/lit/ - Literature

>>20448973
We need an autobiography of F. Gardner.

The real value in publishing came from its ability to mass produce. There's no value in mass production now that copying is free, so they are left only with their ability to market you. Between eliminating the middle man and monetizing superfans, you would need a mass audience 10 times the size of a niche following just to break even. There is just no point unless you crave legacy prestige.

>>20448841
Order of the Stick used to have lots of jokes like that. Other than that, I can't think of any.

>>20449117
Curse you...I just spent entirely too much time reading the online archive.
https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots.html
I am DEFINITELY going to have to come back to this.
So far, what I'm doing is different, so I still have hope.
Thanks for the info!

>>20448931
>diamond dozen
Who's writing the Diamond Dozen pun/idiom story? Please post what you have. I need a laugh.

>>20449212
This is what I saved from before.
I didn't write this; credit goes to a based anon.

>>20448701
this is so gay

>>20449251
This looks like just shitposting. Someone has to be writing the actual story. We need F. Gardner to write this. He is the only man on /lit/ that has the talent to make this into at the very least a novella.

>>20449319
Lmao. Someone send it to him.

>>20449409
Are there actually anons here that personally know F Gardner? I thought that was some kind of a running joke on here.

I want to write a romance where the main character is named Blanche Slate.

>>20449423
I’ve talked to him. He’s a based retard.

Other forums
https://reddit.com/r/writing
https://writing.stackexchange.com/

>>20448662
I mean...

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.

>had all this time off this weekend
>spent it playing Warframe and reading
I'm sorry bros. Free time is bad for me. The structure helps ensure I always write every day.

>>20448662
Thanks. I needed those links.

Upon hearing of Foucault, he stopped and thought of the Paul Morris guy, who candidly spoke, in a tone as casual as someone telling you about a cute dog they saw, about the days of San Francisco's gay emergence, during which he frequented bathhouses such as Folsom's one and only "Handball Express" (may the creators of such disgraceful pun know the depths of hell). And any story involving San Fran's primordial puddles of anonymous homosexuality, the expression "Handball Express", Michael Focault and a protagonist who told what was virtually an utter and complete stranger tales of the height of his vulgarity as if they were forgotten logistics of a supermarket list, can only be a tale of degeneracy so syphilitic that the whore of Babylon herself would cover her years and scream as to not feel her last shred of humanity being stripped from her psyche.

But he spoke of how he fisted Focault, probably in good sight of Focault's pendulum, probably leaving enough of a cavernous vacuum through which you could hear the Eco, and in that moment he absorbed the information of the bald frenchman's genius through some sort of transmission of ideas found in the communion of sex. There was undoubtedly something of a beauty to the concept in itself, now that Billy thought of what he could extract of his beloved by having her sit on his lap, her back on his chest and stomach, and in the feeling of her warmth and smell of her perfume in his devouring of her nape and neck and shoulders, while her flesh flower submerged his member into her being. But Morris and Michel's elbow grease shenanigans were more of a "marriage of the shared audacity of vulgarity" more so than a "lovely and flowery marriage of kindred spirits". Like getting your dick sucked by random harlots in public bathrooms of nightclubs can only be romanticized if you really neve received motherly love, and tend to run after them with pants puddled around your ankles when they become bewildered by your proclamations of love growing from the sexually delirious to the cascading tears and desperately heartfelt.

Does the world need a Houellebecq tier book but with zoomers in America? I'm thinking about taking the spite I have and putting it on paper.

>>20448670
I spent the whole time writing my first LitRPG.
It's based on a Pathfinder 1e scenario I wrote a long time ago; I"m just mentally playing characters through it.
I've posted 4 chapters on RoyalRoad, but have 12 written so far. I predict this is going to be really easy to finish.

And technically, it's not my first LitRPG.
Back in the days of AD&D (what we now call "Dungeons and Dragons first edition"), I used to write stories based on my scenarios.
My friends would sneer at them, and call them "stupid D&D stories".
Several decades later, it's a popular literary genre. I was just really, really ahead of my time!

>>20448678
>through which you could hear the Eco
Barf

>>20448677
You'll be surprised to find that the questions being asked here are the EXACT SAME QUESTIONS being asked there.
It's almost like...it's the exact same people in all three forums, or something. Go figure.

I couldn't even hear the word "candid" without thinking of her face, beautiful even in the cinereal onyx haze of a black and white film picture, mouth slightly open in a split second of understated surprise. That which she captioned "the only good candid" photo of her that existed. No repetition was necessary, or pavlovian conditioning, and I didn't even get the picture for myself, but from that moment forward the word was hers and no longer Voltaire's. The second I hear it, unconsciously, my mind shoots her face to the front of my thoughts, and I often take a couple of seconds to understand why. I remember it with a clarity that when I saw it again, on sporadic occasions, it fell in line with its spectral replica in my mind, a remarkable perfect recollection of details. It makes me think of when someone mentions a slug, and I see her sitting there on the couch, maybe in front of me, more an imagined picture than a hallucination, a sudden apparitional icon teetering between both, and there she is because one time she jokingly referred to herself as one. More obvious things like the music she likes, to which I was and am completely indifferent, can cause it too, but even more abstract and seemingly random things, like the way a person stands, smiles or reacts to things, remind me of her. In all these small things, I see echoes and reverberations of ethereal images of her that shoot through my mind, more than images they come followed by something of a fog of other sensory stimulations. her smell and voice and the touch of a warm cardigan she wears. The fluid streams of turquoise blue from an aerial shot of the foamy and undulating tides of Copacabana that I see remind me of the blueish-green of her irises into which I lovingly gazed, and I realize I am getting sappy, but so delighted in being lost in her, more than just in the fumes of endorphins that cause addictive pleasure born from physical contact, but in an entire world of possible colors, music, smells, textures, clothes, art, words, postures, smiles and squeals and attitudes that the realization of her all-encompassing, flooding influence over my world amazes me too much to care. And into these triggers of echoes that become increasingly conspicuous, I realize that she never really leaves me, and she probably feels the same way about me. In these ways, a person who leaves the mortal coil can feel as if they never left, leaving behind a materially emptier world, but one filled to the brim with associations to their presence, so much so that they are still everywhere. And even for those who have never met them, they seep and bleed through all the people they've touched, in their manners of speech, in the things they do, the way they do them, new horizons and dimensions of enjoyment of art, of philosophy, of life, that they've been introduced to. When even the words leaving my mouth sound like hers I know she is inside me now, a self-fulfilling cycle of remembrance.

>>20448684
You aren't one of those people who include *dice rolls* in your story, are you?

>>20448679
Those are LitRPGs written by bad GMs.
And boy, are there a LOT of those out there.

>>20448708
No, but I did roll dice to come up with the character stats.
Let me guess...you're one of those people that screeches "MY THREAD! MY THREAD!" and has never written a line of prose in your life.

>>20448692
I think you're right...

>>20448720
No I'm one of those litRPG hacks that posts on Royal Road. I just hate when action gets boiled down to numbers. Numbers are fine for character sheets.

>>20448723
Yep...with a username that's as good as "Anonymous".

https://pastebin.com/J2eT2ix1

reposting my litrpg that i gave up on becuase i honestly have no interest in it.

>>20448741
Ah, OK.
Someone started seething at the end of the last thread, and I thought you were him.

I'm using the character stats my players came up with when I ran them through the scenario.
I saved every iteration of them; at the time, I wanted the option of reusing them as NPCs, since Pathfinder 1e character creation is so arduous.
Now, I'm using them to help write the LitRPG.

But I wanted to add an extra character, so I started by rolling for his ability stats, using the "4d6 discard lowest die" method.
I rolled 16, 15, 14, 9, 7...and 3. Yep, the odds were 1,296 to 1 against, and I actually got it.
So I used GM Discretion to drop the 3 and rolled another 9.
I think that character is going to have a death arc. LOL

>>20448757
Well, sure. GMs know to avoid "tournament arcs" in their scenarios, and for the same reason you don't like what you wrote.

>>20448681
have things changed enough yet?

>>20448775
Ehhh I feel like I have enough personal experiences to say something novel

>>20448684
How many readers have you gotten for the first 4 chapters?

Do any characters you write have consistent yet awful grammar? Im writing one foreign character and their voice is just bizarre.

>>20448758
Consider inventing your own system. It should be entwined with worldbuilding and serve the story you want to tell.

>>20448741
So, here's a random question for you, since you write LitRPGs...
Have you ever included "RPG standup comedy" in one of your stories?
One PC is a bard with ranks in "Perform (comedy)". Don't ask me...it's what my player did.
Somehow, I came up with some stand-up comedy set in an RPG universe, and I think it's going to work.
Just wondering if you know of any existing examples of this.
I found some examples online, but they were either game mechanics (e.g. using dice rolls to determine whether routines worked, a la skills-based intrigue) or warmed-over old jokes (e.g.a a redo of "Who's On First").

>>20448794
We told you already chinaman anon. Accents are outdated and you should have everyone speak properly

>>20448794
like Yoda?

>>20448714
Is this a common belief or just yours? I GMed for a bit and I definitely don't think it fits a LitRPG format at all. If anything, a bad GM who railroads and cheats whenever he wants seems exactly like how a LitRPG should be written.

>>20448792
At the moment, 53.
Respectively per chapter, 31, 9, 7, and 6.
It's been up just over a day.
It seems that, if I can get them past the first chapter, they keep reading, but I lose a lot there.
>>20448797
Ugh...that is WAY too much work.

