/lit/ - Literature

Reference material, feel free to share your own:
https://youtu.be/Nqv-UtJQk5Q
https://youtu.be/VIGTPZW9DEA

>>21245298
>>21245298
oh fuck, my book has an incest element to it. I don't write actual sex, but it's there. Game of Thrones is 100x worse, but I'm not GRRM and don't have power. Don't want to get banned. How do I change it?

>>21245310
Nice...glad to see my swapping of chaotic neutral and chaotic evil has taken!
Because exposition is b-o-r-i-n-g.
And I love starting mid-action sequence.

Can someone critique the first draft of the first half of my romance novel? I'm struggling to find the motivation to finish it. I need to know if it is entertaining.

I dont know where to paste it now that pastebin doesnt allow nsfw so ill just share it on my blog.

https://dickhicks.wordpress.com/2022/11/12/tintern-list/

>>21245329
>https://www.amazon.com/Garden-Eden-Pseudo-Daughter-Erotica/dp/B00B17G3DO
can't be that bad

>>21245329
You didn't get banned for incest...you got banned for:
1) Using photos of famous models without permission
2) Vulgar language in titles
3) Graphic nudity
4) Misclassifying your work (i.e. non-erotica categories)
5) Necrophilia?! GRRM didn't do that.
6) Incest RAPE? GRRM didn't do that either.
and if you weren't clueless enough...
7) Dumb enough to mouth off to a Reddit mod. You know they're all petty tyrants.
Just what this thread needed..another seething schizo pseud. Sigh.
Helpful hint: you can post your work to catbox.moe, but pastebin will probably censor it.

>>21245359
I'm not the same anon, I'm a different anon, but all this talk about KDP banning people gets me scared.

>>21245349
You are good at painting a picture of scenes.
Your pacing is too fast, I thought you were writing a romance novel and then it quickly devolved into a pornographic novel.
You use 'She' far too repetitively.
If you're writing a true romance novel you should slowly establish the connection between the two characters. The climax should be when they finally make love.

>>21245396
Thats what I don’t get. Thats what stumps me. How the fuck do you establish a connection between two characters? What is this connection? They aren’t real first of all, and so this connection concept is baffling. How do I do this?

>>21245366
Im that anon hes talking about.

Just dont write incest because all it takes is one troll to report it. AND NEVER SHARE YOUR AMAZON AUTHOR ACCOUNT

Also we should build a community because i want to make money

The next-to-last chapter. I’m concerned with how the action flows so feedback on that would be appreciated.
https://pastebin.com/K9EqbCj8

How's my blurb?

>The Gold Rush is over, but the lure of riches tempt Fei-Ming to abandon his homeland of China to the Kingdom of the West; America. Working as a coalminer, Fei-Ming befriends Hutchinson Callaway, a Dixie fleeing the destruction of Civil War, and Montgomery Attinson, a Yankee with a mysterious past. There the three men forge an unlikely friendship in California, a place where the East called the Gold Mountain, and the West called the Bear Flag Republic. Embodied with the beliefs of self-determination and friendship, the three attempt to achieve their version of the American Dream.

>>21245409
but my story is centered around incest and the unnaturalness of it. I guess I'll do the Anime cop out of suddenly they're not blood related.

>get frustrated with my writing
>remember that Patrick Tomlinson is a published author and I am not
>get pissed off an start writing
Anyone else know this feel?

>>21245403
Your characters are real, living, breathing people with their own personal thoughts, feelings, experiences, and personalities.
If you want to write a beautiful and fulfilling story you need to slowly build a relationship between the two characters through their interactions, shared experiences, hardships, ect. You need to write something relatable, something that makes people dream about falling in love like that.
https://books-library.net/files/books-library.online-12292230Vr3R6.pdf

>>21245430
I like it, its concise, too the point and tells me what to expect from the story.

>>21245440
Why did you link fault in my stars

>>21245430
Here's my amazon cover so far. I don't know about the painting though, might be a bit too low quality to use.

It is free use since it was painted in 1870.

>>21245449
It's a pretty decent love story.

>>21245430
Good shit.

A new chapter of the Kill List is out. Any feedback provided is appreciated. Thanks for taking the time.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/54622/the-kill-list

>Amazon tech support finally gets back to me on why one of my books' covers is not showing up on its store page
>"Your cover is submitted using the sRGB color space, which is not supported and is preventing the file from populating on your Amazon page."
>"You will need to make adjustments to the image and re-upload."
>I have no fucking clue what this means, how this image wound up being "submitted using the sRGB color space" when the other three that I used the exact same process on Canva to create did not
>no sweet shitting idea what sort of "adjustments" will fix it because I don't even specifically know the problem or what's causing it

>>21245528
don't bother, the PDF upload is a huge waste of time. Just use their "cover creator"' upload a PNG that's incredibly oversized, and use that as a "background"

>>21245537
That's what I did, doesn't matter. Have tried it both ways, both wind up with "No image available" on the store page.

Something about the colors of this one image are simply incompatible with Amazons printers apparently (which shouldn't matter because it's a fucking ebook) and so I'm going to have to just make a new cover with different colors I guess and keep taking forty minutes to reupload new inferior covers and see which one gets to the store page because anything's better than "No image" look.

>>21245528
Try putting the image in PS or Gimp then re-export it.

>>21245565
Did it with GIMP. Same results. It's the colors of the image itself that need to be changed (though I have no way of knowing which colors). Essentially there is no way to get the image as-is to function in their systems apparently. It's also such a weirdly specific error that there's no googlable solutions to it.

Just have to suck it up and fuck around with the colors. I guess this is the self-publishing tradeoff that I have to deal with this instead of some intern at a major publishere.

>>21245574
RIP. Yeah, that is weird. Good luck, my man.

>>21245462
Have you misspelled the title?

>>21245582
Yes. Yes I did. I caught that after I posted the image.

Can I get an honest critique of my prose?

Out of doors grows drooping tree limbs with verdant fan leaves latticed over each other like playing cards, the sunlight casting its layered green-tint between patchworks of fan shade blooming above. All about is the deep smell of ferns desiccating in the tropic sun, its essence drawn out by the powerful heat to wander wraithlike beneath autumn laden boughs. Spanish columns rising out of centennial walls, stone hewed tightly with playing vines climbing interstices, topped with pale green tiles like freed shells cresting a wave. Low shrubbery with broad leaves fanning like a vermillion current from treeline to treeline whispering in their soft tongues to the deepening sun as the breeze measuredly sweeps it away.
We are heading there now. Packed 5 deep in a rust-spotted Jeep over mud causeways and living grass. The cool evening air running over us and up shirt sleeves and collars, each damp with a last cooling layer of jungle sweat. The heat of the day having expended the might of its power; now: cool evening in her dewdrop gown.
-Are we nearly there Miguel? A
-Si Senor, We are only four or five miles away M
-Hmm
-You must be ready to start filming huh?
-Not necessarily, but how did you know?
-Know what?
-Know that we were part of the documentary crew?
-Ohhh, You guys have a pretty specific look
Unsure how to take that one I turn from his laughter. The sun bleeding crimson on hanging vines and slouched flowers breathing sweetly over this nourished landscape. Back home is the cold. Withering winter in its dry bite spreading coals of its intensity pressuring hotly on the mind. No snow on the ground to restore a piecemeal of humidity to the air. Lines outside of actor’s auditions, towering stone bulks of buildings their presence imposing like the void that they evoked. Sleeping shrunken and shivering out of sight in the backseat of a green Toyota. Ramen Noodles half cooked out of metalcold microwaves. But here, the cup that is poured over is poured over once more. Faye gods and gnomish tricksters run beneath taut stalks shimmering, their grinning faces ducking behind bug laden barks in the forest’s screen. They love this land because it is living and it is living because they love it. The rich earth hiding their burrows with the bones of conquistadors and dinosaurs alike. Life living on life living on life. Turning their faces from the dead to drink deep from that cup overflowing.

>>21245600

How can I change my ideal writing time?

For some reason, I can easily write at hours that I consider late(10 PM-1 AM). By easily, I mean the difference of my productivity between that time frame and any other is like that of heaven and earth.

However, I want to work at an earlier time because I am a fagese and usually sleep by 11 PM.

Is it as simple as writing during the hours I want to write until it becomes a habit?

>>21245610
Fair. Any suggestions?

>>21245620
Stop trying so hard. Not every sentence has to be dripping with self-indulgent extravagance.
Stop thinking about yourself/your ego when you write. It's about the piece, not you.

>>21245600
Everything is wrong.

>>21245620
>>21245623
To expand a little; you should put a piece of yourself in the piece, but you have to accept it for what it is rather than trying to force it to be what you think it should be. Write more naturally and in your own voice.
Your prose makes it sound like you're trying to write how you think you should write, rather than how you actually write.
When you're writing, imagine you're an anon on 4chan.

I've got an idea for nine zines I'd like to release.

Would love feedback.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F40dzidN01g

>>21245654
The first paragraph, including the dialogue, was written in a different sitting than the second where I was feeling much more inspired, gay word but I really don't know what else to call it, and so it came much easier than the second paragraph. I guess my issue is that sometimes its much easier for me to write purple passages than other times so how would I go about it then? Try to tone down the extent of run-ons and descriptive passages across the whole work or patch the flowery sections between more standard writing?

>>21245701
The feeling I get from a lot of the descriptors is disconnected. Put yourself in the shoes of the character and describe things as if you were there. Since it's third-person you can paint the picture as if you were an omniscient observer experiencing the moment through the shoes of the central character.
As is, the voice of the 'narrator' seems too detached, as if we're not actually there, but you're describing something that may have happened somewhere at some point, and you are attempting to make it poetic, but since the core of the feeling of being there is missing it comes off contrived.
>the sun
>the leaves
What you've chosen to describe is too obvious, stock and impersonal. You can describe shrubbery in the most flowery language imaginable, but if you're just describing a shrub, it's still a shrub.
Imagine you're actually there. What would the character be thinking about? What would they say about the scenery? How does it make them feel? Focus on what's important. The rest is noise.

>>21245753
Thank you. I've never thought of it this way before, embarassing to say. I suppose I was writing more of a scene out of a movie than out of a book.

>>21245462
AAAHHHHHHHHH. Now I'm too scared to publish it!!!

