/lit/ - Literature

fag thread

if you post in this thread you WILL fail to get published!

>>21961110

>>21961110
Hah! Way ahead of you!

>>21961108

I wish this board talked more about men's adventure rags and pulp fiction stories

>>21961110
Watch as he snibs and snabs in banal spite at his betters...So afraid of their success is he that he will even infer his own preemptive failure, in the vain hope that others will fail in their dreams.

How do I write a heist story, or a story about stealing something?

>This you will never find on Royal Road:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
>Nor this:
"Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth--but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour."
>Don't write with amateurs for a pittance; less than hacks post there.
>Shoot for more. Do better.
>Now get to work.
>Write.

>>21961203
After Rick & Morty expertly deconstructed the heist genre...you don't.
https://screenrant.com/rick-morty-heist-episode-twists-explained/

>>21961213
RoyalRoad authors hardly make a pittance, as was clearly elaborated in the previous thread.
Hopelessly baroque prose like your examples, though, will never sell these days.
Times change. Childhood ends.

>>21961226
I pity you, anon. I really do.

>>21961251
I don't think of you at all.

>>21961213
but we get to read and write this:
>Jack killed the slime with his bare hands. Just then, he saw a small screen pop into his brain.
[+1 strength
+2 endurance
Gained Skill: "Bear Grip"]

Jack turned to his big breasted elf companion. She grinned with anticipation experiencing Jack's newfound strength. She knew she'll get a taste later. Lips moistened.

>>21961213
>bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth
but rules tell me that you can't use the same word three times in a single paragraph! repetition bad!

>>21961278
>big breasted elf
This really IS a fantasy story, isn't it?

>>21961226
Do you think everyone should write solely for the purpose of becoming the next J.K Rowling or something?
Is it so hard to imagine people do it because they enjoy it? If they make it big, cool.
Being this critical of yourself only leads to depression. It takes time and effort to improve as a writer, clearly.
You're only fucking yourself over by having such an attitude.

>>21960592
i really enjoy writing with no capitalization. after sticking by the rules for so long, i'm doing my own thing. fuck the system, fuck the queen's english. this is my personal rebellion.

Writing a violent super-hero story aimed at young adults and teens (or anime watchers in general) set in a dystopian future with pic related's vibe but also magical girl/anime shit and an overarching theme of anti-natalism, capitalism bad, etc.
I was really into it at the start, but now I'm no longer feeling it. I don't know how I'll make MC get powers and that's kind of dragging my mood down.
Rate and hate. Tell me how far you got before dropping it.

https://files.catbox.moe/ohzeoo.txt

>>21961284
kek, call Strunk and White! Emergency!
>>21961331
You know I had a dream the other night where I began writing a novel and decided, fuck it, no punctuation at all. If I can't make it so that you out there understand what I mean without punctuation, then I've failed, but if I can get away with it and you understand me, fuck it, why not.
>You know I had a dream the other night where I began writing a novel and decided fuck it no punctuation at all if I can't make it so that you out there understand what I mean without punctuation then I've failed but if I can get away with it and you understand me fuck it why not
It's possible

>>21961332
I like it.
I have no real criticisms to give.
As for how she might get her powers, she decides to try spending the night outside in her rebellion, and ends up in a clearing of the homeless by private police, ends up as an experiment.
Perhaps she could even go back to her parents once the mix up is realized, showing that it is relatively normal for such a thing to happen, and as she doesn't have a reaction at first, they she doesn't end up as company property.
I gotta say, I love the description of the swat or whatever those guys are.
Armor in the same vein as this gets my hard.

>>21961374
After I read Strunk and White, it suddenly hit me how a majority of the Greats would give them simultaneous strokes.

>>21961423
Agreed. I liked the clause in there, "unless you can be sure you'll do well." No one can be sure of doing well until they do well, maybe not even then, and if the Greats had followed Strunk and White's advice before they were considered Greats, they wouldn't have done as well as they have by ignoring most of that bad advice. Maybe I'm a mid-wit, but that seemed like circular advice to me.

Writing this little segment about the main character making golems after his family is attacked.
Normally he avoids the imagery of skulls and death because he is trying to not be seen as a monster. But now, he intentionally makes these to strike fear into anyone else who might try to attack him.
My issue, is what to call them. My first instinct is Death Corps, after that Deadmen, then Black Unit. But honestly, I don't know if these have the right edge to them. I'm not trying to make them sound silly, but I want them to be what a 15 year old who is trying to sound scary would call them.

>>21961474
They're protectors, not death squads, call them Violet Guardians.

>>21961522
Huh, I did think of just calling them Guardians since it would be a name that intentionally doesn't sound menacing, which would contrast their appearance and how people would view them.
As a placeholder I just called them Black Golems, but Guardians or Bulwarks sounds better.
I'll give it more thought.

>>21961541
Now ask yourself what is the MCs motivation then. If its one of goodness, the names are not menacing, and his opponents will see it as so, thinking MC has gone bonkers. If its revenge then by all means, the sentinels of nyx works

>>21961562
Ah, Sentinels, that is a perfect word for them.
While he made them out of anger, by the time they are all finished he is of a clearer mind.
His intentions are just to make something stronger to keep his family safe, even if by making that one sentient one he has broken the law.
I don't want to Nyx because of story reasons, but thank you for your suggestions.
Black Sentinels is it.

You did write your 2000 daily words today, right /wg/?

>>21961579
Yes.

RR is making me crazy. Gaining readers, losing followers, no reviews, 50% drop after chapter 1.

Shit man... My chapter 1 isn't good enough

>>21961588

If you don't have a lot of chapters published, why would someone review it? That seems quite silly, anon.

>>21961579
i had my annual check-up today and drank some coffee, thought some more about my planned story. the antagonists and protagonists are starting to take shape. i thought about prose. prose is hard for me. but if i try to write in a way i would appreciate, and not in any particular style, i find that my prose gets the job done. over-description and micromanaging of details tends to trip me up so i limited myself to writing from the character's perspective and including details only if they suit the tone/theme. also varying sentence structure is something i try to focus on.

Do any of you retards have experience hiring editors?
I have niether desire nor hope of ever being tradpubbed, but I still want to at least approach my writing with something close to professionalism.
Is there a particular company or service you'd reccomend, or should I hunt around on linkedin and send emails untill I get an affordable quote?

>>21961108
I'm going to imitate Conrad's narration style in the Heart of Darkness. Wish me luck, negroes.

>>21961108
writing is hard, it is really hard. mediocre literature is not hard, but when comes to creating something that can make a reader feel the exact emotions at the exact time, while trying to create a complete theme around it and trying to portray a image with all of that is really difficult. there is a reason that only few can write so well, and that being genetics

>>21961755
>How good you can write is genetics
I want to say that's bullshit but I suppose you can very accurately describe how different ethnicities write.
Swedish stories have this very unique style overall.
Anyone can write just like anyone can cook.
The difference is how well they know how.
Practice and trial and error can get you pretty far though don't underestimate how far persistence and willingness to learn can take you.
Also consider what market and demographic you're writing for. That will always play a part in how much success you find.

>>21961789
I've learned that the time you take with the work also matters, if you have skill, will work hard, and are willing to learn. People who shit out work at a fast pace will inevitably write bad prose and stories--even if one is good every once in a while, a lot of them will be bad. It's a numbers game. Even Shakespeare had what he called "foul papers." But that's also hard to measure, because some authors wrote really great short stories in a manic frenzy and yet wrote other short stories that took years and weren't so great, really. It's so highly variable that this comment is retarded and I should just kms.

something weird just happened, My brain was about to break. I tried to force a complete different view of reality and my brain was starting break, fuzziness, muscle strain...holy...fuck!. this was fucking bizarre, I saw the world like I was a child, vibrant with color, adventurous, curious, filled with endless possibilities, but..., only for few moments, it went away pretty quickly cuz my brain was hurting really bad. fuck!!!

>All the luggage I had in my cart consisted of one small portmanteau half filled with travelling− notes on Georgia; of these the greater part has been lost, fortunately for you; but the port− manteau itself and the rest of its contents have remained intact, fortunately for me. As I entered the Koishaur Valley the sun was disappearing behind the snow−clad ridge of the mountains. In order to accomplish the ascent of Mount Koishaur by nightfall, my driver, an Ossete, urged on the horses indefatigably, singing zealously the while at the top of his voice. What a glorious place that valley is! On every hand are inaccessible mountains, steep, yellow slopes scored by water−channels, and reddish rocks draped with green ivy and crowned with clusters of plane−trees. Yonder, at an immense height, is the golden fringe of the snow. Down below rolls the River Aragva, which, after bursting noisily forth from the dark and misty depths of the gorge, with an unnamed stream clasped in its embrace, stretches out like a thread of silver, its waters glistening like a snake with flashing scales.

guess the book anon

>>21961822
>>/x/

>>21961881
listen here fag, I've never been to /x/ and I don't think I will ever go there. the reason I posted here because this the same effect writers try to achieve with their book or literature in general

>>21961889
You had a stroke, anon. Probably should get to the hospital asap.

>>21961943
it wasn't a stroke

>>21961819
A master is not born.
He is made.

I'm planning on writing a novel in the style of Martin Amis & Anthony Burgess called 'Io venni in luogo d'ogni luce muto' after the fourteenth Canto of 'the Cantos' by Ezra Pound who Martin Amis & Anthony Burgess have at least once mentioned in their writings. Do you have any advice as to how I would go about doing so?

>>21961579
I'm not writing, I'm editing.

Last night I finally conceptualized what was missing from my manuscript so I have to go in and try to weave the new emotional thread.

>>21961606
I have the story done, but I don't want to dump it all out

>>21961632
Why not Reedsy? I haven't used it but I know it's popular.

>>21961755
>something that can make a reader feel the exact emotions at the exact time
I think this is the issue; too many people try to "make" the readers feel or see exactly what they want in their mind's eye and it hurts them.
Claiming that truly great writing is from genetics only sounds like cope, though.

i think my manuscript is nearly ready that i could start looking in earnest at getting it published (if i wanted to)

but i dont have a name for it
do i need a title before i send it to agents/publishers, or could that come later?

>>21962437
Why not spend 5 minutes to develop a decent tentative name for the manuscript you spent 200 hours writing and revising. You can even say when you submit the title is tentative.

question. can I serialize on rr and then take the story down once it's finished and put it on amazon? or do I need to stick to one platform

>>21962574
You only need to take it down from RR if you put it on Amazon KU. Amazon have a legal thing you can't have it available for free elsewhere. But if you instead just sell it on Amazon you can leave it on RR too.

>>21961881
I went to /x/ in 2007 when it had sovl. In my opinion, smiledog killed the board. I wish there were more people there that actually believed in the paranormal and just liked the aesthetic. I need to jump into it more again, I'm glad Spencer is already writing some out there stuff. Goddamn I am old, my back hurts.

