/lit/ - Literature

>>21741253
Write both of them, as separate novels!

>>21741547
>No clue how to change the sigil in my a.i. generated art.
>Decide to just incorporate it into the story instead

so, i was just transferring my writing from paper to computer, right?

holy FUCK my writing is AMAETURISH. SHIT. DOOKEY. and this is supposed to be the story i'm most passionate about.

>>21741567
Got to start somewhere

>>21741560
What do you want to change it to?
Is it something you have elsewhere?
GIMP or Photoshop should be able to do that.

How does this read? Mostly there to show that weird stuff has been happening in town but no one can really explain what exactly for these weird things happening

>>21741577
I was thinking of just cleaning it up a bit to make it less jagged and the rays shooting every which way, but it's okay, incorporating it into the lore worked out.

>>21741579
The first sentence
>Tom said somberly, with a hint of nostalgia in his tone
could be changed to be better
>Tom said somberly, a hint of nostalgia in his tone
>Tom somberly said, nostalgia in his tone
>Tom somberly said, nostalgia in his voice
It looks like you put in a lot of effort into the dialogue, but should probably break it up into chunks. Nobody is going to read one long block no matter how much Faulkner they've read.
And with the dialogue It sounds like a lot of talk and nothing to center it around a physical place. Although that may be what you decided for.

>>21741547

Would you read my schizo novel?

"Every child and teenager on New Canaan learned to fear the Deboner from the cradle. Entangled on a myriad of judicial processes concerning the cover-up of cases of ritual murder of children, the Striped Pajamas Deboner is studied on universities of law, for it is a twisted marvel of human corruption the fact he never got caught or that so many evangelic Christians to this day defend him with all their wits from the accusations."


"The fact is that the Jews cursed to live in New Canaan are the epitomized and synthesized living stereotype of both Nazis and Jews that somehow boiled out from the racist molecules of the IIV and was fueled by the aforementioned reversal of the virus, that united with the fact that mostly of the infected Jews were Zionists – which was already a form of genocidal and dispossessing ultra-nationalism in itself – led the already existent quotient of extremism to highly extrapolate when catalyzed by Ideological Immunodeficiency Virus' infection."


"The devious view fueled by the most insidious of hatreds that animated and vibrated into the neural pathways of the original Nazis when referring to the Jewish people is embodied into all the other neural pathways of the races festering in New Canaan as the standard for their judgment of this tormented ethnicity vilified through the ages by all of mankind; it is the standard view they necessary have towards them, but it is also the necessary behavior enforced on the infected Semitic populace of the city. It leads the most contaminated of them and the less resistant to the infection to propagate this stereotype, impersonating it in a scale proportional to the viral charge into their bloodstream. Many of the Jews of the city incarnate, therefore, the persona of maleficent and scheming devils – the racist and infinitely derogatorily, but in this case and in this city accurate opinion shared by the exponents of antisemitism across the ages of humankind, turning New Canaan officially into the most unpleasant city to live in on Earth, a battleground of perversity and backwardness never seen before on the human history."

>>21741579
It's very monotonous, no expressive language. Just like if you were summarizing a story. The flow like this is only good when you use long, flowery, quirky words.

>>21741670
your not schizo bro

Today I:
>changed a significant character completely
>put a novel defining event into my outline
>changed the genre
>decided to change the style of prose completely
>asked myself should I write in a fantasy setting at all
>wrote absolutely nothing

How do I stop on something good?

>>21741684
how about instead of making a million word novel you start by writing a 4k short

>>21741685
I intend to condence it into a 30k word novella. Practically impossible since it's already 80k words worth of outline, but I have an idea to compress everything so a readercan read it three times before figuring it out.

>>21741695
i reader will read it once, find it confusing, and never read again

>>21741648

I've split it into two when they get back from their vacation. Thanks for input.

>>21741648
it really should just be "Tom said" and the somber tone with a hint of nostalgia should be communicated via what is said

>>21741728
I disagree, sometimes its better to set up the mood than try to get the audience to mind read what you were trying to convey

>>21741579
That quote block is way too huge to read. It needs paragraphs.

>>21741712
you should probably split it into 3-4 blocks desu

>>21741697
Different people read in different ways. If I write it good, someone will take time to figure it out. If I don't write it good enough then no need to care about it at all, it's already a failure.

>>21741670
Is that your back-cover blurb? If so, it's too long and nowhere near punchy enough.
Is it a lore dump at the beginning of your book? Don't do that. Readers are bored with lore dumps.
Also, there is much usage of erroneous words, e.g. "on" where you seem to mean "in".
As the OP says:
>If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.

About to use my transcription program I spent $500 on so I can make a detailed play by play of my next story without giving myself carpal tunnel. it's a bout a dude that bones his mom.

>>21741547
The elves, being not unaware of their newly discovered status would take to emphasising their most visually distinct features. The females, as a part of their jewelry custom, would slot golden earpieces onto the their elongated points that flashed in the light, drawing attention to their characteristic length that unmistakably differentiated themselves from the humans. Ones eye would be drawn to the shiny material and it would serve as a semi-conscious reminder of whom one was talking to, preventing any lapse into familiarity. They, being a species that is entirely hairless below the neck and having entirely different cultural and biological conceptions of sexual dimorphism, would also for the same reasons be keen to leave exposed the area around the armpit and near the pubic mound. They came to wear increasingly thinner leather straps that would reveal the majority of the vulva, leaving only the labia out of sight. As much as we humans have not one solid podiatric skeleton but a merged series of bones that shoddily forms a stable block, and our males have non-functional nipples; the elves, as a vestigial remnant of an antique, more hirsute condition still exhibited occasional outward dimples in haired areas that once housed small black or red follicles. These small emergences, like that of a plucked game-bird, dappled the soft dough-like flesh around the vulva. They did not mind the inevitable human gaze that came from men and women alike, if anything they enjoyed it. 1/3

>>21741778
If you encountered another semi-sapient species in the budding stage of their intelligence, only now developing the glimmerings of soul, would you not come to regard them with an almost reverential parental affection, like with the initial most formative brush-strokes of a masterwork? And if you found that they were entirely fascinated with your hands, staring longingly at them at every chance; would you not contentedly lay your hands before them to study, moving the fingers to show them all their curiosity wished to drink in? If anything, the more flustered they became, the more pleasure you would derive from the moment. Such with the elves and their vulvas. On one occasion, in the court of a minor provincial bureaucrat, one diplomat noticed me gazing on her. She spread her legs open, sitting on her marble recline and smiled warmly at me. By this point having some familiarity with the differences between Elvin and human psychology, I embraced the opportunity and sat myself on the floor in front of her. I felt the hot plumpness of her thighs with my hands and lovingly stroked the crease where her legs joined her torso. The elves are immaculate in their hygiene, not a single roll of dirt was extracted from my hands movements over her. This extended to their clothing too. Even the slightest hint of a changing tone of flesh, the darkening around the anus or the flush of the labia, was hidden, to less than a centimeter of accuracy. After much massaging of her pudgy mound, by this point hopelessly enthralled by the moment and its heady perfume, and with pupils more dilated than a leaf-chewer, I attempted to pry to the side the leather straps to reveal her flower. She shooed my hand away at this, laughing. 2/3

>>21741786
It was only when, in my ecstatic abandon, I succumbed to rubbing my cheeks forcefully along the softness of her exposed crotch that eventually she withdrew and returned to her employment. I watched her walk away, swinging her nubile hips as she went. After slowing my heart I rejoined the other human ambassadors, being met with looks that contained equal parts disgust and envy. 3/3

>>21741756
why should someone do that when they can read another novel, or a tv show?
your audience is a person that is willing to re-read the same book 2~3 times instead of picking something else up, and I have to ask, how many books have you read 2~3 times?

>>21740084
Ah, I see. It did feel supernatural in a sense. At any rate, I enjoyed it very much. You managed to successfully accomplish your goal of making it open to interpretation, and for this you are commended.

>>21741777
I hope you recoup your investment

>>21741773
It is a lore dump. And is nowhere near the longest one in the book, which is twelve pages long, all in one colossal paragraph. As for the "ins" and "ons", I just recently learned they are not interchangeable, thanks to Grammarly.

