/lit/ - Literature

Any good books about writing horror stories?

>>23140636
Stephen King's The Danse Macabre. I hate his novels, but he's very knowledgeable about horror as a genre.

Baldcore anon, I ordered your novella. I was also thinking about going with that same press, how was your experience with it?

>>23140690
Appreciate it! Good to know my baldcore/morrowind fanfics weren't completely forgotten.

So my experience with it was good, but you need to go in with the understanding/expectation that you're still just self publishing. Upload it yourself and plan to do all the work yourself. The editor is very generous to offer up his time as a betareader and baller graphic designer for free (i intend to kick him a few bucks though), but definitely upload it yourself -which I suggest you do so you control the file/money. Happy to go into more detail, just let me know specific questions and if you ever wanna connect over email don't be a stranger: Tookysmag@gmail.com

>>23140428
I keep trying to make a story but go round and round and keep changing story details so that the stuff I wrote a few months ago is now completely irrelevant.

Namely, the female character (not the main character), back when she had a bigger role, was supposed to suffer a lot (even though she gets a happy ending), partly because she started out as a horrible person and partly because I wanted to see what I could get away with, without resorting to cheap tactics like rape. At this point in planning she's basically a damsel in distress and has no real impact on the story.

>>23140842
what inspired this? or how are you incentivizing the reader?

What day job is good for writing, outside of night-time security guard? I'm scared of dealing with people, and getting /fit/ takes time and money too

>>23140947
>I'm scared of dealing with people
*hug* getting over it will make you a better writer

>>23141001
I don't actually know how to. I work retail full-time, which gives me no time for writing on the job, and I'm still scared of people. I have gotten a bit better but at home I get a feeling like I'm being watched etc.

>>23140428
1/2

Opening to a chapter I finished today. Surrealist sci-fi with a lot of symbolism and schizophrenic eroticism

>>23141253
2/2

>>23140428
I usually lurk other boards, first time really screwing around with /lit/. I like to write the odd poem or thing from time to time. Is poetry accepted in this general or is there usually a thread dedicated to that?

>>23141253
god my eyes

>>23141371
There's a poetry general that sometimes appears, usually same OP image. You will have better luck there most of the time, as /wg/ is mostly about prose and the creative process.

>>23141420
ok cool just wondering

>>23141253
>found themselves
I hate this. Give them a stronger verb.

>daughter-wives-virgins
uwot

>She'd of
She'd have

Imagery is pretty, although it's hard to keep track of scale and where things are happening. Exclave dancers are in the sky overhead?

Very little happens. If it were a first chapter, I'd be disappointed in the beginning paragraph describing things they've already done to get to the field.

I also do not give a shit about Priscilla, having never met her. The reader's impulse is to care about the mind they inhabit, here Mavis, and about immediate characters.

>>23141253

Trying way too hard to be PKD in some areas but it's interesting. Just needs polishing and refining more.

>>23141587
You again! Edit your shit!

>he had prayed fervently...

Remove that "had", it isn't doing anything. This is a recurring problem in your work, filler words.
You also repeat "damage wasn't too bad" as "damage wasn't too severe". You can cut a lot of that paragraph.

>The Queen's Kiss it was called

How about: "The Queen's Kiss, because it appeared ... Or The Quiet Death, due to..." Cutting out "it was called" and "Another name for it was"

A man performing surgery on himself to treat a mysterious illness is automatically interesting. This is good, but needs tightening.

do you guys have a discord? i want critique but don't feel like posting my stuff here to be forever displayed in fuking 4chan archives lol

>>23141692
for a brief moment we had one... before frank crushed our dreams.

>>23141692
If you're that shy, you can put an excerpt in pastebin and set it to expire in a week or something

La meva ment està marejada. Cada nit tinc una ansietat debilitant pensant en el concurs de relats curts al qual vaig participar l'any passat. La llista definitiva està a punt de sortir d'aquí a unes setmanes. Fins i tot la mera idea de no fer la llista em fa palpitacions. He invertit tres anys de la meva vida creativa i emocional en aquest esdeveniment. Si guanyo, és una justificació per a cadascú, les oportunitats que m'obririen en l'àmbit literari són immenses a més de poder omplir el cul dels haters que em vaig trobar. Si perdo, és penúria i misèria i, el pitjor de tot, temps perdut. Cada nit és pur dolor. Espero a tots els déus que hi guanyi

>>23141374
t. phoneposting poorfag

>>23141809
try using Google Translate if you're going to post here
>My mind is dizzy. Every night I get debilitating anxiety thinking about the short story contest I entered last year. The final list is about to come out in a few weeks. Even the mere thought of not making the list gives me palpitations. I have invested three years of my creative and emotional life into this event. If I win, it's a justification for everyone, the opportunities that would open up for me in the literary field are immense in addition to being able to fill the ass of the haters I met. If I lose, it's hardship and misery and, worst of all, wasted time. Every night is pure pain. I hope to all the gods that he wins

>trying to do a novel
>got bored
>finally get back to it
>change everything but a core scene
Guess first drafts were never meant to be.

>>23140740
Wanna be in the pastebin?

>>23141751
Which shows how Frank is the best of you.

How can I write horror that’s any scarier than our reality, where a literal Nazi is the front runner for president?

>>23142168
weak b8

>>23142176
No u

>>23142168
Good point but that guy is more a joke to me than scary. There's 0 percent chance he's gonna win the election trust me

>>23142168
Man your south american politics are weird as shit, we should really stop interfering in them but no one has control over the glowies.

>>23142243
He already won. Twice.

>>23142168
Just changes the names and suddenly even people who are voting for that guy will be raging over your character

>>23142263
>gronald blumpf was a bad, orange man

What’s the best way to pretend to understand emotions so your characters don’t all seem like yourself?

>>23141253
Not reading this because the format is so awful. Please consider the reader if you're going to ask for advice.

>>23142292
>What’s the best way to pretend to understand emotions
don't have autism

>>23142292
You need to be able to see from someone else's viewpoint, thinking with their mind, experiencing the world through their body. A classic way to become able to do this is to talk to other people and get to know them.

>>23141587
please study pic related, especially chapters 1 and 2 on punctuation and composition, and edit your work before you repost. no offense intended but it's bad writing

Penis penis I love the taste of penis explode your cum in my mouth your man whore

>>23142321
i know you're trying to be edgy, but you're just boring. if you want to be different, try being honest, decent, and hardworking. literally everyone is a psychopathic manchild these days.

>>23142335
You have no penis and you’re not even a woman.

