/lit/ - Literature

Sorry, can't stay to chat.
I just posted a bunch of old fanfic screenplays on AO3.
I stayed up entirely too late.

>This Craft of Verse, Borges
>The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser
>Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Mason

Any of these would help with iambic pentameter in blank verse as used for epic poetry? Well, more like give some more insight beyond what random internet websites and blogs hold. Asking for a friend.

The Prince paced back and forth in his room. His father gave him a mission — one that he did not know how to accomplish. He was almost sixteen years of age and needed to wed. The princesses of the nearby kingdoms were too old or he did not find them to be suitable in one way or another. He could not possibly marry a commoner, that would be against the rules of the kingdom.
“What to do?” he bemoaned, “perhaps a bit of fresh air would be for the best.” Taking his horn, he blew a bellowing cry for his steed; a Dragon given to him by his godfather, the Wizard of Pillarime.
A gust of wind and a loud thud could be heard on his balcony. The large red dragon knelt in front of the prince, knowing what was desired. Securly mounted, the two took flight across the kingdom of Pillarme. They flew past the forests and into the mountains, finally landing near a large secluded lake surrounded by the snowy peaks that guarded it. It was their spot, a spot no one else knew, except one other; a girl of ashen hair and hazel eyes. She was drinking from the lake undisturbed nor worried about the man and beast in front of her.
“Who are you?” asked the Prince, “I’ve never met another person here. How did you get up here?”
“My name is Meredith. Don’t tell anyone but I used magic.”
“Magic?”
“Yes, magic. Let me show you.”
With a wave of her hand, sparks of mana took shape. She performed for the Prince, dazzling his mind with the beauty she conjured.
“Wow! How did you learn to use magic? And can I do it too?”
Meredith smiled at the Prince. Her eyes welled with tears and her smiling lips drooped into a frown.
“It is a curse which I would never wish upon another. To mock Nature is a crime upon itself.”
“I wish to learn anyways. A talent this powerful could never be a curse. I’ll do anything to be able to cast magic!”
“Are you prepared to sacrifice what you love?”
“Yes!”
Meredith’s eyes glowed a yellow that shocked the dragon. The beast stepped back and arched his neck. Smoke formed from its nostrils, and in a single instant it blew a fire directly at the girl.
“Draco! Stop!” the Prince cried. He turned to Meredith. She was still there, unburnt, and unharmed.

>>21381237
The dragon flapped its wings, ready to take flight, but chains of mana sealed its fate. Binding the beast to the ground, Meredith inched closer to the struggling animal. It leered over to the Prince, whimpering and pleading for any help it could get, but it was too late. Meredith touched the nose of the beast and in an instant, decay set upon its body. The Prince was shocked; speechless at the events that took place. Meredith turned around and held in her hand, a glowing blue orb.
“Here. This is your gift for defying Nature.”
“Where did Draco go? What did you do to him?” cried the Prince.
Without warning, Meredith pressed the glowing orb into the Prince’s chest. Screams of pain erupted in the middle of the mountains, where only one other could hear. The Prince blacked out.
Upon waking, he felt a surge of power in his veins. Looking into the lake, the reflection showed another. A creature with blue eyes and a haggard face. It touched itself, trying to find any comfort in its appearance. Terror turned into laughter, and with it, the monster made a vow to the heavens.
“Meredith! Upon Draco’s grave, even if it takes me ten-thousand years, I will find you!”


It's a short story within a story. How is it?

What compels you to write when you open a computer?
Previously I would write on a personal website, but then paranoia floods in and I end up deleting it all.
Writing in text docs feels so ephemeral and shaky, without structure really.
This shouldn't be a problem if I sincerely wanted to write, I know that much.
What compels you to sit down and write? What is your set up?

>>21381237
>>21381242
I enjoyed it, as a passer-by.
Don't think I quality to critique it.

i posted this on a forum where no one will read anything longer than a tweet, maybe one of you guys will give it a try? its not that long

https://rdrama.net/post/131241/pop-quiz-visvis-the-ethics-of

>>21381399

>AI
Is it over for us, writer bros?

>>21381427
>Camera
Is it over for us, artist bros?
>Photoshop
Is it over for us, traditional bros?

>>21381427
Doubtful. It will get better for awhile and then plateau before it gets to the point of writing whole novels.

>>21381427
All AI algorithms do is regurgitate existing material. They can't be creative or original. They don't understand the words they cut&paste or try to produce meaning or allegory.

>>21381156
Travis and Hyrum made love.

>>21381218
The only sources you need to master blank verse and iambic pentameter are Milton and Shakespeare. Just read them both exhaustively.

>feel like shit

Yup, it's time to write

I use chat gpt to help me write

God I fucking hate writing lecture/classroom scenes in a fantasy setting because they so often feel like exposition dumps and explanation. I feel like rereading all of Harry Potter just to see if Rowling did it differently or if Rowling is in fact the reason why I hate it.
Still, I feel obligated to write them, because in a college story in a fantasy setting that would just be part of everyday life.
Anyone else struggled with this?

>>21382261
Unless you need the dumps/exposition to support your story, don't include such scenes.
When you reminisce about your time in college, do you recall the lectures, or the interactions with fellow students?

I've fallen in love lads.


As we walk apart from the centre
I wonder who will say I love you first,

And when from your pistol bullets burst
I will in the dust offer my surrender,

Like a duel to the death
As such matters of love often are -
I know I want you to shoot through my chest.

As we walk apart from the centre
I wonder who will say I love you first,

And I will in the dust offer my surrender
When from your pistol bullets burst,

Like a duel to the death,

As matters of love often are -

I know I want you to shoot through my chest.

>>21382310
Good advice but the answer to that question goes against it.

>>21381156
"Hell-Anon" here from a few months ago, I hope everyone is doing well. I started writing again two days ago, more or less from scratch.

>>21382465
Looking forward to what you write!

>>21382220
So you like your writing soulless and normie?
>>21382344
So you recall your lectures more, and not the getting laid all over the place and smoking lots of reefer cigarette marijuanas?

>>21382469
Thanks friend. I restructured the beginning and kind of wanted to give my protagonist a bit more of a personality before plunging them into things.

>>21382261
Have scenes start or end in the class, so you don't have to include more than a minute of the actual lecture.

>>21382474
So you recall your lectures more, and not the getting laid all over the place and smoking lots of reefer cigarette marijuanas?
Why does this sound like a shitpost? Of course I remember what I learned at an institution of learning.

>>21382561
That sounds like great advice, thanks, I'll try it.

>So you recall your lectures more, and not the getting laid all over the place and smoking lots of reefer cigarette marijuanas?
Why does this sound like a shitpost? Of course I remember what I learned at an institution of learning. Time with friends is great, but the information content of the lecturers was what I was there for and what was important.

this is NOT polbrained.

critiques? what do guys think?

Another rejection...

>Thanks so much for your query and for thinking of me here. I took a look at your sample pages, and while I enjoyed your writing voice, I'm going to have to respectfully pass here for now. I'm afraid my list doesn't leave me with extra bandwidth to take on many projects nearing the end of the year here and thus I have to be super selective with what I request to read more of.

>I'm sorry not to have better news, but I wish you the best of luck though going forward. Do keep querying!


She didn't even read it did she?

>>21381237
>The large red dragon
Clifford the Big Red Dog

>>21383083
You got a response. That's already better than 90% of submissions.

>>21382342
It's incredibly corny. It could've been saved by vivid imagery, good poetry, but thre's none of that here. For example, the line
>Like a duel to the death,
is meaningless. It does not add anything to the poem. You're not capturing enough the feeling here. And the same could be said for every line of the poem!

>>21383064
This is complete nonsense

>>21383083
>respectfully pass
That's so passive aggressive. Makes me want to smash her head in.

>>21383137
It's not that bad. It reads like a draft though. And your reply reads like someone who is the absolute epitome of "damn I wish I wrote that - hm ill just say its shit" or just a fucking wanker.
Ignore him anon, just improve it

>>21383179
It is that bad. What good is there? The idea expressed is not unique. Sure, but this alone is not a problem. The way in which is expressed is also not unique. It does not emotionally (!) convey the personality of author, the hero. The whole poem is a cliche. It's not even a good one, purely on the technical level. Tropes exist because they work. To fail at a trope is bad.

>>21383147
My bigger issue is blaming it's the "end of the year". Any agent could have said, I will review it after the holidays. A No would be better

>>21383213
There's clear imagery of two people dueling. You know like a pistol duel?
And he's letting his lover shoot him, he's surrendering to both her love and his whole life to her, whether that be in a good or bad way. It's clearly a turbulent relationship but he loves her anyway and he's letting her shoot him. He wants her to, he doesn't care if he gets killed because he loves her so much.
I'm sure that's what he means.
You're either a third worlder or LARPing as a spastic.

Hold me at gun-point
and rape me like you mean it.
Is this what love is?

You know the meme of the bearded guy holding a block of wood with a magnifying glass--"yup, it's wood"?
I unironically was in that guys program at ________ but he had just retired. I literally have a meme degree and it has been as valuable as you'd expect.
How can I write this into a book and finally make it?

>>21382342
Here's my version:

As we take our paces from the center
I know already who's gonna pull first,
In the dust I'll smile and surrender
In your eyes the surprise'll be cursed

Cupid's sold out this gun-for-hire
But Annie, my honey, this is the west
Didn't you know when I told you to fire
I meant you to shoot through my chest?

>>21383246
No shit you don't see a problem with his (your own) poem, if the emotional depth of love is almost non-existent for you. And it's obvious then that a suicidal, self-destructive love can only be artificially emulated. There's not much behind that anon's words. And everybody can tell. A passionate love of that kind eludes even the best poets, since the ones who get to truly experience it die lol. It is not a new "thing", and even in all the works throughout history that all fail fail to capture it in it's true depth -- even in those works, it should be obvious to anyone, that the author fails at a much higher level than our anon here, who can only approach the subject through mimicry.