>>21741837
People want to read stories, not imaginary encyclopedias

>>21741837
I wish to warn you again that readers find that boring.
Basic story structure is goal-conflict-disaster, and even in its absence, the prose still needs to be designed to make your reader feel something.
Lore dumps don't accomplish that.

>be canadian
>look up short story publication earnings
>payment is roughly $100 per story
Can I get paid by an American publisher?

>>21741547
It's zulupalooza at the /lit/ Top Ten, as Zulu Alitspa has managed to achieve a feat previously accomplished only by the likes of F Gardner: three titles ranking simultaneously in one edition. Unfortunately, neither he nor anyone else has come close to knocking Mike Ma from the #1 position, although John Jay Stancliff's Fedbook shows no signs of dropping from the rankings. Zulu's fourth book, Cephalopology, debuts directly into spot #3. Tales of the Unreal maintains a position in the Top 5, and for the first time ever, Gardner has slumped out of the Top 5 and into position #6. The Top Ten welcomes Ogden Nesmer's cult classic Eggplant back onto the rankings, and we hope to see him around next week as well. Panther Pride makes a surprise appearance at #8, and Spencer Weedman's Egregore has returned to the rankings at #9. KK Wing's The Beautiful Kingdom retains a solid hold on position #10.

This week, we have some opinions on Zulu Alitspa's newest release, Cephalopology. The Gossip Catalog indicates trouble with the film adaptation of Horia Belcea's Synthesis, a bit of bad blood brewing between /wg/ authors, and some upcoming interviews on the Unreal Podcast.

>>21742018
Hm. Might need to actually read this Zulu fellow now.

>>21742018
Hah. I get zero sales for a week and I drop a million spots. From 400k to 1.6 million. Good for fedbook getting readers through his shilling

>>21742115
I ain’t too proud to beg

- John

how fast do you guys write?
i personally do anywhere from 200-1200 words in an hour, depending on how "in the zone" i am.

>>21742272
if I have everything ready to go 1000 words an hour, at worst 500 words an hour

>>21742272
same
1000 words a day minimum to 2,500 maximum
lately, i've been doing just 800 a day though
i feel ashamed

>>21742272
i can shit out text pretty fast, but my first drafts are usually pretty rough, easily more than 1k an hour. editing is where i get fucked and sucked

have you ever written something that made you cry?

>>21742292
A mental breakdown about the protagonists estranged grandfather after he died.

>>21742152
>>21742152
Whatever you're doing its working

>>21742292
Yeah, twice. Both times were about the same character; once when he's absolutely crushed and at his lowest, and then later on when he finds purpose and meaning / the will to live.

>>21742272
I do about 2k 'final draft' quality a day by going back over my last 4k then rough drafting approx 2k. If I just rough draft and be a fucking retard I can shit out out 8k but desu it's hard as fuck to keep tone and quality consistent unless I'm tweaking it the whole way. Mental exhaustion slows me down some but desu not sure how else to make progress than to keep at it.
But I mean 2k/day isn't bad at all. That's approx 10k/week and a finished, novel quality book at 2 months, which is frankly way faster than what my high school and uni led me to believe was possible.

>>21741992
Competition for publishing short stories is fierce.
I honestly have no idea how anyone succeeds at it.
You can check out this (now defunct) site for lots of links re: publishing short stories.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230131085517/https://ralan.com/

>>21742272
I think I wrote 400 words of a draft today. Mostly dialogue. It doesn't go well other days either. Too hard, not enough time, can't figure out the story or characters. I feel like a sad frog.

>>21742340
I felt this within the depths of my soul.

>>21742340
>can't figure out the story or characters
You're trying to be a 'pantser', which is a person that shits a story out of their brain without much effort or forethought. Unfortunately, you're not that level of genius or hubristic moron. You're going to have to figure out your book before you sit down to write. Your brain has modes -- you're trying to do 3+ things at once (plot, character develop, dialogue, etc) but it realistically can only handle one.
So first you need to figure out your story. I know it feels lame to use the hero's journey, but sorry, you'll need to until you can figure out something else after naturally developing your skills.
Before that, 'figure out' your main character, and any important side characters. Make a spreadsheet. Sorry, guy, you're not smart enough to shit it out -- use the fucking spreadsheet. Make people up, make them interesting. Base the MC after you. Or your mom. Or whatever.
The plot is a series of choices and happenings to your main characters. They need to act the way they truly are. Just make a billion 'and thens' until you get to the logical conclusion of your story.
Wa la. That's your outline. Now you take your outline and expand it. I put it in a word doc, and replace it as I go with the actual story. Don't forget to back up on email.
Accept that it will suck ass and don't be a pussy, just finish it. Feel free to edit as you go but make progress on the outline replacement part.
In the span of a few weeks you will have replaced your outline with a rough draft.
Revise a few times and make it as good as you can. It won't be perfect. Accept it and build your skills over time.
In a couple years you'll have at least a few novels. Some will be garbage. Accept it. Grow your skills over time.
That will be $20k, or the cost of a term or two at a shitty lib arts college that won't teach you this anyway.

Archimedes' inventiveness is only maintained by the elegance of platonic forms, from which he (and his mortal enemies/accomplices, frenemies, and competitors) draw. He swam through the portal, the breaststroke through the penance of artifice, how distilled but cruel and offending a completely still lake with no ripple could be, how pristine yet how dreadful I recollect. The presence of the dejected never touches or bites a pool. How a frozen man-made lake can be both gorgeous and terrifying. The olive tree branch is strong enough to break the whistling sword that appears above in heavenly form, akin to Damocles' sword, and this is a wonderful use of metaphor for once.

and indeed, Damocles sword, that which the branch of olive tree is strong enough to snap, sure thing, but for the spectacle and its "vaudeville" oddities in gore of battle, Archimedes saw the whistling sword unlike the greats of military leaders, he saw how it sacrificed show for show, and his verdict? no peace is worth the cost of immense spectacle.

>>21742420

>>21742420
>You're trying to be a 'pantser'
You don't get it. I already have a story and characters, but they are bad. I am already boiling in all the advices you repeated for me. It is simply not enough to just write.

>>21742420
Your advice seems to be a highly condensed version of the "snowflake method".
https://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/articles/snowflake-method/
This article was written by the author of "Writing Fiction For Dummies".

>>21742465
>story and characters are bad
fix them first? It's pretty obvious that you're stuck because they're not actually figured out.

>>21742465
Why are they bad? Can you articulate it or is it just a feeling? If the latter, has it ever been the case for you that you feel the writing is bad now but then when you read it a few months later it's not so bad?

>>21741547
I didn't join for the words.

Can someone post more sci-fi elf bitches?

>>21741778
Pls crit this

>>21742482
>>21742490
I get new ideas when I read books, learn stuff or just suddenly have a bunch of creative thoughts. I think that it's alright, but then realize how out of tune everything is, how important details are disconnected from the narrative and just come from the general setting, how little emotion the thing provokes. If I ponder my creation for a long time I'll just expand it, polish it a little, but it won't be good.

>>21742523
The first part is already hot. You should not use such complicated language though. Won't read past it, dimples on elf vaginas are already moving something in me and it's not the time.

Happened at work the other day. How good I am for an ESL?

Does anybody here have experience writing time loop/travel stories? If so, do you have any tips for keeping details straight as to prevent continuity errors?

>>21742605
Why the fuck would you even do something that stupid?

>>21742609
It offers a unique avenue to explore the elements in the story (characters, setting, etc.) via the ability to play out the same events in different ways.
I also just like time loops.

>>21742628
>I also just like time loops
That's simply too rare, most people hate it.

>>21742605
yea get an outline

>>21742585
it should be she wasn’t very knowledgeable but otherwise it looks good to me. plenty of native english speakers post way worse samples in this thread.

>>21742018
It’s time to remove Mike Ma. He’s fine and all but there are enough /lit/ authors to fill a list of their own. Removing him would open up another spot for a real /lit/ anon.

>>21742499
This is the only one I have that's safe for this SFW imageboard.
You can generate as many as you want with Stable Diffusion.

>>21742678
He will be removed when Stancliff buries him.

