/lit/ - Literature

>>22004981
Let it be known that over 85% of Canadian maple syrup production, nearly 75% of the world's total production, is made by French-Canadians.

>>22005050
Repostan question from other thread

>>22005052
roleplaying in what sense?
it usually lets you wander and be freer in that persona.
putting on a mask is easier than letting yourself out properly.
most of /lit/ probably put one on to socialize, even if they don't realize.

>>22005052
If it's working out well for you why would you want to stop?

Be honest, is getting traditionally published a pipe dream? I'm not talking about making it big, but just being able to BE an author

>>22005086
My country gives a bunch of writers yearly paychecks. One author turned it down and instead wrote a book about why he turned it down.

>>22004933
>What would you compare getting published to?
Getting a job. That's exactly what it is. They expect you to write another book after that and get a contract. But you have to write something and professionally polish it and yourself first to show you are worth hiring, and not a chump that wanted to publish one book. If you can't make a business case for why they should hire you, you don't get the job.

>>22005086
My country is all about nepotism
>Some guy worked at a film studio and made connections
>He get his book published becuase he knows people
>They give him awards despite the book being mid
>He gets a budget and cast to turn his book into a movie and it gets released in theaters
>They give him awards for the movie too
And by they, I mean his pals in the industry.

>>22005026
My French teacher used to tell me about it back when he was in Quebec, he used to take the groups of kids he was teaching in winter with the rest of the school to make them some weird maple syrup treats frozen with snow.
Weirdly enough he was italian.

>>22005086
My wife is regularly published but doesn't make shit for returns. Usually royalty checks are a grand or so. It can happen though

>>22005026
>Maple whisky
Is it sickening? Or is it like mead?

>>22005187
>Weirdly enough he was italian
Not necessarily weird, if he wasnt from Montreal it's pretty normal. Every French-Canadian outside of Montreal must deal with winter by finding a way to enjoy it, skiing is a huge part of our coping mecanism, and hot maple pouring on snow is one of the comfiest snack to have while doing so. Similarly, since maple syrup is pretty huge here, many schools organize trips to them for kids.
Outside of a few places in Ontario all maple syrup production pretty much comes from rural Quebec.

>>22005187
I've actually had this in school before. It's really good. It's like a maple flavoured caramel that's just solid enough to stick to the end of a popsicle stick. Would recommend.

>>22005279
It's not sickly sweet, no, but it's a lot heavier, smokier and long lasting than mead is. It feels like a whiskey with honey touches over cinnamon.
I'd take it over most other liquor, but not over a good whiskey. It does work great as a cooking ingredient.

where can i get feedback on a poem/song and be able to delete it afterwards?

>>22005026
That's because they know how to set up a cartel

>>22005052
okay let's roleplay. I'll be the boy and you be the girl :3

>>22005156
oh I see you live in america, too

Can I be a good writer if I don't really feel compelled to read all that much or enjoy it too much?

>>22005492
No.

>>22005492
No, but maybe you just need to find the stuff you love.

>>22005379
>and be able to delete it afterwards
Just use pastebin you autist.

>>22005518
>>22005534
Why is it just no? Have you considered telling me yes instead? Is there an example of a good author who doesn't read?

>>22004981
Nice OP!
>I would destroy an appropriately freckled redhead
>As long as she does not have too many moles though
Right, writing...yes...
Two and a bit chapters edited today.

>>22005567
It's like asking can you be a good carpenter if you've never seen furniture before or don't know what wood is.

Beep beep beep the thrumping of the hare drum. It rolled over us in waves. Oh im sorry. I did not explain who us was. We were here. There. Everywhere. Myself and my companions. I am Delanastrios and I am the last. We journeyed east. West. North. And found nothing. It was as if a world yet made stretched out all before us. The old treatises and tracts had nothing to offer. God is dead! Or perhaps has not yet been born. I am knocked prone a mind bereft of wanders. Selna to the right of me, a strong woman. She left me abandoned in my fetters. Locked away in the university library. I kept my head down. The university I aspired to one day be a professor of, an esteemed position making minimum wage. I could not let it be known. I felt alone. Ohohoho if only. Selna glances up from her studies. I avert my eyes. Unrequited. I cannot even rise up. Not even my manhood cut down in infancy could rise. The art of cutting an infants manhood is a barbaric practice. I began to writhe my fingers. Weaving an aetherial noose. May the God's watch over me. How else may I get through this dimmable thing. Selna a worthless freshman tryst now being looked over for the position I so coveted. As it turns out nobody cares about my research into the Egyptians and my comparisons to the native American Cree. I could only bemused myself like a stuffed ox mounted over a mantelpiece overlooking an old man in a smoking jacket surrounded by books he cannot care to read. Tips and vulva and it always comes back to that. First they cut my manhood before it can ever rise and then they let them inherit the meek. The boys in the lounge will have a day with me im sure. Tesseract....tesseract intersect... why shy boy boy boy. I'm a poor boy. I was raised in a predominately black neighborhood. I grew to resent them. But when I went to school I was taught how wrong I was. The middle aged man making $35,000 a year thumbed his nose at me and peered kindly through his horn rimmed glasses. I've been in wars he said. Wars on the streets of Seattle. Washingtonian Skirmishes. I've crossed the rio de la Munde. This thing you're doing here? The man gestures around his own office as if it were my harkonian machinations. It won't work. I have been pepper sprayed. What have you been? I did not know where I have been let alone what I have been. I stared silently into his muddled eyes. The realms and realms within under his curly hair dyed Saturn red were pulling me under like a freight train on the way to Chicago. The man's marble pillars could be my own undoing. I must prod his manhood. Please him as it were. Such as it is. I nodded. And I abandoned Selna the cross legged hole and abandoned myself the curtained half man. I was now the professors. And I would be until I could please a manhood as much as Selna managed through aeonic pulsing. May the Gods have mercy on his red velvet capote. I am the ball that rolls asunder. The bull has cum.

Beep beep beep the thrumping of the hare drum. It rolled over us in waves. Oh im sorry. I did not explain who us was. We were here. There. Everywhere. Myself and my companions. I am Delanastrios and I am the last. We journeyed east. West. North. And found nothing. It was as if a world yet made stretched out all before us. The old treatises and tracts had nothing to offer. God is dead! Or perhaps has not yet been born. I am knocked prone a mind bereft of wanders. Selna to the right of me, a strong woman. She left me abandoned in my fetters. Locked away in the university library. I kept my head down. The university I aspired to one day be a professor of, an esteemed position making minimum wage. I could not let it be known. I felt alone. Ohohoho if only. Selna glances up from her studies. I avert my eyes. Unrequited. I cannot even rise up. Not even my manhood cut down in infancy could rise. The art of cutting an infants manhood is a barbaric practice. I began to writhe my fingers. Weaving an aetherial noose. May the Gods watch over me. How else may I get through this damnable thing. Selna a worthless freshman tryst now being looked over for the position I so coveted. As it turns out nobody cares about my research into the Egyptians and my comparisons to the native American Cree. I could only bemuse myself like a stuffed ox mounted over a mantelpiece overlooking an old man in a smoking jacket surrounded by books he cannot care to read. Tits and vulva and it always comes back to that. First they cut my manhood before it can ever rise and then they let them inherit the meek. The boys in the lounge will have a day with me im sure. Tesseract....tesseract intersect... why shy boy boy boy. I'm a poor boy. I was raised in a predominately black neighborhood. I grew to resent them. But when I went to school I was taught how wrong I was. The middle aged man making $35,000 a year thumbed his nose at me and peered kindly through his horn rimmed glasses. I've been in wars he said. Wars on the streets of Seattle. Washingtonian Skirmishes. I've crossed the rio de la Munde. This thing you're doing here? The man gestures around his own office as if it were my harkonian machinations. It won't work. I have been pepper sprayed. What have you been? I did not know where I have been let alone what I have been. I stared silently into his muddled eyes. The realms and realms within under his curly hair dyed Saturn red were pulling me under like a freight train on the way to Chicago. The man's marble pillars could be my own undoing. I must prod his manhood. Please him as it were. Such as it is. I nodded. And I abandoned Selna the cross legged hole and abandoned myself the curtained half man. I was now the professor's. And I would be until I could please a manhood as much as Selna managed through aeonic pulsing. May the Gods have mercy on his red velvet capote. I am the ball that rolls asunder. The bull has cum.