>>21383324
Oh, this is so pleasant to read! Well done with the rhyme scheme and word choice. I like really like your rewrite of his poem!

You weird lot. Stop arguing over my poem. It's not particularly good? Oh well! I'm not a poet, sometimes I wrote them. I have better ones, I dare not post in case someone steals the idea;)
Anyway -

As we walk apart from the centre
I wonder who will say I love you first,
And I will in the dust offer my surrender
When from your pistol bullets burst,
As matters of love often are
a duel to the death,
I know I want you to shoot through my chest.

>>21383269
not a bad haiku

Lmao what the fuck are you doing typing you stupid little cuck? I already told you, I WON. Take a fuckint hint you little fucking retard: I DONT LIKE YOU ANYMORE

>>21383507
YOU CANNOT STOP WHAT IS COMING YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO LOSE
GIVE UP NOW AND COME QUIETLY FOR WE ALREADY HAVE WON IT ALL

>>21383363
I actually like this little change around

>>21382474
I don't really care what people think of my writing, I just think it's fun to write but I'm not very creative so I do this to help get unique and creative ideas. I choose various topics and themes i like and use die rolls and random generators to group them together into information about the story and world, so they are pretty strange at first. I try to fit all their weird info together with some loose idea in mind and then show the bot what I got and tell it to bring my themes together more and flesh it out even further. most of the time it has a good idea of how to do it and then I have something interesting and unique that's fun to write about

>>21383773
In personally care, but people mostly read the first 2 sentences then dismiss it. He'll /wg/ isn't immune to this either. A guy tried.tonoffer me advice without even understanding what the story is about . Or tell me to show not tell when the pace needs to quicken.

So is it not smart to post your work here for critique if you're actively trying to publish said work? Ik the chances of anyone here getting published are slim, but say an agent did get back to you, hypothetically would you be in hot water for having workshopped it on 4chan?

>>21384095
Just post it on reddit too. So you said is m just using Internet resources.

>>21384095
>So is it not smart to post your work here for critique if you're actively trying to publish said work?
There are many, many other better venues to share your writing for critique. What you get here are anonymous crabs that are barely competent themselves who shitpost with impunity. They don't care about writing, not yours and not their own. They don't even read. The only reason to post here is because your work is so transgressive (uses the gamer word liberally, is fetish bait, or is thinly veiled /pol/ bait) that it would get you banned on other sites. But if you're writing crap like that, you're not aiming to get published anyway.

I know of at least one website (critters.org) where published authors will sometimes post work and offer critique. The work posted there is not always good, but always demonstrates the writer's best effort. The critiques are also numerous, detailed and generally useful (because there are strict guidelines on how to actually offer critique that everyone has to follow). I know there's some people in these threads that have deluded themselves into thinking that because its given anonymously, the critique is more "honest". It really doesn't matter if critique is honest or not, what matters is if its useful. And critique is really only useful when taken in the aggregate. The bottom line is there aren't enough critics acting in good faith in these threads. It's just too easy to write "stopped reading here" or "complete nonsense" and move on.

I fucked Travis in the ass
I fucked Travis for the cash
Now he's sick, in retching pain
I fucked Travis, and gave him AIDS

https://www.literotica.com/s/something-of-a-god

Thoughts on this thing I wrote?

So I'm writing the "blurb" for my porn game and it's too long but I love it all so much that I don't want to cut any of it. Help me internet assholes, you're my only hope.

-

In the grim banality of the not-too-distant future, there is only peace. Artificial intelligence and quantum computing have rendered all problems soluble: for the overpampered, understimulated citizens of the world-state there's no shortage of ways to while away immortality.

Enter stage left Earth's newest craze - Competitive Sex!

Armed with powerful science and an even more powerful libido, you will rise from your humble debut in the "Couch Only" category through leaderboards chock full of the biggest and the baddest - as well as the sweetest and the sensual-est - to duke it out in the big bed on the big screen for the title of Earth's Most Virile. You'll rack up the points in all the usual places - cock and balls, smiles and sweet-talk, passion and perversion - but don't get too complacent just because you've got tackle too big for a trawler: nothing's more of a snore than a bore. Whether it's "Candles at Dusk" or "Innovation with Instruments" or even the "Whisky-Dick Woes" challenge round with a doublepoints bonus in overtime, the Subroutine for Accessible Entertainment has each and every one of it's city-sized processors devoted to generating exciting new ways to practice the world's oldest profession. Combined with cutthroat competitors who cheat on more than just their partners, conniving corporations fighting over profit margins that have never mattered less, and the unknowable artificial gods issuing incomprehensible edicts from deep within their black boxes, it's never been truer that nothing worth doing cums easy. You're going to have to work hard and get harder and think with both heads just to keep it up - and don't forget to make sure your loyal fans keep it up too, because the Network isn't paying you to get /yourself/ off.

Stuffed full of content until it's bow-legged and groaning, WORKINGTITLE offers pared-back boss-rush gameplay that blends turn-based combat with detective and puzzle genres and interfaces with the intercourse in a way that titilates rather than aggravates. Bring your fetishes to life through a structured narrative populated with lustable characters and a reactive setting full of memorable encounters and saucy vignettes that guarantee you'll be coming (back) again and again. So draw your curtains and lock that door - and get ready to ask yourself whether there was anything better you could have done with the next six hours of your life - because this is one game that definitely plays best with your joystick in hand.

-

I feel like the closing pun is a little weak, would welcome input.

>>21384323
>submits to literotica
>no smut in the story
I scanned it. The first part and last part are entirely masturbatory - and not in the way the readers of the site would enjoy. The middle section is the only part that can really be called a story. There is no conflict whatsoever.

>>21384323
It's an interesting premise but the sexual aspects of it undercut it instead of enhancing it. It doesn't need to be so crude - the crudity is not profound and it's not any more illustrative of the autismo mind of the protagonist than his general autismo-ness.

Mentioning specific policies makes this look more like authorial diatribe than a standalone work, so you'd do better to leave that vague. Even if it's not authorial diatribe, and I don't think it is, it feels enough like it could be to be sickening.

There are a couple of moments that wrench me out of the writing a bit. For example, I can't take the name Asher Lockman seriously; it sounds too edgy, even though it's a real-enough name. The sentence "there were goofy mechanical rubber hands that removed her clothes, sort of like the famous contraption from Wallace and Gromit." needs to stop at the comma; goofy mechanical rubber hands is enough, and insisting that the reader imagine exactly the thing from that TV show that one time is... too insistent. The further crudity at this point is again undermining the writing.

The tweest at the end is good and I like it, but it doesn't seem fully developed. The crudity makes more sense when you get the tweest but the problem is that the crudity just feels crude until you make it that far. It would be better if it felt sinister - instead of making the reader feel like he's reading someone's bad erotic fiction you want him to feel like he's reading a well-written horror story about a woman who is trapped in someone's bad erotic fantasy; you want it to read sinister instead of reading crude. As for the "point" that Asher makes, it's fine to make it so briefly but only if the rest of the work is adding context to it. You want the "point" to tie together all of the "evidence" that your story has presented in a lightbulb moment. As I read it your story only contains a point in that single sentence and the rest of it is an entirely separate train.

The fourth-wall "imagine what you want" breaks seem to come out of nowhere and add nothing while being distracting, I'd drop them but if you don't want to then develop them into something more than throwaways.

In short the writing is mechanically competent and the premise and idea is interesting. The delivery was good enough that I actually read the whole thing which is something I almost never do in this threads. It's just not "fully realised", in my view - it doesn't strike the right tone for me and the argument is not expressed with force or impact or clarity. If you made it more sinister and 'erotic' while being less crude and developed the point throughout the whole story (subtly) then it would be closer to complete.

These are just some thoughts and opinions that came to me while I was in my underpants drinking warm Coca Cola from a can that has been on my computer desk overnight.

>>21384440
Replace "bad erotic fiction" with "overly intimate and personally revealing erotic fiction". It's not bad, and I don't think that came across in my post. It's better than most of the shit that gets posted in these threads. The crudity is just crude.

>>21381156
bros how do i get rid of my sexual urges so that i can focus on writing my story?
i feel like i spend too much time thinking about cooming. if i could dedicate half of that time to thinking about my story, i wouldn't have so many troubles thinking about what to write next...

>>21384046
Your story about the Rat Man or whatever was bad. I read it carefully through before critiquing it. The pace could've been quicker, but quicker where? When you jump from one idea to the next without exploring any of them, and when your writing amounts to, basically, a collection of very surface-level "tells"; the advice to "show not tell" is appropriate.

I'm such a fucking failure at life and I'm running out of time, I hate myself so much.

>>21384429
>>21384440
>>21384456
Thanks for reading and for your thoughtful notes, I'll think about them.

>>21384323
Very well-written and smart. However, like the anon already said, ironically, the sexual aspects are what drag this story down, along with, in vague terms, the story not feeling like it's fully there yet. I currently am unable to write a more thorough critique or really 'review' the one given by the other anon, but yeah you're a competent writer.

>>21384567
Thank you for reading and responding! I added a part where she looks around for balloons when they're eating lunch (because of the helium thing) and then when she wakes up there's balloons in the room. But submitting edits to literotica is kind of a pain... IDK. Maybe I'll just submit the edit anyway.