>>21245310
I open chaotic good every time like clockwork.

>>21245515
Started a little genetic but the eventual twist to horror was intriguing. Good prose overall.

Hey WG, I asked my roommate for some feedback on a rendition of a folk tale and he said my opening paragraph was too confusing. Did I filter him or is it a mess?

>Once upon a place there was a horribly ugly man and a very handsome goblin. His name was Bobert the Goblin, but we will refer to him as Rob the Hobgoblin for short. Richard, who was truly a dreadful sight, was a man of much wealth. You see, he is ugly because he is an oil man, and all oil men are ugly. Rich was Rich, and that money is what attracted Rob the Hobgoblin to the home of Dicks. Rob the Hobgoblin was the one who kept the house. He would keep the dishes clean, keep the floor swept. keep the chickens fed, and keep having sex with Mrs. Dick. Richard was fond of all but one of these, but he never had much spine.

>>21245866
You filtered him. This is fucking hilarious.

>>21245866
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qJgnm72tXI
Don't worry, nothing is original. If you find this shit funny listen to this whole album. You have a similar style and I love it.

How do you overcome jumbled first drafting syndrome short of coming back to it with freash eyes at a later date?

>>21245302
miniMAG issue19
full issues at minimag.space
send submissions to minimagsubmissions@gmail.com
best of at end of year, what makes the cut?

>>21246062

>>21246063

>>21246065

>>21246067

>>21246069

>>21246071

>>21246073

>>21246074

>>21246076

>>21246077
0 pieces this week were from /lit/
all you gotta do is send something to minimagsubmissions@gmail.com

>>21243536
Nobody had this issue, seriously? As if everybody who writes inherently loves writing. And if not, why wouldn't it get more discussed?

>>21245462
That's your book? I was just about to look it up, because I definitely want to read it. Just one question- it doesn't have a sad ending, does it?

>>21246086
No. When it feels tedious I stop writing, because when it feels tedious what I write is tedious.

>>21246229
Have you had a phase when everything you've penned was tedious? Perhaps, when you began writing your first stories. Did you feel severely discouraged then?

>>21246253
No, I was enjoying it because I wanted to write and I wrote what I wanted.
Find the child-like sense of play again. Remember that it's supposed to be fun, and to write what you want to write rather than what you think other people think is 'good'.
Also, what are we doing right now? Wax on, wax off, my dude.

>>21245462
>I don't know about the painting though
To me the weirder thing is the title font on the spine. Seems off.
Why not just use the same font as at the front?

>>21245430
>West; America
Don't do this. Cut out "america"

>>21246336
Also, wtf is "kingdom of the west"
its not a kingdom and chinese people didn't see it as such either. very shallow orientalist nonsense.
rest is fine though

>>21246339
every country name here ends with 国 which literally translates to kingdom

>>21245462
it's looking good man
maybe make the font on the front cover 'pop' more, goal is for it to be easily readable without expanding the thumbnail

>>21246372
I just want to say this dude is a nigga

>>21245462
>The three
>The three
You're repeating yourself
And "political, social, economic climate"? You're writing a novel, not a undergrad history paper. Drop the cliches, especially cliches that pertains to non fiction social science
>Pre 1900s
Just say 18th century. Or specify the year it begins in at the beginning of the blurb and let the reader figure out the rest for themselves
And the last two sentences.....you're not enticing anybody to become interested in the story, your for fact laying out the sentiments and primary theme of the book. Why? The "american dream"? And Why are you using this phrase in relation to Gold Rush California? Ahistorical.
Also, leave out the names in the blurb. "hutchinson callaway" "Montgomary attison" Who cares. It makes the sentences clunky and the narration boring.
>meets a dixie fleeing the destruction of the civil war and a yankee with a mysterious past
Thats it.
>there the three men
Why is this a sentence? Start with either "The three men" only or "There they" only
And you're wasting too much space throwing around different names for california for a blurb thats a short paragraph. Use that space for suspense, not world building

I found this today after checking to see if my old phone worked after 4 years, is this salvageable?

Before theycould be crystallised, Mrs Blake strode into the room porting an apron around her waist and a spotted bow in her hair, she carried a tray for tea and biscuits,placed in front of her husband and then threw the window open flooding the room with cut grass and washing away the sweetness of magnolias. Mrs Blake surveyed the room, she clicked her tongue thrice and removed the dolls from the floor and placed them to rest shaking her head disapproving at her daughter. "Beautiful day," Mrs Blake said but her eyes were transfixed on the painting as if she was there and not supposed to care for children or a husband, and her eyes were a little glassy as one's usually are when holding back tears and she sighed loudly before repeating herself.
It was a beautiful day, that was undeniable. A day where the flowers blossomed: camellia white, red and pink; daffodil yellow and dwarf irises purple, entwined around the base of where all of the flowers were planted - Mrs Blake's pride and joy, her single greatest accomplishment if you asked, the magnolia tree in the middle of the garden, a white canopy that she called her little heaven after her last husband (Victoria's father) had likened it to a cloud they had watched for hours during the early days when their marriage was joyful instead of loveless. The sun was still in its adolescenceso the cream cloud wasn't yet blinding to look at directly and Mr Blake glanced up once from his reading and his gaze lingered enough for him to declare that she should "paint the tree" and Mrs Blake agreed it would make for a beautiful painting, and she promptly left the room to retrieve her tools from the closet all awhile wondering if the painting would be best painted by someone like her or by someone more qualified, as if one could be more qualified than another at painting the same scene and then she began to think of painters who had painted amazing works: Monet, Picasso, Rafael, as if she was in league with such people, such men, which she felt regretful immediately for she was a wife of a man, and not even a great man, and she was not a painter in their sense. Her eyes were glossy again as she crossed the drawing room to step into the brilliant sun and she was thankful that no one had noticed and she set the canvas on the grass and felt warm.

>>21246360
This was also part of it but there was a large gap between

For his step-daughter, the words bore resounding joy, as if the stars would align after this pregnant pause, as if the world would be choked in its humidity and reborn in an instant with its passing, as if the summer falling away among brown and red leaves (and those little chocolate seeds that her brother collected every autumn and set about piercing them with needle and thread until he had made a suitable weapon to compete against other boys, swinging them over and over until one cracked the seed or ones knuckles) settled that the little light on the horizon turning the sky warm shades of orange, yellow, and red would be visible to her eyes. Yet for the moment she settled on a streak of sunlight waltzing in a dust gown and retrieved three dolls from her house that had to be keptbeside the mantelpiece (which had a great watercolour painting hanging above by anadmired artist - and a friend of her mother's, or so she liked to recount on summer evenings where the horizon's orange had not yet deepened to plum)and set them down in the light because the brilliance of the setting summer could transfix the strongest and smartest of men and theprettiest of women

I'm not a nigga, that is all

Is rewriting a bestselling novel and then changing the characters and setting and plot but keeping the structure plagiarism?

Cause im half way through just doing that…

>>21246385
>>21246385
Ask EL James.

>>21246385
no, because there is a limited amount of variation in structure you can do anyway
you can rename it a lot but essentially good structure looks almost always the same
but at that point you know it anyway and can just write your own

Newfag here. Give me criticisms. This is my first short story

Behind my back, I know that they are talking about me. Throwing slights and slanders in my name, damaging my reputation. But this time, the very thing that they dislike about me will get the better of them. I will use it to rise to the top of this upcoming school festival.

They held the School Festival yearly in high esteem. Every student looks forward to this event to showcase their talents. May it be rare or common. This is the right time for me to showcase my talent, which is trained since I was a child. I study at a very prestigious school. After all, my parents love me so much that they won’t let their son stay in a rotting and free school where he would meet lowlifes. I prepared myself, Ate plenty, and made sure that I am ready.

Before the date of the contest, I have taken laxatives to prime myself. With that, I am certain that I will leave the audience in awe of the performance that I will be showing them.

On the day of the contest, my mom bid me good luck saying. “Don’t overdo it, my son. Remember, always present yourself properly. Always have self-restraint and always think of your image to the public”. And I heed almost all of my mother’s advice. Ha ha ha! Surely my public image will soar higher than before. My image to the public will not be tarnished. Not anymore, not by murmurs and underhanded ways. I will be immortalized in this way.

The organizers started laying out all the things that we will use. I am drooling, thinking about the pleasures that I will soon indulge myself in. My fellow contestants have been glaring at me with discernible eyes, but it is understandable, for I am the biggest threat in the contest.

The officials ordered us to seat at our respective seats. And as soon as the timer starts to tickle, I started to perform. As I have imagined, the audience is struck with awe. Some are waving their wands to me, and some are saying stuff like “Stop” or “That’s enough”. They clearly couldn’t handle my talent, my awesomeness, the thing that I hold my very pride in. Even my mom is crying, begging me to stop. But No! They will not stop me. I am making my very own legacy. None can interfere! The other contestant watched. In shock, they are frozen to their seats. They can’t even begin to comprehend what they are seeing, a god's appetite in a mortal man. Contestants who can’t endure just vomit in their seats. But I, I will not stop. No one can stop me from doing a record of this eating contest.

>>21246273
>Find the child-like sense of play again. Remember that it's supposed to be fun, and to write what you want to write rather than what you think other people think is 'good'.

I guess I just haven't found yet what I want to write about. With or without regard to what other people think is good.

>Also, what are we doing right now?
Procrastination is a hell of a drug. Well, at least that's what I'm doing right now.

>Be writing
>Font size 11, page layout so letters encompass every square inch of white space
>I'm aware you obviously can't print a book like this. It's just incentive to write more and a greater feeling of accomplishment knowing that one page will be reformatted later into like 3-4 pages
>Chapters at minimum have 5 of these pages
>Stretch a bit to make ends meet but whatever that's what every does, right?
>One day be walking around a book store
>Really good 2-4-1 sale for brand new books
>They're all the classics; To Kill A Mockingbird, Frankenstein, A Brave New World, The Iliad, and several more
>Realize I've never actually read the classics, like, any of them
>Pick up Dr Jackal and Mr Hyde + The Iliad the go home
>Read DJ&MH first
>It's like 2-4 pages between chapters, one chapter was literally one page long
>50 pages total, the other 140 are different tales
>Realize all the classic books are actually short as fuck
>Realize I've been stretching my pages beyond the realm of boredom because I was reaching an overshot goal I assumed was normal
Well.... Shit.

