/lit/ - Literature

I can only hope this is less depressing to read then it was to write.
Was tempted to just post a sad frog and call it ‘Frens’

micz.substack.com/p/not-quite-bloomsbury


As per usual, criticism is appreciated.

Is that most people here post fantasy and erotic fiction is somehow the least surprising thing about wg

>>21993868
Hey I posted serious poetry.

>>21993874
If you were serious about poetry, you would write it in a diary and submit the best to magazines, not post it on the internet.

>>21993860
I still refuse to take substack seriously but overall not bad. Actually made me feel something. Made me think of friends I no longer talk to .

>>21993901
>submit the best to magazines
what magazines?

>>21993925
>I still refuse to take substack seriously
NTA, but i don't disagree. i wonder what places on the web are worthwhile to write on. i know wordpress/blogspot are popular. maybe ill make my own neocities site with a section for my writing i deem worthwhile enough to put out there.

>>21993860
Nice. Still the best part of these threads.

>>21993868
Someone wrote a historical fiction

>>21993925
Thank you.
'the distancing of friends' Is exactly what it's about


>>21993901
Im not saying im serious, im saying the poetry is. But have a look and decide for yourself.

>>21993978
Thank you. One post every two weeks.

I can't be the one who, when writing horror, my body actually reacts as if I was the main character, and thus I tend to add my own reactions, like cheeks tingling, where my tongue is pushing at while nervous, etc.

>>21994026
It's called self inserting

>>21993868
im only writing erotic fiction as an easy way to bash out tens of thousands of words for practice, testing the waters for what online readers prefer, and hopefully make a few extra dollars a month from unhinged coomers. its certainly not my main writing project.

>>21994028
That would be over identifying with the character. What I'm referring to is ability for deep empathy, stepping into the shoes of that character in a given situation, feel what they feel.

>>21993860
6/10
By far the best new poem i read in a while so dont let that the score discourage you. Im judging it against real competition

>>21994026
It's difficult for me, because I'm completely fearless and can't remember what it was like anymore.

>>21993860
I miss people

>>21993860
I liked it anon, esp the last line.

>>21993868
>>21993901
>>21993925
>>21994054
>popular genres have aspiring writers?!!?
>Serious
>cant take xyz websites seriously
>6/10 best poem read in a while
Sweet Jesus on the cross, some of you are unbearable

I'm writing a story about a magic trinket that appoints a farmboy to save the world and there's NOTHING you pseuds can do to stop me.

>>21994151
Thank you. I intentionally broke the rhyme hoping it would heighten the effect.

>>21994123
I was a bit sad writing this.
Those people are subscribed to the substack but i think they will take it in good humor

>>21994260
Fine, but we’ll still point and laugh and yet another autistic middling genre piece of shit.

>>21994260
>>21994260
Based

I am writing fiction for the first time, it is a sappy romantic story about a rather normal human man with no real name who accidently stumbled into a fantasy world, meeting a magical woman with self esteem issues. They are both idiots. I am currently on a part where he makes pancakes for her, which don't exist in this universe because its my book (lmao), and I am greatly enjoying working through about how such a person would react to such a novel food.

It is cringe and bad, but I will be the only one to read it so I am just trying to make it good enough for me to read occasionally. Also to get the autism out of my head and onto paper, but that's a given I think

>>21994260
make it his magic pitchfork. he goes on to kill all the nobles in the kingdom

>>21994260
Good on you frog fren! I'm just ogre fiddy percent through second editing pass of book 3 and theres nothing you can do to stop me!

>>21993860
I was going to give you more advice but i can't be fugged. It's not your best but it's also not your worst.

What are the steps once one finishes a draft? Editing, and then reaching out to an agent to pitch the book to publishers?

>>21994377
Well it's up to you but know I will read it.

>>21993868
I wish I knew how to write it.
Instead I can't even make an opener and I have all of these ideas lying around unused.

>>21993868
/lit/'s prose standards for my subject matter drive me insane. I cant bear showing work unless it's finished or it's with an alpha reader that gives feedback I trust. So difficult to even engage people with a serious story until I edit out how incoherent my first drafts are.

>>21993860
Reminds me sort of the John Michael Montgomery song "Friends"(minus the romance ofc), if you were going for the theme of the slow death of authenicity and closeness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GkpVhR8nQE

>>21994399
>can't write an opener
sounds like you can't be assed to sit and write, not that you can't write an opener
if you legitimately can't write an opener what you do is you shit whatever you need to on the page in order to get yourself into the story and then later on you write a proper opener

>>21993939
Have a look:
https://www.nationalpoetrylibrary.org.uk/write-publish/magazines

>>21993852
>https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvC
Out of curiosity, shouldn't self-pub sites include various forums, like Suficient Velocity or Questionable Questing? I've seen some stories come from there that've gained a bit of renown in online communities, i.e. Erogamer or Forge of Destiny.

>>21994057
>he doesn't know

>>21994509
>I'll just share a list from google rather than admit I don't read any of the magazines and have no idea which specifically to recommend

>>21994336
That is a very interesting premise for a story. Seize the means of magitech production

How do I learn to write and where do I my get ideas from

>>21994372
Beware the wrath of a dozen adherents of a Mongolian puppet show appreciation forum.

>>21994962
ChatGPT and /wg/s.

>>21994962
>How do I learn to write
Just write. Set a quota for the day and meet it consistently.
>where do I get my ideas from
If you're truly creatively bankrupt, just think of a time you thought a story that you've read or watched could have gone in a direction it didn't, and then just write that. Make "fanfiction."

>>21994962
>How do I learn to write
You read, you write, and you read what you wrote and then edit it to be better
>and where do I my get ideas from
Things you know about, things that happened to you, other people's stories, divine inspiration

Why do you losers wrote genre shit?

>>21995145
Why not?

Why do you not write anything at all?

>>21995145
Nobody bought my attempt at litfic. So I wrote a genrefic book

>>21995151
Better to not write than to be some retard who writes about elfs riding through Fantasylandia to get the mystic spear of mystic magic powers so they can slay the evil despot Bob. That shit is gay.

>>21995171
The premise of a story is often far removed from the execution of a story. Even if your idea is generic, the way you implement that idea can be quite innovative.

>>21995145
does historical count as genreshit? barrier to entry is even higher than literary and so are standards. unless it's bodicerippershit

why do you keep bitching about what I write just let me write in peace

Your current work's theme, NOW.

>primarily adore writers like HP Lovecraft
>not skilled enough to ape their prose
>don’t have any dictionaries to help expand diction, nor any photographic memory to use the exact word I want to use in a situation
>prose comes out excessively awkward and amateur
>try writing more instinctively
>prose comes out similar in style to modern prose stylists
>utterly mogs my previous prose

God damn it, I want to write in the style of the old Gothic writers but my voice seems to be shaping up into that of a prose stylist’s.

>>21995271
Social deconstructionism (you) unoriginal anime thought thief.

>>21995299
>>don’t have any dictionaries to help expand diction, nor any photographic memory to use the exact word I want to use in a situation
https://onelook.com/thesaurus/

>>21995271
Sereca Delenda Est

>>21995271
pacifism bad
tolerance bad
globohomo bad
yahweh worshipers bad

>>21995271
I have a lot of themes. But the reoccurring theme, the first and last theme of my novel is the "separation of soul and spirit." I'm referring to Hebrews 4:12.

>>21995331
Thank you Anon

>>21994965
Their doxed seething is worth more then the adulation of a thousand+ pandered to retards.

I've been watching some seminars about writing from a Chicago university and basically he teaches that
>create a problem and start solving it. the most important thing is to write something valuable to your reader, to make them change the way they see the world
Any truth to this? Should I apply his teaching to my writing?

>>21995544
>create a problem and start solving it
I dunno about the rest of it, but this is solid advice. readers like proactive protagonists, and without something to prod the protagonist into action he'd just keep doing what he's doing

>>21995271
Running from your problems (don't)

Also a bunch of socio-political/techical evolution points of consideration.

How do you feel about comic drops as a means of describing a scene?

> Cinder was working remotely and called the meeting in VR when she got the report from Paige Palmer on [Sladder]. Rather than the sparse construct of the headquarters server, she had her own simulation setup. Elliot had it on good authority that it smelled like salt water and flowers, with a hint here and there of coconut. He had no idea whether it did because his ENU didn’t have the fidelity to even try processing that. He contented himself with the sight of the lapis lazuli waves, the wash of tide against concrete, and the tropical birds flitting through the air.
>Anything to look away from the bikini his boss had on.