>>20448800
>"RPG standup comedy" in one of your stories?
No clue how that would work. I restricted the [SKILLS] to magic shit to avoid such problems.

>>20448817
Oh, there's no end of bad GM tricks.
See https://reddit.com/r/rpghorrorstories/ to see what I mean.
Seems like tournament arcs are more common in anime.

>>20448831
No, I mean...actually writing jokes about life in an RPG universe.
I like what I came up with, and wonder what else has been done along these lines.
Is is common in your experience?

anyone else discarded a lot of drafts because you got bored of the slow-burn start and then writes a new only to get bored by slow-burn start again?

>>20448894
Perhaps--and stay with me here--don't start with a slow-burn.

>>20448925
Yeah...slow burns are a good way to bore your audience into submission.
There has to be a reason for them to continue reading.

>>20448894
Ideas are a diamond dozen. I've started books and series that I've dropped because the ideas ended up as generic or uninteresting. Here's a few.
>six criminals go out to reclaim their stolen lives by vicious acts of crime end up becoming heroes because they're horrifically incompetent villains
>a coal miner deep in debt to his company store blows up his company mine and runs from the greedy company collections officer
>a schizophrenic pilot and her crew of 5 go have space adventures in space
>a boy must trek by bike across the entire country to find his parents when a military coup destabilizes his country
>three people are chosen to be the next Jesus, Muhammad, and Buddha, starting major religious wars
>a fortune 500 CEO comes to terms with the greed of his fellow man and tries to stop it

i'm so close i can almost taste it bros!
>I still have to edit
FML!

>>20448931
>a fortune 500 CEO comes to terms with the greed of his fellow man and tries to stop it
I'd love to see someone flesh this one out.

>>20448931
Maybe you could combine a few of them...find some reason for the characters to interact.
At least the insanity might make it more entertaining!

>>20448963
We don't need a autobiography of Donald Trump.

>>20448681
As long as it’s not torture porn or doesn’t use obvious incel rhetoric, I’d read it.

>Dickens was writing The Pickwick Papers at age 24
>I'm 29 and have yet to have anything published other than an anonymous story in the Coronamerdon
Why are we here? Just to suffer?

If something is licensed under Creative Commons, does it mean you can use it freely?

>>20450096
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/CC0_FAQ

Got a new sketch of >>20447956
Pretty much fixes all the nitpicks I had with it

the first cry, somewhere several tens of lines to the north, always had a haunting way of mingling its resonance with the omnipresent mechanical whine, so that you couldn't be sure if you wanted to risk adding your voice to it prematurely. giving it a few moments though, some other tentative wails closer by would prompt you, and hundreds of voices growing confident together would finally turn into a rapturous howl, overpowering all the incessant harsh ambience of the place. it made you think of your bed and your meal, and more distantly of your forgotten hopes, and teased you with a hint of excitement.
but as if the effect suddenly embarrassed us, the howl usually choked away awkwardly.
the aural triumph was brief.

often, some among the lineworkers would cry out before you could, in a loud jocular parody that made you reluctant to sing your stilted original. who was it at line 0-alpha? was she always the first to call? maybe it was one of her workers each time. either way, by the time its sound reached section 36 it must be many voices already...
"she"?
rarely did you ever meet a supervisor outside your section. presumably those around the alphas might bump into those around the sigmas (or mus, or whatever, it varies) of the neighboring northern section, but the little bubbles never encompass more than a handful of lines. the north side might as well not even exist. whoever's over there, we're all the same anyway. yes, it has to be a lineworker making the first call. has to be. or an excitable little group of them. the supervisor over there probably just yields to their judgement. they know when it's time to go, when the work is reasonably done with.

If dialogue is shouted, how do you give it impact? It seems pretty weak to just write something like:

>"Then what would you have me do?" I shouted.

>>20448678
No shit this one is kinda funny

>>20450417
Add an exclamation mark, maybe reverse the order too so you know it's shouted before reading it.

>>20450428
>I shouted, "then what would you have me do?!"

I'm thinking of adding some kind of action, to give some sort of movement or a feeling of an outburst, but I'm worried that the suddenness is lost. Something like:

>I burst from my chair and shouted "then what would you have me do?!"

>>20448701
this is good i would read this but you probably wasted all your prosaic talent on this one blurb. the rest of the book would have to be empty

Based on the feedback in the previous thread, I assume people here really don't like first person narrators and colloquial language?
But why? Someone said first person forces self-insertion for the reader which I just don't get. It's a story someone else is telling you. From what I've seena round the webnovel sites, first person is the absolutely dominant narration style. Or is that just because it's how light novels are written and everyone there imagines he'd be writing the next big isekai anime?

>>20450442
Maybe load up the tension in a previous line's decription and then use that line?
>I gripped the chair tightly, barely restraining myself
>"blah blah blah I'm a needlessly antagonistic excuse for the main character to become righteously indignant"
>"Then what would you have me do?!" I shouted, bursting from my chair.

>>20450467
Ah yeah I like that. Tension and release! Cheers anon.

>>20450458
I like 1st person. It makes using an unreliable narrator easier. Bitches love them unreliable narrators.

>>20450458
Personally, I don't mind any style of narration, but it becomes awkward and strained trying to write certain things in first person.
>want to show other characters, but can't let the reader see in their thoughts
>want to exposition dump
>want to show some detail the MC didn't notice/see to the reader
>want to describe a scene happening in the past
>want the reader to not know something the MC knows, forcing weird mental gymnastics where he refuses to ever think about his own plans
And in third person limited all those problems disappear, and you can do everything you wanted to do in first person, only having to add an occasional "he thought".

>>20450458
Please understand that /wg/ is full of pretentious pseuds that will shit on anything and everything used by popular works

>>20450457
Thanks anon, here is another bit of prose

Her head was directly underneath the golden light of day, producing the impressionistic illusion, momentary as it is, that would lead the inattentive eye to describe her as blonde, which she actually wasn't. With or without the light, this was the result of the natural archetypal image she embodied, if primarily in spirit, the blondness that one would naturally expect to conclude her perfectly groomed appearance, like the brain that expects the next note to seamlessly flow in a musical composition. Her hair was cut at the neck's length, a characteristically feminine style, voluminous yet still elegant, in cascading curtains of a caramel-tinged brown silk, beautifully shiny in this blended, subdued way. The collar of a pristine white dress shirt protruded from a sweater as sable as pitch, a black and white pairing reminiscent of the keys in a piano, the predominant blacks in their perfect pentatonic scale, playing the sharps, and the flats that could so powerfully conclude a phrase when sustained. And of that climatic sustain she was the physical embodiment. Like the simple crystal glass of champagne, not ornate with detailed carvings but a smooth thin cylinder, uncomplicated totem of poise and finesse, filled with the amber liquid that when held against light would also turn golden, and from its bubbles and color produce its attention-grabbing radiance. It was in her deliberate refinement that her generally simple composition was uplifted, irradiating a lustrous aura. As in the automatic stimulation of music, that in the first couple chords of the major scale, all whites from end to end, transports your mind into the emotional context of triumphant joy, in that same way your brain instinctively knew the collection of ideas associated to her by laying eyes in her shine, under that sun. The freshness in the smell of perfume and clean clothes, the tidy and careful organization of her affairs, much like the memorized nature of her knowledge spheres, her beautiful calligraphy and words pronounced in the Queen's English exiting roseate lips delineated in a self-satisfied feline smirk. In that demure sophistication she exuded the so called "attitude" through which one expresses the contents of their soul in their entirety.

what are some good expressions to use as a substitute for the word "incoming"

>>20450489
impending?

>>20450489
Depends on the context.

>>20450489
>>20450505
Imminent.

>>20450150
do yoy need to still apply for it or does credting the sources and saying your work is also under the license works?

DId you write your passion project as your first book?

>>20450616
Yes, because I'm a narcissist and wrote about myself.

>>20450616
You'll never finish if it isn't a passion project. Don't be afraid of 'wasting' an idea because you aren't a developed writer yet, you can always come back and rewrite it some day.

>>20450641
This nigga got a point. Thanks anon.

can you MENTION rape in young adult? not describe, just mention. idk how that sits with publishers

>>20450616
Yes because it burned my mind so much that I had to get it published. Im not worried about coming up with other ideas, I have no shortage of things to care about.

>>20450458
I like to write in first person its like youre acting and you allow youtself to follow the delusions of your characters. Some of my favorites by Faulkner are first person.

>>20450458
>, I assume people here really don't like first person narrators and colloquial language?
No, these things are fine, but people usually use them as an excuse to just write shitty blogposts and fall back on "well it's first person and colloquial! that's just his (read: "my") voice!" and that sucks. Writing has to be well written. If the average, colloquial voice were considered to be good writing, there would be no metric from which to judge quality at all, because "good" then becomes just a question of grammar and punctuation. If writing is more than just being grammatically correct, then writing needs to be more than just emulating an average voice.

How big is your beta reader team anon?

>>20451003
>he has beta readers

This my second draft of the opening of my book. How's my writing? Can you notice English isn't my first language? I want to give my narrator a David Attenborough-like style of describing things.