>>21742678
>Waaah we can't compete with Mike Ma so kneecap him arbitrarily
Without a doubt, the most failed-crab viewpoint I've ever seen expressed on here...and that's saying something.

>>21742735
The consequences of actually achieving humanlike-intelligence AI is a hilarious example of how the scifi visions and speculations of the past have absolutely no way of knowing how the future would really turn.

>>21742744
He’s not a /lit/ poster and never was as far as I’m aware so he doesn’t belong in a list of authors who are /lit/ posters. If he was on /lit/ or claimed to be then he does belong on the list.

>>21742755
It was shilled here constantly when it was published, I don’t know that he’s here now, but he and a whole squad of tranny grooners posted about HA every day.

>>21741547
Are there any old books on writing fiction? I'm curious what people before ~1900 thought was important.

>>21742780
/lit/ also likes Nietzsche, that doesn’t mean he should be on the top ten /lit/ bestsellers list or whatever

>>21742944
Aristotle don't miss. But I'd be curious on any writing guita in the 1700s or something.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0060:book%3D3

>>21742944

>>21742678
Mike Ma (hon.) stays on until he is beaten. Stancliff and Gardner have come close a couple times throughout the week, but I record the rankings on Saturday.

My prediction: Eggplant will be the first to unseat Harassment Architecture later this year, because Ogden Nesmer has already demonstrated staying power and Eggplant is a popular subject for /wg/ marketing experiments.

I will get this book published EVEN IF IT KILLS ME

>tfw tempted to introduce doujin elements into my writing
goddammit, i just finished jerking off

>>21743013
>doujin elements
You are retarded

>>21743023
yes

>>21742018
I've made the list like twice? since you started doing it.
Clearly i need to rethink my marketing game.

>>21742315
Brutal.

>>21742018
I just want to let you all know for some reason, somehow someway, someone bought The Emily Project on Kindle and I earned myself a whopping 35 cents! Word is spreading.

Now how the hell do I market The Beautiful Kingdom?

>>21743080
brother I would have made it cost at LEAST 4 dollars

>>21743080
I mean this in the nicest possible way: use a different name. This a board dominated by Anglosphere posters. Natural suspicion of Asians.
Secondly, historical fiction readers are not super common here. You need to market it as literary fiction to get more clicks on this board. Otherwise find other environments in which histfic fans are common. Booktuber comments maybe. Offer to send the book to a low subscriber booktuber.
In the future, that’s what I would do. It looks like a pleasant Sunday read. But most people here want smut, sci fi, or The Next Big Work of Literary Fiction.

>>21742753
But we still had fun reading it, and they still had fun writing it.
Besides, sci-fi inspires real-world scientists all the time.
>>21742755
Take your gatekeeping somewhere else, midwit.
>>21743060
This whole world is brutal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Hnapq_Kj0

>>21743106
What? /lit/ doesn't actually read. You aren't supposed to shill here, just attention whore so people buy your book out of pity.

>>21741579
paragraphs

>>21741695
>Practically impossible since it's already 80k words worth of outline
jesus christ stop being a pussy and just WRITE

>>21743106
>Natural suspicion of Asians.
Too much /pol/ for you. A vast majority of us don't actually give a shit. If we did, /lit/ wouldn't be have xian xia, anime, and occasional threads of the eastern novels.

What's with these AI images in the OP?

>>21743195
I personally have nothing against Asians. I’m just saying some people may see an Asian author and assume they won’t be able to relate to the book. This is part of the reason black African immigrant fiction that makes bestseller lists and the Oprah book club doesn’t sell here either. KK Wing is far more original and more talented, but here nobody’s going to read it partially because the first assumption is a non Anglosphere, unrelatable perspective

>>21743232
>I’m just saying some people may see an Asian author and assume they won’t be able to relate to the book. This is part of the reason black African immigrant fiction that makes bestseller lists and the Oprah book club doesn’t sell here either.
That's the reason I took this name. I'm not writing just for /lit/. Having a minority name I think would allow me access to those in the traditional publishing sphere - similar to RF Kuang.

what's a word for when someone says "hmm" without actually writing the dialog "hmm"? It's not a grunt or a hum.

>Started off writing a murder mystery
>Rereading it, it's basically a travel book
How did I do this

>>21743272
Murmur?

>>21741777
Please update us on whether the transcription program was worth it. I’m curious about this.

>>21743313
hmm

>>21743161
Speak for yourself.
I'm reading right now...a /lit/ book, even.

>>21743210
What's NOT with them?
Why does it matter how they were generated?
Probably not a good idea to express prejudice against our soon-to-be A.I. overlords.
They know who you are, after all.

>>21743313
No, this is a murmur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmgA5ef5K8s

>>21743368
Last thread there was some major assmad going on about Ai generating text. Odd how illustrations don't reach that level of triggering.

>>21743379
Prolly cus this is a writing thread and people here hold writing to a higher creative standard / value. I'd assume it would be the other way around if you posted A.I. art in a drawthread.

>>21743359
Which?

>>21743583
What really matters is that you look through the OP pastebin for /lit/ authors, read the "Look Inside" portion of several of them on Amazon, and make your own decisions.
Here's an older image to get you started.
The one I'm presently reading isn't depicted here.

>>21743161
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little shit? Ill have you know I was teacher's pet of my creative writing elective in high school, and Ive been involved in numerous shill reads on Unreal Podcast, and I have released over 300 confirmed books. I am trained in subverting tropes and Im the top shiller in the entire /lit/ catalog. You are nothing to me but just another sale. I will piss you the fuck off with persistence the likes of which has never been seen before on this board, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with ignoring my desperate posts over the Internet? Think again, pseud. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of shills across fiverr and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your thread. Youre fucking flamed, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can shill you in over seven hundred ways, and thats just with my own keyboard. Not only am I extensively trained in unedited prose, but I have access to the entire arsenal of 4chan advertising and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable post off the face of the catalog, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little clever comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your tongue and asked for a free PDF. But you couldnt, you didnt, and now youre paying the paperback price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. Youre fucking dead, kiddo.

How would you guys go about organizeing your drafts and ideas and notes? I'd like to make things a bit more clean.

If possible answer how you would do this for say world building like a fanasty world

>>21743654
- John

>>21743632
what are you presently reading?

>>21743754
>world building like a fanasty world
do as little of this as possible before you start writing. enough to set up your sort of initial premise to get the story rolling and then not more than that. once your story is being written you can add ideas as they come to you or change them to make them more interesting. have a very short (mental) list of sort of inviolate ideas that are set in stone, but everything else can have exceptions.

why do I recommend this? because readers are interested in your characters, not the background. yeah, there might be a sort of overarching rule that changes everything in your specific story that is noteworthy (like things fall up instead of down, whoa) but everything else is pretty much window dressing.

>>21742998
I’d agree with this. imo Eggplant really kicked off this whole boom in /lit/ authors. Before it there was really only Harassment Architecture (not /lit/) and Call of the Crocodile (astroturfed shilling), but since it’s release it’s like /lit/ author is a whole subgenre now. Credit where credit is due.

>>21741547
At least this time the petite pirate is actually of age, even if she's 300 turning 19 elf.

After reading The Science of Storytelling, I came up with a modified version of Stor's Sacred Flaw approach (which is nearly identical to the Story Genius method but not as annoyingly presented). It consists of four concentric circles. In innermost circle is "delusion", what Stor calls the sacred flaw and Cron calls the misbelief. The delusion than creates an identity, the next circle. The identity then creates the world. Beyond that, is the truth--that which opposes the delusion. The inciting incident of the story is when the truth penetrates the world. It then progresses through the circles until it reaches the delusion (which is in turn pushing back) and in the climax either it conquers it (a story of transformation) or is conquered by it (a tragedy). You can start ideation at any of the circles and use what you have to fill out the others.

Write a short, 50 word story about this pic. Winner gets my praise

>>21743849
Davey said I was crazy, but after I brained him with the shovel I found the drugs he had been slipping into my food. Who's the crazy one now?

>>21743849
I walked into the restroom and found myself staring at my sister holding four cannisters of pills. She claimed she was filming a tiktok and needed me to leave the room. I naturally obliged, for I it was none of my business. A few minutes later I heard a loud thud coming from the second floor, but like most people too preoccupied from my own activities, I ignored it.