>>22005567
First, there is a nut-and-bolts craft to making your story nice to read on the sentence level. You develop this by reading a lot of (good) text.
Then to invent and structure an interesting story you need to be familiar with a lot of stories. (And if you only get your stories from movies and such you'll probably end up writing stories that don't work on the page, focusing on those elements that are only impressive on the screen and through the speakers, and neglecting fine descriptions that work through text but could never be put on a screen.)
Why do you want to write if you don't like to read?

'Mark are you listening to me
Mark glances up from his Apple laptop towards his longtime girlfriend Alice. They had been together for 6 years. They owned a dog so it was official. Alice tapped her foot
'Yeah
'I just don't feel like you're taking this all in'
Mark had to tone down the Beach Boys' best : Pet Sounds on his Apple Airbuds connect to his laptop via Bluetooth. He made an unconscious expression. The face of an alcoholic whose been told its last call.
'Im taking it in.'
'I don't think you are. He's dead' Mark's
Mark soured. He had made a bad move on his copy of the Bhaalspawn saga macOS edition. He would have to redo ten minutes of progress. He began to navigate his group of adventurers a second time. Taking exagerrated care around any traps and paying close attention to his spells.
'Mark!' Alice briefly lost her patience with the bespectacled man in front of her. He was wearing the nice cotton Oxford button down she had bought him for his birthday, but he had allowed himself to go out wrinkled and unkempt. She briefly lost her composure in the Starbucks lounge before regaining it. Mark glanced over the top of his white computer before looking back down.
'Mark seriously. We need to face this together.'
'Why?'
'He's your father.'
'Exactly he's mine.' Mark made pointed eye contact with her before going back to distributing his characters ability points, he had leveled up.
'Is that how you're going to be about this?'
'Nigger.'
Alice flinched and looked around in embarrassment.
'What do you want? He was a bastard. Are you going to leave me over this? I have friends on 4chan. And I can masturbate. Soon they'll be sexbots and Ill be happy.'
Alice held her head in her hands. Mark always had a problem with volume control. Some people glanced at them. The teenagers behind the counter smirked. She sat in silence. Carefully folding and unfolding her hands. Her white Toms lightly tapped the floor. She glanced down at the pink upside down visage on her chest. Kirby. A cute smiling Visage. Slightly stretched due to the weight she had trouble losing since she gained it in college. She sighed.
'I have to go to work. Can we talk at home?'
Mark didn't make a sound. Alice got up, she had to go drive for Lyft for nine hours.

>>22005572
>>22005609
I like reading sometimes. I have a book I really like. But nothing really grabs me. Likely because of my low intelligence. I don't dislike reading i just wouldn't feel comfortable saying I'm a Reader. But I enjoy writing.

>>22005618
You won't be a good writer without reading a lot, but it's fine to be a bad writer if you enjoy it.
What's the book you really like? Which other books have you tried?

>>22005623
make me a good writer without reading right now

>>22002959
>If people want to use Google to become intellectually lazy, that's their funeral. Sloth is a deadly sin for a reason.
Taking the intellectual high ground is a risky affair. People are biologically built to seek the path of least necessary effort. No one is immune. Your brain won't ask your permission before conforming to patterns that reduce its work. You have to stay constantly vigilant and challenge yourself to leave your comfort zone, to not be crippled by "tools". Most people aren't even conscious of this and it's going to cause massive problems before long (it already is).

>>22004981
Both float inside this perverse Ouroboros of excruciation, alienated from the communal fuckfest of pain. Trying to contain her fear by focusing on her anger, the girl asks the beast spitting disgust and fearful of mentioning her doubt concerning Christ’s involvement with the Deep State when there certainly are many conspiracies still to be unraveled:
– How are we to proceed now, faggot?

>>22005492
Doubtful.

https://youtu.be/WVpaPFTWuS0

Have any of you ever told a friend or family member that you were basing a character in your book on them? How did they react?

I told one of my childhood friends this when we were teenagers, fell out of contact with her, and recently ran into her for the first time in years. After hearing I was still writing, she mentioned it and now wants to read my book. Problem is I figured I'd never see this girl again and the character's evolved past her, becoming one of my mains with plenty of flaws and drama. Should I show it to her even though she may react badly and want me to change things, or just send her a copy when it's already published?

>>22005903
Just explain that the character started out inspired by her but it took in a life of its own and is not a commentary of your thoughts about her.

>>22005903
I never tell people this because none of my characters are solely based off of a person I know, but may have parts of their life, or they way they look or the way they talk. One of my first protags is based on my dad, but his character motivation only matches up with my dad when the protag is younger. Because the character goes through a very different life, his motivations change. So I don't know if my dad will ever read it but I figure my mom will and realize that I used him as an example.

>>22005026
>to be french
I would expect nothing less from a nation with a pot leaf 'ponst its livery.

>>22005903
something my friend said inspired me to write a short story, but not about her. when I told her she inspired it she was delighted.

>>22005903
I once told my former fiance that I was basing a character upon her; the character was a grotesquely fat woman who was called "stinky arse" and when she walked she would fart, and in the book wheneevrshe wouldspeak she would drool and slaver upon herself, and her breath stank, and she could only speak in short bursts of grunting profanity, and she was always in the wrong and she always thought she was in the right, and in the book she would be slain on a train track when her character had absconded from a mental hospital having kidnapped a baby from a pushchair.

Anyone else need a cheap editor? My life savings is tied up in a lawsuit and I'm going to end up on the street

Who the fuck doesn't self-edit these days?

This will be my last essay for a bit as i return to fiction posting. Thoughts and feedback welcome as always.

I Have No Life, and I Must LARP
https://tookys.substack.com/p/i-have-no-life-and-i-must-larp

>>22006355
RIP, anon. Best of luck with your divorce settlement.

>>22006668

I'm about to go to the meeting of a local writing club, and it's a free trial before I have to pay $50/month. What can I expect? It's in a big city in a majority white neighborhood.

Serious question: is it a bad idea to get into writing if you haven’t read much? I’ve honestly read maybe 100 books in my lifetime but I’ve felt the urge to get into writing as I’ve always had a desire to create, and music isn’t working out and Hollywood screenwriting is too hard to break into. But I haven’t read very much and honestly used to not like reading much at all. I’ve grown to highly enjoy it though over the past couple years. Anyway am I going to make myself look foolish trying to publish my own fiction?

>>22006743
writing is genetic, were your parents intelligent? there are some fields that are not worth pursuing depending on your current incarnation

>>22006743
with this attitude you shouldn't try anything because you'll convince yourself that you just weren't cut out for it without putting any effort into improving
just start collecting funko pops already

>>22006761
I’m fairly intelligent id say as with my parents (most my family are engineers or business owners). My mom died quite young so I don’t know if she ever actually completed school, me and my dad/family don’t talk about her much, but my dad is pretty goddamn smart especially with math

>>22006769
We’ll I’m doing it either way I just kinda wanna clue into how foolish I’m gonna look

>>22006743
>is it a bad idea to get into writing if you haven’t read much?
Yes, kill yourself.

>>22006504
Everyone does, but it'll still not be good enough. A good professional editor is a thing and only the craziest will be willing to spend $6k to pay for an editor on fivver, but are you getting an actual editor or some intern monkey running it through grammary?

>>22006777
>but my dad is pretty goddamn smart especially with math

all right, you are probably capable

>>22006786
When I get the balls to do it I will lol

>>22004981
this 2d image induces lust within my loins

How do I into concrete writing?
How do I describe a tasty dish if I don't know fuck all about cuisine of the time period I'm writing? I research and research but I feel like I learn nothing.

>>22006859
Go somewhere and eat it

>>22006859
You're not researching properly then. Just buy a period-correct cookbook and make something if it's that critical (It almost certainly isn't, but could be fun).

Anons, how would you describe your own prose, and who do you take the most inspiration from?

