/lit/ - Literature

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

>>20528800
we're all gonna make it

Any books you’ve read with clever competitions/trials/tests you can recommend? I’m writing a YA fantasy and need inspo on how to execute it well

>>20528800
Thank you friend. Hell-Anon here, I've been taking time off from actually writing to do an absurd amount of research. Hope to have something better to share soon.

>>20528881
Nice! Can't wait!

>>20523171
If I ever write a book the soul will be one of the main themes. There must be some essence that makes you who you are just as certainly as a tree is a tree. Like a single possibility in the universe presenting itself. And who's to say you haven't existed before?

>>20528922
>presenting
manifesting* rather

>>20528888
Thank you Anon. Right now I'm working out some logical issues I have with the science in my setting and the way the afterlife is meant to work. Namely as it pertains to animals and whether or not they can wind up there (even accidentally), or if they did if they're be able to reproduce. I've come up with about two dozen new ideas in the last two weeks and I feel really good about the shift in tone and the realism I think I'm building in the setting though.

>>20528795
A book like dune but it's set just a few decades in the future, and instead of outlawing thinking machines they only outlawed the internet

>>20528866
"maze runner" is on my reading list

>>20528800
I'll never write anything worthwhile. Everything I post here not a single soul has bothered to finish it

>>20529065
Just focus everything you have on writing 1 good scene. Once you can do that just replicate that task with minor variations to make short stories or chapters.

>>20529086
not him but i love making scenes. it's great. sometimes they turn into an actual story and that's even better.

>>20528800
This

>>20529065
Keep reading, learning from authors, writing and editing. It takes several years to get it but you can finish stories in the meantime and people will still read it.

>>20529065
The majority of /wg/ including myself just want people to read our shit, but have no interest in reading other people's shit. We relegate what writer's share in these threads as 'work in progress' so it doesn't catch our attention in the same way it would if we saw your book on a store shelf.

Absolutely terrible stories on royal road gets 1000's of followers because, after that first 1000, the next 1000 are enticed by the amount of people already following it.

The webnovel series Worm isn't very good, but the sheer number of fans it has continues its on-going popularity regardless.

>>20529403
So I should abandon /wg/ and just write on Royal Road.
Got it.

>>20529427
Nope. /wg/ for its faults will at least shit on you honestly (or dishonestly) but the negativity, if you can take it, will make you a better writer. Royal Road is a giant hugbox because everyone just wants their story to be reviewed with five stars and patted on the back. Harsh criticism rarely happens because it causes drama.

Royal Road's forums are filled with people who make posts and threads just so they can advertise their fiction with their signatures. It's a slow way for authors to maybe catch a new reader here or there, but the majority of Royal Road readers don't use the forums at all and just read.

I use both but not too much and that works for me.

Are you writing your passion project as your first novel, or are you writing smaller projects first?

>>20529461
Smaller projects.
1st was for fun
2nd to know it wasn't a fluke
3rd is to find my voice
4th is going to be for me to try and go all out

maybe i should write an adventure story and sneak in at least one of my fetishes per chapter

>>20529403
I will read /lit/ if it's something I'm interested in. There's a few anons I want to see published but I havent heard from them in a while and even forgot what it was they were working on. Some of you are alright.

>>20529403
>>20529440
>>20529621
I am interested in what other people are writing, but admittedly I'm more interested in getting feedback. Personally I feel confident in my prose, but I feel like pacing and tone are the things I struggle to be consistent with. There was one anon who posted a story a while back about some tribesmen happening upon a birth or something and taking the woman as a thrall or slave essentially. I couldn't remember the whole premise, but I was very impressed by the tone and the consistency.

I struggle to walk the line between writing in a voice that feels natural to me without wanting to sound psuedo-intellectual. Though in truth it's probably hard to divorce the two because part of writing is inevitably going to include some vanity I think.

>>20529461
I'm passionate about all my projects. There are a lot of things in my life or that I care about worthy of focusing all my passion toward. I wish I could work on them all at once but I stick to one primary and others get at most a rough draft.

>>20529643
Work on tone first then adjust pacing later. I like to check my vocabulary, literary devices and diction for tone/style. Try to understand voices similar to your own and deconstruct why they come off that way. Eventually you can be deliberate in that tone but you naturally may lean toward a tone hopefully in a voice appropriate for stories you tell. I switch dominant emotions around chapter to chapter but theres always some darkness boiling beneath it. Some kind of stark, candid tone.
As for pacing, adjust wordlength and word count of sentences, sentences/words in paragraphs, and all of the above in chapters, as well as how many chapters. That, your punctuation and even more subtly the emphasis of how words are pronounced affect how pacing is perceived.
I'm Southern Gothic anon btw. One project is a married couple breaking apart because of the singularity, the second is about a dysfunctional, mutually violent relationship and the man desperately tries to trade it for an equally abusive one in which he is financially dominated so he can feel at peace.

A good subject or topic just won’t come to me. I have nothing to say. How do I write about nothing?

>>20529795
When you have nothing to write about, you can write about anything you want. Just pick a place and roll.

>>20528795
I made a haiku :)

>Count my syllables.
>Did this take a lot of time?
>You would not believe!

>>20529795

Strawberry Supermoon brightens sky, was lowest full moon of the year

China says its giant 'Sky Eye' telescope may have picked up signals from alien civilizations

WHO to rename monkeypox after scientists complain label 'stigmatizing'

so i picked three of todays headlines. the goal is to make a story out of it. your story might be different

so china makes friends with aliens which sends the west into a tizzy. what if the aliens give china powerful weapons?
the aliens give the chinese a bio weapon, but when the chinese, thinking that it will only affect westerners, use it, it kills them too!
the only safe place left for mankind is the moonbase. but chinese and westerners live on the moonbase, how will they get along?

>>20529766
That's kind of what I thought. Tone to me represents evoking the feelings and provoking thought about the concepts I'm trying to dissect in my writing. Pacing to me is the struggle to go from natural sounding dialogue, to existing in the world, including exploring the new, revisiting the familiar, and sharing the protagonist's view of all of this as they and the reader are learning these things for the first time. Starting and ending chapters on a punctual note is difficult, and I really only feel like two or three of mine are finished in a satisfying way. I know the material is there but I just need to format it all better.

Back to tone, writing in the first person is really fun and it allows me to breathe a lot of life and humor into the situation I've put my protagonist in, but it's also difficult to convey the weight of certain actions or choices to the reader the desired emotions and tone associated. (Hell-Anon by the way)

>>20529985
>supermoon lowest of the year
>this somehow allows China to communicate with aliens
>their entire message is to chastise WHO because they're 'being stigmatizing'

>>20529795
Read more and live your life and you will have far too much to write about. In the mean time just retell a story in your own style or take a premise of something familiar and then add an unfamiliar element.

>>20528795
found this book, https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Dictionary-of-Obscure-Sorrows/John-Koenig/9781501153648?utm_source=author_post&utm_medium=author_social&utm_campaign=the_dictionary_of_obscure_sorrows&utm_content=

hear you ever heard of this author by chance before I pull the trigger?

I have a great idea for a story. Except I don't have a plot or any characters.

>>20530284
Then what is the story?

>>20527987
All of Pedro Páramo's characters were dead.

>>20529090
>love making scenes
Based, that's my thing anymore too. I try to fall in love with a scene before I write it (the location/vibes) and it really helps me share the feeling.

>>20529643
Tfw someone remembered my Neolithic fic fondly, thanks hell-anon. I've given you feedback twice or so before and agree with your self assessment, have seen your prose improve a lot over time but the pacing tends to be inconsistent. I used to struggle with that exact thing a lot and I think am improving it - not sure how or why, but I believe it's that I've gotten super comfortable switching back and forth from "showing" to "telling" within scenes. Read someone like P.G. Wodehouse with an eye for pacing and it blows your mind how much they expose "show don't tell" nerds as psueds.

>>20529795
Write a Baldcore short story and submit it to me for the future anthology next year :-)

>>20530333
That's the problem. I got a concept and a setting. I need some kinda (non-epic) adventure story.

>>20530360
>short story
Oh yeah it's Wednesday. I have to work on a short today. I'm hoping in a year I can have 15 shorts done while still working on my novel. I got a few underway.

>>20530360
I remembered it fondly because it was well written! Pacing feels a bit like how I imagine a bad cartographer's job might feel. I know the twists and turns and bends my story wants to take. I can connect them all in my head with a high degree of clarity and articulation. When it comes to "drawing the map" though, say for example from my house to the closest grocery store, despite the fact that I've driven that route and I could describe the turns and roads very well, my own perception of the length of each road is completely off. To alleviate this I'm trying to get a better idea of the overall outline of my plot rather than just letting it come to me. Also since I'm writing in the first person it feels like skipping around from bit to bit feels a bit like having a "lapse of consciousness", so it's tricky to decide what's important enough to be written about and what isn't.

>>20528795
>Self Publishing How-To
>>risky, but much more profitable
Can someone elaborate on this? I have money and time. My main concern with self-pub is the entrepreneurship. I just wanted to write, not do networking and advertising. Also, what about lit fic? Nothing on it in the OP.

>Binge read multiple MTL translated Chinese Novels over the course of 2 years
>Begin to write like MTL as a result of this

How do I detox from this? Read more books from the Western Canon?

>>20530472
you'll have to do networking and advertising also when tradpubbed. even more so because it's part of a contract then. about the profits... writing is almost never profitable.

>>20530472
Writing is still a business. If you want companies to market for you, go with bigger ones and in the US that requires and agent. They take 15% but only after you publish and guaranteed they will get you a better contract than you can alone because they know how to fight for them. Granted, marketing isnt a simple as ads. Its a certain type of publicity that should involve a multipronged approach. Even $1000 (utilized effectively) is enough for a small time writer to market and make it just as well as the median income author. Your book cover matters a lot. Having a website for publications, promotion and interaction with readers is great. 90% of professional social media should be about promoting someone elses work instead of only yourself. You dont make a booth at a con unless youve published a lot of books, not worth it otherwise. Publicists can help but you might not need one if you know your target audience and how to reach them.
Self-publishing is a legit way to start since 2010, but dont knock other publishers. Readership is more important than money imo, I didnt quit my dayjob yet.