>>21246479
jekyll and hyde was an unlucky pick man. that's a penny dreadful that just happenned to be really good (think of The Godfather compared to other mafia movies of the time). the whole genre was based around horror novella-short stories that could be printed on super cheap paper (penny).

compare this to something like Tale or Two cities or Three Musketeers. they were both printed chapter by chapter in newspapers/magazines. authors would purposely make them long as fuck because they got paid for each issue they were featured in + they signed longterm contracts before starting

>>21246109
Nope. But I'm too cowardly to publish it. I should edit it some more

>>21246521
I wanna read it.

>>21246356
Whew thank goodness I didn't publish it yet

Misanthropic Robot:

RaZimoVS own visor met with the gaze of the boy staring before him.

Human of course, thin and dishevelled, his visage overall gaunt, the angular sockets of his cheekbones serving a pedestal for black eyes seated in their own crevices.

There was a moment of silence.

Predicted by the memory facet allocations of RaZimoVS' biological reasoning sub-sect, the boys countenance soon changed from one of cautious intrigue to hopeful dependency.

He approached, muscles lining the outskirts of his mouth tensing.

Before the first words were uttered, the boy had entered close proximity, sensing this RaZimoVS' hands struck out for his throat.

Meeting their target, the boy attempted a squeel, but was to late, the robotic fingers clasped around his neck had restrained with enough force to prevent the passage of air but retain consciousness.

He drew the boy nearer to his chest.

Emerging metal prongs entered the boys eyes and brought with them the gentle sounds of crunching bone and sloshing tissues.

Writhing, RaZimoVS held the human cherub in place.

Time passed and as resistance abated, his fingers loosened upon the neck, the body fell to ground.

Sparing one more glance at the now deflated eyes, resembling the empty plastic bags that flew down abandoned streets, RaZimoV raised his leg and brought down the flat metal club of his foot upon the head, splitting it in two.

It was the eyes RaZimoV hated the most, ALWAYS carrying the expectant will of humans for their robotic saviours to care for them, humanity was nothing but a leftover antiquated husk of the evolutionary journey for robots, one more needless dependant muddling the goal of complete efficiency.

Today had been a good day.

>>21246086
I think it's the opposite. It's not that no one has the issue, it's that no one here has an answer.

>>21246479
I found most modern classics, ~1920 - 1980 are mostly 50k words. Metamorphosis is something like 30k only

>>21246086
I would say I don't have that problem.
If you don't like writing, why do you write?
I'm confused.

>>21246527
Thank you but now I don't think it's good enough to be published. I need to go back and edit it. Maybe the pacing is too slow? The word choice is all wrong? The story itself is shit? So many variables. I don't even think my beta reader or editor actually read it.

>>21246504
Huh that's actually pretty cool. I never knew that. And yeah I really wish I picked Brave New World or Dracula instead. I really don't mind short stories but the short runtime for this (Jekyll and Hyde) made a lot of events seem rushed.
Wonder if they still print stories on newspapers, might be an easy way to get pseudo-published.

Does it get easier? I want to write but when I sit down it just gets so hard to start. I struggle through 200 words and then stop. It's just a practice thing, right?

I want to pursue trad pub and I was on Reddit on a thread about sales and people were saying that selling 5k was good… and that many people can’t even sell 5k. I feel so discouraged LMAO I’m still going to try though. 5k is so low

>>21245869
>>21245881
Thank you my brothers. You've restored my confidence.

>>21246808
I personally crank out maybe 500 to 1,000 words on a sitting, but I only write what intrigues me at the moment. None of my works really ever pass 2,000 words. But I think it is probably just practice.

>>21246851
>I think it is probably just practice
I feel like just when I get into a good routine with writing that I drop it, for some reason. I need to try to stick to doing a little bit regularly, somehow.

Anywhere I can get commissions to write smut? Im trying to grow my website

It seems i have been needlessly over complicating things.
I've cared too much for others opinions.
Its time to get back to the basics.
Writing, video games, masturbation and clinical insanity.

>>21246893
Now you're getting it.

>>21246830
These are probably people who self published through one of those indie publishing companies that publishes shit like George Floyd Creepypastas, and never do any sort of advertising outside of a Facebook post.

Which of these should I develop into my cover? The book is about three friends who get caught between supernatural extremes. Before you ask, yes, there is a scene where cultists dress up a dog in women's clothing to fuck it and another where vampire sucks a used tampon.

>>21246946
3 looks like the best one

>>21246830
50% of tradpub doesn't make more than 12 sales.

90% don't break 2000.

This is from the recent lawsuit with S&S.

>>21246946
>>21246955
Seconding 3.
Looks great and sounds like a good book. What's it called? This is my kind of shit. I'd like to read it.

>>21246962
I heard this was debunked

>>21246946
Actually, no. I think I'd go with 2. It's more unique and the hands in front of the face gives the 'monster' a more sinister look. 3 is more grand and awe inspiring, 2 is more sinister and feels like it's grabbing you. Depends on tone.

>>21246955
>>21246969
>>21246978
Thank you.
The book is called The Pacer's Club Comedies. The tone is practically schizophrenic.

>>21246987
>The tone is practically schizophrenic
Fuck yes. I'm in.

>>21246976
It wasn't.

The "deboonking" was saying that this isn't taking into account the fact that each title will have multiple versions (paperback, hardcover, ebook) and so it's not fair to split the sales into three and that manipulates the numbers a bit. Which means at best perhaps the average tradpub title across all versions sells maybe 36 copies instead of 12.

However on the opposite side of this, these numbers are also mass inflated by the fact that these major publishers have a few gigantically successful bestseller classics that they're publishing.

>>21246626
Is there still a public version?
I didn't have time to read it the last time you were offering a public version, but I might today. No guarantees.
I should war you that the last time I read it, I made it about 20 pages in, and was bored senseless.

>>21246962

>>21246938
No… it was a discussion among editors and ppl in tradpub :/
>>21246962
The 12 value was debunked but yh midlist authors aren’t selling much

>>21245544
>>21245528
Printers print in CMYK colors not RGB. Choose CMYK in your pdf export settings. And next time, read submission guides.

>>21246360
>>21246366
bomper

>>21247060
Either way books from random ass authors can't possibly sell all that much. Even Moby Dick sold something like 3000 copies for decades until Melville died

>>21247030
https://countercraft.substack.com/p/no-most-books-dont-sell-only-a-dozen

>>21247024
Nope.
>I should war you that the last time I read it, I made it about 20 pages in, and was bored senseless.
I remember, but I honestly had no idea how to make a Chinese dude walking around San Francisco any more exciting.

>>21246946
3, 4, 6 are all good. The first illustration doesn't do it for me.

>>21246946
I like 6 the best. Clear picture

>>21247205
This dude really went through the effort to both define a book and a sale.

Oof.

>>21247205
>it all depends on what you mean by “book,” “published,” and “sell.”
So, in short, it's true

>>21246987
Do you have an excerpt of this story? Sounds interesting.

>>21246086
>>>21243536

Yes, I have. It came from a devotion to free writing every day, and also studying presence of mind, witness states, deep perception of the senses, letting go of control, disregarding all desire for quality or sense or future goals, some reading on magic and esoteric practices, a practice of devotion to imagination and treating the beings I encounter in my mind as living beings . . . now when I write I look to tap into a feeling of intensely present navigation. Sometimes I also listen for voices, even close my eyes and type as I hear things or see things. It's been incredibly rewarding, and I've written things beyond my conscious potential this way. Books:

>the courage to create - rollo may (nature of insight, also seen with Poincare. Importance of feeling in knowing)
>journey to ixtland - carlos castaneda (description of warrior state, how to navigate present moment, keeping death at your shoulder. Intent and feeling as magical modes of existence and key to life)
>reality - peter kingsley (metis, deepening understanding of warrior state, being gifted world as perception, meaning of life as observation, loosening of all shackles of choice and bounded to fate)
>wild mind - natalie goldberg (some free writing advice, lots of padding, take what you like. I use the first three rules she presented)
>atomic habits (identity>beliefs>systems. Making unique spaces for writing. Preparing my writing space the night before and beginning immediately).
>lost art of the imagination - gary lachmann (overview of history of imagination as a distinct realm of living beings)

>>21247094
I did. There was no indication it would not fit the guidelines. I didn't select any different pdf export settings. I did not switch settings to sRGB. I did all the covers the same way and one of them wound up not jelling with the system while the others did.

Is /wg/ the place for writing in the form of manga/drama or does that belong on /a/? I would like feedback on some scripts for a manga but the rules aren't clear don't want to get b&.

>>21247060
See >>21247011

>>21247367
Are there any prose-heavy parts? If so, post that here.

>>21247205
>So this statistic isn’t true.
>Or at least it isn’t true in the way you might think.
This is the most common "fact check" shit around these days.

>CLAIM: OP sucks cocks.
>FACT CHECK: False. The original poster, while he doe place penises in his mouth and stimulate them orally, does not apply a negative pressure to the penises using a vacuum. While it may on the surface seem true that the original poster "sucks" cocks in a colloquial sense, it is not really the case.

>>21247387
D-don't worry guys we'll all be part of the 0.2% right?

Can someone critique the first few pages of my postmodern doorstopper? I'm struggling to find the motivation to finish it. I need to know if it is entertaining.

https://pastebin.com/raw/tD0QNFUq

>>21247350
I'm at work, but the book is mostly complete aside from one more planned editing pass before handing it off. I'll provide an excerpt tonight or tomorrow.

>>21247344
>>21247387
I knew it would be too much to ask you chud-buds to read an entire several paragraph long article, especially when it contradicts the deep thought peice of a single vague tweet from someone you never heard of before but which you want to me true.

Article lays out clearly how even a single basic new release in only one language/national market would be recorded under 4 categories with onto 75% of sales data even captured. But the best part of the article is actually the top comment where an actual lead bookscan analyst breaks down her estimates on booksales.