>>23142314
It's surprising how short and affordable that book is. Do you recommend any others in a similar vein?
In high school I was gifted "The Elements of Fiction Writing" by Orson Scott Card. Pretty useful for writing most types of commercial fiction, great for staying organized too.

>>23142349
Orson Scott Card is a homophobic bigot.

>>23142349
Also he’s racist. Did you ever read Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus? In it, he dared to present the Native Americans as being capable of horrific violence. It was really offensive. Whatever he suggests for writing, you should do the opposite.

>>23142349
I've heard stephen king's book on writing is good, but his rambling on about himself annoyed me, so I dropped it. maybe it gets better later. I think beyond what's in the elements of style you're only going to write better by writing and getting critiqued by good writers

>>23142349
Really, I’m just very triggered to see something from that man recommended. I didn’t think this was that sort of a place. I’m literally shaking right now.

>>23142356
>>23142363
>>23142390

Methinks the troll doth speak too much.

>>23142363
>Also he’s racist
kek based

There's something especially embarrassing about trolls who are neither subtle nor funny. Like if you're going to waste your time shitting up threads on 4chan can't you at least be good at it?

>>23142496
I love you too, anon.

>>23142386
>I think beyond what's in the elements of style you're only going to write better by writing and getting critiqued by good writers
I don't think one can gain anything from books on writing without having a metric shitton of drafts and failed experiments to dissect. All the pointers and advice are nearly useless without your own existing map of the territory. You're right in that.

I'm also going to be a massive dick and say that unless your initial foray into writing was trying to emulate any of the greatest or better authors, all the books on craft are going to be meaningless. There's no point in putting in the effort to explain why copying the efforts of Tolkien or Gisli's Saga is not the same as copying harry potter fanfics and machine translated xianxia, it speaks for itself. But we live in an age of writers who refuse to read and hate books, so it's no wonder they write rancid dogshit.

>>23142126
Throw me in! Thank you.

>Is that all I am worth?
>Is that all I am?
>That all I am?
>That all I'm?

Are these all correct and carry the same meaning

>>23142879
They all mean different things. The last one is the only one that is exclusively incorrect. The third one could be used as some sort of dialogue.

>>23142981
>they all mean different things
Bullshit
And the 4th is not incorrect
Idi

Jotaro is wall level accept it. I was taken aback when I watched a video and it said he was city level.

>>23142496
lol. Imagine believing that being on 4chan entitles you to someone’s effort.

Pros/cons for a female protagonist for genre fiction (specifically RR?)
And can we skip all the 'I hate women, based based based' responses? Or at least get it out of the way then give a serious answer, thanks

>>23140428
What are some good challenges a person trained in a sheltered environment to basically be a walking magical artillery piece would face upon joining an actual military expedition?

I intended for them to somewhat be similar to Korra- a lot of power and skill, but little real world experience to temper their power.

I did intend for them to have great self-control in controlling their power as to not cause collateral harm, but I'm wondering what would be some difficulties the real world would bring upon them.

non-english speaker here
I have troubles naming the different types of sounds there are
clicking, shriek, screen, trill, chirp, and so on
is there any book that could facilitates me looking for the names of sounds and their descriptions (sort of like a dictionary)

>>23143555
You can play to different themes, different psychology and voice, and have different kinds of expectations and reactions from the reader.
You will probably get more sympathy for a woman protag than a man.
>specifically RR?
Not sure.

>>23141282
are you a woman?

>>23143725
What

I'm not even going to bother looking through the archive for my last post. It's likely been around 5 threads by now. I'm just going to post another update.
60,000 words! I am (roughly) two-thirds of the way done with this book. It almost feels surreal with how long I procrastinated (2 years of worldbuilder's disease is a bitch, but it's useful for adding flavor to the story.)
In addition, I've begun crafting the outline for my next book. It's in the same setting, but over a millennium later (so more of my notes will be relevant). The story is far, far less simple, so I'll need to be much more thorough in constructing it.

>>23141751
QRD?

>>23142168
Fascist =/= Nazi. Even his status as a fascist is a matter of debate IMO. Authoritarian? Yes. Follows an ideology of blind worship of the state for its own sake? Hard to say, and a lot of American right-wing rhetoric flies in the face of that.
There's also the fact that in every primary so far, he's underperformed his polling substantially. Old Joe might, in effect, be up by 5.

>>23142335
True! Edginess without a purpose is old, and tired as hell these days.

>>23142674
>writers who refuse to read and hate books.
Is my hypothesis true, that those types don't want to be writing a book, they want to be writing anime, movies, and/or games? What's your take on that?

>>23143555
A lot of genre fiction that sells has elements of wish fulfilment. In RR, the LitRPGs that dominate fulfil the fantasy of there male, weeb, reader base. For most genre fiction, you want to fulfil the wishes of the largely-female audience for books. My second book will have a female protagonist, although that's mostly because having that in lieu of a male one requires few if any major story changes.

>those types don't want to be writing a book, they want to be writing anime, movies, and/or games?
No. I'm one of those types though I don't hate books

>Hate everything I write
>tendency to re-write the same paragraph multiple times
>Show IRL people my wretched shit
>they love it and say I should continue working on the stuff
>still feel that imminent dread of ngmi

Anyone else got these feels?

>>23143555
Pros:
>Most readers are women
>Different challenges and motivations, think mother bear vs protective father
>Can pretend she's your gf

Cons:
>Have to write her believably or women readers will be unimpressed
>If you have 4chan brain, this will be impossible

>>23143959
>Is my hypothesis true, that those types don't want to be writing a book, they want to be writing anime, movies, and/or games? What's your take on that?
In music, you have people who are in love with the idea of being a rockstar but refuse to learn the mechanics and theory of music and don't listen to music or enjoy it in any meaningful way. They like the idea but don't engage with the thing itself. The idea of learning a few popular songs by rote makes them recoil. They don't make it anywhere, needless to say.

I think the truth is that anyone looking for critique on prose through excerpts the size of this post, or the litrpg cancer that makes someone obsess over worldbuilding and magic systems; they don't read and can't recognize why they read and what they read for because they don't read, or they're total autists obsessed with irrelevant bullshit. They want to be rockstars but don't love the craft. They're like a chuuni 14 year old who thinks his shit has magic powers and everything he says is pure gold, totally unaware that he's a spotty dweeb that reeks of virginity and axe body spray.

To assume that they want to be writing or creating in another medium but merely lack the talent and dedication to pursue the arts that barely literate spastic cripples do with a brush or a circle of slightly more socialized dweebs, that implies that writing prose is easier.

They're posers, that's what they are.