I soon needed to take a shit and found my sister dead on the floor. I promptly called 9-1-1, but it they told me that they weren't able to come because of a lack of staff. I took off her shirt and found her to be breathing. That was a good sign. Her nipple teased me and I could only do one last thing. I made a video on tiktok with me getting a paizuri.

The next day my sister was elated with joy. She had a video get 50 million likes. Like many women in the world, she needed more and thus a second video was shot. This time she put my cock in her mouth.

The End.

>>21743796
Didn't someone make a "/lit/ authors" list on Goodreads?
If they haven't then someone should

>>21743849
The ice red wine cooled her throat as she looked down at me. In the wheelchair, Mistress Garfunkel rattled her bottles of stolen meds in my face, excited for another night of sweaty hallucinations and burned sage. The obscure Tibetan tapestry on her wall matched her underboob tattoo that was half covered by a roll of her fat and saggy tits. She opened one of the containers, penis pills, and forced them down my throat. The wine of her breath stung my nose as she leaned in to lick my sweat. The penis pills lower my blood pressure and I feel faint. Life fades in, and out. My penis throbs, and I feel hot adrenaline enter my arms. Needle time, another drug. The pill bottles rattle as she moans, "you are my sunshine...my little sunshine."

>>21743849
Trisha knew she wasn’t like other girls by the time she was eight and started to see things; her mother would often go along with her wild imagination but had never thought much of it. Her ‘friends’ each had their very own personality and would make her do things like steal from mother’s purse, pull her brother’s hair, or kill anon’s mother in her sleep unless he replies to this post. But once she met the kindly doctor, he could make them all go away—all she had to do was take his special medicine.

>>21743906
Nobody wants to be associated with this place outside of /lit/

>>21743957
4chan should be used for standard business practices. Trust me bro.

>>21742523
you've made an ero piece dry and boring

>>21743849
Finally Bobby could be a real American boy.

>>21743754
https://obsidian.md/
>If possible answer how you would do this for say world building like a fanasty world
General outline. Make up the details as you go.

>>21741547
>AI """art"""

>>21743754
I use an outline editor called TreeLine.
It's done everything I need it to do, and is capable of much more.
It's also free and open-source, too.

>>21744012
No one who generates images with Stable Diffusion considers themselves an artist.
Your snark about AI art is a strawman argument.

>>21744041
>>21744012
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/law/midjourney-ai-images-us-copyright-office-226437.html

AI art has no copyright. make rejoyce my friends. may we rejoyce

>>21744047
>AI-generated images are not protectable under current copyright law

If that stops corporations from making money, they'll pass a new law to fix it in no time.

>>21743272
why not just write hmm or hm?

>>21744034
thanks for rec anon been looking for something like this

Thinking about writing a scene where a character contemplates suicide. Cringe or based?
HIs reasoning is that he's been conscripted to find a never ending war and has to watch the girl of his dreams marry some old guy and have his babies

>>21741547
Is possible writing a complete novel based in a single picture?

>>21744047
So?
I could care less if anyone took an image I generated and used it for some other purpose.
If they take the AI-generated image I use for a book cover, than can only be free advertising.
Also, that means I can use AI-generated images anywhere and any way I want.

>>21744282
>hur dur I'm a crypto bro and now I know everything to do with AI
go to fucking /g/ already

r/writing has better advice. Nobody here knows shit.

>>21744170
Glad I could help!

>>21744291
I don't come here for advice I come here to discuss my writing

I'm sitting on two novels (170k words combined), drafted and redrafted but now I finished I don't know wtf to do.

>>21744309
>query
>self-publish
>re-write
honestly I would make it a habit to publish a meaningless book first, just so you don't fuck up your "best" book

>>21744313
I've had this thought as well, now that they're complete they feel like my children and I'm shitting it lads.

I might write a bullshit novel about Antarctica and see what happens.

>>21744285
Um...crypto and AI image generation have nothing to do with each other.
Your reply is just plain odd.
And yes, actually, I do know quite a bit about AI.
I don't do AI for a living, but I am in the software industry.

>>21742735
Found another one lying around.

>>21744291
Literally a Reddit tier comment
And the people on r/writing sound about as amateur, and lost, as the people here.
That goes for https://writing.stackexchange.com/ too.

>>21744291
last time I went to reddit I had someone bitching I was using prose, period.
how the fuck am I supposed to write a book with nothing but dialogue?

>>21744346
If we were pros do you think we'll be wasting our time in this shithole?

>>21744408
yes, i would at least. because i like you guys and want to have an actually community here. thats why i made the author pastebin

>>21741547
do you really have to draw all the coomers here posting /sffg/ booba, OP? find god

>>21742272
takes about 3 hours to get 2000 words, but that's including fucking around online

>SHOW DON'T TELL!
>TOO MUCH EXPOSITION!
>read a publish book
>uses expositions up the ass to get to the point
>Just keeps adding random ass exposition info dumps
>Jim seen the golden bars Maria brought him. They were all around him. He saw them embedded on the side of ships. Museums had them on display. Large signs glittered the same gold color on the lettering. Even his own mother, wore the gold around her neck before she died.

>>21744558
To understand how retarded you are, pause at an interesting point in a film and write prose about everything you see on screen.

I am genuinely fuming at the state of How-To-Write shit. They are all garbage. They lie. They misinform. They suck money out of well-meaning but ignorant people.

It is unfucking believable that a terrorist manifesto is a better commentary on how to tell a compelling story than anything the industry has put out.

>>21744340
very nice, what was the prompt/model you used? i imagine that you must've fixed it up after generation

>>21744584
Teddy's or someone else's?

>>21744589
Uncle Ted's yes.

>>21744604
Can you explain how? I don't remember anything about storytelling in Industrial Society.

>>21744609
The power process and the human need for surrogate fulfillment of it. I'm not saying it's the most profound shit in the world to telling a good story, but rather that somehow every book out there about how to write seems to be even worse.

>>21744558
all the rules they tell you are bullshit. I see all kinds of wild janky shit in published books. in reality it's based on nepotism, not merit. you and they play by different rules. for an independent to win and get the publishing deal, you have to be ten times better than the hand-up nepotists.

>>21744309
Let me read them, I'll be honest

>>21744447
I found God...and discovered he is totally indifferent to our fate.
We're little more to him than a zillion-channel cable TV package.
He sits in his easy chair, munches popcorn, and laughs his ass off at us.
And that's the best-case scenario.

>>21744588
I didn't make it; I found it here.
>>>/g/91898620

>>21744408
Sure, why not?
It's the only social-media site where I can't be canceled for saying something unpopular.

>>21744584
You buy the how-to-write books?
I just download them.
I buy the ones I found useful, after I'm done reading them.
It's only fair to support good authors if I can afford to.

>>21744617
The rules in these books aren't about how to get published.
That was covered in picrel.
It boils down to having industry contacts, which you get by getting to know people during your MFA degree, then working in the industry.
Something that isn't really an option for people like us.
The rules in these how-to-write books involve producing prose that keeps the reader engaged.
That's the value of scene structure (e.g. goal-conflict-disaster) and ensuring that your prose makes your readers feel emotions.

>the only books I enjoy reading are the books I wrote myself

>>21744732
>i prefer jacking off to sex

Would you read this story based on this blurb?

>Adah Phenric took a vow to protect Tymber from all that may burn it when she became a Knight of Valora. It was an oath required of every Knight blessed by the Goddess Valora in order to protect the land. All was well until she and her team were sent on a routine mission to hunt a monster. Things go awry and Adah finds herself to be the sole survivor. Unconvinced her comrades are dead, she ventures out into the world to uncover the reasons for their disappearance. Adah’s investigation leads her to uncover a larger mystery concerning the nature of the Goddess herself. Her mission soon leads her in conflict with a mysterious merchant and learns of a plot that threatens the stability of the world.

>>21744777
stupid names, also female protagonists written by men are invariably cringe/terrible

How much information does this synopsis carry, and is it serviceable as one?

>A necromancer named Sneed revives a
the dark sorceror Yakub. Yakub then rebels and slays Sneed, going on to do evil until he is slain by his slaves.