>>21962801
> I wish there were more people there that actually believed in the paranormal
You wish there were more idiots?

>>21961960
Only someone with a stroke would say that.

>>21962825
It is one of my favorite character archetypes.

i'm doing it guys. i'm writing genre. i'm writing the books you buy at the train terminal to kill time and spill coffee on. i'm a real author now

>>21961822
it happened to me once but it was different

If I'm writing a romance novel, is it bad that I have at least 4 or 5 female characters point out how handsome the main guy is?

>>21963055
No. But be sure to add that the man will only have eyes for the plainest and ugliest girl for her personality or other non superficial trait.

>>21962825
The real idiot is the guy who looks at the world as it is and thinks, "yeah, makes sense!"

>>21961588
RR is a cesspit of entitled assholes as >>21959466 pointed out. Unless you write catering crap it's just not worth your time. I know your complaining about no reviews right now but seeing as you have not had the foresight to get beta readers to give you chapter 1, 5 star reviews or payed for a bot army I think I might quite enjoy your reaction when you actually do start getting reviews on there.

>>21963091
I thought RR would be my beta readers. J didn't think it'll be that political

>>21963072
I understand your point, and I had such questions when I was younger, that's why I'm currently doing a physics PhD and can now make sense of the world better than most people.

>>21963148
What questions has that research answered for you? Has it influenced your writing?

>>21963178
when he drops things he knows they're going to fall. I know you, as a layman, think you know that things will fall when you drop them, but he spent several years at uni really studying it, and now he has no doubt. so get you /x/ tier garbage out of here, stuff falls wen you drop it and that's that

>>21963015
Great. Your the next F Gardner.

>>21963178
> What questions has that research answered for you?
That the supernatural is all bullshit but there is enough wonder in nature and the universe to make understanding it amazing.

> Has it influenced your writing?
I'm currently writing a fantasy book with "realistic" magic. The trick is to somehow still make it enjoyable and fun.

Who is making all these FG threads in the catalog?

>>21963226
the initials of the person doing it are FG. could be anybody

>>21963112
Think of it like you running a market stall and your there giving away your time and stuff for free. Only the organizer of the market is making an entry fee(ad revenue) of your stuff (content/story). Now if the stuff your giving away isn't to the market goes (readers) taste they can just move on no harm no foul, so what if you didn't bring fake glowing testimonials (reviews) right?

WRONG!

The market goers (readers) will not only often not have the decency to let you know what they thought in legible english. When they do let you know they do not even have to put actual words to that shit, oh and they get to be completely anonymous while everyone gets to see an over simplification of what they "thought" of the stuff they just got for FREE.

But wait it gets better!

Because of the way the scoring system works you need ten five star reviews to offset one 0.5 star review. So while also showing up to the market (RR) and wasting your time and effort giving away something for free you have to try and convince the rest of the passerby's your not a complete and utter failure by tricking them into giving your work a unrealistic rating.

tl;dr?

You should have become an uber driver and actually got paid to be abused.

>>21963226
Turn off Adblock if you’re on your phone. That’s why. His new books have been advertised for weeks here now. F Gardner just released a Choose Your Own Adventure book and it’s fucking bonkers.

>>21963226
Why the fuck do you think? F Gardner’s face is plastered everywhere due to his never ending ads.

>>21963240
then why doesn't everyone just publish their books on their blogs like andy weir and solicit feedback there? little known fact but andy weir's short stories were being shared on /x/ as creepypasta before the martian even went viral. word of mouth can be powerful

>>21963226
F.G in the coffee... that's it!

>>21963262
because sites like rr and scribblehub and wherever have traffic and your blog that you just started doesn't. in either case the people that discover your work will provide word of mouth.
does that mean you shouldn't start your blog and publish exclusively there? no. but how much money can you monetize from your blog vs posting it on several sites while including a patreon link on each of those sites.

>>21963266
Is F.H. Coffee god for you

>>21963286
Why don’t more people just buy 4chan ads like F. Gardner? It’s clearly working for him.

>>21963289
I don't know what you mean. I was referencing the game Deadly Premonition.
>>21963291
Is it though? Because it seems to me like his parents are subsidizing his writing career just judging.

>>21963291
F Gardner is an irregularity. He did it first and has been doing it for years. He has almost 20 books now and seems to have inexhaustible funds. He’s the only instance of a /wg/ author with a consistent following and it’s obviously because of all of the above. Not a good comparison. But you raise an interesting point. Not a lot of people seem to be committing as much sheer effort (or lunacy) as F Gardner. I think his YouTube show probably contributed to this too.

>>21963262
Word of mouth can be powerful but you need to actually start somewhere, and there are far more people looking for new stuff in RR and other sites than there are people who are crawling through blogs looking for new stuff.

>>21963322
Sort of. I mean, I guess word of mouth is why F Gardner gets so much attention.

>>21963240
>>21961226
There are roughly 54,220 stories on Royal Road. Less then one hundred authors are consistently as successful as FortySixtyFour (AnimeCon Harem, RE:Trailer Trash) >>21958800 and generate more than 4.5k usd a month or 54k usd a year.

That is roughly a 0.001847745750185% chance of 'making it' from within RR. And that is with all the work, catering and sacrifices the guy and others like him have put in.

It's not that the average /wg/ poster will never 'make it' on the site. It's just ex-fucking-tremely unlikely it will actually occur.

>>21963419
It's 0.185% but your point still stands. That's worse odds than traditional publishing.

>>21963451
>That's worse odds than traditional publishing
I don't think so. The odds of getting trad published are low, in the first place, and then the majority of trad published authors never exceed their advance.

>>21963419
>Boo Hoo I don’t want to be viewed like F Gardner and become a meme!

Kek too bad. What a crybaby. Not very supportive here to try throwing based F Gardner under the bus. Why is this place such a bucket of crabs?

>>21963553
Preach. Gardner is what happens if anyone here ever gets a level of celebrity status. He’s the ONLY instance of anyone ever getting this popular & psudes ironically and hypocritically don’t realize they’ll be viewed the same way if they ever reach an iota of F Gardner’s success.

>>21963419

For your consideration, as a new author on RR, my story is already nearing top 10k on site, and I'm a measly 25 chapters in so far. I don't think the bottom 30k stories are worth considering really? Like if I'm this high up already.

Are we going to make it, bros?

>>21963632
Nope.

>>21963607
I've been at this for about 10 months give or take, and I've been hovering just under 6k for over a month now. I was actually 12k by the time I first looked at the dashboard feature, so I didn't realize there even was over 50k stories on the site.
>>21963632
Unfortunately, yes.

>>21963565
i will never become a celebrity beyond my pseudonym as my irl job is somewhat important. my employers would not appreciate what i write. i do it just to do it and maybe piss a few crabs off

Are there any other forums people use to discuss writing?

Reddit, RR, etc… are dog shit. They’re either in love with the idea of being a writer or autistically delving into world building.

>>21963811
>discuss writing
online, only posers and psueds and faggots
irl, english classes (aka posuers and pseuds and faggots and students)
now asking for feedback or discussing a particular piece of writing, they usually ask their irl family and friends

>>21963632
I already made it in other things in my life. I'm going to make it in writing too. And if you stick with it, you will as well.

r8 please. Greentext denotes italics

The air in the thirty-first floor of Elliot’s neighborhood clogged the lungs with boiling grease. If he opened his mouth, he could taste the deep fryers belching out their fumes from the cloistered kitchens around him. He sat in the stench of industrial cooking precisely because it kept him from opening his mouth. He was able to sit and stare at the pack of cigarettes in his hands while resisting the urge to rip the plastic off and stuff one in his mouth. He figured it would taste horrible. The air itself would provide all the grease and grime that bioengineering had taken from the Nico-Pure cigarettes his brother had preferred.

>Five years? No, that was last year. Going on six now. Where the hell are you now?

His phone was piling up with reports and incidents he was ignoring just like the rest of the department. Then the ringer grabbed his attention. Slipping the pack of cigarettes into his pocket, he checked what his boss wanted. One of the day’s reports had been flagged and Cinder messaged, “Make this your inaugural investigation. Sensitive interests.”

>>21963995
the kitchens being located on the 31st floor seems strange.
calling it an inaugural investigation seems wrong. his phone is piling up with reports and incidents so he didn't just get the job, so it can't be inaugural. or did he just get the job and you need to remove the line about his phone filling up with shit.
cloistered kitchen also doesn't sound right, because then the smell of the grease wouldn't be as obvious

>>21961332
the setting of this is the most important and interesting part of this. i dont have concern for the girls conflict with her parents or what shes capable of. i wanna see her get involved in something out of her control like a life or death (or even some sort of dystopian confinement) scenario. like invisible man or one flew over the cuckoos nest or great gatsby, the main character is mostly just a vessel of viewing the world and characters within. having the mc be a superhero seems lame, which might be why youre no longer interested. thats my opinion on where you could take it.

>>21964021
>the kitchens being located on the 31st floor seems strange.
It's a mega city.

>>21964038
okay, in that case calling the kitchens cloistered seems like the wrong adjective and unless he just got the job it's not his inaugural investigation

>>21964045
If I can think of a better adjective, I'll change it, but he did just get the 'promotion'. You don't need a detective to show up to a bar fight, but if they're the one at hand they can still do the arrest.

How do I effectively make money out of my writings? I write tons of degenerate erotica, and apparently people are more than willing to pay for my shit.

>>21964050
I still don't like the phrase inaugural investigation. Just doesn't seem like cop dialogue, or maybe it's the way he says Make this, because it sounds like less of an order somehow. or he should make a comment on the promotion, but obviously this is a small excerpt so it just sounds strange by itself.
"Congrats on getting off the beat. Here's your first real assignment. Sensitive interests."

Finished the outline for the second draft. The first one was so shit I wanted to rip my eyes out. But it was necessary so I could just spill the concepts into paper, I guess. This new draft is looking more promising. I'm excited, bros!

>>21964057
Degenerate stuff actually sells much worse, depending on what you mean by degenerate. If noncon, incest, stuff like that, then it can't be on Amazon or Patreon or any big site, really. Only Smashwords.

Like usual, more info needed.

>>21963632
Like the other anon said, if you stick with it you will yes!

>>21964067
>outline for a second draft
how does this work, exactly? isn't that called the first draft

>>21964057
Go look at reddit and be prepared to play the algorithm game
>>21963826
Whenever I ask irl friends and family for feedback they tell me they like it but they can't articulate their thoughts beyond that. Probably not a good sign

>>21964076
I've finished the first draft and there were a bunch of problems. Mostly structural and in characters' drives. So I had to outline it again to fiz those things.