"Newcomers describe the arrival as awakening from an eternity-long nap that felt like an instant. Whether they are lucky enough to be reborn at the top of the pile or they have to fight their way to reach it, what their eyes see, if they still have intact and functioning eyes to look through, is a blood red sky. While their eyes adapt to the mysterious glow of this sunless sunset, the first thing that hits them is the reek of putrefaction. Even though most of them will grow accustomed to the smell of rotting bodies, the initial contact with this putrid scent is so horrible that [...] . Due to the deep numbness pervading his body, Mason puts both his hands on the ground to help himself standing up, just to be brought to an even more horrible realization: the moist surface he’s laying on is organic, pulsating, alive. He brings his right hand to his mouth, but can’t stop his stomach from emptying itself, forming a small yellowish puddle under him. While he’s on all fours fighting to keep himself from vomiting a second time, he becomes aware of the voices. Tens of thousands of different voices echoing from every direction. Some close, other distant. Some just moaning, others screaming, crying, praying. At this point, his brain, overwhelmed and incapable of making sense of his new condition, sends his still torpid body a desperate but clear message: leave. Mason finally stands up."

>>20450721
they mention rape in young adult novels
they have sex in young adult too
still, i would keep it pg13

>>20448655
We held our gun-like devices up in the hallway, pacing forward anxiously. With each trepidatious step, our silvery spacesuits made scrunching sounds. We walked down the hallway, which was our last stretch before we could get out to the parking lot, where the Paranormobile held the traps we needed for the poltergeist. When I could see the exit, I hastened. Then, like slipping on a banana peel, my feet gave way and I almost toppled to the ground.
>Darn! I said.
>You okay, doc? asked my assistant, Tiamat.
>I'm fine. But. Wait...
>What is it, doc?
Below me, there was a bed of ectoplasm, the source of my slipping, which pulsed like fireflies in the twilight of a camp trip. I kneeled into the glimmering goo, luminescent paleness, the same hue as lunar waxing, upon the hallway's hexagonal tiles, which, from a distance, seemed as if thick sweat upon a Byzantine mosaic feature. With the tip of my index finger, I prodded the slime. Then, first dragging it through the viscosity of it all, placed the then soddened fingertip into my mouth. I swirled it inside the gums, sucked it all down, then licked my lips with satisfaction.
>Cunny's been here. Recently too. We don't have much time.
And like highwaymen in the night, we stole away down the hallway towards the exit, our zap-o-meters whizzing and whirring and pulsing with neon lights.

>>20451056
>He is projecting his insecurities as a question to rope others into his sickness.

>I said: “As your honor has stated, this is not a case of ‘whodunit.’ I stand before you today accused, agent, and executor to the accused’s estate. I am all the above, and of the crime I am accused, with material causality and evidence, I am surely guilty; but not of malintent! No, this was a simple error. The aggravating factors and compounding elements to the crime of which I am accused are—as I will shortly demonstrate to the jury—well, these factors and elements of which I speak, they are, well, that is to say… in a manner of speech, and to quote greater men to whom I have been both supplicant and erstwhile protégé, and whose words of wisdom are those circling and helicing the one cosmic truth which binds all otherwise unrelated phenomena together into one great tapestry, well, they form—if you will permit the analogy—nominally-discrete subsections, independently and infinitely bounded—well, ahem—to say that my words today ring echoes of these truths would be to fall short of my intended significance. I would forsake the spirit of this truth entirely in paraphrasal. Ergo, I will choose to come at the issue from another angle… which is to say—well, ahem—rather not to speak in rank falsity than in gleaming truth, but to say that the defendant did not mean to cause the plaintiff any harm nor inconvenience, and must therefore and forthright be acquitted and found innocent of culpability by means of undue fear of reprisal for the initial actions which thereby caused the aforementioned inconvenience and injury. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I would like to invite you to take a stroll with me… to—well, ahem—perambulate the globe of this issue, so to say… by which I mean that by the time I have laid out my case and summarily quit my locution—of whose nature, it must be said, are notions such as ‘precision’ and ‘brevity’ held close and dear to its blackened cockles—you will have no choice but to render a verdict of ‘not guilty.’
>“The defendant has some history, your honor, which led to the actions taken yesterday, and which must be factors considered in weighting the defendant’s liability for his actions. Most crucial in this case is, of course, not action but inaction. He admits that, in a perfect world, Dr. Bucksneed should have been alerted to the hazard. The defense will, later on, call upon a witness who will confirm for the jury that had my client adequately alerted Dr. Bucksneed to the danger, the causality of the act is such that an injury to the flesh of the underside of the foot would have been otherwise unlikely to occur. We do not bring argument to this court today that my client is innocent of the actions which arose to said injury. He is most assuredly guilty; it was his hand which propelled the chisel with misapprehended force unto the window which thereby shattered. It was my client’s voice which failed to alight with warning to Dr. Bucksneed, in whose anger—”

>>20451247
...I was joking about the fact I don't have beta readers, anon.

>>20451269
Do you write every single character in your own voice? I remember Bucksneed also talking far too flowery from your last post. Bad form.

>>20451068
>Can you notice English isn't my first language?
Somewhat. Spanish speaking native?
>Even though most of them will grow
If I can suggest, most of the fat of English language in its most proper form can be trimmed. A lot of the beauty you can tease out of it comes from manipulating particles and thereby sentence structure. For example, the above could be reworded as:
>Though most will grow
The point isn't whether one or the other sounds better in this specific case, but to point out the possibility for more modulation of language, if that's what you care about. I'm sure most people wouldn't notice that you're ESL from your writing, but there is a very slight "stiffness" in your language use. Luckily, this stiffness is very much in vogue right now. It dominates contemporary stylism. If you want to keep it, feel free. But your command of the language is probably good enough to start exploring it a bit more loosely. Good job, anon.

>>20451269
Awful.

>>20451303
>>20451313
None of the humor is coming through for you guys, then?

>>20451307

Thank you for the reply, very insightful. I guess that since I've learned English academically and I don't really speak it in everyday life, my prose might sound a bit stiff like you said. I'm Italian btw.

>>20451317
I honestly didn’t see a single joke. He’s on trial and threw a chisel. What else? Am I supposed to laugh just because you said “sneed”?

>>20451323
Well, if you have to explain a joke, it's ruined. Valuable data though, thanks.

>>20451317
Did not land for me either. Even dissecting the terrible prose into something legible I’m unable to find the humour in it. The only thing I can maybe see as a joke is the MC is going off on some poorly written pseud rant towards a jury who likely doesn’t understand him. I don’t think this was intentional though as no reaction is shown and the prosecution immediately does the exact same thing.

>>20451339
>I don’t think this was intentional though as no reaction is shown
If an apple falls to the ground in an orchard, do you feel the need to look around to make sure it didn't come from a peach tree?

What's the best way to come up with a title for my book?

>>20451360
Why are you coping so hard? Just admit it’s shit and go back to the drawing board. This place won’t give you any good feedback beyond the brutally honest kind. Otherwise, go get a beta reader from a website like Goodreads.

>>20451360
The joke need a a punchline you fucking retard. Something that confirms that it is a joke. You can’t write a court scene in dogshit prose and say “See it’s funny because he talks weird in a courtroom!” when every excerpt you’ve posted has every character talking in the same way.

>>20451377
Cheers, thanks for the feedback.

>>20451317
Nope. None.

>>20451372
Steal a quote from Shakespeare or the Bible.

>>20451381
>>20451388
Ok. Thank you frens.

where do I pirate scrivener without getting viruses

>>20451438
TPB.

>autistic worldbuilding
>tryhard purpleprose
>tryhard "clever" humor that isn't even funny
is this all you guys write?

>>20451453
>tryhard
When did it become a bad thing to try hard at something? I really just don't understand the mindset behind effort being somehow a bad thing. Is this just hangers-on to the tail end of irony?

>>20451438
hello underage

>>20451463
It's bad if it's apparent you're trying hard, it shows you're too amateurish to hide the seams.

>>20451474
And the implication is... don't try? That doesn't seem like a constructive approach. Maybe gratifying to say, but not all that useful to actually accept. It usually takes effort to improve at something.

>>20451505
Sure, but it doesn't mean looking like a tryhard is good.

>>20451453
>>autistic worldbuilding
>>tryhard purpleprose
>>tryhard "clever" humor that isn't even funny
Point them out. I didn’t see any.

>>20451508
But if we agree that it's a byproduct that comes from being at a beginning or intermediate phase of something, then it's not bad either.

>>20451516
>tryhard "clever" humor that isn't even funny
>>20451269

The seat attached to my desk was quite comfortable. The two halves of my ass conformed to the grooves built into the seat. This can't be said for the fatass sitting in the desk next to me. Both sides of his ass cheeks hung over the wooden board. This posterior picture provided the very definition of a muffin top. If there were specks of shit, visible, I do not believe I would be able to eat a chocolate chip muffin today.

To my right was a girl. Her ass was quite a sight, unlike the fatass to my left. Her skirt covered much of her butt, but it was still much too short to avoid my lecherous gaze on her milky white thighs. She squeezed her legs together, concentrating on the task on hand, or feeling my presence ogling every inch of her body. She even wore one of my favorite fetishes. A sweater too tight for her body. Her breasts contoured with the cotton yarn stretching the thread to the point of exposure of her shirt. I wondered if she was wearing a bra that day. No matter, she looks like the type that will be accepted to the academy.

I returned my focus back to Le' Magic Academy's questionnaire. After a grueling three hours answering practical and theoretical questions, we've reached the end of the test. It was the personnel section of the exam. The first question asked a very simple question: "Why do you want to join Le' Magic Academy?" Nobody ever answered this question truthfully. It was always the same answer of trying to become a great mage, making their family proud, or to serve the nation. Hogwash. I tapped my pencil on the line where I were to write my answer. This time, I will tell them the truth of my intentions. Thus I wrote: To meet, seduce, and breed with the cutest female (not trannies) witches in the academy.