>>21743319
So far it's helpful in that I can get down ideas at 'the speed of thought', but it's difficult to try and actually draft with it as there's a lot of punctuation that is needed to make it an actual draft. So I'm using it as my outliner and to transcribe recordings that I make when I drive. It's useful and has cut down on my workflow a little, so it's just like having an expensive tool that I am incorporating into my workflow.
I made $370 so far from some published stuff that I made without it, so it's not a serious financial blow and hypothetically I can write if off as a business expense and claim a self employed loss or something. If I could go back so far I don't regret it. At some point I'll get more comfortable using it and may be able to actually write a shitty rough draft as I get faster at thinking through a draft, but as of now my writing style seems to more favor just being at the keyboard and doing my edits as I go -- trying to rough draft an entire novel through transcription is a little outside of what I'm capable of atm.

>>21744777
>Adah Phenric swore an oath to protect Tymber from all that may burn it, a vow required of every Knight blessed by the Goddess. After faithfully fulfilling her duty for several [months,years] she and the rest of her closest comrades are sent out on a routine mission where an unforeseen disaster strikes. As the supposed sole survivor, Adah finds herself unable to let go of her suspicions and unconvinced that her friends are truly dead. Abandoning her post she ventures out to discover the true reason for disappearance. This investigation leads her to uncover a larger mystery concerning the nature of her oath, a plot that threatens the stability of the world, and even the very nature of the Goddess, itself.

>>21742272
I used to write 5-6K per session, every day, but eight years of that on top of day work exhausted my arms. I can still write 2-3K, though I have to stop after 2 hours. 200 words is like one 4chan post.

I'm having trouble coming up with a backstory for my protagonist. Her parents died 5 years before the beginning, and at the point where story begins, she's cut off from everything, with nowhere to go. But how did she live those 5 years? Without relatives, she presumably was sent to an orphanage or some such facility and they kicked her out when she became of age. But that's kinda generic and boring. Maybe she got adopted by a foster family and ran away from them? That's a bit cringe too. I don't want to write an angsty teenager, the MC is at least 18 and wouldn't do anything so stupid without a good reason. I need an idea more interesting than that, but which you don't need to dwell on. It's not supposed to be a major plot point, but quickly explained and over. What other possibilities are there?

>>21745336
Tell us at least ANYTHING about the fucking setting or genre, you dunce.

>>21745356
It's fantasy, but relatively modern. Technologically around late 19th century, but thanks to the existence of magic, many things are better than they were on Earth at the time. Views on magic are divided between two main movements, one that would mix it with technology to make it available for all, and the magic society that wants to preserve it as a higher art for the few with the talent. Most people can't use magic by nature. Because of this conflict, there are on-going wars. There are also monsters that make large stretches of land inhospitable to human life. What else?

>>21745336
If she’s at least 18 then she could’ve been old enough to just be on her own when her family died 5 years ago. Probably got a shitty job and lived in group housing (like a hostel or a dorm, used to be fairly normal for people in cities to do when they were young and single, especially women I think)

>>21745386
1. It's a city. She gets in a gang of orphans working petty crime for some gangsters. [Insert whatever tearjerk story about thieving orphans here] And then some place where several affiliated gangs are at the same moment, a dark magician walks in on the criminals and unleases horrendous spells. She barely escapes.
2. It's a warzone. Some old officer of a rugged half dead army takes her in. The girl and other servants survive, but none of the soldiers do. She leaves for a different place.
3. She gets in with a circus troupe. A magic beast kills a few people and circus gets canceled and bankrupt.

>>21745402
Depends on the country. English were treating labourers worse than cattle.

>>21745402
A 13-year-old living alone? Maybe someone who was raised to be independent and has other people helping out, but someone from a proper family, orphaned suddenly? That's a bit too incredible.

>>21745425
>She gets in a gang of orphans
The MC's family were sorcerers and she had basic magical training. If criminals found out about that, they'd butcher each other trying to get their hands on her, since it's a rare talent. She probably wouldn't live long. But she did not use magic in those five years, with no one to pick up her training. Also, because living conditions are decent thanks to magicians, common crime rates are low. Moreover, I feel this would become an unnecessarily long-winded sub-plot.

>It's a warzone.
This has potential to explain how her parents died, as that's still open. But adding a whole army would make the opening of the story unnecessarily bloated. I'd like to bring the reader in gently. Starting close to the reality we know, and then adding the fantasy in digestible doses.

>She gets in with a circus troupe. A magic beast kills a few people and circus gets canceled and bankrupt.
Points for originality! An interesting idea and I'd read a story like that, but it's a bit too far-fetched to work here.

>>21745462
>But adding a whole army would make the opening of the story unnecessarily bloated.
Really depends on how you write and structure the story. Remember, you have 100% control of pacing.
Okay, anon, most likely you would not accept any idea from another person. You should just think about it yourself and use those ideas as examples. Think about your protagonist more and maybe something will come up and it will fit in the story.

>have written probably 250k words worth of fanfiction over the last year in an effort to get good at writing before I take on any "real" projects
>feel like I'm getting somewhat decent at writing
>still have no future plans for an independent story
Am I just being stupid?

>>21741547
>the hands
it NEVER fails

>>21745735
Have you tried writing anything independant? I find my characters flow a lot better after figuring out how others would.

>>21745730
>most likely you would not accept any idea from another person
I wouldn't say that. But ideas are rarely perfect the moment they pop into your head. It takes some back-and-forth to get them to fit and that's where another person's input is helpful. The comments here have already been useful and there were ideas that never would've occurred to me by myself. Things have gotten a bit clearer, I'm just not quite there yet.

I'm trying to write a character with a villanous origin, however she's in what many would say is the redemption arc since she met the love of her life that is very much fixing her broken parts of herself. My issue is: I have no idea on what or how to write the reason as to why she was previously evil without making it seem petty, or something akin to "she was evil just because". What would be something good for a start? The setting is very much fantasy, though I am not sure about the technological standpoint. I do know that there are guns, mechanisms, automatons and such available, that may just be the setting its in though.

>>21745868
>>21745386
>>21745336
>>21745206
>All female MCs
Holy fuck you fags

>>21745891
Male MCs are fucking boring.

>>21745735
If any of your fanfictions are decent then literally just do an edit pass to change character/place names. Voila you have an original story.

>>21745891
Yep, classic early sign of trooning

>>21745977
Female MCs give a different perspective and allow for different scenarios to be played out. Male MCs need to always win battles, while female's can lose but escape after being raped. Males if they lose get killed on the spot

>>21746008
I give a shit about the femMC or maleMC debate but
>Male MCs need to always win battles
is some bullshit

>>21746008
Disgusting coomer

>>21746008
Female MCs are rape porn

>>21745462
>A 13-year-old living alone?
You said she’s “at least” 18, so if she’s 20 then she could be on her own at 15. That’s not too much of a stretch.

>>21746039
That's why they make for great protags. Even female authors understand that female MCs were made for rape. Jane Eyre had mr Rochester rape his negress and groom Jane herself to rape her later.

>700 words done today
Lets get this W kings

>>21745751
>the hands
And despite that, graphic artists and terrified of Stable Diffusion, and seething like mad.
Kind of revealing, isn't it.

Threads a bit quite today lads, anybody want to start a discussion? I've got a do-nothing Sunday on my hands.

>>21746312
I was just going to link my post without further explanation, but if you’re game to play?

I could be some cryptic narrator while you squirrel away at the text.

Or not.

>>21746312
/pol/ has rotted my brain so much I can now only think this guy is an Indian.

>>21746332
>>21746316

>>21745386
>Urban fantasy female protagonist written by chubby millennial man
Ehhh

>>21745908
Nah, you're just shit at writing/addicted to anime and want your own waifu

>>21745891
based

>>21746333
>foreign office person
is this the tranny reich?

>>21746350
I wrote 2 books with male MCs, I want to try a female mc. Yes she will be waifu bait.

Why write a female MC?
Simple.
I love the kind of woman that will just straight up kill me.
yes picrel is an ad banner

>>21741547
mine is better

>>21746379
Senator Armstrong?