>>21964077
A lot of people aren't very articulate at all when it comes to critique or even explaining what they think about fiction. They just feel it and then stop thinking about it unless it really moves them personally. Not every story can hit that hard.

>>21964077
I suppose you get what you pay for is a truism for a reason. better than them saying it's shit, it's totally awful, I can't even pinpoint why it just sucks, take this trash and throw it in the fireplace, and throw yourself in there too, while you're at it

>>21964082
Probably one of the biggest failures I had in my first draft is my protagonist didn't react in the mature way that I wanted him to. I also had to alter a lot of his dialogue to make him more laconic. Like you said it's important to get the ideas on the page first even if they're wrong. Later it becomes apparent which things need to change.

>>21964077
Does reddit really have a meaningful erotica scene for PAID content? I know there's a bunch of free writing, but this is the first I'm hearing of it being a real career platform.

>>21963995
There's something about it that feels indirect and convoluted. I was halfway a pedantic line-by-line critique but it felt too mean and snarky. In brief, I think you're trying to hard for this vivid, snappy, crime-fiction style that actually takes a lot of skill to pull off. Don't start with the artificial conceit of the boiling grease, and the enigmatic cigarettes. Keep it simple and direct and plot-focused and you'll build a sense of style as you go.

>>21963451
>It's 0.185%
Yeah sorry. My brain no good so work in mornings. But unfortunately >>21963533 is right, trad pub is worse and now even more so for the straight man. Best you can hope for is to churn out some controversial literature that supports a more well known conspiracy theory to secure a small but consistent right wing following.

>>21963607
Unless you start suckin some other authors dicks with review swaps or RR's with some ad buys your going to only move up a few thousand in a year anon.

>>21964106
>Unless you start suckin some other authors dicks with review swaps or RR's with some ad buys your going to only move up a few thousand in a year anon.
Not true. Just write better
>t. #767

Well, you SHOULD engage with other stories on the site, but I wouldn't call that sucking dick unless you're blatantly lying in your reviews and comments.

>>21964102
It's indirect because it's opening with Elliot reminsicing, not with the crime. Post your line-by-line if you didn't delete it.

>>21964072
I guess I exaggerate a bit. I'm big on raceplay; not necessarily white/black since that's the most basic overdone Burgerland pairing. Purchasing wives is about as dicey as my stories get.

>>21964084
>>21964085
Both good points. I feel like I only improved at expressing my thoughts on media and art once I started writing in-depth reviews. It's much easier to say why you hate something/it's bad than why you like it, imo.
>>21964100
There's a community on reddit that discusses all the tips and tricks for getting paid for your erotica. But like >>21964072 says, Kindle is strict and can pull your book and/or permaban you even for writing consensual BDSM scenes. You can still find that kind of story, but they're at risk for catching th banhammer at every moment, apparently.

>>21964126
I wasn't planning on publishing Kindle, but is there any kind of official "you will get banned" list of things you can't write for most places? Because I might want to toe the line.
There's a scene in something I'm working on where a girl convinces a guy to choke her on a regular basis, and eventually worse that isn't presented explicitly. I recall an anon this week mentioning that choking in erotica is banned on some platforms. What I'm writing isn't erotica but there are really strange moments where it's not clear if one character tells the reader she is into the dominance or if he's simply hurting her because he wants to.

>>21964120
>Not true. Just write better
>W-Well, you SHOULD engage with other stories on the site.
It's ok to be gay anon.

>>21964157
>toe the line
Hell, that's the wrong expression. I mean I'd like to transgress the standards.

>>21964120
>The air in the thirty-first floor of Elliot’s neighborhood clogged the lungs with boiling grease.
(1) Neighborhoods don't have floors; buildings do. Any reader is going to be jarred. Some might make the inference that this is potentially set in a world with neighborhood-sized buildings, but even then it's awkward that no explanation immediately follows, and they cannot be sure that the writer doesn't simply misunderstand what a neighborhood is.
(2) Having your lungs clogged with boiling grease would be an unimaginably horrific torture. You read the image, then you work your way back to the fact ('the air was foul and smoky'), and the the distance between image and fact makes the image seem comedic hyperbole.

>If he opened his mouth, he could taste the deep fryers belching out their fumes from the cloistered kitchens around him.
This brings to mind the image of a man very tightly and intently keeping his lips sealed. That's the only detail we have about him so far. Not effective.

>He sat in the stench of industrial cooking precisely because it kept him from opening his mouth.
Where is he sitting? Is he just loitering in a corridor? Who is this man? Why is roaming around searching for the right atmospheric conditions to sit in? I have zero concrete image for who he is or what he's doing, other than his firmly closed mouth.

>He was able to sit and stare at the pack of cigarettes in his hands while resisting the urge to rip the plastic off and stuff one in his mouth.
Assessing subjective motivations is, of course, highly subjective; but I think it's extremely farfetched that someone would deliberately sit in a zone of smoke of stenches just to prevent themselves opening their mouth long enough to insert a cigarette.

>He figured it would taste horrible.
There's something apologetically redundant about this sentence, as if it were saying 'In case I haven't made it sufficiently clear by now, he sits here because it would make smoking too unpleasant.'

>The air itself would provide all the grease and grime that bioengineering had taken from the Nico-Pure cigarettes his brother had preferred.
There's too many ideas in this sentence, without any immediately obvious connection to each other or to the preceding material. The air now has an additional function, that of providing grease and grime, which this man apparently wants (otherwise why mention it?). He doesn't want to smoke the cigarettes here because they would taste bad, but apparently he does want to inhale the grease and grime. A confusing connection between ideas. Then there's the brother, and it takes some piecing together (for zero reason other than Mystical Literary Vagueness) to realise the cigarettes are the brother's, and that the man wasn't trying to quit smoking, but instead wanted to travel to a commercial kitchen complex in order to sit and look at a packet of his brother's cigarettes. Why does he reminisce in such a strange way, this tight-lipped, grime-breathing man?

>>21964120
>it's opening with Elliot reminsicing, not with the crime
the opening of this particular except. this isn't the opening of the entire story, right?

>>21964199
I don't know why you held back on posting this, it's not particularly mean at all, and makes good points.

>Elliot sat at the edge of his home tower, knees almost pressed to the railing beneath the exhaust of too many restaurants to count. The cubby was quiet, but the air was clogged with boiling grease. If he opened his mouth, he could taste the deep fryers belching out their fumes from the cramped kitchens around him.[...]

>>21964226
It's chapter 2, after a chapter introducing the antagonist and setting up the incident.

>>21964157
I'm pretty sure I was the anon talking with you about it last thread (or two threads ago, can't remember now). From what I hear, smashwords is pretty much "anything goes" except for bestiality, pedoshit and rape maybe (though you can publish rape if it makes up a small percentage of your catalog). They're very generous with their standards for erotica and I'm planning to publish at least one choking story there lol.
I haven't seen a list like the one you mention yet, and I've spent a good number of hours researching about publishing. I just know that kindle is both strict and unclear with what they do/don't allow (though if you are writing anything outside erotica or romance, you can write about killing and choking all you like). Ao3 has no forbidden content whatsoever, but I know you mentioned you want to get paid.

>>21964232
oh, so it is the introduction to this character, who is the protagonist, I'm assuming. describe him first doing something, not the scenery. and this is just me, but I particularly dislike authorial dictation of internal motivations. the offending line is:
>He sat in the stench of industrial cooking precisely because it kept him from opening his mouth.
note this example is completely different from the author letting the reader know what the character is thinking at this particular moment.
also,
>If he opened his mouth, he could taste the deep fryers...
avoid the authorial hypothetical. say,
>Whenever he inadvertently opened his mouth, he could taste the deep fryers
But I would describe him fiddling with his phone first before setting the scene

>>21964249
I'm a retard; you said what you're writing isn't erotica lol. I think you should be fine for the most part; worst that could happen is you get told off and find somewhere else to publish. Good luck anon

>>21961213
Based

i want to post some excerpts here but it's still kind of a clusterfuck right now. however i can tell that my story is not the kind that will find success on rr. it doesn't pander to the readers at all, in fact i think it will make them uncomfortable and disturbed most times. the successful writers on rr seem to pander to their readers in egregious ways, as if to tell their readers, i ascribe to your ideology, pay me and i'll regurgitate it to you in a format slightly higher brow than porn. imo the whole culture on rr is an insult to everyone involved. and if you feel stuck on there writing something you don't enjoy then stop wasting your time and create what you do enjoy

>>21964250
You might not like the style, but the hyrid of perspective dictation as well as explicit internal monologue lets me make a stylistic difference between the protag's chapters and the criminal's chapters, because the criminal gets the prose explanations but not the thoughts.

You might not think it's ideal but it's the choice I made for the book.

>>21964273
fair enough if that's how you chose to do it, I do like that each character is stylistically distinct. I'd still open the chapter focusing on the character and not his immediate surroundings, which you can describe a couple paragraphs in.

>>21964268
You should post it anyway, anon. Good fiction comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable or something like that

>>21964253
Thanks for your input. I think there are some more subtly offensive things in that story but I believe I can get away with it because it's not outright transgressive fiction. But I do like to write for both the disillusioned and hopeful people out there, I think there is some common ground where I can tell a story without preaching to the choir.

I was heavily medicated earlier and started typing up a giant, embarrassing post ranting about the book I am currently writing, and only stopped because I passed out with my phone in my hand. I thank God for taking consciousness away from me.

>>21964526
why were you ranting? what's frustrating you?

>read old book
>Realize it's not that good
>Already published
Oh well

>>21964529
I've just been floundering on a section I've been writing for two weeks, or perhaps more at this point. I keep looking at it and fills me with disgust, and while I've contemplated rewriting it, I can't come up with anything better. Worse, I have built it up to this big climax and now that I've gotten to this point, it feels like dogshit. I can't execute on what I've gotten to. I hate it and just want to be done with this section so I can focus on what comes after.

>>21964542
maybe your build-up isn't satisfying enough for your payoff. in any case that's something that you resolve in editing. your job with the first draft is just to get something down that you chisel away at, or reorganize, or reuse. you might find that you can only reconsider things once the whole is finished and you see how the parts fit together. hope that helps

>>21964551
I don't know, I feel most writers when they use this approach can "feel" their way through the chapter. They'll have notes set up ahead of time for plotting where they want to go, and can end up in a situation where they're able to see what they were going for upon reflection and better it. That there is a solid foundation, some good clay, they can work with. That's how I look at my first drafts, anyway. I'm typically fairly happy with the outcome because I know implemented various writing elements well enough, and have some pivotal scenes, and it reads coherently. This is just shit, and that's why I've been so morose, as none of it feels like there is a decent baseline.

