/lit/ - Literature

Should I be disturbed that Japanese depictions of themselves, with the big eyes and pointy ears, don't look Japanese at all?

>>23226993
They drawn to be realistic

>>23227001
Aren't*
My bad

>>23226993
She's Aryan thoughever

>>23226967
Nothing in it is explicitly supernatural in origin, but there is the question of whether a crime has actually taken place, whether any of the alleged witnesses are to be relied upon, as >>23226972 put it, whether the senses of the rather questionable amateur detective can be relied upon, and what sources of information are valid. Is stealing dignity a crime? Who stole it? What happens to it when someone steals it, where does it go? Not what I'm writing about, but a similar kind of questioning.

I'm going for uncanny, but not obviously supernatural. It may end up as a longer short story, that kind of shit is exhausting to read.

>>23226972
It actually started from an unrelated VN idea, I've never played Umineko, but there are some obvious things that the medium suggests to do with it.

>>23226993

They don't look European either, the word you're looking for is neoteny. It's something inherited from Western animation but is meant to appeal to children and those who have an affinity for the childlike at the expense of realism.

>Writing Prompt

Write the suicide note of a supervillain.

>>23227128
what is a supervillain?

>>23227128
"I've been bad. REALLY bad. I'm so bad, what I am gives a whole new meaning to the word 'bad'! I must atone for my lifetime of sins by ending my life!"
No, he groused as he crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the waste bin. I have to do better than that.
"I'm haunted by the looks in the eyes of all my victims as I snuffed out their lives, stole their fortunes, and ruined their futures. And for what? My own selfish self-centered self-interest? I am a horrible person, and I deserve to die."
That's crap, he seethed as he threw another failed note into the garbage. What is really bothering me, he asked himself.
"Oh noes, a bunch of people on Reddit downvoted my post and said mean things about me! Goodbye, cruel world!"
He rolled his eyes as he discarded yet another ersatz epitaph. Finally, he was able to face the truth.
"Some anon on 4chan called me a faggot! KILL ME NOW!!!1!"

>>23227148
It's kind of like a supermarket, except it doesn't have produce.

>>23227110
So it's not because the Japanese nation uniformly hates the way they look?

I finished writing my first novel after 5 years and several top to bottom rewrites. I'm afraid to try the publishing route as I have no credentials, contacts, or accolades/publications. My life is such a mess of disappointments, disasters, and failure that I'm a generally demoralized person. Getting out of bed every day is a huge task, and I wouldn't know where to start. I also don't have the money to relentlessly advertise if I self published. Trouble is I'll feel like my life will be even more of a waste if I don't do anything.

>>23227189
The hate of remaining unnoticed, maybe. Who in Japan gets attention in a crowd?

>>23227200
Cool, you wrote a novel. How old are you?

>>23227215
i figure she would

>>23226971
I admire the heck out of you all.
I perpetually suffer from having ideas in my head that I never translate, probably out of fear of failing, and being limited by my lack of talent. Kudos to you all.
If you have any tips to change this, they'd be appreciated.

so if I write an isekai do you guys promise I'll become rich and famous?

>>23227367
“Come join me, Anon-kun.”
Stacy-chan dipped her foot in the rose-scented tub. Her large almond eyes stared at me as if daring. Her ample breasts and flat belly glowed within the light, like blooming dandelions.
I cannot, in good conscience, describe Stacy-chan as beautiful. Big flat nose, weak chin, and two floppy ears adorned her features. If you were to meet her on the streets, dressed in baggy clothes, you would have walked past her without a second glance. No, her charms lay below her neck. In each shapely limb and squishy curves. In the smooth perfection of her milky skin.
Seeing her silhouetted against the wide windows in near-nakedness made blood rush toward my groin. My manhood stiffened beneath the towel.
“So you can get excited.” Stacy-chan laughed. “You’re always so quiet and calm, I thought you were a robot.”
I grabbed hold of her and demonstrated my virile manhood with a kiss. Her thin lips were gentle, and her tongue tasted like fire. When I finally released her, there were starlights in Stacy-chan’s eyes.
“Guess you’re human after all . . . I’m glad.”
We got into the bathtub. Where our legs tangled and our hips met. I creamed right within her warm embrace, and as I looked down at her soft quivering body and panting face, I couldn’t help but remark:
“Goddamn, you’re fugly!”