>>23142168
You have stage 4 TDS.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/03/03/exclusive-gay-couple-weds-at-trumps-mar-a-lago-beyond-our-wildest-dreams/
Would a "literal Nazi" do that? Now get in touch with reality.

>elliot rodger actually wrote good prose

what the fuck

KNEEL
>>23144444

>>23144499

>>23144045
let me read your stuff

>>23144075
>Most readers are women

This is such an absurd idea. Most women I know don't give a shit if the protagonist is male or female, and neither do most men. Sure, there are books only women will read because they were written FOR women from the start, with the appropriate handling, which is not strictly related to the main character's sex.

Trying to write..no inspiration..no nothing. I can't figure out what to do

>>23145209
find and read books that you enjoy, think about what you like about them (find inspiration), take notes
give yourself an hour or so away from youtube (or anything PC) or whatever distracts you, daily

got some writing advice to make things a bit more efficient.
>>23145504

Im about to make a short film, can you guys help me create a screenplay? I have a bunch of airsoft players as actors and abandoned places like locations

>>23143959
>QRD?
There was a /wg/ NaNoWriMo server that started in October of last year. It was built up and had a mysterious person running it. Then at the start of November the mystery person revealed he was THE Frank Gardner, author of the groundbreaking horror masterpiece Call of the Crocodile. He was going to closely monitor everyone’s NaNoWriMo progress on his server and help the winner get their work published. Because he’s a pillar of our little writing community and wants to see others succeed. And all he wants in return is photographs of little boys’ penises.

>have an idea
>decide to write it
>spend 10 minutes on a single paragraph
>it's shit
How do I cope?

>>23145873
Move on to another paragraph.

>>23145840
what do you need help with?

>>23143573
A lot of the sounds are written like they sound. A click sounds like 'Clik' or 'Klik'. That often helps with remembering. Go outside and listen to various sounds, in nature, in the city, the sounds can even be found in your home. There are probably lists goung around on the internet, but if you pay attention to a sound, that helps you remember it more.

>>23146015
If you really can't go outside, listen to some pieces of audio called 'Field recordings'. They're audioclips of sounds in fields. Listen attentively to what you hear. Match the sound with letters. Congratulations, you've laid the basis for phonology!

>>23145903
I can't move on until I'm satisfied.

So according to AAVE, an offical dialect of english, it is technically proper to refer to your friend's friends friends friends friends as "my niggas niggas niggas niggas nigga."

>>23146089
You forgot your pepe

Is it plausible for someone to get a fever and vomit from the stress of a deep love interest casting them aside?

I intended a Florence Nightingale sort of thing where the woman who helps nurse him after his fever replaces his first love in his heart.

>>23146274
Check out limerence, shit's crazy

Why aren't you writing anon...?

>>23145923
retard can you read?

>>23146274
It's gross but it happens. Long term psychosis is also a possibility.

>>23146311
Im finishing my master's and it's sucking the life out of me

>>23146311
I am, anon
Are you?

>>23146015
>>23146025
but books rarelly uses echoism
they describe how the arachnid stridulated in defiance
a ghoul breathing a throaty rattling in hunger
or a wyrm hissing burning fumes throug its nostrils

>>23140636
I think your best bet is going to be to read lots of horror--I know that's a stupidly obvious recommendation, but if you follow the guidance given in books that are so specific to genre, you're going to at best find yourself just reflecting the most stereotypical tropes in that genre

Some of the best horror out there is written by people who don't really read horror, e.g. Brian Evenson

ESL Here, how do I improve my english prose? Is there any sort of manual or guide I can/should follow?
>read more
I do, but my prose still comes out like AI slop or just plain uninteresting

>>23146456
I feel you
I'm a fan of Legacy of Kain, and I really like how people talk there
so sophisticated
but as I work my writing just sounds boring, and even Grammarly says even a twelve years old kid can understand it

>>23146456
Write in your native language

>10000 words into my romance book
>Love interest not even introduced yet
Was it too slow a burn?

>>23146521
Unironically yes

>>23146516
I've been told this but most of the sites/audience seem to be in english though

>>23146516
spics are illiterate tho
in latam the only authors they read (if any) are those that uses García Marqués as inspiration
is more likely to get reader by writing the most common language (that is either english or chinese, but heck if I'm going to learn chink tongue)

>>23140428
1/2
Start of a sci-fi horror thing I wrote as a prose exercise--not sure if I should continue it

>>23146556
2/2

>>23146555
Less competition then. Exploit your niche. If you do it well enough, you'll get an English translation and you'll get the English-speaking audience that way.

>>23146640
guess is logical
but no way I'll stand out when the only thing spics read are weeb comics and magic realism slop

>>23146465
>but as I work my writing just sounds boring, and even Grammarly says even a twelve years old kid can understand it

why is that a bad thi- oh I get it, you're above writing for the common pleb. this is high brow literature, right?

well let me tell you something. plenty of 12 year olds played legacy of kain you gigantic faggot.

What is your occupation? How much of your free time do you spend writing on average?

Almost done with my second to last draft. I was at 39k words in December so I'm proud of myself.

>>23146669
Auditor. 5 hours a week.

>>23146667
I'm new at this so I assumed it was a bad thing(?)
but as I reevaluate, guess I'm amateurish
I just pondered that my prose would be more intereting given I'm nearly 30

>>23142674
I spent about 2 years taking a break from writing so I could focus purely on reading and considering what made my favorite books so good. My writing improved massively. Reading is also relaxing and enjoyable, which helped a lot.

>>23146683
Heck yea dude, keep it up! What's your personal system for staying productive?

>>23141555
>Exclave dancers are in the sky overhead?

No, they're girls with cybernetic helmet-like things that wander around the field. Ngl it's hard to describe them.

>Very little happens.

It's supposed to show Mavis's fear given she'd just left this reception at the court of Priscilla to convince Priscilla to merge her "orphanage-cult" with hers because the former made a deal to essentially rise in power with the help of a mysterious conglomerate-faith and Mavis thinks she essentially sold the children out in exchange for power. Mavis seeing her own creations (her Acolyte-Wives[clones of her that she uses for divination purposes, among other things]) and their twisted humanity in regards to life/death (i.e. their experience watching a suffering bird die akin to watching a newborn being born etc) and the sisyphian death of newborn cicadas emerging from the soil (a womb - given the red/white stillborn/abortion imagery I use at the end, I thought that was obvious), it basically reasserts Mavis's fears.

I understand this is Chapter 10 or so and not Chapter 1 so it reads weird in a vacuum. I was moreso looking for feedback in regards to the prose and technical things, given the structure is unknown to anyone without context. This is also why you wouldn't care about Priscilla, because there's 9 chapters of time with her.