>>21964577
if worse comes to worst just be a hack and foreshadow a solution two hundred pages beforehand and add some supporting motifs and the readers will accept it

Weird little problem I'm running into. I feel like I'm doing a definitive play-by-play of every one of my character's little behavioral traits. Their ticks, their nervous jerks, how they gesture, etc
How do I cut these out without being left with nothing?

>>21964636
don't include them if they're distracting or just describe them without drawing attention to them and eventually the reader will recognize a pattern

>>21961330
I enjoy it *and* I want to become the next big-selling author.
Certainly better than soul-sucking day-jobbery.
Gotta try to live my dreams!
>>21963015
Hope your sales are beyond your expectations!

>>21963148
>physics PhD
Oh yeah?
What's your take on quantum theory?
Or your explanation for the double-slit experiment?
Quantum physics is discovering, from a Western perspective, the sorts of things that Eastern mystics have been talking about for thousands of years.
Can you handle that, or do you just cover your ears and shout "LA LA LA LA LA"?
In my experience, a "rational scientist" is someone that hasn't lived life.

>>21963995
Complete trash. Your writing is beyond shit. A 13 year old girl's diary offers more depth and complexity than your fecal matter in the form of words. Your writing reminds me of when I watched a dying rottweiler shitting out its guts on the side of a road when traveling through ghetto central America. You should immediately smash your computer and proceed to the bathroom where you shave off your pubes, tuck your dick between your legs, and immediate begin your transition because the only way anyone will ever notice you is if you decide to become your true self; a eunuch with less ability to write than an autistic toddler being hit by a cattle prod. Your attempt at creativity has the feng shui of a cancer patient on a bed lying in the coffin position in room 44 on the 4th floor of a hospital on the 44th meridian. Your entire energy of each word corresponds to curses forgotten to time, and with each sentence the devil laughs, as you damn your fellow man to an eternity of re-living the worst moments in time where some absolute fucking loser thought that the diarrhea he shit onto a thread reply would actually be good, and not something that dooms mankind to reincarnate and live through the mistake of who you are. Kill yourself now to free us all from the cataclysmic error your parents made when your whore mom shit you out of her smelly cunt and spent years nourishing a failure like you so you could come to this board and make your post that damns us all to an eternity of shit prose.

Kill yourself faggot.

>>21964670
not that anon but these questions are not phrased very intelligently. asking "what about quantum theory" is like asking what do you think about the alphabet or trees. i don't know, what do you think about chemistry or any high school science education in the past 100 years? why do you have to resort to insults to bring down someone who you don't even know?
>>21964679
same goes for you too. utterly embarrassing

>It ate him up inside, knowing what he knew but also knowing there was no good explanation for it. ‘Walking without walking,’ that was both the technique and the secret of the technique. One could not step lively into some faraway place without knowing the way, and one could not be taught unless the tutor knew the way behind the way. In that respect, ‘walking without walking’ was the answer and the question—all in one.
>Anyone could understand this, given time. There was no de jure name for the technique, not even a nickname. Adherents knew it only by the way they did it. People who would never and could never do it called it ‘astral projection.’ That careless term, like a spinning kaleidoscope, served only to warp the truth of the thing. And so countless others found the journey that much harder, they found the path impeded by jargon and encyclopedic burdens. It was unfair, and despicable, but it is true that many journeys are sabotaged before they can even begin.
>‘Astral projection.’ Just like that, another chick was stuffed back into the egg. Return to utero and die—

>>21964670
My take is that anyone that equates quantum theory with mysticism understands neither.

>>21964689
Eons ago in the forges of the universe, the old gods were clashing hammer on anvil, and the slag that flew off coalesced into a mess on the floor that would eventually become you. Trash begets trash, and the deformed, twisted sperm of your anti-creativity found its home inside the cunt of satan who held you deep inside it's rotten hole until finally birthing you so you could shit up this board with your primeval filth. Nothing you wrote even makes sense, it is the foul refuge of a loser without any sense of good or bad, you simply exist in a state of being and doing, much like an asshole that was created to push out foul, brown matter. Close your eyes, imagine yourself as a productive, intelligent, thoughtful artist with something to offer the world. Now open your eyes, walk to the mirror, and look at yourself. You are golem of failure, a walking, talking marionette of human shit. You are made from nothing more than failure and your parents certainly come from a legacy of shit, your mother's cunt a smelly hole full of spiders and dirty, your father's ballsack a redoubt of beta-maleness that would be like a holy cross to the vampirism of Andrew Tate. A man such as you deserves the contempt of all writers, as just participating in literacy brings down your fellow man with such pathetic efforts that cannot even be compared to an infant shitting out whole letters of an alphagetti meal. You exist simply to torment people who seek intelligence and meaning, as your writing is nothing more than noise designed to jam the signal of intelligence and wit. When I attempt to read your verbal nonsense, my mind is hijacked by virtual arabs of literary terror, each sentence like a 9/11, and I witness the deaths of Shakespeare and Hemingway over and over, the cold barrel of that shotgun in Ernest's mouth was a direct quantum tunnel in time from the moment you decided you could write to the moment that great writer needed to exit this world so he could never spend a moment gazing upon the bloody tampon which is this forum that you decided to ram up your creative cunt. Every moment I spend reflecting upon what you've attempted to convey is like a year spent rubbing my face into a pile of broken glass covered in lemon juice and salt. Your work is worth less than the smeg under the foreskin of a gay pornstar specializing in scat porn. Every aspect of your attempt at "art" is a holocaust of language, your works push the fan of writing into a gas chamber of tranny cum farts. When a pedophile murderer goes to hell, Satan asks then if they'd like to have their dicks ripped off by a hungry pitbull on repeat until doomsday, or the "alternative" option, being forced to read your writing forever.

>>21964679
>anon puts more effort into a disgusting shitpost than the passage he's complaining about
Impressive, in a way

>>21963995
i used to be a fry cook so i understand well the smell that you are describing. i'm going to rewrite your passage in my style and see if you can spot any differences.

elliot did not exist, either to his employment or the world around him. high-rise apartments have a way of subsuming you, especially since the windows didn't open fully, additionally because he was a smoker, and finally, once he did crack the pane to surreptitiously puff on a cig, the street's unholiness blew furiously into the apartment and forced the pane shut. of course, the street smell was the only thing that bothered him; he'd long stopped smelling the nicotine and side-eyed anyone who complained. it would explain why he'd been persona non grata in the department lately.
another text. new case. elliot did but almost didn't care. he didn't exist. at least until his brother did.
elliot sat on the pane of the world and took a deep fucking drag. but this time he did not crack the window.

>>21964727
>Trembling, he said it
>Smirking, I read it

>>21964745
I have endless talent and creativity but no way, outside of porn, to monetize it in this absolutely cucked and faggot world of 2023

>>21964750
stop lying, i read your book and it was horrible

>>21964755
Which chapter did you make it to? If you really read the book, what is the name of the character that betrays Ken in act 1?

>>21964755
If you really read the book, what chapter has the F. Gardner "crocodile" shout out?

>>21964742
nayrt but goes to show mere experience isn't everything
>high-rise apartments have a way of subsuming you, especially since the windows didn't open fully, additionally because he was a smoker, and finally, once he did crack the pane to surreptitiously puff on a cig, the street's unholiness blew furiously
Everything about this is a no. Also,
>Elliot did but almost didn’t care.
Ugh. Is this YA? Usually I'm nice with my feedback but the vitriol is flowing in this thread so might as well add to it.
op's passage wasn't as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Op, work on writing for clarity first and then build upon the senses.

>>21964715
I beg to differ. Picrel explains it better than I ever could.

>>21964762
>>21964765
your book is horrible and you deserve the hate for being so deluded. your presence here is a negative karmic mark on the universe. instead of improving your craft, you shopped around a self-referential pile of excrement and jizzed onto it for several years in the hopes that someone would take pity on you and buy it. you are worse than everyone here.
>>21964769
i'm curious to deconstruct what level of prose you think qualifies as YA

I don't remember where I first saw this but have a pyramid.

There were contours in that steel. Fucking contours.
The lurching asymmetric shit stumbled sideways and danced down the apartment steps like an alcoholic daddy with a brew in one hand and a belt in the other, one of those crisp $20.00 belts with the fat metal buckle, oh yes, the type that left glinting oil-slick bruises. And when that walking abuse reached the ground floor he finally saw just how haphazard it was. A Gothic helmet, Gothic! Three Quater leggings, bulky out of place fat fucking iron thighs on the vile Frankenstein’s monster armor and the breastplate with its contours, piece-of-shit-died-in-my-stomach-and-slithered-out-my-anus-fucking-contours, absolute bleedingly obscene Maximilian chest. Maximilian, Three Quarter, Gothic. The Larper had to get his throat cut, he just had to.

>>21964778
Since you apparently can't read:
>Elliot did but almost didn’t care.
Edgy and trite. A YA-quality sentence.

>>21964750
Are you competing with Gardner to see who can be the most self-involved alcoholic tard?
No one cares which one of you is lamer.
If memory serves, I read the first chapter and a half of your book.
All these bad things happened to the protagonist for no apparent reason; it was all "LOL random muh bad luck". No plotting or morality at all.
I was bored senseless.

>>21964727
you want overwritten shit?
>I slid my dagger down my sleeve and pressed it quickly into his throat. The gurgles he made and widened eyes were his last gifts to this world. His body remained erect and frozen inside the nook. I closed his eyes and wiped the blood onto his cloth. Any heat his body emanated dissipated into gusts of winds carrying his soul to a place far removed from this paradise.
>The street across from me provided me a vantage where I sat to enjoy the simple pleasures others partook. Footsteps after footsteps passed the corpse without a single acknowledgement. A woman held her nose, but continued forward. The smell of flesh was unfamiliar to her. Neon lights illuminated his face, but as observed from each individual that would pass on by, he was part of the setting in which he lived. Not an ornament that adored the landscape, but rather, a piece of it. Blood soaked his clothes, yet, nobody noticed the darkened shade spreading throughout his body. Cursed to the realm of irrelevancy, not even his individualistic pride provided him comfort as he remained on his altar. His life ended and became a small piece of a larger story for another. That was all that would remain of his contributions to this world.
>Glamora continued to entertain any that remained on its streets. Underneath the purple glow of hearts, symbols, and graphic light that left little to imagination, I watched a woman take the arms of a man. She pulled him into a building in which neither reemerged. Joining them, I too, entered the building with little regard of what was inside.

>>21964772
Thanks for proving my point.

Gauntlets are great for breaking teeth, but metal boots kick ass

>>21964787
you sound like the type of peasant in famine to pick corn out of cow's shit and reject it for not stinking enough. i mean that in the nicest way possible.

how do i cope with hating to write dialogue? it's too easy for me to cross-contaminate emotions and styles of speech

>>21964778
You didn't even read the book you fucking loser. Kill yourself faggot.