There. My pencil laid flat on the table. I was finished with the test, but not my leering. She was still writing, twiddling her feet with nervousness like a mouse unable to escape a fruit-jar trap. I licked my lips running through a scenario where I licked hers.

Of course one may ask what makes me so confident I'll be accepted to the school? Simple, I'm the son of the Dean of students. My acceptance is based on familial privilege, not merit, unlike the others around me. Thus, dear reader, will you accompany me on my quest to molest, and harass the females of this school?

>>20451542
Where’s the other two then.

>>20451463
the japanese are pro trying-hard
there's a lot of people who became really successful by working hard

>>20451003
>someone who reads gigantic fantasy novels on the regular
>two who reads lit and philosophy, fans of some of my favorite authors
>one a published author in bookstores and reads contemporary lit
>one is completely jaded consumer and hyper sensitive to point out cliché
>another who reads science nonfiction and contemporary lit
I think I have a pretty decent group and it has a few women, theyre all pretty well read and educated, productive and thoughtful people some who even disagree with my personal beliefs but like my stories.

>>20451453
I don't do any of these things. I only write about THE ACE OF SPACE
THE ACE OF SPACE
THE ACE OF SPACE

>>20448655
so any place where I can share my amateur writing where people will be critical but not overly rude?
>post it here!
no thanks, I'don't value anonymous schizo opinions.

>>20451003
3 people.
>my best friend since 7th grade who also wants to be a writer, he reads mostly fantasy novels and manga
>my mom who reads lots of detective novels and historical fiction
>my brother who reads John Grisham and economic journals
Their tastes are varied and I don't write in any of the genres they read.

>>20451372
I defer to publishers ultimately but my tentative titles usually come from a dominant theme that is interesting. My first book title is a line out of a Thomas Wolfe poem and it just rolls off the tongue so well and fit the major theme about an eternal morning.

>>20448655
Why is Lulu not an option here in self-publishing?

>>20451603
Litopia. Most of them have profiles with their real names and publications attached so they don’t wanna be seen as rude, but they won’t go easy on ya tiger

>>20451453
I barely world build and I rarely tell jokes. I dont go purple very much at least according to the last time anons commented. I have some big words here and there but I don't like to pile them on. Will try to share more this year, Ive gotten far more active writing after work and reading, reviewing and analyzing.

Do you write outlines?

>>20451563
Utter smut

>>20451659
Yes but they are more like documents to help me manage the scenes Ive done, so I remember where everyone is, what has happened etc on my second monitor. My first outline is really barebones with a couple cool beats I want to hit and include chars I think best tell the story. Ultimately I let those chars live their lives and if I discover a better ending along the way I go that way.

>>20451563
Sometimes you use adjectives where they aren't needed, makes it sound cutesy

>>20451603
>I'don't value anonymous schizo opinions.
They why are you asking us anything at all?

>>20451659
Barely. I try to ballpark the length and structure of things like the order of events and that's about it

>>20451659
Yeah, I have a ~30k word context file that I use to structure my story. It contains a general outline and a few other cool ideas I want to explore either as standalone stories taking place in the same universe a la the Witcher short stories, or ones that I manage to fit into the greater main narrative. I'm a stickler for structure, and I often run into dead ends or weird places if I don't pre plan it all beforehand.

I checked how I used to critique people’s writing a while ago and it was pretty bad. Hopefully I learn how to do it properly.

>>20451679
Milky white thighs and lecherous gaze?

>>20451275
You were not the 'he'. The OP you were replying to was the 'he'. I replied to you because I thought we were in on the same joke.

>find the shitty fantasy stories I wrote in middle-school, including the scene where the paladin tries to drink away the sorrow of his failure and ends up shitting his pants
>also find a play my friends wrote for a class, starring Italian stereotype mobsters running pizzerias
This shit is so much more fun than what we're writing as adults. Fuck being literary, it's time to return to literary monke.

>>20451003
Pretty big but barely anyone shows up.

>>20449423
Frank is always here and I think he knows gardner

>>20451701
I'm asking where the exit is friend

>>20450049
Why are you comparing yourself to others? Just be you.

>>20451819
Try an irl writing group.

>be me
>me be
>go ski
>c3 vertebral fracture
>
>owie
>
>be me
>veggie

>>20451563
Is my writing that bad nobody wants to read and comment on it?

I find it so boring rereading old stories to improve them, so much so that I don't feel like the process is beneficial because I'm trying to rush through it instead of thinking about it. It's likely a combination of feeling 'done' with the idea so it's no longer interesting, and that my writing is just boring. Do you guys do anything to make it more interesting?

>>20448684
Sacred and Terrible Air

Surprising as it may sound, Robert Kurvitz intended to write several novels in a row. As the 2013 year edition cover reveals, 'Sacred and Terrible Air' is a preface to the series that, fortunately for the roleplaying game (RPG) 'Disco Elysium' fans, didn't materialize. So instead of writing in an RPG manner, the author decided to create one.

Here is a synopsis for those waiting for the English version of the book (the translation is mine and may be subject to changes upon the official release.).

On the day before the last of the summer break, four daughters of the education minister Ann-Margret Lund disappear on a public beach. A new ship with one thousand five hundred passengers vanishes on its first trip. Three classmates of the missing girls do not stop their search even after twenty years. The world comes to its end, but the hope to find Lund children is still alive.

The book starts slow, with two alternating realities, one of the crime itself, the girls' disappearance, and the second depicting grown-up men who meet again after twenty years to resume an investigation. The parallel lines go hand-in-hand, and there is not much to speculate about. The interesting thing happens when the story strays aside and multiplies to the level of surreal. Differences in time can be one day or one hundred fifty. Space pulsates, expanding to the whole fictional world and then deflating to a single car. Languages - Estonian, Swedish, Russian, Finnish - are shuffled like colors in Rubik's Cube. The stakes rise higher and higher until the slow, yet unstoppable greyness destroys the whole planet.
The central theme of the book is vanishment. Death means vanishment. To vanish means to die. One of the examples is the missing girls. They disappear and stay exceptionally in the minds of their grieving classmates. Nobody cares about them like they never existed. The greyness (similar to the wave in 'Far Rainbow' by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky) is the epitome of vanishment. Everything that it devours dies, if not instantly physically, then mentally.

The book is constructed as an RPG game. In the game, the main character moves, unaware of the upcoming dangers, thus creating a surrounding area map. Yet, in a sense, the map is still unreal, like the contorted figures in the twilight. Like the past and future compared to the right here and right now. The only reality lies in the eyes of the observer.

Communism vs. capitalism, vanishment vs. dizzy reality, and otherworldly Sweden vs. Estonian language. I'd recommend being patient and wait for the English edition. The book is much more than worth reading time.

>>20451863
at some point, it's just work

>>20451859
Seems like everyone's hateboner'd out after Bucksneed-anon posted earlier.

>>20451865
>Commie Elysium
As an actual eastern-european (not a privileged bougie cunt that fled to france at first opportunity), I resent this pretentious pile of shit beyond reason.

>>20450417
WRITE IT IN ALL CAPS
ALSO BOLD TEXT

Is anyone else writing a visual novel

>>20451863
>Do you guys do anything to make it more interesting?
start cutting out sentences or shortening them until it's no longer boring to reread

>>20451884
Why? Were his parents rich? I just know he resigned from a literary journal when they published someone’s stuff without permission.

I like writing from the viewpoint of like a mentally unhinged pretentious old man.

>>20451950
So from your own point of view?

>>20451884
You haven't played it

>>20451629
This please.

>>20451884
>game makes a point of communism being a failure and that it's basically a religion
>HURR THE GAME IS A COMMIE GAME
No.

>>20448655
I can't write with style but I can come up with kinda good stories. Can I still be a writer?

>>20451884
>an actual eastern-european
Okay so you should see with your own eyes and touch with your hands that remnants of socialism are the only things in our countries that aren't complete garbage. AND you call Kurvitz "bougie cunt", but yet also at the same time call the game "commie"
So which side are you on? Centrist?
And besides, regardless of sides, why do you actually hate the game? In what way is it pretentious?

>>20451979
Yeah you just need to create a story that isn't for a book. Like a cartoon with minimal or no dialogue. Or a video game. Those are easy as fuck to make with todays technology.

>>20451972
My comrade and tovarisch, that point is made in a late game quest, to which access is created by consistently choosing communist responses in dialogue.
If you see someone dismissing kino elysium as "commie trash" or anything two-worded like that, it's definite he haven't played it beyond Day 1.
People who beat the game give much more thorough critique.

>>20451988
Fuck no, I want to write books.

>>20450385
now it looks like a sexy woman, round hips and everything

>>20451993
I beat it as both a Moralist and a Fascist, actually. From what I recall of the game, it basically went "COMMUNISM GOOD BUT TOO HARD"

>>20452026
Moralism is the only good choice.

>>20452026
>"COMMUNISM GOOD BUT TOO HARD"
Yeah, if you write it in a reductionist retarded manner it doesn't sound profound at all. You got me haha

>>20451995
Ok then do it. You want our permission for you to write some shit? If you know want you want to do, then why are you asking us?

>>20452049
For you to tell me I can't, so I do it.

>>20452053
You will NEVER write a book. You will NOT write a paragraph or two RIGHT NOW and then immediately post it here for us to critique. This will NOT HAPPEN. Impossible.

>>20452053
You can't do anything, you're untalented and your chances of success are so against you that's it's not even worth trying, just go to a tech school and learn to be a plumber if you wanna work with shit.