>>23146556
>>23146562
Set the scene some lad.

>>23146683
Cool mang what's the premise?

>>23146720

No one do anything dumb like this, please.

you can both read books and write at another point in the day. no need to compartmentalise activities in your life like an autistic retard.

>>23146896
Your the retart.

>>23146521
The master and margerita only really starts in the last few chapters

I finished my first novel today.
My wife just read the first two chapters and said it was good.
I'm happy I got to write this.

>>23147045
congratulations anon!

>>23147045
Very nice.
I've been writing a webnovel for about 2 years, but I'm only just starting on a normal novel length story, 2.6k in so far.
Sequel to a shortstory I wrote in February, murder in Ohio during the 1970s.
I wouldn't call it a murder mystery, since the reader would instantly know who the killer is if they read the short story and some of the chapters are going to be from the perspective of the killer.
The important part is more the interaction between the sheriff and the killer, and him trying to prove that he is the killer without also saying that he believes the man is a werewolf.
People enjoyed the short story, won a small contest, so I'm hoping they can enjoy the expansion of the concept.

>>23147088
>>23147087
lol.

>>23147045
What does your wife's boyfriend think of it?

>>23146669
NEET for the next ~20 months, then i get back to waging

Doing a journal style novel, should I include typos for "immersion" or does it just break immersion to have them even though a guy's journal would likely have typos?

i want to write a story about a powerful man who fucks over everyone in his entire life and is a complete hedonistic selfish sociopath who only hurts and destroys and dies in a tragically ironic way but that's kinda gay

>>23140428
I wrote a very rough draft for a short story on the toilet paper today while I was shitting

>>23147599
did you wipe with that toilet paper after

>>23147605
I didn't wipe

>>23147609
freak

when you freewrite to get over writing anxiety, do you do nothing but free write for a while, or do you do some free writing then do your normal writing the same night?

>>23146311
I don't get it. I used to be so happy writing. I would be able to write 2000 words or more constantly, but now I can barely scratch 100. My mind is always plagued with "People won't like this" or "This is so stupid. Gotta rewrite." now I'm barely having fun at all trying to appeal to the made up pseud in my head so he doesn't call my work shit

>>23147645
>freewrite
whats this

>>23147648
all the passion i had for writing or creating anything left after childhood ended. that's the real blackpill. maybe just start thinking like a kid again or smth..regain the passion you once had idk

>>23146317
You're not going to get any help if you're rude.

>>23145840
use chatgpt

Let's plot out a novel and get this show on the road.

>>23145840
I could but I'm not very good at writing. Could you give me a general plot outline and what characters will be there?

>all advice is to write separate genres/styles under different pen names to be consistent in branding
>I'm just gonna not and publish a literary fiction war novel alongside my giant high fantasy first book, and continue doing a variety under one name

Surely will lead to great financial success.

>>23145840
How long is the short film?

Xianxia / Cultivation

>>23147761
so sick and tired of faggoty spirits and magic fruit. the chinese are so gay

>>23147828
The reason why there's so much copying from other stories and why stories are so similar to each other is because they are required to hit a certain word count and updates have to be fast on their webnovels so a few of the cream of the crop are good but a lot of derivative middling work gets produced this way

>>23147835
youre kinda cute anon...uwu

>>23145873
Your audience won't know any better

>>23146456
>manual or guide
Do you mean the dictionary???

Better use big smart words or short easy-to-digest words?

If even, I write for the screen
If odd, I write for the page

>>23147916
Depends what sort of tone you need for the work.

>>23147921
Screenfags btfo

>>23147649
When you practice writing without a story goal in mind. It helps improve the attitude you need to write more.

>>23147916
Never use a big word when a diminutive one will do.

Will passively reading even low quality work help you with writing quality and knowledge

>>23147978
In a what not to do way

>>23147978
Just read everything that interests you. Books both good and bad.

>>23146311
Something that's going to blow your socks off.

>>23147968
hehe

Do you take any substances (nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, adderall, etc...) when you write?

>oh yeah, I got a few pages into your story, but I've just been pretty busy, haha
>haha no worries, whenever you get around to it
I hate trying to get feedback when nobody even bothers to look at a word I write

>>23148116
I was in a writing course way back in uni with an actual good instructor. One thing he always said was never take your reader's time for granted. That was ten years ago, nowadays people's time is even more dominated by other things. It's just hard to get people to read. Problem is especially that your friend didn't seek out your writing, you asked them to read it, which means there wasn't an initial interest.

>>23148116
They're your audience anon.

>>23148120
it's a 6k word story. What else am I supposed to do? Beg? If he'd actually read "a few pages" he'd have read the entire thing.

>>23148163
Have you posted it for your pals on 4chan to give feedback?

What's a good way to write a character as feeling guilty and apologetic about something they did, but lacking the courage to apologize to the wronged party?

I was thinking
>Wronged party takes every opportunity to insult or be rude to the other person
>Other person merely accepts it and turns the other cheek
>Other person says they did not mean any harm
>Other person brings up how others have hurt them too
>Other person volunteers to help the wronged party with their desires, even at great self expense

>>23148171
https://pastebin.com/uCfuevNX
mostly I'm sulking because I think it's really not that bad and he'd like it if he tried

>>23148094
Yeah

>>23148197
Which ones?

>>23148094
I like to drink tea while writing, so small amounts of caffeine
I also drink alcohol sometimes
why are you asking?

>>23148187
Too much intro

>>23148094
I'm a stimulant addict. I have a very low-energy, depressive personality normally, so energizing drugs give me enough will to actually do something. I had to give up adderall though because I fucked up and took too much and almost died on a dirty gas station bathroom floor. so now it's just coffee and nicotine and occasional energy drinks.

>>23148187
Pretty good story. Could use less digressions on reddity fun facts about animals. I get the point of having them, but it's annoying. Find some more obscure facts and actually teach the readers something new. And it's discreet, not discrete, at least in that context.

>>23148300
>I'm a stimulant addict.
Stephen King?

>>23147648
You are aware of the problem and also know the solution. What a blessed state to be in.

i think i had an epiphany about my writing and its preventing me from doing any more
i realized im using writing to get a sort of emotional high
constructing scenes to replace memories i dont have and stretching them out to sustain the pleasure i get from experiencing them
how do i get around this???

>>23148715
>constructing scenes to replace memories i dont have and stretching them out to sustain the pleasure i get from experiencing them

picrel

>>23148715
What's the problem, exactly?