>>22007037
nic lang if he had average IQ and not ability to anything but meandering descriptions of introspective thoughts

>>22007063
no ability to write anything*

>>22005570
>AI shart
kys

>>22006761
Bro don't say this. I come from a long line of bakers

>>22006504
I do a lot of my own editing, but the final two passes I leave to pros to make sure it had the desired effect by a copyedit and properly proofread too. Absolutely will not do any high level edits.

>>22006706
I went and they were locked so I have to go tomorrow... bros...

>>22007074
>>22006786
I hope you write a nice day too!
>>22006355
I would anon but i'm writing for fun right now and my prose would probably make you melon ball your eyes out anyway.

Would it be alright to upload short stories on Royal Road? Don't think I'm good enough to do a long story yet, so I reckon I should stick to short stories, but I don't know if people read one-shots.
To be completely honest, I know nothing about Royal Road and am only thinking about where I could upload my writing so it gets some exposure and criticism.

>>22007193
RR is not great for anything other then lit-rpg or cultivation unless you already have a following. Using coomer art as your cover might get you some views but any deep and meaningful shit you write will go over the vast majority of readers heads. As for feedback that isnt "I like this character" or "I don't like that character"? then forget about it.

>>22005086
No, but it seems that way because of low quality noise that gets constantly submitted to publishing houses. Simply not making mistakes in grammar, spelling, or formatting, and actually making sure your manuscript matches what they're looking for when you submit it, puts you above at least 90% of the competition. Then having some bare basics writing skills (some okay narrative devices, coherent plotting, characterization, non-shitty dialogue etc.) puts you up another 9%. If you're serious and educated, you're already in the top 1%. Then it's just a matter of being that much better, or being persistent and far-reaching enough that you eventually get picked.
Source: I've seen and reviewed the raw pile of noise that gets submitted to a typical publisher. It's really, really bad. There's nothing more motivating than seeing exactly what you are competing with and realizing you're already more than halfway there.

>>22007307
tell us about the slush pile, anon. i want to believe i will make it

>>22007279
Ah... Oh well. That's unfortunate.
On a side note
>lit-rpg or cultivation
What is this bullshit? I have never heard of this before finding Royal road. I don't get the appeal. Why not just play a rpg..?

>>22007307
Hey bro, I have some shit i'd like evaluated. You can give me a thumbs up or down I'm not asking for actual work. If you put down a throaway email I'll send you a page. I can paypal you 10 bucks or a game on steam or something idc.

>>22007345
What's so hard to understand about people growing up playing lots of games enjoy reading books with lots of game elements involved?

>>22007345
the only people who are willing to pay for art are degenerates with specific fetishes. this has always been true

I cannot write 2,000 words per day.

>>22007380
that's fine. i can write far over 2000 words a day but i choose not to. what's important is that you keep developing your prose skills/literary toolbox and discover what you actually like writing about.

>>22007376
I have spent some time looking at the top-earners on RR and most of the time it's just them having lots of cliffhangers and you can subscribe to their Patreon to read ahead. Hardly anyone is making money without offering this benefit by just the merit of their writing.

>>22007380
I bet you could if you got more comfortable deleting around that many words in the editing process. Removing words is just as essential as writing the words

>>22007374
I assume what people enjoyed about video games was the fact that they are interactive. Why would you care about the game elements if you can't interact with them? You know what would improve a game? If I didn't have to play it! You're just then reading a made up let's play of a non-existent game, but to be fair, let's plays videos are very popular and I don't see a point in them either.

>multiple university essays overdue worth most of my grade
>spending time writing
It's over

>>22007380
whats important is not words written per day but weeks/months to production of a story
you can write 4k words a day but not finish a single story

>>22007430
You don't want to spend a ton of money on university courses and end up without a degree. Even if it's not something you're really interested in, finsh what you started.

>>22007417
They get the enjoyment of reading a book combined with the dopamine rush of levelling, lots of big numbers, weapon power ups, one man vs the world, lots of fighting etc. You don't have to like it but surely you can understand it.

>>22007386
thanks anon. by reading (and reflecting) a lot I really am finding the lifebood of my own writing. I just wish I could make it flow out easier.
>>22007404
My drafts are rough and dirty. The last short story I finished, I deleted 75% of it and took it in an entirely new direction that better suited my theme. My issue is not perfectionism paralysis (anymore), it's just sitting down and actually writing. I keep blaming my day job but I don't write nearly as much on the weekends as I want to.
>>22007439
I have trouble finishing stories unless there's some deadline from an external force (like a submission cutoff). I want to get better.

>>22007575
>I have trouble finishing stories unless there's some deadline from an external force
You can always braindump everything into the paper without self-editing (if you have it all planned out) or get a writing group/mentor to simulate that external force

>>22007575
>>22007603
same anon, to follow on this one way I braindump (which might take some time for you to get used to) is to speak everything into a microphone and then use openai's whisper to create a transcript of it all. That way I don't have to set down and write, I can just speak into the microphone

>>22007380
>I cannot write 2,000 words per day.

I cannot write 2,000 words per day,
I cannot do it, as I say.

For when my fingers go to type
I all at once find I'm on my trike,
and that my attention span has wavered,
I return home at once and munch on Quavers,
seven hours thereby pass,
I pass the time not touching grass,
and then I find myself fit to write
and all at once I'm back on trike.

I cannot write 2,000 words per day,
I cannot do it, as I say.

>>22007380
I'm hard-pressed to write 1,000.
I also don't edit, I insist on getting right on the first try.

>>22007709
>I don't edit, I insist on getting it right on the first try
I go back and make iterative drafts of my bullet point outline. Fells good.

>tfw nobody critiques your work

>>22007752
what's your work? also nobody replied to my post about going to a writer's club, feelsbadman

>>22006706
It's gonna be mostly middle aged women and maybe some insufferable hipsters

>>22007628
I tried text-to-speech once and I got a lot on paper in a single sitting. I should do that again, because the brain definitely filters less when speaking aloud vs. typing.

>>22007757
>>22006706
Why the fuck would you pay for a writing group? Unless someone their runs a publishing company just join or start a free one

There are billions of writer groups online in discord and even city based ones, paying for one sounds like a huge bullshit scam

>>22006706

>>22007380
Honestly I get it, work has been eating a lot of my time and once I get home I'm too tired to crank up the word count
Though I do manage to write about 1000 during lunch break if I already know what i want to do
Don't let the amount keep you down though, try to focus on what you want to do that day in particular

>>22007788
> There are billions of writer groups online in discord and even city based ones
And what are the links to find them?

>>22007777
Holy absolute base, checked

>>22006211
she's your former fiance because now you're married, I take it

>>22007798
google [your shithole city] writers group

if you live in some small shit hole city that doesn't have any then move or find small discords or join one for the closest major city. Also if you do genre fic then you can search for that speciifcally. meetup.com also has a bunch. but if you're too retarded to look for yourself your ngmi anyways. Also don't join a group that does critiques until you actually have a finished draft, it is a trap to start have crits done before the work is done as you will never stop editing.

>>22007772
And yes this is the writers group experience, also a bunch of retarded boomer old men who are all divorced

>>22006706
mandatory trigger warnings and everyone is going have pronouns (ze/zim/zer)

is me being a slav sperg and writing in my second language, english, already enough of a reason for me to never make it?

>>22007961
Depends on what counts as "making it"

>>22007963
make enough money so that the only job im doing is writing while living in a commie block studio apartment and eating fish fingers every day

>>22007973
Possible but unlikely and nerve-racking, I think, same as if you were a native speaker

>>22007063
Sounds like schlock

>>22007961
Hate to be negative but yeah. Even the most competent ESLs who have spoken English for decades struggle to match native speakers in writing. Just write in your first language, at least you have shot. There's a reason why you can count nonEnglish speakers who "made it" in writing in English on one hand.

>>22007961
>>22007963
>>22008128
>for
Retarded demoralizers. Plenty of famous great english authors had English as their second language

>>22008162
Name 6.

>>22008162
Name em. What age did they learn?

>>22008128
To go the other way, since prose matters much less on places like RR, I would say it's not that unlikely a competent ESL could make a living if going all out on pandering and marketing. And is good with story and character, even if sentences are clunky. Isn't the author of Mother of Learning (rank 1 by rating on RR) ESL?