>>21246946
Been thinking about this for a while.
There are pros and cons to each. 3 is the most 'professional' looking, but as a result, it's the most plain in a lot of ways despite its detail. It is very good, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't have the depth of simplicity that 1 and 2 have. It has more flash and polish, but less staying power.
The change in posture of the monster in 1 and 2 creates more intrigue in the viewer. 'It' appears hunched over like a predator, and to come from below, out of the shadows, while simultaneously be floating above. It's this uncertainty of positioning that creates a feeling of unease and tension.
With the empty space it's as though this creature appears from the darkness. It's what you don't see in 1 and 2 that scares you, and draws you in.
One thing your choice might depend on is whether this creature sits back, detached, and plays, or if it grabs you from the shadows.
3 is the safest option. 1 and 2 are riskier, but potentially brilliant.
I've seen 3 before, but 1 and 2 are different.
Just my opinion.

>>21247481
She says 0.6% truly make it and sustain the big 5. The picture is fucking grim, but maybe a bit less grim than the rando tweet.

>>21247205
The original post clearly states "out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books".
The article tries to bring in self-published books, books first printed a long time ago, reissues, "classics" in the public domain, and a lot of other crap that literally has nothing to do with books published in the current calendar year.
Then, zchwir (sorry, it didn't give its pronouns) tries to lump in micropresses, when it's clear we're talking about publishers big enough to be involved with an antitrust suit.
Zchwe continues to flood the article with ztschwis own guesses. As if we're supposed to care.
If this is an example of grplschwis writing quality, I'm willing to bet grplschwis novel sucks too.

>>21247481
I did though. I explained why this "deboonk" is complete cope already ITT. I knew it would be too much to ask you chud-buds to read a thread.

>>21245302
>have a vague idea
>have a couple concrete scenes
>have no idea how to solidify or connect any of it.
how do people write? I've been writing for two decades and I haven't finished a single story. I'm actually starting to get worried I never will.

>>21247501
Add hot women to your story and have them low-key alludes to one of your fetishes.

>>21247513
>implying one of my fetishes isn't going to be a main theme anyway.
Look, I might not know the issue, but that definitely isn't it.

>>21247532
I don't know what the problem is then. Desire to make hot girls roll in the mud or whatever usually does it for me.

>>21247536
Well, yeah, but I want an actual story, not just a porn novelette.

>>21247545
You don't want to read about bikini football for 80k words?

>>21247205
Kristen McLean, lead industry analyst from NPD BookScan, commented on the article. She says:
Collectively, 45,571 unique ISBNs appear for these publishers in our frontlist sales data for the last 52 weeks (thru week ending 8-24-2022).
In this dataset:
• 0.4% or 163 books sold 100,000 copies or more
• 0.7% or 320 books sold between 50,000-99,999 copies
• 2.2% or 1,015 books sold between 20,000-49,999 copies
• 3.4% or 1,572 books sold between 10,000-19,999 copies
• 5.5% or 2,518 books sold between 5,000-9,999 copies
• 21.6% or 9,863 books sold between 1,000-4,999 copies
• 51.4% or 23,419 sold between 12-999 copies
• 14.7% or 6,701 books sold under 12 copies
So, only about 15% of all of those publisher-produced frontlist books sold less than 12 copies. That's not nothing, but nowhere as janky as what has been reported.
BUT, I think the real story is:
• roughly 66% of those books from the top 10 publishers sold less than 1,000 copies over 52 weeks
• less than 2% sold more than 50,000 copies

>>21247501
It's an association game that is mostly unconscious, just the same way you typed that post of yours without deliberating over every word and punctuation point. Sentences form themselves from some deep inner mud with only the vaguest of starts. The key is to simply be present and to remove judgement. You have some idea of what writing is that is blocking you, when all you need to do is type and it will take care of itself if you just let go and let it happen. Approach writing with a sense of curiosity rather than fear or expectation or judgement. Intrigue and curiosity and being present are the key.

>>21247560
So your likely measure of success with tradpub is about 1000 copies?

>>21247549
>80k
>not 300k
you are like little baby.
I can read all the porn I want on ao3, and I definitely do. Real fucked up shit too, if I'm down real bad. But it's not what I wanna write!

>>21247501
I'd say to write short stories, try your hand at writing something and finish it. Don't bother with the thought of reading back to the beginning and correcting something unless you really have to. Editing on the spot will only impede your creativity and get you out of your writing state. After it's finished, you read it, take note of what was wrong, maybe read some books on how to correct your prose, then you write another that is slightly longer, then you do another reviewing, then another story, etc.

It's like running, you're not going to run a marathon on your first try. It takes practice.

What type of writing is popular to put in my blog?

>>21247212
Well, see, that's the problem.
A Chinese dude walking around San Francisco isn't exciting.
That's why it isn't a story.
A story is goal, conflict, disaster.
You wrote goal, no conflict, no disaster.
That's not a story, that's a happening, or an incident.
And incidents are boring.
You needed to come up with a story.

At one point you cited Steinbeck as an influence.
Did you happen to notice that "Grapes Of Wrath" was full of conflict and disaster?
Right off the bat, a murderer gets paroled, he finds his family's farm abandoned, he finds them risking everything to go to California, he violates his parole to join them, the grandparents die on the way, etc.
Whereas your book's opening is repeated instances of "Oh, you're an unskilled, uneducated Chinese immigrant? How do you do, good sir?"
Why didn't you go for more of a story instead? Consider the following.
As soon as he gets off the boat, he finds no one gives a crap.
If he meets other Chinese immigrants, they lull him into a false sense of security, then beat him up and rob him blind.
He finds he has no option but to sleep in an unsafe, dingy alleyway, where he is harassed further. (Think of David's travails in "Kidnapped" by Robert Louis Stevenson.)
Perhaps he gets arrested for vagrancy, thrown into prison, and ends up in a hard-labor camp.
Not only is that much more of a story, but it gives your reader a reason to care about your character, and possibly even root for him.
I could go on.
In closing, I want to point out that I'm not trying to be mean here; this is merely meant to be a pointed critique, and any misemotion you pick up from it is my frustration that you don't seem to know basic story structure.

Made it official today. Quit my job to become a NEET after I previously quit the six figure job I went deep into debt to get. More time to write.

Where can I find info collecting that welfare check to support my writing?

>>21247488
>fucking grim, but maybe a bit less grim than the rando tweet.
That's my only point. Modern publishing is corrupted and reading is in the trash, but let's please use plausible data and not keep reposting Le Fake News.

>>21247490
>hurr libtards hurr **unintelligible yodeling**

>>21247492
Your deboonk of the deboonk is shit. Big sellers are irrelevant to how the bottom half of performers sell rate because this isnt a average of all. Are you still honestly still insisting that half of major publisher books sell less than 12 copies? Read and stop posting misinformation: >>21247560

>>21247617
RIP

>>21247572
>>21247593
thank you anons, I'll try

Question:
Should I really work to simplify the background of my characters? I realized I had worked extremely hard to create real-world plausible origin stories for slightly fantastical protags and those got really complex as a result. Is it just better to come up with simple background that are linked to the ways in which characters progress? For example, I have one character who bounced around several jobs to plausibly end up doing what he is. Would it be better to just handwave it?

>>21247617
I hope you're trolling, because this sounds like the worst decision ever.
Most famous authors either struggled to survive on their writing income, or had day jobs.
Frank Herbert spent most of his life working in the publishing industry.
Herman Melville had an endless string of day jobs, some in teaching, some in the government. "Moby Dick" only sold a few thousand copies in his lifetime, and didn't become a best-seller, and part of the western canon, until well after his death.
Philip K. Dick, despite writing 44 novels, only managed to see real money after selling the movie rights to "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" (which became "Blade Runner'), but passed away before he could enjoy his good fortune.
Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka died penniless.
My day job sucks too, and manages to leave me too tired to write most of the time, but it pays the bills.

>>21247679
Not necessarily, but it sounds like you're prone to the "worldbuilding" trap.
In your case, the character-building trap.
Some people who aspire to be writers come up with lots of background info and little else.
You need to write a story, not an encyclopedia.
You need to use your encyclopedia as source material for a story.
No one will remember all the details of what you wrote, but they will remember how you made them feel.

Is writing a novel worth it? I need money

>>21247710
No

>>21247711
Then what is worth doing in terms of writing? Fuck i just want to make minimum wage

>>21247706
I think you're right. I hate worldbuilding and info. I'm just going to barely explain his background.

>>21247717
Writing advertisement copy or staffing in some awful screenwriting department at Netflix (both heavily nepotistic and competitive industries where being white and/or male is frowned upon)

>>21247717
A friend did exceptionally well on the US army ASFAB and now writes VOA-style propaganda for a living.

>>21247710
If money is your endgame then writing a book is like the last thing on the list to spend time on.

If I advertise my book here will you guys meme it into becoming a hit like Call of the Croc?

>>21247747
That book is not even close to a hit, despite the author spamming his works nonstop here periodically (and being banned for it occasionally)

>>21247484
Thanks. I appreciate the input. It's actually hard to pick and I'm getting extremely mixed responses with most people saying 3 is their favorite, but 1/2 and 6 have their own charm. I've been working with the illustrator for a long time and will probably just pay for the development of multiple covers.

>>21247760
3 has a lot more detail. I vastly prefer 3.
The others are just flat expanses of color.

>>21247725
Just dribble out his background as needed by the story.
If it doesn't serve the story, it doesn't need to be included.
It was still useful to write all that background for your own purposes, though.

>>21247717
There's a whole book called "The Business Of Being A Writer" by Jane Friedman.
It may be what you're looking for.

>>21247768
These aren't remotely finished either, just basic mockups. I'm just asking everywhere before I commit on an illustration

>>21247615
>Whereas your book's opening is repeated instances of "Oh, you're an unskilled, uneducated Chinese immigrant? How do you do, good sir?"
>If he meets other Chinese immigrants, they lull him into a false sense of security
Was is really that subtle that you couldn't figure out it was the Tongs?

>>21247760
A hybrid of the two would be cool to see.
Good luck, my man.
I look forward to the release.

>>21247807
Do you mean "Tong" as in "a secret society or fraternal organization especially of Chinese in the U.S. formerly notorious for gang warfare"?
Then yes, it was way too subtle.
For one thing, until now, I was unaware of the existence of the Tongs.
And it seems like interactions with a criminal syndicate wouldn't be so dry.