>>23147087
Thank you. I hope you guys can read it one day, too.

>>23147088
Keep on writing, if you've won a small contest you must be doing something right. Though desu, the whole werewolf thing came kind of out of left field for me in your post. Why can't he say as much?

>>23148715
>how do i get around this???
why would you want to?

Finishing this first novel is next to asymptotic. I'm thinking I will call it in a few weeks or I will never let it go.

>2500 words today so far
LET'S GOOOO

>>23148187
>le heckin doggorino ending
Emotionally dishonest.

>>23148187
I know you probably weren't looking for critique, but the biggest problem I had with this was the constant overexplanation. There's just so much you could cut that would not only tighten the story but make it more suspenseful and better paced. One of the things that separates pro writing from amateur seems to be the ability to resist the natural inclination to say something and then say the same thing again in different words. The opening paragraph is full of this. You have the guy chewing his pen, indicating nervousness, then you have him squeezing a stress ball. You write the stewardess leaves. Then you write, "when the stewardess left". It's probably why your friend didn't read the whole thing. I would have dropped it on the first paragraph as well. Especially because the stakes are so low. It *almost* killed someone. Well, why not just have it kill someone? That makes figuring out the whole thing that much more urgent.

Also the whole REX = KING is cheap twist. Cheap because there is no mention of the dog until the very end and no pattern to suggest that we should believe it is a dog.

I also agree with the other guy that your animal facts should be more obscure. One of the pleasures of reading is to learn new things (this is why worldbuilding can be so effective--people want to learn about new things even if they aren't real) but they have to be new, otherwise it has the opposite effect: the reader gets less engaged.

What macros or shortcuts do you use when writing?

>>23147692
I used to do that for creative writing prompts. Good stuff.

>>23148286
can you be more specific
>>23148320
it is kind of a reddit-y story, though. I spent a long time reading animal facts and looking for more obscure ones, but I ended up thinking that the target audience for this story is reddit (which makes it publishable, which was my goal) and they'd be just as happy to read facts they already know. The big reason they're in there is because otherwise Bruce doesn't really have a personality.
>And it's discreet, not discrete, at least in that context.
had no idea these were two different words—thanks
>>23149354
yeah OK
>>23149412
I'm 100% looking for critique and appreciate your response.

>>23149088
i dont think i can be productive writing this way
its like a coke dealer who gets high off his supply

>>23149832
Don't think of it that way. A book can be read by many people. Some finite quantity of cocaine cannot be shared.
Besides, if you are experiencing emotional release, doesn't that at least suggest someone might feel the same?

>>23149051
>Why can't he say as much?
During his last tour in Vietnam, he took part in a fictional expansion of the real life Edgewood Arsenal experiments, where the US army tested all sorts of drugs, a favorite being LSD, on soldiers.
In a test for low dose LSD during a combat mission, he encountered a werewolf that killed most of his squad but it was officially written off as hallucinations.
Back home, the VA is prescribing him a drug with hallucinations as a side effect as treatment for PTSD, and so when he sees a werewolf again, he believes that it's just a side effect of said drugs.
I haven't finalized if I want this twist to be the case or not, but I'm thinking about both the LSD in Vietnam and his drugs back home actually being placebos.
I want him to encounter a couple other creatures from local Ohio myth, the Loveland Frogman, and the Ohio Grassman, and I haven't decided if it's more interesting for only the werewolf to be real, and his drugs are making him actually hallucinate things other than it, or if all of it is real.

eat my dick, chucklefuck

I'm here to confess a writing sin. The first paragraph of any chapter is the hardest for me and it led to a real block. So I started skipping it entirely and just starting with the second paragraph but telling myself that I'll go back and write the first paragraph eventually. But I never do. Not once.

>>23150033
If the second paragraph works, then hey, you've got it written.
It's only a sin if it fucks up the chapter because something that absolutely needed to be written in the first wasn't there.

>>23150033
This is honestly not a bad idea. This is what I believe Don DeLillo did for Underworld

>>23150003
Is this a homosexual thing?

I wish I could write. I dont know where to start

>>23150149
Start with your greatest fear and your greatest hope.

>>23150254
Well I’m sure to win awards by writing about tranny niggers.

>>23150358
Is that fucking all you /pol/tards ever think about?

>>23150358
Allow readers to imagine it as satire and you literally will win an award lol

>>23149832
Stop self-sabotaging and write

aaaaa aaaaaa i can't stop writing oh this is so embarrassing aaaaaaaaa what do I doooo

>>23150438
Beats me. But /pol/ is obviously all you think about.

>>23150254
I don't really have any

>>23150697
nta but the only time i think about /pol/ is when you breach your containment board and I'm reminded how annoying you fuckers are, please go away (and also talk to one (1) real human today)

>>23149465
I use vim, so mostly it's diw, dis, dip or sometimes ggdG

>>23150697
>no you
Kek

A long time ago I started writing a portal fantasy. Then isekai got popular and I shelved it because I didn't want to be associated with all the trend hoppers. The problem is I love the story and characters and I still want to finish it. What should I do?

>>23151298
Finish it. I've been working on a "romantasy" novel as the genre has exploded with goodreads women, which sucks but I'm still gonna keep going. If your work is good enough it doesn't matter what the outside factors are

>>23148689
Its not blessed. I want my story to be liked and not tossed in the trash at first glance because its not "mature" enough. I love complex narratives that require the reader to think outside the box, I love jrpgs and the simplistic friendships the hero party has, but I hate being misunderstood and I don't want to be seen as some manchild writing something that means nothing in reality

>>23150727
Most people who write do so because they have something to say. If you don't, then why do you want to write?

I think I wrote something like 3000 words in the past 3 hours and only ended up keeping 1000, but I really enjoyed it. The passage that it replaced was awfully dry.

>>23151529
because i want to

>>23150003
grow up Frank

>>23151584
with that demonstrated lack of introspection, you're ngmi

>>23151653
The hell is with you and Frank, anon? You call literally everyone Frank.

>>23151719
i learned it from him

Which has a lower barrier to entry drawing or writing? imo its writing because everybody has a tool to write with whereas if you want to do digital art you have to buy a drawing tablet

>>23151658
i just like doing it anon

>>23151820
um...you like doing it, but >>23150149 you don't know where to start? how does that make sense?

>>23151817
Did I already ask this and forget

Where is the line between influence and plagiary/stealing drawn? For example, I was watching a Coen brothers movie the other day called A Serious Man and in the movie, a guy had letters carved into the back of his teeth. I thought that was a really cool idea that could be further improved upon (since it was basically nothing in the movie) but I don't know how that would work, would it be wrong of me to use that since it was already in something else?