I tried to writing but then I couldn’t not

>>23227486
Get in the habit of making notes of your ideas and then just writing whatever the hell you feel like. It gets you comfortable with the idea of putting it on paper and it gives you practice.
You don't even need to share it. Just do it for the sake of doing it.

>>23227510
You’re a decade too late for that bandwagon. Now, it’s all about the “BookTok” genre. Think Fifty Shades plus any random fantasy elements a woman may have heard of.

>>23227606
what but RR is bigger than ever, and it's mostly isekai litrpg and cultivation. I'm sure booktok is bigger but also more authors there (and also no thanks)

>Imani stared at the ceiling from her bed. The only sounds were the rain outside and the faint dripping of her IV. Her joints ached, her muscles mildly stung, and she had more bruising than she could shake a stick at.
>What went wrong? How did she lose so easily? She had every possible reason to win, but it wasn’t sufficient.
>She pulled out everything she had, but that clown just walked it off. Even a thumb strike, her most precise technique, directly to his cervical spine that knocked him out cold, was just something he got up from like it was nothing mere moments later. Her lifetime of training in Shaolin Quan with the truest of techniques, refined to a mirror sheen by a legitimate master of the art. Rendered useless before a man who had barely thrown a punch till now.
>She didn’t get it. She had taken on and defeated larger, faster, and far more skilled opponents than that clown. A few adversaries came to mind. The man with the Tiger tattoo, who stood a full foot taller than her and had 20 years of kickboxing experience. Another man who had mastered Karate and had killed a lion with a punch. Or the hulking man who acted as the personal bodyguard for the general who once ruled over her village in Uganda
>All of those men, she had defeated in hand to hand combat. And they would all wipe the floor with that clown. He stood a mere inch over her and had no combat training at all.
>But why did he still win? It felt like logic would dictate a victory for her, but against him she could do nothing but merely survive.
>It seems that her home was doomed, no, destined to die of thirst.

>>23227672

>>23227200
Just fucking employ the pickup artist strategy of casting a wide net. If your work isnt hot garbage you'll catch some fish. Probably. Maybe.

>>23226971
This reads like a lost masterpiece, turned to dust by the ashes of time. Fare thee well, "Jaune Arc Kills All Homosexuals."

>Working on outline for 2nd book (much more complex plot than the first so needs to be extra detailed)
>Trying to string vague ideas together into something coherent
>Drawing a fucking blank, have scrapped 20 scene ideas already because they would have just been filler
I'll get through it, and I know writing the thing will be fun, but fuck. I have maybe 1/3 of the outline done, so this is gonna be a little while. can anyone else relate?

>>23227855
Beware of the plot creep. It's a common pattern that the sequel has to be bigger and more complicated than the last one and have more characters and events and action, and then the next one has to be even bigger, and bigger, and then it's already gotten entirely out of anything a mortal human can manage.

>>23227768
Where can I read this.

>>23226971
>writing prompt
Somebody write about maids with huge boobs doing advanced Computer Science and Mathematics research using Maid Computers. Include very high amounts of fanservice.

I will use it somehow to advance my Science Foundation.

>>23228363
>COMPUWTEWS
shut up gay ass

>>23227200
You can try to get traction with smaller works and competitions first

>>23228363
>years of multiboard maidposting, still no finished projects delivered
How's that for the prompt we're living in right now

>>23228390
I delivered Wolfy MaidSearch and Kurumi MaidCard II. Kurumi III is being built right now, because the Maid Card images for Kurumi II got hashbanned out of desuarchive. Contingency procedures are in effect, obviously a major malfunction.

I have been jannied out of both warosu and desuarchive now. Archives can't be trusted to actually archive things, and Kurumi MaidCard III must have countermeasures.

Also I plan to release my book on Maid Day.

>>23228383
This is my Science Foundation.

>>23228363
I’ve been writing a (very) soft scifi isekai yuri with high amounts of fanservice if that’s close enough?