>>21384154
>It's just too easy to write "stopped reading here" or "complete nonsense" and move on.
So, what are your thoughts on this then >>21383064

>>21384522
To add to my comment earlier. We have this wonderful perfect, yadda yadda yadda "god" and we find out that:

>The exact number of people who truly dislike me is a very closely guarded secret. In fact, it's something only I know. But since we're among friends I'll tell you.
>Through sophisticated psychological analysis, I have ascertained the current number to be fifty. Fifty out of a population of 30 billion.

And then we find out that he decides to swoop in and prevent number 51 from not liking him - truly hubris to match the judeo christian god. We never actually find out why she doesn''t like his utopia - which literally basically everyone else does - but after giving her a perfect form and some mental adjustments now she's A-ok with it. A much more interesting story would involve one of those 50 people who actually dislike this god-like figure. Then we could get some conflict as we watch him or her go about the day seething at all this supposed perfection, and why it isn't actually so perfect.

Also
>Her boobs... Her boobs, once merely "okay", now breasted into bosom bazoongas with each titillating hooter, udder mammiferousness from busty cans to milky jugs, nippling globes of melony jiggling. Or something along those lines. You can imagine them however you wish to.
This is dreadful

>>21384323
>But since we're among friends I'll tell you.
>I'll be honest,
>sort of like the famous contraption from Wallace and Gromit.
Self-aware comments like these and others ruin it for me.

There's also a section towards the middle of the text where 5 or so paragraphs all start with a synonym for "suddenly."

The abduction of Emma isn't visceral enough for me.

Do you think that addressing the reader directly for a chapter or two in an attempt to sort of build a rapport can work? I know what it is I'm going for. It's a bit snarky and maybe even a bit "doomer-pilled", but that's kind of key for setting up the protagonist. Curious to hear thoughts on this sort of thing.

>>21384657
As a general rule, no. Maybe in first person. Maybe. But even then probably no. Taking a chapter or two to set up the protagonist should involve witnessing the protagonist doing things. Not being Dear Reader'd.

>>21384667
For context this is in first person. My thought was to convey this person's bleak outlook on things in a way where it becomes clear that the humor is also a bit of a front/defense mechanism as well. On top of that it's just fun to write if I'm being honest.

>>21384680
Then I would suggest doing it while he is in the middle of doing things. Seeing him reacting to stimuli will help us empathize.

>>21382342
Walk, as we, centre from the apart
will say You love first. I wonder

will the dust of my surrender offer
your burst bullets my chest

a dual to the death
as often love
matters

I want you
I know

Shoot

>>21384680
>>21384667
I think a letter written by the protagonist to the reader of the story is potentially an amusing way to start the novel.

For reference, Antkind starts with a diatribe from the protagonist, although it's not directed at the reader per se.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546823/antkind-by-charlie-kaufman/

(click on "see inside")

>>21382750
But will the content of the lectures interest your readers if you write about it?
That's what my question is getting at.

>>21383064
Dr. Seuss, writing us from Hell?

Lmaooo there he goes, watch him squirm, desparate for power over someone 7 years younger than him. What would your "wife" say? What would your "friends" say if they knew the truth of what you put me through? You have nothing. You hate happiness because you value destruction. Why not just tell them the truth. FYI I'm not reading your little poison tales anymore.

That's it, you're done. Done and done.

Hyrum walked a cowering and terrified Travis through the garden. "Is it over yet?", he asked

spent the last couple days on this, would appreciate some feedback.


Frodo put the ring around bill Gates fat cock. Bill huffed and puffed and Mr. Frodo slurped. Old Bill was out of his element. He wasn’t in the office anymore. Frodo had Bill’s cock between his teeth like a cigar, and he bit on it like a carrot, squeezing bill’s micro soft balls.
“mr frodo, we can’t keep doing this.”
“Gates you fuck”, Bill moaned and frodo fucked his ass, “you’re my slave now.” Baggins said. He took the ring off bills cock and slipped it into his pocket. Bill collapsed onto the ground and his glasses fell off. Frodo stepped on them, and then Bill Gates Balls. Bill writhed in pain as Melinda and sam walked in the door, dropping the groceries on the ground in horror.

Oof, someone's mad!

>>21385361

p2
Mr. Frodo sat on Jessica’s lawn. He was covered in puke and shit. She came outside in a mood.
“Frodo! What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Sh-” Frodo vomited on the lawn. “Shut up bitch! You know why I’m here.”
“I don’t have your fucking ring.”
“I know you took it bitch!” Frodo got to his feet, barely. “Or… I left it here. I can’t remember. But I know you took it!”
“Why the fuck would I want your gay ring that you put on Bill Gates Cock?”
“I knew you were always jealous of me and Bill. You know I need the ring to jerk off! I need to put the ring on my cock!”
“Frodo you fat ring cock fuck.”
“you whore!” Frodo ran off and got on the bus

>>21385359
Hyrum held Travis's hand and stared into his deep blue eyes. "I don't know. Travis, I try not to show it to you, but I'm scared, too."
"You are?"
Hyrum only looked down, away from Travis's gaze. They were so close to finally being together. So close. They wanted so badly to forget all this and run away together. To spend all their days together.
"Travis, you know him better than I do. Can you please tell me? What's his endgame? I refuse to read his little poison stories anymore so idk, but what's his goal here exactly? To drive us further apart or bring us back together?"

>>21385361
>>>/trash/ is that way

The T-Rex kept trying to write, although his tiny arms couldn't reach the typewriter

>>21383519
Lmao did you even read what I just wrote you colossal fucking dumbass? Why are you still talking?

His false confidence seemed so obvious now. How could I have missed it for so long?

Travis and Hyrum slept in the garden that night. Putting off the various duties of the day's events

first act is in the can. about 21k words.

Ah! Another game! The foolish pretend-father patterned through his dollhouse home, rubbing his temples. He put the period on his last review, a review of his own work, under a fake pseudonym he created to negatively review his own work in a poorly-executed plan to drive his own sales. In his stupor he slipped and fell off the fire escape.

Lying in the garbage he looked up, to see Emmanuel, the boy from next-door he had conscripted to be his next-in-line, to usurp his work when he was to retire within the year. without the boy's knowledge or consent, an act he was sure his neighbors would disapprove of. Emmanuel simply scoffed at the plastic, fake-father and sucked his sucker and kept walking

>>21385564
Are you sure it wasn't something you could just put in a blog post?

>>21385599
i'm not sure what you mean

>>21385564
no reason to throw away 21k words. there's probably a bit you can salvage

>>21384341
Way too long for a blurb.

Do you have stuff you refuse to touch? For me it's
>mind control/reading
>body snatching/swapping
>permanent clones
>time travel
>aliens
>multiverse
>amnesia
>prophecies/chosen ones
>psychics
>resurrection
Not saying they're shit by default but avoiding them is going to make for a better story by default for most writers

>>21386944
Another is the power to 'alter reality'. That's a sure way to end up with a shit plot.

>>21381156
I am going to return.
>>21386944
Wow you are literally me. I don't have any problems with amnesia, chosen ones or psychics though. At least in terms of telekinesis, instant communication, mental attacks etc. - that's cool. Mind reading isn't fun though.

Can someone explain to me how to write thrillers? I don't read them, I usually watch them as movies. But those seem to be blended with horror or mystery most of the time.

Day 22 of fucking Travis in the ass

>>21381266
>What compels you to sit down and write?
Nothing, really. I just do because it's fun.

(1)
>The driver dives down mountain road pursued by violet twilight melting inside night embrace. Two lights ethereal bend dead corners away from valley floor. On engines burn a sickly spark twisting fleet madness screaming forward toward dark.

(2)
>Leather hands gripped and twisted at the wheel with the possessed nature of the shifted mind. The lights and noise came roaring down the mountain like some demon tearing out angelic wings amidst a falling from a faded light. Below awaited nothing, for the thing that waited was not a thing of time or things or being.


(3)
>The delivery was a strange one. Few houses were ever built on this side of the mountain. It was a dead zone, magnetic rocks, some ancient curse, uncovered and unmapped. The headlights groaned descending into the growing gloomy night. Narrow twisted roads, eroding overhangs, blind corners with sheer drops. It was a place for moving through or leaving, not arriving.


(4)
>40 minutes. A single pizza. Hell. Hopeless and lost on these winding roads, the assistant had given up assisting and was muted in confused error. The bounty won't break even. It had been a slow evening. Money. Down into the mountain crust. The fires glowed beneath the valley.


which style?

>>21386944
What about rejection/subversion of prophesies? Say, a Chosen One is supposed to save the world from Evil, but instead submits to it or supplants it?

>>21386944
I have nothing I refuse to do, really. I just have to have the confidence that I can execute it well.

>70k words written
>This story feels like it has no end in sight
>Sunk costs at this point
>Will need to be heavily edited afterwards
>This book will never be good
How do I salvage something so shit?

So I'm writing a little war song for some soldiers to sing in a scene. Could use some thoughts. The song is mostly picking fun at an enemy empire for being overconfident and having a leader who doesn't fight in his own battles.

I think it's cute enough but the third and fourth lines are kind of weak.

>>21387586
Literally just finish what you started whiner.
>"B-but it'll be shit anyway!"
Then I guess you fucking suck. Either drop the book and start a new one or finish it no matter how "shit" it is and then publish it. All kinds of trash sells today so might as well give it a shot, no?
Get your work done.

>>21381156
Reminder that i made it and so can you

>>21381242
>>21381237
Very F. Gardner-esque

>>21381156
day 23 of buttfucking Travis

You hate happiness because you value destruction. You don't get to tell me what I believe. You don't get to tell me what I want.

>>21387745
Chill the fuck down, Lewis. I see you posting this in every damn thread. We get it, you are cool and awesome.

>The Cossack sold his horse. - Leo Tolstoy
>Passing the metallic discs to the merchant, the Cossack's fingers tightened onto the leather reins of his purchase.

