and street performer. I play chess at 1800 and write poetry which is just good enough to embarrass.

>>20434894
I refuse. I can't, but foremost: I refuse. What makes good writing? You know it when you see it. You can intuitively sense its absence. How do you know when you see it? You read both broadly and deeply and you discriminate without shame or shyness.

>>20434880
ah ok, understood.
it's definitely a rough subject and I don't know how to even approach it, and my skills aren't up to the task.
But in a way spotify is also just a part of life. Walk into any shop and check the app's recommendation and it shows you what kind of music the servers like. Sometimes I find a really weird recommendation algo and that makes me think that there is someone interesting working there.
See a man's front youtube page and you'll kinda know the man... see his google recs and you'll know what he looks for, etc etc...

>>20434906
My grandfather (professional writer) always say you should have a 'shishlek' - the writings should have a main thrust, but the readers eat the meat.

>>20434896
No one will want to read your poetry drawing from dilettantism. This is coming from someone who has been around literature and creative writing professors for years in undergrad and a PhD program, receiving the highest marks in a class for poetry. They hate the fact just anyone can write poetry now. It used to be a controlled thing but now anyone can put a half arsed poem on the internet. Instead, critics and established poets want you to read everything in the canon (and I mean they expect you to know everything from Homer to Pound to Zukofsky), as well as getting a handle of rhythm, technique, and styles to the point you can break the penty effortlessly.

I did a lot of edits to this story yesterday. Does it need to be edited more?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11q39jdlnZxvZe5jRuz8bpfESLQikJDOnV5ixJSht7uE/edit?usp=drivesdk

>>20434917
shrug
my grandfather wrote fifty books and he calls himself a dilettante. I think that's good enough for me. He's not the best, no one recognizes him as the best, and when he'll die the general literature world will bury him and forget him.
This is not to say that specialization has it's place - I am going to be a professional computer worker. The degree is going along smoothly and hopefully I'll find my niche in the computing world. But for the art world I recognize myself as dilettante.

>>20434917
Even though I do prose I go through about one poetry collection a month and just got a poetry meter guide some anon in poetry general recommended so I will comprehend why the poets are writing how they do. That way I can analyze that effect the meter has on style on use it on my own writing. I know some people expect an author to be a genius out of the gate but Im not but that's okay. I know I can get there at the rate I read books and reference them in my study to improve.

>>20434071
I have a real job, but my career bores me into submission.
I write to help alleviate that.
At least I'm not just watching TV or playing video games -- I have something to show for my idle time.
>>20434160
>>20434458
based
>>20434533
>fiction which emulates the effect of television or movies but...why?
Because selling the film/TV rights is where the money is at.

>>20432854
Hello, anon, first time posting on here.
I have three questions:
Does anyone write non fiction here? How much a day?
Also, does writing non fiction worth it if you have no formal degree in that field? Do people even buy unknown authors' non fiction?

>>20434160
You're a real one.

>>20433923
This is a post no one replied to but I think it brings up very good points, especially about filtering the glut of content out and finding something ready-made and binge-able. You can even think about YT video titles: they're not nebulous like some book titles are. You've got a simple declaration of what the content is and you know whether you'd like to waste your time with it.

Adaptation to this style of entertainment requires an intense amount of dedication to what's happening online, what gets through and why, even on a day by day basis. I am sometimes stuck in the "It's just going to happen magically" mentality of sending a book into the aether, either trad pub or self, and suddenly seeing an explosion of interest. But if you don't get through the filters of readers, it won't get read. At some point you have to consider The Game as a function of success. It's truly incredible how much book selling has changed even in the last 20 years. And of course it's nothing like it was 100 years ago.

>>20434071
Bretty good.

>>20435054
>nonfic writers
An anon that has been posting his philosophical musings in pastebins. For now they're /pol/ schizoposts, but I have great hopes. He's currently trying to master the art of the paragraph.
>selling
Unlikely. Maybe if you're open to writing a book about whatever subject and include the word fuck in the title? And make it about self-improvement, of course. So if you really like the Chinese Cultural Revolution you could go with GIVE NO FUCKS: A CHANCELLOR'S APPROACH TO SUCCEEDING IN LIFE

>>20433115
>F. Gardner
here is his good reads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5633094.F_Gardner
there is even a picture of him

>>20433517
Back in the days i used to read only fantasy novels. I live in italy in a small village, so i have to take the bus to get to the nearest city with a book store (50min of travel). They have one stall of fantasy novels, and they dont even cicle it. 40% of it was just YA, and the other 40 was the ones that have 1000 different books of one single series. I had no internet so i based myself on 3 things: look at the cover: the cover changes according to the time the writer wrote the book (nice drawings meant that it was written in the 90s, symbols means it was written in the 80s, single figure made in cgi meant it was written in the 2000s), next i read whats written on the folded part of the cover (where there was the REAL summary of the book) and i usually finished with the font size (when its too small means it's too high fantasy for me, when it's too big means it's too YA for me).
That's how i chose books. They usually were pretty unknown authors at that time (for example i read RR martin before he got the tv series, or i got the first italian edition of Rothfuss) some even stayed small (Anthony Ryan).
As you may notice, anthony ryan was a self publishing writer. But i still bought him.