>>22007973
how much cheaper is it there? how much USD a month do you need?

>>22008128
That's a good point, though if a book is succesfull in one language it wouldn't be strange to hire an english-speaking editor to have it fit the foreign market. It might also be seen as a good investment, if it already has a following in one language to open up to a larger audience
Of course, that implies a degree of success in your mother tongue, so i would say striving for that first of all is a fair starting point

>>22008193
I agree, he should focus on his own language if success finds him, his work can be translated and reach a wider audience.

>>22008008
Possibly but it's the only thing I enjoy writing, I fucking hate dialog, characters, stories. Anything that makes a good book, actuially.

>>22008203
You clearly hate proofreading too

>>22008212
based

>>22008212
I work for a living, some tiippos are the price of doing business

>>22008171
>>22008172
Joseph Conrad learned in his 20s
Voltaire in his late 20s
Kahlil Gibran wasn't even educated at all until he was a teenager.
Cioran barely spoke French until his late 20s
Samuel Beckett learned French in college

Nabokov learned English young but still not his first
Pessoa as well
Kerouac as well

>None of my beta readers have gotten back to me after a month
>When I checked in with them, most haven't made it more than a couple chapters in
>Ask if it was too slow to start or boring
>"No, it's good I'm just busy"

>>22008255
Link that shit and I'll give you my honest opinion.

>>22008255
When I do beta reading I tell them it's not a favor, but they're volunteering to work with me. And if they don't give me feedback by the deadline I may consider not working with them again. It's not even personal. But you have to make them understand that not giving prompt feedback may delay the release.

>>22005156
america?
>>22005086
it probably can happen if you write something with the exact subject an agent happens to be looking for, but if it takes a year to write a novel then it's a matter of luck. they don't care about quality. they're narcissists. an agent from georgia who likes horses and the 1920s will only want novels set in georgia, the 1920s, or which feature a horse. it's them them them and they make the decisions for everyone. unprofessional

>send novel queries to agents
>not a single request, nothing but ghosting or form rejections
>write novel-style fanfiction and post it online
>everyone loves it, stats are going crazy
So, agents wouldn't know a good book if it raped their mother?

>>22008334
There aren't any agents that get inspired by talking with authors that have new visions anymore? They just want to contract people that will write books exactly about what they want? That's wild.
How do we even get new genres or movements if they won't take a risk and be utterly robotic, accepting premises like an algorithm would? I swear I've heard some think tanks can't even function without consulting a super computer anymore.

Any resources on dialogue? I.e., not having the 16-year-old and the 70-year-old speak the same.

>>22008342
Or maybe fanfiction readers don't. Fanfiction is mostly read and written by teenagers, someone who takes writing seriously is gonna be a big fish

>>22008342
I laws weren't so strict we'd have a fan fiction section in brick and mortar bookstores.

>>22008348
A 70 years old could speak like a 16 years old, but he'd use words and expressions from his generation.

>>22008342
I wrote an original word on AO3 and random comments said it was good enough to be published. Probably one of my greatest accomplishments in life.

>>22008346
I'm getting turned down primarily because what I write is antiquity period historical, and agents only want shit set in the fluffy dress era because they like that one author who writes books about seducing a duke. I've had multiple agents who accept historical fiction turn me down because "it's too ancient". Doesn't matter how well I've written it, doesn't matter if fantasy novels are basically medieval/antiquity plus magic and people love them and don't think they're "too hard to read", doesn't matter if plenty else set in this period has done well in markets, the recent trends are hunger games and twilight and that is all they want. Now, if I were writing something that was like downtown abbey or whatever fucking TV series they're obsessed with lately, I'd get published no problem. If I was writing a myth rewrite (song of achilles etc) I'd get published no problem, even though that is MORE ANCIENT than my preferred timeperiod. It's so frustrating to have the door slammed in my face. Everything moves in trends. Notice lately how many greek myth rewrites there have been. So it's a fucking lottery.

What the shit for brains don't realize is the one who makes the biggest money is the FIRST one to write for a given trend, IE the people they're turning down in droves until one lucky fucker makes it in. They're all risk-avoidant to an insane level. And they don't get that readers dont' want 20 nearly identical novels and this trend-obsession is why people don't bother reading books.

You can see it in titles. Books with similar titles come in waves. Recently it was "the [profession's] daughter" or "the [profession's] wife". Now it's them bastardizing greek mythology and the iliad into feminism-approved retellings.

>>22008350
agents are bottom feeding, nepotistic pond scum

>>22008367
Meant work, not word

>>22008350
People who read fanfiction are the same demographic who actually payfag for books. Mostly young adult women.

>>22007757
If nobody critiques my work does that mean it's just that bad

>>22008383
That's really stubborn. I wanted to write something set in ancient times write when we had more of a historic record, basically after the Bronze Age recorded history becomes a lot easier to get into. But that's really frustrating because I can look at Achaemenid Persian fiction, the Empire right before the Greeks and Romans, and there is basically NOTHING new. That is a crying shame, especially considering it was an ancient empire that put women in military general positions which I guess is something they don't really care about. I'm not gonna do that as my first release but like hell of if I'm gonna let a pencil neck agent tell me we shouldn't even try. That wasn't even gonna be the focus of the novel but even talking about it in an interview or a blurb can turn heads.
I agree with you, it's really risk averse behavior but I've heard many agents and publishers say it's impossible to even tell when something will be a best seller. They apparently just go with the flow or something?

>>22008422
Primarily I read things based on setting, I want to experience different settings. But everything is just generic murrrka now, or else milktoast fantasy. I'd want to read something set in Vienna, or ancient china, or Napoleon-era France, or modern Hong Kong. We can't have shit. When I look at books set in more ancient periods all the results are old, nothing in recent decades has been allowed to print if the author wasn't already established. I love stuff like Julian or Memoirs of Hadrian and we can't have it anymore. And books aren't being translated into English that often because the english language market is bloated enough. We're getting a lot of modern J-lit because more-a-cummies made it popular but we aren't getting anything else international.

The only timeperiods these whores want to publish are modern, ww2, or 1920s. It drives me up a wall. Ironically the only genre that presses limits is detective fiction. Steven saylor publishes a detective series set in ancient rome, for example. And he can get away with it but we can't.

>>22008393
post some of it here with the details changed. sometimes editors are just busy.

>>22008459
I did

>>22007404
Removing words is not essential. If you have to remove that many words, stop writing.

I remove only a minimum number of words from my writings. I call it "drive-by writing" and I am happy with it. Stop removing words from your work. Just get it right the first time and move on.

>>22008464
is it this? >>22005590

>>22008458
I wish you were joking, I really do. But I've seen "historic fiction" category in bookstores and it's all WWII. Especially WOMYN in WWII. And the rest is women in historic America. How are people not all WWII experts at this point? Who even cares? It's all old hat now. And yeah it's like we're not even allowed to write about anything else.
>here is your historic fiction section
>it's about a conflict that only happened within about five years over thousands of years of human history (even farther if you are creative about prehistoric)
>what? you want more? why?

>>22008476
Yeah

>>22008495
before I review the content, the formatting alone is challenging to get through. i understand why you were rejected out of hand. there aren't even paragraphs and a lot are cut-off sentences. you aren't an established writer that can experiment with formatting; you need proper punctuation and apostrophes.

>>22005590
it's rambly and unfocused. maybe suited to a drug induced haze somewhere in the middle of the book. as an opener, or as a stand alone, it's simply annoying

How do I write homoerotica if I'm not gay?

>>22008492
WWII embodies the present day creation myth. evil nazis, old white europeans powers becoming broken, america ascendant, jews becoming sacrosanct through martyrdom. that era is soon to end, god willing

>>22008492
This desu.
>The Nazi's ___
>The ___ Librarian
>Churchill's ____
>The ____'s Daughter
Just keep your manuscript at hand for when the tides shift or you get established and then can publish what you want.

>>22008537
Summon Jason Bryan to the thread and ask him. I think all the porn he did was straight.

>>22008520
How the fuck is it annoying? This is literally how.my.book opens

>>22008492
Yet people call me crazy when I say 90% of agents are jewish.