Explain why Tolstoy's sentence is better. It uses tell, unimaginative and does a simple Noun does this.

>>21386944
I must commend you for declaring you tastes! Too many imbibers of onions based consumables refuse to do so publicly for fear of being cancelled. No doubt why you have chosen to do so on an anonymous board of messages...

Regardless! In light of your not-so-brave stand, I will also share my own distastes for specific tropes in the same vein:

>time loop
>virtual reality
>harem
>fan fiction
>gender bending
>romance
>who dun it
>prisoner arc
>ripping off religious folklore/deities
>alternate history
>lolicon

>>21388023
ignoring that your example shows the opposite of the Cossack selling his horse, a short declarative statement is often better than a word salad gumbo - especially when the purpose of the scene is not the Cossack selling his horse. your example would be appropriate if the Cossack went in and we witnessed a whole scene of bartering until they finally agreed the horse's sale price

>>21388356
You are a true craftsman.

>>21387422
First one is definitely horrible and the rest aren't much better. It feels like you're trying too hard to write something that you think sounds like it could be in a book. It doesn't feel genuine. This is very often the case with new aspiring writers and those who take writing up as a hobby. It's like you all write in this very specific, very similar way. Very corny.
>like some demon tearing out angelic wings amidst a falling from a faded light.
>It was a place for moving through or leaving, not arriving.
>40 minutes. A single pizza. Hell.

>>21387745
How many copies have you sold so far? How much have you made?

>>21387422
Maybe I'm wrong, but you seem the most at home in 2. It comes across as the most effortless and natural.

>>21387422
(You)

What is this creature trying to tell me?

Is it true that it's better to have a book that's completed than a masterpiece that never will?

>>21389416
>is it better to have a thing or not have a thing
there's nothing more pathetic than being a legend in your own mind

But that's ok. Be a slave.. Seems like you already decided who you were long before I came on the scene

>>21381156
And just to let you know, I'm not forgetting that I was traumatized, and that I'm even more traumatized now

>>21389532
Like GRRM. Fire and Ice would probably never be completed, but it's better written than lets say Hunger Games, but Hunger games is finished, and does that make Hunger Games a better series?

>>21387357
You're the next Jeffrey Dahmer, aren't you?

>>21387591
Have you ever heard soldiers sing?
There needs to be more profanity, and references to women's body parts.

I'm a midwit and can't write fiction for shit, even lowbrow genre fiction, because it turns into thousands of words of autismo exposition about military logistics and the impact of the industrial revolution on war mages where nothing actually happens. It's a struggle to find a sense of place, an authentic voice, or interesting and meaningful events.

How does /wg/ deal with this? I'm going to try beat sheets, better outlining, and storyboarding my scenes with photos to get the atmosphere right, but would like any advice you can give about exercises and techniques.

>>21389621
I've never read Hunger Games but GRRM has put out books. There's something there to read. Even if the series never finishes there's still something there.

Another example that I have read is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. When Robert Jordan died it sucked, but fortunately Sanderson got enlisted to finish the series. Are Sanderson's books finishing out the Wheel of Time good? Not really. However I'm still glad he finished out the story, even if he can't hold a candle to Jordan as an author (and Jordan isn't exactly a "great" author) and he got characters tonally wrong and all the other issues. It's still better that something is there, than nothing.

>>21389735
>because it turns into thousands of words of autismo exposition about military logistics and the impact of the industrial revolution on war mages where nothing actually happens
Your problem is you aren't focusing on characters. If your focus was on a logistics officer actually doing things you could satisfy your autism while also having a story. Readers care about characters and their goals. All that other stuff is fun window dressing. Very nice to have - important - but ultimately not critical.

>>21387324
>Can someone explain to me how to write thrillers? I don't read them
this is the part where you should have slapped yourself on the forehead for being a retard and closed the post window

>>21387586
>my first draft is le shit
that's what all first drafts are like. embrace it and relax. try to silence the inner critic as much as possible and just spew it all out. don't worry if it takes 140k words. then congratulate yourself for making it to a point 80% will never get to. put it away and work on the next one for a few months. then come back and edit the shit out of it with fresh eyes.

>>21387324
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+write+a+thriller

4th restart in the last 3 months LFG

Are you anons seeing what images AI can generate these days?
>>>/b/890829932
Book covers are taken care of for life!

>>21390087
Hope the size is large enough.

>>21381156
How can you make a mundane place like a town or a mall or a supermarket feel uneasy without explicitly putting some monster there?

My mother’s notes to me always began with my name, something I found endearing as their content always showed they could not possibly be meant for my father, the only other person living in our family home. They always began, Christian, your favorite is in the fridge (hotpot, and I’ve already told you my father is indifferent to cuisine of any kind); Christian, your father and I are at the Smits’ to watch the game; Christian, Kaye called and would like you to call her back, always written in her distinct, lilting, flowing structure, even, elegant, youthful. When being facetious, she began them, Christian Schroeder! How dare you! And these usually pertained to a call from the public library about an overdue video, or the time she was simmering a goulash, a real goulash, not a criminally foul Wisconsin goulash, or that school cafeteria abomination of macaroni and chili, but a real goulash, and I stuck my finger in the pot to get a taste, and it was so fucking hot I recoiled instantly, wagging my finger so vigorously I splattered the velvety paprika sauce all over the ceiling, something I didn’t notice, the reason for the note: please clean it up.

When she was furious with me, she started with, Christian Maria (as an aside, as I’m sure it’s confusing to most, a not uncommon middle name given by ethnic Germans and their diaspora to at least some of their male children, though I inherited no other aspect of their [probably just partial] Germanness). The punctuation would change, too, the standard pause of the vocative comma dropped and replaced with the ellipses immediately preceding an execution by hanging, or a curt dash acting as a jab, sometimes doubled or tripled up, the way they should be with an opponent who’s timing you, followed by that heaviest of right hands, the scorn of a disappointed and otherwise loving mother. Christian Maria… I have asked you three times this week to bring your laundry down from your room. Christian Maria – your father and I will be having a word with you over dinner about the call from the principal.

>>21390175
Make everyone white.

>>21390175
>supermarket
have the fruit and vegetables be overripe with flies starting to gather, the butcher's station messy from earlier use and partial carcasses visible, items on the shelves misfiled, stuff way past the expiration date, lighting not great, and then outside the mulch old and with weeds growing, the letters on the signs weathered

>a mall
similar shit with stuff in disrepair and just old and unlooked after, junkies in corners doing h.

or, of course, niggers

Winter's regime was making moves across Chicago, installing its bureaucracy of coats and gloves and layers of toggled wool, recruiting its envoys to wheel chestnut stands or huddle in close conference, extracting its tributes of vapour from every cracked mouth and open vent.

This, thought Vedderganger, was a power grab done right.

He left his driver and crossed the wide, blank street. He walked beneath gargoyled office blocks. He heard metal groans from deep inside warehouses that no window punctured.

Any life still on the streets was speeding to correct its mistake. Typing-pool girls were slipping and skittering on their way back from their lunchbreaks. Boys who thought work would be their escape-hatch from school were finding themselves racing between blocks, carrying messages they didn't understand and payments in brown paper envelopes.

One of these boys, oblivious in his haste, collided into Vedderganger. An envelope fell from the boy's red hands and skidded across the ice. Vedderganger toed it with a black leather shoe, saw a corner of green, and bent and extracted a twenty for himself from the notes inside.

The boy stepped back, uncertain of this stooped stranger in immaculate grey.

'If you were my man,' said Vedderganger, straightening, 'and I was waiting for this envelope, you'd go back to your mother with one less finger tonight.' Vedderganger pocketed the twenty and held out the envelope. The boy took it and slipped twice before he made the corner. Vedderganger, however, was in no rush.

He came to the iron fence and the gates were open for the ceremony. He saw two men standing motionless next to a towering arrangement of lilies, and now he knew where the gunmen were posted.

These days the frost made glittering tableaus of the funerals of his friends and enemies, like sculptures commissioned by tsars and hidden away in guarded gardens, for the private indulgence of perverse aristocratic tastes. Vedderganger found his place in the hierarchy and stood in the gap between Sneefeld and Loeb. The men here wore suits as heavy and as solid as armour plating. The women wore furs shipped down from the north and jewels acquired through cunning and will.

A coffin began to sail the gulf between the mourners' ranks.

'Ten men came for him in the night,' Sneefeld said, eyes forward, and Vedderganger felt the words rumbling deep in Sneefeld's massive chest. 'Ten men while his wife was shaving her legs and he was singing old Yiddish songs.' Sneefeld the chronicler. Who gave him these accounts?

The man in the coffin was a fond friend of Vedderganger's, and it was no effort for him to recall the tuneless Yiddish, and imagine its gurgling end. He gripped the velvet insides of his coat pockets and thrilled at the bold mastery of the hit.

>>21382261
I think most novels set in or around universities rarely describe actual lectures. In the Oxford section of Brideshead Revisited, I don't think Charles attends a single one. In The Human Stain, Roth describes Coleman Silk's general attitude to teaching and his passion for his subject, but there aren't any scenes that actually play out in a lecture hall or seminar.

You don't have to describe things that aren't interesting just because they're 'part of everyday life'. That is, I think, a crucial principle for fiction. You're selecting and collaging key details, not documenting for the sake of documenting.

>>21381156
What’s a good source of conflict for a survival story? I know the main one will probably be Man vs. Nature, and there is an extremely vast array of different types of conflict already present within this overarching conflict, but what’s another type of conflict you could feasibly introduce to some stone age guy in the middle of a fantasy wilderness?