>>23151832
its just reality

today i will write

No. not anymore.

>>23151817
There’s no point learning to draw anymore because AI is so easy to use and so good. Writing will be taken over by AI soon, too.

What would prompt a captain of the guard to join a rebellion against a theocracy? At the moment I'm thinking something similar to the Dazexiang Rebellion or Liu Bang's Rebellion in Qin China: the Empire in which the story takes place is a bronze-age theocratic state which is ostensibly ruled by a group of literal gods (though in truth they are more angels who decided to turn from God's will). The gods have little to do with the day-to-day running of the Empire as they consider it beneath them, so they formed a bureaucratic priesthood to run the Empire for them. Part of this priesthood is an Inquisition dedicated to rooting out all other religions, and because of this even being suspected of worshipping a different god is grounds for arrest and execution. So my current idea is that the captain of the guard is either framed for heresy or actually is guilty of it, and he is therefore convinced to join a rebellion against the priests.

>>23151817
Idk after a few months of practice this is all I can draw with a digital tablet.

However I'm in school and I cannot practice very much every day.

>>23152217
You'll get better, just keep at it. There are plenty of videos on YouTube that might be helpful and plenty of books that you could read if you're really serious about it.

>>23152211
His name is Moses

>>23152211
it depends what effect you want. if he were framed, he'd turn by necessity more than anything. that's sort of a passive outcome. if he were disillusioned and made a difficult choice it would be more impactful

>>23151997
Honestly I believe every idea is stolen from somewhere else, but most people simply have shitty source memory and think they thought of it alone.

I personally don't see any problem with taking such a small detail and building on it. Your end product will probably be vastly different

>>23152263
Well for one he isn't the main character. I'm leaning toward what >>23152293 said in that he'll be disillusioned with the priests who are quite corrupt but my main concern is that in this world the gods are very real and have committed genocide in the past on people who don't worship them. Granted, that did happen about two hundred and fifty years before the story but the ruins of those civilisations are still present to remind people of what happened.

>>23151997
I'd say there are "generic" ideas and there are "unique" ideas. The difference is that former are shared by countless works and no one can easily point out who did it first. These are fairly safe to use. But the latter are such that people can immediately identify the source of the idea and will always think of another work first when they see it. I think what you describe is closer to this category. It's not like these ideas are trademarked or anything and you're not going to court for using them, but you should still consider does the unavoidable comparison take more from your work than it gives.

>>23152431
>you should still consider does the unavoidable comparison take more from your work than it gives.
I doubt it, the movie wasn't huge and like I said, it was basically nothing in the movie (it was just mentioned in a story a dentist told and it never came up again). I get what you're saying though, it sucks too cause I think it's such a cool idea that I'd like to try my hand at improving at working with especially since they did so little with it.

>>23152444
The irony of unique ideas is that the less famous they are, the riskier they are to use. You put a laser sword in your story and everyone will just be like, "yeah, I love Star Wars too, bro moment!" But if you borrow something from a more obscure work and if someone then points out the connection, it easily creates an atmosphere of deceit. "Did the bastard think nobody would notice!?" Just something to think about. There should always be ways to modify things a bit to create plausible deniability.

>>23152462
>There should always be ways to modify things a bit to create plausible deniability.
Well, in the movie the letters on the back of his teeth were Hebrew letters so I could always change them to English.

>>23151653
Shut the fuck up nigger

>>23152462
>"Did the bastard think nobody would notice!?"

I really suggest you stop caring about voices like that. There will always be people criticizing your story. But if you see a neat idea and make it your own, you have done nothing wrong. Ideas aren't quantitative. They can't be stolen, at worst, they are pirated.

Here's the most important part. Why do you like the idea of letters on teeth? What does it represent to you? Why would a character in your story get the idea AND go through the effort of carving teeth?
If the answer is 'because it's cool/scary/ominous', then yeah, stealing something that specific is a bad idea. But if the answer is something like 'this character greatest desire is leaving a mark on the world/he wishes to instill fear in others/as a child, his mother removed one of his baby teeth for every spelling mistake'; then you have tied the detail into your own world.


>>23152473
This isn't deep enough imo. It still doesn't answer the question of WHY the character carves teeth.
Good luck

Keep going on your Polish, overly-fatalistic thinking patterns. You know there's no one home anymore

>>23152511
>It still doesn't answer the question of WHY the character carves teeth.
Well obviously I'd figure that out, I was just saying a difference I could make.

>>23152543
Just making sure. You'd be surprised at how often writers steal something because 'wow cool idea' and never expand upon it.
Or maybe that's just the AI they're abusing

>>23152516
What? Nothing to say? That's what I thought you little prick

What are good sites to upload to besides Royal Road and Wattpad?

>>23143555
You can add a pregnancy plotline at any time.

>>23143555
It doesn't matter because you sound like the kind of faggot whose writing is probably normie garbage anyway

>>23143567
Stuff that relies on subterfuge or taking advantage of a random factor. Fighting in a situation where the enviroment/factors of the combat change suddenly due to a natural disaster. Ambushes and deceit, if the character is an actual artillery in the sense that they struggle with close combat.

>>23140428
I want paypiggies. Is RR the way to go?

>>23146274
100% plausible. People have physical responses to emotional stress all the time. I remember one time when I was a kid when I met a family member I fucking despised and I actually felt sick and had to stay in bed for the whole day.

>>23146311
I got addicted to AI prompts. It's a different struggle to get this beep boop machine to shit out a coherent story that follows what I'm imagining. I'll eventually come back, since I get more and more frustrated as I start to see the AI struggle to really make that jump into really interesting dialogue and tone.

>>23152908
depends on the genre
but ao3 and scribblehub

>>23153014
if you write progression fantasy of some sort at a high release rate then yeah

>>23149832
Man, I have written fetish stories that I jerk off to for years. Just get out of your high horse and enjoy your emotional masturbation.

>>23152908
DeviantArt.

>>23153028
Really? I thought that place was for niche fetish porn

>>23153033
That's what I write.

>>23153014
This >>23153020
Just be aware that this is the fastest way to become a talentless hack. You're basically sacrificing creative freedom for 'mony nao pls :)))'

I'm completely new to writing. Should I just ignore all the books and videos about writing and just read a lot & write a lot?

>>23153160
It's slow but it does work, so long as you're reading with writing in mind and actually trying to improve quality instead of just increasing volume. It's the random walk approach, but it only works in a convex setting.