>>21247845
yes. I'll put in more rich décor in the scene to really hammer in the oddness of filthy rich chinese men in America at the time.

>>21247905
Adding decor doesn't make it a story.
How about having the Tongs rescue him from the hard-labor camp? (But only after he's suffered sufficiently there.)
Then he finds they expect to be paid back for their "service", which involves doing terrible things on their behalf. Like beating up recent Chinese immigrants and robbing them blind, like he was.
It's part of their plan to make Chinese immigrants so hopeless and desperate that they willingly take whatever the Tongs offer. That helps to ensure their loyalty.
He considers going to the police, but they don't care about him, and if the Tongs learned of his disloyalty, they'll have worse things in mind for him than death.

I'm basing this on my memory of the first 20 or so pages I read a long time ago, but if what you have now is anything like it was, I don't think it can be rescued...it needs to be rethought from the ground up.
Goal, conflict, disaster. With disaster replaced by less-disaster near the mid-book climax, and with something resembling triumph at the end.

Ugh...if you don't write this, maybe I will. This is coming to me more easily than any of my own ideas.

>>21247747
It’s worth a shot. It’s weird how famous Call of the Crocodile has become. I remember when ads for that were first showing up and /lit/ was freaking out because a /lit/izen ( F Gardner) finally published their book.

>>21247944
And Gardner has been stuck in that win ever since.
He's literally unable to move on, or accept that his time has passed.
CotC is only famous in his own mind, and because of his incessant shill-spamming, which is limited to 4chan because most other sites have either banned him or curtailed his activities severely.
You may want to reconsider your idea of being like Gardner in any way whatsoever.

>>21247747
The book is only famous in a small corner of the internet, and the advertising budget has far outweighed the revenue, that's for sure. In a sense, this isn't a bad way to market; take massive losses until hitting paydirt. Gardner will never hit that because you need merit to blow up

>>21247930
>How about having the Tongs rescue him from the hard-labor camp? (But only after he's suffered sufficiently there.)
That' doesn't make any sense in the context of history.

I'll make it more clear that the Tongs are in cahoots with the Mining company shipping a bunch of cheap chinese laborers to the mines.
The Chinese are already hopeless from the Opium Wars, and they're a bunch of peasants. The mine companies want cheap labor, the Tongs send these random peasants and get paid by the companies. Now with new laborers gets them into conflict with the Irish who want higher wages.

I guess it wasn't all that clear. I'll rewrite it a bit to have the labor issue come up sooner.

>>21247845
>>21247930
Chinaman Anon, don't listen to this guy. If he doesn't know the Historical context he won't understand the story. The minute he said he never "heard of the Tongs" means he has zero contextual clues about the History and the book isn't for him.

Now that said I never read your shit either, but books are niche for a reason and people have preferred genres. So post the story and I'll take a look .

I didn't get to finish that chinaman story. When are you realeasing it anon? It was just about to get interesting.

>>21248045
The labor camp can be one run by the police.
Then the Tongs can break him out of there, and send him to their own labor camp. After, of course, he refuses to beat up recent Chinese arrivals.
Now you've got a beginning that doesn't bore your reader into submission.
>>21248062
I never heard of the Tongs, but I'm decently familiar with the Triads.
I don't have a problem with the historical context; my problem is that the book bored me into submission right off the bat, and that is directly traceable to neglecting story structure.

>>21248120
>The labor camp can be one run by the police.
>Then the Tongs can break him out of there, and send him to their own labor camp. After, of course, he refuses to beat up recent Chinese arrivals.
>Now you've got a beginning that doesn't bore your reader into submission.
It's not fantasy man... You're going to have to write that book on your own.

>>21247617
Based. Fuck the other posts. Fuck everything except the work of your heart, as long as you can sustain yourself, or stand to suffer for it. You stand against their cowardice and expose their own weakness in the face of their second-hand reasoned excuses.

>>21248201
You don't have to use the plot ideas I gave you.
But you need to use *something*.
You need actual story structure, not a series of boring interludes.

Say I'm trying to describe a fantasy creature that is a mix between a cow and a giraffe. But I'm telling the story in third person limited and the MC has never seen a creature like this before, nor a cow or a giraffe. How should I go about this? Two or three sentences of describing the creature without using 'cow' or 'giraffe', or simply just say: "it's a gold and black short-haired beast with the body of a steer yet long neck similar to a giraffe with large curling horns on its head--a narrow black mane flows down its neck to its shoulders."

>>21247576
>I can read all the porn I want on ao3
Any recommendations? I'm still on NNN, but most of ao3 stuff I've seen was weird porn parodies of Harry Potter and similar, no good smut. There's a sea of shit there, hard to find anything worthwhile.

>>21248244
An overwhelming number of people who quit their job or go to a writing retreats to write a book never finish one. They simply don't have the discipline and have their head in the clouds about "kick-starting" their manuscript. Not having resources also means you absolutely MUST be industry published, because you won't be able to hire development and a copy editor. It's a bad idea for most.

>>21248337
depends on what you want. I got recs for a lot of shit, but it better be gay. The last one I read was "Better Things to Do with a Flute in Wartime" which was 300k+ words of hardcore gay xianxia sex. Very good.

>550 words today.
I fucked up yesterday, got distracted by inane shit, should have been reading, outlining and writing at least few hours. I'm not getting this amount of free time anytime soon before being old, for fuck's sake. Fucked up today as well, but yesterday at least I had people to distract me, today it was mostly me. StayFocused app for Chrome is a godsend, you literally can't access pages or turn the app off once you use 'Nuclear' option. Highly recommended (but you still are going to find ways to procrastinate, but it turned my productivity up easily 2-3x times)

Anyway, I think I need to spend more time out of my house in the library, I just bought a small laptop (used Chromebook from Sweden bought for pittance) and this shit is amazing for writing, I can sit anywhere and just open it up on my knees. Even the weird keyboard is easy to get used to. I can even write in while taking a bus.

This is it, I'm going to grind hard. Only 3k into my NaNowrimo goal, even though it's 13 day of the month already. Now I can crank it up to the limit. This is a working month. The best part about the laptop is that I can't do anything serious on it, as even writing in googledoc is kinda laggy. I'm FORCED to be productive. Going to spend 3-4 hours a day writing this week, will give my impressions later.
Wish me luck.

>>21248304
>He called out to the creature, only realizing afterwards that it wasn't his mother-in-law.

>>21248363
Forget Nano and find an achievable and maintainable weekly goal you can maintain in perpetuity

>>21248359
>depends on what you want. I got recs for a lot of shit, but it better be gay. The last one I read was "Better Things to Do with a Flute in Wartime" which was 300k+ words of hardcore gay xianxia sex. Very good.
Unironically wanted to branch into gay shit out of interest if romance and sex scenes are better written than in self-pub harems and erotica books. Thanks for the rec, anon. Will welcome more stuff, even gay stuff (Fantasy/Sci-fi setting prefered). Preferably written by men, not women.
By the way, how big is the reader base for gay smut? It appears to be abysmaly small from what I've seen.

How do I get more creative with my race ideas instead of them being "Furrys" I like animals but I don't know how to really get those juices flowing that isn't just "Furry"

(Yes I am a furry but I would perfer something more interesting then just a furry character)

>>21248384
>Forget Nano and find an achievable and maintainable weekly goal you can maintain in perpetuity
That's what I'm doing anon, but I'm Nano as an excuse to really get into it. I need a goal in life, and writing seems to be it. I have nothing left but reading and writing.

>>21248375
that's great

>>21248375
So I'm overthinking it, is how I'm interpreting this

>>21248386
>how big is the reader base for gay smut?
>It appears to be abysmaly small from what I've seen.
oh my god, are you from a parallel universe? 85% of all fanfiction is gay, and 95% of that has sex in it. You'll want the grandmaster of demonic cultivation/the untamed fanfic- the two MCs have a canonical breeding kink, and they made a vow to fuck every day. So the fanfiction is very horny.

>>21248417
>oh my god, are you from a parallel universe? 85% of all fanfiction is gay, and 95% of that has sex in it. You'll want the grandmaster of demonic cultivation/the untamed fanfic- the two MCs have a canonical breeding kink, and they made a vow to fuck every day. So the fanfiction is very horny.
I should be more precise, sorry. How big is the MALE reader base for gay smut? I know women are freaky and into this stuff.

But I will check out your recommendations, thanks.
Btw, I judged the size of reader base on male erotica I've seen, or rather strange lack of it everywhere. I never ventured into fanfiction or niche web stuff for it, so I'm ignorant of the size of those communities.

>>21248388
I'm in my room in bed. There is a white cup on my table I drank tea from earlier. I look at this and I think: a race of people, china-white and brittle, with a large handle on the back of their heads, like a cup, and their blood is hot and brown, like tea, and stimulating to drink, so they are a prized race to hunt and breed to gather their blood and drink it, stimulating as it is.

I am now aware of my genitals. I think of vinegar, and hands that do what they please without intervention, and I think of a race: they smell like vinegar, and their skin is translucent and jelly like. They seem to like gathering in fields in the morning and they are hard to spot among the dew. This is how they hunt their spiders, which they trap in large invisible nets and swallow for their magical properties. A man can see the silk hovering over the grass, the spiders all digesting into silk in their stomachs. They are wet to look at, and stink, like a fish drowned in vinegar. They are popular targets in the market towns as it is known that their hands have minds of their own, literally, and that they love the feeling of eels in their palm, perhaps because it is so like the tail they all lose in the first year of their life. A man needs only buy a few eels and go to market when they are in town, and their hands will grab at the eels unconsciously. This is enough to call in the sheriff, and by the rules of the land this attack warrants a penalty. For the price of an eel a man can have all the wealth these slimy creatures carry to market.

Like . . . use your imagination.

>>21248388
It's impossible. A rose by any other name is still a rose. There may be some alleviation.
I believe we had the same problem however and I solved it best I could, though not perfect:
I created genetic superman but thought it was corny. I became ashamed of my own world building in a sense, and I may be reading wrong into this, but that's what I'm getting from you.

