/lit/ - Literature

In order to revive /ffa/, we’re joining /wg/ for those who want to practice writing and discussing flash fiction!

How it works:
1. Choose a prompt (full list of unused prompts in following post)
2. Write a story 1,000 words or less based on the prompt
3. Post it in /wg/ with the words "for FFA" somewhere
4. Add a new prompt for the list

Anyone posting for the /ffa/ accepts that their work may be made available online (Creative Commons) or in print (available for purchase at lowest possible cost).

There’s only the lightest editing (typos, etc) so garbage-in garbage-out. While there are not quality/content requirements (aside from porn, extreme abuse or gore) that doesn’t guarantee all submissions get added.

Prior three volumes available for free (pdf, epub):
https://archive.org/details/@_lit_anthology

And print (low cost) here:
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/anonymous-/gifts-evil-and-good/paperback/product-mgwkgv.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/ca/shop/anonymous-/rags-and-bones/paperback/product-9d7gp2.html
https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/anonymous-/simian-deluxe/paperback/product-y6z687.html

>>20705006
>other forums
>reddit
go back

Nice a new thread

>>20705009
>prompt list (carried over from old /ffa/)
A closet full of skin suits
A dating app with extraordinary risks and rewards
The academy of Paranormal Life Coaching
This will be India in 5 minutes
A grizzled detective goes undercover on 4chan
You reap what you sow
"Please don't forget what I told you"
The location the GPS took them to seems to be a little off
A tapestry constantly being added to
Murder in the Cathedral's sanctuary
The cellar houses wine and... bodies?
Finding a one-of-a-kind book in the library stacks
A co-worker has a hidden talent
A shut-in decides to go trick-or-treating
The best way to die on a dessert island
Horrible timing for a pregnancy announcement
A game of twister at a nursing home
There is a ship museum in Utah
A librarian goes blind every Thursday
Someone crashes a child’s birthday party
POV of an alley cat in Istanbul
An unusual item at the bottom of the sea
Pina coladas and long walks in the rain
A gateway opens between hell and earth
a slasher villain's first date
An elevator that doesn't work
A flooded castle, sinking into the mud
Why robot teachers were discontinued
A very lost succubus
Gender Selection Day
The whales save themselves
Elevators have been portals this entire time
Seven-year-old serial killer
A minor god trying to prove its existence
Japanese ghost fish
What lives beneath the moss
An embarrassing phobia

>>20705013
Fuck off gardner.

Do you know any authors who have pacing like this?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWIXNJ7zOQ4

>>20705037
Are you memeing? Or are you actually insinuating I wrote Call of the Crocodile? I genuinely cannot tell at this point.

>>20705101
Its a meme in /wg/ he's just memeing

>>20705006
I was worried when I started writing what I’m working on now that I couldn’t cover hundreds of years in a book without it either being absurdly long or having unexplained timeskips, but now I think I’ve figured out a reliable way to gloss over a few “uninteresting” 5-8-year spans of each generation’s lives at about 100 words per year, which leaves enough room to focus in on key periods.

>>20705106
I think skipping a couple of years or months now and then it totally fine.
an example in a story I've read was the MC in boot camp, it goes over what they are training him in and about his experience there for a time, a single large event happens during it and then nothing super important for the last 6 or so months he was there.
I actually think having too many big events happening back to back in a single year can make a story feel more artificial.
It can make the world feel like it revolves around the MC and the interesting or important events only happen to bring them into a new story arc.

>>20705014
Thanks for this, I have a prompt in mind and hope to finish writing one this time.

https://losetouchcompletely.blogspot.com/

after a brief hiatus im back writing and updating my blog. some feedback on my site would be appreciated.

>>20705382
I didn't think I'd get my fill of cringe so quickly today.

Day 38 editing
Chapter 42 nipped and tucked

>>20701647
Here's some things i've found that have helped:

>When your first drafting always reread your previous days work to better write the next plot point.
>Once you have done the above leave it and progress to the next chapter and don't look back.
>If you have ideas how to improve your recently written shit, make a list but don't go back until you have finished first draft.
The above will help counter you brains developed blind spots to it's own fuck ups

>>20705712
I've already finished my first draft.

>>20705794
Then repeat until your satisfied.

>>20705794
After first draft you make the developmental editing. First take some time off the book, like 6 weeks. Then some back to it to do a complete read-through while taking notes at the same time of all the things that pop into your mind. NO EDITING. Have scene and chapter summaries written after you finish each chapter. When you have read the book through you can better idea of what you want to keep and what things to improve.

What even is anime writing? Genres that tipically belong to anime or manga? If so, is it really necessary to separate it from regular writing?

>>20705891
>is it really necessary to separate it from regular writing?
It absolutely is. Isekai in particular is a scourge that needs to be excised and eradicated

>>20705891
No clue, but I'd imagine that anime writing is somewhat different from writing a book even by structure alone. Why is this even a thing in the copy pasta?

>>20705891
Anime writing follows the characteristics and conventions of anime, manga, and light novels, many of which are frowned on by western writers, including but not limited to,
>excessive reliance on dialogue to tell the story
>minimal scene-setting and description
>telling instead of showing
>heavy use of onomatopoeia, bold, italics, capitalized words, ellipses, and other irrelevant gimmicks for emphasis
>characters are built on tropes instead of personalities
>characters engage in minimal reflection or interaction beyond what is immediately happening
>lack of themes and focus
>stories are built of "arcs" and "filler"
>extensive use of flashbacks
>very short paragraphs and a lot of unnecessary line breaks
>etc

Also known as "terrible writing"

>>20705974
So, you replaced terrible in "terrible writing with anime? Why?

I wrote my first draft quite quickly, with my internal editor mostly shut as I was merely writing the story through. Now that, after some weeks of keeping my distance to the work, I came back to do a read through making notes, I can see there is so much cringeworthy stuff here, and noticing it I tell myself, good job. Not because I have written cringe, but because I notice cringe for what it is. There are so many people who self-publish (I will never self-publish, even if I am never accepted for trad-pub) and they could never tell if their works were cringe.

>>20706074
Post an example of your cringe.

>>20706124
Need I prove some of my writing is hot garbage? I'd rather not post any unedited text. But I'll say that when I wrote the different scenes and chapters, I have been in various states of minds, which has resulted in wide range of styles and outcomes and thus some scenes look alright while others are full of notes and yet for some I have just written "needs a complete rewrite". Towards the end of the book, I think, my writing improves as I did some conscious effort in deepening my writer's voice, but for the moment I am still on the first parts of the book where a lot of changes are to be made, and I'm glad I'm doing the editing because that is the single most important part of writing.

>>20705952
>an isekai writer finally makes it and is living the dream
>then he wakes up in a world of catgirls
>however, the catgirls cannot comprehend fiction and pretty soon the writer is branded either a liar or an evil wizard with the power to transport himself and others to another world
>will the writer ever make peace with the catgirls and himself?

>>20705952
Alice in wonderland is isekai

Remember to read today.

>>20706334
Nah, I'm going to listen to Bertrand Russell lectures instead of reading them

>>20705006
Met a fellow writer during some college sports thing. I think she's one or two years below me. She's a poet while I'm mostly a short story writer.

Talked about writing a bit, showed her my first draft of some short story I'm writing, gave her my number. Didn't want to be creepy asking for her number for no good reason, so I thought up one on the spot. 'If she's interested in reading the finished thing, she can reach me at that number'. I said. But she still hasn't texted or called me. Should I just wait and don't think about it too much? Or did something go wrong?

>>20706334
I'm gonna catch up on my daily 10 pages of Ulysses at work

>>20706361
When I was in high school, a girl wanted to read a paper of mine because I got the best grades in class and she thought she could learn from it. After that I experienced a rare moment of courage and asked if she wanted to read some of my fiction writings. She said yes, so I asked for email and sent some four stories to her. She enjoyed them and was the most thorough and conscientious beta reader I ever had, giving feedback and showing a clear interest in the work.
Then we graduated and lost touch.

>>20706361
She's being dicked down by chad as we speak

Does it have any potential?

https://ghostbin.me/62d7f2ead5944

>>20706507
too much passive voice

>>20706518
Active voice it is then. Thank you.

>>20706518
Reasonable bait

>>20706507
Sentence structure was repetitive "the x was x". The main challenge for me was that while I found the ideas interesting the language was often vague where it should have been concrete. For example: "the soil was foul" - foul in what way, did green sludge seep up to fill footprints? Did it squish and stink of feces? "They ate everything" meaning what should I picture them eating?