Is it bad that I let my self "stew" for a while while trying to write a story?

I have a few finished outlines and a story with the ideas written down but not the outline and one outline thats a WIP.

I'm wondering if this is bad because I take a week or two to think things over for how to write it.

Is this bad anons? Should I force myself to write even if its the plots of the finished outlines?

>>20530490
Pretty much. Import the setting and tropes from abroad. But use domestic pulp as a model for writing.

>>20530594
You can but I wouldnt for long. Once you start writing characters you will discover way more about how things might play out differently. My characters kept their motivations but their relationships got more complex, side characters got depth, symbols took on new meaning. You have to write to discover the better story. If anything I'd meditate over your first draft more, because that's often half the project done and you have to consider what will stay.

https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-suggests-that-striving-for-excellence-but-not-perfection-boosts-creative-performance-63325

Remember, keep striving for excellence

>>20530335
Don't know who that is, but I'm going to guess that they were only "technically dead," but not dead dead. Like ghosts, or souls in the afterlife, etc. "Dead" people who are still taking actions and doing things. I sincerely doubt anyone had written a book that features nothing but corpses laying around slowly decomposing.

>>20530594
A short story is a relatively low investment project, that shouldn't take you more than two weeks at th most. There's no need to let the outline stew. You are better of stewing on the first draft after it's been written.

Free story idea for one of you; write a (fictional) autobiography of J. Alfred Prufrock. I have given up on it. Thank me later.

Well, shit. One of my characters is going to be a rapper. What now?
Do I just write his lyrics? How do you write this shit?

Do you guys have any good programs for organizing your writing files (outlines, ideas, notes ect)?

I'm trying to use google docs but its a trash fire.

>>20530551
I didn't know it was a part of the contract that I had to network and advertise.
>>20530566
I know what you're saying mostly applies to mass-market fiction, which is something I'm not really interested in besides for maybe a few books, but you guys are making me want to just self publish my literary fiction and starve.

>>20530594
about half your time you'll spend writing and the other half thinking about what to write
i make sure i write at least a sentence a day

>>20530726
You don't have to write his raps at all. I wrote a novella that followed a band and not once did I include any song lyrics. Record titles, sure, but never actual lyrics because its not necessary

>>20530719
thank you for giving up on that bad idea

>>20530741
I used word for the story and word for notes on a second monitor. Maybe I'll get something fancy one day to help me stay conscious of writing mistakes and my style.

>>20530726
You don't strictly have to, but you should consider it if you think you can pull it off. It can help characterize him and immerse the reader.
You don't have to frontload it. Do it when appropriate, ideally to serve multiple purposes. You also don't always have to put more than snippets.
The only thing I've read with rap in it was Modern Cannibals. Here's three excerpts. The third one comes near the end, and it's the only chapter where we get whole lyrics written out. The other two excerpts use snippets but the fact that they're concrete really enhances them.

>>20530748
literary fiction has a small market today. Until publishers stop being cowards and authors with some teeth step forward its going to remain small. I could write an essay about how the death of freedom of association and the rise of "nones" has made people afraid to say something new. You either pick a platform or say truisms. Maybe it's just not easy to make sense of our world today, but at least we could start and sink our teeth into something. As much as I had encouraged traditional publishing I hope you're daring and smart in your writing more than anything. Where it first prints matters less.

>>20530989
I guess I'm just worried about being canceled.

>>20531032
use a pseudonym retard

>>20531032
You don't have to worry about being cancelled if you write fiction, especially literary fiction. No one reads it. It's one of the last public places you can advocate for genocide and pedophilia and have no one care. Most books are unsold and most sold books are unread.

>>20531077
You can't do that if you're traditionally publishing. The publisher would read the manuscript and say no.
>>20531084
I think you're exaggerating. And to repeat what I said to the other poster: if I were to publish traditionally then there would be stakes. Perhaps, self published literary authors can fly under the radar, either under a pseudonym or without, because they are wholly unknown.

>>20531032
Dont be. Good literature has no clear answers. Present your ideas with as much abstraction or in whichever character you want. Dont be didactic, dont use low wit to simplify prevailing views. Your goal is to haunt the reader and if there's any merit eventually people will see it your way and give you credit. Fear of being canceled is why our culture is in stalemate, make people think about something substantive for once.

So what’s a good writing speed? How many words do you get down in a good hour?

>>20531032
IM SO FUCKING THRILLED

IM SO INTO WHAT IM WRITING

IM MAKING FUCKING KINO ANONS

JUST YOU WAIT

>>20528983
Cool. I'm sure I'll like it even more!
>>20529795
Read. Talk to people. Live life.
I have so many ideas, I have to beat them back with a stick.
>>20530434
Sounds like the "worldbuilding" trap.
I've known several writers that just generate lore about their world, and never write a single line of prose.
>>20530658
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." –Vince Lombardi.
>>20530741
I use an outline editor called TreeLine.
I store my notes in there, organize them by hierarchy, and add more ideas when I come up with them.
It's also free and open-source.

>>20529461
Good Lord...I wrote well over 100 short stories before I even attempted a novel.
And my first one was born from a related series of short stories.

>>20531366
>I've known several writers that just generate lore about their world, and never write a single line of prose.
Not that anon but I never really got why people do this. I'm always autistic as fuck about the characters and dialogue more than the world. Hell, to be honest, I don't even really find worldbuilding in general to be all that fun. Is that normal?

>>20530726
Rap is easy.
You just need a rhyming dictionary and absolutely no quality standards.

>>20531380
If you're able to write and not just worldbuild, I'd say you're on the right path.
My theory is that the compulsive worldbuilders were never storytellers to begin with.
It's just sad to see one of your writing friends turn out like that.

>>20531340
When is it dropping bro? Im itching for upcoming /lit/ but since no one does blog or site updates I have no idea what's coming. Once I'm submitting I will just build a site and let people know what I'm working on.

>>20529795
Pick a random setting. Pick a random character. Write 400 or so words of the character just existing in the setting. Try to include sensory details with all five senses, character opinions about all that sensory stuff, and try to have those opinions rooted in the characters past somehow. And then on top of all that just have some sense of a problem. It doesn't need to be the problem of the story or anything. The character's shoe could be untied. There shouldn't really be anything "happening," no plot stuff, just the character in the setting with a problem. (which are the first three points of lester dent's 7 point plot outline

>>20530594
how many finished stories do you have?

>>20531380
>I never really got why people do this
It's one hundred percent fear based. They're afraid to start writing because they're afraid it won't be perfect. They're placing so much importance on the finished product that they never get around to the process of creating it. So then they world build, or outline endlessly, or research endlessly, so they can tell themselves they are working on their novel without actually working on it. And it feels good because in their mind they have this fantasy where they've written this perfect novel.

>>20531380
>>20531596
>I never really got why people do this
>It's one hundred percent fear based. They're afraid to start writing because they're afraid it won't be perfect. They're placing so much importance on the finished product that they never get around to the process of creating it. So then they world build, or outline endlessly, or research endlessly, so they can tell themselves they are working on their novel without actually working on it. And it feels good because in their mind they have this fantasy where they've written this perfect novel.
If I can add, you're 100% right, but it's also because at least in my case, I don't want to write myself into a corner. I feel confident in my writing chops and in the story I want to tell, but I am still ironing out details that are essential to the stakes and the goals of the characters.

>>20530463
>first person it feels like skipping around from bit to bit feels a bit like having a "lapse of consciousness"
Was it present tense? Because i have no idea how to fix in that case. My solution to this with my first person thing is to use the usual "im writing this after the fact" type POV so its really easy for the narrator to skim over stuff. Ultimately every POV needs to do that though so it may be more your self consciousness famalamadingdong

>>20531335
500 words per hour is supposedly a standard achievable hourly goal. I don't track myself daily (and encourage others not to either) but I'd guess I float around there on average with the occasional spike up to like 1k per hour when really in the groove. Of course there are also days where I shit my pants and cough out only 200 words.

>>20531313
If no one will publish it then how would it get us out of the stalemate?

>>20531628
>>20531628
Nigger, I'm telling you, you're killing your story with that shit. Just work all that stuff out on the page. You're trying to write from the front of your brain and that's not where the good shit comes from.

I have submitted extensive reviews for Pseudo Bullkington, Gardner, and Cinder. If you have a book I can purchase and review, I will purchase and review it. If your book is in an ARC state, I will provide an advance review if it fits in my time table. I have one book in my queue for /lit/ reviews (Boswell's Playtime's Consequences).
I will review and buy your books, anons.

>>20531747
Not mine but you should look at Eggplant by Nesmer and the two short story collections by Lewis Woolston. Top stuff in the past year. I aim to have my book out in early next year. Good thing is I'm on my second draft already and have a pretty good idea of how to finish.

>>20531681
You're right, I know. Thank you for the tough love anon.

>>20531747
Glad to hear it.
Will your reviews only go on GoodReads, or Amazon too?

>>20529461
Wrote some shorties and now attempting a novel. Have 15k words so far done in two months, probably I'll have something to edit till the end of the year.

>>20531787
I was actually just thinking about that today and made an account on Amazon specifically for my reviews. I will make abridged versions for Amazon when I get around to it, probably in the next week.
>>20531773
I will check it out.

I posted the first few pages from my book here a while ago and you guys said that my writing was illegible, got do depressed i quit. Thinking of trying it again but it will most likely be illegible again, i envy people who can write so much, i can understand complex literature but when i write no one can make sense of it and not in the 2 deep 4u way. As in even though i am a native speaker of english people cannot understand my writings.