>>22008543
>this is literally how my book opens
I sure hope not. You have a couple issues on a fundamental level. The scene allegedly takes place in the university library - but it definitely doesn't. We're anywhere but the university library. Selna is theoretically important, but I don't give a shit about her I don't know anything about her whatsoever. Oh, and the mc is a circumcision victim and partial homosexual?
Who, what, where, when, why. Please ground the reader before you decide to take flights of fancy.

>>22008547
Then surely they would want something set in Ancient Persian times. Because the Persians freed them from Babylon and helped them restore Jerusalem. Surely they would be down for such a book. Right?

>>22008558
the current jew mythos is WWII based

>>22008556
Not him but thats a really boring middle school English teacher way of doing things. Very soulless. It doesn't matter if we care about Selna yet. Merely that we know the narrator cares about Selna and has hangups over her.

What are some good writers with "understated" prose?

>>22008574
he doesn't like Selna. he's jealous of her because she's being considered for a position he wants, but he did sleep with her (decades?) ago - and probably couldn't perform because he was subjected to the blood ritual as an infant. I don't care if you say it's a middle school english critique, the opening of the book should ground the reader. There are chronological issues that inhibit the reader from jumping in.

>>22008593
It already grounds the reader. Stop disrespecting my work. That guy worked really hard on it. You are limiting creativity. Because you refuse to engage with it. As a grad student that passage really speaks to me

>>22008598
>Stop disrespecting my work. That guy worked really hard on it.
based schizophrenic

if I read through /wg/ every day, would I become a better writer?

>>22008520
How can I improve it?can you rewrite some of it?

oh god. i made a mistake giving him a chance huh?
yeah. your work is bad. maybe worse than bad -- it doesn't work on any level. it has nothing to do with being historical fiction and everything to do with not being constructed properly as a work of fiction. even experimental fiction understands the principles it's playing with. you don't even know what fiction is

>>22008609
quite the opposite actually

>>22005026

>>22008558
They did nothing but scheme against those Persians who treated them so well, and in the end sold them out to the Muslim invaders. Sorry to tell you. He who aids the jew is stabbed in the back. No wonder they don't want to publish historical fiction.

>>22005616
Pls respond

>>22008614
Ye. paragraphs do wonders
>I am Delanastrios and I am the last. A virginal world stretched out all before us. We journeyed east, west, north and found nothing. The old treatises and tracts had nothing to offer.
> Selna sits to the right of me. A strong woman. She left me abandoned in my fetters, locked away in the university library. The university I aspired to one day be a professor of, an esteemed position making minimum wage. I could not let it be known that I felt alone. Ohohoho, if only. Selna glances up from her studies and I avert my eyes. My head sinks down. I cannot rise. Not even my manhood cut down in infancy could rise. The art of cutting an infants manhood is a barbaric practice. I began to writhe my fingers, to weave an aetherial noose. How else may I get through this damnable thing! Selna, a worthless freshman tryst, now being looked over for the position I so coveted.
> Nobody cares about my research into the Egyptians and my comparisons to the native American Cree. I could only bemuse myself like a stuffed ox mounted over a mantelpiece overlooking an old man in a smoking jacket surrounded by books he cannot care to read. Tits and vulva and it always comes back to that. The boys in the lounge will have a day with me im sure.
> Tesseract....tesseract intersect... why shy boy boy boy. First they cut my manhood before it could ever rise, then they let them inherit the meek. I'm a poor boy. I was raised in a predominately black neighborhood. I grew to resent them, but when I went to school I was taught how wrong I was. The middle aged man making $35,000 a year thumbed his nose at me and peered through his horn rimmed glasses. I've been in wars, he said. Wars on the streets of Seattle. Washingtonian Skirmishes. I've crossed the rio de la Munde. This thing you're doing here? The man gestures around his own office as if it were my harkonian machinations. It won't work. I have been pepper sprayed. What have you been?
> I did not know where I have been let alone what I have been. I stared silently into his muddled eyes. The realms and realms within under his curly hair dyed Saturn red were pulling me under. The man's marble pillars would be my undoing. I must prod his manhood. Please him as it were. Such as it is.
> I abandoned Selna the cross legged hole and abandoned myself the curtained half man. I was now the professor's, and I will be until I could please a manhood as much as Selna managed through aeonic pulsing. May the Gods have mercy on his red velvet capote. I am the ball that rolls asunder. The bull has cum.

>>22008637
Are there documents about that? I know in the book of Ezra, Persian officials confront Ezra who is a priest-historian at the time and reveal to him a Samaritan conspiracy to destroy the country, also while there are people in his own court conspiring to betray the city itself, all while attempting to translate into Aramaic their history of evil. Ezra basically has a mental breakdown because he is completely surrounded by evil, when he grew up believing that it Babylon's fault they got enslaved. So there is absolutely a precedent for corruption and betrayal in the region. It happened to both the Northern and Southern kingdoms (Israel and Judah respectively) but also the Neo Assyrians and Babylon as well.

I am a ways away from that project, but I'd like any perspective I can get from Persians and Samaritans. For now I only have Samaritan scriptures and some Persian textbooks. I do not know which Jewish ones will even be helpful to understand the period besides Ezra. And the books of Esdras are fairly controversial outside of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox but perhaps looking into anyways.

>>22008662
This just makes me sound racist. You have destroyed my art

>>22008634
I have heard, in Candia, they mint their money upon thin wafers of maple syrup which radiates when held up to the sun like translucent gold.

>>22008637
Do not worry yourself, citizen. One day we will free the jews of this terrible curse and return them to their native Kolkhis where they may live as Georgians, Alanians, Armenians and Byzantine Greeks once more.

>>22008671
It was probably al tabari I read about it in, as most of the Persian documents from that timeperiod were for obvious reasons unavailable.
You could also of course read about Josephus. I mean, as soon as you poke your head into primary sources there is no dearth of evidence of judaic treachery. No wonder they destroyed education and made primary sources all but unavailable to the average person. Anyone who studied history in earnest could not help but become antisemitic.

>>22008662
much better but still schizo ramblings

>>22008688
I dont understand. Are you saying Josephus does or does not have history about treachery in Achaemenid Persia? I will look into al Tabari.

>>22008703
not in persia but he does a legendary job documenting other judaic treachery. wonderful read, i highly recommend it. al tabari is mostly focused on the arab side but you'll find delicious details in the background of fucked up shit jews did.

>>22008655
It's pretty bad. The characters and the situation feel extremely contrived. There's nothing compelling or inventive in it, just a gesturing towards 'bleak internet consumer culture' as if that alone would offer something to the reader.

Compare with pic related, which tackles a similar vibe but which is focused and has style and knows where its emotional current lies.

>>22008753
this pic is a better story than anything posted here today

>>22007332
>slush pile

>>22007345
LitRPG readers don't have any friends to play RPGs with, so they read about people that play RPGs.
It's like "reaction videos" on YouTube.
Our young generation is F-U-C-K-E-D up.

>>22008753
What does contrived means here

>>22008776
>story with no dialog or any character interaction is easy to write
wow really?

>>22008753
How is it bad? I think it's good

>>22004981
Do you think AI can narrate my novel now? I’m using ElevenLabs
https://voca.ro/1frNgE0pwQmy

>>22008881
I need to make a Cormac McCarthy bot to read McCarthyposts.

>>22008891
https://voca.ro/1jcTHYsXr8uc
No doubt

>>22008800
nta, but contrived in this sense means the characters aren't acting like humans would, given their situation. Mark may be, but not the other one, the nagging one. And really Mark isn't, either - he's playing games on his laptop, okay normal, but they're in starbucks for some reason. He clearly doesn't make any money and he's mooching off her and he has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. That girl would be gone in less than 2 seconds flat. Now if he were some fuckboi I could see her sticking around, but he isn't, he's some retard playing games on his (expensive) apple computer at starbucks. If he were wealthy she wouldn't be driving lyft for 9 hours. So the characters and their motivations are incongruous. I think that's what that anon meant by contrived.

>>22008931
based and astute analysis

>>22008931
>>22008931
>he clearly doesn't make money
What?
>no redeeming quality
Huh?
>she would leave
They've been together for 6 years. I don't think you understand relationships
>Starbucks for some reason
This is a very common place people go

>>22008945
Just learn to take criticism. And get better by accepting you start out shit.