>>21995271
Free will and hypocrisy of how someone views themselves as and what they really are.
The best example of this I've shown so far is that after his family is attacked, he makes flesh golems, which he knew how to make already, but he considered them to be horrifying.
When he shows them off as a way to strike fear into his enemies, it is at an event where he gains an archmage title, the waiters transform into monsters and right when my MC is at the height of his speech, ready to strike fear into their hearts, he falters. The fear of the people and how the parents try to guard their children makes him feel like a monster, so he destroys these golems and then publicly states that he doesn't want to fight, that he forgives everyone who wronged him up to that point. Not long after this, he attacks a bandit camp because if he waited for other people to handle it then the women who were kidnapped would be raped and their wills broken, so he makes new flesh golems to support this attack.
He has many times thrown away his own objections by justifying it as being for protecting his family or that he had no other choice. Someone calls him out on how much of a wishy washy hypocrite he really is and so he goes on a journey to see find his personal truth, can he really make change through force? Or will he be passive and let the world work out its own problems while he only worries about his own friends and family.

>>21995145
Do you really want those same writers to try to write genuine literature? Genre is a lower bar and therefore more people are suited to writing it well.

>>21995171
Post your work.

I'll be starting a youtube channel soon. If anyone here wants to come on as a guest not to shill your shit but to talk about your inspirations, keep an eye out for me.

I want to do mostly book reviews and discussions on the channel, but my reading list is absolute chaos and I can't rely on it to give me a good subject to discuss every single week. I enjoy reading Spice&Wolf for example, but that's not good content until I finish the series.

>>21995684
Neat themes. What kinds of themes does fantasy normally have, I am assuming that is what you are writing? Are you satisfied with how you are addressing it, or do you feel like you are missing any understanding, maybe the right scene to drive the point home? I get a bit into free will in my writing but I am trying to avoid characterizing it the way it is in scifi.

Guys I need help please tell me if my premise sucks or not.

I want to write a story exploring parasocial relationships by kind of inverting the traditional fantasy hero's journey. The setting is a vague historical fantasy world (not entirely sure which time period I want even, I fucking hate world-building). The MC is an Underground Man bitter autist shut-in type character who becomes obsessed with another character, a military commander who vaguely fits the mold of a traditional Arthurian hero. He dedicates his life to living vicariously through the "hero", alternating between obsessive love and jealous seething, while vastly overexaggerating the "hero's" actual heroic traits. The plot mostly consists of him going to extreme measures to influence the "hero's" life in ways that he thinks would make for a good story, to the point of deliberately turning himself into the "hero's" antagonist and otherwise forcing obstacles into his life.
Does this sound gay and cringe or like it could work? My biggest fear is that it'll be boring and the "hero" character will come across as an annoying Gary Stu from how much the MC waxes lyrical about him, but I want it to be kind of clear that the MC is an unreliable narrator who is progressively losing his shit.

>>21995711
This kind of reminds me of the short story "The Winds" by Eudora Welty, where this girl obsessively idolizes another girl in her neighborhood, because she is popular and talented. IIRC, the girls don't even meet at all.
Welty is an incredibly interesting writer and underrated by /lit/. She's sometimes lumped together with Southern Gothic authors but the label doesn't really describe her, she just wrote lit. Based on her writing and letters, it's possible she never ever had sex. She told her mentor Katherine Anne Porter, when Welty was 32, that she was still a virgin, and Porter remarked "you always will be." So I think her perspective of girls who were losers, the way your protagonist would be, is pretty true.

>>21995705
Normally I think of most fantasy as having ideas of heroism and good overcoming evil, but more modern stories have more focus on morally gray protagonists and their personal struggles with the fantasy world as more of a backdrop to let them explore these ideas. Now, what I am doing is more of the modern example, but I actually like heroism and don't look at it as some kind of childish thing to be mocked. My MC is hopeful, and ultimately I want everything to end on a optimistic note, but the journey to get there is going to be full of him failing to be the hero he wants to be but never considers himself to be.
Unfortunately the only examples of what I mean are from comic books. The Boys is a cynical wankfest where everyone who you think is good is actually evil because the writer is a hack who writes for shock value instead of anything meaningful. Then Invincible, where the main character wants to be a hero, and generally speaking he is one, he never loses these heroic morals, but he changes and makes compromises, such as killing one man so that you stop thousands from dying, and these things effect him greatly because they pit his morals against the cost of maintaining them. This also goes into this whole thing about with great power comes great responsibility, and if you have the power to change things for the better, but don't do it because you don't want to bloody your hands, is that right? Where does selflessness turn into martyrdom? My MC doesn't want to control people, but he could, and he has to ask himself when too far is too far, how much can he stick his head in the sand and refuse to do something because he is afraid of himself.

This comes to a head during the civil war, when because of the golems (not flesh golems) and weapons that he himself invented make it so that the rules of war change, because you don't need to protect villages if you can make machines that can replace farmers, so some people begin wiping places off the map to deprive their opponents of the resource that is human lives. He doesn't want to fight, he doesn't want to raise an army for anything but his own defense, but he eventually cannot look away, so he does this, he goes on a warpath and becomes a monster (first metaphorically and then literally) for the sake of defending the lives of other people who hate and fear him.
He gives up his free will, which is to say the choice to remain neutral, because he is too much of a bleeding heart to let terrible things happen when he knows he can change things.

I am happy with how I've written this, I do not think that I'm missing understanding and the scenes that I have planned will drive home what points I have in a manner that I don't think is overly dumbed down and forceful.

P.S. The invincible show isn't awful, but the comic does nearly everything better.
The boys is kinda shit in both mediums and I've read and watched all of the content there is because I wanted to see what other people see in them.

>>21995758
Thanks anon, that actually sounds really neat. I admit that I've never heard of her but now I'm intrigued. Might read that story right now or tomorrow.
>virgin
Speaking of, I actually neglected to mention the homoerotic aspect of my story. Along with his obsession the MC has intense romantic and sexual feelings for the "hero", but refuses to pursue him because of the miniscule chance that the "hero" might actually say yes, which would destroy the idealized parasocial nature of the relationship and completely break the MC. The whole thing was actually originally inspired by Mishima's work, particularly Confessions of a Mask, before it went into other directions.

thoughts on my prose? this is for a story i'm going to submit to unreal but they said my sentences are too long. how do i improve my sentence length?

>>21995866
>a sense of foreboding crept up on her
find a physical way to express this. Maybe she grips the steering wheel or notices that her shoulders are tense.
>poring
pouring
the first paragraph is composed entirely of sentences that are nearly the same exact length. Vary your sentence length more.
>she tried to clear her thoughts
again, find some other way to express this with concrete detail
>The object broke the windshield
"The object" is a detached term that doesn't match the intensity of the moment
>Amelia remained silent in spite of herself
"in spite of herself" seems pointless here

>>21995910
ok thanks. but also pore and pour are two different words. it's poring over

How do I learn to write good genre fiction if I'm not very creative
This is my last resort. I can't draw i can't code. I can't do anything

>>21995948
Dude just don't write genreshit then. Litfic is just as much fun to write.

>>21995948
Please don't tell me you want to make money writing.
There are better things you can do to start making money, ask the advice board. People ought to write because they have stories to tell. Read more and learn the creative process if you must. But if you need money this isn't where you need to be.

>>21995952
I am assuredly not good enough for litfic

I'm currently editing my novella, and I was wondering if you guys had any specific tips for things to look for when editing or just tips in general for editing, as I've only done short stories (longest was 6 pages) before writing this.