Sandersneed lecture I liked that relates to this:
https://youtu.be/7Js_mUwRMJM

>>20706361
Imaginary girls be like that.

Editorchad has returned to offer his services to mortals once more. Hit me up at maat042@yahoo.com and we can discuss your manuscript

>>20705202
Noted. Feel free to post your work in the thread.

>>20705952
Isekai isn't inherently bad. Watch the show in pic related, "Now And Then, Here and There". Weebs obviously won't talk about it due to their shit taste but it's truly an amazing show (yet depressing). Trust me on this one, it's only 13 eps.

>>20706822
It's from back in the day when they let the autists write the story.

>>20706777
>Editorchad
No.

>>20706822
Just like books, great anime definitely exists.

>>20706856
How did your session with the male escort(s) go? Did you manage to gain any experience?

>>20706822
/a/ is the only reason you even know that anime exists, don't go shittalking weebs

this guy wrote a self published anime series that sold over a million copies
he writes full time and he's hired a staff
it's "shonen jump" like "naruto" or "one piece."
he has a degree in creative writing and started
i've read two of the books in the series. it's good. there's like 11 books in all with more coming

How do I write sex scenes without having sex?

forgot the cover

>>20706968
Porn.

>reread the last scenes I wrote
>things I thought were pretty original when I wrote them suddenly make me think of scenes and concepts of other books, movies or games
>sometimes I read a new book and the exact same thing I wrote a couple months ago happens in it
How do I deal with this?

>>20706985
I was always told porn isn't the real thing
Also I'm writing in first person so I have to put emotions in it

>>20706777
The more em dashes and semi colons the better

>>20706992
What kind of emotions? What are the circumstances?

>>20706992
Are you saying you don’t include emotions in 3rd person POV? Truly, no one in /wg/ writes.

The male lead in my novel is miserably shy, he can't stand up for himself and can't talk to women at all. The story is all about a grand adventure to save the world, after which he gains confidence in himself. At the end of the novel, he successfully asks his crush out.

>>20707008
How original! You should totally waste your time on that!

Herro /wg/, I haven't posted here in a month due to work obligations taking over my quasi-NEET creative time. I have gone from being a fountain of creative thought to a dried out puddle.
My question for the group is how to regain that creative power? Should I read, write, go for a walk? Smoke weed? How do you rework your creative muscles after a month of not using it?

>>20707012
Every attempt I've made at being unique or original has been awful and confusing. I've learned to stick to conventions and what I know.

>>20707020
You should totally smoke some weed, like all the cool artists do. I’m sure it will give you that will of power to push through!

>>20707023
Writing might not be for you. Who knows for sure? Better use 10 years of your life to find out.

>>20707023
Would you consider yourself a creative person?
>>20707024
Would you also consider yourself a creative person?
Is there anon ITT who wouldn't consider themselves creative?

>>20707020
Try meditation. I do it by walking in the very early morning when the roads are silent and empty. I've done the routes hundreds of times, so I'm not consciously engaged in the walk itself, and there are few or no sensory distractions. It helps my thinking in all areas, but especially seems to benefit my creative mind.

>>20707045
I'm creative in the sense that I write but all my ideas are derivative. Every time I tried to make something original, it just came off as out there and weird, and not in a good way. I steal most of my characters and storyline from movies, books, and shows that I like, albeit with some minor changes. I don't really have a problem with it since I enjoy making and consuming formulaic stuff, mostly.

>>20707062
I’m going to screencap this. Now, THIS is writing. I’m going to write a book about you.

>>20707023
there hasn't been anything original for decades
you have to disguise your plot elements so that they appear original, like a new coat of paint on an old house

only moments I can get creative are when I don't leave my room for months and I start talking to myself and have hallucinations
I write schizo notes and let my more sane self make sense of them later

>>20707045
I make puns pretty easily and while my idea isn't completely original because nothing is, there's also nothing that's completely similar to it.

being creative is easy
you literally just start saying words and eventually the words connect in ways that you didn't expect
it's a matter of forging new paths through the neurons in your brain which you have always known how to do, you just need to use it

>>20707077
Doesnt matter is your brain is fried from all the anime

>>20707048
You know I do something similar. Walking for me is really helpful to get the mind "going"
Many philosophers talk about walking as an essential daily habit for thoughtful work.
When I walk I usually find a track or a long isolated footpath and try to zone out, I think it has something to do with (among other things) overloading your peripheral vision with random natural input that it sends parts of you into a meditative state. Very helpful practice, though difficult during the hottest and coldest periods of the year.

>>20707062
I've always considered myself at least somewhat creative and I'm glad that not once have I ever been able to justify this behavior in my creative endeavors.

I always get the best ideas when I'm falling asleep. I have a notebook next to my bed to write what my sleepy brain shows me, by the time I read it the next morning I already forgot about it, it feels like someone wrote it for me

>>20707112
Allegedly Thomas Edison would sit in an armchair at night with ball bearings in his hand so that when he fell asleep the balls would fall into a metal bucket and wake him, then he would write down everything he experienced while he was falling asleep.

The amount of cope in this thread.

I only write one draft and send it to an editor.
Let him figure out what's wrong with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XIhu6zGtPU
brando sando discusses story ideas and "everything everywhere all at once."

What's the difference between smut and erotica?

>>20707234
you know the difference
it's the same as the difference between MAD magazine and the New Yorker
the difference between stripping and burlesque
of course arguably the suburban, middle-class imitation of sophisticated art forms is just as odious, if not more, as the cheerfully unsophisticated forms

>>20707179
seethe

>>20706869
Havnt made any final decisions yet. Want to make sure when I do it I get the optimal amount of benefit, for research of course.
But you are way too interested in this you faggot.
What are you gay?

>>20707268
Can you provide me a good example of erotica? I've read Lolita, but that's not really erotica or smut.

>>20707371
>But you are way too interested in this you faggot. What are you gay?
For research of course.

why can't exclamation points and question marks just work the same as periods when in quotations? What a bother.

>>20707211
A little shocked how casually he just dropped the n-word in there. I mean I'd heard that Mormons were based, but still.

>>20707498
Fair enough.
Wanna fuck?

>That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke so no one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that then.

just learned if you add a thought in 3rd person in italics, it's supposed to be present perfect tense

he has grown impatient over the last hour. like:

"he has grown impatient over the last hour"

or something like that. i still don't get it fully

Has anyone significantly improved their prose? Besides the obvious like no passive voice and more usage of descriptive verbs. Do you emulate authors you like?

>>20707654
read Method Writing: The First Four Concepts

>>20707616
wtf
In 3rd person POV I use italics to show internal monologue and its in present tense

>>20707654
>Has anyone significantly improved their prose? Besides the obvious like no passive voice and more usage of descriptive verbs. Do you emulate authors you like?
>Besides the obvious like no passive voice
This actively ruins your prose if you're writing creative and not technical. I do allow authors I read to percolate into my prose and then I slowly filter them out with other authors over time.

>>20707616
That makes no sense, who says that?

>>20707696
Goes to show the level of the typical writer in /wg/
no one in wg writes

>>20707654
I have no idea. I do wish someone would read The Emily Project and Finding San Francisco then tell me. I think I improved but I honestly have no clue.

Boswell boom review. A 4 out of 5 star Masterpiece
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59217782-playtime-s-consequences?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=jwQxDAHemU&rank=1

>>20707654

I read this book, really improved my voice (prose).

>What Is Method Writing? - Jack Grapes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YotKc9eBO5g
>Method Writing: The First Four Concepts - Jack Grapes [FULL INTERVIEW]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba9jAVzADY0&t=10s

>>20707727
Not going to read your book, Steven.

>>20707702
If I wrote something would you read it?

>>20707783
250 words at most

>>20707616
>Deep Third Person POV:
The narrative is from one character’s POV, and every line (other than other characters’ dialogue) is assumed to be their perspective and/or voice. Only the viewpoint character for the scene may share their internal thoughts with the reader. No thought tags are used to avoid distancing the reader. Because most sentences are indirect thoughts (or near-indirect thoughts, i.e., using their voice), internalizations are italicized only when using I/me and/or present tense for direct quotes and/or for emphasis.

https://jamigold.com/2020/03/character-internalization-to-italicize-or-not-to-italicize/

>>20707788
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rcb-LxY4ZrFSsO-DB7xCBhjCcgoiCR2xmA52yJQUXSw/edit?usp=drivesdk

>>20707816
I read the first page. No text is perfect but it shows that you have done some work to avoid most pitfalls. Perhaps the first paragraph is a bit unclear, at least for me personally; it was hard to understand the descriptions in the second half. I'm not going to nit-pick, rather, I'm only going to tell you that you write decently, much better than most here, I wager, but like everyone, there is room to improve. My advice is, try to improve your prose and voice consciously, with conscious and focused effort.