>>21964789
If you read half of the book, who is the character that betrays Ken in the first act? Literally less than 6-7 chapters in.

>>21964808
seeing you hang would be the funniest thing to happen to me all week. keep shilling alkie, no one's buying your shit

>>21964816
You didn't even read it, faggot liar

You're going to sit in your loser basement and you will watch me release more books and build the best porn site while you languish as a fucking loser doing nothing with your life.

>>21964808
honestly i deleted the post because i don't want you to kill yourself, you're just annoying and need to stop shilling everywhere. even the established authors don't shill as much as you do

>It's October again. The sun sets and leaves fall from the trees, drifting away like pieces of my soul. They drop down like journalists who know too much about the CIA. The cold air raises goosebumps on my skin, like a caress from an unseen hand, a caress that soon tweaks my nipples and stiffens them into pert buds.
>How quickly our time slips through our fingers. Before we know it, the leaves will be gone, and so too will we; before too long, this entire world will be a distant memory. Ashes to ashes. Dust in the wind. As thoughts of my inevitable demise flash through my mind, my heart sinks down into my stomach, and I realize I have to take a shit.

>>21964832
Imagine how hard I'm going to shill the 3rd book faggot, especially once afterworkfreeporn.com brings in more than survival money!

>>21964793
Some day, you'll realize how ignorant you are, and you'll kick yourself for all the missed opportunities for illumination.
Or maybe you'll use your knowledge of physics to design a bomb that destroys the whole world, just because women find you repulsive.
Maybe both.

>>21964811
I never said I read half the book.
I read just over a chapter.
Are you having reading comprehension problems?
>>21964828
NTA either, but why go to porn sites when I can get all the naughtiness I want for free?
What exactly is your business model?

>>21964837
>The sun sets and leaves fall from the trees
forgot a comma

>>21964840
If you enjoyed the book that's great, just don't try and claim it has some kind of scientific value. Philosophy hasn't contributed anything to physics since the era of Aristotle.

>>21964845
Because if you post the right porn, men cannot resist signing up for more, faggot.

You're such a bitch, but I know you already have low self-esteem, which is why you attack a man much greater than you.

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

You realize I'm doing this art for losers like you to lift you up, but instead of congratulating me, you attack me like a crab. Kill yourself faggot. You are the exact reason why the kikes push the above music videos on the youth and there are NO VOICES talking shit against it.

KILL YOURSELF BITCH. People like you stand in the way of great men like Jason Bryan.

>>21964840
ultimately this is offtopic. however your insecurity comes off very hard in your posts. why give a fuck about who studies physics. it's mostly biomedical applications now anyway. that physics guy will most likely design prosthetics for your grandma not work for northrop grumman. you are behaving like the bitches on twitter who invent things in their head to get mad at. no wonder the top earning writer in this thread has a serial where in the first chapter he shits on feminists. jesus christ

>>21963995
You have problems with passive voice and some logical errors but otherwise the writing is fine enough for whatever work you’re using for practice.

>>21964803
watch art film movies

>>21964862
>>21964870
kys

>>21964876
how could that possibly help?

>writing a story about kids trying to make the best hamburger
>thought it'll be a short story
>somehow surpassed 10k words
>they haven't even cooked their first burger yet

What the fuck

>>21964879
>>21964876
kys

>>21964885
what did i do

>>21964884
it's the journey not the destination my friend. imagine sisyphus happy

>>21964855
Blanket statements, made in ignorance of the evidence?
Doesn't sound very scientific to me.
Are you sure you haven't made science into some sort of personal religion?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

>>21964861
You're a man of the people. A real class act.
You're sure to go far with your demonstrated temperament.

>>21964890
You're funny.

>>21964890
>blanket statements, made in ignorance of the evidence?
>Doesn't sound very scientific to me.
>Are you sure you haven't made science into some sort of personal religion?
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

>>21964862
Since you apparently have no memory, >>21963148 claimed his physics PhD lets him make sense of the world better than most people.
Clearly an arrogant, dismissive attitude.

>>21964887
kys

>>21964894
I am the GG Allin of writing, kill yourself cracker

>>21964898
You're boring and close-minded.
Enjoy your self-created downward spiral.

>>21964905
No wonder you've been banned from every web site and social media site.

>>21964902
ahh, so you're focusing on the fact he studies physics and not that he's getting a phd. i would say, objectively, that earning a phd makes you understand shit better, because it is literally self-directed research which you eventually need to defend. maybe you won't have in depth knowledge of all topics but the process of verifying the truth of any topic will become trivial, which is definitely part of "understanding". so yes, he's right

Is my prose effective?
>You see, for the longest time, Anon refused to accept the feelings that he had in his heart. He tried to suppress them, he tried to ignore them, and he tried to pretend that they weren't even there. But they were, and they were getting stronger and stronger. After all, the human heart is a very powerful thing, and it can be hard to deny for too long. Finally, he realized that he needed to do something about it. And so, he decided to act on his feelings.
>Anon realizes that he cannot deny it any longer. He is attracted to other men, and it's getting harder and harder to pretend that he's not. At first, he tries to suppress it again, but he eventually makes the decision to act on his feelings.
>Anon has been hearing everything through the wall that divides his apartment from his neighbor's. He can hear every little sound from next door, from the noises of their movements and conversations to their most intimate moments, even the little grunts and splashes of his neighbor taking a shit. He knows everything about their daily routine. Anon is obsessed.
>Anon's desire for the man is so strong that he can't keep it inside any longer. He decides that it's time to do something about it. So, he waits until the man is home alone, and then he makes his move. He grabs the burlap sack that he got from the Home Depot, and he grabs the barbed wire that he snipped from the church parking lot on MLK Boulevard last Wednesday night. And he waits.

>>21964918
i love it

>>21961108
Silent protagonist. Yea or nay?

>>21964907
kys

>>21964921
the characters were engaging, i'd read more.

>>21964918
>But then... the neighbor opens the door. Much to Anon's suprise, the man is 55 years old, morbidly obese, and wearing a stained, faded wifebeater. The neighbor scratches his belly, belches, and says "Can I help you?"
>"Oh, uh, I thought I heard my cat meowing outside the window, but I can't see from my own apartment. Do you mind if I come in?" He smiles shyly.
>"Uh, sure." The neighbor steps aside, and as he does so, Anon gets a whiff of his pheromones. Anon knows that the neighbor only showers once every three days. His cock jolts with arousal.
>Anon makes it across the threshold, his hands sweating and his throat tight with anticipation. The neighbor looks at the burlap sack and barbed wire and says "So what's the story here?"
>Anon's eyes widen. He was so focused on his cocklust that he had forgotten the original plan. "This is for when I catch my cat," he says quickly, letting out the awkward laugh that he had repressed for years.

>>21964913
Circuitous reasoning and jumping to conclusions.
Not exactly a good look for you.
I'll wager your "plots" are just so much ass-grabbing. "LOL random!"

>>21964935
>kys
But I like my life.
Do you like your life?
Because that doesn't really come through in your posts.

>>21964921
kys

>>21964943
kys

>>21964944
kys

>>21964945
kys

>>21964943
>The neighbor chuckles a bit, thinking that Anon is pretty odd. "I've uh, got some cold beers in the fridge if you want one."
>"Oh, I want one, alright..." Anon says suggestively, making his way over to the fridge. As he opens the fridge, a devious idea enters his mind. He bends over, arching his back and displaying his ample bottom. "I can't find the beer," Anon says, trying to keep his heart rate under control. "Do you think you can ... help me...?" He sways his hips slightly.
>The neighbor, whose name is Doug, is a bit offput by Anon but tries to be an obliging neighbor despite his slovenly and poverty-stricken appearance. "They're in the back," Doug says, approaching the fridge. As he gets a little closer to Anon, he starts sniffing the air. Something about Anon seems... different. So, the neighbor asks the question, "Are you, uh.... are you okay? You seem kind of, um, sweaty."
>Anon's heart nearly stops in his chest. He knows that Doug must be able to smell his buttplug. "Oh, uh, I was jogging when I realized my cat was missing," Anon says, trying to brush up against the neighbor, whose name is Doug.

>>21964958
Fantastic criticism. Such insights.

>>21964989
kys

/wg/, I'm burnt out on my novel and writing in general. after 3 years of forcing it and 1 year of not being able to force no matter how I tried to recover I just feel kind of sick of it all

I still want to finish this story one day but I feel like the writer inside me has finally given up the ghost. the only one who can decide if I get back to writing at this point isn't me anymorel it's god or whatever nameless force controls the parts of my brain that made me a writer in the first place

>>21965015
Go write something else for a while.
Maybe some short stories.

>>21965015
writing is a habit. you have to force it and then you can't stop thinking about it and you lose track of other stuff and then you overload and burn out.
you need to force yourself to sit down and get the words out and it'll rekindle your drive to write. maybe also consider writing a shorter piece as opposed to your set aside magnum opus

>>21961108
I came here looking for dark tower references.
Not disappointed.

Should I re-read the drawing of the three?

>>21965015
writing is the reason i failed my classes, it's the reason why everyone thinks i'm a lazy piece of shit, it's what i breathe, what i loathe. if you don't feel compelled to beat out this shit every day just like you beat your dick then you're not gonna make any progress. you have to love it so much you hate it.

>>21965015
hey if this is JK I hear you. I've been such a lazy piece of this these past 4 months I've only gotten 8500 words out but I've been writing every day for the last week, only 1500 words after deletions, so definitely way below my 1k a day average beforehand. everyone telling you to write a shorter piece may not be wrong, but I always found each chapter was always a shorter piece in and of itself, so after being on hiatus for so long I say get back to your story. plot out the next arc and then get writing those individual chapters. and I swear I'm gonna read the 2nd half of your story but I've just been such a lazy pos and rl stuff but I think I'm gonna be able to set a bunch of that aside for at least a bit. gl

>>21965022
>>21965067
I think I'm just done for right now. If I get back to it I'll get back to it. If I don't, I won't

>>21965029
>you need to force yourself to sit down and get the words out and it'll rekindle your drive to write.

Literally the first thing I tried, and I tried again and again every night for a year. At a certain point I have to accept that the writer part of me is used up. Maybe it will regenerate if I leave it long enough without thinking about it, but maybe it just won't and I'll be like this forever. Who knows? not me. The only thing I do know is that writing with the goals I had in mind was guarranteed to lead to my suicide if I actually published my novel, so maybe I need to change myself entirely if I want to come back to this

>>21965113
For me, I’d just keep switching projects - starting and abandoning stories, switching up styles - until I find the one that gets me excited.

>>21961332
Read the whole thing. Was pretty good and the protagonist's bleak outlook of the world is definitely going to be relatable for a lot of people in the demographic you're aiming for. Would definitely encourage you to continue. If the superpower angle's dragging you down, maybe she doesn't need them. Since it's a futuristic setting, maybe she could be really skilled with tech and gadgets, instead.