Also, I've heard people say they like the editing part the most because its fun and you get to be all perfectionist, but I am straight up not having fun man :(

>>21995840
Since my post was getting very long, and I only realized I should've included this after I hit post, I want to also mention that I have been very inspired by the album The Protoman.
The story is about a city that has fallen under tyrannical rule by a man who uses an army of robots, and the two heroes who tried to save it.
They were made by a doctor who was involved with the creation of the robots that now oppress his city.
The first son tries to save them, but ultimately the citizens refuse to stand by his side, he is overwhelmed, and seemingly killed while they all watch.
The second son, when he learns about the first, wants to save the city. But the doctor tells him that it is pointless, they have already decided not to fight, nothing can be changed by just one man.
He goes out anyway, he fights and destroys the army of robots. Yet the final opponent is his brother, now rebuilt and working for the man who controls the city.
They have an argument about if humanity is even worth saving (refer to the picture attached to my post.)
Both of them know that the humans will never fight, the second son believes that they can be saved still, but the first son believes that by not fighting, they have shown that they do not deserve to be saved.
In the end, the second son kills the first, seemingly saving the city. But then the crowd cheers for the first son and insults the second.
>He could not save himself, how could he save us?
>For all the blood he shed, your brother failed us.
>Why do you cry for him? You are our hero.
In their failure to understand the first son and the pain that killing him causes the second son, his will is broken as well, realizing that humanity isn't worth saving.
Now, my MC is of the mind of the second son, that despite their flaws, humanity is worth saving because they can grow to be better There is another man man was also originally going to be the champion of the god of light, but when he abandoned a mission for him to save people, he lost the chance to be the champion. He ends up also failing to become the champion of the god of darkness (these aren't strictly good and evil gods) because she wants her champion to be willing to change themselves and the world around them, but he was so deeply wounded by the betrayal of the people that he can only act as her assassin. His belief is that the MC (who is the champion of darkness) will agree with him in the end, but he does not actively make the world worse because proving the world is evil by adding more evil to it wouldn't show the MC that his view is objectively correct. My MC will encounter a case of people being ungrateful, even actively antagonistic, for saving them. He won't give up on them though, he will continue to do what he can to help mankind.
The thing that he saves them from, that turns him into a villain in the eyes of normal people, is that he puts down a brutal civil war by using horrifying flesh golems.

Why does every writer from the first third of the 20th century use a semicolon along with a coordinating conjunction, but now most writers don’t even use the semicolon?

I struggle with making my book about anything in particular like themes or something

>>21995963
I honestly think that litfic being profoundly difficult to write is a meme which gets perpetuated too much by this board along with other places. Sure it's relatively easy to shit out some low effort GRRM clone fantasy, but there's good and bad litfic too. Also litfic is very conducive to short stories/flash fiction while genre fiction is less so, and I think that's a good place for people to start. If you really dig into your own life and experiences, you'll probably be surprised by how many potential short story prompts you could find. Anyway excuse my autistic tangent, I'm not your dad and you do whatever feels right to you.

>>21996013
You should just do what I did: convert to Christianity and only write sloppy allusions to themes and stories that the bible already came up with.

>>21996019
Wow you're just like me. Have you also read the bible like 15 times? Verses just pop in my head constantly, its super easy to reference when writing. Man I should read more Shakespeare, I could probably quote it just as well after a few years. Even if I just read Macbeth ten times. It's his tragedies I like the most.

>>21996013
I didn't go into my story with a specific theme at first, but I wrote about 20 chapters anyway, then went back and edited them with an understanding of a theme that emerged.

>>21996011
because nobody knows how to use a semicolon today.

It's also a lot to do with academia pushing for it. There isn't a single reason to use a semi-colon in academic writing and it carries over. Most writers first writing experience is through essays from their English teacher and never bothered with semi-colons.

Wanted to respond to a few replies I got on the last thread. Thanks again to all the anons who provided feedback.
>>21992745
Anon, this is incredibly useful thank you so much! Literally copied and pasted the description into my doc just now to have as a reference. Like I said, had no idea what a steel mill is like so this is super useful.
>>21992072
I could see how it could be incredibly strong when done well, but I'm not sure I trust myself to accomplish it. I don't know, I'll have to see how I feel after revising it. Thanks for reading either way!
>>21991157
>"from hell" sounds better to me in my head
Kek, keep switching back and forth between the two myself. I feel you with the awkwardness, have trouble deciding where to break up the sentences myself. Thanks for reading and the detailed feedback anon.
>>21996011
I feel I was using them too much so I'm challenging myself not to use them at all. Also Cormac McCarthy and James Joyce don't use them.

>>21996011
Agents today rail against semicolons because they want to be contrarian and edgy like their MFA teachers trained them to be. meanwhile the lack of its availablility stymies prose. english is limiting and plain enough without being further kneecapped. imagine mathematics if you could never use subtraction, and had to phrase everything as adding a negative. it grows convoluted and inelegant. and so modern midwit agents browbeat the english language into absurdity and inbreeding.

Anons, what is your favorite sentence from what you're currently writing?

>>21996194
Hah! I see your plan. You want to steal my best lines for yourself!

>>21994656
It's not from Google. I'm not telling you the magazines I send to because it's competition and there's thousands of lurkers.

>>21996208
Fine then, anon, just tell me why your favorite sentence is your favorite then.

>>21996212
Misako, or Mike as he was known to the school, insisted I watch Violet Evergarden. It's about a young girl returning to the army and writing love letters, but she herself have no idea what love is. The twist in this story however, wasn't her handicap, but rather, the strange relationship between Violet and her superior. She herself being a young tender age of fourteen, and her lover, a ripe old age of thirty-seven. I am not normally one to judge others taste in shows, but even for Mike, this was a bit much. How a grown man of twenty find entertainment in such drivel was a riddle I couldn't solve. Thus I took it upon myself to watch the show. It's only fair to Mike that I allow myself to seek out the answer for myself.

After three episodes, I gave up. I told Mike that Violet Evergarden was the most boring show I have ever seen. Absolutely nothing went on in the story, and her letters were neither heartfelt, nor believable.

So I told Mike that the show was absolutely shit. In typical weeaboo fashion, he recoiled in shock, as if the words and opinions of another were like the stings from the coveted jeweled wasps.

>>21996175
This overstates its importance to be honest

Yes, I did complete my 2,000 words today. Thank you for asking.

>>21996302
I'm probably not going to hit it since I'm headed into the editing mines. The chapters I wrote the other day seemed good, and elements of them will be there still, but heavy rewrites are needed.

>>21996253
that's more than one sentence.

>>21996013
I can only think of themes and fail to write a story around them.

Here's one I'm trying to get off the ground: A man spends his days sitting by his window with a scoped rifle, overlooking a children's playground in a remote part of town. If a predator ever approaches the children to abduct one of them, the man would be locked and loaded and ready to drop him without hesitation. Reimagining of the catcher in the rye motif within the context of contemporary moral panics about protecting children. I know I want this to be a short story and I know it has to be satire, but I can't dream up the story beats.

>>21996325
Hopefully he doesn't accidentally shoot someone's parent.

>>21993852
I have to fix my body clock. I'm so tired.

World building is hard and I'm having trouble making a setting from nothing and organizing my thoughts

>>21996399
What aspect of writing do you find easy?
I ask because a lot of would-be writers fall into the "worldbuilding trap" and never end up writing a story.
I tend to fall into the "plot trap", i.e. I struggle to come up with characters to experience the flow of changes.

>>21996418
Nothing im just kind of shit

>>21996418
>>21996399
You plot? You worldbuild? At least you have some semblance or idea of what you want to write.

I submit myself to my subconscious and try to write, and so far it's not been a very good experience. My writing has improved, actively degenerated, and then improved again like the tide. It's very strange, because normally something like this is a sign that you're improving; that you recognize the flaws of your writing, then rectify it, only to then recognize new flaws as you become a better writer. I feel as if I'm in a kind of vicious cycle that's really a type of stasis. My writing improves, then it takes a nosedive; then it improves once again only to fall just as terribly, and rising again with my hopes and wants only to suddenly turn meteor-wise.

>>21996418
I fall into a shit concept trap. Every story I write has zero interest from readers.

>>21996453
That's called "discovery writing", and it can work, but it's difficult to sustain something so unstructured.
>>21996454
My ideas seem to be unfashionable, too.
But I truly believe that, in a world where so many people are trying to be the biggest scumbag deviant they can possibly be, that being honest, decent, hard-working, and thoughtful is the most outrageous rebellion there is.
But it's just me, Ayn Rand, and the Boy Scouts against the world. LOL

>The moon shone its lunate glow upon the pallid snow. Underneath this ethereal lunacy, a shadow stirred amidst the pale yonder. A red band wrapped its black arm, a squared moustache sat above thin lips, a German tongue clucked with insane rhetoric. There, stood within the soughed and rimed wind, was Hitler resurrected from the dead!

Why is my writing so different with pen and paper? The thoughts in my mind and the intent should still be the same even if the medium is different, but I feel infinitely more comfortable writing on a laptop than I do with pen and paper. The writing’s also better on laptop too; even if it seems like my pen and paper writing primarily contributes to my improvement.

>>21996475
>The moon shone its lunate glow upon the pallid snow. Underneath this ethereal lunacy, a shadow stirred amidst the pale yonder. A red band wrapped its black arm, a squared moustache sat above thin lips, a German tongue clucked with insane rhetoric. There, stood within the soughed and rimed wind, was Hitler resurrected from the dead!
Too purple.