>>20452053
You can do it anon, I believe in you.

>>20452026
You should replay for the communist vision quest or at least watch it on youtube
It's comfy and it explains what communism is all about in the world of elysium
It's a secular religion, a belief in humanity's bright future, a utopia. Unachievable due to human nature and shit's all fucked. ALSO: communism literally is a religion, it is supernatural, being a communist for long enough grants you actual literal superpowers, and an aura of prosperity that makes nature thrive all around you. Not a metaphor: actual thing in the universe that has been studied.

I went to the store and bought a rotisserie chicken. It was a moonlit evening that fell early, such was the winter season's habit, and in the space of the empty sky outside of the grocery store parking lot I felt a nigh chthonic pressure building in my temples. Something felt off, as if the world was a-tilt, the lights of the suburbs burning eerily into my retinae. As I gently clutched my forehead - it was not painful, per se, but significant and ominous of pain, or at least I thought it to be so given the modern paradigm of always being in expectation of pain - I heard a strange, small voice, that I thought at first to be one of my fellow shoppers exiting the store.

But it wasn't. There was no one else around. No, my senses told me exactly what the truth was but for all my learning, life, and knowledge as an adult person I resisted what I knew. It couldn’t be - because it shouldn’t be. And so it wasn’t. But the voice spoke again. It was. The rotisserie chicken was speaking to me. In the sublimity of the event I had no recourse but to crane my neck towards the crispy, bulbous little carcass and lend it my ear. I heard its words, and its words were this: “I’m so fresh I’m so fresh I’m so crispy I’m so greasy.”

>>20451863
To me it's like a reward to do that first polishing pass. You should be thinking of ways to make the language maxinally efficient while also looking for any unobtrusive ways to incorporate poetic devices, smooth the flow, and create clever and thematically consistent similes/metaphors.

With all the options available to a writer each chapter is basically an immensely complex puzzle with no perfect answer as you try to fit as many ideas in with perfect flow.

>>20452058
I write in Spanish. I've written 4k words today.
>>20452065
I'm actually an engineer and I hate it.
>>20452065
Fuck you man, don't put that kind of pressure on me.

>>20452072
>ALSO: communism literally is a religion, it is supernatural, being a communist for long enough grants you actual literal superpowers, and an aura of prosperity that makes nature thrive all around you. Not a metaphor: actual thing in the universe that has been studied.
This, alongside the devs outright thanking prominent marxist writers in their award acceptance speeches, only makes me feel more justified in my opinion of the game as commie soapboxing.

>>20452077
sorry, the second one was for you >>20452061

>>20452084
Learn to enjoy things

>>20452077
>I write in Spanish
What do you think of Cormac McCarthy’s Spanish?

>>20452093
I do enjoy things. I even enjoyed parts of Disco Elysium.

It doesn't change the fact it's a communist tract.

>>20452096
Prettay good

>>20451859
Oh... So I'll repost it later when people stop talking about communism vs capitalism

>>20452087
In all seriousness, man, just write. Read and write. That's really all you can do.

>>20452109
But it isn't. Why are you lying? In order to find communists, you follow the scent of failure. The ones you find are just two guys circlejerking about their theories and building a tower out of matchboxes.
Communism doesn't work. This is made clear by the game.

>>20448655
/lit/ writers club matrix server, join up

https://matrix.to/#/!EicuHHPWLGZZlDCLVx:matrix.org?via=matrix.org

>>20452128
Thanks. Even if I'm the second call of the crocodile I guess it's worth it.

>>20452126
I’ll critique yours if you critique mine.
>>20451563
I suggest you spice up the diction a bit. The flow does seem to me too restrained for the subject matter. I think you mix past with present tense, an example would be:
>No matter, she looks like the type that will be accepted to the academy.
After you already established past tense.
Here, I found the sentence to be awkward:
>I licked my lips running through a scenario where I licked hers.
Then when you finish, there’s a sudden switch in voice and it doesn’t make sense why you would do this—further, it doesn’t feel like you earned this part:
> Thus, dear reader, will you accompany me on my quest to molest, and harass the females of this school?
It is an interesting concept but it might be better to read Marquis de Sade for an influence in a litany of filth.

>My piece
I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong. After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake. In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house. This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky.

>>20452109
Nigga just because games explore ideologies and politics doesn't make them "tracts" or "soapboxes"
Every author ever has ideas and opinions which are either way going to be expressed in his or her art. This doesn't make them propaganda.
WHY are you equating a passionate, artful work with something like picrelated?

>>20451003
My beta readers are you guys because you're all betas lmao

>>20452147
Man if you're the second call of crocs you've achieved something impossible. Only someone with no self awareness would be able to rival that shit. The fact that you're worried about it and worried about being bad in general gives you something Mr. Gardner could never have.

>>20451629
I don't know about other anons, but if you google lulu, you'll find a shit ton of complaints by angry people saying how the company sucks and steals revenue and the customer service doesn't respond to anything. Don't know how truthful the complaints are, but I wouldn't recommend it when dozens of other services exist

>>20451068
You need to vary sentence length to stop it from bogging down. It needs more short simple sentences. Consider the reading pace. Long sentences are for hitting the brakes, short sentences step on the gas.
Likewise, starting every sentence with a clause makes it clunky. Start more with the subject. 'Bob did a thing'
You're over-describing physical actions. hand movements, puking, standing up, falling over, etc. It should be more impressionistic; give a few sharp details and let the reader fill in the blanks.

I didn't see any mistakes with timing, which is pretty common. But consider when you need to describe things as happening simultaneously, and when you can just list them in sequence. Readers understand that events happen in the order they're described, so you to don't have to comment on it. 'at this point' 'finally' 'while'

>>20451463
>When did it become a bad thing to try hard at something?
It's a video game thing. You're supposed to have fun, not take the game seriously. It doesn't really apply to real life, like if you're trying to save a toddler from a pitbull or something.

>>20451563
>This posterior picture provided the very definition of a muffin top.
That is not the definition of a muffin top.

>>20452173
The whole background of Call of the Crocodile is astonishing. Literally some schizo author from 4chan writing all those horror books and it becoming memed. I’m happy to have witnessed the rise of garderposting here. It’s been surreal as fuck.

Hey guys, what do you think of this idea?
>Thomas Jefferson's bastard son dies and is reincarnated as an ant, born into an advanced ant colony complete with air conditioning, linoleum flooring and water coolers. Adjusting from 19th century America to modern ant civilization is a tough order, so Thomas Jefferson Jr. must undergo advanced ant therapy to come to terms with his past life and enter his new ant life, working as an ant banker.

>>20452338
Ludo schizo autism tranny troon nigger buzzword kino.

>>20452365
:( No thanks, I'm full.

>>20452365
None of those words are in the bible.

>>20448931
2nd is promising

Is there a place that's quiet and lets me think and write in peace? Is renting a motel room my only hope?

>>20452419
>Is there a place that's quiet and lets me think and write in peace?
Bruv we don't know your life, how could we possibly answer this?

>>20452419
The library? Starbucks with earbuds? A park?

>>20452427
Maybe he lives in such a hellscape that he wants reassurance that quiet places do exist in the world, just anywhere at all.

>>20452419
The liberry

>>20452433
That's a fair point

>>20450481
What is this? It sounds pretentious as hell. What the hell are you trying to say and to whom?

>>20452431
>>20452436
>library
Libraries are hellholes full of teenagers and "teenagers".
>Starbucks with earbuds?
Sure, let me just ignore the people swarming in to use the bathroom.
>A park
Animals, people, bugs, and weather. How do you envision me writing? Scrawling it all out in a notebook?

>>20452446
Ok then kill yourself I guess idk, no where is actually quiet, if you wanna be a negative bitch nothing will ever be good enough.

>>20452451
I'm not being a negative bitch, I've been trying to get an answer to this question for years.

>>20452458
Do you live with people or in a noisy building? If so move somewhere alone. It's that simple

>>20452458
Have you tried writing at home during the day? With no music or A/C running? And the sliding glass door open? Just the quiet click of your overhead fan and the ambient noise of the outdoors?

>>20452461
So the answer is that I need a lot of money.
>>20452462
>Have you tried writing at home
Oh, I've tried. Believe me, I've tried.

>>20452471
So what's the problem with writing at home? Married with kids or something?

>>20452446
>Libraries are hellholes full of teenagers and "teenagers".
I have never seen teenagers in libraries doing anything distracting ever. It's usually the schizos who come in off the street that cause the most ruckus. Besides that, no one goes to a library with the intent of being a wacky crazy distraction.

>>20452172
Gottem

>>20452471
If by a lot of money you mean a job that leaves you leave mommy's basement then yeah

A true master… writes in a loud storm. Let no distractions become your excuse for not making a master work.

>>20452474
>So what's the problem with writing at home?
Incredibly noisy house where ignoring it isn't an option.
>>20452478
Lucky you. Where do you live?
>>20452481
How do I get a job without a car?

>>20452482
*power shuts off*

>>20452487
I write on a typewriter. Powered only by my BRAINPOWER.

>>20452484
you got legs stupid. get a job cashiering at the local grocery. take the bus.

>>20452484
>How do I get a job without a car?
I have a license but no car and I get paid $29 an hour at a college. Have you got literally any connections or credentials? If not, maybe think about networking somewhere, even at writing groups or editing associations.

>>20452484
Surely the people at your house sleep sometimes? Adjust your sleep schedule to be awake when they are not.