>>20434869
I was drunk and just wanted to participate in this thread with my /lit/bros

Another chunk of my stuff:


Victor didn’t entirely understand what he was feeling, but he understood that he felt good.

“Why?” a thought shot through his head, instantly swept away.

This burning malice, this hatred in his chest that spurred him to shout his throat out and cackle like a psychotic madman every time the thunderous impact of Zel’s fist rang out against the knight captain’s armor. Everything felt so vivid, as if he had suddenly become anchored, his mind no longer passively wandering anywhere other than the current moment. A tickling pressure built just behind his forehead, akin to that which someone felt when they first put on a pair of sorely-needed glasses and the world finally came into focus for the first time.

Despite struggling to make sense of what was happening, Victor now actually recognized nearly everything Zelsys was doing. The flashes in her muscles whenever she made a sudden, snappy movement - that was Thundercharger, the technique wherein she saturated muscle groups with Pneuma in order to, through some complex arcane interaction, allow the muscle to contract at full power repeatedly using only Pneuma and without building up waste product.

Her punches and kicks, too, were ones he recognized, ones which the pulps had inadvertently drilled into his head by detailing the actual process of their invention. Perhaps the only thing he didn’t recognize was the hair trick, but he could clearly tell that she was just playing with the knight captain.

There was no way in hell that was an effective use of energy… But it made Von Wickten look like a chump.

>>20434880
>It's just not possible to have a perspective on these things that won't be hilariously myopic within twenty years
I think this is where really great writers separate themselves from the droves of typical writers. I don't even want to think about how many books will be written that have a basis in the pandemic lockdown culture which only this generation will ever really understand. The themes are just not universal.

>>20435121
Phone posting here.

There's some word choice issues I do not like and some of the pacing is awkward. For example
>Despite struggling to make sense of what was happening, Victor now actually recognized nearly everything Zelsys was doing.
What is it? Struggling or making sense? This can be clarified through better word choice. Or possibly another description of what's going on. Victor is getting his ass kicked, so show that, all the while have him slowly recognize the fight.

If this character growth I suggest you slow it down and emphasize this part more

>>20435093
Im actually translating in italian (and expanding) a 1800s book about the links between ancient greek gnosticism and freemason symbolism/rites.
I hope edgy emo girls will buy it.

>>20434338
Mile-wide asteroid, the largest yet of 2022, flies safely by Earth

Where Monkeypox Is Spreading In The U.S. And Around the World

$9-a-tablet drug used to treat HIV patients could help reverse memory loss

Three headlines in the newspaper today.
The story would be: meteorite impacts earth, everyone loses their memories, there's a rumor of a drug that will restore memories, turns out it's a preliminary attack by aliens who value memories above all else.

>>20434533
you can write out your character's thoughts which is hard to do for tv or movies.

>>20435096
Do you honestly think another /lit/ book like Emily Project is more popular? Exactly. Only 1 anon bought it for charity. Versus Gardner's hundreds.

>>20434485
Varg's lookin' good there.

>>20435159
>more popular
It's like you're completely unaware of the distinction between people laughing WITH you vs. laughing AT you. We laugh AT Gardner.

>>20435163
Doesn't matter if it's with or at. The question asked was who's the most successful author on /lit/. By the measure of sales and popularity, it is Gardner. Unless JK Rowling or even Sanderson reveals himself

>>20435178
Quiet down, gardner

>>20435180
I accept your concession

The alarm clock ringing, sliding, and shaking across the dresser he could hardly hear it. He had dozed off again, just fell asleep in front of his computer screen again. He had said he would stop doing that but his chair was just too comfortable and the bed was just too far away. His eyes slowly and achingly sputtered open his limbs and torso he became acutely aware of each and every one of his body parts as he started to stretch. Pushing the chair away from the desk to make some space, he got up, still feeling tired. He really needed to think about changing his sleeping habits but staying up playing this new MMO had just been too alluring for the past couple of weeks. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do--one might think that after years of being cooped up inside a genetic testing lab, he'd want to spend more time outside but no, the indoors were the familiar and the familiar is what brought him comfort after being torn from the only life he had known since birth. Besides, when you're a 7ft, 300 pounds genetically altered kangaroo, you can't exactly just waltz down to the local supermarket and buy a box of Cheez-bops and and a case of Shaka Cola.

>>20435178

Have I "switched perspectives" here? Something feels off in the second part of this spiel.

https://pastebin.com/kwG1psCU

I feel like I've completely lost the thread after having had it in the first part.

>>20435159
Really need that dopamine hit today, huh gardie? It's okay, we've all been through tough times.

>>20435199
based ant poster

>>20435195
>Rang, slid, shook
Fix that first before I read anything else

>>20435200
Seethe and concede. You lost the argument. Hell even after proving you wrong with sales, you won't go out and buy other anon books.

>>20435198
I accept your concession

>>20435217
None were made, shitpost-kun!