Maybe i should just say it out loud and then write it down and just do it piece by piece.

>>20531777
trips confirm. Godspeed anon.

Fellas, this might be a stupid question but for the life of me my brain is closed in on itself: How do you properly write in a smash cut from one scene to another (or just a general instant timeskip) without doing a chapter change? As in going from one scene, to a different environment at a later time without changing chapter.

In my document I currently just broke the two paragraphs apart by a "..." but that's absolutely not it. I swear I'm well-read my brain is just mush trying to think of a method that feels "correct" right now. Too used to writing screenplays.

>>20530360
>Based, that's my thing anymore too
Where are you from? I've seen Palahniuk use "anymore" like this in some of his short stories but I've never met in anyone who has used it like this in real life.

I've been wanting to write my own story for years, but I don't know how to write too well. I read online educational material only, not novels. The biggest problem is that I have a short attention span, so I've always gravitated towards comics, webcomics, and manga rather than novels. I am really wanting to buckle down and become a better writer, though. I was going to try to learn through example (the best way I learn). Can anyone recommend me good novels or audio books that would be interesting for manga readers with shorter attention spans? My favorite genre is fantasy/psychological thrillers trope-breakers. Preferably, ones that are exceptionally well written, so I can learn by reading the best? I am super serious about learning how to write.

>>20531961
Read short stories or fairy tales for now

>>20531906
I would love to run some ideas by you guys. I think I have some neat things to incorporate into my plot and setting but I worry I'm reaching in some regards.

>>20531969
Have any good ones? I really want to start reading the best examples of writing so that I can improve as best as possible. Also, I want the first novels I read since High School (it's been that long) to ignite my passion for reading. I've long since run out of good manga/comics to read and I feel that switching to novels will be a positive change in my life. The problem is, there are so many and I know nothing about them. I just don't know where's a good place to start. I want novel reading to become my chosen hobby. Manga/comic reading is my current hobby, which I want to replace with novel reading and writing.

>finally finished 4th book
>get ready to start promos
>forgot about the blurb
Shiiiiit.

>>20531985
Depends on which genre you are going for but some of the most lauded short story authors are Anton Chekhov, Flannery O'Connor, and Ray Bradbury. There are plenty of other authors that have good ones too, I personally like Faulkner and Welty.

>>20531631
Thanks

>>20529090
Same, it's beautiful to visualize those scenes that I can picture.

what's a good day job for a writer? something that doesn't drain my creative energy, leaves me time to write, pays well enough so i can survive. just until i can make a living from my actual writing

>>20532004
>fantasy/psychological thrillers trope-breaker
That's the preferred genre. I read a lot of revenge-porn stories and tragedies that go against traditional narrative. I can't stand overused tropes, as manga is littered with them. I really hate slice of life and school life stories. And I will avoid non-fiction like the plague, because I get enough non-fiction from educational research materials I read every day. I like tickling the imagination and empathy centers of my brain. I love feeling emotion, as a person that rarely feels anything.

Ray Bradbury seems like an interesting author who may write what I'd be interested in, so I will check him out. The other two seem to write realism-based stories.

>>20532023
Whatever pays you the most for your skill set.
Don't expect writing to make you a living any time soon.
I had high hopes for my novels, but I think the only ones that bought them were family and friends.

Just posted the 20th chapter of my LitRPG:
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54832/leave-bad-enough-alone
27k words so far, and I'm just getting warmed up!
I've heard some LitRPGs stretch for hundreds of chapters and hundreds of thousands of words...I'm well on my way to doing that!

>>20532023
35T in the US Army.

How do I start writing? I'm so shit I wouldn't even be able to write a simple essay. But I want to try.
Any tips?

>>20532045
Try Amphetamines mixed with Caffeine.

>>20532045
Start small. Even as you post that you must surely be shit, consider that you have made a post stating what you want to do, what you fear and you want advice.

I've started writing my first story. Can I get a quick critique of my first couple of paragraphs, so I know how to quickly improve/adapt moving forward?

"Grace be with all of you gathered here today to witness the birth of the second wave of Chosen, under the all-viewing gaze of The Infinite."
A crowd of onlookers who previously were shouting, cheering for the holy event that occurs once a decade, were now mostly silent before The Grand Oracle. Murmurs from children who did not understand the traditions of The Chosen Hunt were all that could be heard, replacing the previous sounds of revelry echoing throughout the city streets. Crowds were gathered upon the streets below the steps of an excessively decorated marble and stone temple. Gold and silver vine-like holy symbols were engraved upon the walls of the main temple, also decorating each of the side towers that vertically stretched higher than even the clouds above. The stone buildings built beside the many roads paved towards the tiled walk space in front of the temple were nearly as gaudy themselves. This was the center-hub of the entire world. This was the Infinitium. This main temple of humanity, which only allowed the most important holy men and women to enter its doors, was preparing to host the only outsiders allowed into the temple in a full decade; those volunteering for the second-wave of the Chosen selection process.
Perched upon the steps to the Infinitium stood a bald frail looking elderly man, softly smiling down at those Chosen potentials gathered before him. All could easily recognize this as the Grand Oracle, who was draped in the ornate golden rose red robes which designated the one wearing them as the holy leader of humanity. Standing beside the Grand Oracle, all but one at positions of attention, were eight of the legendary Chosen of the previous hunts. They all seemed to be standing guard for any potential dangers lurking within the area while also acting as decoration to bolster the importance of the event and those involved. Up above, in the lower balconies of the nearest-right and nearest-left towers, stood crowds herded together to watch the ceremony that took place below; the first wave of Chosen. And there she spotted him, standing on the lowest platform, looking down apathetically at the closely gathered group of the Chosen potentials.
"Rain.." mumbled a sinewy female Chosen potential, a great aching in her tone.

How do you conceal information without completely blindsiding the reader? In my case, the heroine is actually a villain who knows the main villain of the story and has been waiting for him for centuries but she's only supposed to act on this knowledge once the protagonist has unwittingly done their bidding.

>>20532071
if it's third person, you can do the old, "now here's the plan"
and then you cut to the next scene without saying what the plan is
but it's kind of a cheap trick to pull on your readers
i don't know if you can do it in first person

>>20531930
New paragraph. Do not indent.

>>20531810
Look up brain dumping audio recordings. Some authors do this.

>>20532087
You can do it easily in first person. It's actually not any different from how you do it in third person.
>I gathered up the gang and told them the plan. Johnny looked at me like I was crazy and Donkey-Dick started mumbling about how we were all gonna die, but because Old Man Jenkins just nodded along I knew it could work.

>>20532087
It's third person thankfully. Right now I have to decide on a course of action because the approach I take will greatly affect how the rest of the story up until the end of part 1 should be structured:
>Does the protagonist get some hints that the person in his dreams is an actual person and is up to no good?
>Does the 'heroine' largely act on her own, and so the tricky part would be concealing that she's the actual villain and not her lookalike?

>>20531747
I just found your reviews. I’ve read some of F. Gardner but I’ve never heard of Limbo’s Rainbow. His series is hit or miss from the ones I’ve read. The last one I read was Jigoku and that was the best one I’ve read. I would honestly say that’s a good book.

>inb4 people claiming I’m Gardner

I don’t even like all of his books. In fact I strongly dislike some of them. But Jigoku is legitimately cool since it’s edgy horror Pokémon.

>>20532045
well what I do is that I have so low standards that when I do write vitriolic gutter trash I don't delete it and keep writing anyway

>>20532028
Read "Skeleton" by RB, it's a bit longer than most short stories, if it's not one it's a novellete. It's not a thriller but it's really psychological and messed up.

>>20531930
Dinkus

>>20532212
>Skeleton by RB
I looked it up on Google and got no results. Can you get a bit more specific? I want to read that.

I have spent the past 5 years of my life worldbuilding, researching and not writing, and have made more progress in actually writing my fantasy epic by throwing my notes in the trash than I ever could've made following them. I'm going to make it bros.

>>20532222
https://mrewert.edublogs.org/files/2016/03/skeleton-13v0hv5.pdf

>>20532232
Thank you!

Also, does anyone have a good epub reader? I want to get the one you all use, because I don't trust random shit off Google to not be bloatware or adware shit.

>>20532065
If those are the first few paragraphs, you throw the reader into the deep end a bit too quickly; you have alot of worldbuilding, which shows, but you gotta pace the concepts you throw out and introduce them at a less dizzying pace

>>20532226
Based. Might I ask what's your epic about?

What's your process for coming up with and writing short stories?

>>20532239
I dunno because honestly I just buy paperback short story collections. A lot of the classic scifi I read like Bradbury, Asimov, Heinlein, Philip K Dick short stories as well as Vonnegut, Lovecraft and others in high school. We had paper print outs that he scanned from books but he made us shred them for legal reasons. The really prolific authors its all but impossible to get all the stories in one book or collection but you can get selections usually and reading one a day will give you 2-6 weeks of reading!

>>20532252
I am trying to set up the main character starting off the story at the Chosen selection ceremony, which I want to explain further more about the story and how the character got to that situation in alternating chapters (odd chapters are the present, most even chapters will be the events that explain how she ended up where she is and her backstory).

I just worry that throwing a reader in without explaining the setting she is in will confuse them and leave them wondering what is going on.

>>20532269
Like a long story, except the subject is too short to be a long story.

>>20532270
Nice! I will look at all of those authors. I want to really get into reading as a daily hobby that I use my free time for, so I can learn how to write more effectively. I just posted an example of what I started writing (>>20532065), but as you can tell, I am sure I made a lot of mistakes in just the beginning of my story. Transitioning from comics and manga to novels will be jarring at first, so having all of these examples you've provided will definitely help me get to where I want to be. So, thank you so much for all of that. I didn't have a way to start my journey into novel reading as a hobby, previously.

>>20532239
Calibre is free and open-source, and understands every e-book format under the sun.