>>22008931
incel projection, that snippet of text doesn't give you that much insight into their relationship.

>>22008948
But none of his criticisms make any sense

>>22008970
Your text gives that reader that impression, though.
You may want to figure out how that happened.

>>22008966
it's a workday and he's playing games at starbucks. they have a dog, somewhere, which means they have a place of residence. he's wearing an expensive shirt, although wrinkled, and she's got Tom's shoes, not some discount brand, so they're not dirt poor. she's abut to go on a 9 hour lyft shift. she's not exactly making gobs of money, and if the other guy was making good money she wouldn't being doing lyft for 9 fucking hours.
>'What do you want? He was a bastard. Are you going to leave me over this? I have friends on 4chan. And I can masturbate. Soon they'll be sexbots and Ill be happy.'
He's a loser. that snippet of text shows a lot about their relationship.
You also know what it does show? his dad is dead and she isn't thinking about any potential inheritance.

>>22008994
I think it's on you man

>>22008995
Confirmed for not understanding modern relationships. If she's not making tons of money then who is? Perhaps the guy with the really expensive compute

>>22008999
It’s shit. You didn’t even punctuate properly. Read more.

>>22009004
nope, she's about to do a 9 hour lyft shift. he's not making good money

>>22009008
Thats not how relationships work

>>22009007
How is it shit

>source i need is only available in german
>ancient pdf so I cant' even shove it in google translate without retyping the whole of it
fuck me

>>22008931
This is an incorrect analysis based on unfounded assumptions

where does the especially kinky erotica go? is it really just literotica/ao3 and specialty sites like readonlymind?

>>22009023
that is precisely how it works for women in relationships. they have a dog which means they're living together. if he was making good money she wouldn't be doing a 9 hour shift. from all the name brand shit he has it sounds like whatever money he does pull in gets spent on frivolous crap.

>>22009036
You're wrong here. There are women who value independence over comfort

>>22009030
then your excerpt is poorly written. fix it

>>22009036
thats a leap in logic man you sound like you base your knowledge on relationships off 4chan shit

>>22009040
a 4 hour lyft shift, maybe. a 9 hour lyft shift is pure drudgery

>>22009043
But you haven't pointed out anything to fix. You literally just went out on a limb for no reason. I'm not going to include literally every single detail of the characters lifesfyle in the first paragraph especially when to normal people its not even necessary

>>22009026
You didn’t even have proper quote marks on the end. Nothing is happening except telling and exposition, and wooden dialogue. Read!

>>22009047
Thats what they are willing to do. Do you understand women at all?

>>22009055
>nothing is happening
And what do you mean by that? You want explosions ? You're literally repeating hollow criticism. You're not actually applying anything specific to the story you're just listing criticisms someone could have about a story

>>22009058
do you not understand women? this isn't his mother we're talking about, who will put up with his shit out of obligation. if there was an inheritance I could understand her doing it, and choosing to do a 9 hour shift because she hates the guy and wants to get away from him

>>22009061
You didn’t even use speech marks properly. There was no story. It was an introduction of you purposely shoving some idea about this relationship onto the reader. Nothing was implied nor shown through artful storytelling. It was “this is how you must feel about this 4chan character.” Seriously? It’s so unpleasant to read. I can tell you haven’t read much since you don’t know how to draw the reader in. Make us ponder and bring about intrigue through dynamics or emotion. If he has expensive, frivolous things, then why go for cliches like a MacBook in Starbucks? It’s so cringe and uninspired. Maybe he should wear new clothes or something more frivolous than a work tool.

>>22009079
I still have no clue what assumptions you're making
>>22009073
Thats how relationships work. You put up with a lot.
Its just hilarious to me. This story is non fiction. I'm mark

>>22009032
it's probably sacrilege to say it on this site, but ao3 is pretty decent with a great tagging/filter system. It helps your work reach your target audience quicker

>>22009079
I didn't tell the reader to feel anything not sure what you mean by imply. How would you write it

>>22009100
I’d start by not writing your dumb auto fiction no one cares about. Go get a job, loser. Writing isn’t for you.

>>22009092
>being that autistic in public
King shit.

>>22009092
>This story is non fiction. I'm mark
I'm truly sorry about that. fix your shit

>>22009093
nothing wrong with archive of our own, I dunno why you'd think otherwise

>>22009103
What is your problem
>>22009104
>>22009105
It was years ago and I was already employed making good money

I have read lots of books and I have no clue whats wrong with that Mark story. Its as engaging as most other litfic

>>22009115
I don't like to judge books by snippets only. But without more context it's tough for me to say anything. I like to read more before I give feedback, but alas I'm readin "I Pray to the Hungry God" tomorrow. What read so far it's pretty great. Nesmer has a good voice in it.

>>22009115
because it's about a poor suffering girl whose wasting the best years of her life picking up after a manchild while driving for lyft. it's soulcrushing

>>22009131
Honestly writing for critique should be longer than a 4chan post. Otherwise your only critics will be autistics.

How many books did you sell today /wg/?

>>22009141
We are married.

>>22009166
0. Everything I’m in is coming out later in the year.

>>22009190
how many children? furbabies don't count

>>22009198
0 then

>>22005616
I'm assuming English isn't your first language? I understand thinking your work will get more readers if it's English but I promise your work will just be so much better written in your native language.

Can someone post an link to the Unreal Press discord community? I gave in and made an account. I don’t wanna get groomed, lol, but I just finished Tales of the Unreal after seeing all the hype and it was actual kino. I wanna submit something for the next one if there’s a part two in the works.

I’m working on a story about a cursed watch that’s bequeathed to the oldest son in each generation of a family. The watch distorts time, causing the wearer to relive the worst moments of his life over and over at an excruciatingly slow pace, gradually driving him insane. The oldest male in the family is always assumed to have some kind of dementia, but it’s really the accumulated affects of the watch causing a mind break. If the wearer removes the watch or tries to destroy it, it’s cursed time warping effects begin to transfer to the wearers’ oldest son and drive him insane by proxy. So the wearer has to essentially choose between losing his own sanity, or saving himself but watching his son lose his sanity. He can’t end the curse by committing suicide, because then the watch will simply be left to his son after his death. And if the wearer keeps the watch on, he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll die and his son will become the recipient of the curse anyway. Written out like this the idea sounds a bit dumb, but I think when it’s worked into a narrative it’ll hopefully do the job right.

I’m going to start it out with a teenage boy and his father going to visit his aging grandfather in the old folks home/mental hospital. The grandfather is insane, rambling to himself or sitting catatonic, and pointing and muttering at the clock on the wall. At one point the father makes an offhand comment about the grandfather’s watch to the son, noting that it’s been passed down through the family for generations and will belong to him someday. At this the grandfather becomes noticeably agitated and begins tugging on the watch and pulling at his hair, insisting that the watch belongs to him and he can’t take it off. The father misunderstands and consoles the grandfather, assuring him that the watch is his and no one will take it from him. But this only makes the grandfather more agitated. Then I’ll do a sort of flash forward to the grandfather’s death, after which the boy (now a young man)‘s father inherits the watch and begins showing his own late father’s symptoms of insanity. The young man watches his father deteriorate, never realizing the cause. I haven’t quite worked out how it’ll end, but I think I’m going to have the young man inherit the watch earlier than most, after his father is unable to deal with the watch’s curse and commits suicide, thus fooling his son. By this time the young man will already have a young son of his own. He’ll gradually discover the watches curse, driven insane by the flashbacks, but doubly so by the knowledge that his own young child will eventually suffer the same fate.

>>22009142
True I think it's hard to tell what a voice is unlesss you get used to it. A snippet is only really standout if it's the best stuff, stuff that potentially stands on its own legs.

>>22009166
Im gonna sell some books big league.