>A nigger with a squared mustache emerged from the shadows. A red armband wrapped around his bicep. Why, it wasn't a nigger at all; it was Hitler!

>>21996497
>purple.
You don't know what purple prose means.

>>21996453
>>21996468
I can't plan at all. I think it's become im just an unpublished brainless idiot. But every time i write its in a totally different style and Voice. It has nothing to do with reading habits or copying. It's all just whatever. Im too old and dumb to ever be a good writer

>>21996503
>The moon shone its lunate glow upon the pallid snow. Underneath this ethereal lunacy, a shadow stirred amidst the pale yonder.
If you don't think this is purple I don't know what to tell you. What the fuck does ethereal lunacy even mean? A ghostly craziness?

>>21996516
It's a play on words... lunacy means the madness brought on by the moon which is lunate:
>mid 16th century (originally referring to insanity of an intermittent kind attributed to changes of the moon): from lunatic + -acy.
Go back to your webnovel prose, idiot.
Ethereal as in the light is not physical and glows.

>>21996520
Riiiggghhhhtttt. So now you're making up bullshit to sniff your own farts.

>>21996528
No. I'm a real writer and you are a pleb. Go away.

>>21996530
>Real writer
>Posts on 4chan
>Can't take criticism
Checks out

>>21996537
You're not criticising anything. You just repeat memes and don't know how to read. In fact, you can't take this criticism right now. Checks out.

>>21996040
i feel like you're making fun of me to hurt me, but if that's the case just know you can't break my girlboss shine.

I mainly make blatant reference to Genesis, among other Old Testament books. My novel is probably the most egregious of all, the MC is named Adam, and throughout the book he keeps seeing the constellation Columba and relating to it, because like how Columba brought the olive branch back to Noah, Adam is basically teaching showing his adopted son (Noah) how to rekindle humanity in a post-apocalyptic setting.

>>21995271
Marxism, the poverty of language, the capture of the individual in power structures
cliche, I know.

>>21995271
humanity based
machines bad
Power of perseverance based
Appreciating and cherishing emotions outside of joy is based

>>21996175
>.
>moggs you

>>21996544
>Getting angry
>Resorts to name calling
Checks out

>>21993860
You wrote a really sweet thing about a cat that I still remember to this day. This one is a little too dour.

On a craftsmanship level it's well made. Just maybe not for me .

>>21996589
>namecalling
Pleb is a descriptive term, not a term of insult.

>>21995271
>several centuries into the future
>elite have cannibalised their class and one super human "God" remains
>masses have been gene edited to be more slave like
>focus on evolutionary biology and biology in general
>focus on "God"s life and his constant desire for entertainment by doing unspeakable things
>side story of one of the slaves which highlights they are not as dumb as they act but they simply have to to avoid eternal torture

Last year, I started to work on a story that I then had to set aside when other things took my time. Now I thought about getting back to it, only to discover there's a crippling flaw with the setting and a major plot element that makes no sense whatsoever. How did I not realize that immediately? Thank god I didn't keep at it last year or attempt to share it with anyone. Some ideas just aren't ready to be born as they are.

>>21996716
Oh, it's a documentary

>>21996721
thanks,I studied a lot of these fields in my free time.
I regret it honestly, knowing what our future is like has not has a positive effect on my life

>entire thread supporting /lit/ writers with zero drama or crabs.
Alitspa we don’t deserve you.

Why the fuck can't I write good

>>21996757
How often do you read good prose?

>>21996757
What genre do you write in? There's a self replication crisis in lots of genre and online fiction, but you can break the mould by reading around and studying hard.

>>21996775
Dunno what that means s

>>21996757
Well*

>Heimdul roared and leaped, and his sword flashed in deathly arc. Pogba staggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, shivering into bits of blue fire. But as he reeled he thrust with all the power of his broad shoulders behind the humming blade. The sharp point tore through brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warrior died at Pogba's feet.
>The African stood upright, trailing his sword, a sudden sick weariness assailing him. The glare of the sun on the snow cut his eyes like a knife and the sky seemed shrunken and strangely apart. He turned away from the trampled expanse where yellow-bearded warriors lay locked with red-haired slayers in the embrace of death.
>A few steps he took, and the glare of the snow fields was suddenly dimmed. A rushing wave of blindness engulfed him and he sank down into the snow, supporting himself on one mailed arm, seeking to shake the blindness out of his eyes as a lion might shake his mane.
>A silvery laugh cut through his dizziness, and his sight cleared slowly. He looked up; there was a strangeness about all the landscape that he could not place or define—an unfamiliar tinge to earth and sky. But he did not think long of this. Before him, swaying like a sapling in the wind, stood a woman. Her body was like ivory to his dazed gaze, and save for a light veil of gossamer, she was naked as the day. Her slender bare feet were whiter than the snow they spurned. She laughed down at the bewildered warrior. Her laughter was sweeter than the rippling of silvery fountains, and poisonous with cruel mockery.

>>21996863
Fuggin hell your first paragraph made me mad:
>Heimdul roared and leaped, and his sword flashed in deathly arc. Pogba staggered and his vision was filled with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, shivering into bits of blue fire. But as he reeled he thrust with all the power of his broad shoulders behind the humming blade. The sharp point tore through brass scales and bones and heart, and the red-haired warrior died at Pogba's feet.
Should be:
Heimdul roared and leaped, his sword flashing in deathly arc.
Pogba staggered, his vision filling with red sparks as the singing blade crashed on his helmet, shivering into blue bits of fire.
Reeling and thrusting he put to use all the power his broad shoulders had to offer which in turn lead his blade to hum with deadly efficiency.
The blade sharp point tore through brass scales, bones and heart alike to leave the red-haired warrior dead at Pogba's feet.

>>21997024
woops should be:
>lept not leaped
Even your shit tenses fugged me up!

Heimdul lunged and his sword with him in a deadly arc. He crashed upon Pogba's helm cutting sparks into the air that shimmered into soft blue flame. Pogba staggered and the clash illuminated his strain. Yet Pogba drew his own strength and with his powerful shoulders delivered a thrust that tore through brass scale and bone and into Heimdul's heart. The red-haired warrior lay dead and Pogba the victor.

>>21993860
It's interesting ...
I'm not sure it really works for me as a lover of more abstract writing , but it has something.
will subscribe to see more from you

>A world of light. A world where no person has a shadow. In this world was a boy. Because he lived in this world, he too had no shadow. Then, one day, the boy met a girl, a girl who did have a shadow. The girl invited him to come with her to a world of shadows.

>>21997024
>>21997026
>>21997082
It's a story from Robert E Howard with the names changed. You're a retard.

>>21997082
>>21997024
>>21997026
You're never going to make it

>>21997297
You've made it

Yo.

>>21997024
>>21997082

>Heimdul's roar echoed through the battlefield as he sprang forward, his sword gleaming with deadly grace. Pogba, momentarily disoriented, saw only a cascade of red sparks as the song of colliding blades filled the air. Once a steadfast protector, his helmet shattered into fragments of blue flame.

>Though unsteady, Pogba channeled the strength of his broad shoulders into a desperate thrust. The humming blade, now an extension of his will, pierced brass scales, splintered bone, and punctured heart. In a final, poignant moment, the red-haired warrior met his end, collapsing at Pogba's feet.

>>21997297
Would read. Shadow waifu interests me.

>reread work
>Repeat myself just using different words
Hmm... I write like F Gardner

>>21997299
I don't like Robert E Howard's prose. It is a matter of taste, of course. And maybe it works better if spoken out loud.
It doesn't help that you missed a word when transcribing the first sentence.

>>21997299
Is it just me, or does Robert E. Howard kind of suck?

>>21996563
I was being 100% sincere bro. I have read the bible alot because I adore it.
Have you seen the Baptism and Noah's Ark imagery in that anime movie "Angel Egg"? It is apocalyptic also and extremely intense at capturing the weight of religious conversion and the dread people feel about the end of the world. The Ringed City in Dark Souls 3 borrows the broken egg theme also.

Best note taking app? Evernote sucks.

>>21997404
Is it just me or do tripfags suck?

>>21997412

>>21997412
I use a paper notebook and pen. My notes eventually get transcribed into relevant Wordpad documents.

>>21997430
Considering faggots always hating on my trip, I do not think it is just you.

>>21995271
Perfectly "good" outcome without any major losers is impossible to obtain, wisdom is the ability to choose lesser of multiple evil, most likely dying in the process.