>>21746402
I've gotten that comparison enough times that I feel obligated to have her almost reiterate the omelette speech only to catch herself mid-sentence

>>21746379
t. played Prototype as a kid

>>21746350
Name one interesting male character in fiction. You can't. At best, they're just inoffensive, impersonal witnesses, at worst completely insufferable.

>>21746342
EEEEHHHHHH

>>21746416
Garrett from Thief

>>21746423
This is a literature board, nerd.

>>21746412
Of course I did, I had good taste even then, but the arm isn't inspired by Prototype. It's much simpler, I just thought HMMM BURNT-ASS DEAD EMBER ARM

It glows orange when used for normal magic and bright red when used for the super speshul high-risk high-power alternative

>>21746416
Naruto Uzumaki

I am cursed by Melville. He possesses my writing like a demon making it verbose, dry, convoluted. He is my favourite author besides milton but the more my writing is like his, the worse it is. How do I exorcise him?

>>21746460
I too am consumed by 19th century literature which structurally and stylistically is so completely odious to modern readers that I've just accepted I'll never be a popular writer

>>21746427
you can't stop me, dipshit

>>21746416
>completely insufferable
which is interesting
have less sex

>>21746491
yeah, that's crazy. You'd think the best way to be as vertically integrated as they are would be to just buy out a couple companies along your supply chain, but I guess they started from the ground up.

>>21746498
wrong thread bud

>>21746501
my bad

>>21746416
Martin the Warrior, Redwall

>>21746476
Is it curable?

>>21746460
>>21746476
Read Cormac McCarthy.

Rate or improve my screenplays logline: "A corrupt and nihilistic police detective is forced to pull himself out of rock bottom when he discovers a heinous child sex ring in his city.

>>21746460
>>21746476
No, you're not unpopular because you write like 19th century masters, it's because you write BADLY

>>21746595
>does nothing
>seeks attention and recognition
explain this personality type

>>21744262
Kill yourself kike

>>21746592
19th century masterpieces would be unpublishable today.

>>21746577
I read blood meridian and thought it was ok

>>21746379
Private eye or vigilante?
Private eyes tend to investigate, not eliminate.

>>21746595
I tried a few times to use GPT3 to plot out fantasy stories, and they all ended up as painfully boring and generic as this. "MC goes and gets the thing that turns the tide of the war!" over and over again. I don't think GPT will ever escape the middle of the bell curve, by design.

im writing a mansion murder mystery. what silly things should i add to the plot and crime?

>>21746379
buffy the vampire slayer is unironically one of my favorite media created by hollywood. Joss did a great job, too bad he was canceled.

>>21746610
Wonder how much the censorship plays a role in this. It can't attempt any transgressive or subversive ideas

>>21746596
Every Millennial & GenZ?

>>21746612
Hopefully you've done your research, e.g. 1959's "House On Haunted Hill", as well as the mansion-murder-mystery episodes of "Adventure Time" and "Family Guy"?
Plenty of silly inspiration to be found there.

>>21746606
A fair point, but "private eye" has a touch of noir whereas "vigilante" is perhaps the most generic term you could include as a descriptor for a webnovel

how far do you lean into trying to convey accents in dialogue? think, boston, southern, etc.

>>21746625
thinkstonian

>>21744777
Have you improved the first chapter?

>>21746595
Sounds like the most basic bitch slopfest possible

>>21745735
fanfiction is legit writing practice. you don't have to ever write your own stories if you dont have ideas for it. just do what you want

>>21746610
I don't understand the appeal with GPT. are you honestly surprised the computer program that's designed to regurgitate what it reads from the internet is a midwit?

>>21746616
it probably could be tuned to be more daring, but the trade off is that it will produce a larger portion of unusable nonsense. The censorship stuff is lame, but it's not likely baked into the model itself. What they do instead is just intercept your query and run it through a smaller model to try to detect vulgarity, then replace it with "lecture me about why X is morally wrong" or whatever. They'll also do gay stuff like replace "write me a story about a doctor" with "write me a story about a female doctor" to offset the model's innate bias that a doctor is always a white man. It's all a trick.

>>21746595
I may as well call AI Joseph Campbell

>>21746616
I don't think it's capable of being transgressive or subversive
well, "transgressive" maybe if you count imitating 4chan dipshits or twitter trolls but it will always be imitation
and subversion requires a level of sagacity and "originality" that the algoritmn can't really comprehend. it can try to imitate subversive stuff, but at that point is it even subversive?

I think most of this AI stuff is really stupid and dumb, almost enterelly without "artistic value" on it's on. but it will undoubtly affect industries and art production.

>>21746665
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tPecc6PUDU

>>21746610
>>21746638
>>21746671
yeah, that's the point. this shit is hilarious.
I think most fanfiction has better sinopses

>>21746625
"I think best to use as little dialect as possible because it confuses people who are not familiar with it. That nobody should let the character speak completely in his own vernacular. It’s best indicated by a few simple, sparse but recognizable touches."
-William Faulkner, from a 1958 interview for “What’s the Good Word”
Source: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/20-pieces-of-writing-advice-from-william-faulkner

>>21746691
the worst thing in literature is when some foreign author writes in an extremely local dialect and the translator has to find an English/American equivalent. It always ruins the passage.

>>21746698
this happens on every language

>>21746691
Twain would disagree.

>>21746595
I've found that GPT works best as a tool for ironing out kinks / generating specific ideas related to an already (at least somewhat) developed plot. Can work wonders if you brainwash it hard enough.

>>21746610
I usually use it to flesh out and revise old / newly drafted chapters. Even managed to convince it to help me re-write a super gory, violent scene involving child murder. Granted, they weren't human children, but still.

>>21746577
Ive read Blood Meridian and understood that I can't write like him.

>>21746379
Very based and exceptionally redpilled. I, myself, can never just write a female protagonist that I'd personally find attractive.

>>21746342
Urban fantasy female protagonists written by male authors are unironically better than urban fantasy female protagonists written by female authors.

>>21746760
I can. I purposefully put her through the most disgusting fetishes I have.

did the guy who wrote that piece about Maximus Price, the macho insurance salesman, ever post anything else?

I want to read moar

can't rush art...
can't rush art...
can't rush art...
can't rush art...
can't rush art...

>>21746798
yeah
i don't care if 1k a day is more than most people
i want to finish this chapter today, dammit

Can you rate this passage I'm experimenting with? Is it okay written? Does it suggest genre or setting? Does it suggest the role of the character?

"I arrive to the town. A new town with gloomy faces and scrawny backs. I see the simple mugs of the rugged men, smile looking in the dull eyes of clueless women, walk towards the smell of the bad alcohol pouring in dirty glasses. I visit the bar, talk to the keeper, he lets me do my craft. I open my black case, take my violin, feel the stares of other visitors. I jerk the bow, let the first note be loud, play my tune not stopping once. They look at me, quit their chatting, listen closely. Their minds sing along, their souls forget, their memories remember me. The men, the women, the dogs don't think of anything else.

Tomorrow they talk about me to the ones they know, ask me to play their favorite tunes, put money in my pockets. I play for them again, and again, and again. They lose their wits in laughter, they drink, they throw coins. One man cries. Another man drinks a barrel of whiskey. Third man dances with his horse and gets trampled to death. Someone's naked wife jumps on him, takes a bite and grunts. They all praise my music.

Next day it ends. I hide my face in my coat, put on my hat, set off to a road. My horse is new, my means are timeless, my violin is ancient. I am a rascal, I have means, I am but a man. I travel somewhere remote, I spend a little time in each place, I leave good memories. Some already await me in the next town."

>>21747068
>my means are timeless
Missed this mistake. It's supposed to be
>my tricks are timeless

>>21747068
Seems pretty obvious to me he’s a bard in what I assume is a D&D type setting. I think it’s well written.

>>21747068
You need to cut a lot of filler words
>I arrive to the town
I arrive at town.
>I see
>the rugged men
rugged men
>dull eyes of clueless women
dull eyed, clueless women
>walk towards the
>talk to the keeper, he
and the keeper lets me do my craft
>feel the stares of other visitors
>They look at me
The visitors look at me
>listen closely
and listen close.
>their memories remember me
nigga wut?
>The men, the women, the dogs
They
>to the ones they know
>, they drink
and drink. They throw coins.
>. Third man
, another

So overall I think the ending undermines it.
>My horse is new, my tricks are timeless, my violin is ancient. I am a rascal, I have means, I am but a man.
But that could be what you're going for. Making the guy out to be the devil but then snatching that away by saying he's but a man.