>>20435210
Hope he sees this, bro

>>20435219
>Have no arguments
>Can't disprove the numbers
>Forced to angrily browse his reaction face folder
>Type in the captcha
>Still lose
I accept your concession.

>>20435204
The alarm clock rang, slid, and shook across the dresser and he didn't even hear it until it crashed onto the floor. He had dozed off again, had just fallen asleep in front of his computer screen again. He had said he would stop doing that, but oftentimes when his eyes were starting to droop, his chair would be just too comfortable and the bed was just too far away. His eyes slowly and achingly sputtered open as he became acutely aware of each and every one of his body parts--his feet, his back, his hands, his legs--as he started to stretch. Pushing the chair away from the desk to make some space, he got up, still feeling stuck in that heavy between sleep and awakeness. He really needed to think about changing his sleeping habits but staying up playing that new MMO had just been too alluring for the past couple of weeks. It wasn't as if he had anything else to do--one might think that after years of being cooped up inside a genetic testing lab, he'd want to spend more time outside but no, the indoors were the familiar and the familiar is what brought him comfort after being torn from the only life he had known since birth. Besides, when you're a 7ft, 300 pounds genetically altered kangaroo, you can't exactly just waltz down to the local supermarket and buy a box of Cheez-bops.

>>20434533
>Had this thought today: so many modern writers (and writing manuals) try to encourage fiction which emulates the effect of television or movies but...why? Television and movies already exist, if the reader wanted that experience, they already have it.

I spent my childhood watching TV and movies. I don't consciously try to emulate those media, but my stories end up with a lot of their qualities. That's just how my brain works now. It feels natural. In past centuries, writers might have made works closer to theater or epic poetry or cave paintings.

>>20435244
What am I reading?

>>20435286
A light novel about genetically altered animals that play competitive video games.

Red light shimmered in the morning mist as the sun’s rays broke over the jagged horizon. Ostra tried to snort a string of snot running from his nose but it just got lodged in his nasal cavity. “Son of a..” Ostra’s internal struggle was interrupted by the shifting of foliage. He tenderly adjusted his position on the heavy limb of the Onlog Oak he perched in. The wisps and puffs of steam were rising out in the high grass and there were faint snorts. So he raised his bow biding his time. He could just make out where the grass was being jostled. Time seemed to slow as the grass was being split about twenty strides out. Ostra drew the bow back as the horns of the boviboar pushed clear of the grass. The drawstring was heavy, but Ostra held it, the powerful back muscles shivering slightly from the strain. Then the broad side of the creature emerged and let out a fierce honking cry as an arrow planted itself between its ribs.

>>20435244
The switch from 3rd Omnipresent to second person is jarring and terrible. Also you need to set up the scene better. I thought he was sleeping on his bed. Start with the computer and chair while hinting it's a kangaroo.

>>20435310
That's not second person, that's just a narrative thought he's having, I assume.

>>20435239
Again, no concession was made. Let's review this "argument," since that's the way you insist on framing it.
>>20435178
>By the measure of sales and popularity, it is Gardner
Here, you make this claim. In my following post, I focus on the idea of "popularity," because Gardner obviously has sold the most books on /lit/.
>>20435163
I made this post to dispute that he's the most popular author on /lit/. You chose to distinguish between sales and popularity yourself, and I proposed the idea that popularity is not just how many books you sell. This draws from your own argument, which made the initial distinction. He is not the most popular author on /lit/, because his work attracts almost universal derision due to its extremely poor quality. If anything, he is the most UNPOPULAR author on /lit/. To this, you state the belief that it doesn't matter.
>>20435178
Why doesn't it matter? Who knows! You never quite got that far, did you. You preferred to retreat to implication, and to gesticulation in the general direction of your a priori beliefs, which conveniently define "popular" however you mean them to. In my followup post, I specifically chose a reaction image because your argumentation tactics are so commonplace that I have a specific image which refers to it, which I employ here.
>>20435198
Thoughts? Does this strike you as a concession still?

>>20435310
Please provide me your perspective skills for my waifu fan fic.>>20435199

>>20435339
>perspective skills

Hoefler Text is a god tier font. Anyone who disagrees is wrong.

>>20433024
>this board’s most known author?
>>20435178
>The question asked was who's the most successful author on /lit/
And the question asked wasn't even that! Where's your argument now, retard? I'll accept your concession whenever you're ready to give it.

>>20435121
>Victor didn’t entirely understand what he was feeling, but he understood that he felt good.

https://litreactor.com/essays/chuck-palahniuk/nuts-and-bolts-%E2%80%9Cthought%E2%80%9D-verbs

>>20435347
Good sir

should I cough up the $40~ for scrivener? Is the shilling real?

>>20435330
The original post clearly asks for numbers. There is no other metic by which we can assert popularity except quantative. Which in this point you conceed.

Therefore Gardner is the most popular. He has the largest amount of sales and is the most well known here. Go make a post with Eggplant, Son of Sun's, Emily Project, and see how many replies those get. It won't be CoC numbers

>>20435358
I like how you conveniently ignore the actual first post
>>20432918
>>20432918

>Success
>Numbers
I accept your concession

>>20435210
>>20435217
>>20435219
>>20435239
>>20435330
>>20435381
Boys, boys...place nice now...you don't want me to turn this car around and go home, do you?