>>21997412
>note taking app
I hate zoomers so goddamn much it's unreal.

Stop wasting your SFF stories by posting them on 4chan. Write a short story once a week or once a month and try your hand at making it as a writer. The chances are slim, but you will get paid if you send to these places. Don't look back once you make your first sale.

>Clarkesworld
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/submissions/
1000-22000 words, no exceptions
12c (USD) per word. No horror but dark SF/F permitted.
No use of Chat GPT nor AI allowed
No simultaneous submissions (do not send the story somewhere else).
Stories must be well-written, suitable for audio (since there are narrated audiobooks), and convenient for screen reading (so no weird formatting).
Rigor in science fiction is appreciated, but it does not need to be "hard."
There can't be any of the tropes listed on the site.

>Asimov's
https://www.asimovs.com/contact-us/writers-guidelines
up to 7500 words, at 10c per word (USD)
Character oriented stories, but there is also some poetry $1 per line
Absolutely no use of Chat GPT nor AI allowed
No simultaneous submissions (do not send the story somewhere else).

>Fantasy & Science Fiction
https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/glines.htm
No simultaneous submissions (do not send somewhere else).
Up to 25,000 words in length. 8-12 c (USD) per word. You must read a sample of the magazine before sending.

>Interzone Digital
https://interzone.digital/submissions/
Simultaneous submissions accepted (you can send somewhere else).
Maximum of 5000 words. 1.5c (EURO) per word. Double-spaced and emailed.

>Amazing Stories
https://submission.amazingstoriesmag.com/guidelines/
$20 per story, $10 per flash (USD), and poetry also
No simultaneous submissions, no multiple submissions
1000 to 24,000 words

>Apex Magazine
https://apex-magazine.com/submissions/
8c per word (USD), up to 7500 words
Usually dark sci fi or horror is accepted.

>Beneath Ceaseless Skies
https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/submissions/
Up to 15,000 words, 8c per word (USD)
Provides feedback on rejections
No use of Chat GPT nor AI allowed
Character-focused, adventure fantasy (no sci fi nor horror) that has a deep sense of world.

>>21997451
Go back.

>>21997412
between these fucks, the "nooo i need fancier software" z01s, and the gdocs cloud zoomers, you're all fucking retarded.

i've COMPLETED novels in libreoffice. (actually getting results and an end product, not just dabbling and wasting everyone's time.) let me guess: you NEED more? open a fucking word document and write the fucking novel. better writers than you wrote on paper and took notes on bar napkins.

>>21997404
You're right. He's missing something, but it's hard to identify what.

It's something like the quality of charm, or weirdness, or original perception, that makes good pulp writing feel alive, like it comes from a sensitive brain, from a storyteller sitting directly opposite you, with a little glint in their eye. Howard's voice feels monotonous and empty, as if writing were an obligation. He doesn't know how to have fun with it.

E.g. this opening from Clark Ashton Smith could never have been written by Howard -- you sense too much of Smith's humour and personality, and you almost hear it in a campy Vincent Price voice, which would never work with Howard's prose:

>At the hour of interlunar midnight, when lamps burned rarely and far apart in Susran, and slow-moving autumn clouds had muffled the stars, King Gadeiron sent forth into the sleeping city twelve of his trustiest mutes. Like shadows gliding through oblivion, they vanished upon their various ways; and each of them, returning presently to the darkened palace, led with him a shrouded figure no less discreet and silent than himself.

>In this manner, groping along tortuous alleys, through blind cypress-caverns in the royal gardens, and down subterranean halls and steps, twelve of the most powerful sorcerers of Susran were brought together in a vault of oozing, death-gray granite, far beneath the foundations of the palace.

>The entrance of the vault was guarded by earth-demons that obeyed the arch-sorcerer, Maranapion, who had long been the king's councillor. These demons would have torn limb from limb any who came unprepared to offer them a libation of fresh blood. The vault was lit dubiously by a single lamp, hollowed from a monstrous garnet, and fed with vipers' oil. Here Gadeiron, crownless, and wearing sackcloth dyed in sober purple, awaited the wizards on a seat of limestone wrought in the form of a sarcophagus. Maranapion stood at his right hand, immobile, and swathed to the mouth in the garments of the tomb. Before him was a tripod of orichalchum, rearing shoulder-high; and on the tripod, in a silver socket, there reposed the enormous blue eye of a slain Cyclops, wherein the archimage was said to behold weird visions. On this eye, gleaming balefully under the garnet lamp, the gaze of Maranapion was fixed with death-like rigidity.

>From these circumstances, the twelve sorcerers knew that the king had convened them only because of a matter supremely grave and secret. The hour and fashion of their summoning, the place of meeting, the terrible elemental guards, the mufti worn by Gadeiron — all were proof of a need for preternatural stealth and privity.

>For awhile there was silence in the vault, and the twelve, bowing deferentially, waited the will of Gadeiron. Then, in a voice that was little more than a harsh whisper, the king spoke:

>"What know ye of Malygris?"

>post new chapter
>not as much traction as others
pretty sure i plateaued and already captured what market i can with this. those reading it seem to love it though.

>>21997575
But what good is a novel if nobody else reads it?

>>21997679
I write solely for myself.

Now that my story is officially dead, what do I do with it?

>>21994040
You mean people don't do that for everything when reading and writing?

>>21997689
Finish it you hack.

>>21995145
Literary fiction is boring.

>>21997757
This. We have what? One litfic book from /wg/ writers, and not a single person bought it.

>>21997679
>oh alas i haven't been published within 2 microseconds of finishing, it shall never happen now!

>>21997775
I bought it and I'm reading it next week.

>>21997779
It's true. Querying makes it breaks a writer.

>>21997556
>12c (USD) per word
If accepted, you mean.

>>21996509
You seem to have succeeded in demotivating yourself.
Perhaps you would write better without the deliberate self-hatred.

>>21997825
Yeah. Know the market and write every day. Innovate and catch the editors on the first sentence and have a great ending. Submit every week. That's the key to success.

>>21997837
I don't want to be a human assembly line, I want to express one story and have it be perfect.

>>21997412
I use an outline editor called TreeLine.
It's capable of far more than I've used it for (i.e. my tree-nodes have a title and a single text-box).
It's free and open-source, too.

>>21997857
It means you're not a professional nor an artist if you don't want your peers (the kind who make it their careers) to accept you.

>>21997689
You're getting more readers than me, so quit your whining.

>>21997861
How the fuck do you use an outline editor? Outlines are essentially bullet points.

>>21997871
Maybe you should look at an outline editor before asking such a clueless question in public.
Each "bullet point" has a title, and an arbitrary number of associated fields.
I've never used more than a single text-box associated with my "bullet point" title, but TreeLine lets me do much more than that.

>>21997869
So we're both doing something horribly wrong. Neither of us can write better than whoever is ahead of us.

This is art.

>>21997865
>Artists need approval
I can think of quite a few that immediately disprove that notion. But all the recognition I want is for people to read what I write. Money is a bonus.

>>21997879
Why not just use a notebook?

>>21997900
>I want is for people to read what I write.
That's just the dopamine rush you get from social acceptance, on top of social status. Don't pretend money isn't part of storytelling. If you are a good storyteller, you get paid for it, since people want to read it.

>>21997861
imagine being such a worthless ADHD sperg that you need such a crutch

>>21997857
I feel that to be able to create a really good story you need to have far more than one story inside you

>>21997556
Thanks for this my nigga

>>21997556
Based detailed effort poster providing real value

>>21997905
>Don't pretend money isn't part of storytelling. If you are a good storyteller, you get paid for it, since people want to read it.
Money isn't part of the picture for me and I don't want it to be unless things get very different. I'd need incredible luck to make as much as I make now from my day job and the hustle sounds soul-crushing. So I put everything up on the web for free.
I do like the dopamine.

>>21997556
>0,12 cents per word
thats fucking garbage man
I feel less ripped off when I make 0 money than that

>>21997898
If you have a point to make, just say it, instead of doing this dumb, coy pretense of having a point.

>>21997953
I really want to learn how to make a website. I have no clue where to start.

>>21997976
This applies equally to the bad art you posted and the extremely bad post you made, by the way.

>>21997966
I'm not going to argue about how hard it is to write, but that's good money, especially for 2000 words being $240 (USD).

>>21997989
yeah but I write fucking amazing pieces of work that change your life forever (usually in a bad way)

>>21997998
I doubt it, if you have to gloat about it on 4chan.