By the way, I stopped reading when I read "Doggy dog world." That's when I realized I wouldn't be able to stomach any more. Don't know what the genre is and I don't care.

>>20707112
that's kinda cool

>>20707887

>>20707970
I try to imagine what is the closest language/culture to whatever is the character I am giving a name to, then I choose some nice name that fits the character and then add or remove or replace one or multiple letter in the name.

>>20706987
I wouldn't fret over it. The familiar stuff in your work will help center the reader who likes that kind of stuff. So long as you add something new to whatever the genre formula is. You did add something new, right? You didn't just stay in generic territory right? You did move beyond the cliches right anon? Please anon. Please tell me. ...anon

>>20707547
I recognize Hemingway's writing when I see it, wojak poster.

>>20707720
I would read FSF and I reviewed Emily Project but Im at crunch time reading and writing after work until October. I might be able to get away with it reading next month at work when my boss is out.

>>20707816
>“It’s Number 8’s birthday! Happy birthday Number 8!” yelled out Number 3.
>“Shucks… you guys shouldn’t have,” Number 8 said.

Was a little bored at first but this hooked me. Love the tone shift.

Continuing.

>>20707654
Look into phonetics. People are familiar with syllables as the 'music' of lyrics. As in, the rhythm. But phonetics is the 'colour' of the sound.

Mine and Time have the same phonetic.
She and me have the same phonetic.
Hand and land have the same phonetic.

Here's a on the spot written paragraph with phonetics highlighted:

A girl was born without a /hand/. Many /times/ she wished she was long the other children who had both their /hands/. She would /try/ to play games with them, but games like basketball, or volleyball, even hockey were out of the question. When she was fourteen she had an /idea/, she would join a /band/. It didn't matter if she only had one /hand/, because boy she sing.

You might notice the prose flows somewhat and has a sense of weight to it. It comes from having the same phonetic motif throughout. If you change the subject, i.e you move on from the current topic and progress the narrative a little, then you move onto the next phonetic motif, this creates a new rhythm each time even if it is only a sentence long motif.

So yeah, look into phonetics.

>>20708135
>>20708135
oops *long = like

>>20708135
>she would join a /band/. It didn't matter if she only had one /hand/,
I would always avoid this because it rhymes and that's not something you want.

>>20707673
A rule of thumb would be unquoted italics for thought, unquoted plain text for narration.

>>20707816
Literally the only person on /lit/ who actually knows what he's doing.

>>20708161
My example was a bit shit. Here's a list of the same phonetics. They don't all rhyme.

(there's more than what I've listed but you get the point)

and
that
at
by
have
can
out
time
about
than
how
man
life
why
house
find
quite
national
national
high
night
right
family
perhaps

>>20708255
Can you give a non-shit example, then?
I'd like to see how this works.
Kind of sounds like bullshit to me.

>>20708161
Rymes are nice though.

>>20708268
No they are distracting.

>>20708269
The colour represents the same phonetic being used as part of a motif.

The phonetics themselves are in bold so you can see where they are being used.

Where you see one colour change to the next is where the motif has changed. Subconsciously the reader perceives this as narrative change / progression.

When characters speak there is no need to add a motif, because the dialogue + any additional action has the same rhythmic effect. Also 'said' is its own phonetic so most of the time there is at least one phonetic word covered anyway.

I recommend reading out loud to get a better sense of the flow. This work needs editing by the way, so its not perfect, just an example of phonetics in use.

>>20708272
It depends on the context.

Frankly I think your prose should change slightly if you're taking the multiple pov approach. If a character has an appropriate personality, slightly more-than-coincidence ryming in your writing can be a subtle reflection of character.

Obviously you don't want to go overboard and poison the reader though.

>>20708323
No rhyming in prose will always be distracting. Save your rhyming for an actual poem or song and insert that into the story.

>>20708323
True.

>>20708312
I'm not sure I understand. I can see the narrative progression, but I don't recognize any import or pattern to those words in particular. In the first paragraph, around, alive, sky, and try are all clearly audibly related, tiny a bit less so, but in the other paragraphs I can't connect any relation at all.

>>20708369
Having a phonetic motif is like putting a backbone to a sentence. Because I know I have the phonetic word 'time' in my sentence, what comes before and after it in the sentence can be whatever I want.

I wish I had more time to live a better life.

The above sentence is anchored by the word 'time', because of how it sounds when read aloud. Some phonetics are more obvious than others. Time is an obvious one. 'Try' is less likely to be noticed as the word which anchors a sentence.

I really did try to win her heart...guess I failed.

One of the most common phonetics is 'And'.

We will get together /and/ then we'll kiss /and/ then we'll hug /and/ then we'll go back to her place /and/ you know what happens next...

It flows because of the phonetic. There's good and bad ways to do it. Poetry and prose, done well, hides the use of phonetics, but I would argue that the best authors are using phonetics hidden in plain sight as a way to engage the reader without the reader even realising it.

It's a hidden art most rarely learn about because it is part of the writing craft.

>>20707867
It's comedy anon. The Diamond Dozen title should have tipped you off.

>>20706413
Fuck I forgot about this. Nearly done Sirens.

>>20708359
It shouldn't necessarily even be something the reader consciously detects. Some character-specific styles can be obvious, but it can be a range of things, from the overt use of more vulgarity, a focus on certain aspects over others if a character is being described from another's perspective, aversions/predilections to specific sorts of emotive language, or a difference in the average lengths of paragraphs and sentences and the amount of commas or pauses and periods used. In the case of rymes, I'd say a subconscious use of it would be only once or twice with intent per said pov section, while not intentionally editing out any incidental cases. Again the reader shouldn't even notice, let alone be distracted.

>>20708400
Okay, okay, I think I get the idea.
I'm going to edit a passage from my sports drama to see if I can play with it.

Not sure if this is bullshit or what but I'm intrigued.

Do you know of any particular writers who implement this stuff?

These threads are invariably rife with conflicting advice and rules for writing, all delivered with the air of utter assuredness. I'm starting to think no one here writes...

>>20708475
I'm the Wish Mountain author and I use it throughout all 15 chapters released of my story on RR.

>>20707867
>>20708413
Not normally my kind of thing but reads like a children's book, besides the 6 and 9 thing.
Kind of giving me some nostalgia for phantom tollbooth - the childish tone combined with the cleverness in the wording.

>>20708400
I think I see what you mean now. It's not something I've consciously considered, but rather just something incidental to the writing process.

But still, won't each reader interpret each sentence somewhat differently? For example in the sentence "Chicory clung to me with his tiny hands", I could easily take "clung" to be the word of emphasis in my mind. In the case of the first paragraph, I'd even argue "try and" is something I'd edit out immediately for flow.

>>20708491
Link?

>>20708528
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54100/wish-mountain

>>20708481
Wrong! No-one here reads.
Writing is very subjective and more grounded in intuition and differing methodology than hard rules.

>>20708523
Yeah this is what is weird about phonetics. It's not as obvious as rhyming. It's easier to think about it in terms of emphasis, but it doesn't mean that the phonetic word used is /the/ emphasis. Rather it allows for anchored emphasis somewhere in the sentence. Basically if you have a phonetic word in your sentence, and all your sentences in the same paragraph share the same phonetic motif, you are thinking about flow and rhythm.

I really struggled with prose for a long time because I always felt it was...unstructured. Like the sentences would sometimes flow well, but it all felt poorly glued together. Then when I gave it a lot of thought and research I figured out phonetics was what I was missing.

But overall its supposed to be a hidden art. One thing I've been complimented on in my fiction is how consistent the tone of the story is. By having my phonetic motif my tone is able to be very consistent. The pacing is always chugging along because there's a minimum of one phonetic every line. Subconsciously readers pick up on that repetition and some of that gets thought of as 'tone'.

I also write multiple POV so when I switch up character POVs I change the style a bit intuitively, but keep the phonetic motif standard.

It's both really simple but its a system that has a lot of depth to it. I'm still trying to figure out how to go deeper into my prose to take it to the next level. I'm b-grade at best right now.

>>20708481
Don't you post my wife without permission you fucker.

>>20708572
What do you mean by phonetic motif? Again, I'm not seeing the connection in a lot of those examples.