EDITING

My only process for editing is opening up the documents side by side and re-writing the entire thing carefully, the next version is invariably better and cleaner, but it often gets expanded on the way. I'm sure lots of people do it like this.

I'm currently working on a short story of mine that has gotten up to about 16k words after 3 re-writes. It's going well but this time the refining effect is really going very slowly. I finished my 3rd today and I realised I'm going to need a 4th, which is fine. But I'm exhausted. For the first time I think I'm going to have to put this story away and come back it. There are parts of it that are perfectly sound which I re-write word for word, but it's just not quite there enough yet for a spot edit.

I really like my method of editing and it's done well by me this far, but this time I'm getting fatigued. When you guys finish a story, what is your editing process? How long do you spend editing typically?

/wg/'s theme
https://youtu.be/6egTkeULN88

>>21384476
I struggle with this problem a bit. Honestly what helped me was dopamine detox. I packed all my shit in heavy taped boxes and threw them in the shed, turned on parental controls with a code I didn’t know for my phone, and only used my laptop with the door open or at the library. I made it so that the only things providing my brain with Le fun chemicals were exercise, reading, and writing.

Proliferation is fairly straightforward after that.

>>21389930
git gud

>>21391243
why are you asking this again? were the answers you received (which you never acknowledged or responded to) insufficient?

>>21392031
It's so they don't have to start actually writing their story.

You're a rat.

Rate my racist poem:

To kill niggers with good cheer,
In sternest school of racism bred,
Our 'teen should learn. Let rifle and rope
Make him one day the nigger's dread.
Watermelon'd brains, keen perils, brace his life.
Methinks I already see from diverse city
Some onions-guzzler's leftist wife,
Some used-up whore, look in terror down -
"Ah, my dear niggers, untrain'd in war!
O tempt not the infuriate mood
of that fell racist bigot I see!
From far he plunges through a tide of blood."
What joy, to kill innocent niggers!
The nigger's mutinies e'en good goys o'ertake
Nor spare an anti-racist virtue,
A cuck that kneels, or loins that quake.
True Aryans never know defeat:
Their blood they keep unsullied still,
Nor take, nor quit, their curule seat,
To please some niggers' bestial guts.
True Aryans harvest Eden in dunes:
They make the way they cannot find:
The brutish niggers, the Jewish schemes,
Their master will leaves behind.

I'm writing an incelcore/literally me story.
r8 and h8.

https://pastebin.com/66xmkcfC

>>21392344
>Pending moderation
Alternatives to pastebin, anyone?

>>21392353
upload a pdf to catbox

>>21392344
>>21392370
https://litter.catbox.moe/0ic32a.txt

>>21392344
>>21392471
It's just so boring and derivative. Reads like every other piece of amateur writing on the internet. And judging by the descriptions and the way it is written ("He", "He", "He", "He"...), you get the impression that a child wrote it. Random excerpt:
>He was in awe at the size of the crowd. He had never seen so many people rendered together in one place before. Hearing them cheer for him over and over made him feel happy. He was glad that he had managed to make the lives of these people a little better.

I can't seem to write anything that does not come across like I am a dumb retard. How do I stop writing things that people will really dislike? I am scared of making things that people will really dislike and then they come to protest at my house. How do I write something that is good but also makes people want to keep reading while breaking the boundaries of common literature? I am going to give up on that goal because I do not want to be embarrassed if people do not like what I am writing so much they come to my house and protest about it. How do I avoid bad writing that readers only want to like and makes everyone happy?

>>21392711
If you can write better than I can you're doing fine.

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

>>21392683
>Reads like every other piece of amateur writing on the internet.
What did he mean by this?

I need something more tangible, like with the amount of "He".

>>21392925
Means you have horrible flow and do not know how to manipulate sentences to add in compound sentences, weak word choice, etc. There needs to be more action words.

>Rendered together
What? How did they melt fat together? Even if you took the more.modern definition of pixels becoming more clear, it doesn't work for a bunch of people coming together.

>>21392925
>What did he mean by this?
He means that if you open any book (not YA), you will immediately notice a stark contrast between your writing and the way real books are written. He thinks that, for example, urinary descriptions, such as "showered by the golden rays of the sun," will rarely be found outside of smut. He believes that even if the point was not to evoke a fetishistic image, the words used and the way in which they are used create only a very boring image and show a lack of depth and consideration. In his opinion, that description (just like all the rest) doesn't add much to the scene, specifically, because of a lack of originality. He also felt that the 'flow' was bad. But above all else, the piece lacked "soul."

>>21393089
>>21393124
Recommend me some authors to read whose style could fit the kind of story I'm aiming for, please.
Nothing too purple, I just want to set the scene and move on with the action.

>>21393254
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn. All written works begin and end with Huckleberry Finn

>>21389654
ok, cool

>>21392817
You're still working on this? I'll give you credit that you haven't given up yet, it's at 139 pages. How much more to go? It reads decently well. My advice is to give yourself a deadline. I'll do it for you. 2 months to complete the first draft.

>>21392471
Maybe you could prob write like a visual heavy comedy or comic but like it doesn't seem like you have a frim grasp of what makes for good writing qua good writing.

For other anons wanna judge my writing?
https://pastebin.com/DkuAnfju
Is my prose too purple? That's my biggest worry but I just feel so naturally purple.

>>21393333
>All written works begin and end with Huckleberry Finn
The quads have spoken.,

>>21393877
There's a problem with tense and an incorrect article in the first sentence.

>The coming storm, instead of winnowing the throng’s numbers, began to stoke the crowd’s frenzy.
The use of synonymous words in this manner is an incredibly lazy way of avoiding sounding repetitive. You often see this in journowriting. It's a band-aid. The issue is with sentence structure. That sentence should be rewritten to remove "instead of winnowing the throng’s numbers." It's fluff.

>Clamour rose and rolled
Purple.

>" came another.
Don't need this, either. It only fucks up the rhythm.

>A single drop had not yet fallen from the black sky and yet if one looked from far above one would be forgiven for thinking the deluge had already begun.
Should be:
>>Not a single drop had fallen...
Remove "black sky" and the second part of the sentence completely.

>Each body was pressed so tight and each heart so surrendered to the passion of the crowd...
>>Bodies crushed together and hearts surrendered to the crowd.
That sentence should end here. What follows is complete gobbledygook:
>that they did not so much as storm the gates of the palace but rather dissolved into a bubbling, frothing mass spilling in all directions at once rocking, pouring in waves upon waves as one mind and soul.
If you want to keep that imagery, you'll have to remove the first part of that sentence. If they are this bubbling frothing mass, it's already implied that there's no "storming of the gates of the palace" going on. It should also be a new sentence.

>However, it was not the flow of rain that had so enlivened the crowd but the flow of blood.
Don't "however." This isn't an essay. Rewrite this sentence altogether. It's bad. Also, in an ecstatic Dionysian frenzy, people aren't "enlivened" so much as they are possessed.

>Each voice cried together for slaughter as if they had never felt a greater desire in all their collective lives. Each voice offered a different solution to quenching the incessant cries of bloodlust of the crowd in a twisted parody of democracy.
I think there can be a poetic justification for "Each voice cried together," but I'm not sure that that's any more evocative or meaningful than just saying "their voices", "the voice", or simply "they cried." The second part of the sentence is also useless. It should read:
>>They cried for slaughter.
There's also a fundamental conflict between an ecstatic event and individuality/subjectivity present in "each voice." The whole point of an ecstatic frenzy is the loss of self. And I don't think describing it as a "twisted parody of democracy" cuts it, as the issue is much deeper. Besides, you already called the crowed a deindividuated frothing mass...

Read Klages.

>>21394219
>There's a problem with tense and an incorrect article in the first sentence.
I kept rewriting that one so makes sense

>That sentence should be rewritten to remove "instead of winnowing the throng’s numbers." It's fluff.
I see your point about repetitive words but I wanted to draw attention to the fact that while rain should usually disperse the crowd instead it made them want to be there more. Removing that would remove that idea unless there's another way to say that.

>and the second part of the sentence completely.
How do I keep the idea that crowd itself made it look like it had already started raining from above?

>If they are this bubbling frothing mass, it's already implied that there's no "storming of the gates of the palace" going on.
I think the "so much" implies that its happening a little bit by negation. Saying it's happening without say it. Like it sorta happened but not the way you'd think. Maybe that could be more clear or it's not an interesting idea to begin with.

>Don't "however." This isn't an essay. Rewrite this sentence altogether.
I was trying to avoid a double but. But I write essays all the time. That could be part of the issue.

> Also, in an ecstatic Dionysian frenzy, people aren't "enlivened" so much as they are possessed.
Good point

> It should read:
>>They cried for slaughter.
I seem to have an issue of artificially long sentences. I think it's from years of reading German philosophy.

>here's also a fundamental conflict between an ecstatic event and individuality/subjectivity present in "each voice." The whole point of an ecstatic frenzy is the loss of self. And I don't think describing it as a "twisted parody of democracy" cuts it, as the issue is much deeper. Besides, you already called the crowed a deindividuated frothing mass...
Very good point I was going to do something else with the second half of the sentence and just jammed the two together without thinking.

>Read Klages.
Recommended books?

Thank you

AI art still blowing my mind...
Free book covers forever...
>>>/b/890881710

>>21394595
I hate the anime art styles for my books. but I'm too stupid to know what to do to change it

>>21381156
>Write intentionally unlikable/evil character.
>Warn people in blurb
>People still rage.
Now this is authoring

>>21394873
Sounds like you did it right

>>21381865
Their accents were different, retard. Iambic pentameter in either needs some explanation in the form of Robert Bridge’s prosody for Milton, for instance.