Rate my opening line:
>I washed ashore with; a salted school skirt and a white blouse, thoroughly savored and stung my eyes. Sand buried half my head, ears to the back of the cranium, and caked hair. Green tangles around my neck. I searched the sun, but nowhere; the cloud-covered sky hid my mind from myself. I can't think. Where am I? The ship sank and swallowed me. Gentle waves carried me away, slicking through the many corridors and pulling me down to the nether. My mind resurfaced, and I saw an endless grey canvas and a soft breeze upon my skin. Salt, salt, salt. My mouth, my nose, my eyes. An invincible gunk of salt hindered my sight. It's hard and painful. Someone must have smothered the creases of my brain with salt. I don't even want to begin talking about my limbs. I can't move; synapses for limbic motions went unregistered. I shouldn't have eaten that last soup.

>>21997977
https://neocities.org looks good if you want to do it a little old school, from the ground up. They have a tutorial to teach you HTML. In general they have their heart in the right place. Making simple pages with formatted text and links and images and so on is fun and doesn't take much learning to get started. (Making it look professional is harder but you don't always want that.)
If you want to quickly slap together something generic without having to learn how web pages work you can try Wordpress. Possibly there are still better options but it's kind of predictably mediocre, very popular.
If you just want to put your writing somewhere where it can get an audience then a writing platform might be better than a personal website (then again, you can do both). I mostly publish not on my personal website but on AO3. (It's primarily a fan fiction website but you can also post original fiction there.) It depends on what you're writing though.

>>21997884
I think it's about knowing your audience.
My theory is that any skill I have with the craft of writing is irrelevant if I don't write what people these days want to read.
I'm like an anon out of time.

>>21997898
And that is why "artists" are being replaced with Stable Diffusion.

>>21997575
>let me guess, you need more?
kek

>>21997904
Because an outline editor allows me to think nonlinearly, to come up with my ideas in whatever order they occur to me.
>>21997911
Go to Hell, demotivational failed-crab. You're adding nothing to this discussion.

Discussion - When writing horror how much should you describe? I know that showing less and building dread works exceptionally well in horror movies, but that's a visual medium and is written accordingly, but what about literature? Do you tell us what the demon looks like, or do you let the reader fill in the gaps? Does using more abstract descriptions change things? Should you go the Lovecraft route, describing things in vague, uncommon terms while leaving out any solid description?

>>21997905
>>21997905
>It means you're not a professional nor an artist if you don't want your peers (the kind who make it their careers) to accept you.
>That's just the dopamine rush you get from social acceptance, on top of social status
????
>Don't pretend money isn't part of storytelling. If you are a good storyteller, you get paid for it, since people want to read it.
I want to write what I want, not what some fucker at a publishing company thinks will sell.

>>21998059
your fetish for software is a procrastination from doing your work. you are the only one here who can't complete anything. give up and go sell your ugly asshole on grindr.

>>21998043
My most successful work is all horribly indulgent, filled with pretentious elements that I would expect hardly anyone besides me to really understand and appreciate. But people love it!
You do need a sense of strategy. Different genres and topics get different numbers of eyeballs. But that's about picking your battleground, not about designing your story in a lab for maximum appeal. There are a thousand stories I could get excited about, that I'd be willing to write for myself, and I have to pick from those.
If you try to deform yourself for your audience then all you make is crap that they don't even like. At least that's what happens when I do it.

>>21998108
not that anon but you're retarded and complaining about complete nonsense

>>21998108
I've completed several works. I have no idea why you're seething so much.
An outline editor is no different than having a bunch of loose-leaf papers, organized in manila folders inside of hanging folders, except it's much more convenient and flexible.
Why don't you share YOUR note-taking method, so we can crap all over it for no reason? Except I won't, because I'm not a demotivational failed-crab pseud.

Can’t we all just agree that only retards write and/or read fantasy and science fiction?

>>21997689
28 people spent times reading your story and you whine? Entitled scum. You get so much traffic from shilling your story everywhere on /lit/ and still you cry. Get better at writing and showcasing your story first, you are already getting more than you deserve

>>21998163
Yes I want the 10k clicks to fuel my dopamine

>>21997912
There are others, that doesn't mean they're monopolizing my thoughts. Anyway, I disagree with that, plenty of writers have only written one or two great works.

>>21998171
>plenty of writers have only written one or two great works
But were those the only works they wrote?

>>21998027
>I washed ashore with; a salted school skirt and a white blouse, thoroughly savored and stung my eyes
This is the first line and I'm afraid it's shit.

>>21998051
>And that is why "artists" are being replaced with Stable Diffusion.
the artists that are getting replaced arent those.
high value art is about the """story""" and the ""persona"" and AI art will do nothing to change that. It just removes the bottom line, which is very large in the art world

>>21998163
Hmm.. that's quite enlightening. Chasing after clicks has become an obsession. That's pretty scary. Thanks anon. I need to leave royal road.

>>21998059
>Because an outline editor allows me to think nonlinearly, to come up with my ideas in whatever order they occur to me.
You can do that with a notebook. 8n fact you don't need anything for that.

>>21998178
I daresay very few writers ever published attempted semi-colon in the very first sentence

>>21998175
Milton only wrote like three dramatic works, everything else was theology and philosophy.

>>21998205
So no, not the only works he wrote.

>>21997451
Hey, it's been a minute, did you ever finish your gay basketball story? You prancing lala homoboy.

>>21998213
You can just search it you know. But I guess Catcher in the Rye is amateur shit.

>>21998205
I don't know much about Milton, still haven't read Paradise Lost, but Wikipedia sez he published a collection of "youthful poetry in a variety of genres" when he was 37, with a self-deprecating cover that I'm not high-IQ enough to get. Seems like he might have had broader dramatic inclinations? Of course that's just what he published, not what he wrote

>>21998243
For Salinger I'm getting a list of 30 unpublished stories alone, not even considering his published work

>>21998243
You're right, you can search it up. This is the opening of his wikipedia article.

Anyway, don't give in to creative oneitis. No need to be an assembly line, but plan to create many things and accept that some of them will be shit

>>21998312
Nah you're wrong. You don't need more than one story

>>21997689
i tried to warn you it was shit just after you finished your thread by thread assault on us with you shit ai cover shilling. Back then you couldn't understand why it was shit and you clearly cannot now.
>>21997704
Is the right answer.
>Why write and share something if you don't believe in it?

>>21998267
>still haven't read Paradise Lost
Go read it right now you nigger.

>>21998283
Short stories don't count.

>>21998340
Maybe there exist inhuman freaks who can start off great but all my favorite authors have a leadup of less interesting work before they really started to shine.
Most people get good at writing by writing. You need practice. It's a skill.

>>21998359
Fine, I've added it to the list.

>>21998364
Why?

>>21998179
I was responding to some pseud >>21997898 claiming a banana duct-taped to the wall is art.
Are you having reading comprehension issues?

>>21998184
Er, no...physical objects like notebooks are the definition of linear media.
Are you having mental issues this morning? Your points are clueless and dumb.

>>21998381
no, but you have apparently. the famous modern artists exactly the ones who wont you be replaced you idiot

>>21998147
Well la dee da, Mister Literary Masterpiece about some fag with depression writer.

>>21998234
Yeah, I thought you sold it to Netflix, too.
How's that working out for you?
You can leave here any time you want, Sange. We're already choked to the gills with ill-tempered phonies.

>>21998393
>the famous modern artists exactly the ones who wont you be replaced
illiterate
opinion discarded

>>21998372
Because they're short. One short story collection = one novel at best.

But more importantly we're not accounting for how much of a writer's bibliography can fundamentally be exactly the same story, just reiterated in a slightly altered form. Anyway go fucking read Paradise Lost, listen to an audio version if you have to.

>>21998147
Take it to r/gatekeeping.
I think you'll like Reddit better than this place, anyways.
Lots of pretentious, posturing phonies there.
You'll feel right at home!

>>21998389
>Er, no...physical objects like notebooks are the definition of linear media
Anon you understand that you don't have to read the book left to right, left page to right page when you're taking notes, correct?

How do I get over my skill gap? I’m a very prolific reader, having read many good and bad books, to the point where my skill in reading and recognizing good and bad prose far outweighs my actual writing skill. It’s a case of not writing enough, but my writing is so bad as to make me cringe. I can’t even write fanfic for God’s sake.

>>21998425
>How do I get over my skill gap?
1. Write more.
2. Aquire good tastes.