>>20452497
>get a job cashiering at the local grocery
How does that get me money to move?
>take the bus.
The local bus stop is a ways away.
>>20452502
>I get paid $29 an hour at a college.
Where?
>maybe think about networking somewhere, even at writing groups or editing associations.
I'm an introvert, I'd like someplace to shut off sometimes, not keep the social machine working way past capacity.
Besides which, what writing groups? What editing associations?

>people still replying to the troll / total spastic

>>20452516
He reminds me of myself with less self awareness so I'm taking pity on him

>>20452511
>Surely the people at your house sleep sometimes?
If only.
>>20452516
Some people really do have lives full of suffering. I wish I were trolling.
>>20452518
Elaborate.

>>20451322
>I'm Italian btw
My condolences

>>20451322
>I'm Italian btw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLCd6_r0yU

>>20452497
America doesn't have buses

>>20452521
I'm a jobless picky introvert with noisy family who can't go anywhere too. But there's no easy solution no matter how much you ask for one, you're gonna have to tolerate something unpleasant for at least some period of time if you ever want to escape your circumstances. Not that I'm doing any of that myself. It's just reality

>>20452512
>what writing groups?
I don’t know what area you’re in but US/Europe/Australia/NZ all have writing festivals, which you can attend and meet writers, who might need help if you wanna be an editor (which is what I do). I go to events also for my local writing association and attend a meet up where we critique each other’s work. I’m a member of my editing association. They will look like this:
https://aceseditors.org/
https://www.the-efa.org/
I got my job through contacts but I worked as a freelancer for about 2-3 years before signing a contract with a college. But good news is that colleges always need editors for postgraduate theses which are legal to have edited but not written by another person. Each thesis can be up to 500-1000 bucks in pay, which takes a week or less with minimal hours per day. Since you’re an introvert, you can also just be completely online and make money through freelancing sites like Fiverr or just set up a website and post ads for it in Goodread groups or Facebook. Editing is fairly easy once you get the hang of it, and people usually just like it if you’re thorough and quick.

I’m having trouble writing dialogue. My novel is thematically dark, although there is some humour. My character is in his 20’s and lower class. Every time I write dialogue, it just comes out very dry, because that’s how people actually speak. It’s boring to read and write though. I’m thinking of leaning into that more, making the dialogue insufferably surface level and uninteresting to make a point, but I realized that was one of the standout features of American Psycho, so I really don’t want to do that. The idea is already superficially similar in that it follows a guy who decides he wants to murder someone. Any advice or thoughts on this problem?

>>20452512
>The local bus stop is a ways away.
You're morbidly obese, aren't you?

>>20452568
when they asked elmore leonard how he wrote women so well, he'd say that it took him a lot longer to write women. he might spend an entire week on woman's dialogue where the male dialogue would only take a single afternoon.
doubt if this will help you, but that's what he said
dialogue and natural speech have little in common. natural speech is full of mmmms and aaaaahs and people sort of ramble.
dialogue is much more direct and to the point.
if you can find a novel with dialogue like you want to write, you can study how that author did it and reverse engineer it.

>>20452568
A good way to do that would be to contrast external with the internal dialogue. Have what's being spoken be utterly banal and insipid, but have the internal dialogue of the character at least have some insights, even if they're psychopathic murderous ones.

Glad I dropped by, never would've heard of Call of the Crocodile otherwise. I find analyzing bad media to learn from it quite helpful, so this would be interesting to check out.

>>20452419
Get some kind of noiseblocking headphones or something if that exists. I bought a house out in the country side and hear nothing except rain, wind and birds.

>>20452658
Thanks, that’s interesting. I’m writing natural speech, which may be an issue. Filler words and everything. This was maybe what I meant in my original post. As fun as it would be, I can’t have a character who is a 25 year old in the 2020’s start going off like Marmaledov in the inn without losing all sense of reality. The insincerity and shallowness of our real life interpersonal relationships is one of things that has to stay. It just makes me think of that DFW criticism that the world is shallow and dreadful but that shouldn’t be an excuse to write shallow and dreadful characters. I don’t want to be guilty of that.
>>20452679
This is what I’m settling on for now. It’s hard to do without my character coming across as insufferable. Another thing I’m using is sometimes not writing the dialogue and having the character summarise what they said in a sort of mocking way.

>>20451566
>>20451950

>>20452149
>I remember the whole beginning as a succession of flights and drops, a little seesaw of the right throbs and the wrong.
Don't understand this sentence, especially with the word "throb". How is throbbing moving left and right or up and down like a seesaw?
>After rising, in town, to meet his appeal, I had at all events a couple of very bad days—found myself doubtful again, felt indeed sure I had made a mistake.
What?
>In this state of mind I spent the long hours of bumping, swinging coach that carried me to the stopping place at which I was to be met by a vehicle from the house.
I don't understand.
>This convenience, I was told, had been ordered, and I found, toward the close of the June afternoon, a commodious fly in waiting for me. Driving at that hour, on a lovely day, through a country to which the summer sweetness seemed to offer me a friendly welcome, my fortitude mounted afresh and, as we turned into the avenue, encountered a reprieve that was probably but a proof of the point to which it had sunk. I suppose I had expected, or had dreaded, something so melancholy that what greeted me was a good surprise. I remember as a most pleasant impression the broad, clear front, its open windows and fresh curtains and the pair of maids looking out; I remember the lawn and the bright flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the clustered treetops over which the rooks circled and cawed in the golden sky.
Rest of it is pretty good. A bit purple for me but the beginning confused me.

>>20452289
Anything I want to do I want to do well. What's the point otherwise?

The monstrous soldiers stripped Princess Lilestilelle of her armor. Her winged helmet fell to the floor. She was left wearing only a pair of tight hose and a ripped doublet. The monsters clamped iron manacles about her wrists and fixed the chains to the prison wall. Her golden hair fell in disarray over her face.

A moment later, Zegzibar the Dark Tyrant entered the room. He wore black robes and a helmet adorned with a pair of demon horns.

The sight of the royal captive brought a wicked smile to his face. The dark tyrant waved to his minions, and the brutes obediently filed out of the prison cell. Zegzibar produced a long dagger from his robes and pointed it at Lilestilelle.

“So, Princess, we meet at last. It’s a pleasure to have you as a guest here at Demon Tongue Tower. I must apologize for the dismal state of your lodgings...” The dark tyrant tested the point of his poignard with his fingertip. “...but don’t worry. You won’t be here for long.”

“You don’t scare me, demon. My allies will soon vanquish you, and my mother’s armies will destroy your evil nation. All the disgrace and horror you visit upon me shall be returned to you a thousand fold. No evil can escape heaven’s justice.” Her chest heaved as she cursed the tyrant. “My spirit will not break, no matter how you ravish my body.”

“Ravish? What?”

“I don’t have the power to resist your lust. You despise purity. A shadowy demon like you is bound to ravish a virgin princess from the Queendoms of Light.”

“What? No? God. Why would you think that?”

“You’re the dark tyrant. You defile all you touch with sorcery and violence. The forces of darkness exist only to murder, looting, and rape.”

“That is not true,” Zegzibar protested. “At least not all of it.”

“So… So you don’t ravish your prisoners?”

“No. No, there’s no rape. We don’t do that here.” He looked her up and down skeptically. “Did you want get to raped or something?”

“No! Of course not,” she sputtered.

“Then why do you keep bringing it up? It’s making me very uncomfortable.”

“Sorry.” Lilestilelle fidgeted with her chains. “If you don’t plan to dishonor me, then what are you going to do?”

“I was going to threaten to stab you. What else?” He gestured with his poignard. “But that seems a bit anticlimactic now, doesn’t it? You’ve gone and made it all weird.”

“Sorry.”

Zegzibar tapped his foot uncertainly. “Well, this isn’t going how I expected at all. I need a glass of water. So? Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes. Please.”

The dark tyrant departed the prison cell to fetch a carafe of water, leaving the princess alone with her thoughts.

>>20451463
To most, apathy is the greatest virtue of the 21st century

>>20452887
What lead to this? Literature is almost always the source of society's contemporary attitude. As far as I'm aware, hope is what's trendy though?

>>20452911
What works have you been reading? I haven't seen any works with hope as a central theme in years, it's mostly just nihilism dressed up as realism

>>20452883
Too many cliches in both prose and dialogue. Read more novels to get a better understanding of what makes good fantasy, like Gene Wolfe.

Also, what kind of "dark tyrant" goes "You're making me feel uncomfortable?" lol.

>>20452883
fucking lol. I was wondering where this was going, too many fantashit tropes to be genuine, but it did make me laugh.

>>20452883
She should have squeezed her legs toget to try and hide her pussy juice. Would be funnier. Or suggest anal

>>20452930
Well when my work comes out and makes me famous you'll see the central theme to everything is hope

>>20448931
not interested in any of them desu

>>20453010
Yeah, neither was I. That's why none of them made it past the planning phase. Usually if I'm planning a story I know it won't go anywhere. The stories that end up as books always take me for a ride for the first 10k words, then I get a wrangle on them and start ironing shit out.

>>20452930
Eggplant is pretty positive honestly. I have a pretty similar feeling but I prefer more ambiguous endings. One thing is that I write settings in the near future and they arent worse than what we live in today, theyre better. Despite that characters still struggle with age old things, and new versions of old problems. I love McCarthy but I dont expect The Road to actually happen forever. Things will get worse but I do think things will become normal again. At least some places.

>>20452873
Sometimes you go fishing to drink beer and boat down the river. The number of fish you catch isn't that important.