>>20532269
Just live life and talk to people.
It's easy to develop a single idea into a short story.

>>20532269
I think of what happened to me that week or what I felt or saw or did and try to put a unique spin on it.

>>20532274
You might want to pace out your explanation and focus a bit more on the character's feelings to get the attention of the reader. I tried to picture this scene and it was overwhelming.

>>20532269
If there's a place, idea, character or event I want to talk about but only that. You can also do two but more than that you are going to double or triple the wordcount most likely. There aren't as many moving parts to a short story which is why they are short. So I take something that I want to focus on and the story only looks at that. Then I take a look at it and just write. After a first draft if I want more I may add a twist and put in the appropriate build up for it. If the plot doesn't change I just try to improve the narrative style.

>>20531961
What genre are you looking for? The novels of Dumas (particularly Count of Monte Cristo) and the short stories of Pushkin are an excellent place to start based on your criteria. The two in combination work quite well, with Dumas setting the tropes of the genre and Pushkin more or less breaking them. I can also recommend a certain exercise to learn from their work (which I stole from McKee's book).

>>20532254
Sure thing man. So the basics: The world is in shambles from a recent war, that shook the foundations of the earth. The Barbarian King Valdhen Ulfedh, responsible for the war, having ascended to divinity, has mysteriously chosen "the path of Eternal Return" perishing upon his own throne, and leaving his massive decentralised empire to his heirs.
Lines are drawn, as his children turn on each other, setting the stage for a war that will either destroy, or save all civilization on the continent. In the west his eldest son, and finest general Siegfried the Red; to the east Armil the sole non-demigod heir, and his sister-wife Alva the Lioness. Between them, lord of the mountains and forests, Nuadoch who takes most after his father.
In the south, a religious order, the Brothers of the Hammer, an extremist faction of crusading knights go on a pilgrimage north, across the ruins of the Imperial heartlands destroyed and cursed in the war, with an intent to play kingmaker with their chosen heir.
Their leader, Signifier Titus, however, is forced to confront a troubled history along the journey.

In a broader sense than plot; it's about nostalgia, religion, loss, and the search for one's own identity in a harsh world. It follows several POVs, telling various stories, with a through-line of a shared cultural trauma of the recent war of conquest.

I also wanted to just write a setting with all the things I love in pulp fantasy and literary fiction combined.

>>20532295
Thank you for the feedback. If you don't mind, I also wrote a short chapter that was my previous rough draft. That one was more based on starting earlier in the story than that point and based around the feelings and experiences of the character. I feel like getting your opinion on it (even if only a piece of what I've written) may help me understand the writing style I should be aiming for moving forward.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iAdsPc57KxvZD6Yv-cdcIxXl01RoAVPRfnhLAnqvpYc/edit?usp=sharing

I really appreciate the feedback, truly.

>>20531930
To add on to the other anon's answers: you also need something to indicate the passage of time. The simplest way is to just state it ("Six years later...", "When he got to the theater...", "In the car..."). More literary methods are creating the effect of montage or time lapse by, e.g describing the same object at different time points.

>>20532313
I wish you luck on your endeavors, that sounds like an interesting story.

>>20532314
Sure, will read when I'm off work. This is a problem that's interesting to me because my opening is less world-building heavy than yours but I'm debating having a very important character singing about the truth even as the people listening to him believe in a lie that he fabricated for their sakes and my thoughts on this matter is that trying to see the scene you're writing from the perspective of your POV and background characters can help to tone down giving too much information within a short span of time.

>>20532309
The story Count of Monte Cristo is right up my alley for preferences, besides the "Historical" genre. I am more into the fantastical imagination of a setting beyond my current knowledge. It's the reason I like the shows "Adventure Time" and "The Midnight Gospel". Fantastical settings with psychological thrillers are my bread and butter. I will put that book into my reading list, though. I can't learn anything from sticking to one genre and may appreciate the story more than I would initially believe. After all, when it comes to both reading and food, I like to sample a little bit of everything. I will also try to sample Pushkin, as he seems like an interesting author if he is a trope breaker. I really love trope destroying stories. It's what I aspire to be able to write.

>>20532350
33k words and counting friendo, this is the third draft too, this is the publishable one.

>>20532361
That's awesome!

>>20532350
For sure, I really appreciate that! Also, if you can, send me one of your stories you think I could learn from a bit. I'd love to see how people like you write also; it may help me gain a greater perspective into how novel writing and story telling should be.

I've gotta go to sleep now, though. Seems we are in different time zones. Have a good night, anon.

>>20532373
I am but a scrub anon still stuck building the actually important world-building parts of my story because it informs the way the entire story unfolds, but I'll try to write the opening to my story to illustrate my point. Personally I liked how Tolkien had story-telling and songs built into his world, because characters listening to that sort of thing is a great way to build immersion without delivering information too dryly.

>>20529461
I'm writing a light novel as an exercise in not taking myself too seriously. I always get caught up in feeling like I need to write something of extraordinary literary merit and never end up finishing anything, so I'm just saying fuck it and doing it for fun. It's surprisingly freeing

>>20532430
I do have a second much less developed idea, perhaps it'd be nice to use that as my fun writing project because it's also somewhat involving (Fantasy story, involves years of history and whatnot) but it has more of a comedic bent while my current WIP is a clusterfuck that requires me to fact check every plot point to make sure my revisions didn't accidentally mess up a previous plot point.

>>20532372
Thanks man. Hard part will be publishing. I'll likely have to go self-pub or traditional right from the get go, as it tends to be that most sites for sharing your work have rules against the levels of sex, violence and controversy I find necessary for the story.

Why does no one write literary fiction anymore? No judgement, just asking.

>>20532430
Yep. That's the point of the LitRPG I'm writing.
Of course, the longer it gets, the more I take it seriously.
That always seems to happen.
Hopefully the ridiculous content will keep the seriousness at bay.

>>20532443
Literary fiction is a matter of lived experience; societally, the younger generations are trapped in a state of arrested development, and denied the kind of life experience you need for true literary fiction.

>>20532443
Probably because it'd be seen as too boring.
Literary fiction, historically, just seems to be about people's lives, and people going about their lives.
Maybe that was more of a draw before mass media, but these days, that's just not enough to hold anyone's interest.
Can you imagine anyone writing "In Search Of Lost Time" by Marcel Proust in this day and age? Just some upper-class twit whining about his life? Ugh.
The kids sure don't want it; they prefer supernatural creatures, magical princesses, and portals to anime dimensions.

>>20532439
Yeah, I can't imagine most sites would accept your work simply because of the amount of violence that seems apparent in your work. Hope it goes well for you.

>>20532454
>>20532465
Besides this, mass media has made people more privy to information than before. When I think of the great literary fiction there's a sense of mystery simply because you didn't know everything there was to know about people's lives.

How would you hide this sort of twist?
>Protagonist swears to do X, but in truth there are two souls in the same body and the real person who said that is the villain of the story

>>20532541
You can hide it by having the non-villain soul dominate for most the story.
The real question is, how do you hint at it so that, when it's revealed, it doesn't feel arbitrary and cheap.

>>20532045
Block out time to write and just write whatever you can during that time. Put your phone in a drawer, close any internet browsers you have open, close steam, any kind of distractions you have.

>>20532576
Yeah, my plot is filled with so many of these wonderful complications. The non-villain soul is indeed dominant for most of the story, so my concerns are largely as follows:
>Will the audience pick up that the 'dream' the protagonist sees is actually a character and not some figment of his imagination?
>Will the audience be rightfully suspicious of the heroine falling in love with the protagonist so readily, as if he's the person she claims to have seen in her dreams?
>Seeing that the protagonist collapses shortly after making that declaration (Makes sense, he walked a long way to get to this place), is it enough that the protagonist appears to be more innocent than the one who declared he would get revenge on the person who killed his father even if it's Death itself?

>>20532588
Fight Club but fantasy, sounds neat anon

>>20532631
Thanks bro. It's a neat idea to be sure, but for someone who's never written anything beyond a short story length story creatively it's overwhelming:
>Centuries of history to set up
>Multiple reincarnations involving some of the major characters
>Foreshadowing and twists left and right
>Bookend ending where the protagonist and antagonist confront each other at the same place where the promise was made
I blame this on my major influences being stories that are pretty complicated in their own right.

>>20529643
>>20530360
can i read it?

>>20530726
As a general rule, I would suggest not making a character a rapper, musician, lyricist, or anything else of the sort unless you actually want to write lyrics. I mean, if you want to share your own rap stylings with readers, then yeah, write about a rapper.

Otherwise, you'll have to write your own raps, which I absolutely guarantee you will be cringe as fuck (it's much harder than it looks), or avoid any direct references to their music. Which is doable, not even all that hard, but does beg the question of "why is this character a rapper then?"

>>20531931
Family from the northeast US but I've lived in the south all my life, never considered it an unusual phrase but maybe it's fallen a bit out of fashion.

>>20530741
Yeah. It's called "Windows Explorer." It uses this novel system called "Folders." You can label them, put any kind of file in them, organize them in nested layers. It's awesome. You should totally download it.

>>20532663
Not gonna lie, this made me laugh.

What would you guys write for end of life monologuing (specifically if they're dying alone)?
I'm leaning towards the fear of being forgotten and feeling like their impact was miniscule but I'm struggling to make it sound despair inducing. Any tips?

>>20532685
This is not an easy question to answer anon, first you have to think about how your character views things when they're alive, how suddenly do they find themselves dying and what they're leaving behind. A slow and painful death versus a sudden one can be starkly different in tone, so what's the full context here?

Today I have written 125 words. Which is pathetic, especially since they replaced about 500 words and a scene I really liked. However, those 125 words finally gave me the bridge into Act II that has kept me floundering for the last week, and I've got the first six chapters of Act II outlined, so tomorrow (or maybe later tonight) I'll get back on track. Very excited because act II allows me to introduce Bad Brains, my brain damaged allosaur nemesis to the duterprotagonist.