>>20435375
Why the fuck would you?

>>20435349
>Hoefler Text
Not bad, but for me, Merriweather Light is king.

>>20435317
Yeah, you got it right.

>>20435310
>I thought he was sleeping on his bed

The alarm clock rang, slid, and shook across the nearby dresser and he didn't even hear it until it crashed onto the floor. He had dozed off again, had just fallen asleep at his desk again, with the screen of his computer still giving off its faint shine even though the sun was out. . He had said he would stop sleeping in his chair and try to mend his habits. In spite of that declaration, he'd find oftentimes, when his eyes were starting to droop, that his chair--with its heated neck rest and its ability to lean back by detecting movement instead of making the person seated in it extend themselves to pull on some oddly placed lever--would be just too comfortable and the bed was just too far away.

>>20435376
>There is no other metic by which we can assert popularity except quantative
that doesn't mean a metric is good. it just means you're arbitrarily choosing the metric for popularity you like. i could just as easily say that because f. gardner has sold the most books (for 99 cents each) he's got the most pairs of red socks. everything about your metric is arbitrary.

PLUS, there absolutely are ways to determine popularity. popularity is a good word, because it comes packaged with its antithesis: unpopularity. it tacitly implies that popularity is positive renown, where unpopularity is negative renown. these are NOT unquantifiable metrics, they're just unquantified. your ideological and dogmatic retreat to sales is categorically NOT a proof that popularity is unquantifiable, and i don't accept sales as its replacement. feel free to make an argument disproving that, but i don't think that you can. there is a finite amount of people who browse /lit/, and a finite amount of posts that have been made about fag gardener.

consider being less of an enormous faggot about everything. alternatively, post some writing.

>>20435415
Now you're just arguing semantics. We have a clear indicator. Sales numbers. That's all we need to know. And Gardner by and large has the largest sales numbers

>>20435435
no, i'm not. you are the one who chose to distinguish sales from popularity. you proposed popularity as a completely separate concept from sales. you did it here
>>20435178
>sales AND popularity
there's no real support to the idea that gardner is the most popular author on /lit/. if sales are popularity, why mention it? why have you doubled down on the idea that he's the most popular, if it's equivalent to sales?
>We have a clear indicator. Sales numbers. That's all we need to know
i've made a specific argument addressing this. you've tried to circumvent it by calling it semantics without justification. stop arguing like a slimy little cunt.

>>20435376
a lot of traditionally published authors use word or a simple word processor. google docs is fine too
i think scrivenor has a lot of stuff most people will never use
but there are people who swear by scrivenor

This nigga angry that Gardenbro outsells him

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nBQqfx2AnFoC55tovM91pqKgCkXS_5MjW_Np9aCrTC4/edit?usp=sharing

Going to go workout soon and then spend the rest of the day working on it. Hope everyone is having a cozy Saturday.

CoC costs 6usd for a paperback and 1usd (give or take) for a digital copy
applying these to more applicable data, I can say I've sold 147 paperbacks or 881 digital copies, or any combination of the two

You guys are crazy with your 'books'. The top writers on Royal Road make like 10k/mo on Patreon.

>>20435526
>>20435526
Just made an account. Thanks for the heads up about patreon subscribers

>>20435526
Lol, won’t say how, but somewhere along my process my readership makes me kore than books and it’s not pozzed like patreon.

>>20435558
My work contains significant themes of racism and the villains are globalist chinamen that practice population replacement via immigration as a form of warfare
I've never had issues with Patreon
they only give a shit if you're an irl activist

>>20435576
>>20435558
Also you can always use Subscribestar instead

>>20435546
And they can double dip! Put up a story for a year or two to get followers and subscribers, then take it down and move it to Amazon. You'll be guaranteed a few positive reviews from existing fans.

>>20435375
Scrivener is shit. The UI is archaic, there are no good built in editing tools besides a really bad spell checker, and you'll be spending more time fiddling with the thing than writing.

>>20435593
>>20435593
Holy shit. I've been binging book marketing shit and they all say "get a hundred friends to review your book lolol" but I have no friends. Are RR readers that loyal? I may consider uploading my novel there to get "friends"

>>20435594
I figured the shilling was just that, shilling. I'm using pages for now and its been fine for basic word processing but I'm eventually gonna insert illustrations which pages is known for shitting it up.

>>20435633
If you write a good enough story that catches enough people's eyes, you can probably make some decent money off RR and later Amazon if you're popular enough. It's hardly a guarantee, but it's probably 'safer' than just chucking a self-published book out into the wild.

>>20435650
>>20435650
WTF anon. You literally just changed the course of my novel's publishing. Honestly, I was dreading the social aspect since *autist* but I never considered another alternative. THANK YOU.