>>23227768
Satire yet again proves itself to be the lowest form of not only comedy, but also the arts in general. I cannot even recall an instance, historical or otherwise, of a work of satire being more than what you might hear at a pub or from your uncle.
I'm convinced satire is only funny because one agrees with it.
And yes, I consider that to be a work of satire.

So I'm reworking my opening with the dead birds from the previous thread. I think I'm actually going to highlight what species of bird my main character collects for his taxidermy/conspiracy hobby. I thought of opening my piece with a raven but that's way too obvious but my work does have a lot of nods and references to Norse mythology, it would fit I was just thinking whether there could be another less obvious bird to signifiy that shit is about to go down and chaos is coming. My other choice was potentially a dove.

>>23228620
Spoof/parody is not satire. When I think of satire, I think of Jonathan Swift, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and American Psycho. Not exactly pub uncle fare.

>>23226971
If a medieval seductress of a mother were to teach her daughter to be a good seductress as well (but remain a virgin for marriage) would she pretty much just have to get her to practice with a wooden dildo? Is there really much else to do with it besides handjobs/blowjobs/titjobs since she can't push it in herself without rupturing her hymen?

>>23228618
Yes, if you put the characters in maid outfits

>>23228649
American Psycho was satire in the 90s. It is more than that now. Read Lunar Park if you want to know more.

>>23228783
That could be arranged. MC gets transported to the future and uses her “historical knowledge” to help write a history book. Maid outfits don’t seem too terribly far away from that with a little contrivance

Why did she do it?

>>23228649
Parody is a subset of satire, I think. It has been a while since I've read Huck finn and Gulliver's travels, however I don't remember them being very subtle once you get some contextual knowledge about the period being written about. I'm not knocking it down or anyone who uses satire, it just isn't a very highbrow.
Also, I wasn't solely thinking of >>23227768 when I wrote that post, I was also thinking of candide.

>>23227764
Are you mocking me

literary fiction bros wwa
i recently saw a (non)play about beckett

>>23228921
you're writing litfic? what/how are you most interesting in communicating?

>>23228882
yes, but i can't tell if it's satire. you need to work on your ideas.

>>23228822
In the future, everyone is a cute maid.

The future is moe moe kyun!

>>23229030
I changed my mind, this is cringe now

trying to write but i have work, and my responsibilities. ok i've made time now, but i am tired. i am hungry. i have to use the washroom. i'm sore. i'm uncomfortable. i'm itchy. i am hungry, again.
WOW, OK. how the FUCK am i supposed to focus and get work done if my brain is housed in this big fleshy baby body of endless dying and regeneration and all the fueling and recharging and. i want to be pure.

>>23228351
It's gone, the only fragments of it that still exist are some screenshots I took before it was disappeared.

I miss the second chapter. It was just Jaune ranting for the entire chapter (like 2000-3000) words about how disgusted he was that the Achilles expy was a futa, and then at the end he finds out it was just a strap on.

>>23229071
that's so tragic. i mean the part about being upset about futas. that would be like confirmation of alien contact, or the supernatural. a gift of knowledge that cuts through the monotony of a world without actual real futas. to shun such a blessing. baka

>>23229084
Even if it's utter slop I miss it.

What some bad writing habits that people should shake? Something that screams “amateur writer”?

>>23229025
It’s not satire.
Let me explain
>Write a fight for my martial arts story
>Want a character to win
>Genuinely cannot think of a believable way to make them win
>Decide fuck it, I’ll make the other guy win because I genuinely can’t think of a way for the one I want to win to actually win

>>23228921
I haven't read much Beckett.
Writing/reading a lot this big 4 day weekend.

>>23229062
What is cringe about maids with huge boobs?

>>23228830
https://youtu.be/QCeSOlyEFp4
>Why did she do it?
Profitability.
My teenage self would sneer at this, but flipping burgers at 30 has taught me to admire the slop-hustle.

Hi, /lit/. Until now I've never written anything substantial, but I've always wanted to tell stories and all that. I mostly didn't because I was not at all confident in my ability to effectively describe scenes and properly use my vocabulary. What do you think of this little passage, /lit/? Anything I can improve on?

>>23229556
Personally I couldn’t bring myself to write something that was 100% slop.

I’m writing something pulpy with mass appeal now, but ultimately, I’m still injecting my own style into it.