I know a lot of people thought Hero Academia would've been more interesting if Deku had stayed quirkless and was forced to rely on his brains and support items.

>>21965507
>I know a lot of people thought Hero Academia would've been more interesting if Deku had stayed quirkless and was forced to rely on his brains and support items.
Yes the world contains a lot of retards.

>>21965634
Personally, the series would've required too many changes to tell if it'd end up better or worse for it, but it's an alternative that had potential. Horikoshi himself was allegedly planning on keeping him quirkless, though couldn't figure out how to write his fights against some of the stronger villains convincingly. Deku just ended up taking the Superman route instead of Batman.

>>21964742
>Made a sci-fi setting into a mundane setting
I suppose this can be forgiven because the passage isn't particularly sci-fi in the first place.
>Turned a non-smoker into a smoker
I question your reading capacity
>Turned missing his brother into hating his job
You're projecting
>Turned standard prose into a rambling mess of commas and clauses
Nobody is going to read a novel worth of this unless they feel "he's just like me fr fr"

This isn't "your style" it's something completely unrelated.

Also, learn to capitalize your sentences.

>>21964769
You're using clarity wrong. You mean I'm using ambiguity too early in the work which is akin to making an ironic joke with someone who doesn't know you. Clarity problems mean you don't understand who is doing what, when.

Which, yes I see that. The phrase works better as the grease clogging the air rather than clogging his lungs for example.

M. awoke to the hypnopompic whisper of the rosy dawn, in infinite placidity and serenity, all too indifferent. It touched with angelic gentleness the furniture, the clothes, and the spirit of M.. In those quiet minutes, existence felt like something unique to him. It was like God reminded him what it's like to be alive, what it's like to be a man.

Could be heard only the absence of everything, and the timid praise of birds...

--I am an ESL who has just begun writing, because after having taking reading seriously, moments of inspiration are more occurrent. So, how bad is it?--

>>21963419
Can't tell if you're being disingenuous or if you're just so ignorant of how Royal Road works that you're drawing such poor conclusions from your statistics.

Royal Road readers only give a fuck about active serials, with the mindset that every fic that isn't active is abandoned or will never complete--i.e. so why would they get invested in a fic that will be forever unfinished.

Aside from an extreme minority of completed fics, or inactive fics with ratings high enough to linger in toplist placement, there's probably only 6k or so active ongoing fictions. Fics that haven't been updated in a month get automatically flagged "hiatus."

Competing with 6k active fics is NOT some herculean task, people. Many of these are ESL writers in India or Indonesia hoping to just do well enough with Patreon to bring in $200 - $300 USD, which they can live off of comfortably. Many others are amateur enthusiasts or hobby writers. VERY FEW are approaching this with serious projects and the intent to succeed outside of "hey, maybe this'll go viral and get popular randomly."

Success on RR isn't rocket science and it isn't luck. If you understand the progression fantasy demographic, if you have the patience to set up a decent backlog, to schedule regular posts, and to maintain consistent output, and if you are capable of a BARE MINIMUM of networking with either authors or readers on the off chance you don't get your fic on front page Top Reviews (8 to 10 upthumbs on a review guarantees your fic will appear on front page for a week or so), you are 100% going to make the Rising Stars list and get anywhere between one thousand and six thousand followers.

Which is a start and usually translates to 100 to 300 patrons. That's a strong foothold on RR and means you can start snowballing to bigger numbers and attracting more and more readers.

>>21963419
>>21965814
To add to this, the number of apparent RR writers with extremely successful Patreons is smaller than it appears because these authors leave RR once their following is big enough and graduate to bigger ponds. Indie publishers SWARM over any authors on RR who appear to be doing well. Aethon, Podium, Royal Guard, Timeless Wind, etc all regularly remove top RR authors from the RR pool and take advantage of their large readership followings to start tapping KU money on Amazon. Talent is continuously flowing upwards and out of RR, leaving RR with a constant vacuum of quality fiction that needs filled with new authors.

>>21964918
The second paragraph is kind of redundant.
You're saying the same thing twice.
>He tried to suppress them, he tried to ignore them, and he tried to pretend that they weren't even there.
When you could say
He tried to suppress them, and he tried to pretend they weren't there.

But maybe that's just me. Maybe some readers are cool with a bit of redundancy. To me it feels like you're wasting your words a bit, though.

The more I think about it, the more I consider the general 'Romeo and Juliet' premise as being perhaps the strongest premise out there. It can work with practically any type of story, and it doesn't have to be the main premise either, it can be inserted practically anywhere. The themes are pretty universal, and it doesn't even have to be romantic in nature, to still carry many of the major themes.

>>21966017
Have you read the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe? It's from Ovid, and as far as I know the source of the star-crossed lover theme.

>>21965814
>>21965860
>proving anon right with over explanation.
>Success on RR isn't rocket science and it isn't luck. If you understand the progression fantasy demographic, if you have the patience to set up a decent backlog, to schedule regular posts, and to maintain consistent output, and if you are capable of a BARE MINIMUM of networking with either authors or readers on the off chance you don't get your fic on front page Top Reviews (8 to 10 upthumbs on a review guarantees your fic will appear on front page for a week or so), you are 100% going to make the Rising Stars list and get anywhere between one thousand and six thousand followers.

Yes anon, you cannot write how or when you want to be successful on RR unless you only want to be successful by pajeet standards, and even then they pander and sweat shop.

I mean look at: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/126340 It has nothing in there about writing a story you want to be told but finding a GAP IN THE FUCKING MARKET! That is even discounting the fact that is is by a well established networked author WITH A BRAIN DEAD CULTIVATION FANBASE WRITING A STORY ABOUT A LITERAL PIECE WOOD AS A MAIN CHARACTER!

For a new author: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/111469 basically tells you that "Be realistic about your expectations.
Don't expect lots of readers/views straight away."

>>21965860
>Talent is continuously flowing upwards and out of RR, leaving RR with a constant vacuum of quality fiction that needs filled with new authors.

Except nowhere have you provided any evidence that the success of the ones in pic related is being replicated.

Hell the most prevalent guide on the site is one about a guy saying how much work for so little reward it is: https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/102887..

>>21965015
Check out the two minute rule on habit formation.

You might also be in need of some motivational stuff - authors firing you up with a desire to create. Find yourself someone with a pleasant voice, with a personality you like, and listen to them talk about their writing process. For me that voice was Jerry Jenkins.

>>21966589

Wait, you guys are posting on RR for money? I'm just doing it as a hobby.

>>21966589
>Except nowhere have you provided evidence
Because it's self-evident? The first link you posted was Xkarn, who exploded into popularity just a few months ago. Aethon and Podium are constantly announcing new authors they've signed, new fictions are always climbing up into both BR and PTW.

>the most prevalent guide on the site is one about a guy saying how much work for so little reward it is
No shit there was little reward for wutosama, he never made a patreon, didn't set up a paypal for donations, and opted out of KU.

Look anon, it's clear you've got some sort of complex and have set yourself up for failure by deciding Royal Road is too hard. But, the fact remains that RR has clearly defined paths towards discoverability and anyone marginally competent at writing can build a large following there and kickstart a writing career towards Amazon or etc.

I'm tistic as fuck and I can't "put myself in others shoes", so to speak. I can't write dialogue to save my life. Does anyone have tips to get past this?

I'm wondering, do any of your have an issue with the tone of a chapter being switched? The one I just wrote is 2900 words, so it isn't short, but I'd almost like to expand it, continue with the next scene. Yet I feel that if I did so, it would take away from the tone that it ends on right now.
I'm not changing it, so this post is just food for thought, not asking for advice.

>>21966701
Same. Im hoping just to make a few bucks

>>21966861
develop multiple personalities. but really it's not about putting yourself in someone else's shoes, but if that's how you see it imagine a cooler, or fatter, or more handsome, or more retarded you doing something

>>21966865
there's no reason why a chapter that's dark and depressing the entire way through can't en on an upbeat note, or vice versa. it's probably better to do this because it creates a kind of cliffhanger

>>21966861
Practice talking to people in real life and notice how they speak.

>>21966865
I'm a firm believer in ending chapters where they give the most narrative impact, which usually means sticking to the same tone in a given chapter.

That makes some chapters short and some long, but as long as they help reinforce the weight of the story, the reader isn't going to notice the breaks.

>>21966886
The scene itself is that the main character states his desire to seek revenge against the man who attacked his family, and his parents are of two minds on the matter.
So, once he leaves, his father tries to explain how pointless it would be to actually attempt to change his mind.
This ends with him stating that she is free to lock up their soon to be adopted child in a cage to avoid him ever thinking of being other than a farmers son. She slaps him and stops talking with him for a while.
I think that if I expanded it and showed the main character returning to school after his absence, then it would distract from the uncomfortable tone that I built, and have been building with his parents drifting apart the more my MC places himself in danger and shares how he views the world.
The father understands the futility in holding his son back, because he doesn't look at his own past as a rebellious teenager through rose colored glasses because he had a rough childhood and if his wife had listened to her father, they would've never gotten together.
The mother instead would rather delude herself into thinking that their son is still the gentle child who she raised and that as his mother, she could change him.
I think it also builds to a good contrast, as the next chapter starts with the main character meeting up with his fiance who accepts him for his faults because she believes that whatever lines he has crossed and will cross, he will still fundamentally be the same man as the one who she fell in love with. That him becoming less extreme, or not at least planning revenge, would be him cutting out part of what makes him him. Which is his passion, good and bad that comes with it.

>>21966960
>I think that if I expanded it and showed the main character returning to school after his absence, then it would distract from the uncomfortable tone that I built
that's more than a tonal switch. that's a complete scene change. is there anything to connect the two scenes, even? because from your description there's absolutely no reason not to have a chapter break.

>>21966992
No, there isn't a reason to connect the scenes. The only reason I would expand the chapter is just so I have less chapters in total. I know that people on RR love to put out 2000 words of fluff that doesn't move the story forward an inch, but I sometimes wonder if what I write being so personal will bore people because I've gone 10,000 words without someone turning into a pile of gore. I've written 5000 word chapters, and I've written 1900 word chapters. Ultimately I will always write what I want, and what I believe makes the story better, regardless of word count.

For my fan project, to keep track of what materials I've used so far, I've created seperate files with all relevant material to the tale.
Took a bit but was worth it; now I know what paragraph or sentence I'd used (and where was it taken from) by highlighting it.

technobabble inspiration:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle

>>21961213
>; less than hacks post there.
Isn't this grammatically incorrect? I was under the impression, that you could not use a semicolon to connect an independent and a dependent clause. And it's clear, that "less than hacks post here" is a dependent clause.