"You're not gonna believe it, but this here's a treasure map!" squealed Carol, loud enough so the two truckers in the next booth over could have heard if they didn't look like they were about to doze off into their mess of overcooked hash browns and scrambled eggs.
"Lower your decibels, Carol, jeez."
She squealed again but was definitely quieter this time, her tail shimmying behind her. For as long I'd known her, which is longer than I've known anybody pretty much anyone, when Carol was happy about something, she couldn't hide it. The smug grin she'd get on her face could be seen by probably be seen like aliens, who would then be scared off because the people on this planet would be seen as way too friendly.

The picture Carol was showing me barely looked like a drawing, let alone like anything somebody could make out like a map. There were a couple of squiggly stick lines in each corner that looked like trees, which tells you basically nothing because we're in the suburbs and trees are everywhere. In the middle--or what I'm gonna assume should by all means and actual logic be the middle--was a drawing of some flat, not-too-short-but-not-too-tall-rectangles with tiny squares on them (buildings?) circled and marked with a big X, with the circle and the X the only two things that actually look like anything.
"Carol," I told her. "This is just a grease-stained napkin covered in some druggo's
pen scratch, I could crap a better map than this."
"Yeah, well, a greasy napkin can be a treasure map if it wants," she said.
"What? No, it can't."
"Yes, it can."
"No, it--" I had to stop myself. Carol was an expert in the debating style of 5-year-olds, she could go on back-and-forth like this all night, she'd just wait until the other person got worn out and consider that a win.

>>20435660
You may go completely unnoticed on RR regardless, but the general rules are "post consistently", so if you're posting once a week, keep posting once a week. Don't chapter-dump, and try to avoid missing too many. RR tends to prioritise showing off stuff that keeps updating. That said, readers have a decent tendency to leave reviews so you can at least get a good idea of what's going well with your story and what isn't.

>>20435643
I've been using Microsoft word and Google docs for a lack of a decent word processor. Docs at least have some add-ons you can download if you need it but both allow for images. I think libre office does, too.

>>20435526
one of the best things for self-published people is a mailing list
if you have a new book out, you can mail your list and ask for reviews, for example
and a mailing list won't close your account for reasons

>>20435633
>Are RR readers that loyal?
Not really. It's just a numbers thing. If you get on the front page, you might get tens of thousands of people at least giving your first chapter a go. If you post for a long time, you'll build some followers.

This is assuming your stuff isn't garbage. And there are some pretty cool stories that fall through the cracks due to bad luck or just not matching the readers' tastes. But it's still worth a shot.

>>20434174
I meant in terms of the story. Story wise it was an entertaining book desu. I don’t think Gardner’s readers care about the commas and editing stuff. Think creepypastas from /x./ Anons never really complain about if things have editing issues. F Gardner pumps out horror at a consistent basis from my understanding. Clearly there’s a market for that and his readers probably overlook any editing issues.

>>20435526
That's my goal. Have a completed story, shill it on RR and hope for Patreon bucks

>>20435693
Pretty much. F. Gardner is essentially a modern day version of a pulp horror author. His readers don’t care and probably don’t even realize the editing fuckups you guys fixate on. As long as he continues publishing twist heavy horror books they’re going to keep eating his work up.

>>20435741
he has like 10 fans and himself who actually posts :)

>>20435526
What do they support for on patreon? Early access? First drafts? I can’t imagine how patreon helps a writer on RR.

>>20435766
It's usually early access, basically pay to read ahead, sometimes with side content like side stories/smut chapters/voting on art etc.

>>20435594
What kind of built in editing tools do writers here use? What more do you need than a spellchecker?

>sit down to write my weekly flash fiction
>think it'll be fast and be done in half an hour
>takes me 2.5 hours
>I have over 8 tabs open with varying degrees of symbolism, bird sounds, forestry in my state, and specific definitions
I should have never started reading again. Now I'll never escape from literary enlightenment.

I have two stories in progress. Symbiosis was intended to be like an introductory novel of sort but I'm not sure if it will end up being novel length so for now Royal Road it is, alongside my Roswell story which I had a bit of roadblock with but that's been sorted.
https://www.royalroad.com/profile/126344/fictions

>>20435349
>>20435407
>applekeks

>>20435777
Personally, I like grammar checks because I have a bad habit of including passive voice but some others might like mind maps or something to help them plan a complicated timeline or plot.

>>20435806
This is where I really like Word. If you get into the Grammar module and really finely tune things, as long as you're using it solely for word processing, it's the best in the business. It works amazing for formatting too once you understand how to work it.

Does excessive masturbation get in the way of writing?

>>20435832
I jack it probably once a day on my most active libido weeks and it doesn't bother me that badly. If you're cranking it three or more you probably don't have room for writing and should see someone.

>>20435832
No. But the hours looking at porn beforehand do.

>>20435852
Eh, I do it at least two times a day, for the past 4 years now.

what do you guys do for a living?
it seems all writers are agnsty, overly analytical ex-journalists.

I am just a retard who likes action films and works in sales. Can I write a cheap spy thriller, or do i need to become a neckbeard first?

>>20435900
I'm a schizo, but I don't write schizo stuff. Yet.