Also, what if you want to vary the pace and tone, not just along chapter progression, but within paragraphs? When connecting sentences and creating flow I've always thought more about the beginning and end of each sentence, but it may be I've just been intuiting what you're doing purposefully.

>>20708579
Get a wife who won't whore herself out to anons with better prose than you

YOUR BOOK IS GETTING A FILM/TV ADAPTATION. CHOOSE A TRAILER SONG. Also pace it (Hardmode)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HF09FA58nOk
>Each string beat from 0:00 to 1:18 shows a different character, with that longer beat being an environment
>The drums from 1:18 to 1:36 show them all interacting briefly
>The rest of it is them fighting, along with some truly fucking apocalyptic imagery.

>>20708603
Sorry this should help explain it. Each column is a shared phonetic kind.

At the top of each column there is an example phonetic word.

'ai' is the phonetic 'sound' that is in 'night'.

So in the 'ai' / 'night' column are all phonetics that are all of the same kind.

So when I write a paragraph (can even be several paragraphs if they are all combined to the same topic / centered on the same thing without moving on too much) I use just one column to pick out what phonetics I can use.

It is like a game because you're searching for a phonetic word that can fit with the sentence you mean to create.

So I know my draft sentence uses the word 'night' so I then go to the 'ai' / 'night' column and see if I can string sentences together with an /ai/ motif. Much like using a specific note in a song to create a motif.

If you go back to >>20708312 this example image you can refer to it to see how the motif is used.

>>20708481
there is advice that doesn't work for all authors or genres.
like the rhyming thing, I intend to use rhyming for a character but it wouldn't make sense if a soldier or someone else who is overall stern just spoke in rhymes for some reason. I edited a bit of my writing because I accidentally made a rhyme and it wouldn't make sense for the situation.
or someone trying to argue you should write in first or third person, one isn't better than the other in every case.
or changing prose to be more flowery or more clinical yada yada.

>>20708636
An instrumental excerpt of the first part of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_nQhGR0K8M or maybe an instrumental cut with the transition if the execs really want me to put a few violent scenes in the trailer.
Lyrics don't really fit that well, but the tone does.

>>20708481
>no one here writes

What are you talking about? F Gardner alone has written a dozen books.

>>20705006
>be me
>anon who wants to write
>love sci-fi and want to write sci-fi
>not nearly as well worded in english as I am in my mother tongue
>sci-fi sounds terribly cringey in my mother tongue
>there's close to no market for sci-fi in the country where my mother tongue is spoken
what do I do anons

>>20708312
>>20708638
So, if I'm understanding this correctly, this is more of a substitution technique for editing rather than something you do with initial intention? Also are you highlighting your phonetic relations with bold lettering in that example?
This sounds a lot like what mouthfeel anon was trying to say, but I feel like his examples were a little easier to understand.

>>20708638
I see what you're doing. I think of the phonetics not as tones but as musical keys. 'ai' may be F minor, for example, whereas 'ur' could be G major. This is a pretty unique and interesting way to think about sentence construction and probably something worth making a more active observation of in my own writing.

>>20708775
I write my first draft without worrying about it.

I number my sentences.

1. Susie walked into the pub.
2. She downed a drink.
3. Punched the midget in the face.

And keep counting the lines until I feel the chapter has reached its end. Then I go back, remove the lines (they're only there to give me a sense of progress as I write), and then I start to focus on the phonetics. So yes it is a phase of editing for myself, but I think its a bit more than just editing. Because when I write using phonetics I have to get creative about how I use them.

In that creativity I also find I have more room to explore ideas. I can continue a paragraph longer than I would feel comfortable to because I have the security provided by phonetics (sounds like a fucking tom cruise thing at this point).

My work (Wish Mountain) needs a fuck ton of professional editing that I, as the author, can't do myself because my brain just isn't technical enough to give it that great polish. But going through the process of adding phonetics to my work is a fucking DELIGHT. I use words I otherwise wouldn't, so when I read back my work I'm able to enjoy it more because it's not just my vocabulary being used. In a way I think phonetics draws in readers because it adds a bridge. It's halfway in my voice, but also solidly relying on the sound of the English language in a way anyone who understands English can enjoy.

>>20708800
Great. I agree. Phonetics is literally about the sounds our mouths make. It's the basis of language itself. So it has to be relevant to good writing at least in some small way.

It's not an accident /and/, /he/, /she/, /me/, /the/ are so commonly used. The sounds are addictive in a sense.

>>20708819
Still not 100% sure it's something I would consciously use. Feels as though its subject to cherry picking that, in the end, is just as likely to detract from a sentence as it is to add to one.
I like mouthfeel anon's message a bit more. His was centered around an aloud recitation of your work in an attempt to spot ugly words that go against the grain of each sentence. Words like "Athlete" (Ah-Thuh-Leet) have a phonetic ugliness about them that has them hard to slot into a sentence.

Then again, this may be a Mr. Plinkett situation. I don't see it, but my brain does.

>>20708638
It's very interesting, though it feels a bit paint-by-numbers to me.

>>20708819
This is submidwit level autism. Post a sample of your work so we can disregard it and you once and for all.

>>20708757
I’m aware. F. Gardner has produced like half of the /lit/ canon.

Script for a comic I'm making. Not final. What do you think?

A bunch of people are in a nightclub. Agori barges in. He extends his hands and people are surprised and shoots flaming bullets and a bunch of people are shot. Anthony is sitting around kissing girls and is shocked to hear some explosions. Agori is staring around looking at all the corpses on the ground walking through the place walking over men in suits with guns and goes through a door and sees a bunch of money and drugs on a table. He puts them into a duffel bag and carries them out. He meets Anthony outside as he is getting out astonished by the dead bodies. They lock eyes. Anthony makes his hand into a club Agori shoots him with his finger. He charges again after being knocked back and with some blood from his mouth and Agrori shoots his in the chest multiple times and he is on his hands and knees on the ground with holes coming from his chest. Agori stands in front of him over him and with a stern look slides his money far away and puts his hands up and charges up as Anthony looks pissed and creates a giant explosion and makes a giant hole in the wall. Anthony is nowhere to be seen. Agori looks through the hole and walks over to get his money and drugs but looks up and sees Anthony’s whore on her hands and knees terrified. He walks over and she is cowering in his presence. He makes a gun with his finger and shoots her in the head.

>>20706777
nice trips

>>20708819
At the very least it will force you to figure out how to use words you may not normally.
It could be a useful practice for that alone.

>>20708927
I'm pretty autistic about my writing process. I do my best to have it be as intuitive as possible. For me its a great mix of architect vs gardening. I get the best of both in my process and it works for me. I'm also a bit of an audo-didact, in that I have to break everything down to atoms to explain it to myself, but once I've done that I can explain it to anyone how I do what I do.

But I am a midwit. I'm average IQ for sure. That's just a fact of my life and I'm okay with that.

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

>>20708956
Pretty much. My editor friend said to me 'well at least you're thinking about how it reads'.

>>20708945
that sounds like someone who doesn't really care is describing the events which have taken place.

>>20708819
>writing by a natural mathematician

>>20708968
cue?

>>20708939
I can still remember the OG /wg/ threads where F Gardner used to post his progress. There would be doomers posting “Gardner you will NEVER finish your manuscript!” Then Gardner published Call of the Crocodile and 10+ other books and they absolutely seethed.

>>20708980
He’s an inspiration.

>>20708963
As I suspected.

>For at least the /tenth/ time that year Andy had /opened/ his locker to find a letter had /been/ placed there. It was a simple folded piece of paper with the distinct /scent/ of a girl coming off of it. Another love /confession/ he would have to go deal with after school. It was always such /an/ annoyance.

Unedited, it seems some have naturally fallen into my writing.

>>20708972
It's an extremely process-focused writing method. Almost like how an AI would write, especially if it was tuned for reader engagement and page turns as it's priority.

>>20708400
99.99% of published writers dgaf about this

No one has cared about polysyndeton sine the greeks.

pair that with the fact that, unless you are reading the prose out loud, a lot of this stuff wont even translate and you have a recipe for never finishing a manuscript

plot first, everything else is a waste of time

>>20708965
Is it any good?

>>20705014
for FFA
>seven year old serial killer
>new prompt: plants are proven to be sentient life forms

Andy crouched from around the corner, looking the girl up and down. Little Sally Eggwhite was his classmate, a student in Gucci Elementary’s second grade. She had rusty red hair braided into pigtails; bespectacled and pale, she was nerdy and cute. That was Andy’s type, but she routinely mocked and belittled the poor boy. To sate his romantic desires and thirst for companionship, Andy had already raised hell for a few other schoolgirls, but their beauty and poise paled in comparison to her. He intended to make Sally his playmate for life despite her protests. First, he had made sure to lure her behind the oak tree, across the far field of the playground where no yard duty was to be found. All it took was a fake letter from Trent, a school bully, with whom Sally was smitten, advising her to meet him in that distant, remote location.