>>22009220
I meant to say thus *dooming* his son, not fooling. My fault for phone posting with fat fingers, lol,

Here’s what I tell my flatmate Owen the first time we tried acid; the girl beside me in bed who I force myself to have a conversation with; the brother I do not have; myself, as I sit at the back of this droning theatre and wait for the lecturer’s arrival: I’ve got this idea in this head of mine that when people think of a person, they always seem to be trying to reckon with what that person is “really like.” Their glassy essence. The kind of typical thing they are to the exclusion of all the many other things. This is, I’ve always thought, (I tell them all) a real big mistake in our understanding of individuals. Because you see, I once did this university paper on Mark Antony and Cleopatra which counted for both English lit and classics, working out well for my monstrous hodgepodge of arts studies (attention from all various audiences beginning to drift at this point).

[I've been told the opening sentence is confusing, which it's meant to be a little, but is it overly so?]

>>22009219
I only speak English

>>22009235
It is. How about.
>The first time we tried acid I'm sitting at the back of this droning theatre and waiting for the lecturer’s arrival. With me there's my flatmate Owen, this girl beside me in bed who I'm forcing myself to have a conversation with, my brother – I don't think I have a brother – and myself. I'm trying to tell them I’ve got this idea that when people think of a person, they always seem to be trying to reckon with what that person is “really like.” Their glassy essence. The kind of typical thing they are to the exclusion of all the many other things. This is, I’ve always thought, (I tell them all) a real big mistake in our understanding of individuals. Because you see, I once did this university paper on Mark Antony and Cleopatra which counted for both English lit and classics, working out well for my monstrous hodgepodge of arts studies (attention from all various audiences beginning to drift at this point).

>>22009220
Never submitted to Unreal, but I like the idea. I think it could end up being a disturbing story if you tell it right. You’d have to really lean into the mental part of it all.

>>22009190
How often is she getting sex on the side, in order to fill the gaping void created by your manlet lameness?

>>22009279
I'm 6'1

>>22009287
You got confused at some point in this exchange and started getting defensive about your relationship when this is about your relationship. I know nothing about you or your relationship, but surely you can see that from the exchange you posted (awful btw, please fix your pronunciation and refrain from using "visage" twice in the two sentences) the reader is going to be left with the impression that the girl should leave Mark.

>>22009310
about your writing*

>>22009287
Oh yeah?
Do you use mitts to take things out of the oven?
Did you cry out the last time someone stabbed you?
Did you ever pet a cat?
Face it...you're a beta cuck.

>>22009310
Give. Real. Criticism.
>>22009326
I don't give a fuck about your childlike conception of masculinity. I also took my wife's last name. Bet you have conniptions over that

yes, i have written my 2000 words today

Do the 2000 words count if its all 4chan posts.
I wake up at 6 am every day and I think I continually post on 4chan until I go to bed at midnight. No job. My time isn't valuable

Untitled (/sp/ shitpost, a story in four parts)

Any feedback very much appreciated

>>22009389

>>22009389
My criticism was that you don't seem to have a good understanding of the reader response to your characters, that your punctuation illiteracy makes it unclear what you're saying, and that you have a limited vocabulary which makes your writing repetitive and clunky. All of this was in the original post and all of this is gather you're going to ignore because you've got you're guard up (or maybe you're just always like this).

>>22009531
But your response was off base you just have to admit that. I don't think writing is wrong if a reader goes out on a limb and makes a bad assumption from a single paragraph of the story. There's no way for me to assauge that and have it read well. If I went I to how these peoples lives functioned exactly it would be incredibly tedious.

>>22008383
It's simple: trad publishing is not a free market.

>>22008393
Useful critique takes skill and work. Most who sign up for it find that out fast and don't know how to admit that they are not up to the job.

>>22008537
HLA.

>my mc is a heckin' fellow 4channer
anyone who does this should commit soduku

>>22006178
>with a pot leaf 'ponst its livery.
Wut?

>>22006178

>>22006178
...

>set deadline at the beginning of this month to rewrite a serial I made two years ago
>goal is around 2.5k words (small goal)
>have only written around a thousand words
>still have to write the rest and edit it
>serial turns three tomorrow
It's over. I only have myself to blame.

>>22009617
art imitates life.

>>22009588
Nor is self publishing, which is all about paying for ads and shilling yourself online. Only those with resources do it.

Anyone who's serious about making money will do something new, like interactive web fiction. It's easy to get published that way.

>>22009848
Anyone who’s serious about making money will get a real job and not write. You obviously don’t care about maximising time if you write.

>>22009862
Anyone who’s serious about making money will get a webcam and a giant dildo. It's easy to get attention that way.

I need this answer lit bros, does writing every day really help you with improvement in writing? Or is that just an empty platitude preached by try-hard fags who want us to work harder, not smarter?

>>22009862
Anyone who's serious about making money with writing*
I didn't realize I had to spell that out, but there you go, fuckwit.

>>22009896
Practicing any craft daily will improve your performance at it, doesn't matter what it is, this isn't exclusive to writing.

>>22009808
That doesn't make it not a free market.

>>22009896
if you aren't severely autistic and can see your own fuck ups, yes

I have just spent the last three days learning from historical documents how magical circles and pentacles and shit work, and what they do. Holy fuck this shit so cumbersome and autistic and everyone disagrees with one another, and I still need to read like three more books to feel confident enough to feel like I can write this shit with a passing understanding. AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

>>22009935
> everyone disagrees with one another
Sounds like you could make up your own bullshit and it would be just as believable. You do know not of that is real?

>>22009976
Science isn't real either, that doesn't meant I can just go, "The earth is flat!" and have it pass muster.

>>22009986
> Science isn't real either,
Not sure what you mean by that statement.

>>22009935
>>22009986
But esoteric magic is all made up. It disagrees with each other because it's all fake. It's deliberately convoluted and obscure to sell the illusion.
You have to capture the gestalt, you have to know the sorts of ancients they liked to name-drop and the ways they suggested exclusivity and deep truths and all that. But don't sweat the fine detail. Whenever they disagree about something that just makes your job easier because you're free to disagree with them in turn—as long as the thing you come up with would get any wannabe magician all giddy and excited.

>>22009166
I got three more kudos on my fanfic

>>22009935

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

>>22010265
We lost the Fitzgerald poster for this?

>>22010265
Im editing. I go through 6000 words of copy editing a day plus 500 words of fresh writing.

>>22009896
Pull up one of the royalroad webnovels from around here, read the first chapter and then their latest chapter and see if you think they improved.

>>22009718
How long until spamming AI becomes a bannable offence?

>>22010336
we desperately need a dedicated AI board. It's ruining a bunch of boards.

>>22010265
No words today but I solved a block in my plot I couldn't see how to get past until now.

>>22009848
>like interactive web fiction. It's easy to get published that way.
It's rare to find a person who excels in one difficult area, let alone two: to find a talented writer who is also a talented software programmer.

Would you have the writer bind his own books and build his own typewriter also? EGADS MAN

Alex spread the map across the table. ‘I give us two weeks,’ he said. ‘Then the nukes fly.’ He tapped at a red X with a tremoring finger. ‘The city, obliterated. Our friends in the city, blown to bits.’ The idiots. He’d tried to evacuate them. Happy where they were, they’d said. Near their kids and grandkids. Things Alex didn’t have to worry about, Walt had remarked.
‘Fallout,’ he went on. ‘That’s what we have to worry about.’ He traced some squiggles from the X to his new house way out in the country. ‘The wind will carry it here quick smart. And it will hang around for a good while. We’ll bug out to the shelter and hole up, wait for the radiation to decay to safe levels, then head out. Let’s take a shelter inventory.’
He went out to the yard. There was a hole in the garden. Beside it was a raft of planks, piled over with dirt. Beside that, his shovel, stogged into the earth. Just the sight of it made his hands ache. Gardening should be safe, his doctor had advised. As long as it wasn’t too strenuous. The hole was six feet deep. Alex fished a pill from his pocket & swallowed it dry.
Peering into the hole, he surveyed the supplies he had amassed with pension checks. ‘Food, check. Water, check. Faraday cage...’ He couldn’t see. The sun was low, his eyes weak.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s turn this into a dry run.’
He lowered himself into the hole and sat on the dirt, groaning and wringing his hands. The laminated checklist lay at his feet. Checklists, supplies, camping out. The tramadol was kicking in. It buoyed his spirits. He dragged the plank raft over the hole with the rope. It all made him feel like a scout again. He didn’t even mind that his hands had gone numb.