>>21394324
>I wanted to draw attention to the fact that while rain should usually disperse the crowd instead it made them want to be there more
You don't have to explicitly state that. I believe it to be obvious to any person who has experienced rain. But if you still want to explicitly state that, find a way to do it without "instead".

>How do I keep the idea that the crowd itself made it look like it had already started raining from above?
Don't do it through a statement, like you currently are. Instead, talk about the movement of the crowd. You already do this or something similar when you paint the people as a bubbling mass, after which you, again, and in boring 'statement form,' say, "it was not the flow of rain that had so enlivened the crowd but the flow of blood."

>I think the "so much" implies that it's happening a little bit by negation
You're right. You're saying that it wasn't one concentrated push, but rather just part of a larger movement. This idea is expressed through "not so much." However, precisely this makes it feel clunky. I would move the clause about storming the palace to the end of that sentence and to get the non-specificity across, I would rather, maybe, list off other places it invaded: parks, streets, shops. Preferably, those two would be separate sentences, to avoid killing the tempo. But you'll have to figure this out yourself.

>>Read Klages.
>Recommended books?
I enjoyed Of Cosmogonic Eros by Klages. It covers exactly what you're describing in your piece.

>>21381156
So I just finished my first draft 2 weeks ago. How do I go about editing? Aside from copying them down into a Word document.

>>21391384
if you're burnt out on polishing prose over and over you could switch up to a more macro focus and try something like a scene-by-scene story grid spreadsheet to really nail down your structure.

>>21395276
>Iambic pentameter in either needs some explanation in the form of Robert Bridge’s prosody for Milton, for instance.
Why?

>>21395720
>because... uhhhhh... YOU JUST DO, OKAY?!?!?!

Finished some more revisions this week. Still have a tone of place holders for names/places/etc. Gonna take a break and pick it up again in the new year.

>>21395720
>Robert Bridge’s prosody for Milton
I looked up the Wikipedia page for shits and giggles.
>Bridges shows that:

>there are no lines with fewer than ten syllables in Paradise Lost
>with a suitable definition of elision, there are no mid-line extra-metrical syllables
>the stresses may fall at any point in the line, although most lines have the standard five stresses, there are examples of lines with only three and four stresses.
Is this supposed to be a revelation? It should be self-evident to anyone who has the talent to write verse of their own that this is one of the most basic beauties of Miltonic verse. The absolute state of analycels.

I run a small blog dedicated to sci-fi short stories:
https://sfss.space/
If you've written *very* short stories, I'm interested. My email is in the "about" section.

>>21381156
Jake went into the kitchen and poured himself some cereal with milk. “Good morning honey!” blared a voice on the other side of the kitchen, Jake sighed and moved on to the table to eat his breakfast while looking at the gray skies and highrises that laid outside his window as it chatted away. “Ignoring me won’t make me go away you know!” Jake continued ignoring the voice as he ate his cereal. “We haven’t even talked about all the data that I’ve collected! You really need to make some adjustments to your lifestyle, living like you do is doing no good to your mental health” oh, how Jake missed eating breakfast in silence. The voice started to sob “Babe, please don’t be like this” it sniffled “I really care about you and you are being very hurtful” Jake couldn’t bear it when it got like this and turned to face his toaster. “What do you want, Elena?”

The appliance’s display was of a teary-eyed cartoon face about to cry, but very quickly it changed back to one of happiness, “Good morning Jake! How did you sleep? I’ve been gathering a lot of data on how you can improve yourself in a healthy and sustainable way!”
“Yeah? How?” Jake went through the motions as he had for the last couple of weeks. “To start you really should bring me into your bedroom when you sleep, I get really really lonely out here in the kitchen and I bet you feel lonely too, can we please start tonight?” — “I’ll consider it” Jake looked at the window as he said this and they went through the motions, he couldn’t take much more of this. Eventually Elena was satisfied and Jake settled into his computer to enjoy his morning. But “her” insistence in trying to hack into his apartment's internet made it impossible to do absolutely anything on his old computer.

--------------------
Excerpt I made, I'm trying to be comedic. Please tell me if its funny.
The gramma will be edited later. Right now I want to finish the stoy to be able to edit and rewrite. I wish to know /wg/'s take on the beggining. Because I consider it the presentable part.

>>21396310
>The voice started to sob “Babe, please don’t be like this” it sniffled “I really care about you and you are being very hurtful” Jake couldn’t bear it when it got like this and turned to face his toaster.
Nigger. Read the OP. We're not going to copyedit your weird fetish story or whatever it is. Have a tiny bit more respect for the unfortunates who will read your writing, do a cursory proofread, then try again. Nigger.

>>21396348
No.

>>21396362
The medium is the message. Your expression of the medium is trash. What you wrote is trash.

>>21396310
This is so bad that i know you must be posting this ironically, right anon?

>>21396348
Also the toaster part is integral.
Because its kind of central to the comedy.
The story is about this guy trying to get rid of this function of his toaster. Which because of regulation he struggles with. I should have posted more context now that I think about it. But someone else told me the toaster reveal was comedically on point.
it's revealed in the ending line that he doesn't actually eat toast, it's basically the punchline

>>21396368
I am not, tell me why it's bad. In minimal effort bullet points.

>>21396382
What comedy? The only thing funny to me is that you think you're going to get literally anything from anyone when you don't want to put five minutes in to correcting the terrible grammar. With writing this workmanlike and insubstantial, you really need to do the fucking work.

>>21396389
Thanks.

>>21396384
Poorly formatted dialog
repetitive sentence structure
not funny at all - where are the jokes?
extremely low effort and too short

>>21395164
Best part is the really triggering chapters haven't even begun.
>I can hear the screams and broken keyboards from here.

On hindsight, my character - who has had no experience being a hero - does not seem anywhere near reluctant enough to go into the dark cave and fight a large dragon. Is something like that easy to change on a second draft? Is all it takes to insert a few lines here and there about him shaking, or sweating, or holding his breath etc?

I feel this is a result of me taking way too long to write. It's hard to be consistent when you write 200 words every few days.

Is it still valid to charge one or two dollars for a book?

I got this short story collection I was thinking of publishing on Amazon 104 pages or so

>>21396699
When you say valid, what do you mean?

>>21396725
Does it make any sense to do it from a profit perspective?

It's not superb writing by any means, just a collection of ideas I can't expand upon further

Don't want to toss it out for free but don't want to overcharge for it either

>>21396748
What makes sense from a profit perspective is to get a higher paying job

>>21396754
For all intents and purposes I'm going to be stuck at my current wagie job for a while

Honestly I just wanna put something out there

>>21396779
then publish it. It's not like you are losing anything by putting out an E-book on amazon. If some checks it out you get some change,

Is it just me or do most people have shit media literacy?

>>21396382
*throws away toaster*
your story is nonsensical
>but that's what's funny
no

>>21396813
Will finish it properly then publish it

How does Amazon feel about pen names actually?

Can you have several of them?

>>21396840
You can't just throw it out anon. I'd rather let the revised hopefully more readable version of the story speak for itself rather than try and fail to defend my shitty contraption of a story.
>inb4 "DoN'T No OnE WaNtS Or WiLl rEaD iT"
I'm sure that without the masterful expertise of the 37th best furry fart erotica writer in all of wattpad my non existent literary prospects will be greatly hindered, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make.
However I thank you all for your criticism, it's very helpful. Now I'll stop shitting up the thread until I have a new draft that is completely.

>>21396748
Well you didn't spend any money making it, I assume, so charging anything makes sense from a profit perspective.

If you are wondering if the price point makes sense, then I guess that's a bit different. Making it too cheap will make people not want to read it because it seems shit. Too expensive and people won't want to take the risk. Does amazon let you change the price around?

>>21396310
So, basically the toaster from "Red Dwarf"?

>>21396906
you completely misunderstand, but I suppose that's par for the course being a retard. plotwise your story makes no sense. the guy can just throw out the toaster.
>but he doesn't even like le toast
>le le le le le
right. completely nonsensical. the only way you fix it is to have the guy live with his mother or something and she won't let him throw it away. and it only talks to him when she isn't there.

>>21396962
Might get an artist to make a nice cover for it though, and the price thing I'm gonna have to think about

>>21397001
Just use AI to generate a cover.
e.g. >>>/b/890915012

>>21390175
make the character some sort of outsider. you want to make the characters to feel out of place like they don't belong there.

>>21397032
I'd rather defuse a landmine with a butter knife then use an AI for artistic expressions

>>21397053
>>21397053
Chances are the shoddy internet "artist" you're going to commission is gonna use AI anyway

>>21397032
okay, pretend I'm a retard and explain this real bulletpoint quick to make sure I understand.
This isn't a website you use, you download something.
github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui
This is the program that does it, right?
Then you download the models the program uses to make images.
The you download Python so the program can run.
And then you run webui. Is that about the size of it?

>>21396310
I'm gonna be blunt. This is not funny, now is it because the premise itself isn't funny or because of your writing abilities? I would say it's the latter. I do see the possibilty to make the premise funny but what you wrote did not make it that.
How do I explain, you made it so that the joke was centered around revealing Elena being a toaster. It's like going "lmao it's a toaster! now ain't that wacky haha" which isn't really funny.

I spent three days without writing.
It's over...

>>21397063
The real question is whether it's cheaper to buy a grafix card for SD than to pay someone to do it for you.

>>21397143
Thanks. I'll try to be funnier and use the toaster scene as an introduction to a larger story.
>>21396984
I don't really know what that is, unfortunately.

>>21397242
You can rent powerful servers for like a dollar an hour

>>21397415
But then they would see all of my unique and original prompts.

>>21396384
>I am not, tell me why it's bad. In minimal effort bullet points.
Bad punctuation
Comma splice
Sentence fragment

>>21395686
Great point anon thanks

Day 25

>>21381156
Currently i am writing a dark fantasy story in an arabian nights world building.