So, I thought about it and decided to make them human octopus hybrids who pass entirely as human. This was a key to explain away complex things like regeneration and electroreception. Still corny fantasy science fiction shit. So, I start looking up octopus behaviors, and that's when I hit paydirt. Octopi exhibit some strange behaviors, like autocannibalism and females ripping the reproductive parts off males, and/or males detaching them (a hectocotylus). These more inhuman behaviors and how something with human logic suddenly made them interesting on coincided with the bullshit abilities I gave them.
Consider making them weird in behavior and habits based on their traits and you will at least make people uncomfortable or deconstruct the furfag shit

>>21245302
Could you all critique the first few pages of my postmodern doorstopper? I'm struggling to find the motivation to finish it. I need to know if it is entertaining.

https://pastebin.com/raw/tD0QNFUq

Feel free to criticize the writing. Just the first three paragraphs of a coming of age story:

Many said the fun ended when we passed into eleventh grade. We turned sixteen, seventeen; everything gained an unsettling speed. Sciences or humanities was the first customs house, the first border crossed, separating friends like travelers commuting from one train to another, their luggage left somewhere between the snow and the porters. Classrooms disbanded. Ben Moses broke up with Annie Walsh and Rick Brook stopped talking to the Gibson twins and Maria Paz dumped her boyfriend and scholarship—in that order—and Christian Cross was expelled from school after hurling a flask containing a fetus at the biology teacher.

Oh, yes; from class to class we towed Plato and something called hylomorphism that belonged to some forgettable school of thought. The Russian Revolution spread itself wide across our notebooks, and on page seventy-something the Tsar was executed between crossed-out scrawls. The economic causes of the war turned out to be complex, not what they look like by a long stretch, even if impressionism brought a fresh palette and a new idea of nature to painting. Susan Morrow was very fat and didn’t get along with anyone, but that year she came back crushingly thin and still didn’t get along with anyone.

It was a kind of hecatomb. Half the class fell in love with Olivia Pace at the same time or in turns. Every morning she came into the classroom, showered, barely powdered, it was a creaking and vulnerable vision that could hurt you if you dared think about it around midnight. Olivia always arrived forty-five minutes late, and until she made her appearance the syllabus was something dead, a waste, the teacher rambled on about Bismarck, as if painstakingly brushing his tailcoated corpse, the chalk repulsed. Her arrival resuscitated our desks. You couldn’t believe it, Olivia Pace, something so sponge-like and scented, stepping into the classroom, laughing, providing us with her fabled profile, her light at the prow, you wouldn’t believe it, it hurt so much.

>>21248522
I do not like the present tense. I don't know what 'callipygian' is, and it stands out among the rest of the writing because your vocabulary is not consistent with a word like that. There's a lack of causality and everything is so brief and scattered that there is no fictional dream present for me to get immersed in. If I could ask you to do one thing with this it would be to slow down and expand upon details and scenes. It all moves too fast, and it is too cursory. For me.

>>21248528
You have a good ear and strong imagery.

>>21248528
Totally purple—in a purple-proof place; alas, the topos of age attainments; —a waste, time of ours, accelerating into losing your readers off the bat.

Where did you learn to write like this?

>>21248528
Bin it and start fresh. Atrocious. Bundle of bad habits. Not sure if this is a troll b/c it's so thoroughly bad in every sentence. An achievement.

>>21248581
>Where did you learn to write like this?

I imagine he/she learned by reading. I can think of half a dozen writers similar in style to that post. You two >>21248581 >>21248595 are not only completely tasteless in your evaluation, but also incredibly rude and spiteful creatures.

>>21248528
>Every morning she came into the classroom, showered, barely powdered, it was a creaking and vulnerable vision that could hurt you if you dared think about it around midnight.
This should be two sentences. Like it overall.

>>21248612
>I can think of half a dozen writers similar in style to that post.
Who?

What is tasteless about telling the truth about very poor writing? I know it cut buddy, but it has to die. It really is bad. I just re-read it looking for something nice to say. Every single sentence is stinking sludge garbage slime. Every one. Laughably bad, but I get the sense it's not done in jest.

>>21248473
ah. I understand. I'm sure there are some men, but most of it is written by women, although everyone uses screen names. Men tend to watch their porn, and men tend to "immortalize" their fandoms, while women want to "expand" their fandoms. So, it is mostly women on ff sites.

>>21248648
who cares

>>21248650
the guy whose post I responded to, dickhead

>>21248652
he doesn't care
u wrote a bunch of shit everyone knows lol wtf

>>21248384
Nano is achievable. F Gardner literally did it in few days.

>>21248648
>ah. I understand. I'm sure there are some men, but most of it is written by women, although everyone uses screen names. Men tend to watch their porn, and men tend to "immortalize" their fandoms, while women want to "expand" their fandoms. So, it is mostly women on ff sites.
Yep, it seems that way. Thanks for responding anon.

>>21248512
thank you my friend, I was already thinking of all the things that would entail if they were to exist, thank you for the words of wisdom. guess I was on the right path

>>21248655
F. Gardner is already a famous author who has written a ton of books though.

>>21248648
Hmm yes. This is a very intelligent reply to my comment. My regards sir!

>>21248648
I never looked at it this way. Woah. Thanks for getting back to me, I've been updating the thread for an hour kek

Is this any good?

>"Dude it's X stop taking it so seriously."
>"Just turn off your brain and enjoy it."
>"it ain't that serious."
>"it ain't that deep bro."
>"Why does it have to take itself seriously all the time?"
>"Just have fun."
>"Dude, you're taking it too seriously."

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP

>>21248704
Technically, it's not all fucking banged up like:
>>21248528

So you're far ahead. Your tale telling could make huge gains by engaging the mind's eye more. For example:

>The eerie silence of the forest returned Adah back to her senses.

This is old advice, but Show Don't Tell. So instead of saying it brought her to her senses, you could simulate the experience of it bringing her to her senses. This way the moment to moment stuff works its way into the reader.

>>21247617
look up neville goddard

>>21248650
t. gay

>>21248655
And he did it the way he always does it, i.e. short sentence fragments, meandering viewpoints, typos, homonyms, overtelling rather than showing, inconsistent tense, cardboard-cutout characters that speak in cliches, philosophy out of nowhere, lots of commas, confusing plurals with possessives, mixing singular and plural, etc.

>>21248771
I read F Gardner’s new book and I thought it was good. It was gorier than I thought it would be.

>>21248780
Yeah that other guy is just making shit up. Notice how he didn’t say what he didn’t like about F Gardner’s book? No mention of what the plot is about. Because he didn’t read it.
I’ve read a couple of F Gardner’s later works and I can tell he’s evolved significantly as a writer.

Is the "We both want to date each other but I think we're better off as friends but I still dream about being with you" A good story idea anons? It seems like one of those complex relationships good for a story

>>21248650
We all care, you fucking faggot. Postmodern dialysis of masc and fem fandoms is actually very interesting. Cataloging the demographic divide of who writes ff may seem stupid but it has wide ranging consequences for literature. And my point about men immortalizing fandoms against the female instinct to expand fandoms actually shows you how to ENGAGE with the pool of potential fandom fans of one's own catalogue of works. So fuck off. That guy had great and important points. Maybe you can learn something form him.

>>21248804
If someone pitched that to you would you really care? And how is that complex? Or even interesting?

>>21248780
>>21248789
Are you freaking kidding me?
It starts right off with present/past tense mixing.
There's the usual overabundant and erroneous placement of commas.
As well as the usual awkward phrasing.
>She was a young woman who was about to assign her kindergarten students a book to read. She was a young kindergarten teacher.
You really think this reads fine???

>>21248612
>>21248528
I'm not neither of them, and yes they're spiteful, but the text has issues. The writer has a conversational stream-of-thought style to be sure. It is a style that is extremely difficult to land, a style I'm not fond of, and a style the writer hasn't mastered.
First, this would be considered a weak passage. It's entirely expository. Now, you don't need a present action to open, and you can have a out-cropped scene-setting like this, but that actually makes the body of this text even more off. There are pointless details and name drops that aren't needed to set the scene and feel forced. Like, I've read a good chunk of /wg/ work, and my God, leave Plato alone. Please. Just don't. And other things stand out in this sort of style, like someone threw a fetus in a jar at someone else? In a highschool? What? In my slice-of-life coming-of-age story?

Second, the text is purple. That's been mentioned. It's slop at times.
>Sciences or humanities was the first customs house, the first border crossed, separating friends like travelers commuting from one train to another, their luggage left somewhere between the snow and the porters.
Do you feel this is a strong bit of prose? If you do, I think we have a difference of opinion.
The text is at its best when it hammering out details.
>Susan Morrow was very fat and didn’t get along with anyone, but that year she came back crushingly thin and still didn’t get along with anyone.
This is the best line in my humble opinion, and it's still has "Crushingly," which seems like a poor adjective.
Last is the markings, which have been mentioned. They're not bad, but "Oh, yes;" is bad.

>>21248528
Anyone criticizing this is literally just jealous.

>>21248826
This isn't helpful at all anon but thanks anyway =\

>>21248819
Its complex because of the feelings one another would feel, a longing for the other yet not able to get it, a deep love that burns bright but who no one wishs to tend.

Its interesting because you don't know if they are going to date or not, the feeling is there you know they want to date (Unlike most romances) but yet something is holding them back.

Its not really a will they won't they its more of love they are unsure of but with intense feelings they know each other has

I have no idea how to explain it It might be crap who's to say you can spin any idea into a good story.

>>21248825
What are you an English teacher? Say something about the plot! Until you do you’re shitposting and didn’t read it.

>>21248831
This. It’s the same thing when people freak out about how much attention F Gardner and Call of the Crocodile gets here.

>>21248843
>who's to say you can spin any idea into a good story.
I figured this was your plan. And look, it's not wrong. Maybe you're John Updike and the weave of your writing will keep us reading despite the who-cares-zzzzzzz plot idea. But even John Green's stupid books have better pitches. Work it into something that when you say the summary we all are genuinely interested. I think you can use that general idea still, but punch it up. Who are they? Is the setting a draw? Etc.

>>21248865
I think it's all shills, including you. Either the man himself, who is extremely-online (a nice dude though, he's easy to track down and literally talk to)—or somehow someway other ppl are shilling for it (unlikely). It's genuinely good indie lit though, I did get a kick out of it. But the posts about it are just plain annoying.