There was a chain-link fence separating the school from an adjacent park. Andy squatted low to the ground, the freshly-mowed grass and diesel car exhaust filling him with a nostalgic thrill. He had met Sally on the school bus that fateful day in first grade… how long ago that was for seven-year old Andy! With the honed reflexes of a true, natural predator, he clawed at Sally’s pink striped knee socks, pulling her into the hedge. With a hand over her mouth to muffle the shriek, he shoved the girl face-first into the dirt.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much, hm?”

He bent Sally’s frail, noodle arm back then pushed his nose into her wonderful, bubblegum scented hair. The perfume was overwhelming and the boy’s eyes rolled back into the sockets at the ecstasy of being so close to his beloved future wife. She bit his hand so Andy jerked her arm even harder. Sally managed to cry out:

“Where’s Trent? Please, somebody help –” but she couldn’t finish when Andy punched the back of her skull.

She was soft… perhaps too soft. He didn’t want her to die! Sure, the other girls were soft too, but they didn’t matter. Sally did matter. He turned her over and slapped her cheeks, bringing the color back. Her eyes fluttered open, uncomprehending, trickles of blood matting parts of her hair.

“Don’t worry, Sally, it’s me Andy. I’m here to rescue you.” Sally still didn’t seem to understand where she was or what was going on. “I fought the other guy off. He was big and scary but it was a piece of cake!”

Finally, she seemed to remember what had happened, and her body shivered in fear. “Y-you… fought him? But Andy, what if he c-c-comes back?”

“Don’t worry my princess, my little cupcake. I’ll protect you!” He toppled onto her, staring deep into her hazel eyes through her broken, crunchy glasses. Andy took her hand and bent in for a deep, mouthy kiss, just like he saw his dad doing to all the girlfriends he brought home.

>>20709007
Sally squirmed and kicked but seemed to relent, melting into him. It was exactly as Andy had imagined it! His plan was working. Stroking her burning crimson hair with the tenderness of a man of refinement, he parted mouths with his lady, sweat beading down his crooked nose and plopping onto her blooded forehead. She stared at Andy in shock and awe, as if discovering for the first time the true nature of this ugly, tormented young man; she saw past the nose his father had gifted him in fits of inebriation, the eyes too close together, the harelip scar, and the lazy left eye, and gazed upon the soul of a gentleman and a lover – the first and last time she would do so.

With a clarity of motion unseen outside the savage savannah, Andy took Sally Eggwhite’s neck and twisted. One moment it was if she had seen God in the flesh, and the next, she was to truly meet Him. He reached into the pockets of his shorts and pulled out a fistful of pilfered crayons. He stuck gave them a kiss and anointed them with his own brand of blessed Oil, then carefully inserted the lime green into her left nostril, and the orange into her right nostril. Her ears needed a little elbow grease to really push the crayons into her ear canals. A trickle of blood dribbled from her mouth and Andy bent down for another kiss. Playing with her limp tongue, he came up for air with a Cheshire grin.

“This won’t hurt a bit, my pumpkin darling. Hold still,” he whispered with a chuckle.

A fistful of crayons were shoved down Sally’s throat. Her esophagus was warm and wet and wonderful. Twangs of anxiety pricked at Andy’s skin. He had never gone deeper than the esophagus with the other girls. No. Sally was too precious for that. The innocence of a first kiss had been taken from her, as had the breath of life, but he would leave that alone. But the urge was strong to know her, to really know Sally, inside and out. With a lurch of indulgence, Andy frantically consummated the marriage of his newlywed wife, the same way he had seen his dad doing with his girlfriends. It felt kind of strange but also good in a way he had never felt. Finally, he finished his work of art by putting the crayons where the sun didn’t shine. With a grunt, he picked up her corpse and launched it over the fence into a stranger’s yard. The police would blame it on the poor bastard.

And so they did. Andy got away with his crime, feeling unusually complete. But something began to unravel after the public tragedy faded away. Something familiar and monstrous stirred in the boy – once a man – now a boy again. It was a hunger just like the one he had felt stalking his prey. He wanted more.

Third grade started and with it, new playmates.

>>20708993
Oh then yeah.

>>20708986
What's autistic about it? I don't have autism but I must be somewhere close to that spectrum. Like autism-lite or something.

>>20709004
I love to read my writing out loud. I really want my stories to be able to be read to multiple people at once almost like a campfire story. I totally get that other writers prefer stories to be simply read without saying it aloud and that's fine too. I just really appreciate a good spoken story.

>>20709017
Anon. I am not about to argue with an autismo about whether or not or what kind of autism they have.

>>20709006
as a basis for something to be written I don't think its bad, as I am fan of modern fantasy, or whatever this is.
but it needs to be written into an actual story, maybe turn that into a chapter in a story and then post it again.

>>20709020
I was just asking about that excerpt I don't care about my potential autism.

>>20708939
It pains me that this is true. What’s F Gardner’s secret?

>>20709020
it reads like the ramblings of someone who has yet to realize that their adderal tolerance is reaching the switch-to-vyanase threshold

>>20709034
He forces memes. It works.

>>20709034
He’s literally a based schizo.

>>20709004
>pair that with the fact that, unless you are reading the prose out loud, a lot of this stuff wont even translate and you have a recipe for never finishing a manuscript
Audiobooks are a thing now. Phonetic-anon might be on the cutting edge here.

>>20709053
If you check the top of my RR chapters I have audio-narrated my chapters for the first 13 chapters (stopped doing audio as well due to full time work).

So you can see how it sounds read aloud by me.

>>20709053
>might be
Probably not

Holocaust All Shitbulls
By: Charlie Hooper

Did you know that, like a snake, a shitbull can still bite you hours after having its head cut off? Most people don’t know that about shitbulls. Most people don’t want to know that about shitbulls.
You see, shitbull lovers have this weird gaslighting campaign going twenty-four-seven about how sweet and innocent their choice breed of midget manglers are, posting pictures of their soon-to-be-mauled children reaching towards the fuck-off grin of what looks to be a recently subjugated demon.

Isn’t he cute? - My neighbor.
He’s so sweet with my kids! - My neighbor.
Blame the owner, not the breed! - My neighbor.

She even drove that little Honda toaster whatever its called around for a whole week with a bumper sticker that said like: I LOVE MY PITBULL on the back glass. This was AFTER the shitbull ripped her 3-year-old’s throat out. It took em near an hour to unclench the things jaw, meanwhile its chewing this kids arms down to nubs. Neighbor was collapsed out on the lawn making noises that sounded like she was trying to scream and puke at the same time.

>>20708939
Is there an up to date /lit/ canon chart? How can I get inna chart?

I think they had to shoot the thing through the head.
A real closed casket affair. Nightmare. Was a cute kid too, she had just learned my name.
“What is charlie doing?” I would hear the little girl say as they walked past my open window, the shitbull anchoring the rear on a too-thin lead, swiveling its hamshank head around for something innocent to dismember.
Oh yeah, its called an Element. Honda Element. You can still see the residue from that sticker on her back window, glue-gobs in the vague shape of the dog that ate her kid. Kinda fucked up to think about. All that guilt in the rearview every time she backs out of a parking spot. I’d kill myself if I were her.
That was maybe a month ago, when the kid died, I mean. Since then I’ve learned a lot about shitbulls.
Week after the attack I learned that little morsel of info from the beginning about shitbulls still being able to bite with their heads cut off. Wild right?
So I had been walking around the neighborhood, up a few streets and back, looking for shitbulls. I wanted a little revenge for that girl. When BOOM, something like a mine cart full of gristle slammed into the fence I was walking past. No warning. No bark, no growl, nothing. Just slam, slam, SLAM. I could see its stupid eyes through the uprights, teeth bared, drool. Real spooky. The worst shit: in the same backyard was one of those little kid plastic swingset things. Fisher price, you know. Pair it with the purple dinosaur climbing toy.