Also, I loaded my entire novel into Balaboka, listened to the whole thing, found six or seven typos, found a scene that didn't work and was able to rewrite it effortlessly to play much better, and fixed a dialog section I'd written before I'd found the character's voice.

So, all in all, a very productive day.

>>20532710
Sometimes you have to kill your darling scenes to make progress. Congrats bro.

>>20532685
It's going to depend entirely on the personality of the character, their circumstances, and the cause of their death.

If I wanted to go for maximum "make the reader cry" points, I'd take a good-natured, likeable hero and then brutally mortally wound him in a way that is absurdly painful, then have him spend his last few tortured moments doing something important, like pressing the world-saving button, while wishing he would be there to see the world saved but accepting he won't.

>>20532697
There's quite a bit of backstory to cover but just think of it as; a sickly happy-go-lucky girl gets teleported by her father into a world where her disease doesn't exist, except she instead gets brought into a world where 1 second on earth is 1 week there, prolonging her condition.

>>20532736
>a world where 1 second on earth is 1 week there
Wouldn't that only matter if you were traveling back and forth between the worlds? If you start on world 1 where time runs at 1:1, then go to world 2 where time runs at 1000:1, you'd only notice if you went back to world 1. Right?

>>20532710
It's okay. I got a criticism that completely demolished any desire I have to continue writing my Chinaman story. The critic said it was racist, disgusting, unrelatable, and should never have seen a single letter typed. The racism and bigotry the story is a clear indication of the crass ineptitude of the author to generate any awareness of the current times today. Reader can't believe they even know someone like the author.

It's unprintable, unreadable, and worthless.

>>20532755
Write it again, but with more vitriol, more racism, and transcend the barrier. Zipperhead, Gook, Chink, throw them all in there, cross the Gran Torino line.

>>20532730
So, how do you feel about a hero who wanted to defeat Death but who ended up screwing over the entire world when he had character development and decided that the world could not be saved by sacrificing a child, slaughtering his friends following an argument and their own attempts to kill him, and who after living a long life of regrets ends it barely able to move, without his powers, begging for Death to spare the world while knowing that he will die for this?

>>20532736
In this case I would put emphasis on the passage of time assuming she can notice that and longing to be with her father again. Perhaps you can focus on how her father did this for her and she regrets that she didn't just ask to be with him until the end?

>>20532736
>>20532685

if only i had more time.

>>20532730
Not really jerking for tears just aiming for a pure "damn, that's kinda fucked" emotional response.
>>20532748
No because time in world 2 is insanely slow too. The only thing this doesn't apply to is her perception of time on a neurological scale. She can think in normal speed but actions take 1000:1. As the sickness is neurological, she's pretty much slowly dying in a trapped body she has full awareness of.
>>20532772
>Perhaps you can focus on how her father did this for her and she regrets that she didn't just ask to be with him until the end?
Absolutely perfect, cheers anon
>>20532774
idk man that's like being stabbed by a knife and saying "knife to meet you."

>>20532772
Sounds tragic. And very melodramatic. And vaguely anime.

>>20532765
but i wrote the story for her... and she didn't like it. What's the point?

She said she hated how there's so little realistic books about Asian Americans. Said everything was mmysticism and kung fu fighting, so she wanted a more grounded story. So I wrote it.

What's the point now?

>>20532784
>The only thing this doesn't apply to is her perception of time on a neurological scale.
Ah, yes, that would make a difference. That's pretty horrific.

>>20532793
>writing for someone else
That was your first mistake. Don't write for women, don't write for your friends, write for yourself.

>>20532784
>Absolutely perfect, cheers anon
Great. If I was writing this, I would have my character muse on how priorities change as times go by: When pain cripples you, you wish for it to go quickly and when you're with your loved one you wish for it to never end yet now you're left with the worst of both because you never thought that you should have let go of being free of pain and have chosen to live to the last with someone you love.

>>20532789
>Vaguely anime
Truth be told I do like to envision scenes the way an anime should be like, haha. The entire scenario is fucked up though, in this world dreams inform your abilities and the hero wasn't just the Chosen One but always victorious, turns out this is a problem if he ends up being more than just a 'thing' and makes an enemy out of the world itself.

>>20532803
But she's hot

>>20530840
is this really homestuck fanfiction?

>>20532793
Their was a webm of this guy in singapore who was forced to study non stop every day while their father watched over them and read over everything they did. This started during his teenage years and he was like 21 or something i fogret the exact age. Anyways one day the guy says to the dad hes done and gets up and walks to the balcony as the dad reads over his work, i remember his dad interrogated him about the work before he did this. As the dad reads over the tell his son had written he looks to the left of him now looking at the balcony and see his son jump off. The webm continues with a crying mother and daughter who come out into the living room. I can just imagine what the parents would say, if we'd only knew, we didn't mean to push him so hard.

So yeah now change it to be about some 2nd generation from Asia, make them gay or lesbian and how he had to hide it from his parents and their ya go.

>>20532842
as the dad read over what his son had written he looks*

>>20532842
Not that anon but I remember this story. Apparently that was his suicide note.

>>20532793
>>20532825
Please tell me you aren't a white dude writing Asian oppression fiction to impress a cute yellow chick...

>>20532854
>its yellow as well.

>>20532269
it all comes from my fears deep down. they bubble up to the surface because i can't stop thinking about them. then i pass by a scene during the day or hear someone else tell me how their day went and i think, the person in that scene might be feeling what i'm feeling.

sometimes it's not so bad. i look at a photograph or remember a sweet old memory or wake up from a dream that leaves a bittersweet lingering feeling. then i write about it. just a short scene, no more than a few paragraphs, but sometimes they can become a short story. other times, i leave for a bit and come back with a story in mind. but underneath all my short stories talk about the same thing, the same fears and insecurities that i've known all my life. i'm hoping some decisions i'm about to make in the near future would give me new things to experience, and feel.

short stories are not that hard. you can take almost any idea, any object and write 2,000+ words about it. i don't have a novel in me yet and i may never will be able to come up a novel-length idea ever. maybe i am just destined to write short stories forever. but we'll see.

>>20532854
No I'm SEA nigger

>>20532892
>short stories are not that hard.
I find writing short stories damn near impossible unless it's fanfic set in a previously established world. Novels are much easier.

>>20532793
>>20532755
embarassing. I actually liked the story too. now I lost all respect for you as an author and wont' bother reading it anymore.

>>20532834
Not really, but it features Andrew Hussie and takes place at a convention. I guess it's a novel about artistic creation and (not) growing up to be a manchild.

>>20532685
i would go for what he's familiar with. remember the smell of your mother? remember the feeling sand sinking under your foot that day at the beach? remember what you wanted to be when you were little? the things only he would know. think of the ending of citizen kane.

>>20532925
i envy you desu

>>20533059
Don't, because I should say novels are easier to conceptualize, outline and write 1/3rd of then get mired in editing until you can no longer stand to look at the story and you quit, only to start a new novel and begin the cycle all over again, never finishing anything.

I really wish I could figure out how to tell a story in 20k - 40k without resorting to frontloaded exposition dumping, because I've written 40k Act Ones of a lot of novels and I might have published something by now if I had some ideas that were both interesting and didn't take 80k just to fucking set-up.

>>20532795
Not gonna lie, I'm interested in trying to write a short bit about this.

>>20528800
>Day 3 of editing
I never knew making it was gonna be so hard

>>20533305
Me neither, I had to spend weeks fleshing out my story to the point where the opening would lead naturally to the most pivotal scene I had.

>>20528795
Speaking of passing fads I decided to get the old knuckles cracking and logged into grammarly only to find a message supporting Ukraine. I thought companies stopped supporting that months ago. All the local businesses in my area did. Don't these fags know it's pride month? They should have the rainbow flag.

>>20533391
It was founded by Ukrainians, they have an exemption

>want to write a novel
>this is my first time doing so
>have posted a few fanfics here and there with positive comments
>have a passion novel I really want to make
>but I know that jumping in big first is a bad idea
>other story ideas in my head just don't hit the same as the passion novel
Wat do

>>20533511
Just write. You can remake the idea later, when you had some feedback and experience. Unless you think of a better one.

>>20531747
Cinder here. Just finished reading your review. I did have a friend act as editor (for free) but as you pointed out there were things that we both missed. Believe it or not but I had never even heard of Barotrauma until I was on my third draft and a beta reader brought it up. At that point I was too invested in my own story to meticulously try and make it drastically different than the video game. Besides, just because one form of media has subs on Europa doesn't mean no one else can.
Thanks for the review overall. Characters have always been my strong suit. It comes from being a TTRPG game master for over 8 years now. I'm still learning how to translate other aspects of GMing to written prose, so this helps.

>>20533511
I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to write a big thing first. If that's where your passion lies, trust me you're better off writing that first then writing passionless half-assed short stories. Then you can take whatever you learn from your first big book and use it in the second, and learn along the way. What I think you should do is read in tandem with your writing. You'd be surprised how many ideas and improvements you can bring to your own work by seeing how other people tackle similar themes / subjects / plots.

I'm doing it, so can you.

>>20532443
See>>20530989
and also agree with this>>20532465
Literary fiction can become very bizarre and dramatic but honestly I think it's a deeper issue with modern culture where we feel we cannot get upset about something unless it's something a group already agrees on or is trite life-affirming and far too clear. We've been influenced by crusaders, editorialists and administrators who want us to believe life is clear at least for them. Litfic can push against that if writers are just a little contrary to this notion.

>>20532784
Denial of death rather than acceptance always fucks me. Also superstition, say someone thinks they are dying because of some bizarre reason. Some artifact, animal or person is too close. Someone didnt recite a prayer correctly, I dont know. But having a character go to great length explaining it and insisting people fix it, then him looking certain he wont die after. Then the people looking around in pain. That messes me up because I've seen it and it's sad.