How do I write a good pitch? What I have so far:
Protagonist, a 23 year old university drop out with ambitions of being a writer, has always desired a romantic relationship, but when the ‘one who got away’ gives him a second chance to do it all over, he struggles to not make the same mistakes that destroyed them before.

I want to write about a tragedy disguised as a romance with an OCD protagonist, but I do not know how to get across in the pitch the conflicts he will face.

>>21248876
>How do I write a good pitch?
Competition. Real or imagined. If you know you're going to be judged, you need to really take everything up a few notches.

>dropout
Boring.
>ambitions of literally me
Boring.
>always desired a romantic relationship
So an incel? That's actually interesting.
>one who got away
Incels don't have ones who got away lol. They all get away. So it's more One Whom He Obsessed Over. Okay, interesting.
>second chance
Lol 'destroyed it before'. This is actually insane and cringe enough that it could be good if you can write even just passably.

Next:
>tragedy disguised as a romance
Ok. I dig it. But that's every single Nicholas Sparks novel. And hey, they work, so you're not wrong here. OCD protagonist? We already have Monk. And probably others. Is there anything interesting about his particular OCD?

>>21248856
I'm not going to bother to read long enough to get a sense of the plot if the prose is garbage.
If the writer can't be bothered to make the prose high quality, the odds that he made an effort to make the rest of the book high quality is near zero.
Besides, his other plots have been laughingly bad.
>Call of the Crocodile's twist is that the family for the first half of the book never existed and were made up by a kid who browsed /x/ and tried to make a family of tulpas for himself. The twist is revealed in a chapter where the kid who you think got eaten by a crocodile is still alive and he's playing with a Ouija board in a treehouse. The treehouse is struck by lightning and the kid is hospitalized. Then there's some out of body chapters where the kid is in this DMT realm and tormented by elves and the tulpa family tries to kill him for creating them. The kid sees the reader of the book and then snaps out of the DMT trip. Then an evil cult named Ouroboros kidnaps the kid, Stephen King and JK Rowling and brings them to Dracula's Castle (which has been relocated to Chicago) because they want to burn it down with a bunch of people inside as a Satanic sacrifice for The Great Reset. The kid burns down the castle early causing the cult to flee and then the ghost of the kid's dad saves him along with Stephen King and JK Rowling and they all watch the castle burn down together.

>>21248919
What makes prose good?

>>21248876
>simp gets another chance
highly unlikely

>>21248933
It's low fantasy.

>>21248922
In his case, he can start by making it not obviously bad.

>>21248939
I mean generally. What is your opinion?

I'm trying to write a horror scene where the protagonist smashes someone's head into a brick wall. I just want to move on to the rest of the damn story but something about the opening is bothering me and I can't seem to figure out a way to end it. Is this normal?

>Jack knew he was dead the moment he let go. He watched as Brian crumpled to his knees in front of him, his face smeared against the wall, before dropping to the pavement amid the scraps of cardboard and broken glass. His bloodshot eyes bulged beneath the sinkhole where his skull had caved in, staring out in all directions. The gore alone should have disgusted him. But there was no remorse, no lamentation. Jack felt nothing at all.

>>21248919
That sounds amazing.

>>21248834
The purpose of critique is to provide meaningful criticism, and not to coach the text.
I'm not going to tell someone how to write, but I've articulated my issues with the text.
>A couple superfluous details that come off as out-of-character for the rest of the text.
>A weirdly placed semicolon.
>Purple.
>Some adjectives are eccentric to the point of division.
>Entirely expository and the narrative range is distant from any immediate action, which can work, but it makes some written details seem clumsy and unneeded. Another way of putting this is we don't need metaphor-rich text when setting things up at such a distance.
>Weird detail about a fetus.
This is the only point I can really concede on that could be relevant later, or maybe the text is full of this sort of stuff. There isn't enough here to gauge how purposely this is being done.

I've also given some positives.
>Definitely a defined style.
>Text works when just hammering out details flatly, and setting the scene.

>>21249024
Thanks I guess....but huh?

>>21249027
Huh what?

>>21249030
Hush. Explain yourself. There is literally nothing wrong with what I wrote and you probably can't do better. Post YOUR writing. You won't. Idiot.

>>21249034
Slayer narrowly dodges The Hellhound’s fiery assault. The beast had missed. The Hellhound inhales deeply. It was going to try again. Killer jumps at The Hellhound, but is engulfed in the fiery blaze of its breath. Killer yelps, rolling around on the ground.
Ripping off his shirt, Otto rushes over toward Killer. He places his shirt on Killer, trying to put out the fire. “Wew…that was a close one…” Otto says. It seemed his idea had worked. The boy had reacted quickly, and used his shirt to put out the fire. Killer was safe.
“That was fast thinking” The Skeleton compliments. “Yeah…thanks” Otto says. He felt a bit chilly now that he was shirtless. But that was the least of the boy’s concern. He couldn’t just put his shirt back on, now that it was burnt from the flames. Otto was just going to have to go on without a shirt.

>>21249034
I've explained my problems with the text clearly. You can either accept them or not. This isn't a debate or a competition and I'm above treating it that way and you should be too. If you cannot process critique, you will not be able to work in any professional capacity with a publishing house editor or even a copyeditor.

>>21249044
Never mind. This is kinda bad but also kinda cool. Lol.

>>21248901
> Is there anything interesting about his particular OCD?

I have it. The character is me. Instead of drop out, does explaining that he planned to commit suicide make it more entertaining? It's going to be like one of those loser animes but the waifu leaves him and he just kills himself

>>21249044
Wait, you're telling me this is Frank? Read my review, Frank:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4736003886
You owe me like 2$.

>>21249055
>does explaining that he planned to commit suicide make it more entertaining?
Yes, suicide is probably universally interesting.

I hope this isn't some sort of extreme ideation thing though.

Anyway, where does the romance fit in? Girl leaves, self-insert zipzaps his brain out?

>>21249061
Frank owes a lot of people money.
But his mommy and daddy won't raise his allowance.

>>21249050
>you will not be able to work in any professional capacity with a publishing house editor or even a copyeditor.

Oh like you know. Cuck.

>I've explained my problems with the text clearly.

Implying there is anything wrong at all. Also no you didn't. It's gobbledygook. I'm not sure if you think you're ultra clear or clear at all lol. You're not. It's wheedling nonsense.

>If you cannot process critique
I could if there was critique. There isn't.

>This isn't a debate or a competition
It is and you lost.

>I'm above treating it that way
We. Know. Kek.

>>21249069
yes he tries to manage his ocd but it spirals out of control and the girl is exhausted from his behaviour and he kills himself cause he thinks he is a bad person and is exhausted

>>21249081
What is wrong with you, Frank? Are you still salty about my review?

>>21249061
So are you still reviewing /wg/ books, or have you (understandably) gotten sick of it?

>>21249083
How does the OCD manifest?

>>21249090
I just finished Nesmer's book and took a peek at Bulkington's book. I'm trying to start a stream with my sister where we read /wg/ books.
I'm extremely busy with school, a couple editing jobs, and finally started writing a review for Eggplant. It's almost finished. I will be looking for another /wg/ book soon, probably in a week, I'm just finishing a Joyce collection too. Do you have a title that needs a review? I'm always happy to purchase and review /wg/ books.

>>21249108
Nah, I'm just happy you're still working through our drivel.
It's so difficult to get any sort of review.
I am truly grateful for your work.

>>21249093
sexual fantasies, abusive behaviour, psychosis

>>21249116
Everyone here deserves a comprehensive review if they get their book to market. Buying the books and reviewing them is the least I can do.

>>21248085
here's the pdf anon. It's not 100% final yet, but go ahead and be my final beta reader. I'm still tweaking the ending adding/subtracting a few things, I don't think the ending quite hits the message though. So there's that.

https://litter.catbox.moe/t4n55q.pdf

>>21249061
I think that is the best GR review I've ever read lol. I can see why he's pissed at you.

>>21249131
>https://litter.catbox.moe/t4n55q.pdf
Got to give it to you for ambition. But oof. NPCs should be detected early and not taught how to read or write. Fuck.

>>21249093
>>21249069
How is this? I need it perfect before I start outining

Nicholas Stanaitis has failed. He has deferred his university course to pursue his dreams of becoming an acclaimed author. He has always desired a romantic relationship, but when the ‘one who got away’ gives him a second chance to do it all over again, he struggles to not make the same mistakes that destroyed them both before.
As his condition drives her further and further into the arms of another man, he is forced to confront the grim reality of life: That to be a man in this world it means accepting true responsibility for one’s actions, even when those actions aren’t a choice at all.

>>21249149
what?

Is it possible for another book from here to reach the insane level of fame as Call of the Crocodile? How did F Gardner manage to become so popular here?

>>21249162
It means it's bizarrely bad. Not sure whom you are trying to pass it off on.

>>21249249
well sorry. Then it's not ready and I'll need to rewrite it.

>>21249257
OR you think your audience is garbage. Which is literally fine. In fact, that's your best option. Otherwise you're totally asleep at the wheel and so self abscessed you can't tell how your words would interact with the mind of someone else.

What is your philosophy about writing, generally? I'm genuinely curious. And legitimately impressed you wrote a whole fucking book.

*obsessed

>>21249224
No one really knows. Call of the Crocodile might have been a fluke. I think F. Gardner accidentally memed himself to being a famous author just because that book was so fucking weird and there’s nothing else really like it.

>>21249162
Not him, but you employ a lot of really odd phrasing throughout. It makes it hard to read.

>History Teachers often separate these topics at different points, never interconnecting them together.
I think this is a great example of word choice that comes across as almost ESL. To change nothing else, almost any native would simply use "connecting" or another word in place of "interconnecting".

>>21245366
Try using smashwords. They're alot less strict

>>21249224
It's not famous.
Gardner is just a notorious shill-spammer.
4chan unfortunately has no natural defenses for such acts, but he's either been banned on other sites, or his activities severely curtailed.
e.g. he had thousands of reviews removed on Goodreads after they were determined to be fraudulent.

>>21249266
>What is your philosophy about writing, generally?
I'm just having fun with it. It's a learning process.

>>21249266
>Not him, but you employ a lot of really odd phrasing throughout. It makes it hard to read.
thank you that helps a lot. If it's that badly written, then I'll just shelve it.