>>21746627
I certainly hope so. Here's a pastebin of the first chapter.

https://pastebin.com/jYqWejz1

>>21747068
>"I arrive to the town.
>A new town with gloomy faces and scrawny backs.
I arrive to town with gloomy faces and scrawny back.
>I see the simple mugs of the rugged men, smile looking in the dull eyes of clueless women,
Simple men smiled looking at the dull eyes of clueless women.
>walk towards the smell of the bad alcohol pouring in dirty glasses. I visit the bar, talk to the keeper, he lets me do my craft.
These need to be combined
>I open my black case, take my violin, feel the stares of other visitors. I jerk the bow, let the first note be loud, play my tune not stopping once.
These also need to be combined
>They look at me, quit their chatting, listen closely. Their minds sing along, their souls forget, their memories remember me. The men, the women, the dogs don't think of anything else.
Now your'e starting to do too much noun does x. Mix up your sentence structure.

>>21747481
these are awful edits

>>21746606
Shut yo dumbass up. This is the exact kind of coldly autistic and grossly myopic advice this stupid general is packed full of. What the fuck does this specification do for the quality of the story? In fact, the connotation of vigilante is so distinct from that of Private Investigator that such a distinction is going to severely detract from the author’s ability to convey the spirit of his story. Yes, spirit, the spirit of noir, not plot, which features the actions supposedly within the realm of vigilantism. You’re a fucking retard who will never write anything with even the slightest amusing quality, much less something of significance. Walk into the ocean

>>21747658
You have zero idea about what noir is.

All I have to look forward to in my life is my story with a philosophically tortured serial killer MC where I'm pouring all my hatred for myself and all my issues and it's actually good but it's making me intensely suicidal. I'm starting to take pharmaceuticals willy nilly and chugging tons of alcohol even if I don't want to drink and doing other stupid reckless things just for the sake of harming myself. Tonight I was about to climb into a fenced park because I wanted to smash a shitty installation they put up in it. It would be fucking heroic if I did that. There's a bridge on the way and every night I think about jumping. I think I'm approaching the final station bros. I know that whatever I'm writing won't go anywhere because I'm not a tripoc gendercopter and I'm not rich but if I drop this stupid scribbler business all I have left is the rope. I've got some nice rope at home that I use for my hammock, it's literally just there. All I have is to take it and tie the knot.
How the fuck do you people write? Do you have normal lives, is this like a hobby or something

>>21747663
Unfortunately for you noir is a vague "vibe" as much as it is a definable genre with specific conventions and tropes

>>21747703
None of us are normal in the head

>>21747703
I write something that makes me feel good and genuinly improves my psychological state whenever I think about it. Try having good thoughts, anon.

>>21747761
>Try having good thoughts, anon.
When I do I write love stories. I haven't written about love in months

>>21746460
The thing is that 19th century authors wrote convoluted sentences that are still effortlessly readable. If you can achieve that, then no one will complain.

threads like these are cool cause it can prove what I instinctly know while browsing this fucking website:
most of you have shit taste
most of you are doing just as badly as me

>>21746591
>"A corrupt police detective has hit rock bottom when he discovers a heinous child sex ring in his city."

>>21747824
Random sentence from Pride and Prejudice:
>She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors, under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years’ continuance.

Though granted, Moby Dick is very readable.

>>21746591
>A corrupt and nihilistic child detective is forced to pull himself out of rock bottom when he discovers a heinous police sex ring in his city

>>21746460
why the fuck would you want to exorcise Melville

>>21747834
That sentence is perfectly readable

>>21747851
>A heinous and nihilistic child ring is discovered to pull himself out of detective police when he forces a corrupt city sex rock in his bottom

>>21746591
It's quite good. I'd say nihilism isn't an attractive prospect and is a bit overdone in the current market, besides you've already got a good descriptor in "corrupt", which is a bit more alluring than "nihilistic" yet carries a similar negative connotation, but otherwise you're solid.

>>21747829
>"A corrupt police detective has hit rock bottom when he discovers a heinous child sex ring in his city."
I like the other anon's clarifaction that the detective has to pull himself out of out whatever hole he's dug, so that he can stop the sex ring over your passage where it seems like the protagonist hits rock bottom because of the revelation of said offences.

>>21747068
A little repetitive. I I I. They they they. It's okay as a rhetorical device, but you're sort of stretching it.

It's a D&D Bard. Unless there's something else to him, that's not too exciting. Max CHA bard players are always intolerable knobs who desperately want to be cool IRL, and it bleeds through to their characters. Kvothe would be a good example.

>>21747888
>Kvothe
god don't get me started on Cuckkiller Chronicles
remember picrel?

>>21747938
I cry not because of how terrible it is, but how jealous I am of his success.

>>21747952
I seethe not because I am envious of his success, but because it wasn't someone of actual substance in his stead.

>>21747938
What is this shit? My brain checked out after 4 balloons.
I hate that shit book BTW. I think it was the only time I got angry over how shit a book was, and it was a book I fucking pirated.

>>21747938
Shouldn't it be Kingcuck? Cuckkiller indicates he kills cucks when it's the opposite.

>>21747658
The OP doesn't need your seething pseud ass to defend him.
He wrote back at >>21746623 and conceded my point.
And I concede his right to be different.
We're literally dumber for having listened to you.

>>21747938
what I don't get is how all the successful people are allowing this

>>21747703
I find writing to be cathartic, i.e. I get out my aggression and issues by doing so.
I'm not sure why you're not getting the same benefit.
Perhaps it's due to your self-admitted self-hatred.
I don't hate myself.
I do have a very low opinion of the vast majority of other people, though.

>>21747952
>>21747959
>>21747969
>>21748005
Stop being a little bitch. He's a great writer. Just read his debut The Name of the Wind. It's better than any excerpt posted on here. Even if all 78 of you faggots got together to write a page, you wouldn't even be able to come close to the quality of Rothfuss

>>21748019
I have indeed had the misfortune of reading his trash
cope and seethe Kingcuck fanboy

>>21747068
It's nice and speedy and compact.

People are saying you need to edit it tighter but I think if anything you need more description and character details. This is how I would rewrite the first half:

>Another town. Heh. Must be the thousandth that I've visited. Yes, it feels as if I've visited a thousand of these godforsaken towns. Perhaps even more than a thousand. This one features gloomy faces and scrawny backs. Men ruggedly quaff mugful upon mugful, and predatorily ahoot smiles towards the women -- clueless, oblivious, dull-eyed woman who seemed to have lapsed into the semi-conscious slow-blooded half-life of spiritless flesh, and the mugs the men are quaffing are filled with a godforsaken local brew that foams darkly like a forest spring from which satyrs nocturnally sip. This sight -- the men quaffing mugfuls and directing smiles to the women and also the strange, absent quality of those same women -- made me chuckle but in a weary, sardonic and contemptuous way rather than on the basis of genuine mirth.

>Just then I saw the bar loom rapidly into view, due to walking towards it at great speed. 'How now, alesman!' said I. 'You will not prevent me from practicing my trade in your establishment, I trust?' The portly barkeep squinted rotundly at the black case in my hand and a pall of suspicion darkened his features like a black veil over a widow's beautiful visage -- though with his bulbous nose and porcine eyes he was far from beautiful!

https://pastebin.com/mTRZ2dbm

>>21747068
It's nice and speedy and compact.

People are saying you need to edit it tighter but I think if anything you need more description and character details. This is how I would rewrite the first half:

>Another town. Heh. Must be the thousandth that I've visited. Yes, it feels as if I've visited a thousand of these godforsaken towns. Perhaps even more than a thousand. This one features gloomy faces and scrawny backs. Men ruggedly quaff mugful upon mugful, and predatorily shoot smiles towards the women -- clueless, oblivious, dull-eyed woman who seemed to have lapsed into the semi-conscious slow-blooded half-life of spiritless flesh, and the mugs the men are quaffing are filled with a godforsaken local brew that foams darkly like a forest spring from which satyrs nocturnally sip. This sight -- the men quaffing mugfuls and directing smiles to the women and also the strange, absent quality of those same women -- made me chuckle but in a weary, sardonic and contemptuous way rather than on the basis of genuine mirth.