>>22009896
Writing every day makes you diligent and gives you something to work with. Just thinking about writing is not articulate. Y

>>22009896
See: >>22010289

This definitively proves that writing every day is not sufficient to improve your writing. We know how to improve in almost any skill, but few are obsessed enough to put in the work. The autists at RR are obsessed with their ideas but not the craft itself, so they never get any better.

>>22005936
This definitely seems like the most sensible approach. I'm a bit worried because while the character's traits have changed a lot over time, the roots are still recognizably her. What worries me more is that because it's an apocalyptic story her character's father who has a lot of parallels with her own is murdered. Basically, I don't want her to take it personally, or worse, try to sue me.

>>22006102
Yeah, she's the only person I ever told, and I regret it. But wow, that's funny, my current protagonist is based a lot on my father, too. He's lived a more interesting life than me, getting into plenty of fights and mischief when he was younger. When I first started, the protagonist was a bit of a self-insert and I ended up with that common problem where you create a mary sue/gary stu devoid of flaws.

>>22010478
Yeah same, mine started as self insert but had to admit there were more appropriate personalities for what I was trying to do. So I chose someone more likeable, my dad. I am tempted to change the first chapter later but I characterize the protag as almost selfish in his dedication to independence because I want readers to know there's something dangerous about him, while most of the first half of the book he doesnt seem as obsessed with it, because his confidence hasnt been damaged yet.

>>22010464
You know, I'd like to refute you, but I'd have to ask my readers for their opinion. I should do that next week.

>>22010515
>he also models some of his characters after his father.
>>22004981
Making an outline turned out to be more important than I thought.
I have like 2 or 3 pages worth of disconnected vignettes.

https://files.catbox.moe/okfpno.pdf

Reposting doorstopper for feedback

>>22010637
>no indents
>no paragraphs
Bruh

>>22010637
>writing 1169 pages and never once thinking you should learn how to format dialogue
Also incorrect capitalisation in first sentence. I can give you one gold star least since that first semicolon is used correctly. But yea do some serious editing before expecting a human to read this.

>>22010674
>incorrect capitalisation in first sentence
God damn it I wanted to tell you off for not recognizing a noun; like a name of a thing in correct but infrequent usage in English, "I had purchased a Ladle," but it looks like you're right. God damn it, anon, >>22010637

>>22010674
>>22010640
Fair enough.

>>22010637
I only read up to around where the dialogue started and the lack of a new line per speaker just threw me off completely, but formatting aside, it seems decently written. One thing that stood out to me was the spelling of ax. I did a CTRL+F and you use ax sometimes and axe at others. Personally, I would just stick with the more common axe.

>catbox.pdf
Why didn't I think of that? Why don't more anons use that to show work?

>>22009418
Good god man, how can you stand that

The next time you think, "Wow, /wg/ sure is shit lately," remember what the alternative is.

>>22010865
This would be 80th percentile in /wg/

>>22010865
That's completely incomprehensible to me, like how the fuck is anyone incapable of picturing things? And how can they enjoy books if they can't?

>>22010762
I told him we should make a running joke that everything in Provesh should be called "Provesh Thing" like Provesh Bank and Provesh Whorehouse

Anyone else need an editor? At this rate I'm gonna be sucking dick for Bitcoin

>>22009220
I think Unreal has a submission email, it’s unrealpressandpodcast@gmail.com

>>22010881
More than 50% of people don't have an inner monologue and you're surprised some people can't visualize?

>>22010865
Beethoven went deaf and still produced amazing works, because he put in the effort to make up for the shortcoming. Simply by acknowledging the weakness and seeking to overcome it, that redditor is better off than every single crab here.

>>22010904
>More than 50% of people don't have an inner monologue
you pulled this out of your ass

>>22004981
How do I write a song for my story like Tolkien did if I don't have any knowledge of songwriting or poetry?

>>22010973
>he doesnt know

>Friends got me into a new game to play with them
>Lost all motivation to write
Fuck, friends are such banes

>>22009935
This is what I did for my story and I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply not going to represent it in very detailed capacity beyond the shit I've specifically made up, rather I'll just allude to its principles. What's particularly interesting is the esoteric theology like Hermeticism, which can absolutely be represented in large capacity, especially when it comes to alchemy and astrology and whatnot. "Magic" in and of itself isn't anything specific, that's like researching "archery" because there's so much that goes into it as far as theory and equipment and terminology. The best way to divide it up is low and high magic, or natural and ceremonial. You don't need to go beyond a Wikipedia page's worth of understand to represent this stuff in writing if you're writing fantasy, you can just fill in the gaps with fiction. It's not like these magical practices would've been created and developed the same way it did in our world, anyway.
What I'm really stumped on is learning non-western esotericism and magic, like Indian and Chinese shit for my foreign races. IRL races have different types of magic, we're not all different flavors of Christian. Buddhist magic is even harder for me to figure out where to begin learning. It's especially hard when English terms like "alchemy" are applied to distinctly foreign concepts that are just reminiscent of our western understanding of alchemy.

Does royal road censor chapters?
>Chapter with rape
>22 views
>Next few chapters
>50+ views

>>22010010
NTA but I'm thinking he means that most of it is through testing theories that often times disagree with past or contemporary findings due to the nature of the tests themselves. Scientific ideas are constantly changing and being rewritten and reinterpreted, and "science" itself isn't a thing, rather a methodology. The same thing with magic, they didn't have a "magic method" back then, but individual practitioners often tested other theories and recorded their own different understandings, interpretations, and results of them. Just take a look at medical science, there's basically no telling what some drugs could do to a person, and health is almost always subjective. Google if steak is bad for you, then if it's good for you. Science ALWAYS disagrees with itself. God I'm glad I'm a schizophrenic writer and not a schizophrenic scientist, I'm allowed to not make any sense.

>>22010905
What a completely retarded comparison. Beethoven wasn't BORN deaf, retard. This guy has never "pictured things in their mind"

>>22011050
My apologies, I forgot people can only use skills they're born with, they can't learn or improve.

I'll reformat it. Then you'll see

When is the last time we had a decent Big Foot short story or novel anyway.

>>22011008
I only talk to my friends in a small timeslot in the morning now. Writing just too important.

>>22011098
Did you proofread this? It'd read a lot better if you fixed some trivial mistakes and tightened it up. Here's a start:
instincts -> instinct
Comma use in that sentence doesn't look right, either remove all of them or add a third comma after "of course"
"was repeatedly sending" -> "repeatedly sent" (not for grammar, but for better flow)
"just wouldn't budge the closer this being was approaching me": doesn't make sense unless they budge even less as it gets closer. And here too I'd change "was approaching me" into "approached me"
"times,but" -> "times, but"
"to our kids" -> "to our kids?"

>>22011028
I've found that every chapter with a sex scene has fewer views than the surrounding ones. Like, a substantial percentage drop. Censorship never crossed my mind, desu. My best guess was that the people who discover your story talk about it and tell their friends about the chapters with sex scenes, and they choose to avoid it. But I guess censorship could be possible? I dunno

>>22011089
Cheer up anon!
All your dreams will come true.
Within the NEW BREAD! >>22011137

>>22011151
>AI shart
Sigh...

>>22011130
The weird thing is my sex scenes one doesn't even have any mention of penis or vagina. It hints it. Guess words like gyrating gets a flag

>>22011176
no, that'd be an indication that there is no censorship and its more what I figured.

>>22011176
>gyrating
We gyrated under the moonlight, we gyrated in the bedroom, we gyrated on the train. Eventually someone shouted at us that hula hoops were an "old fad" from the "fucking 90's", and so we stopped.

>>22011130
>>22011176
There was a thread about this on the forums once, and most responses were just that people don't like sex scenes and won't read them.

>>22011130
Honestly I decided to skip the sex scene in my current WIP, since it would only waste words I can put to better use later
I'm already struggling to keep this novel inside a reasonable wordcount range, I don't think I can afford to be horny
To be fair I never even found a sex scene in a novel that I didn't find superfluous, so I'm not sure why it's even an issue to simply suggest it

>>22011637
>>22011664
But only one or two sentences?