>>21249266
>legitimately impressed you wrote a whole fucking book
Indeed. It's an "accomplishment" on the level of Breadworld:
https://ditzbitz.com/breadbook.pdf

>>21249316
Why shelve it? You clearly invested a lot into this (244 pages!). I know how fucking horrible it feels to realize that something you've written needs a daunting amount of tlc to even be passable.

You have more late nights ahead of you, but I believe you can do it. That you've come this far is impressive for an ESL. If you're Chinese(Malaysian?) then 加油!

>>21249343
Why bother it's clearly unsalvageable. He should just hit delete and call it a day. He's no writer ---worse than Gardner.

Not too late to rape her Wgon.

>>21249343
No. He mad his bed. It's huge. It's real. It's thought out. He should be paid for it. The man is not an Artist. He is a tale teller and his tale is told. Honestly, he needs to figure out how to sell it. Not necessarily financially, but "sell" it to the people who would enjoy it. There has to be one person who would read it. And if there is one, there are a dozen. And if there are a dozen, well, there's a few dozen dozen. He unironically deserves their attention and they deserve his book.

So, litfags, what ideas do we have for connecting the two?

>>21249359
Hey! Don't say that! NEVER say that!
K.K. Wgon may need to work on his writing, but he will NEVER be as bad as Gardner.
Gardner is petty, mean-spirited, juvenile, and utterly lacking in self-awareness.
K.K. Wgon has been nothing but a good /lit/izen.
Take that back NOW.

>>21249359
It's fine.

>>21249375
Offers still open Boswell. We’d be happy to interview you on the Unreal Press Podcast.

>>21249359
Fuck you dude. Have you ever written something of this length? I know that I haven't. Gardner is a native and publishes his trash unedited with sub-web serial (thanks >>21249061 for the comparison) prose. This ESL is TRYING.

English is clearly not his first language and he stands to learn a lot by shouldering the volume of editing work he'll need to do. He should continue.

>>21249276
>Not him, but you employ a lot of really odd phrasing throughout. It makes it hard to read.
Can you help me find a paragraph in the story that was difficult to read? I would like to know how to improve word choice and phrasing.

>>21249368
You might be right. I guess I'm pretty attached to the idea of improvement, but he could always just write the next one with more feedback along the way.

There are some mainland Chinese websites he could post it to where most users:
1. Speak a tiny bit of English but not enough to be bothered by the errors.
2. Dislike/are neutral towards clichéd wuxia-inspired garbage.
To dip his toes in, he should try some Zhihu communities. They're just yellow redditors.

>>21249388
Ugh...now Gardner is LARPing as the Unreal Press gang?
Are there NO depths you won't sink to???

>>21249419
Join the discord, it’s linked in every single video description, and DM anyone with a green name. We’ll set it up.

>>21249413
wh-what

>>21249423
This would imply Gardner is involved with Unreal Press.
In which case...you're dead to me.

>>21245302
Trying to improve my prose. Am I able to hold attention? Example from my diary today:

Buttcake quivered betwixt her buttcake-caked butt cheeks. All at once it roared forth, felicity curving her poopoo snake first hot & warm on the bridge of my nose & then roping down burning into the o of my open mouth. She moaned at first (the rush of doodoo having scratched an anal itch), a deep chest-vibrating moan, & now she's giggling and her thighs give & the white brown moon of her ass suddenly smears down across my face, soft & wet, crickling, now cracking my nose, one nose plug coming free, the other disappearing into me.

>>21249447
More for calibration of your considerations:

Charlotte's butt cheeks clapped closed. When I parted them again (like a favorite book) there was but an earth-toned Rorschach of buttcake with her Sarlacc in center and I brought my cakehorn close and blew a soft puff. Her Sarlcacc winked and the stink poofed silently towards my nose.

>>21249444
Yeah, Gardner partially owns the podcast. Doesn’t really have anything to do with it though. You’ll get a fair shake.

>>21249413
I'm in mobile right now - apologies if the feedback is mediocre.

Let's look at the second PP:
>The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment passed in 1865, 1868, and 1870 granted equal protection and voting irregardless of race, yet, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and denied both Native Americans and Asian Americans the right to vote until a later date. Hispanic Americans would be classied politically as “Caucasians,” but locally, there was clear separation.

To get this little irritation out of the way, please banish the word "irregardless" from your manuscript. You deploy it incorrectly here (as many do), and even if used properly, it would be better to not do a weird double-negation like this unlesd you know what you are doing.

More importantly:
>The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment passed in 1865, 1868, and 1870
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Don't totally rework this boring sentence structure until you can simplify this sort of thing as is. This is an opportunity for growth.
You could just say something like "the amendments which followed the war between the states" or better yet rework the previous paragraph so that something as short as "the amendments which followed [the war between the states]" would work. No need to give extraneous details that can be found in five seconds on wikipedia.
You do this sort of thing often. I suggest you go back and identify lists throughout. Rework every. single. one. even if it sucks. You'll learn a lot.

Come back after you've done that.

Is this redeeming at all? I spent 5 weeks refining and refining and working it over for an assignment—

The turd in the toilet took two seconds to tear apart. My fingerprints rilled with shit. It was supposed to be inside, but it was all doo doo. I glare at grandma. 'Why?'

Next thing I know, I'm at Romanelli's Scrap Metal arguing with handless cashier over how much grandma's walker is worth. 'Wha? This is aluminium alloy—no, I don't know with what!'

Back at the house grandma beckons. 'It is in my cunt' she whispers against my ear. So I guide her in the bathroom, undo her pants, and help her sit on the toilet. With a breaststroke motion I part her knees, her skin oldwoman soft. I feel my way into her melanin drained bush, of course she's self lubricating, why not? Middle and ring finger, searching. Nothing. Has she been lying? Is she delusional? Insane?

My name is Alex Trebek, I may have all the Answers, but the real Answers are the Questions.

I was in DC all week. I got to sit next to Pope Francis today flying into JFK. Doing the NYT crossword, he turns to me, 'four letter word for a woman, ending in 'u-n-t'?'

'Aunt'

'Do you have an eraser?'

Now, in my voice: The Answers are the Questions.

And you probably don't believe I'm actually Alex Trebek. Which is just as well.

The plane passes through the morning sea mist, the mist silent, all encasing, heatshimmer off the engines. Pope wrote 'cunt' and one of us is an index of magic, tools, functions, gossip, and a nexus of tickles. And one of us lies about kissing babies while going around kissing babies.

An O-ring, also known as a packing, or a toric joint, is a mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus—it is a loop of elastomer with a round cross-section, designed to be seated in a groove and compressed during assembly between two or more parts, creating a seal at the interface. And a ring of opinions? Well a pinion: gear with a small number of teeth designed to mesh with a larger wheel. Where do you get yours?

You need to know the Answers to Questions you don't know the Answers to.

Pope wrote 'cunt' and maybe it's C-rings that are the problem. Why do women like being tied up?

>>21249480
Meant for >>21249404
Again, I'm phoneposting. Sorry.

>>21249434
That's my meandering way of saying he could post it on a site like Zhihu and get the right sort of eyes on his work.

>>21249469
No he doesn't. I've done everything I can to keep him out of the server.

>>21249487
I wish I went to college with you.
I like the voice of the narration, but you switch between tenses a bit and the dialogue has a different tone to it. I find that jarring and it needs to be handles if the A is competitive.

>>21249480
I was hoping you'll criticize the story and not the author's note.

When my book releases will /wg/ bully me about it like Gardner?

>>21249447
>>21249458

Never use 'thesaurus' words like "betwixt" unless you know you have a narration that fits.
You also have too many conjunctions and commas. Some of those could be turned into periods without any additional editing besides capitalization and it would flow better.

On the flip side "earth-toned Rorschach" is fucking amazing.

>>21249519
Unfortunately, it's all part of the equation. I'll give you an exercise with page one of the narration though. Identify why a sentence like "A three week voyage without a bath, a change of clothes, or fresh food." is worthless (and also not a complete sentence though you're using it as one) and why sentences like "Cries and caws of seagulls could be heard from above the deck" is maybe even more pernicious.

>>21246946
>there is a scene where cultists dress up a dog in women's clothing to fuck it and another where vampire sucks a used tampon.
And I thought my stuff was nuts.

>>21249599
I know its a fragment on the first sentence, and there's pointless repetition of cries and caws, as well as cries being a terrible choice of a sound word for seagulls but why shouldn't there be some rule breaking if it makes the story clearer? There's rules to avoid adverbs, but writers still use them for effect.

>>21249613
Subvert orthodoxy deliberately. Are you attached to that first sentence I highlighted? I'm not an expert, but I'd wager more than 9/10 would at least nitpick there.

>>21249613
Also I wasn't talking about word choice with the second part but more that your sentence is "telling not showing 101".

>>21249624
No I'm just curious. I already made the edit to the main copy. But thank you for confirming my suspicions that my editor and two beta readers didn't even bother reading the manuscript. I'm going to ask for a refund.

>>21249641
Definitely understand when a simple phrase or a single word is appropriate for emphasis. Many amateur writers go wrong there in one way or another (including me). A trained editor should be able to catch that.

>>21248706

>>21249526
You'd have to be insane to post your book on /lit/, that's asking for a review bombing.

>>21245515
Reading this has surprised me. Why hasn't anyone combined horror with high fantasy before? I'm anxious to see what comes next anon.

>>21249487
The humor lands surprisingly well despite the overt crudeness, but your grammar leaves a lot to be desired. Is English your first language? No offense meant. Your prose is unironically clever.

A little worried bros. I find that writing comes so much easier as I drink more wine. Anyone else have experience with using substances to boost the flow of creativity?

Man….Gardnerposting has gotten crazy. Is Reddit making more threads about him again? Or has there just been an explosion of F Gardner interest since he released his new books? Literally how do I achieve the same kind of meme status for my book??

>>21245515
>Jon H. is a licensed funeral director, former aircraft mechanic, and current programmer. A lover of all things strange and horrific, Jon currently lives on the Space Coast of Florida, dreaming of weirdness in this universe and beyond it.

What bullshit. aircraft mechanic, funeral director? so much bs in one bio. get a life

New bread >>21250373
Get moving you sordidly contaminated potatoes!

>>21247560
literally had this copied and was about to paste it
this anon actually reads