>>23153096
The trick is being a degen who likes those sorts of stories in the first place

>>23153160
Pretty much. The books are only good if you have your own writing to compare them to. The most important thing is writing something that you want to read, but in a way that others can understand it.

>>23153160
There are good books/videos on writing but don't take any as the bible. Grind on just writing yourself and intensely editing/ self critiquing so you have a sense of writing first and foremost.

>>23153020
“Progression” fantasy?

>>23153160
The correct answer is 'whatever works for you'. The weird thing about writing is that the more you get into it, the less concrete advice becomes. Since you're new, I'll hit you a bunch of the concrete basics to get you started.

>Variety is the spice of life.
Variety in all things. Word choice. Sentence length / composition. Paragraph length / composition. Characters. The easiest way to make a boring story is to be repetitive.
>Set goals.
Set attainable goals for yourself everyday. For example, I try to write anywhere from 1,500-3,000 words per day, but you don't need to go anywhere near this hard.
>Read.
Reading helps. Generally, if you feel like you're stuck on something, read some books and see how other authors do what you are struggling with. Works wonders.
>Join some communities.
Having people to bounce ideas off of or to help read your writing is invaluable. If you're autistic, don't worry, because anyone who writes with any sort of regularity is guaranteed to be really autistic, really fucking weird, or some gradient mix of the two. Put yourself out there, and see whose willing to help. People will scoff at this, but discord is unironically pretty good for this purpose.
>Enjoy yourself.
Probably the most important thing of all. If you are not enjoying yourself, then why are you doing it? Have fun with it.

>>23153254
Fantasy stories with a major focus on "getting stronger"
The west's version of Shonen anime basically
Usually it's litrpg, cultivation, isekai, reincarnation, etc.
If you don't write this you're probably better off self publishing through Amazon or such, not posting online
What genre do you write?

I want to write but I just end up arguing with retards on 4chan all morning

>>23153272
Perhaps don't do that

>>23153296
I literally can't

>>23153272
Write early
Write often

>>23153305
Anon, I promise, you literally can.

>>23153307
>>23153308
I WISH I KNEW HOW TO QUIT YOU

>>23153312
For once in your life, be strong, anon

>>23153329
I think it's the immediate gratification of knowing my posts will be read vs the fact that when I write it feels like I'm screaming into the void, ya know?

>>23153160
Have you not already read a lot? Because if so that's a big problem. I have to imagine 99%+ of successful authors were just natural readers their entire childhood and into their adulthood too. So if you're not well read, start

>>23152179
Lel
ai wont be able to supplant artistic/experimental writing since its currently based on finding the words most likely to follow a prompt while good writing (tw: prose) does almost the opposite

in other words, writing depts have been preparing for ai for decades by teaching their students not to write in cliches while ai is literally programmed to write in cliche.

>>23153448
>ai wont be able to supplant artistic/experimental writing
So basically, the writing that .01% of the population cares about? Even most big readers don't give a shit about 'experimental writing'

How do you create the effect of getting sucked into the writing? I.e that sensation of losing track of time while reading because it's so engrossing. I find that genre fiction will have this effect on me more often than literary fiction even though the writing is not as good. E.g I was reading Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett the other day and while his stuff is riddled with cliche and hollywoodisms it always has this hypnotic effect when I read it beyond a page or two. Harry Potter is the same. Michael Crichton and Orson Scott Card are the same too.

I sense it's a structural thing and something to do with pacing, the way they alternate between internal monologue, action, and description. But I can't quite put my finger on it or replicate it in my own writing.

>>23153481
I think it's primarily
1. Anticipating what's going to happen next (tension, pacing, investment in the plot arcs set up, wanting to see how something is resolved or develops)
2. Simple prose that goes down easy but that's still engaging (hence why it happens more with genre; literary works often require you to pause and contemplate passages, which breaks flow (in a good way, though))
But it's probably a mixture of a ton of things. What makes "good writing" is impossible to answer comprehensively.
And it's even up to the reader's current mental state. I've started a book and dropped it, come back years later and gotten completely sucked in despite having disliked it the first time.

>>23152179
If this isn't a troll post, then no, writing isn't close to being taken over by AI. Not long-form writing at least. The intelligence required to fully develop a host of compelling characters and an interesting plot is well beyond next-token predictors. I expect LLM tech in general isn't capable of it, and a different architecture of AI will be required to break through that wall.
It'll probably become decent enough to act as an exceptional line editor, though. So that'll be neat for the indie authors.

>>23153531
>I expect LLM tech in general isn't capable of it,
why? this problem of length seems analogous to video generation, where people said ai would only be able to generate short clips and wouldnt be able to sustain a continuous geometry long enough to handle full videos, but now we're seeing just that come out of open ai

>>23153586
Let me clarify, 'length' isn't the problem. Rather, that the inventiveness and coherency required to plot a novel requires the full extension of human analytical and creative capabilities. Simply predicting tokens (I assume...) can't possibly be enough.
Nobody on the planet knows whether that statement is true or not, but it's what I personally find blatantly obvious. For an AI to create a coherent novel, it would require human-like thinking capabilities.
And if we have AI with humanlike thinking capabilities (so, AGI...) then the world as we know it will be completely disrupted, and we're either entering a utopia or dystopia in the years following it.
At the very minimum, even GPT-4 and Claude 3 are complete dogshit at being coherent in long-form writing, so we're safe for a long while yet.
They haven't even figured out how to use AI to replace artist's jobs, lol, and pictures are far simpler than novels

AI might figure out litfic, but it'll never be able to write LitRPG, so I'm safe

Recently went to the Canary Islands on vacation and found no good books on its history.
Thinking of trying my hand at it just for practice at least, though I've only ever written short stories.
Anyone got any book recommendations on it? Seems hard to write non-boring prose on a history-related subject

>>23152908
Adimverse.

>>23153258
Thanks bro
I'll start off small with 50 words per day just to get the habit started. Then I'll increase by 50 per week

Just submitted a short story to a magazine. Pray for me bros.

>>23153745
Good luck lad

>>23153745
Nice, anon. Which mag? Did you have to get invited first?