Do I need to have male characters

>>20453270
No, but you probably need to have characters.

>>20452333
The absolute weirdest part about Call of the Crocodile was how Stephen King and and JK Rowling are actual characters in the plot. Never in a million years would I have guessed that would happen in a book. They get kidnapped and the protagonist has to rescue them.

>>20453295
Yes, it’s been well established that book is bonkers.

>>20453295
I don't see how that's special or innovative in any way

I can’t tell if it’s even Gardner anymore or anons doing a good impression of him

>>20453308
is gardner even real?

>>20453295
Is that the plot twist or is there more to it

>>20453311
Unfortunately. Keep in mind /lit/ is a slow board. If you had a book to shill, you could easily mention it in every active thread and do this for 16 hours a day and maintain this indefinitely, which is what he does. I think occasionally one is a trollpost parodying his shilling, but it’s the minority.

>>20453318
No. The twist is way more complicated than that part.

>>20453318
Way more. The twist is at a different part. I’ll admit it’s clever. I can’t really think of another twist that does the same gimmick. Which is what Gardner is. A gimmicky author. I don’t hate the guy. But I definitely think he stumbled upon his meme status by accidentally writing a strange enough book. Also, there’s no way it’s actually him doing the shilling. Call of the Crocodile is the ONLY Gardner book that’s ever mentioned. That book is the meme. If he wanted to shill then he’d spam his other dozen and more recent books.

>>20453395
This. The “Gardner is everyone” meme is fucking retarded. The idea of a single person doing nothing but posting about his book for years all across this niche board is ridiculous.

>>20453412
I've seen stranger on this site, honestly.

>>20453395
Frank, nobody is buying this. Call of the Crocodile is also the only one you pay to advertise on 4chan. No WAY Gardner is paying for those ads, if he wanted to advertise himself, he’d advertise his other more recent books.

>>20453425
I’ve seen ads for the other ones. That doesn’t even make sense.

>>20453449
It does make sense. Everybody who is here knows Gardner is a lolcow grifter and his writing is terrible. The meme isn’t the book, it’s Gardner himself.
If there’s any doubt about this, keep in mind his goodreads reviews were wiped because they were all made by himself. It would be autistic enough to make new accounts and rate the book 5 stars, but he actually wrote hundreds of reviews of his own book. If you ever saw the reviews, it was the exact same thing that gets posted here. “Wow, the twist is amazing”, “It’s like goosebumps for adults.” “This is the strangest book I’ve ever read” etc. Call of the Crocodile had hundreds of these fake reviews, his other books only had a few dozen. He really focusses on that one book.

I don't know if I should censor myself or stop censoring myself. I am unsure of what ideas are good and when to have some self restraint. Fiction so not too worried with being too highbrow but my concepts can get deranged at times and I doubt anyone would out up with it.
It really is a matter of quality right, you could get away with mostly everything if you have the chops, right?

>>20453498
Never censor yourself

>>20453500
It's just that I do want to make one of the most alien in concept antagonists I can, it's even a challenge and my Peter Watts/Cronenberg influence is begging me to go harder.
When is too much in fact too much?

>>20453489
>the meme is Gardner himself

That’s why we shilled it so hard. Did you see that one interview of him? He’s a fucking Flat Earther NEET weeb who thinks cigarettes don’t cause cancer. He also genuinely believes he is the second coming of Shakespeare and that his books are true art. He’s the perfect storm of autism. He’s like Chrischan if Chris somehow had a never ending budget to advertise his shit.

I’ve only ever read Call of the Croc and Arcade. They do honestly live up to the “so bad it’s good” thing because of the out of the blue twists. Now take all of these aspects into consideration. Is it really any wonder that guy became memed so hard on this board? Obviously not.

>inb4 Gardner

Not Faggot Gardner. But I’m definitely an ironic fan of his.

>>20453412
I imagine it's probably some of both, in that he really does autistically shill his book, or at least has, but he's done it so long it now lives rent free in the heads of regular anons here as a meme

>>20453489
Dude do you not realize Gardner went viral?

>>20453546
>viral
Search “Call of the Crocodile” on twitter, a social network Gardner can’t shill on, this is quite literally the only tweet in two years discussing the book. This is what happens to retards who fall for his scam.
>>20453532
I agree you’re autistic but I know you want to be famous at any cost, so I don’t take anything you say sincerely. Anyway, I’m done replying to you for today.

>>20453546
That was hilarious.

>>20453576
Say what you want, Gardner dialogue is better than Walden's ellipses filled conversations

>>20453576
Gardner on suicide watch

in all srsness I would fucking love it if Frank Gardner was unironically on suicide watch. At least to keep him of 4chan for a few fucking days.

>>20453532
>an ironic fan
jfc how awful. why? do you just not like reading and this is all a big joke? why else would you want to waste your time? do you just hate yourself? my fucking for this is honestly the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard of. why do you admit this?

>>20453614
I like the genre he writes. Which as many have pointed out, is pulp horror. Different strokes. Of all the criticism I hear, I never really hear people criticize his actual stories. Which makes me inclined to think they’re not actually reading them. I remember seeing some guy on YouTube who likes his books and he seemed to share my feelings. That they’re fun to read and interesting because of the jarring plot turns.

>>20453606
True. With F Gardner you know you’re in for a wild and retarded ride.

>>20453633
I’ve read them. The famous twist in COTC is essentially that it was all a dream. The story is trash you’re just being disingenuous to further the joke (or you actually are just Frank) but what I’m wondering is why? who’s laughing? did you mean to say unironic? cause that would make sense it would just mean you’re stupid which is easier to believe.

>>20453244
Why would I use an excuse like fishing? Stick to relaxing on the boat.

it’s all so tiresome

Im an amateur writing and want to post my work in some page, is there a Royal Road equivalent for spanish writing or should i try to properly write in english to reach a broader audience?

I need some advice regarding writing ominous / looming antagonists. I posted a while back about having a villainous protagonist who goes around looting and pillaging, and my first book is set to have the antagonist be the small island lordship he's pillaging and more specifically its ruler. I want there to be an overarching 'big bad' (or good ig?) that gets mentioned by name, though the reader should remain unsure of exactly what it is. It's supposed to be this larger empire that eats up smaller nations, but does so as peacefully as possible. They're fighting some distant war and so are largely absent until the people getting fucked with manage to send an envoy asking for help. Any ideas for how I might do this without explicitly just saying "Oh, there's these big fuckers that are a big threat, but they've fucked off for now so its all good until it isnt."

>>20453395
>>20453412
t. Gardener

RC Walden or F. Gardner?

>>20453658
>or are you actually frank

Holy fuckin shit. I like the books because they’re RETARDED. Did you even see that interview? Gardner outright says he believes his books are akin to Dante and the classics.

>>20453607

>F. Gardner ever being depressed


Lmao he is a rich playboy neet.

>>20453671
then it’s IRONIC and my question remains: why the fuck do you IRONICALLY like books? Who the fuck is laughing? You? Why?? Why don’t you spend your time ACTUALLY enjoying something instead of making yourself a living joke??

>>20453670
Gardner by a landslide.

He’s an amusing schizo.

>>20453677
>implying that’s all I read

I don’t exclusively read pulp horror.

>>20453677
You’re speaking to Gardner and he is incapable of creating characters with comprehensible motives.

>>20453687
Grammar is too accurate for Gardner. Not enough commas.

>>20453668
Just make comments about the existence of a larger leadership structure/country. It could be as simple as having your "antagonist" lord be an obvious lower rank of nobility. Duke is fairly high, under that is marquis, then earl, viscount and then baron. Make him a baron or viscount.

>>20453687
The goal of the cult in Call of the Crocodile was to create a mass sacrifice for the Great Reset. Sounds pretty realistic to me desu

Just remember, Gardner had sex before.

>>20453822
I do not doubt that F Gardner has had numerous sexual experiences with countless men.

>>20453671
Please, man. If you're not him, give it a rest. Talk about Empress Theresa or Stones for Abbigale or any other terrible meme book. The spam is annoying.

>have a scene where my MC meets her dad/brother/creator after being estranged from each other for over a decade
>i need it to happen to establish him as a character since he turns into the main villain not long after independently of how their meeting goes, connect another character's subplot to the main plot and introduce her as a rival for the MC, introduce a character that makes the main villain's side not look as if it's made up of evil people exclusively, and so on
>no matter how much i think about it, there's literally no reason for her to want to meet him again because their relationship was already strained before them separating
>forgot a nice, funny exchange unrelated to that event trying to think of a reason for them to meet
fuck

>>20453869
I’ve never heard of those books, to be honest. And I was just answering questions. This is /wg./ It should be no surprise if /wg/ authors come up in conversation. Even if they’re overmemed.

>>20453876
pain, at least that kind of problem is occurring to you

>>20453876

>no matter how much i think about it, there's literally no reason for her to want to meet him again because their relationship was already strained before them separating

Some bad event could happen to (friend's dad, coworker's dad, etc) that she hears about, and it makes her uncharacteristically sentimental, willing to meet up with her own family despite disliking them. Just a spitball.

Here's something I wrote recently. Would love to hear any critiques.

It's not just that all of the vampires, the lone inhibitors of the Earth, will all be obliterated as more and more sunlights pours onto the Earth; all evidence of their existence will be erased in the light as well. All the spaceships that failed, all the servants mind controlled to do their bidding, and all the skyscrapers that they had made their towers will vanish. They may have hid during the day, but they ruled during the night and controlled all of the economies and societies in the world. This is what Capitalism has gifted them, and they ruled it well. There were those who complained, but they lacked the vision and foresight to create a truly efficient world. But none of that mattered any more. The supernova will travel through billions of years to reach us, and they all reveal the same thing: all of existence is coming to an end.