>>23229560
>It's dark that night
I know that it's could be it is or it was, but I always find it best to write it out as it was, since using it's in that way sounds awkward to me.
>Rain stands in an open field. The field sits a few miles out of town,
I'd mix these two
>Rain stands in an open field a few miles out of town,
since I think that repeating field twice in three words reads awkwardly.
>Only four lights are visible, these being the stars, the moon, the city, and the fire
I'd cut
>these being
since I think it reads more smoothly.
>but these lights are much too feeble to substantially penetrate the darkness that surrounds them.
Personally I'd replace but with yet and remove much while replacing are with were where it shows up in the sentence.
>A smell is in the air. An unpleasant smell. A sickening stench of bubbling blood, and a metallic, unnatural rot.
I can see that you are trying for repetition, but I don't think it works here.
I'd write it as
>A unpleasant, sickening stench filled the air. Bubbling blood, iron, rot.
The rest of it seems fine to me, and keep in mind that most of my changes to your writing are more stylistic than objective.
Except replacing it's with it was, since I find that one to be offensive to my eyes.

>>23229603
Thanks, anon. Will certainly consider all of this. I actually like "Bubbling blood, iron, rot." much better than what I wrote originally so I'll probably replace that.

With a.i. getting better every day, what's the point in writing now.

>>23229667
You are a soulless husk of a human, and you consider only the output, but nothing of the thoughts actually put into it.

How many of you write smut, or have extremely detailed and erotic sex scenes meant to titillate?

>>23229709
I've never written a sex scene beyond the foreplay, I just cut to black.

what does prose poetry mean.

>>23229709
I've only written smut

>>23229830
Either <free> verse in the formal structure of prose works, or something that looks like prose but isn't. It's immediately recognizable, whatever it presents itself as.

>>23229709
I used to write smut and put in on scribblehub but I got bored of it since got in the way of all the other things I also wanted to do with my story

>>23229667
To enjoy the process and to make something specific that you want to exist in the world. An AI can only go so far nowadays, try as hollywood might it won’t stop writing from being a career option

>>23229709
I'm in the process of doing so, but keep veering off into them talking and reflecting. It's probably too detailed all things considered, not one whole paragraph on the freckles on each of the woman's tits or the shape of the guy's balls tier bad, but I'm likely hammering the aspects of the characters too hard and losing out on sensuality in the process. I'll read it dick in hand later and use it to edit.

Aww yeah, go figure a dedicated typewriter platform is the most comfortable thing in the universe.

>>23230431
Damn I really need to repaint, half that shit was there when I moved in.

How do I write a timeskip without it sucking?
I need to give my protagonist something to do between WW1 and WW2 and there's a period of about 10 years in which there's just nothing happening that I really care to go into detail around.

>>23229709
I used to write smut extensively and was always making written porn for /vg/ and shit. Nowadays I use what I learned to insert deliberately unsexy comedic sex scenes into my writing.

>>23230440
I would say to give a few short sentences set in each year between the first and second war.
If nothing important happens, then just say
>started working at X
>bought a car
just shit like that.

>>23230440
It's weird how easy it is to handle it, and yet how visible it is when you don't handle it quite right. You almost have to labor and belabor how unimportant it is. Compare that with a single line of white space between two adjacent scenes and how that goes over if you do it wrong and you'll see the point I don't know how to get at.

>>23230440
>the years passed in a blur, nations rising and falling, while Protag found solace in the peace. He worked, trained, and waited etc and other vague phrases.
Or keep it short.
>Time passed.
>
>Ten years had done much for Protag...

>>23230440
As long as the protagonist's state of mind doesn't change at all during the timeskip, you could do it in just a few sentences. If something changes him radically though, you'll want to explore it more in depth.

>>23230597
You really think a person could just remain unchanged for ten years anon?

What should I write about

>>23230666
Literally anything. I came up with the idea for my current book in 3 minutes, and it's completely ridiculous. It's about a former pornstar with the inability to die hunting down all the people she used to work with and killing them.

>>23230640
No I don't. Not usually.