>>23148179
Actually I had another idea about this as well

Do you think this dialogue sounds good for guilt tripping someone into doing something for them?
>I'm sorry, I can't do that for you.
>I see. I guess Morgan was right.
>Huh?
>I thought you might have changed since you apologized, and I spoke with Morgan about it. She didn't think you changed at all. I went to ask you anyway because of what you said to me, but I guess I was wrong.
>Wait. I'll do it.

the brindlebump walls of her dance studio were made of harps, diced like a cookiesheet. what her dance teachers clodding would sound like stretched on nail ropes over the hair dressors upstairs ceiling. how hair dressing would look curled up like around like a giraffes tongue on ________ .
times id wait on the orphaned fire escape come plateau with suction cup fingers about the railing like paparazzi for sides of dust, pieces with claims that people havent been here. doe-tailed instigations on the bridal train fit across my recently gones like maple tape. Or the sorted chime around the elevator, to catch her or dine on the stairs two at a time. Or a click and the door sighing like a maskmans mad coming off. Like a cctv camera she lassoed the glade of railing next to me and pulled it in. I could just her through clowntown reflections on the dagged shards of glass manging from her clothes and ending in fake knife prop splats. they thistled when she leaned her neck over the railing to get my attention. "Humph" her phone slowly spinning on the railing like a toddler on a too young to get a haircut barbers chair. The icy swish of her cigarette lighter like pool ball through a marbe chute. A sustained puffing campaign towards my side like north korean factories. clapping her shoe against the grating with less the muster of a sports better. Another sigh, the vacuum leaving the room during flooding. Texts from her friend, timed to block out the ceiling when my phone wanted to check its smoke alarm batteries.

>>23153822
>brindlebump
I already hate it

>>23153831
I was debating taking that word out it annoys me sometimes

>>23153847
Anything that reminds me of faux British terms like "cold on the cob" I do my best to remove. It's an instinct now to refuse certain sounding words or literary devices.

Without having to post an example, what's anons' takes on really terse, minimal prose, bordering on poetry? I tend towards the baroque but an impressionistic approach might better suit a project. Longform flash fiction of a sort. I can't think of an immediate example other than children's books and the higher end of graded readers.

I have some thoughts on what something intentionally reduced to a poetic form does on the reader's end, but it's neither here nor there.

>>23153948
It's cringe for anything longer than short fiction. Short fiction is where you can experiment most with form and style because the reader won't get exhausted.

>>23153745
Good luck amigo.

>>23153973
I've got something in the works that's too long to be a short story but not enough filler in the world will make it a novel. I'll keep that in mind and see what different edits look like. I'm finding that I overwrite and dialog and detail isn't doing anything, nor the musings and Big Voice, and I looked into essentializing from the start because I was being exhausted by my own writing.

I don't want to go full minimalist because that shit does suck, but I like how short fiction does more with less and need to cover examples of at least 7 or so of these kinds of psychological games and their outcomes, although they aren't the focus of the story itself. Would it be okay to use short, flash fiction chapters to build a case between something more normative? I have a vision I like in theory, but that doesn't mean anything and I'd rather have someone else highlight what I need to consider beforehand.

Somewhere I have the note "like BASE jumping into the pits of Hell" as how the pace needs to be at one point, so it will serve a brief purpose. You already nailed something I worried about because I really hate when a story is intentionally constrained to the point that you know it, but it isn't poetry or short form fiction.

>>23153264
Fantasy. But not the progressive kind. I’d heard of litRPG, didn’t know they were the same thing.

>>23154190
Depending on the exact styling of fantasy it could maybe work on RR, but odds are very high it won't. Depends what your goals are I suppose. RR is a niche site with a niche audience

>>23153948
sick and tired of it. It might have been cool 100 years ago coming off the 19th century full of dense prose, but these days it's overdone and starts to feel like a crutch due to lack of fundamentals. I roll my eyes as I trip over wannabe chuck palahniuks everywhere on the internet. It's more edgy these days to write complex sentences and deal more in narration than in dialog.

How do you deal with the feeling that your story is pointless? It's so strange. I know that there are people who will enjoy what I'm working on. I know that the story will contribute to the niche, although modestly. I know that I did enjoy working on it only a few days ago. But still, I think about it now and feel empty. "What's the point?" It's just fiction. Words. An imitation that insults life. Working on it, I can't help but wonder if writing is a surrogate for living, yet I set out to write because the worlds I describe can't exist. How the fuck do I escape this hell?

>>23154216
>writing is a surrogate for living,
i feel the same way about my writing
but whats the alternative

>>23154207
Do you have an examples?

>>23154207
You nailed me there. I had more of a Moby Dick thing in mind for some chapters, but I guess they did too. Fuck.

I still have an out I need to consider. The narrator is a schizoid who doesn't interact with the phenomenal world at times and his sense impression of events is blunted when that happens. So he's recounting events that aren't filtered through his friends in a reduced way. His outer reality is a palahninuk short story or Wattpad. His inner experience of things is much richer.

Or has that been done too? I never read the Gatsby.

>>23154216
Life is so non-obvious at times that it often takes fiction to help people notice what life won't tell you. For that, fiction is worth writing.

My cripplingly low self-esteem is ruining my life and my ability to write, how do I recover?

>>23154290
Grow up. No one cares about you. No one even realizes you exist. With that in mind, what do you have to be embarrassed about?

>>23154216
This happens when you're writing something bereft of personal significance. J K Rowling wrote Harry Potter based on her experiences with crippling poverty as a single mother. The whole series is about the power of a mother's love and sacrifice for her children, and what happens when that isn't present or is corrupted (Voldemort).

If what you're writing doesn't touch your deepest fears or your greatest hopes or the things which anger you the most or give you the most grief or occupy you in silent moments, then yes, it will feel meaningless, because it's mere journalism. Written quickly and as quickly forgotten, like yesterday's news.

>>23154216
I told anons what I realized what I wanted to write about and got 3-5 replies, mostly positive. Those who know, they want to read about a version of it that may show them a side of it they don't know. Tell a story for yourself and the friends you want to have. The friends you have probably, statistically, don't like reading even if they like those kinds of stories. You can tell those assholes the story and talk about what it means. Fuck everyone else.

>>23154307
This gave me a lot to think about. Thanks, anon.

>>23154307
>your greatest hope
ok so i should be good writing about my imaginary gf

>>23154512
Unironically yes. See: Dante. Or literally any classic novel written by a woman (imaginary bf in that case).

>>23154512
There's an entire genre of this called isekai

>>23154740
thats.... not what it is

>>23154746
I said that mostly jokingly, but it is verifiably true that many of them have self insert protagonists with the author's ideal woman as a love interest

>>23154756
the love interest in any book is often "the author's ideal woman" lol

>>23152497
see i knew it was you, Frank

>>23153332
your posts are forgotten immediately

>>23153481
it's called "narrative drive". that's maintaining the feeling that something is about to happen. inb4: no, there's no formulaic way to accomplish that

>>23154290
take your depressive whining to >>>/lit/wwoym/

>>23154843
>>23154843
>>23154843