Are semicolons only good for cadence at this point? I've fallen out of love with them.

>>21967346
>I've fallen out of love with them.
same. some authors abuse its use and now i hate to see it.

>>21966821
Stop moving the goal post shit for brains. The argument is, can a novice writer break into the already flooded market of RR easily the answer is; NO!
>XKARNATION: https://www.royalroad.com/profile/208505/fictions began trying in 2021 with several failures and rewrites to his name before he got there, thats years at trying in case your aversion to hard numbers is still as present as it was in your previous posts. And even if we pretend that he just 'Made it out of nowhere' which clearly isnt the case, thats would only be one example. Which it isnt.

>publishers are constantly signing new authors from RR.
Once again its not new authors BUT EXISTING ONES YOU HALF WIT! Yet again you hav given no examples to back up your point save for the big established ones and they number at most twenty and that is out of how many? GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER TYRONE!

Here's another guide out lining the souless work required to 'make it' https://www.royalroad.com/forums/thread/116847
"So, while there’s more money to be earned, it’s become harder to get your hands on it."
And this take on the market is already out of date as it was posted over a year ago.

>Look anon, it's clear you've got some sort of complex and have set yourself up for failure.

No you have consistently failed to comprehend any of the posts points linked or back up your arguments with hard data.

>Don't talk to me or my son ever again.

>>21966861
Bro I don’t want to sound defeatist but if you’re legitimately autistic I think you should just find another hobby

I don't get it. RR readers claim books written there have prose and style rivaling masters such as Fitzgerald and Melville.

But I can't see it.

>>21967665
Honestly you guys are both wrong. It's not as braindead easy as the other anon said, but it's also not that hard (t. someone who's recently "making it" on RR by following typical guidelines). And the money HAS dried up, since everyone realized how easy it was, and everyone flocked there to pan for gold.

That said, compared to traditional publishing, if you can halfway write and are willing to cater to a LitRPG/Cultivation audience, you have decent odds of making living wage money on RR. Like all art fields, it's still way lower than getting a degree and a normal job, but it's not that hopeless, either. At worst, you have to pivot a few times until you hit the right premise that resonates with the readerbase.

Again, it all depends on whether you have the willingness to cater and work ethic to pump out words. And can write halfway well (by web fiction standards). But yeah, with those requirements filled, "making it" isn't that hard.

>>21967774
Clearly you haven't read AnimeCon Harem.

r8 my fantasy pirate story intro
https://pastebin.com/raw/jVEFCaNV
I promise I've edited it and it's better this time

>>21966034
Show, don't tell.

>>21966861
You need to lean into your autism. Any idiot can write normie dialogue. I'd rather peer into the brain of a true autist. Write a book entirely without dialogue. Or write a book in which the narrator just inserts his own dialogue regardless of what people say, like some kind of autism filter. A fresh take on the unreliable narrator. You need to stop writing for an audience which may never even read you and start writing for one that you know will always read you: yourself, in the future.

And what's ironic is that when you put your heart and soul on the page like that, people can always tell. Even if its not good, they'll still love you for it. The worst thing you can be in this game is something you're not.

>>21966861
I have autism as well. Take advantage of time being on your side as a writer. As an individual you can't come up with witty responses on the spot, can't recognize facial cues, and many other things because you are paying attention to something else in the moment.
But if you analyze a scene in a book or a video, play by play, you start to see all the details that you missed before. You can also revise, or write out as many responses as you want and choose the strongest one.

The best thing you can do with any overwhelming challenge in writing is to break it up into more manageable tasks. Let's say you choose one character who needs the most help with dialogue. Copy and paste all of that character's dialogue into a separate document. Now compare the dialogue to people and characters you want it to sound like. Does it match the dialect? The temperament? Is it hitting the themes, or whatever else you want to come out of you dialogue? That's all you really have to do. Just do it one at a time. So many people give up because they try to do too much at once.

>>21967805
>Like all art fields, it's still way lower than getting a degree and a normal job, but it's not that hopeless, either. At worst, you have to pivot a few times until you hit the right premise that resonates with the readerbase.

That's exactly the point though. It turns something that should be a pursuit of art and passion and turns it into a formulaic/topic restricted nine to five underpaying job (unless your a second or third world ESL) for which you still have to homogenize your 'public presence'. The only appeal to it I can see is that you would be your own boss, like that is literally it.

>>21968230
Correct. I am lucky enough to to have a job that pays the bills so I can write in my free time. It's not a ton of free time, but I take what I can get.
There is nothing thing that would suck the fun out of writing faster than having to write all the time to pay my bills.

>>21967839
pls respond
will accept any feedback including "didn't read"

>>21968230
Well I already liked reading and writing fantasy, so I just started adding stats and numbers. Characters and plots still work the same. It's not -exactly- what I want to write, but I can still tell stories that interest me. Just have to sprinkle progression elements in.
And yes, it beats the hell out of a soul sucking 9 to 5. I also get practice with the fundamentals of writing (character, prose, story, etc) which make my passion projects stronger.

>>21968274
wrenched not wretched

>>21968274
saw the witch's, not saw witch's

started to blend not started the blend

so many typos bro

Pls crit this

Elizabeth always parked herself a distance away from the larger group when bedding down, for the noble purpose of her monastic dignity and station. Her bed and tent were obscured by some patches of bramble and one of the gargantuan willow trees was placed between her and the main fire. She lay on her bedding, having finished her nightly verses and her unspoken hymns, her mind turned upwards. The sailors had been looking on her as she walked ahead of the group that day, she could feel their scorching gaze on the back of her body with each step, each mile. This was not unexpected for her, it occurred whenever she left the sanctity of the nunnery. For her, the external places that due to her role she visited often where definitively ‘places where men will have their eyes on me’ and as a secondary characteristic held the particular function of her visit to that place.
‘Men do not look at gold or jewels with nearly so much keen intensity.’ She thought.
‘The world turns on the object of their desires, all men are inwardly Agamemnon. What are honours, titles, social displays of wealth but proxies for potential satisfaction of their yearning? This is the steam for all human activity. Silk and spices are valued for their capacity to signal purchasing power, excess of currency. Currency is a token of being owed quantities of gold by the state. Gold itself is non-productive and an abstraction of value. But even that value is mere representation for what they see in me, walking ahead of them. That arrangement of fat and bone, skin and bright hair, the lower part of the torso swaying to the left and right with each step, firmly straddles all activity in the world. What I give up for you Lord! My abstinence from that terrible power is the weight of my sacrifice for you, heavenly father. Who can say they offer as much as this?’
1/2

>>21968328
She rolled to lay flat on her back and rubbed her thighs against each other. She had never attained the little death, through the first kindlings in the teenage years into the full blossom of her adult prowess, not once had she succumbed to that state. She slid her middle finger down the middle of her glistening vulva, feeling the exquisite softness of the plump flesh.
‘What men would do if they could see this.’ She thought.
She tenderly grazed her body with minute pressure until she felt the rising surges of ecstasy, assaulting with the full force of the profane on her will. And there she stopped. There was nothing in her worldy form that did not yearn for her to continue, only might of spirit bade her stop. The unbroken chain, like the papal succession, was maintained, and another link added to that splendorous thread reaching from her heart to the heavens.
‘This I offer to you too, Lord. In your heavenly beauty I find a greater ecstasy’ She offered her prayer.
She kept her legs apart while her breathing slowed, allowing no further contact to tender flesh.
The temptation was not over, and would return many times that night. But, embodying the holiest aspect, in her as in the saints, she had certainty she would defend her unbroken chain.

The campfire crackled.
2/2

>>21968295
fixed
>>21968304
also fixed
https://pastebin.com/eByyrW0M
there's not that many, come on
is it fucking engaging? jesus fucking christ
I guess not
writing is hard

How do you guys cope with the fact your book just isn't good enough? It's so mediocre that not another soul in the world bothered to comment on it?

>>21968328
After reading the first sentence, I have no idea what you're talking about. It took me awhile to figure out it was in the middle of a forest. But for some reason in the middle of the forest there are sailors. So are they on a shoreline with tons of willow trees which don't exist near a salt water beach? I think there needs to be better set up for the setting because right now, it's just a bunch of horny men checking her out., but why? Why not just rape her? What's stopping them? Is she the captain of the sailors? I get you want to use a higher register, but it's really clunky.


>Elizabeth walked away to go to sleep because she was noble.

>>21961136
Is there a book that ops pic is referencing?

>>21968465
It's a Call of the Crocodile reference to how all anons here gang up and attack anyone like crabs if it's mentioned.

>>21968336
Please never write "vulva" again

Anyone else just loathe the phrase, 'First things first?'

>>21968336
I'll second never writing vulva again. There's nothing less sexy than using words like that. They totally kill the mood.
>The man loomed above her, his breath hot on her face, and her life now in his hands. His fingers, insistent, made their way past her defenses and toward his destination. Teasing and playing they invaded her most private place, before finally pressing against her urethral opening.
Ah, that reaction, he thought, a classic sign of vaginismus. The man withdrawing his fingers and pulling off the latex glove.
"Ma'am, I believe I've discovered the source of your problem."
Her heart skipped a beat. He already discovered the problem? Clearly Dr. Smith's reputation wasn't exaggerated - and fortunately he was one of the few gynecologists in the area that accepted her insurance with only a twenty-five dollar copay. With the money she saved she'd buy the 93% lean ground beef instead of the 85.

>have a drop off rate of 60% of readers after chapter 1

FFFUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK

>>21968280
>progression.
This isn't directed specifically at (you) anon, but does the term 'Progression' now stand for a story that takes way too long to go much of anywhere? Because i read a decent amount on RR and that's basically the only thing all the stories labeled with it have in common. It's gotten so bad that i treat all fictions with that in the label like they were females with their hair dyed a fluorescent color.

>>21968443
At least it isn’t bad Anon. I write literal dogshit every time I try.

>>21968681
Relax dude

>>21961108
How do I become creative?
I can't even think of a single story that isn't just an assortment of scenes I have already looked at in entertainment. Like, as in the actual scene.

>>21968681

That's how it is for most people. Most people have the attention span of a gnat, they just read 1 chapter and then drop.

Think of the "But how can it keep my attention if it doesn't have a video of subway surfers going on the side" meme.

I wan't to write about a dream that lasted a life time, its one of the most important dreams i have had in my whole life.

I wrote the first chapter and now into the 2nd chapter and its been pretty hard. I constantly lose motivation and because of my mental illness i get depressed then quit and come back.

If i keep it as this pace i'd prob take me 3-4 years to finish the first book. I just wounder if its all worth it ya know, the only thing that keeps me coming back is how important and insane this dream was.

It all just feels like a waste of time.