>>20532825
Not him but for some reason women I like dont always make it as chars, it's usually ones I have mixed feelings about. Also I try to only inject a slight amount of sexuality (I will start fetish writing if Im not careful) and writing about a girl I'm presently attracted to can work but then I feel restrained on what else I might say if something bad is supposed to happen.

>>20532443
>>20533701
I think that all literature is a product of its time, litfic is no exception. The reason that litfic has fallen somewhat behind is, in my eyes, because the world that we live in now and the world that existed when litfic was in its prime are two different things altogether. In this day and age people don't want realism, they want escapism. Of course, every time has it's troubles, but imo because of mass media constantly pumping our heads full of shlock, people get burned out and tired of their own day to day lives, much less those of others. Plus, they get that from social media anyway. With all the endless pressure that exists in the world today, from nonstop media shilling to constant politicising of everything to everyone bitching and whining about this and that and everything else, I don't think its surprising that people want a way to detach from that world.

And I don't think that's a necessarily bad thing. As I've said countless times before, I find that having a hard distinction between literary and genre fiction is reductive and pointless, and I think that that line is going to become increasingly blurred as time goes on. I think we will see poigniant commentary on the human condition and the nature of life be increasily told through a fantastical lens, especially if the world continues to go in the same trajectory as it is now.

Self published authors are not writers. If you weren't picked by an actual publishing house, you're shit. You're not a writer because you sent something to amazon.

>>20533835
You're a good writer if you write good

>>20533779
>non stop media shilling
That is actually one way I deal with it in my writing. I have tried to come at it not with the paranoid and sarcastic tone of post-modernists, not like the modernists either despite the influence I am still trying to refine it and I hope there's some coherent style that supplants how we see the world today. It's not to be prophetic but I try to write near future where this has come to a head and you have parallel societies of people that listen and people that don't have to. So instead of having to wrestle with the controversies of today or where they might take us in the future I simply ignore them because no one really cared in the first place. I've almost convinced myself that people participate in clown world to fulfill some other base desire like belonging, though usually its based on envy.
>it's not necessarily a bad thing
It's a different flavor of life. Views on education created Modern English when more people read the Greeks, then how people would write changed too as we then began to look more at the French, then at the Germans. The way we tell stories now is all a part of what we've been through in the last 100 years. I'm trying to get ahead of the curve and give answers to people as they become more disillusioned when escapism fails and need to take a closer look at their lives

>>20533779
Then why not write a litfic about a man struggling for realism in a world of escapism? That seems like a superb litfic novel basis.

I write a litfic novel about my schizo experiences and it's great.

>>20533890
OUR schizo experiences, you mean.

>>20533878
Not him but in a way I am doing that with my first two books.
>a husband thinks life in the singularity is somehow fake so he opts to a more poor lifestyle and gets frustrated as he denies himself a "better life" that he thought he didn't want
>man in an unhealthy, indulgent relationship wants something normal with "real love" but it's just as unrealistic if not more
I do agree with what you're saying and I like seeing characters struggle with whether they are living correctly. A lot of them get pushed into it by at first pretending everything is okay or that it doesn't bother them, then when pain surfaces they get upset and confused why they didn't feel that way earlier. I will work on a cute short story next week about people at a race track who are more sure of themselves though. Yesterday I started a short on a man finding the last theatre mask in the Mediterranean sea. That story is going to focus on key element to my writing, the end of sarcasm.

>>20533870
That's a fair way to view it. I prefer writing fantasy because that's what I've been raised around. My dad bought World of Warcraft as a gift for my third birthday the same year it came out, both my parents are fantasy nerds that adore LotR, Narnia, GoT, The Witcher etc. I've never had to buy a fantasy book in my life because we've always had them home on the shelves. But I still want to tackle real world and 'real people' issues in my writing, albeit trough the aforementioned fantastical lens.

>>20533878
I might give a crack at it once I've become a better writer and wiser person. I think I need some more life experience to be able to write something really profound. I'm trying to tackle certain issues I've experienced, either first hand or seen people close to me go through with in my current ongoing work, but to do something so grand-scale that ecompasses more or less a whole generation or several generations seems like something better suited to do after I've lived through certain other phases of life. I'm 21 now and a year away from finishing my psychology tuition, my goal in the future is to write a litfic novel about the reasons for why people are so mindfucked in this day and age, and I want to do that after I've seen firsthand how those people describe their plights.

>>20533835
Sneed sells Feed and Seed; Chuck sells cucks who have shit opinions like (You).

>>20533890
I'd be remiss if I didn't write about my time here at some point, it might be a few years before I do. As far as I know anons have only gotten the side character or villain treatment in stories but I'd love to see a story through the eyes of someone absolutely obsessed with attention from a small community and all the idiosyncrasies that come with that. I have a huge folder of the most autistic things I have seen, dead memes that you can't find anymore. I want to write a scene where some drunk 30-somethings are playing golf online for hours instead of being at a New Year's party.

>>20533929
Before you're 30 you will probably see more people ruin their lives, more tragedy and the like. You probably won't believe the same things anymore either, I don't. If you want a leg up then read more litfic and history.

What inspired you to write, anons? Was it out of just wanting to unleash your creativity? Money? Was it a game, tv show. movie, etc?

>>20534020
Basically I thought that there's not really a fantasy story that fits my needs and struggled to come up with an opening that did interest me, and it spiraled from there.

>>20533523
I wasn't entirely sure it was inspired by Barotrauma either, especially after playing Barotrauma to see for myself, but it definitely seemed like a huge coincidence. For my problems with the book, I did enjoy it, and was legitimately impressed you pulled the ending out of your ass. The battle was a lot of fun to read and I wished it was a bit longer. Kudos, man.
>>20532165
I don't think I'll read another Gardner book maybe ever unless Frank asked me personally, as I have too much going on. Limbo's Rainbow is so weird and bad it's barely a book.

>>20534020
My crackpot eschatological views that made me obsess over how exactly our world would end and feeling nearly certain that we've been completely wrong to expect a dystopia. Eventually after enough wakeful nights and drawing and notes I was like wait this is a story, I'm a writer?
The same goes with the rest of the things I cared about. If it messed me up enough that I obsess over it I go to the page and just fire at it. That and to make sense of all the suffering I've seen an philosophy I can't make heads or tails of yet. Also intertextuality because I love to respond to ideas and aphorisms from old books. It'd be nice to make a living off of it but I already make enough money as it is. If I don't treat it professionally I'm afraid I might not put the work in though.

>>20534020
Zdzislaw Beksinski, Ito, Pynchon, Lynch, McCarthy, Melville, and probably a few other things. Also, the desire to say nigger meat sandwich, and have a Jewish girl with big tits put a swastika on her forehead for magic powers. Here's a spooky monster from my book.

>>20534020
Nostalgia

>>20534020
I gave a friend of mine feedback regarding his writing and in doing so I realised I could tell the stories I had always thought about if I began writing myself. So now I read and write every day and I'm loving it.

>>20534127
Now that you mention it, I do have a friend who talks to me about writing too.

Alright, be real with me lads. Cringe or boring?

>>20534020
If I could say that I have a "gift" for anything it would be writing. Some people's gifts manifest in the form of visual arts, music, etc... Writing is by no means as flashy, but when you spend most of your life trying to plug yourself into roles that aren't really a good fit for the real you it makes writing that much more reaffirming when you're doing it. Beyond that I have a story to share, and I think it's one that will resonate with a lot of people by the time all is said and done.

>>20534083
>jewbas
Yes. There's a really nice girl I know that's like this that also likes McCarthy but although we quietly aclnowledge none of our beliefs are compatible we still give eachother the look now and then. It makes me feel fucked up. Your story sounds nice anyways.

>>20534188
I actually don't mind this at all. Heck feels a bit weird, just say hell instead. Maybe I'm not reading it right but
>Often I stare back at everything and wonder why I'm alone. Was I abandoned somewhere along the way? Forgotten? I'm terrified of that.

and

>Being just another corpse listed on a government spreadsheet would be a blessing

feels contradictory. Why would he be both terrified of being forgotten and see himself being just another statistic as a blessing?

>>20534219
I dated a big tit Jew dancer. I still think about her and we chat on occasion even though she lives in San Francisco and became a total leftoid, while I became a became a drug-addled pro-speech weirdo and stayed in northern Canada. Great sex. It's nice to know that despite our incredible differences, we can still talk politely, and for a brief period, we were in love before we were really formed any meaningful beliefs. It was enough to make a Jewish big tit dancer as a character in the novel.

>>20534237
Ah good observation, it does feel a bit weird to read doesn't it? I'm trying to get across that he's so scared of being forgotten that being a statistic on some government sheet would be a blessing as it confirms he existed (and by extension; was somehow useful to the world). Do you have any tips on structuring this better?

>>20534252
That's cool. Ive said before Ive avoided talking about girls until I've moved past them but some are so unordinary that I suppose it looks like wish fulfilment on my part so I try to measure how I present things. I've dated girls way taller than me and even one with macromastia and so far havent written about either. There comes a point that even finding things like that attractive it will become mundane and you can only touch on the difference here and there. For example I did a writing exercise about the former girl and mentioned how my eyes always met the tip of her chin and how my eyes would drift up to her tired looking face. For the latter its how she always seemed to billow, her body never was at rest.

>>20534139
The ironic thing is that my friend barely ever writes anymore while I'm all-in

>>20534020
Sick of the works of dilettantes being put on a pedestal.

>>20532314
I'm the anon who said I'd read it off work, this one is better paced and in my opinion you should look into how you can convey just the important parts of the ceremony in a way that your protagonist should be invested in.

>>20534020
I can't do anything else.

>>20534334
Good morning! Thank you for reading that and giving me your opinion. So it seems that my first draft is better than my second draft then; I just need to pinpoint what I can do different on my third now.