>>20435435
>>20435450
Just agree on the only meaningful metric...whether the writer is making enough money to quit his day job and write for a living.
>>20435852
If he could see someone, he wouldn't need to jack it 3x/day.
>>20435853
Mmmm...nerd lady

>>20435900
I'm an engineer and spies are always sapping my teleporters. I turned this nice phrase yesterday that I liked: I think like an engineer but I have the emotions of a writer.

Where's the best place to get genuine feedback on your writing?

>>20435779
I keep telling myself I will write short fiction on Wednesdays and then I read extra or work on the novel instead. God. I am going to change that next Wednesday because I have 14 prompts and 3 of them I already started. Need to get these done one at a time because it's experience for the drafting process. Being stuck in early drafts is bad for development I think and I need to get comfortable knowing what the late stages look like.

>>20435060
>>20434160
Speaking of, if anyone has something I can pick up on Kindle wants a GR review, link it. I will buy it and review it eventually.

>>20435741
I’ve talked to Gardner. He seemed like a Boomer who was unaware of how memed he is. He was nice but he definitely has an ego.

>>20435933
Critique Circle. You have to critique a couple chapters for each chapter you post, but in exchange, you will get a handful of reviews.

>>20435900
I'm a programmer.
You can just write whatever you want.

>>20435928
>the emotions of a writer
Are you sure that's a thing?

>>20435961
I could say emotions of a poet, but I don't write poetry.

>>20435933
if you can find a group of fellow writers who are as serious as you are, you can critique each other's stuff. they can even review your stuff when the time comes

>>20435994
I'm not sure that's a thing either.
Even engineers have emotions. I think the bottleneck is expression.
It's hard to tell because you can't look inside people's heads.

>>20435852
>>20435876
Jesus, I do it like once a week. It's not that great.

>>20435926
>Just agree on the only meaningful metric...whether the writer is making enough money to quit his day job and write for a living.
I'll accept your concession.

>>20435933
I used Scribophile in the past. You require a sub to post all of your story. But the feedback is varied and quite useful

>>20436072
>not going 12+ a day
Rookie numbers anon.>>20436099

>>20435944
Are the ones you were already told about still on your list?

>>20436005
>fellow writers who are as serious as you are
This is my challenge, 99% of those seeking a writing group are mongoloids, spergs, and dabblers who will quit in a week. As a good writer (my mother has confirmed) I can't get much feedback I can take seriously.

And that's not even mentioning the dysfunctional retards who post but refuse to read your stuff (you know who you are).

>>20436223
>>>As a good writer (my mother has confirmed)
Chad shit

You programmers and engineers are NGMI. You’re shape rotators but not shape creators.

>>20436376
I sometimes read fiction written by programmers.
If I can get other programmers to read my fiction then I count that as a success.

>>20436376
Depends on the field. "Code monkeying" (95% of programing jobs) is definitely shape rotating, but there are many fields such as the one I'm in that requires innovation.

I'm writing a scifi novel where giant 15 feet women hunt the far galaxies for men to conquer and breed with. They have committed genocide of thousands of races by snu snu

>>20436412
and then what happens?

>>20436376
>You’re shape rotators but not shape creators.
Quit baiting me, you aphantophobe.

>>20436415
They meet the smallest and meekest of men that seem to be able to withstand the effects of snusnu, but their small dicks and feminine stature repel the women. But they list after cocks so much they keep trying to breed with these men only to grow continually more frustrated with every session.

>>20436445
i see

>>20436412
"Sexy Space Babes"

>>20435071
Right exactly. True about YT videos. That's the way things are now in the public consciousness. Not really a big ask to know what you'll be getting into with a piece of content honestly. We had that pre-internet with book/record/videos stores and genre sections. Things are just more sophisticated now.

I know what you mean by throwing something into the aether lol. The problem with the book model now is there's no consistency for the author. One needs to engage with the audience often to build a relationship. Someone could write a book and post each chapter over time. With a chapter post every few days that's A LOT of content. Short stories too. It just doesn't make sense to drop a book at once now unless you already have an audience.

This is exactly what fanfic authors, posters on old forums, and now people on RR do. I think it's genius. It's interesting how no one uses the word "book" in those circles either. It's always a "story".

I don't know why I'm speaking authoritatively on this, but that's my opinion. Content is more like a river than a lake now. You can have lakes along the way, but the river still has to flow.

>>20434591
wait wtf is the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction

>>20436177
Yes. I'm about halfway through Xenos Depths by Cinder and next is Playtime's Consequences by Boswell. If you have something I can pick up, let me know.

I'm looking for a sci-fi short story that I read a long while ago, anons. The basic premise was something like this:
>Humanity and some Alien race are in contact, aliens visit our solar system and work together with humanity
>a ship with an alien/human crew suffers a reactor malfunction (?) and a human crewmember sacrifices himself to save the others
>years later, the aliens return with a massive delegation to honor the guy
>they realize with some surprise that Humanity has long forgotten about him, since such self-sacrifices are basically dime-a-dozen in our society

>>20436557
literary fiction is about the real world. people with jobs and families who go to work, etc
genre fiction is westerns, sff, romance, mystery, thriller, horror, etc
some people only read literary fiction
some people only read non-fiction
literary fiction is the most artsy fiction, generally speaking. best prose, best themes, etc

>>20436597
https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/8wvafy/do_you_hold_our_debt_fulfilled/

>>20436611
>literary fiction is the most artsy fiction, generally speaking. best prose, best themes, etc
why is this? is it because the greater realism means the entertaining needs to be delivered through a different means?