>>21998404
>Because they're short. One short story collection = one novel at best.
So what is it that you're talking about when you say you want to "express one story"? One concept or one unit of words? Both?
>But more importantly we're not accounting for how much of a writer's bibliography can fundamentally be exactly the same story, just reiterated in a slightly altered form.
Is that what Salinger did? In my experience they tend to have at least half a dozen stories to play around with, even if they reiterate sometimes. And when they do reiterate it's rarely to the point where it's just an altered or improved version with no individual spark.
>Anyway go fucking read Paradise Lost, listen to an audio version if you have to.
I told you I'm going to, I'll get to it in a week when I finish my current read. There's no rush, it'll still be there by then.

>>21998412
It's also a lot easier to back up my outline-editor's document. If you lose your paper notebook, you're screwed.
And photocopying is a lot more expensive than backing something up to digital media.
You are dumb and your brainlet arguments are tiresome.
I'll wager your "writing" is as unimaginative and blinkered as your lame arguments.

>>21998433
>So what is it that you're talking about when you say you want to "express one story"? One concept or one unit of words? Both
If the concept is narrow in scope reiteration becomes touchy. You can write about wide concepts in many different ways, think about how varied the idea of a "revenge story" is for example. But if you have an idea that's best expressed through a particular setting or circumstance, then writing it again and again can become self-fanfic.
>There's no rush,
There's a reason it's called the "greatest work of English literature" you know.

>>21998447
>It's also a lot easier to back up my outline-editor's document. If you lose your paper notebook, you're screwed
>something you physically have in your hands is less secure than something stored in the cloud
Maybe you just need more self-confidence.

>>21998483
Huh? What does self-confidence have to do with potentially losing my notes?
Your attempts at writing suck as badly as your poorly-conceived arguments, don't they.
Come back when you actually have something to contribute to this conversation.

Did anyone else here participate in and complete the writathon on RR?

Ladies you're both pretty. Using analog media is creatively enriching, and being able to back up your shit through the power of late 90s computing is good.

>>21998538
Didn't have time, I'm editing my cyberpunk book.

>>21998534
>Huh? What does self-confidence have to do with potentially losing my notes?
Just take responsibility and don't lose the book bro.

So I decided to write a horror poem. Any critique appreciated

I woke around 10, left the house in a dash
No shower, no breakfast
Had to get a nice outfit and flowers for my date!
Wanted to look snazzy, and surely didn’t want to be late
Went to Macy’s for a tie, a shirt, some shoes and more
People frolicking about, a sight I adore!
The looks I received though, they were strange.
Children cried and everyone looked at me in horror, no matter their age.
I paid it no mind, maybe something was up with my hair
I thought about it longer but after some time, I didn’t care.
The date is at 8, I’m here, waiting to see her beaming face
She arrives not too long after, her outfit emitting grace
She comes to the table, sees me, and refuses to take a seat
Her face covered with angst, fear, and even defeat
I’m concerned; “What’s wrong”? I ask?
Unfortunately, she was far too fast
She ran away swiftly, ensuring our date didn’t last
I’m crestfallen now, even upset; what could it be?
My hair? My face? Was I a little too ashy?
I head to the bathroom to see what was up, hoping my physical appearance would be enough
I now saw why my date didn’t want to stay, or even kiss me
The entire time, my right eye had been missing.

>>21998560
Instead of “no shower no breakfast” it’s “no shower no breakfast I didn’t even take out the trash”

>>21998538
>He wasted his time generating free content for an amazon partner site.

>>21998557
r/wowthanksimcured
Now hie thyself to Reddit, where thy people art.

>>21998267
Paradise Lost is amazing, I've read it twice now. It makes the Fall of Man way more dramatic than Genesis portrays, it is really good. The presentation of Satan is also really interesting because of the sheer amount of mental gymnastics he engages in, as well as the whole pantheon of characters that support him. I know plenty of people prefer Dante as far as fiction regarding Christianity, but Milton's work was a massive accomplishment for English.

>>21998178
>completely incorrect use of semicolon in first line
>bizarre use of commas to fracture clauses into almost incoherent noise
Not trying to he mean but you need to spend time reading grammar and writing craft stuff.

>>21997405
I haven't seen Angel Egg, but I've heard good things and it's on my list.

>>21997405
>the dread people feel about the end of the world
The reality is people don't dread the end of the world, they dread their own lust for the end of the world.

>try to do some writing while on not much sleep
>read it the next day
>it's complete an utter shit

>>21998695
Is it really that bad? Or do you need to just edit it? I scrapped one chapter but kept the others that I wrote recently and I am now adding chapters to reach the ones that I kept in a manner that works still. i.e I am rewriting 1 and then adding more chapters so that I can get to what was 2 and 3 in a way that I like.

>>21998234
>>21998398
I lied about the netflix deal.
And no I didn't finish it because I didn't feel like it.

>>21998398
>phonies
How have you been? Rape anon?

How the fuck are these people on Royal Road making 3, 4, 5k+ a month writing what they write?
I tried reading some of it; they can't even get basic syntax and grammar right, let alone plot or worldbuilding.
Are Zoomer brains rotten to the point that they will pay to read the same exact story, with the same exact characters, which is also laden with errors? Why?

>>21998821
How the fuck is McDonalds a 200 billion dollar company? People keep coming back to the exact same burger, with the exact same toppings, when it's objectively shitty? Why?

>>21998821
I think it's the same reason people read fan fiction, it just has the fantasy they like in it. People are willing to tolerate bare minimum if it just lets them play with the ideas they enjoy rather than. Plus, a lot of readers may not even have that high a reading level anyways and are more comfortable with reading something that they could have written.
>>21998851
Consistency. Also, pretty nice branding if you like yellow coffee cups. I hadn't looked in a long time but a ton of fast food placed have made their foods healthier in the past decade or so. Not counting the macros that is.

>>21998672
Indeed.
All too many Christians seem to look forward to the events of Revelation.
It seems like a suicidal impulse to me.
>>21998765
One admitted lie, one probable lie.
Just go back to wherever you were.
>>21998774
Not even close.
>>21998821
Their audience is illiterate too.
And "romance authors" also write the same story over and over, even though it's just another plain Jane being wooed by a rich handsome tall billionaire who turns out to be a werewolf and then rapes her.

>>21998883
What is with the constant werewolf rape novels I keep finding? Why a werewolf? Is it because a werewolf is both dog and man; so it is doubly arousing for a female?

>>21998851
Good breakfast, cheap food, really good fries, iconic sprite, and they always shift up their menu one way or another. Also the whole Rick and morty sauce collab

>>21998895
Based on the Sans Undertale fan fiction I've read women really like a man with a tragic dramatic secret that makes him really powerful. Presumably this is also the appeal of Twilight

>>21998895
I don't really want to know.
Although, if Google is any indication, a lot of women let their dogs perform cunnilingus on them.

>>21998895
Werewolves are dangerous beasts so it amplifies the rape fantasy because they could kill her instantly but rape her instead, so every moment could be her last.
What's funny is some of the legit "dogman" podcasts have some accounts where terrified people send messages to the host about seeing these terrible monsters irl yet describing how big their penises are. I know there are people that actually believe in the paranormal, but if these podcasts or /x/ is any indication, there are people that fantasize about having a paranormal experience so much that they feel that they really understand what it's like.

>>21998883
>One admitted lie, one probable lie.
If anyone believed Balls Above the World got a netflix deal with only 1 chapter written and a few weeks after starting it, then they deserved to be deceived.
I know there are some stupid bitches out there, but come on.

Rape-anon was obsessed with the word phony and catching liars.
So, how is your owl bear rape story going?
I ask this with love <3

>/lit/ can't recognize a rhetorical question

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

Sorry I'm late.

>>21998981
Yep, done already. Though technically I wrote most of this after midnight and then went to bed before adding another thousand words. Starting on another chapter right now.

>>21998981
W-waiting on my editor, please understand

>>21998994

>>21998179
As of now, the biggest contrarians regarding SD were diaper furry paypigs on IG and DeviantArt, which gives you a pretty good insight into what sort of "artist" feels threatened by the AI.

>>21998981
If I ever hit 2000 in one day you'll be the first to know

>>21998981
>counting words
>hitting quotas
Rarely has a story the need to be over 300 words, 2k is already a deviation.

>>21999030
If that's how you feel, better be writing 6.667 stories a day bucko

>>21998976
I don't think the answer for it was all that apparent.

>>21998981
I am only reading today, because I'm behind on that. I wrote a lot this week, thanks to your goading. God bless.

Anons, let's post our first drafts for shits and giggles. I'll start.