So I called up my dentist assistant/dealer buddy, does the gas, anesthesiologist, and asked him what the best dope he could get me for some sleep. He said propofol, but that’s the gas, so I asked if he had anything in pills. He said ask around for some ambien. Easy enough, my mom’s had a bottomless prescription ever since dad had his feet cut off.
So I call up my mom, visit, give her a hug, etc, etc, slyly mention I’ve been having trouble sleeping and just like that I’m walking out the door with a little baggy of ambien.
Next up, I’m standing at the meat counter.
“How much for the chop there?” I said.
“2.99 a lb.”
“I get that. I want you to weigh it.”
“It’ll be three-thirty-eight.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Anything else?”
“You know what, yeah, throw a couple jalapeño cheddar brats in too.”
I almost walked out the store without charcoal and buns. But that was dinner for me and a midnight snack for the shitbull two streets up.

Fast forward to just after one-AM, I’ve got a belly full of bratwurst and a dripping handful of ambien frittata and I’m lurching through the alley dodging streetlights with a mask on, looking like a real dipshit. I get to the fence and WHAM, the shitbull is there, spit covered teeth sparkling at me. This fucker is silent. Just hot breath and a little scratch of dirt as it dug in for another lunge. WHAM. I waste no time and throw the meat over, hear it chewing, ripping the shoulder bone from the flesh, really enjoying its little shitbull life.
I duck back into the alley, dick around on my phone for a bit, walk back. It’s still upright, rigid, staring at my dumbass face pressed to the fence, but hey, it didn’t lunge at me.
I give it a few more minutes. Scroll through reddit a few times, watch a little anime, lose track of time. I get up at 1:45, walk back over to the fence and the shitbull is gone, out, sideways on the ground legs rigid, gone.
I found the latch, stepped in, all the while watching for motion detecting lights or whatever. I drug the near-dead thing through the backyard away from the windows, pulled the ball-peen I had stashed in my pocket and got to work cracking that shitbulls walnut brain. By the time I’ finished, little Diesel (I checked the tag) was a shitbull jello-salad from the neck up, and I’m dragging him back through the alley towards my house, mask on, sledding this shitbulls corpse around streetlights, looking like a real dipshit.

But I made it back with no problem, then the real fun began.
I’ve got one of those dual headed sledgehammers and an old hacksaw dulled by my years of plumbing work. I figured, if a sledgehammer and hacksaw is good enough for cast-iron, its good enough to take apart a dead fucking shitbull.
I started with its legs, bringing the broad end of that hammer down in pulverizing arcs, beating its bones to splinters, then cut them free with a few passes of the hacksaw, tossed em all in my burn barrel.
Then came the head.
“This is for Natalie.” I said to its blown out, jam-filled eye sockets. It took me a few starts and stops to get the saw through the spine, I took a few breaks, scrolled through reddit, watched a bit more of that anime I started earlier in the alley. It’s the final season of Attack on Titan. If you know you know. But yeah, I made it through the spine, slipped as it drug through the final few millimeters of bone, and since I was putting my whole fat-ass weight on the back of that saw I fell down into that shitbull smear. Stood up dripping, I was covered with it, slinging slime from my fingertips as I wiped gore from my eyebrows.
But it was done.

>>20709078
I don’t think so. Gardner has published several more books and there have been others from anons here.

I gave the head a nudge with my boot, and the fucking thing tried to bite me. Got a few teeth in my good work boots. Still kind of pissed about that. That brings me back to the beginning, prophecy regarding the severed head chomping down fulfilled, now you know how I know.
And so I’m standing there in my backyard with three things on my mind, first, I’ve got a shitbull just waiting to chomp down on any toes I accidentally put in the line of fire. I found a stick, lodged it in the back of its throat and stepped back to admire the way the fucking thing still clenched and unclenched its jaw an hour after getting its brains beat in. Second, I’ve got a shitbull torso I don’t know what to do with, I can’t burn it, too much meat, I can’t run from it, it’d probably get aroused at my retreat and wiggle towards me trying to bite me with its sucking neck hole. Third, I was mulling over that burning question on every guys mind after taking the head off a shitbull with a rusty hacksaw:
What the fuck do I do now?
So I did what every guy does after taking the head off a shitbull with a rusty hacksaw: I paced a few steps back, got a running start and football punted that shitbull’s head clear over my backyard fence.
Fuck you diesel.
I knew I shoulda played football in highschool.

Only problem, I kicked the thing too far and it landed on top of my nonagenarian next-door neighbors roof, rolled down and settled on top of her gutter guard she had spent so much money on last year getting installed. I don’t think it says anything about shitbull head damage anywhere in the 10year gutter guard guarantee. Actually, there’s probably a clause at the bottom if you read real close specifically about not covering damage from punted shitbull heads. And that poor old lady would have died coming out on her back porch looking up into that disgusting shitbull grin at 6am in the morning when she’s off to church or whatever it is 95 year old women get up to. Slot machines? Bridge? Quilting? Skip out for a malted down at the drugstore with her sweetheart Billy Johnson? Whatever.
So I get out my ladder at going on 2:30am. Im just-killed-a-dog tired and struggle lifting my fat calves up the rungs, but I make it, toss the head down and that’s pretty much my story on how I learned that shitbulls can still bite after getting their heads cut off.
Wild, right?
Only, that’s not really the end.
Laying there that night after digging the grave, showering, jerking it to Nier Automata 2b Futa porn, I got to thinking. Maybe one shitbull wasn’t enough to avenge little Natalie. Maybe my neighborhood wasn’t safe as long as there were shitbulls still pacing backyards waiting for helpless toddler-meat to fall out of open windows.
Maybe I needed to get a few more shitbulls.
Maybe, but I’d need a good nights sleep to think about it.

>>20709078
I'm too paranoid to be associated with here
Does Gardner actually make a living from his writing now or does he still work a day job?

>>20709115
I highly doubt he has ever worked a day job. He is graveyard shift stock boy material at best.

>>20709115
I don’t think Gardner has a day job. He’s apparently rich. But that might just be a meme and fake news.

>>20709115
No one mkes a living from writing anymore unless you are writing romance.

>>20709115
Gardner’s like a rich retarded playboy or something. Literally living the /lit/ dream.

>>20709115
Well, you gotta understand F Gardner is one of those one in a million success stories. I image he must be doing fine. I’m in London and most people seem to be aware of Call of the Crocodile at my university. I don’t know if any of them have really read it. But I’ve had classmates who knew of that book and who knew who F Gardner is.

>>20709114
Pretty good anon. I would drop the nonagenarian part because I don’t think it fits with the voice of the narrator. Also you later state the age exactly so it’s redundant. Otherwise I like it.

>>20709162
>I’m in London and most people seem to be aware of Call of the Crocodile at my university. I don’t know if any of them have really read it. But I’ve had classmates who knew of that book and who knew who F Gardner is
Gardner memeing is getting so advanced that I can't even tell what's real anymore

>>20709185
nixed, thx

>>20709195
>I can't even tell what's real anymore
Congratulations, you're ready to write the next "Call of the" book.

>>20709162
I’ve had a similar experience. I nearly shat my pants when I heard someone mention Call of the Crocodile in one of my classes. Some of my classmates smirked and chuckled along with my teacher and they briefly talked about it. That book is apparently way more known than I thought it was. I thought it was just 4chan that knew about it but they were talking about the “le epic twist” Call of the Crocodile allegedly has. I’m inclined to think that it’s because Gardner marketed his book really aggressively. Simply the fact that advertising seems to work on most people.

>>20709210
>Congratulations, you're ready to write the next "Call of the" book.
That's quite possibly the most insulting thing anyone has ever said to me

>>20709195
Lmao. Seriously. I remember thinking “What the absolute fuck?” when I first heard it mentioned at university.

>>20709210
Now be nice. I read Jigoku and that read fine. Gardner seems to have improved since CotC. I guess that’s no surprise after a dozen books. I’ve heard it mentioned that you need to write several books before you can write a good one. So, I suppose Gardner is evidence of that.

Gardner predicted the rise of Trump in "Call of the Crocodile," and the Jan 6th Riot.
And that's just the obvious stuff.

>>20709245
He sort of predicted the meta verse. One of his books is called Reptilian Odyssey and that’s essentially what that was about.

ok, please stop
you can stop now

>>20709247
Holy shit. This sounds kino. Am I really about to be memed into reading an F Gardner novel?

>>20709252
Self-promotion is all the man has. Leave him to it.

>>20709269
I’m replying to >>20709247 him. Not promoting anything and I am not the meme man.

Added more to my sports drama and edited the first part.
Pastebin doesn't like the word retarded so I had to change it to re-tarted

https://pastebin.com/6x7HU84e

Take notes, bitches.

>It’s another /wg/ gossips about F Gardner episode.

>Tripfag posts drivel
Haha good one.