>>20436622
>greater realism
>literary fiction
the way the best literary fiction requires you to interact with meaning and reality makes literally every single sci-fi/fantasy story look like 7-11 at noon

>>20436619
Holy shit that was quick, thanks.

>>20436628
why cant genre fiction force readers to interact in the same way though? and I don't understand your greentexts... was what I said untrue?

>>20436557
Literary fiction more often focuses on the form and follows conventions less, and genre is more focused on cleanly expressing a story within a specified genre. There is crossover however. Something in a specific genre may still be literary fiction.

>>20436578
Cool, I just got a paperback of Xenos Depths but haven't started reading it yet.

>>20436663
so its more like a spectrum than 2 distinct categories

I know the wiki says not to go with a publisher but….won’t they shill the book the book for me and eventually will be able to self publish with a loyal following? Idk I’m in over my head now that my manuscript is finished…

>>20436759
Most successful books have a publisher.

One time when i was like 13 i wrote a poem and submitted it to a contest. Later on they sad I won and my entry was printed and to give them $30 to get a copy. Only now do i realize that it was a scam. Anyone else almost get duped?

>>20436765
There's different avenues these days, but you probably won't get mainstream success without one. The Martian is basically the only relatively recent example of success of that caliber off of self-publishing, and even then it was traditionally published later.

>>20436769
I hear self-publish to trad publishing is nonexistent. True?

>>20436759
I have no experience with either, but the way I see it is, no matter which method you use to shill the book, 1- if its good then people will share it and talk about it and 2- theres a great degree of luck involved either way.

>>20436770
It can happen (again, The Martian) but it's unlikely. Web serialisation to traditional publishing can happen, though.

>>20436777
I just perused some published and most seem to offer digital only to new authors. I see no point in pursuing that avenue. I can do that shit myself. I want hardcover books!

>>20436790
*publishers

I want to write a book, but I know the only reason I want to write is because I want to be creative and the skill ceiling for writing is much lower than it is for playing instruments or drawing
unfortunately I don't have the drive to learn those, so I want to cope by writing unintentional schlock and calling myself a creative

>>20436798
You mean skill floor?

>>20436798
There's no true skill floor for drawing, if you're willing to put out cringe

>>20436822
Same with writing though isn't it? Plenty of people pump out utter shlock at the start. Problem is that a lot of them either give up there or refuse to improve.

>>20436766
millions of people. that's why those scams exist. at least you have the excuse that you were just a kid at the time

>>20436622
I think it's better to think about these categories in terms of their audience. Literary fiction is read by people who have read the classics and who have read much more books and more difficult books than the general public. Consequently, this kind of fiction relies more on playing with the expectations of form or the aesthetics of style to engage the reader.

Genre fiction is read by a greater number of people and by those who don't necessarily read the classics, and also consume fiction through other mediums (comic books, movies, tv etc.). Rather than play on form or style, they play with the conventions of their genre. Take the success of ASOIF, a lot of it comes from the play on typical fantasy tropes like "the honorable character wins in the end" or the "nobility are good" (or even the "nobility are corrupt"). Genres are essentially a kind of metalanguage creating certain expectations in the reader before they ever pick up the book, which are either fulfilled, subverted or addressed in some way. For the most part they are fulfilled beat for beat (just read any two thrillers or romance novels by a best-selling author) but once in while something like ASOIF will come along and shuffle things around.

>>20436622
yeah, I'd go with that
another idea is that all humans tell stories all over the planet
there's evolutionary pressure for it
when you listen to the elder tell a story about how he got away from the lion, that information might save your life one day
genre fiction doesn't give as much useful information as literary fiction in general
knowing how to defeat a vampire will never come in handy
but knowing how to defeat an asshole boss, might

Shall i shell out the shekels for some slimy literary agent to shill my shiny manuscript?

>>20435330
One of my novellas has more reviews than all of Gardner's books combined.

>>20436628
>what is the western canon
>>20436917
Oh, cool. Self-pubbed?

do you guys care whether a protagonist is male or female?

>>20436938
Not really. Some people just don't like protagonists of the opposite gender, some people seem offended by the notion of it (just look at how many people are like "Oh, female protagonist? Dropped" on other threads), sometimes it depends on genre (I don't read romance in general, but I probably wouldn't read female protagonist romance if I did).

>>20436686
My initial impressions so far is that is a weird read. 3 POVs in 3 chapters, lots of sci-fi and world-building, not too rough but definitely missing polish. Cinder isn't a terrible writer, but he isn't great. I don't know what his editing, critique, and drafting polish was, but I think with a more traditional drafting and editing and copyediting process, the book would be perfectly at home in the sci-fi section. Compared to the last two /lit/ books I read, which were pretty miserable, it's not too bad.