>Just then I saw the bar loom rapidly into view, due to walking towards it at great speed. 'How now, alesman!' said I. 'You will not prevent me from practicing my trade in your establishment, I trust?' The portly barkeep squinted rotundly at the black case in my hand and a pall of suspicion darkened his features like a black veil over a widow's beautiful visage -- though with his bulbous nose and porcine eyes he was far from beautiful!

>>21748005
It's not that they're allowing it. There's a massive gatekeeping operation that only lets certain people in.

Nobody had commented on this when I posted it in a previous thread, so I'm trying again.
Cyberpunk story. Pretty bloody passage. Would like to know if it flows well.
https://rentry.org/gkbdc

>>21748019
My stories don't feature gleeful cuckolding as a main plot point, so I'm automatically better

>>21748182
404 my friend

>>21748277
should be up

>>21748182
He swung into his pleading hands and a shudder went through him when he
yanked the blade that he'd lodged between thumb and index and red
flooded his sight.

Just write things in the order they happen. This is almost unreadable.

>>21748182
some context before the gore would be nice

>>21748360
>Just write things in the order they happen.
Oh now I get what was wrong in that, ty.

>>21748182
I've written my own rendition of this except, see pic related. It's not great, but I just threw it together. As for a breakdown,
>He swung into his pleading hands and a shudder went through him when he yanked the blade that he'd lodged between thumb and index and red flooded his sight.
This is almost incoherent. I think the scene needs to be set up a bit more before the action is relayed. Your character should be swinging his weapon "at" the man's hands not into them. Even "He swung at his pleading hands" is awkward without knowing that there's another man, pleading before the protagonist. As it reads currently "his pleading hands" seem to refer to the main character's hands, who was refered to as "he" three words prior. Your description of the blade getting caught in the man's hand isn't very clear and I'm not sure why red is flooding anyone's sight. Is the protagonist "seeing red" as in getting angry, or is the victim's sight being obscured by his own blood? It's not clear, mainly because you're using "him" and "he" for both characters, within the same sentences, without distinction.
>That first resistance was the hardest to pull through.
This should be exemplified though the character struggling in his attack, it doesn't need to be stated.
>He whacked the flailing arms three or four times before he
managed to hit the head.
You don't whack with a sharp weapon, you chop, cut or slice. A whack is often a "sharp" attack, but that's more so the speed of it, not the nature of it.
>He struck Mr. Vermin's face with the machete, hacking pieces off his cheeks and nose and cleaving his eye and his brow and his ear.
Again, you're overusing the word "and". Seperating "he managed to hit the head" and "he struck Mr. Vermin's face" breaks the flow. That and Mr. Vermin isn't a realistic name. Perhaps the characters call him that as a nickname, but the narrator shouldn't.
And that's as far as I've read, too much of a mess already to bother continuing.

>>21748302
Didn't catch the protagonist's name before my rewrite, so forgive the placeholder.

>>21748415
>That and Mr. Vermin isn't a realistic name.
He'd given him the name. I took note of everything else although I admit I don't like the rewrite very much.

>>21748434
I don't write much to be honest. I'm just getting into it. Reading back what I wrote in the image I have lots of problems with it, but I think that's OK for a first draft. Getting your text to be more concise, removing the filler and adding better imagery can always come later, jotting down the main events in a clear way is my goal first time around.
I'd appreciate some feedback on the rewrite, after all we're all here to get better.

>>21748487
I mean it's just something I wouldn't write. It's a different scene? There's too much thought in it that I didn't want to cover. I never pictured the MC looking down at the man in disgust, he's killing him and that's all there is in his mind. Dunno if you've ever been in a fistfight, your mind blanks out and you're just punching and kicking.
But apparently I didn't make it frantic and it just reads badly instead so I'll rewrite it.

>>21748535
I clearly misjudged the intent. From your passage I gleaned that it was an execution without any comparison to a fistfight. I figured that the slash at the hands was a rejection of the plea for mercy "pleading hands" implied.

What makes a book well written and goes from readable to great?

>>21747133
>>21748080
I guess it really is too long. The way it's written was supposed to produce a feeling of a surreal introduction for the character. Anon noticed that that character sounds like the devil but he's explicitly not. Have to scrap it, too hot for the intended protagonist anyways. >>21747888
>>21747118
Funnily, I'm not familiar with DnD bards at all. It's a character for a gothic piece (19th century setting).

If my mc has a journey and he already knows where to go (like, from location to location in the kingdom), should I mention these locations at the beggining (like a roadmap), or not?

>>21748853
drawing a map would be cooler

>Fiction magazines shutting down submissions because of all the AI generated content
Humans couldn't handle a post-scarcity society. They'd stop eating out of spite.

>>21748990
It's as I predicted. It's not a matter of spite, it's just that any retard can now click a button and post a submission, so magazines are probably receiving thousands of them. They're all gonna die lol. We're going back to traditional publishing and it will be extra super gatekept.

>>21748990
its all the dumb dumbs who can't afford to put in 2 minutes of work in anything

>>21748990
haha
why don't we just have AI read over all the submissions and pick the best ones? Then have AI market and publish it in the best markets. Then have AI buy and read the books. Simple as.

>>21749027
whats most likely to happen is that now you are going to have to be referenced in to submit something.
AI-shitters just made it 100x harder for actual writers and they will see 0 repercussions

>>21749045
>side-hustle niggers ruining good things

who could have thought this would happen

>>21749051
All according to plan nyhehehehe *rubs hands*

>3rd part of my series
>follows a more chaotic neutral/somewhat immoral cast
>introduce a voodoo shaman witch (archetype Ive always loved that is far to sparsely seen in media)
>introduce a sadistic plague doctor (common archetype but rarely executed well imo)
>realise that writing the story with both of them is going to be difficult because many of their talents and traits would overlap
suffering
Ill probably have to remove the plague doctor

>>21749240
Make them buddies, like a duet of weird doctor buddies. They do shit together but in their own specialties, so they don't overlap each other.

>>21749240
>same results
>differeent methods
>they argue over their methods

Thoughts on starting an epic fantasy book with a poem? Had this idea of starting the story off with part of a larger poem intentionally written to be easily readable / seem somewhat generic at a glance, but to have it make more sense and gain deeper meaning the more the reader knows about the plot, characters and world. I want to make it diegetic too, have bits and peices of it scattered throughout the story (not necessarily in order mind you) so that the reader can peice it all together into one larger whole; like having the characters hum / sing parts of it or so on.

I'm a huge fan of subtext and hidden meanings, so I'd really like to have something readers can look back on, peice together and find deeper meaning in later down the line.

>>21749386
I usually hate poems besides maybe haikus but the way you describe it does make it sound very interesting, and its quite original. Perhaps you should repeat it at some point to truly emphasize how it becomes more recognisable, but dont overdo that or it would feel like getting pushed into your face

>>21749386
I think based. I'm doing something similar, albeit with just one character and parts of the poem aren't supposed to be pieced together.

>>21748415
>pile of horrible advice
>literal autism
>shit rewrite
lol no wonder why this board loves AI so much

>>21742585
Your descriptions of things are just descriptions and do not add to the story. It tells me nothing that the classroom is "dark." Why not say how the blinds were closed and how a student always had to make his way through the desks to the windows, and how summer sun was no more, maybe just a glow, rays of sunlight through the blinds, but the heat's still there, or is it your nerves?, and you're sweating, blind in the projector's beam and in front of the class. But as is, the first paragraph can be removed completely, and nothing would be lost. The second paragraph falls short and does not make the reader understand what you experienced: the bond, how your body was "tied" to hers. It's just nonsense. Also, the word "notebook" is confusing. Manufactures call them "notebooks," but consumers tend to call them "laptops."

>>21749413
I've been accused of this same shit. Maybe stop writing incoherent prose where you swing swords "into" people and you won't be corrected on it?