Outlining my novel idea for the Honeymeme contest and gonna try to draw a half decent cover tonight
I feel like this idea is a little tryhard but it fits with the school theme
The whole concept came to me during a breakdown a few years ago, then I built on it and decided it was too heavy at the time

>>20709329
Better than anything else on here and you can't even deny it.

I've been feeling a lot more confident lately. Feeling like I'm gmi.

>>20709328
We literally have the report button

>>20709292
Hard to tell if you are serious or trolling but I had a good laugh regardless. Thank you anon.

>>20709354
Talking about Gardner isn’t breaking any rules.

>>20709355
It's a serious emotionally gripping sports drama.
But I add a little comedic relief out of courtesy for the reader.
You're welcome.

>>20709380
Fuck off Sponge.

>>20709328
>>20709329
>>20709354

I’ll let it slide. F. Gardner is a /wg/ author. So, it’s relevant and on topic. We can talk about him if you guys can’t think of anything better.

>>20708769
Git gud at English, scrub.

>>20709411
Gardner was never a part of /wg/. His shilling, by himself or his fans, is obnoxious and constitutes spamming and should be reported as such.

>>20709260
>can't even write a grammatically correct synopsis
I think I'll pass on this meme

>>20709421
No. He used to post progress updates in the old /wg/ threads. Just because you don’t like the guy’s books doesn’t make him exempt from our community and you don’t speak for all of us.

>>20709435
I can't believe I forgot that he used to post in here. Now all of the pieces are falling into place. I do vaguely remember him constantly providing updates years ago

>>20709435
>you don’t speak for all of us
F. Gadner samefagging is only one person.

>>20709435
This. Gardner’s literally the most famous guy from here. We’re always saying “we’re all going to make it.” Shooting someone down because he’s the closest one of us to “making it” is just crab in the bucket mentality and sour grapes.

>>20709004
>pair that with the fact that, unless you are reading the prose out loud, a lot of this stuff wont even translate and you have a recipe for never finishing a manuscript
>plot first, everything else is a waste of time
Completely wrong and soulless. Language is foremost a spoken thing, the writing merely captures it for reproduction. When reading we hear the words in our head and can sense good flow/poetic beauty. Any passage you ever found beautiful likely had some poetic aspects consciously added by the writer.

>>20708312
>>20708638
Thank you for these effort posts, things like this are what make /wg/ worth hanging around. I'm going to have to reread this as I'm still not 100% sure i could apply it but its very interesting food for thought.

Since no one will shut up about him I have to ask why are all of Gardners books so lowly rated?

>>20709482
Review bombed by Reddit a couple months ago. It was hilarious.

>>20709482
Because they are genuinely awful.

>>20709482
>I have to ask why are all of Gardners books so lowly rated?
Because they're just regurgitated greentexts?

>>20709497
Greentexts? I read Call of the Arcade a year ago. I don’t remember any greentexts in it.

>>20709458
I don't dislike Gardner because he "made it". I dislike him because his writing is well below the standard of even generic YA stuff and he's only popular on this board because of endless shilling, advertising, and forced memes that stopped being funny a year ago. I'd be happy for the guy if I saw genuine passion in his writing, but it's just an unedited mess that he regurgitates in a few months to sell solely off of meme factor.

>barely ended up writing a chapter yesterday but I thought it was at least alright
>haven't written anything until about 20 minutes ago
>wrote less than 400 words
>so unhappy with it that I'm going to completely
erase and rewrite it
I'll write more later... I swear.

>>20709528
He sounded plenty passionate in an interview I saw with him. I’ll post it here, I guess.

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

Can someone pls read my shit its 2000words. Im too shy to share to people i know and i just can’t trust the retards over at r/writing to give a honest feedback

>>20709579
yes.

>>20709579
Yes. Post it.

>>20709394
"Sange"
Say it correctly, bitch.

>>20709594
Sperg?

>>20709594
Spŭnj

>>20709292
Seriously though, I'm open to critique and tell me what you'd like to see from the story.
I'm new to the sports drama genre, I hope I am doing okay.

Vella bonus for June just posted and they gave me $10 as a bonus for only 7 reads and that was 0 locked reads, meaning people only 7 reads among the first 3 episodes which are free
Considering I've been marketing this month and already have nearly 150 locked reads plus follows and likes now I'm curious how July is gonna look

>>20709629
>I'm open to critique
You're a dumb faggot.

>>20709643
You hate me cuz you ain't me.
Bitch.

>>20709654
I hate you because you're a dumb faggot and you literally cannot stop telling everyone.

>>20709528
Gardner’s later books don’t really have the problems of his earlier ones.

>>20709663
You mean readers?

>>20709660
Stay mad, bitch.
Stay mad.
I already proved how good my writing is, now you can't say shit rape-anon.

>>20709674
Kek. I meant no unnecessary commas.

>>20709676
Ignore him, anon. He’s just a troll. I’m sure if you can become the next F. Gardner.

>>20709676
>now you can't say shit
Sure I can. For example, you're a dumb faggot.

>>20709585
>>20709586
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nv_1EB5x64QRV-cX3s3LQep22IeAm77opDCXZVa3OOk/edit
Thanks

>>20709695
You're right.
Thanks anon, I need that kind of validation.

>>20709676
It's almost hard to believe you aren't a bot or a troll
You write like I wrote when I was 13 and trying to write anime 1:1

Quick question to the anons that helped me last thread, was the wall of text issue not just one of indentation or was it also having no whitespace between paragraphs? From >>20703608

>Finally start working on a cartoon
>Start writing a script for an episode yesterday
>So far only write a four scenes
>Each one is short and still needs work and improvement
>Together they only make up 5 minutes of the episode
>tfw i'm actually making progress
This feel really fantastic. Now that i have started it feels so good and i can't wait to finish.

>>20709728
That was me too you dumb faggot.

>>20709754
No it wasn’t. It was me. Like I said, ignore the troll.

>>20709758
I don't think Sponge is trolling, he's a dumb faggot unironically.

>>20709745
Post an excerpt.

>>20709761
No. I mean the guy trolling him. Probably the same troll that spergs about how he hates F Gardner other people here who share their writing.

>>/lit/thread/S15974415

>>20709770
ESL post. I see you Sponge.

>>20709765
I got it written on paper, not in digital yet.
But would it be OK to use a greentext?

>Reading this thread.
>/wg/ loves F Gardner now.

Based and wholesome.

>>20709808
I don't.

>>20709819
I do.

Anyone else kind of fascinated by just how much audiences are ready to tolerate and forgive?

You could throw a sappy redemption arc at Mega Hitler and people would eat it up.

>>20709828
Secretly, everyone loves Hitler. They just need an excuse to admit it.

>>20709467
>When reading we hear the words in our head and can sense good flow/poetic beauty.
We actually don't. The Greeks knew this and differentiated writing for oration vs writing for reading. Read Aristotle's Rhetoric.

You are probably ESL though. Every midwit pseud in /wg/ is ESL.

>>20709828
It seems like we’re experiencing the F Gardner redemption arc right now.

>>20709828
People have shit taste. Yes, even you.

Here is my piece from the previous thread, with some new additions and much of the advice given acted on. Please give me your thoughts, anons.

>>20705013
currently readng this, gonna read Roadside Picnic next, what am I in for bros? Is it like the games? I Liked those a lot

>>20709711
Aside from cleaning up a few petty errors ("the recent incident in Owenne that have brought these two onto our focus" for example) I like the prose, and the dialogue is nicely distinct.

I would say of the dialogue that I didn't get a strong enough sense of stuffy officialness to her summary of the case file. I fell like that should be very distinct from her internal or conversational voice, with the more guardedly precise language typical of that sort of document and "official" or formal discussion of them. This would also apply to her responses to his questions about the Arbiter, which presumably are lines she's been instructed to memorise and would have the same obfuscatory formality that you see in corporate or government language. Either that or, for more fun, the extremely overzealous language of (for example) Communist Party documents, where everything is "traitor" this and "glorious struggle" that. If you've never read those, I'd recommend it. They can be quite fun. either choice would help to characterise the government and indicate Aelen's relationship to them.
Perhaps you would want to emphasise the secrecy and sensitivity of the information she's carrying, too. She is prone to worrying and has important, classified documents in her hands. The same would go for the Magistrate's extreme boldness in effectively challenging the approved opinion on the war to someone who could easily go and report him. The stakes of the conversation shoot up massively when that question is asked, but it doesn't really come through enough for me. Shouldn't she be terrified of where this conversation might lead? Whether it might be a trick?