What did the masters of the world think about as they saw that there was nothing to prevent their upcoming doom? Truth be told, some told themselves that the spaceships that never worked will through hard work and convert all their energy into it. Some wanted to take pleasures in the simple life: hypnotizing the weak, seducing the weak, and drinking the finest blood that life had to offer.

But all wondered about what their sacrifice was to become a master of the world. Sacrificing their humanity was a given, but what about the things that nobody warns about? There were families that had to be abandoned; there were formally fulfilling jobs that had to be left; there were the passions that were no longer regarded as important. Losing their humanity means all of these had to go too. Ironically, in becoming timeless in age, all of these things were seen as not worth the time to consider. There were more important intoxicants to drink.

When one disregards death, life becomes nothing more of a hunt for pleasure. Lust, gluttony, and thrills are all which life is centered on. Of course, freak accidents happen, and anyone can get murdered. But anyone can also look at these events and just consider how everyone should celebrate their one life and live it to the fullest. The fullest seems full until death truly seems inevitable.

>>20453899

Death rewrites everything not because it's a sudden addition to life but because it's so common that anyone can see that it can happen to other people. Just like other people can have a job, get a dog, make others suffer, and do whatever that anyone does, death just seems commonplace enough to seem inconsequential and something that just "happens'' . It's commonplace and something that happens to other people up to the point where it becomes impossible to deny. For everyone, it's different. Sometimes one is born with true knowledge. Sometimes one dreams the unbelievable and discovers the unbelievable to be more sincere and welcoming than the fantastical that they awaken. Sometimes one witnesses the undeniable. Sometimes one is committed and discovers for oneself that death really does just happen, and it happened for the best in their life. Only when one discovers the unbelievable and undeniable that the tastes of life turns to ash and becomes a waste of time.

Perhaps that they'll justify it all by saying that there are actions to be taken to prevent such a fate, not believing that death is a preventable illness rather than being a endpoint for a series of decisions that were taken and not taken by a person, a creature, mother nature, and the cosmos which illuminated the sky. Speaking of which, let's use the special star that makes life possible for us to illustrate a point. The sun, who's supernova is reaching out to the Earth, had always been in the process of deciding its own death. Even as it lasted through eons and eons, the star grew old and withered, and finally exploded. The sun never was conscious and never decided to grow old, yet it did anyway. That is the nature of a non-conscious object; it leads to one place or another through forces that aren't their own, withers, and ceases to exist. Even if they didn't make decisions to decide their fates, their fates were made and created through the force of other forces, conscious or not.

A living being is a fool to assume that their fate and decision making ability is truly any different from the sun, and the vampires who were the master of the world were the biggest fools of them all. They all started as a baby somewhere, bumped and thrusted into the world, and then into, in subsequent order, safety, security, education, language, desire, and whatever happenstance follow suit. It was always a series of somethings and decisions that led them into becomming a vampire. The only real difference between them and the sun is their ability to think allowed them to fool themselves into thinking they weren’t just the masters of the world - they were masters of their own choosing as well.

>>20453903

And what foolish “choosings” they did have. They sacrificed everything that they loved to live forever, only to discover that forever isn't forever. It was only as the sun exploded as they finally discovered the believed the unbelievable: all forever is and forever will be is a long journey full of pain and loss with more reasons given for the futility of life. The blood only distracts until they're hungry again. They'll be distracted and distracted until the light dawns on them, whether it's day or night, and they'll have nowhere to run.

The blood looses their taste; the sex loses their excitement; the skies loose their darkness; the great mystery reveals itself to all. The fountain had run dry, all kingdoms turned into ash, and time ceased to exist. There are no words nor wailings to pollute the silence. It is only after drinking the abyss that the masters, the servants, and the cattle of the Earth are illuminated from their suffering.

>>20453890
It's not a bad start, actually. A friend of hers dies some time before this would happen so that might be a reason to trigger that sort of reaction.
Thanks.

>>20453899
Vague abstract musings are not engaging to read, even if they include vampires. Maybe if this came at the end of a book the reader was already already invested in, it might have some weight. But as it is, without context, it's boring and meaningless.

It sounds like someone talking to hear the sound of their own voice.

>>20452558
>local writing association
No such thing here.

>>20453924
Fair enough. I personally tend to enjoy this type of writing, but I can see how, without any grounding in characterization, this can be a drag to read. Oh well. Any particular thoughts on the prose itself, or do you rather its in the same quaility as the content?

>>20453668
Isn't one line good enough? I always see readers think it's such great foreshadowing and was there all along in their faces when it's one singular line that sets up an event for later.

Alright, another question from your resident absinthe slinging toilet writer: Are exposition dump chapters innately bad even if I do all I can to make them seam as seamless as possible? E.g. I have a chapter where one of my characters is standing on a boat at night while the rest of his crewmates are asleep. He's part of a bigger viking-like expedition that travels around and explores and shit. The guy can't sleep and he sits and looks at the night sky and the calm sea and reminisces about his friends and some stories his father had told him of his own adventures. One of these stories is a bit exposition dumpy because it talks about their views of 'outsiders' and how they basically treat them as fodder for their own stories to be built upon. Think of how a player in a video game treats everyone in that universe as an NPC, kind of sort of like that. There's no dialogue, just the guy thinking and reminiscing about stuff. It's written in free indirect speech so I try to make it seem as realistic and personable as possible. Chapter is pretty rough right now and I'm in the process of revising it, might post later down the line.

Thoughts?

>>20453994
Wouldn't people end up just forgetting that line unless its immediately preceeding the event? Plus I have a feeling readers might bitch about Chekhov's gun if I just give one line of set up early on and it doesn't materialize into something until later down the line.

>>20453899
I actually kind of like it. To me, this reads less like an actual story, but more like a wiki article or the script to a lore video explaining what's happening in your world. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's bad. Hell, I have a 30k word context file where I basically have my entire story written out in a format similar to this.

>>20453715
That's actually a pretty good idea. I can even have them be suisceptible to getting raided BECAUSE they've sent their men away to fight that distant war. Thanks for the idea, cheers mate.

>>20453962
It is not illiterate. But it's hard to judge without being more grounded in visual imagery and concrete action.

I'd say just keep an eye out for unclear or repetitive parts.
> Truth be told, some told themselves
>decisions to decide their fates
Those are the kinds of things you can catch if you put it down and come back to edit a few days later.

You sort of write like I do, so I might not be the best judge.

New thread >>20454085

>>20451597
The original line was "Ace Of Spades", but thanks for the based Lemmy Pepe!
Filed away in the collection.
>>20451659
Very much so. I use a free, open-source outline editor called TreeLine.
So far, it's done everything I want it to.
>>20452026
Communism is always one execution away from utopia.
>>20452446
Buy a house and live by yourself.

>>20452658
To write women, start with a man, then take away reason and accountability.
h/t Jack Nicholson's character in "As Good As It Gets"
>>20453667
Camino Real?

>>20453882
Frank was NEVER in this thread. Don't sully this general with that vicious lie.

>>20452493
*Ink runs out*

>>20454155
>Buy a house and live by yourself.
Real advice only.

>>20451768
Based dwarf monk. Just don't get your farm-girl buddy killed this time.

>>20454423
Why? It's what I did.

>>20454658
We know, boomer.

>>20454662
GenX.

>>20454770
Nobody cares.

>>20454777
Sorry, can't hear you in my nice, quiet house.

>>20454804
Enjoy all that money you have.

>>20454806
Assuming you didn't buy at the top of the market, a monthly mortgage costs about as much as rent.

>>20454822
More delusional advice from someone who doesn't know reality or the poster he's replying to.

>>20454841
Quit complaining about all the noise and do something about it, or else accept your well-adjusted fate of being a leaf blowing in the wind.
And reality & I are in a love/hate relationship.

>>20454847
How could you possibly think advice like that would fly on 4chan, of all places, and in 2022 when that advice is dead and buried?

>>20454852
I dunno...it works for me.
Get out of your own way.

>>20454862
>it works for me.
Worked, you mean.

>>20454904
It continues to work for me.

>>20454909
I'm sure it did anon, you're pretty funny dispensing boomer "wisdom". Thanks, but read the post chain before you reply in the future.

>>20454920
I did.
And GenX.
OK, gotta go to bed...since I have a day job and all.
You should try it, instead of smoking dope, playing video games, fapping, and whining about the losers you live with.
Zoomers really are the Least Generation.

>>20454942
How do you get a job without a car?

>All this talk of Gardner

I’m going to post this guy’s video. This is what convinced me to give his Gardner’s series a shot. Watch this and tell me this doesn’t sound like a good story.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gqmbpSJ-1iE

>>20454155
I read a book (one of the latter Jo Nesbo novels) where a character learns the line is actually Ace of Spades and refuses to believe it because Ace of Space sounds cooler.

>>20454958
Alice Cooper has some advice for you:

I can't get a girl
'Cause I ain't got a car
I can't get a car
'Cause I ain't got a job
I can't get a job
'Cause I ain't got a car
So I'm looking for a girl with a job and a car

>>20454958
Why don't you write a slightly fictionalized account of the meager, pathetic lives of you and your roommates?
Sounds like you have more than enough raw material.
You could become the Houellebecq of your generation!