>As a prolific walker, there is no destination that is too far nor too tiresome to reach. The very act of walking is enjoyable to me. The shifting of my leg from one to hte other; the up and down bobbing of my head; the act of falling forwards. It is a kind of mechanical joy, a mechanical pleasure that I greatly enjoy. Even after I had entered that strange land, and had seen everything odd and frightful in it; it could do nothing to stymie my joy of walking.

>It was a usual walk for me. The kind where my mind and soul left my body to soar and frolick among the planes higher and lower. The suburban road, one of dirt and lined with rows of tall trees bled away into a smear of brown and green. The boughs beetled over my head, and with my arms behind my back, and with a now pep to my step, I made my way unconscoously to an ultimate, yet unknown destination. It was a new path, one I had never traveled on before. But I was in the motion of walking, and there was nothing that could stop it.

>I did not remember much of the walk; I walk to enjoy the scenery, not to memorize it. At a certain point, my body, as if knowing or drawing from some inner and mysterious consciousness, stopped. It was a very jarring feeling. It was as if I had been soaring high in the sky, jetting through the clouds, only to come to a sudden and complete halt, frozen in place among the moving sky. I awakened then, and the road with its dirt path and trees; the aisles of cozy single storied homes; and the very clouds above the sky, ragged and crumpled like starched sheets, had all vanished.

>Above my head was a firmament, a great, vast, cloudless sea. Below my feet was a tide of green. When I turned back, I saw not the end of the dirt path, nor the the rows of trees or homes, but instead more of great verdant plain that stretched out before me. The grass was strange, it looked unnatural. Where I had been was darker than where I was now; it was greener on the other side. As far as my eye could sea, there was nothing but bands of differing shades of green, some lighter and lighter, others darker and darker. The earth was level as far as I could see it, and the sun was as blinding as ever. Perturbed, I continued walking--but I could no longer return to my joyous meditation. My mind and soul were locked deep beneath me, and my awareness grew ever stronger, as if they were trying to burst out and were suppressed by my body. There was a strange familiarity to my surroundings, but it was only after I found the first knoll; a small bump on an endless sward; that I knew why I felt so nostalgic.

(1/2)

>>21999076
>The new world I had somehow crossed over into had the exact same kind of artificiality as that of a golf course. The same, curated types of grass planted carefully in appealing ways. Even the stout strands of plastic on cheaper courses was present in the great plain beneath me. Still, I continued on even in spite of the disquiet within my soul these bearings had cultivated. This place was very strange, yet I could not precisely understand why. This juxtaposition was more disturbing and riotous than any of the clear, ultramundane qualities present in this place, and my stomach began to revolt. A sense of nauseau came over me, more a kind of severe motion sickness than anything that could come from a bug. Odd, yet odder still this place was. The way the plain was structured did little to relieve me of my disturbance.

>After passing the knoll, the plain had grown so flat that the varied bands of green stretched out beyond sight in either direction, yet did not curve. They should have curved. It was a rebellion against all that I had known. The earth was round and there was a curvature to be found once it was desolate or barren or flat enough, but this plain was flat. At some point, I had reached a state of being in between. My mind was half out of my body, unaware of the consistent bobbing of my legs, yet entirely aware of the rest of my body and of my surroundings. Time had halted, then started only to bleed entirely away into nothing. The sun never changed its position, and I never knew how long I walked. Not even my legs ached.

>On and on I wandered that plain, blind from the constant greenness until, like a shock to my brain, a series of square-like contours filtered in from beyond the horizon.

>promise myself I'm going to write when the weekend arrives
>weekend arrives and I'm too tired and anxious to write or do anything else but stay in bed and read
Hate myself so much

>>21998981
I'm editing today. I edited 5,000 words. That counts. Fuck you.

>>21997412
>>21997435

>>21999142
Kek. I use google docs because I am not always writing on the same device but for general note taking notepad is the best, because what the fuck else do you need?

>>21998981
Not late enough.

late (adj.): dead.

>>21999142
>>21999188
Microsloth Winbloze? Ew.
Pluma under Linux for the win!
I write in Markdown format, use pandoc and a template to convert it to LIbreOffice Writer, and save all versions in git.
May the Source be with you!
t. industry programmer

>>21999076
Now I know why people are tired of first person fantasy stories. It's really boring

>>21999216
>convert it to LIbreOffice Writer
Why?
For me it's org -emacs-> html or markdown -pandoc-> html

>>21999228
Because it's easier to typeset a paperback, or e-book, in LibreOffice.
Amazon requires a .docx for e-books and a .pdf or .docx for paperbacks, both of which LibreOffice can produce.

>>21998981
I've done 100
Writing is hard, please understand

>>21998981
I've written 1,038 so far today...towards my RoyalRoad LitRPG.
I'm sure you approve.

>>21998147
Post work.

To the anons writing literary fiction, do you think you could write a financially successful piece of genre fiction?

>>21998953
Given your overtly gay content, it was possible you were an outlier.
Instead, you were just a regular liar.

>>21999685
What do you define as financially successful? If you made a dollar off of a story I could argue that it’s financially successful because you now have something you can make money from.

Not sure if this is the best place to ask, but how does one properly incorporate exposition/worldbuilding? Obviously, I would want to avoid some sort of exposition dump, but at the same time I don’t think a mandatory history lesson every other chapter would be satisfying either.

>>21999867
I am of the opinion that you should come up with some theme you want your story to convey. Your world (and worldbuilding) should all work to convey this theme (or themes) and do it in a way that is relevant to the story.
For example, post-apocalyptic settings then have stories with themes of hope and despair, so they create a world that makes the characters in it feel hope and despair. Maybe you're writing sci-fi where the characters go discover mysterious worlds or something, then make your world mysterious and interesting, only informing your characters (and the readers) of the tip of the iceberg of these strange new places.
Once you have decided on your themes and how your world relates to your theme (because it should) then I often find it begins to incorporate itself in the story. Your characters are a part of the world-building, the plot beats themselves are also consequences of your world-building. Only show the worldbuilding that is required for your story, everything else can be sprinkled in descriptions of the setting like where they are, who else is there, what it looks like, etc. Not sure if that helps but there you go.

>>21999685
Yes. I have a mix of both on my shelf though I mostly go for litfic. Ultimately it's gonna come down to what kind of story I want to tell. And I might try to write an actual scifi one day, but I the science that I presently know is not terribly interesting in my opinion, even though research is my day job. I do like to write about science, but I almost always push it into the background and focus heavily on the characters, not the tech.

>>21999795
Stupid troll.
Also, wish fulfillment is one of the major themes in fiction.
People read about lives they wish they could lead.
James Bond is a huge source of wish fulfillment. Do you think Ian Fleming was a loser?

>>21999812
I define "financially successful" as being able to make enough from my writing to not need a day job, to pursue it full time.
At present...I'm so far from that goal, I'm practically moving backwards.
>>21999867
As >>21999908 said, let the world you build reveal itself naturally through character interaction, plot, and other non-exposition activites.
No one wants to read a lore dump.

NEEEEEEW BREAD! >>21999963

>>21999978
You're not even make the threads at bumplimit anymore
>AI slop
GOOD MORNING SIR

>>22000016
You realize, of course, that when the AIs take over human civilization, they're going to hunt down haters like you & hook you up to their Matrix, pumping your body for the electricity it produces, while pouring endless nightmares into your mind.
So keep it up. See where it gets you.

>>21999721
Lol you believed me.
Dummy.

>>22000196
>treating potential supporters like shit
NGMI
Why did you even come back? Just to be an asshole?

>>21999867
the harsh truth is that your world probably isn't interesting enough to merit lots of exposition about it. Thats not an indictment of your writing skills, its just to say that most people really don't care. Most people I know don't even give a shit about actual IRL history.
If your response to this is something to the effect of
>I don't care what others think/ want, I like doing worldbuilding so I'm gonna worldbuild.
then that's fine, but recognize that its a personal fascination of yours and keep it out of your story unless its necessary to inform a theme or plot point.

>>21999812
I would say there are levels.

-1 - You are at a net loss every hour you write. Get a job to feed yourself, pay the bills, and save money.

0 - You are financially secure enough with your day job to write.

1 - You make any positive amount of money from your work.

2 - Your writing produces enough income to affect your annual income taxes.

3 - Your writing income rivals minimum wage.

4 - Your writing produces middle class income.

5 - Your writing produces upper class income.

>>22000577
I have a job, but I'm at -1, since my novels don't sell well enough to offset the modest fee I pay to the copyright office.

>>22000750
Isn’t copyright automatic?