That's about all I have. Hope you found at least some of it useful.

>>20709783
That would be fine. I'd prefer to see it written for prose sake but since you'd supposedly be animating it that doesn't matter as much as your ideas.

>>20709732
>>20709754
>>20709761
>>20709775
Rape-anon is having a bad day again. Don't worry, bitch, things will look up for you one day.

>>20705661
>>20707179
seethe

>>20709846
He is the meme that keeps on giving.

>>20709878
Felt like a comfy Bradbury story. Unless there's a good reason maybe consider changing Vetra or Vonne's name a little. I think they sound different enough but if the names start with different letters they'll be easier to distinguish. I wouldn't end that passage with a cliff hanger using an ellipsis, it's cheesy. Sure some thriller writers get away with it but they usually have really short chapters so it helps people keep going. If you must, have Vonne think to herself about what the truth might be or Vetra ask about if she even cares about the truth or hint that she knows it.

>>20709878
>her lifelong friend
is a little blunt. If you have a strong sense of their relationship, it should be apparent to the readers without needing to hit us over the head with it. It tends to be, otherwise, with the dialogue.
The descriptions of the view and the cigarette are quite technical, with details like the estimated numbers of people and the fact that the buildings being specifically over two kilometers tall, which I guess must be reflective of Vonne's character. She must be detail focused and curious about the technical aspects of things. It might be worth putting some of that in as flavour for her dialogue, like when she says:
>You don't need to start putting that trash back into your body
she seems like the kind of person who start bringing up specific information about how and why it's unhealthy, or think back to previous times when she tried that.

Oh, and
>kilomters across and wide
along with a couple of other lapses in proofreading.

>>20709034
F. Gardner's secret is he has no standards.
His work is pre-first-draft quality.

>>20710000
>I think they sound different enough but if the names start with different letters they'll be easier to distinguish
Personally, I was reading Vonne with two syllables, like Porsche, making it more similar to Vetra. It might be Vonne like Bonne, though, which I think would be fine. I like them having the same starting letter.

>>20709078
Not sure how "canon" this is, but someone made this time time back.

>>20709900
Wow that’s extremely helpful thank you so much

>>20710028
I haven’t read all of his books. But I read Jigoku because I’m a Pokémon fan. The premise of that seemed cool to me. I really enjoyed it. I didn’t see any major problems. Maybe he uses an editor now. IDK.

>>20709115
F. Gardner is a NEET that lives off his rich parents.
>>20709215
>le epic twist
You mean that it was all a dream?
That's not a twist, that's a cop-out.

>>20710043
That’s because F Gardner’s shorter books are better than his longer bloated ones like Call of the Crocodile.

>>20710037
Gaskun deserves to be on this, he was in the threads summer 2020. Think I saw him make a thread about finishing another book last month. I'm not sure if Lewis Woolston ever worked with /wg/ but I always think of him when I think writers that use this board.

>>20710056
That’s not the twist, retard. Confirmed for not reading.

>>20707020
Welcome to the "joy" of day-jobbery.
I'm usually too burned out to be creative.
I just try to make notes, here and there, when some idea strikes me.
I can sometimes write on weekends.

>>20710056
I haven’t even read Faggot Gardner’s books. But I know that’s not true because I’ve seen people post about the twist here.

>>20710043
>>20710058
This reads as insincere as the McChicken pasta. I don't know how you do it.

>>20710000
I can change their names, no worries. I just liked the alliteration. Also I couldn't think of a better way to segue into what will be a relatively light-hearted short story, since spoiler if anyone gives a shit, Kippa is a mutual friend that recently died. I don't know if Vetra was giving off the self-destructive vibes well enough.
>>20710009
Advice taken. And Vonne is meant to be more straight laced and detail oriented, which will hopefully pay off well later when things begin to pick up story wise. I need to work on my proofreading, that's an embarrassing mistake.

>>20710082
Fuck off with your Reddit memes.

>>20710056
>NEET with rich parents
That makes a lot of sense
I'm listening to his interview now while I draw this cover and he's really tryhard but can tell that he's kinda nervous being interviewed
He said he wasn't worried about editing like what? I checked Call of the Crocodile on Amazon and there has been no editing even for the errors on the first page
So he bought ads here on 4chan but he couldn't afford to pay an editor?
This dude is such a joke talking about how in Japan cancer rates are lower despite more people smoking what is this nigger going on about
You've got no room talking about anyone else's diet when you look like THAT

There was nothing to say about the heat other than it was hot and that everywhere was hot too. The AC was set to cold and only blew air into the corner where the bed was not. He felt sticky. There was nothing to say about it. The two laid naked on the bed looking but not really at anything. Neither liked the way things were going or felt it could be stopped.
They had made sure the cat was somewhere shady with fresh water. Ice was put in the cat's water bowl from parental concern. Some cats actually avoided water if it had ice in it, as it turned out. She had read something once about how in China people preferred to drink hot water, even in the summer. They had analyzed why this might be the case. Like most animals it was hard to say whether the cat thought anything at all or only acted on instinct and vague preference.
She got off the bed and crouched in the cold corner of the room with the glass of water. Her elbows rested on her knees and her feet extended flat on the floor. Yoga lets you do this. She drank the water with both hands like a child does, looking a little doe-eyed out at nothing ahead. He loved this about her.
It had been important to them that the cat was named something human. It carried the respect they had for him, the name, and they thought the cat would somehow feel this respect in having a real name. The title “Mister” was sometimes added to the name—as in “Mister Loren”. They watched the cat drink ice water feeling something close to relief and pride.

>>20710065
Gardner confirmed for being a retard.

>>20709952
I've apparently mindfucked you but I wouldn't call it rape you dumb faggot.

>>20710094
She said how much she missed the winter even though she knew when it was winter she'd be saying how much she missed the summer. He murmured a sound that expressed he was listening and watched her breasts hang in her squat. He admired how sweat brought out the curves and textures of a person, made them shiny and new. Sweat layered on itself like paint. How it creeps into the creases of skin like a lubricant. He thought about white shirts becoming transparent with sweat. How hair has evolved for sweat and heat and cold. The cat did not meow so much as chirp. She hated how her breasts looked saggy when she bent over. In the mornings and in the shower she would lift them up and let them drop to feel the weight of the feeling. He thought her breasts looked motherly and not even in any sexual way. It was impossible to say this to her in a way that she would appreciate.
She told him to stop murmuring. He murmured again.
It was too hot for sex.
I read in India it's so hot that people die, he said. He asked her what she thought that must've felt like, dying of heat. It must be slow. Like the world has a fever you’re a part of. That is the last thing I want to think about right now she said and took a powerful sip of water. Waterdrops slipped from her mouth down against her chest, looking the same as the sweat and the moisture the glass left on the nightstand. She put her fingers in the glass and wiped herself with them across her forehead, her neck, her arms, stomach.
He laughed. Smiling she said what is it that is sooo funny mister and with a humming sound walked over to him as small pebbles of water from the glass and herself fell onto the floor and streaking herself she dipped her head down above his smiling laughing and before he could say what what even funny he knew it did not matter and said nothing. She felt his sweat on his forehead and he how her fingers were water wet.

She was laying on top of him and he was thinking about the heat and how hot it was and how it would only ever get hotter from here until it was too cold

>>20710091
>no room talking about diet when you look like that

Someone post the pics of Chad Gardner flexing his muscles

>>20710065
>Confirmed for not reading.
Based.

>>20710091
>F. Gardner interview
Holy shit. Given your own description, I think anon's take here >>20710056 is spot on in calling him a NEET living off rich parents. Out of curiosity, do you mind dropping the link for the thread?

>>20710037
I remember Son of the Sun appearing on here as drafts. I'm glad he finished it.

>>20710109

>>20710124
How does he look fat and muscular at the same time?

New thread >>20710136
as this one draws to a close...

>>20710115
The link? Sure. But it’s a YouTube video with Gardner. Here

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

>>20710131
Fell for SS+GOMAD

>>20710138
This thread can last for hours, why do you keep making threads when this is still on the first page?

>>20710142
Because once it gets over 300, it starts dropping down in the catalog, and doesn't return to the top.
In case you haven't noticed, newfag.

>>20707727
Yep, saw that...waiting for the incoming "lengthy review".
>>20707732
I didn't post >>20707727. Seethe.

>>20710312
>read review
>multiple criticisms
>gives it 4 stars
That's very generous, his review makes it sound like it's a 2-3 star book

>>20710139
Finished watching. Most interesting thing I’ve listen to from here in a while. Thanks.