>>21968842
Your a literalist anon, you need to take acid and talk to a frog. Literally.
>>21968271
What do you write anon?

What are the most /lit/ depictions of brutal and horrific 1-on-1 fights?

>>21968443
If you’re writing for comments, it was over a long time ago.

>>21968443
Personally, I would write another book.

>>21969341
All writing has an inextricable social aspect. There's no great writer who's been content to write only for themselves. You write to have an effect on others, to communicate, and comments are one sign that you've done so.

>put book on RR
>Asking myself why am I doing it for free

>>21969348
>There's no great writer who's been content to write only for themselves
Emily Dickinson immediately sprang to mind, but to your point she did sent them to her friends as part of letters, even if she never sought publication.

>>21969823
>many such cases
>>21968443
If you are after attention write something controversial or attention grabbing like; 'why being a transvestite means your mentally ill' , 'why globalism was a mistake', 'why Putin is really a nice guy' or even 'how vaccines will make the human race extinct'

>>21964126
>There's a community on reddit that discusses all the tips and tricks for getting paid for your erotica.
Which subreddit is this? Please kind anon, help me for i am just a poor pauper

I have names for dozens of side and minor characters but somehow can't come up with one for the fucking protagonist of the story and I'm tempted to just never mention his name at any point in the book or in the following books in which he'd become a secondary.

>>21970356
is saying globalism bad controversial? On a human level, it has been disastrous.

>>21970532
give me a rundown on your mc. likes, dislikes, needs, wants, desires

>>21970500
/r/eroticauthors

has a semi-decent wiki. good place to get started writing smut

>>21968443
I write for me

>>21970674
Thanks anon. I already make a little money off my writing, but I so badly want to write deeply niche erotica just for fun. I can cry about refusing to write to market later.

Wish I knew where to find a community that liked the same stupid bullshit I do though.

>>21970698
If he writes, he writes.

>>21961108
I've come to the realization that I just can't deliver. I will never finish a novel. I've got 90 000 words, but I left two of the most important scenes for last, and they HAVE to be perfect. So I don't even start to write them. I know exactly what happens in the scenes, but I'm not good enough a writer to write them. Fuck.

inb4 muh first draft

>>21970706
I feel you anon. I'm writing in the wildly unpopular Victorian BDSM niche and to make matters worse for myself I feel compelled to write violent stuff that's unacceptable on Kindle.
Maybe once I get that out of me I can prostitute my writing skills with something popular and acceptable

>writing a duology
>first story introduces the characters and world but has its own ending
>second story is set after a timeskip and fully wraps up everything from the first story
>has its own ending which is my original intended ending and fates of the characters

However while writing I felt the need to expand the world a bit beyond what's depicted and strictly relevant to the duology's overarching story, and have potential material for a third story with the same characters (already have the major beats and ending in mind), but I'm not sure if I should add setup for the third story in the first two, and how overt it should be, just small background details or entire side plots that don't get wrapped up by the end of the duology

I feel like they might come off as loose ends and misdirection if I decide not to do the third story, and I even tied the fate of one character in story 1 to something that would only be relevant in story 3, should I just purge the first two stories of anything not relevant to the duology's ending?

>>21961108
That picture is incredibly funny, what the hell is that goofy american doing? how did he arrive there? is he tourist?

>>21970974
Anon, that's called a trilogy.

>>21971090
Yeah, but I don't want to write a trilogy yet, I want to write a duology, and potentially have a setup for a third story if I feel like it. My main intended ending is at the end of story 2 and story 3 would be more like an addon epilogue rather than closing trilogy-wide arcs.

>>21970851
Most of this is just about beginning. Once you get into it, all those fears disappear because you start communing with the work itself. So just do what Hemingway did when he got stuck:
>All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know

>>21970851
>inb4 muh first draft
nah you're just a retard

>>21970851
Anon swished his pencil in his mouth, digging into his teeth with the sharpened end until every filling had been clumsily leveraged out, and as he fell screaming onto the floor from the pain; coughing up blood and fragments of tooth, he had a bright idea.

"I know," he said, sitting up some weeks later in his hospital bed, "what if I

What do you anons use to write?
Pencil and paper? Notepad? Manuskript? Google Docs?

>explain a concept in a paper
>textbook explains the same thing in half the words
How to write more concisely? I've been told I sound like I'm trying to sound smart when I write.

>>21971241
Read Hemingway.

>>21971165
openoffice

>>21970602
it got a reply did it not?

>>21971165
Notebooks, phone notes, and Google docs to take down notes and ideas and then Word for the final product

>>21971165
Sublime Text (I like writing in plain .txt files).

One time I got very stoned and wrote a seven page story in a spiral-bound notebook in one delirious rush. And then the next weekend I tried it again and just sat staring at the blank paper. The demon's weed is the ficklest muse.

>>21971243
But I'm writing nonfiction

>>21971326
It takes a lot of re-reading and revision. You need to go back over your prose, work out what the key ideas are, and organise everything else around them. When you write, you write in the order ideas occur to you; when you revise, you rearrange those ideas in the order the reader should receive them. A lot of the meandering, a lot of the parentheticals, a lot of the prepositional passive-voice padding vanishes when you rewrite in this way. You're left with a direct and logical sequence of the crucial concepts.

>>21970602
I said that globalism was bad to a grad student I was working with almost a decade ago. The only example I gave was that it was lowering real wages for most people, I didn't want to open any other can of worms. He mocked me for the rest of my undergrad, sometimes without me saying anything.
There are absolutely people who will assume lots of things about you if you say you don't like globalism. Be advised.

>>21961214
bazinga
What's the alternative my wife beating friend?

>>21969145
What? Are you saying it's hopeless for me?

>>21971281
Fuck. That’s based. Good point.

>>21971361
I default to globalism has turned anywhere that is not a NATO country and parts of Asia into dangerous factory hell holes where we rape for minerals. It’s a position that’s easy to defend against shit libs, but I know what you mean.

>>21971452
Ok maybe your not a literalist.

>>21970356
Wouldn't I be instantly cancelled for that? I feel caught in a straitjacket.

>>21971458
People are really bad at not seeing why it happens and either blame people they don't like and/or advocate for locally sourced goods or meme things like microfinance. Totally palliative solutions so they don't have to face the music. But anyways, I'm writing a short story for &amp today, need to get back to it.

>>21971473
Tell me more.

>>21971510
About the story? It's based on a prompt that the flash fiction anthology had. Set in a bookstore in Turkey discussing poetry while also avoiding the topic that the bookstore owner is a devoutly religious and his guests are apostates. Among other things.
One cool thing is I am getting a chance to quote a rare English translation of a 6th century Arabic poem. If you were to search the words on Google you wouldn't find it. I had to make some slight alterations to it. There is one line that uses "but" not as a conjunction, so I switched it to "that" so a modern reader wouldn't immediately take it as a typo. Some other things like that.

Anyone tried that writing exercise where you put your character into different scenarios to see what happens?

>>21971548
exercise? that's just how I write

>>21971533
Oh man, how did you find that? Stuff like that is my jam.

>>21971555
I was looking up ancient Arabic poetry, because the poetry was a cultural foundation for aesthetic in Islam, which the main character of the short story. And I found that because practically the only people that care about the poems read it in Arabic, the English translations are not widely known. See "the Suspended Odes."

Thankfully, I know someone very religious that I trust that I was able to do a gut check on the story to make sure the protag was behaving in a way consistent with his beliefs. I myself am not Muslim but when I thought about a theme I wanted to explore, Islam takes the theme way more seriously than I would. So I thought this prompt would be a good setting for it.

Some of us nutballs are filling a thread with plots for books that don't exist.
Come to >>21966287 and join the fun!

>>21961108
I have two main characters. Is it too much to have both of their povs per chapter as well as an omnipotent 3rd person speaker?

>>21972512
If I were the reader I'd be annoyed. I assume it's 3rd person and not 1st so it's doable, but unless they're standing next to each other - they may be - I don't see why you wouldn't have chapter breaks between the 2 povs

>>21972525
>I don't see why you wouldn't have chapter breaks between the 2 povs
By this, you mean having a 3rd person intermission is acceptable?
The first few chapters are spoken in 3rd person to establish some stuff. The following chapters are in 1st person once the two have established their surface-level goals to each other.

I can probably live with two povs or just one seamless 3rd person. Was just wondering if three different speakers is feasible.

>>21972548
multiple povs is fine but if in a single chapter you start head hopping the reader is going to get confused
>The first few chapters are spoken in 3rd person to establish some stuff
now you see that sets of red flags for me. it sounds like you dumped a whole pile of worldbuilding on your reader and then after you did that you jumped to you character and started telling the story

>>21961136
Agreed. History of genre fiction aside I want to lend my voice in modernizing pulp sensibilities. Revitalize the spirit within the world of fiction. Get away from faggotry and return to an older depiction of idealized masculinity. No irony either.

>>21972548
If you're going to have multiple main characters, use 3rd person. 1p head-hopping is always annoying at best and unnecessarily confusing at worst, especially when shoved in the same chapter. There are books with 4-5 main characters, all in first person, and I can't imagine anything more obnoxious in writing.

>>21971165
either librewriter and google docs. I used to use notepad a lot but I hated having to reformat shit later

>>21972512
Just do the two POVs. The whole point of first person is to get into the character's head, so having an omnipresent narrator isn't doing you any favors.

>>21971165
Notebook/notepad and pen when on the go and ideas, questions, or other such thoughts come to me. I later write my notes down in OneNote. Actual writing I just use Word but I back it up in Google Docs.

Is Scrivener worth getting though?

Anon, before you post it again, I've done my 2000 words for the day already.

>>21971165
Pirated copy of Word 2010.

>>21971165
Libreoffice

>>21971165
Pen and paper for notes, then Scrivener backed up on OneDrive for thhe manuscripts.

Friendly reminder that while "writing 2000 words a day" is a decent goal to force you toward having a conscientious character, mastery stems from both daily practice and concerted efforts to improve an aspect of your craft.

Another friendly reminder that writing seven days a week, without stop, without pause, without actually being conscious of what you're doing, produces gruel. Affording yourself deliberate procrastination and rest will improve your craft, rather than diminish it. This advice, obviously, implies that you've mastered yourself well enough to have actual control over your writing habit, actually able to sit down and write at determined times, furthering your story, and not be ruled by the desire to procrastinate.

I'm making this post before doing my 2000 words today and you can't stop me.

Rate my opener, /wg/!

Today I learned that "I didn’t set out to end the world, it sort of just happened" is not a good excuse for ending said world. Shocker.

>>21973542
>Shocker.

>>21973542
neutral evil

New thread >>21973641

>>21973542
Somewhat long and complex, which lessens the punch. Compare
>Turns out "I didn’t set out to end the world, it sort of just happened" is not a good excuse. Shocker.