Does that work in a third person perspective as well? What about the setting in general? Just leave it mostly to the imagination? I worry that if I don't set up the scene, it'll just leave the readers confused.

The problem I had with the first chapter I previously wrote is that it came up to only 770 words, which I want to write chapters of 2000+ words. I thought "I need to describe the setting more to hit that word count".

>>20534366
I once told an anon here that if he's having an issue with how much attention his protag places on the marble floor he should think about whether his protag likes the marble floor that much. Likewise, for you to begin your story with a ceremony your protagonist must have a reason to be there so start from this point of view and add setting bits as your protagonist sees it.
As a tentative example, my story actually begins with the heroine going about the day on the 100th anniversary of the villain's defeat. She is familiar with the village that isolated her for having a weird dream of seeing the hero standing at the cape so there's no real need for me to describe everything that should remain the same in such a celebration; instead, my focus should be on her thinking about that dream and the mystery behind what the heroes did after that victory along with some emphasis on a mysterious man having come all the way to the village to sing a song.
Basically, engage in the who, when, what, how and why and try to put yourself in your protagonist's shoes to see what she sees and feels on that occasion.

>>20532124
if it's third person, you can switch viewpoints to another character to hide things.
say you have two characters, sara and joe.
you write in sara's viewpoint
then you switch to joe's viewpoint
joe walks into the office and sits at his desk
joe doesn't know that sara has placed a bomb under his desk
the bomb goes off
you switch back to sara's viewpoint

>>20534421
Yeah, that should work out in the long run. Thanks.

>>20534020
I was bored out of my mind being locked down during Covid

Who's making that chart that has a bunch of reviews for lit books?

>>20534445
that would be me. I ended up getting side tracked and joining that MAL x honeyfeed contest and I've been hard at writing. I was reading BurgerPunk, about 6 chapters in and I think its a masterpiece but I wanna get at atleast halfway through before I write about it then move on to the next.

>>20534288
It feels awkward beause it comes one right after the other. Maybe have the monologue be a liiiiiiittle bit longer or have it be split into two chunks by the character doing something. Now I don't know the context in which this monologue happens, but maybe have something like:

>"Often I stare back at everything and wonder why I'm alone. Was I abandoned somewhere along the way? Forgotten? I'm terrified of that." his voice was heavy, his eye twitching as he swirled around the cool drink in his glass before downing it in one sharp shot. 'Truth be told, being just another corpse on some government spreadsheet would be a blessing. At least that way they'd know I was even alive to begin with. But...'

That's how I'd write it anyway, just off the top of my head.

How do I write about a lesbian getting dicked so well she becomes confused and questions if she's a lesbian at all

>>20534472
Shit, sorry for lack of context
This is a script for an animation I'm making which is why there's no descriptive actions outside of dialogue. Also trying to keep it relatively short because voice acting can get expensive plus less time for animation.

>>20534493
one thing you can do is have one of her old friends notice and comment on it
then they have a conversation

>>20534534
Here's my outline
>Nerd self insert and lesbian are good friends
>Nerd self insert gets a good job and becomes well off
>With lesbian friend encouragement he improves himself but still too shy
>Lesbians get into a huge fight because that's what lesbians do
>One lesbian cheats on other
>Lesbian friend hides in nerd friend's house
>Too nice to say no
>Lesbian friend to get revenge on lesbian lover rapes nerd boy
>Sends videos to lesbian lover because women
>Fight more
>Reconcile
>Lesbian friend now grows bored of lesbian sex
>Rapes nerd friend again and again
>Questions if she's a lesbian at all
>Engrossed in raping nerd boy and ends up pregnant
>She decides to get dick from Chad and Jamal
>Doesn't like it
>Gets completely confused now she can only get off raping nerd boy
>Marries him to rape him forever
>Tells the tale to her grandchildren on how she and grandpa got together
>The end

>>20534587
Based, I would read that and devour the prompt comic adaptation.

>TFW your protagonist is basically a child and he accidentally destroys a village except not really because it was already gone, is subjected to a haunted hellscape, almost dies crossing it, is kidnapped and so on until the point where he thinks things are over and then he gets murdered
How do you guys organize all the things you need to flesh out from the beginning to a critical point in the story? Funnily enough, I have a better outline of part 2 than part 1, with the distinction between those parts being the protagonist's death.

>>20534403
Alright. I'm gonna try to work with this. Sorry it took so long to respond, I've been working. I would love to read something you've written some time so I can understand the ideas you've put forward through example. Whether it's that story you are trying to write or a previous one (a short story works too), I totally would love to get a chance to read it.

Thank you again! I will be browsing these threads in the future. It may take me a bit to write my third draft, though. I want to properly think on what you wrote, read some novel-examples of how to start a story, and write something I would feel proud of showing another person.

>>20534751
The weekend's coming up and I do finally feel like my foundation is solid enough to not completely scrap it this time, so hopefully it'll work out! Basically my tip here is to practice situational awareness and apply it to your perspective character, depending on their goals, situation and so on there's going to be details they care more about and focusing on that creates a distinct atmosphere.

>>20534188
Is this better?

>>20534493
I used to play Genshin impact and there's some r*ddit story about a lesbian who wanted to sex a Venti cosplayer (effeminate male peter pan char) at a costume party and when she takes her to bed its actually a guy and he fucks her so good she is amazed. Dont have the screencap on my phone but Im sure it happens all the time.

Let the horehound plant play the river with its mint
let the sweetgrasses blow in an old forgotten hand;
then you can come back home,
then you can come back home.

>>20534403
I'm the marble floor guy. Also posted a scene where my protag murders someone in a snowstorm but ends up waxing poetic about the environment. You have no idea how much that feedback helped me. I ended up scrapping that whole project and starting it from scratch. Thank you.

>>20534786
doubt.

who cares

>>20534889
your mum

I want to write surrealist detective book about guy who gets stalked by entity he met during psychedelic trip. Also i will probably incorporate some cultist shit.
Here is first chapter, do you like it?
https://bpa.st/SXEQ

How do I cope with the fact that because I’m in the upper echelon of humanity (170 IQ), I’m forever destined to be alone because very few can withstand the awesome power of my readily observable supremacy?

>>20534895
doubt it m8

>>20534922
Join Mensa.

>>20534781
I like it in a depressing suicide note sort of way.

>want to do first person POV because i find my characters' thoughts to be better at getting the point of my story across
>also want to give my antagonists cool over the top anime entrances
>ALSO plan to turn it into an ensemble cast later
What do?

>>20535027
Let me introduce you to the wonderful world of Free Indirect Discourse. All the benefits of first person with nearly none of the pitfalls. Can be a bitch to get into at the start, but believe me is it the most fun way to write.

>>20535027
None of those are contradictory, probably your biggest barrier is the low quality of your prose :‐)

But I guess it also depends what you mean by "ensemble" as if you want to show a scattered cast then yes 1st has limitations in conveying your story

>>20535060
I believe it loses the character's unique voice to a large extent, and the conversional tone if that matters to you.

>>20534922
Sounds like autism.

>someone offers to do a shoutout and review swap with me on RR
>kinda want to do it, they have massively more followers than me so it's basically them doing me a favor
>problem is that the fiction they (literally they, a male/female pair of writers) are writing doesn't really appeal to me at all
>don't want to turn them down though, in case it looks like I'm being a dick
>don't want to say yes and be on the hook for a review of something that I'm very ambivalent about
Fug

>>20535060
mite work

>>20535108
It's more like, they get scattered and have their own chapters with their own distinct tones and then get together again.
I believe readers would get attached to those, ideally, and then start to miss reading the story like that once there's no point to it anymore.

>>20533511
>but I know that jumping in big first is a bad idea
It sounds like you're placing too much importance on your passion project, which is a great way to kill it. Just write the fucking thing.

>>20535027
Just write it in really tightly limited 3rd person. CJ Cherryh is a good example

>>20533511
Write something related to the passion project like a prequel, sequel or sidestory. Build the background of your characters and deal with tangential themes you wont fully touch in the passion project. Also read more and maybe you will care about something else.

The very concept of “mental illness” was created with average people (IQ in the 70-130 range) in mind, if you’re beyond that, then you cannot be classified with mental illness, even if you show the “symptoms.”

>>20535233
This is good advice, although it will likely change parts of your original project.

>>20535313
Average is 90-110 you fucking mongoloid

>go to work
>spend the majority of the day procrastinating and avoiding work
>think about the thing I'm writing and how I want to develop the characters and what events I need to have happen to manuevre them correctly

>get home for the weekend
>don't write at all
>think about what I should've done to finish my tasks at work and who I need to talk to to move things forward

Send help

As a novice writer, I get an idea for a big plot in my head but filling in the little pieces leads to complete writers block.
I try to put a pin in the idea and write other parts but I struggle figuring them out.
Take Infinity War as my poor example.
I can think up the plot, and that Doctor Strange just gives Thanos the Time Stone, but I can't think of a reason why. I'll spend days or weeks, but I'm just lost. WHY WOULD STRANGE DO THAT.
So I work on other parts of the story, but the book isn't done until I figure out the why.
How do you learn to figure these out? How do you learn to make cool twists where you lead the reader to think the bad guy killed somebody, but the twist is, it was actually the good guy! (by accident, but still guilty).

>>20535440
This but
>go home
>gym
>shower
>cook and eat
>7pm I can write
If grad school fucks me over in the fall I will just drop out.

>>20533083
you're not supposed to edit until you get to the end, anon.

if you ahve problem with too much exposition in beginning, you begin in media res

>>20535313
If I have a debilitating personality flaw that makes it hard to function in society then I'm going to think of it as a mental illness even if I do great on Raven's Progressive Matrices

>>20535485
yeah, it's hard to do
i usually write down everything i need a chapter to do. there might be a hundred different things
and then i try to organize all those things into different scenes
all for dialogue
and some self-introspection
maybe it gets easier the more you do it?