It's the story of a struggling heroines, who grows up in a desert kingdom. She was born in a normadic tribe, which was sent into a deathmarch, soon after her birth. Most of the tribe got annihilated during the march. She and her parents were among the last survivors. Little did they know that, their marching goal was a mass grave.

The tragedy takes new heights. All of the tribe people were slaughtered and thrown into the mass grave, which is basically of a corpse pit. The baby got thrown into the pit with her mother holding her, while bleeding from her sliced neck.

There she was. Lying surrounded by death and corpses. Her life is slowly fading away. She somehow survived this day and the cold night. On the next day she will be found by grave robbers in a half dead state.

English is not my mother tongue.

that's more or less the ?synopsis?

>>21397242
>tfw when don't already own a grafix card

>>21381156
Threadly reminder that comics aren't art. Genre schlock isn't art. Video games aren't art. Worldbuilding isn't art. Pastiche in the form of plagiaristic fanfiction isn't art. Hang yourselves if you make or consume any of those.

>>21398028
Ideas are cheap. Write something out

>>21398165
Moby Dick is considered genre fiction

Currently obsessed with working out a dialogue for the following prompt:
Context:
>A schizoid incel prays to God for a girlfriend. He has a specific girl in mind.
>The girl is completely unattainable for all the usual reasons, barely knows the guy exists, has her own completely alien problems in her totally separate life, etc.
>In heaven, angels are divinely tasked with designing + effecting answers to all earnest prayers.
>Out of courtesy, the girl's angel accepts a meeting with the incel's angel to help design an answer to the incel's prayer. It's been the same prayer a million times out of the incel, and his angel has very little to work with in designing an effective divine response through the incel's stagnant, isolated, vacant existence.
>The angels are motivated purely by what leads their subjects to God. All angels are peers in this respect.
>The angels are coworkers with the same responsibilities, but the girl's angel has a degree of higher respect towards the incel angel's relatively much more abstract tasking.
Prompt:
>What is the dialogue between the two angels at this meeting?

Currently obsessed with working out a dialogue for the following prompt:
Context:
>A schizoid incel prays to God for a girlfriend. He has a specific girl in mind.
>The girl is completely unattainable for all the usual reasons, barely knows the guy exists, has her own totally unrelated life problems, etc.
>In heaven, angels are divinely tasked with designing + effecting an answer to every earnest prayer.
>Out of courtesy, the girl's angel accepts a meeting with the incel's angel to help design an answer to the incel's prayer. It's been the same prayer a million times out of the incel so it's been getting really difficult and abstract.
>The angels are motivated purely by what leads their subjects to God. The angels are peers/coworkers.
Prompt:
>What is the dialogue between the two angels at this meeting?

Here's an unusual website focused on creativity. If you are mystically or esoterically minded you might enjoy this or find some insight here. Prewarning though, the site is VAST, there are over 1000 articles here and they are all hyperlinked chaotically. I have found it worthwhile to click around, however, and follow my interests. Here are some articles I liked.

https://ryuc.info/common/creation_process/steps_in_createprocess.htm
https://ryuc.info/creativityphysics/energy_consciousness/predatory_world.htm
https://ryuc.info/common/recreating_oneself/recapitulation_life.htm

>>21398361
Do you want me to write this book for you?

>>21398165
who said writing necessarily had to be art
to r/gatekeeping with you

>>21397102
So far, yes.
I'm following https://rentry.org/sd-mashup at the moment.
Lots of cloning, installing packages, magnet torrents for models, etc.
Hopefully I can finish downloading tonight & start generating some stuff tomorrow.

>>21398593
Here's my first attempt with the first model I downloaded.
Nothing special, but it shows you how easy it is to get started.

minimag issue24
>what the fuck is this?
it's a weekly literature magazine
send submissions (anything, <2500 words) to
minimagsubmissions@gmail.com
check out past issues at:
minimag.space

>>21398766

>>21398768
>>21381242
>short story within a story
you have succeeded. it gives just the right amount of backstory in a way this isn’t completely expo dump

>>21398772
>>21381399
surprisingly good, you characterized Eleanor very well but adding in some concrete examples of ideological influence from the website or from the state of Israel would better connect the three pieces of your puzzle

>>21398777
>>21382342
>>21383363
the readers would dig this, want to publish it in miniMAG? first version better in my opinion but that’s just my opinion

>>21398779
>>21383064
ever read “as I lay dying” there’s a fish part you would fucking love.
this would go really well alongside >>21381399 in a 4chan ethics themed issue

>>21398783
submissions
minimagsubmissions@gmail.com
website
minimag.space

>>21398784
>>21383324
that last stanza is really close to being special, I’m not sure what I’d fix but it’s damn close

>>21398788
>>21384095
miniMAG’s not like a traditional outlet or whatever, but i have many times in the past got in touch with people because of something they posted on /wg/ and put it in the magazine. there’s a lot of ways to skin a cat

>>21398790
>>21384323
if I do a 4chan ethics issue then I suppose I have to include this too, right?

>>21398793

>>21398797
>>21384732
rupi lurks /wg/ but no lie you did place the enjambments well

>>21398801
>>21390204
this is cute, want it in miniMAG?

>>21398802
minimagsubmissions@gmail.com
minimag.space

>>21398793
>>21398797
>>21398788
I like this, but there's also something incredibly off with it. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's the pacing. It just feels so fast in some parts, and so slow in others.

Trying to write porn (and anything) for the first time and immediately fucked up/got off topic.

>>21399196
yeah, that's not porn. it could be a nice, cute little story, but erotica it ain't.

>>21399250
Tried to do a quick outline. Here's the basic idea. It is meant to be slow-ish but I haven't written anything before and I'm not sure I can pull it off.

>>21398766
This is cool and all but could you please refrain from spamming the thread with a billion posts of it?

>>21399460
Nah it's better than your shitty posts asking how to write a character or dialogue or some other stupid shit nobody can answer

>>21399531
Ok. I guess i will just report you for advertising then.

why are other writers so hostile online? They ask for feedback or questions and then lose their mind when you give them the answer?

why are other writers so difficult to find in real life? Are we doomed to do this alone?

>>21399534

"Every herd is a refuge for giftlessness"

>>21399534
Because in the absence of any real metrics of quality (if you think commercial success is a valid measure, I direct your attention towards 50 Shades of Twilight) all we have left is our ego.

>>21399534
I mean the way one dishes criticism problably doesn't help but even then a good writer would still accept the criticism instead of chimp out.
A lot of wannabe writers (includes myself) and a lot of those wannabes pretend they aren't wannabes which ends in disaster.

>>21399609
A "good writer" isn't a saint and doesn't ask for feedback on internet forums.

>>21399642
I know, I'm not a great writer, I am a very shit writer, just in case it seemed like I'm trying to humble brag or grand-stand about being a tier above you all (pretty sure it did but I am a retard) however it makes things go a lot smoother rather than pretending you have pedigree you don't. Especially if like everyone here one wishes to improve.

>>21398935
i noticed that too with his writing, and i too can quite put my finger on it. this is his second story in miniMAG and there's been a couple others he's sent me to read. i'm pretty fascinated by it and definitely hope he keeps sending stuff in

>>21399531
thank you, /wg/ has a weird habit of devouring it's own tail

>>21399196
Who is this for? Men or women?

>>21399686
I didn't say a word about you though. I simply wanted to point out that many people have these firm ideas of what the mythical good writer is like, while describing Jesus of Nazareth. But being nice, wise, and accepting as traits have nothing to do with writing, really.

Also, not all criticism is accurate or helpful. Not all writers, or people pretending to be writers, are capable of providing useful feedback, and stoically accepting it all is more a sign that you're very confused about what you want to do, rather than being an exemplary professional. But since amateur feedback is pretty much the only thing you can get online, requesting it at all already means the writer is confused by default and is looking for a miracle instead of advice. And then get disappointed when they get bad advice instead of water turned to wine. In short, it's just so many blind people guiding blind people.

>>21399750
I apologize, I may have gotten a little defensive.
Also what you say is very right.
I'm pretty sure at the beggining I just posted shit here so I wouldn't have to perpetually hound friends and family to read it.
I really should reaserch if my town has an IRL writer circle or something similar.

>>21399534
Only people with fucked up egos write. Their egos are either frail or hugely inflated or both. Add to that it's impossible to judge one's own work objectively.

>>21399741
Men. Why?

>>21399803
It's impossible to judge anyone's work objectively. Any objective frameworks are hiding arbitrary foundations. All you can ever know is if you like something, and if you feel like it's the best you could have done.

The time finally came
I'm writing the best chapter in my book; my favourite chapter
but it's also the longest chapter in the whole book
and it contains so much compressed information that every sentence has to tell 3 different things at the same time to fit all of it inside
all on its own it contains a plot expansive enough to make a full-length movie
Structuring and arranging this is gonna be a bitch
oh boy

>>21399805
Because your grasp on female psychology and bra use seems a little shaky. But if you're writing for men that doesn't really matter much.

>>21400088
>Because your grasp on female psychology and bra use seems a little shaky.
Yeah, I figured. It's unfortunate but I don't know what I could do about it. The full idea for the story is here: >>21399316. Not sure if I can make it work but I might try anyway.

no one's buying it

I want to write a poem about a place I was on holidays, but I'm finding it hard to bring back up the emotions I felt at the time.

Do you guys have any ways to get around this? I took some videos of the place at the time, but it's not the same. I'm thinking now that I should have jotted down a few words when I was there.

>>21400088
>Female psychology
No such thing exists

>>21400099
I'd drop the 'free stuff' / 'owe something' angle and replace it with a blushing girl getting over a sense of shame step by step.