>>20436690
Yeah, for sure. There are also genres of literary fiction too, making it even stranger to categorize, like Bizarro Fiction

>>20436924
Yes. And I've run into a couple /lit/ authors who have sold more.

>>20437010
do they also post on reddit?

>>20437016
I don't know. I don't use Reddit.

>>20436902
>>20436909
a lot of literary fiction is just about depressed alcoholic drug addicts wandering around a city and meeting people that upset them. literary fiction has its own conventions and tropes

>>20437087
>depressed alcoholic drug addict
Well yeah, since most of the audience of literary fiction consist of other literary fiction writers...

>>20436917
Yeah sure. My dad who works at Nintendo also has a best selling novel that sells more than Gardner.

>>20436917
What is it? I'll buy it and review it.

I was thinking about the story of my grandfather.
In Rome, there was once a gay roman. He was imprisoned. In his prison cell, he was hungry and it was very dark. At night, he often turned his head up to the trap in that prison roof. A thin slice of moonlight was enough to illuminate his mind. One night, he has an incredible vision, moreso than any other before it. He is so convinced by what he saw and the sacred mission that was bestowed upon him, that he persuades his captors to let him loose. They set him free and the man is afoot on his charge.
He traces straight down the dirt steps, straight to Hell, feet aflame with divine intent. Down there, he meets Chiron on the burning river. ‘Bring me my brother,’ says the man. Chiron’s eyes melt into their sockets and he reaches iron, skeleton hand into the lava pit and pulls out the man’s perfect mirror. They attach themselves loosely to some sort of wooden contraption, like a cross. The double and his man march victoriously from of hell, attached by the hands to their wooden beams, and straight to the Senate, where they expose their identical sexes, which droop like weeds in the sun. The senators are impressed. They laugh, cahoot and express their overwhelming joy by voting on some news laws, none of which have any relation to the plebeian and his double.
Suddenly, an indescribable creature with no name catches wind of this new arrival. ‘We’re all here !’ It screeches this incomprehensible gibberish with glee. This must be the demon the gay roman feared in his vision. The creature dives towards the man. He unsheathes his dagger but he is no match for the nimble creature. That thing tears a chunk from the man’s skull. His eyeballs melt into their sockets. Sand pours like a sacred fountain from the hole in its place. The creature drinks with glee.
What does the double do? What can the double do?

>>20437151
It’s some LARP. He would’ve posted proof otherwise.

>>20436917
But has your book achieved the much sought after “meme status” like CotC? Unless you’re secretly Waldun then Gardner still probably has you beat in that regard.

>>20437176
"Meme status" is only valuable if it leads to sales.
Otherwise, it's like the old "critically acclaimed' thing, which was always code for "not selling".

>>20437176
You never know when Waldun might appear. I could be Waldun, YOU could be Waldun. Remain vigilant always!

>>20437244
>>20437249
>still hasn’t posted proof of their book

You got my hopes up.....nice larp

>>20437134
>>20437155
This must be a joke. Gardner barely sells. Many people choose a popular genre and sell more. The key is to be prolific. Then you have multiple products for sale, multiple products on newly released lists, and you start to build a following that causes subsequent books to sell more. That is the overarching self-publishing strategy.

>>20437151
There is no upside and a lot of risk. Moderately successful authors don't share their work here for good reason.

>>20437176
True.

>>20437276
>There is no upside and a lot of risk. Moderately successful authors don't share their work here for good reason.
What's the risk exactly? What is actually at stake if I were to purchase and review your book? Are you worried somebody is going to sully your name by attaching it to /lit/ writing generals?

>>20437176
CotC is one of the most forced "memes" of all time. It's hardly a meme, since nobody memes about it except the tiny clique of Gardner fuck bunnies.

>>20437341
what means did you use to determine the tininess of this clique considering we are all anonymous

>>20437351
Gardner has a discord server

>>20437354
this isn't his server and it is a meme here

>>20437351
basic logic, the meme is incredibly unfunny by all standards and feels incredibly forced

>>20433604
Why would I want anyone from this place to read anything I write, especially if it's posted somewhere they can post their retarded pseud opinions about it in a review?

>>20437403
by all standards such as?

I hate when I'm excited about what I believe is a good draft, but then I smoke weed and become really fucking critical of myself and delete it
happens every time

>>20437294
He's larping bro. Don't bother.

>>20437294
stigma of 4chan

>>20437517
In that case, I would like you to find me one author that recieved the stigma of /lit/ that negatively impacted their career. You won't, but that's okay, because I think we can drop the charades. I was sincere in my desire to read and review the material, but there's nothing to review.

>>20437294
Probably more worried about offending some incels by daring to include a black character or claiming that female orgasms are real, and then getting review bombed on Amazon.

>>20437813
Has this ever happened with a /lit/ book?

>>20437529
Two were mentioned above, lazy cuck... >>20436578

New Bread!
>>20437966

>>20437974
Jeez, that was fast.
So much for a lazy holiday weekend.