>>20535556
Yeah, come up with all the things you need to have happen in the story and have the characters discuss how they are going to do these things or handle the problems.

>>20535485
The good news is that you're thinking about these things as opposed to hand waving them away. If you can ask a question about your story that you know doesn't have an answer, then a reader could too, and it's in your best interests to answer that question. Never leave them unanswered.
Answering questions of why and dealing with those detailed minutia comes with fully understanding your characters and their place in the plot of the story. The question about twists is different and I'll get to that in a moment. You figure out the whys by asking questions, empathising, and writing down an argument for or against. It's all a stream of logic even when decisions are made on emotion. Let's do something simple. Say I've got a guy who watched a motorcyclist kill his wife and drive away.
>What happens: he gets angry. WHY? Because someone just killed his wife and ran away.
>Next: he decides to call the police. WHY? Because for his character, it's the right thing to do. He's not a vigilante... Yet.
>Next: he gets nowhere with the police and still feels angry. WHY? Because his wife is still dead and he hasn't seen justice. So we know he loved his wife and believes in fair justice, now. Free characterization.
>Next: he decides he's going to find this cyclist himself. WHY? Because his desire for justice has overriden his desire to follow the rules.
Do you see where I'm going with this? It's very simple and methodological. Now, you can get insanely complex with this, but it all is down to following a system of logic.
Put yourself in the characters shoes. Why would YOU give Thanos the Time Stone? Maybe you think it'd be funny. Alright, so you like a good laugh, laughter is an emotion. What other emotions can you brainstorm with? Maybe you feel hopeless, that Thanos is going to take it from you alive or dead, and you might as well roll the dice on his snap than be dead undoubtedly. Maybe you think his snap is a good thing! And you decide, you know what, the good guys are all squares. Thanos, I'll give you the Stone, but I want in on the game. Boom, a little shoehorned, but now you're a twist villain.
Twists come from unexpected character behavior. Maybe a good character suddenly has a switch flipped in the early part of the book and plots the demise of the bad guy despite saying he won't kill him. Or he has an uncontrollable urge to kill that he frames the villain for, who of course will say he isn't doing it. Most often, these surprises will come to you rather than you sniffing them out, and most of the time, it comes easier if you're writing in a genre known for twists, like thrillers or crime.
Hopefully this answers some of your questions.

>>20535538
>you're not supposed to edit until you get to the end, anon.
I know. I have a problem.

>if you ahve problem with too much exposition in beginning, you begin in media res
It's only a problem with short stories. In a novel, I usually start in media res, and then slowly dribble out exposition as it's needed, but with a short you just don't have the room to pad out the exposition with, you know, story.

>>20535313
That makes no sense. What would you classify a genius with severe depression as, then?

>>20535603
A man with clarity.

>>20535588
Thanks for that.
I'd like to continue to discuss the Time Stone event, since it seems like a good piece to learn from as a writer.
There were so many solutions.
Strange rewound the Apple, why couldn't he have used the stone to revert Thanos to a baby.
Maybe the power/space/reality stones could have somehow broke free? Really?
Okay then why not just lock Thanos in a time loop forever like Strange did with the God of the Dark Dimension. I'm sure Dormammu was stronger than Thanos with 3 infinity stones. Power doesn't escape that scenario.
Maybe it'd lock the other characters in a timeloop too? So have them fly away before the fight starts. Or have Strange pull Thanos into the Mirror Realm then do it.
But the writers for that movie decided to just give him the stone. Was it just so there could be a Sequel? With time travel at that? Aren't time travel solutions the bottom barrel of problem solving in writing? "Uh oh we've written ourselves into a corner, lets use time travel to retcon!"

Give me the corndog, Caleb.

Does poetry have to follow a certain meter? Sometimes I read poetry by well known poets like Kipling or Auden and they will have poems with no discernible pattern with their syllables or rhyming.

>>20533511
just... do it, my guy :]

it's ok, all you gotta do is push forward, and write. if you can do as little as a sentence a day, that's completely ok. take a weekend to just do a paragraph for an hour and meticulously work it out. our even just plot it out, get the skeleton down, and then work on getting all the details fleshed out.

the key thing to all of this is to just... write. you got this bro :]

>>20535659
>There were so many solutions.
You're approaching the problem backwards.

Thanos had to get the Time Stone because if Thanos doesn't get the Time Stone, he can't murder half the galaxy, which is sort of the point of the story.

Doctor Strange has the Time Stone. So how does Thanos get the stone from Strange? He could kill him and take it, but we want to make more Dr. Strange movies, so that's no good. He could beat him up and take it, but that's kind of boring, plus we already established that Squidward couldn't just take it after neutralizing Strange.

It would be interesting if Strange simply GAVE Thanos the stone, so let's have him do that. Now the question is why does he not do any of the other things he could do, like lock Thanos in a time loop? Well, we could throw in a scene where Strange looks into the future and a line of dialogue where he tells Tony that he saw a billion possible futures and they only win in one of them. Then any questions like "Why didn't Strange do X?" are cut off at the pass.

Also, I'd argue that Endgame used time travel as a plot device in the best way possible. Rather than use it as a giant reset button that allows them to undo the previous story, time travel is used as a device to allow for an interesting adventure and surprising plot twists, like "Gamora is back, but her entire relationship with Peter has been erased" and incredibly cool character moments like Nebula literally murdering the version of herself that is still slavishly loyal to Thanos.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54100/wish-mountain-adventure-drama-fantasy

Chapter ten just released. In eight days-ish I’ll have released two more chapters that end the first act of the story.

>>20533919
just me but book 1 sounds a lot more interesting than book 2, going from one sentence alone.

>>20535747
Do you even edit your chapters?

do you guys think there are some genuinely well written videogame stories?

>>20535770
I liked Until Dawn. Best horror “movie” post 2010 in my opinion.

>>20535763
I do what I can. Will hire a professional editor when I’m done with the first book of the series.

>>20535789
what would you say about my writing?
>>20534919

>>20535770
He Who Fights with Monsters_ A LitRPG Adventure by Shirtaloon
Am reading this now. It's a middle grade that reminds me a lot of the Percy Jackson stories.
It's self-published and the guy made a lot of money off of it.

>>20535793
I think you’re including a lot of details that as the reader I’m wondering what will be relevant and what doesn’t really matter to the story. It makes it difficult to read on when it doesn’t feel like most lines aren’t moving the story along.

I have no creative or writing talent but I'm an ESL from an obscure part of the world so all I do is take good local literature and writing and appropriate it as my own in my global-oriented works in English. So far I only stole jokes and characters.

>>20528795
Do you need to read bad books in order to improve at writing?

>>20535853
Some details will be relevant later, most won't
My goal was some sort of poetic prose where its more about evoking some sort of feeling, creating here headspace, insead of pushing plot quickly forward. At least I wanted trip sequencesto be like that in second chapter I start to introduce more characters

>>20535889
I would recommend cutting out anything that you know isn’t going to be important later. Or if you do keep it in and it isn’t important at least have it be very interesting/meaningful/entertaining.

>>20535869
Need? No. Should? No. Can it be helpful? Only as an exercise in what not to do, half of which is really stroking your own ego anyways. I subscribe to the school of "Who you hang out with is who you become" so I should think you ought to hang out with the highest quality books in your chosen style that you can handle.

>>20535751
I'm a lot more interested in the first story too but I think the second will be good on account that I will slowly reveal the extent of disfunction. Watching the protagonist lie to himself as well as his frank opinions, his current girlfriend dehumanize herself into a speechless maid with severe emotional baggage (pic related), and of course the completely untrustworthy new girl. There are a good number of scenes I think will be really fucked up in that one and actually has lots of thoughts on contemporary life. My first book barely talks about contemporary thought at all, it's almost entirely criticizing what we hope to be.

>>20535712
Im reading Poetic Meter by Paul Fussel and it explains a lot. There have been a lot of schools of thought around how the English language works. Part of it is cultural shift from Augustan views to something more modern. What you need to be aware of as you write is that your choice in meter affects what techniques you can use. Learn more and see which meter can express what you want. Rhyme is not nearly as important to poetry as the emphasis of the word. Emphasis as in the scansion.

>>20534919
Kinda feels like a lot of the sentences drag on with the excessive amount of comma flow; alongside having some awkward pauses/shifts inbetween. Makes the writing blend together into a mishmash of superfluous details that bog down the material desu.

You don't have to worry about telling if you write in the first person

>>20536220
Why not?

>>20535869
a lot of people read books on writing to avoid having to write

read a lot and write a lot

>>20536204
Thank you for opinion, its natural for me but I will try t o write shorter sentences

New Thread! >>20536335

>>20536420
Non Vandalized Thread Here

>>20534060
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8u2K6cdbw

This guy says Limbo’s Rainbow is good. IDK it sounds pretty interesting to me.

>>20534838
You're welcome! The anon who criticized your snowstorm story was a different anon but yeah, I completely understand wanting to describe things though even an omniscient third person POV shouldn't go overboard.

>>20533934
>I want to write a scene where some drunk 30-somethings are playing golf online for hours instead of being at a New Year's party.
that's beautiful. please post it when you do.

>>20534919
Sounds a lot like the plot to my new Erotica.
>dude uses DMT regularly
>travels to the hyperspace
>eventually gets to know the entities there
>fucks one of them
>turns out "she" was married and cucked her Hyperhusband
>lots of interdimensional cuckoldry
>The hyperhusbands finds out
>he gets banned from Hyperspace
>he's desperate because DMT wont make him trip anymore to that place
>he goes on a spiral of drug abuse and eventually meets a prostitute and they embark on a journey to the Sonoran Desert looking for a Shaman.

>>20534020
I've had a knack for writing since I was young, but for the past few years I've only been writing for my university course. I can't get inspired anymore. I have a deadline of 7 hours to write a set of poems and I've barely written anything, dear God I'm going to die.