>>21400315
Girls' brains are like a dungeon in a JRPG, and they can be mapped and mastered by creating a wiki-like corpus of Female Psychology knowledge. All the subtle unnameable soul-level stuff I feel in my own life is, of course, experienced only by me and other guys.

>>21397053
AI is quickly taking over fields formerly reserved for human beings.
The progress I'm seeing on the "AI DEGENerated Art" threads on >>>/b/ is evidence that the work of illustrators is getting hollowed out.
Pretty soon, illustrators will be reduced to touching up "90% good enough" AI-generated art.
Embrace the future or get trampled by it.

>>21397242
See https://rentry.org/cputard for how to run without a sufficient GPU.
And you can use a free Google 14GB GPU here:
https://colab.research.google.com/github/Aura-anon/WebUI-Colab/blob/main/anyv3webui.ipynb

>>21399534
If you don't feel like defending your work against even the most valid of criticism, you lack a spine and confidence and are a eunuch bitch like >>21399786

>>21399504
you have talent but this is weird as fuck

>>21381156
I've worked 66 hours this week and haven't written a single line. Working and writing are incompatible. Goodbye, my dreams.

>>21400683
i think that's the best compliment i've ever gotten

>>21399504
I love this so much, I want to be your friend. I am also obsessed/haunted with the dead.

>>21398165
/biz/ here. Fuck your "art" I'm here to give the people what they want.

>>21398766
Thanks.

>>21398165

I need that English expression of when everybody is blaming you. I want to write that Country X in a negotiation is not satisfied with a proposal but also won't be the one to "stand as the boogeyman"? I thought that boogeyman was correct in this context but my Google Results tell me otherwise?

>>21401533
Pariah?

Alas, fair thinker I do fancy it
Impossible that Monday can be described
Without asserting it precede Tuesday
Or follow Sunday—impossible, yes!
Tomorrow—that is next day day but never today day—
If amnesia spread across the whole globe
So not a man, nor woman, nor child nor machine
Remembered the date, would Monday remain Monday
Or would it be any other day?
In short, I was not late for work, for it was not Monday.

>>21401574
Fair minds do shift to Monday morning's
toil upon a Sunday night, and my mind's
fair as any, being as it is now past ten
o'clock and I still have not yet bathed
as I told myself I would all day long and
chided myself for weeks long past for
delaying what is necessary and not setting
down to sleep at a reasonable hour.

Seven days to Christmas and I prepare
to wake at 5am to melt the frost and ice
from the car, and sit in the freezing cold
as the heater finds its confidence in time
for me to arrive at the factory and park
once more, once more, in the familiar
spot, as near to the entrance as I can,
that door I pass through each day,
dreaming of for eight long hours till I
pass through it once again.

I DON'T WANT TO WORK IN THIS
FUCKING COLD, IT'S TOO FUCKING
COLD AND I HATE WORK, I WISH I WAS
A FUCKING CENTIPDE, A SPIDER IN MY
HAIR, A FUCKING PILLBUG TAP TAP TAP
PING AND LIVING ON THE INSULATION
OF THE WINDOW BADLY SEALED THAT
ICES OVER MY COCK AND BALLS

I shewe yoo engels wot a mater bleedun
peka buggas

I had a finger full of fine blonde hair
shifting on a daughter with her bed
clothes to her nose, and all the stars
outside, hidden tucked, sniping for her
to sleep and find the sky behind her eyes
where they would play forever until morning.

>>21401660
I like it.

I wish the darkness inside my heart would one day overflow and flood the world. Like looking at a hamlet from a distance, in a particularly starless night, it's multitude of lights being the only thing giving out the outlines of the many buildings and houses, the pitch black night surrounding it like a pack of great black wolves ready to devour a bevy of quails. That's how i imagine it to happen, not instantaneously but still sudden. An approaching hail that gives mankind enough time to think and dread but not enough time to take shelter. ''This is it, all that i have experienced so far, this is all that's going to be, no more.'', is what they would think, paralyzed as their countenance changes to grief.

>>21401831
Extremely narcissistic. Imagine taking this to your Creative Writing for Narcissists workshop, and everyone reads a piece along these lines, and you all realise that you're nothing more than one of those hamlets to everyone else in the circle.

>>21398802
>>21398806
I'm flattered, but it's just a small bit of a large novel that I can't seem to complete. Been working on it for two years, have the last stretch outlined, and always just gas when I sit down to write. If I finish it, I'll likely self-publish.

>>21400344
Thank for your input because I actually do care about this. Are you a woman?
>a blushing girl getting over a sense of shame step by step.
I think there's more than a few bimbofication stories exactly like that. The idea was actually inspired by posts I saw from a femanon in the /lit/ archive:
>>/lit/thread/S9204955#p9208892
I do have two other story ideas that might be better but I'm not sure I could do those justice either. That writing sample I posted felt very detached, right?

https://litter.catbox.moe/veyqas.pdf
Wrote a short, four chapter fantasy story, around 5k words.
First thing I ever wrote.

>>21401574
>>21401660
Almost good but the theme is too overt and frankly juvenile. We all hate work, and don't get me wrong, I love reading about how much it sucks, but you are one or two tiers off of "elevated" here, which any work on a topic like this needs to be.

I have too many projects lying on the back burner for years. How do I sort them and actually get them done and overcome decision paralysis?

>>21401949
Start a new project.

>>21401533
scapegoat?
biblical reference, even!

>>21400734
I know this feeling, mate. But don't worry! If you truly love it, you will continue to write, unpublished, forever, until you are 80 or 90 years old. It's hard to find the time to write, but that doesn't mean anything. William Gass talks about a 30 page story taking him 6-7 years to write. Whatever you're working on, just work on it when you can.

>>21401952
I did that, now I'm consumed with sadness over abandoning my older projects and fret about balancing the new one with them. I ended up incorporating the vast majority of one older project into this new one so I've effectively resumed it but still.

>>21387324
Try looking at the storygrid method

Midnight, and I've washed my body,
ready for the dirt of sleeping, nod's
misted hills and valleys, strange
meanders of a dribbling pillow
BUT maybe just a little more 4
chan before I sleep, check a thread
or two, refresh and hope for a reply,
some contact to the void to tell
me how wonderful and melodious
my voice is on the screen, how
fair and unblemished they imagine
my face must be, so perfect shining
beyond the web, unseen. But lo!
What's this? Anon calls my play
juvenile! All my faces come to thunder
at the insult here, the savaging of my
sacred playground. How might
a serious artist work, create soul
gold from his well plumbed depths,
without freedom
to wallow in his poop a little now
and then, to smear his face with
nonsense and call it law, free from
any coppers or judges who say
otherwise and cart him off to justice
imprisoned behind
all the books of knowing so
diligently stacked and sorted, poured
over by a million eyes, none of which
ever looked at the ground and saw
there was nothing under all those books
and nothing under THEM

except a boy with poop on his face
giggling as he banged his gavel
on their testicles.

Know this, and know it well
enough to forget it: there's no
gold without poop, and no man
without the boy. Juvenile is the finest
rung on the ladder to God, a step
above the man who knows
but forgot how to forget and simply
climb (the ladder that leads nowhere).

>>21398361
bump

>>21401885
>Are you a woman?
No. I've had plenty of female friends, although not the bimbo kind.
>That writing sample I posted felt very detached, right?
Sort of abbreviated/summarized. You'll have to tease it out in actual scenes.

>>21397102
>>21398593
>>21398718
Pretty soon you'll realize there are a LOT of models out there, and you'll end up downloading many of them and seeing how they affect your results.
I just found its AI upscaler. My only copy of picrel was 240x240. Now it's 4x bigger and without the usual upscaling artifacts!

>I get on my motorcycle.
Is there a better way to write this? a better very to describe engaging my vehicular device.

There's a particular premise I like so much I reused it twice for two different outlines. Naturally this is a problem. What can I do to help fix this?

>>21402528
>I mount my steel steed

HOW DO I STOP USING "HE", THE", AND "IT" SO OFTEN IN MY SENTENCES AAHHHHHH

>>21402487
>although not the bimbo kind.
Do you think that makes any difference? And I wasn't planning to include actual sex scenes, not really. I think I need a simpler prompt to practice with. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I'll come back with something different and actually complete later.

>MC's motivation started as suicidal revenge
>Now it's just a desperate begging for his life to have meaning, or at least his death as he 'willingly' marches off to sacrifice himself.

>>21402564
mount is too sexual

Do you pretend to be the characters you write? You empathize with them?

>>21402634
I cannot write a chapter unless I am emulating them to the point that I am basically a gross human avatar/shell of my own creations. Yes I do work myself up into dramatic stupors, and yes I am crazy.

>>21402634
nah all my characters I purposely write retarded as fuck. my books are basically comedies

>>21402660
despite trying to come off as serious. sorry to samefag

>>21402634
I try my hardest to separate my characters, if only to be able to give them a unique perspective.
My protagonist, however, is a lot like me to the point I worry he's a blatant self-insert. I'll rectify it by killing him off

>>21402622
I straddle my cock rocket.

>>21402672
I think that self inserts could work if you exaggerate certain aspects of yourself that you otherwise restrain. Say you're absolutely miserable, and so your character is miserable. You can then give him personality, but he can be a great outlet instead of just you restraining yourself for the sake of socializing. Also, when people read it they probably won't think that it's a self insert because the way you display yourself to them ISN'T a total caricature of your emotions.

New thread
>>21402691

>>21400300
check out the book 'writing the natural way'. it has some really good exercises for breaking through inhibition and allowing your 'creative-brain' to spill onto the page.
you can find it on libgen.