>>23230666
Pooping butts

>>23230483
>>23230505
>>23230555
>>23230597
Thank you very much anons, you've all given me really good input.
>>23230640
Well no but the whole point is actually that the MC is a bit of a stunted manchild and the changes he undergoes in that time are less than expected.

>>23230440
Read Les Miserables. Maybe throw in a big battle sequence to distract the reader from the protagonist having nothing to do.

If James Joyce posted Ulysses on /wg/, how would you reply?

>>23230809
what is this navelgazing wankfest?

>>23230809
Great, another pseud who thinks he's the next great lit author.

>>23230440
>>23230483
A time-skip is an example of a "sequel". You're allowed to tell-not-show during a sequel. Other basic elements of fiction are described thoroughly in picrel.

>>23230640
sure. wait until you get older

>>23230666
Most people who write do so because they have something to say. If you don't, then why do you want to write?

>>23230864
Jesus Dwight, cool it with the shilling!

>>23230864
I like this guy

>>23230914
not swain, obviously. and go download the e-book instead of buying it, if putting money into the pockets of swain's heirs is such a concern to you
>>23230954
the book contains many other based statements. they're responsible for the vast majority of low ratings on ~Good~WokeReads.

>>23226993
She's an elf from a fantasy universe, why would they want to make her look Japanese?

>>23227200
Anon if you are demoralized now then trying to get on with a traditional publisher will destroy you. Some of the best books of all time were almost never published and there are probably completely forgotten and undiscovered works out there that rival Lord of the Rings that will never be published. Good books aren't always profitable, while many dumpster fires sell like hotcakes.

It sounds like what you really want is the approval you feel will come from having your work validated. Fuck approval. It's the biggest scam ever sold to society. Approval means fuckall at the end of the day. No one will ever give you a satisfactory amount, and most of the people who will give it to you will meter it just enough for you to keep chasing it.

I'm not telling you to give up at all. But if you want your work out there at all, you have to tailor it to potential readers If you aren't writing for your readers all you are doing is just jacking yourself on paper and you will never have a writing career that way.

New at writing here, I want to ask a potentially stupid question. One of the most common pieces of advice I hear for writing, is that you must read a lot of books. That isn't a problem for me, I enjoy reading books. But the books I read are generally either history books or political in nature. I tend not to read much fiction. However, I'm trying to write fiction. Does this mean that all the books I have read aren't necessarily "useful" for boosting my writing skills? Or, does the "what" of what you read not really matter, so long as you are reading something?

>>23231214
you will need to read novels.

>>23231214
Reading a lot tends to help with prose.
Those history books, are they written dryly? Matter of factly? If so, then they probably aren't going to be very useful for absorbing good prose for fiction.
If your political books contain speeches from historical figures, you could learn some of how those speeches influenced people through their charisma, and that could help some.

>>23226971
>Angel has versatile and flexible abilities
>Uses a poleaxe for it's versatility (stab slash and bludgeon)
>Angel has extremely destructive abilities
What melee weapon would best represent destruction like that?

Any tips on writing non-binary characters? Anything I should avoid so I can be respectful? Also, do you find singular they confusing to write around, or is it not that big of a deal?

can i talk to Travis?

>>23231270
i know most fantasy doesn't account for this, but a lot of traditional weapons are designed around small or regular-sized men with normal strength.
an angel would probably carry a bundle of long pikes/javelins he could throw and lance with.
but if you dont want to get weird with it, something like a halberd.

>>23231214
Take it from a man who did almost exclusively academic writing (as in like, peer reviewed shit) and made a shift to creative writing: read literature. Using academic sources as a basis for your creative writing is the easiest way to become insanely boring.

>>23231214
I'd suggest starting with historical fiction to ease your way in and thankfully there's a lot of good stuff out there. One I'd strongly recommend is the book Q, a great swashbuckler about the bloodier side of the Protestant Reformation. You' might like Eaters of the Dead as well, since it's written in the style of a medieval manuscript and has a bunch of cool Viking shit. Both books have a shitton of violence and teen slave girl fucking and a crazy amount of history in them.

The man woke up stuck in a cave with amnesia. The walls of the cave had been smoothed and covered in engraved symbols that seemed familiar.
Next to him was a backpack and an old book with fresh ink on the last pages. It was his diary. It said the year was 1886 and he had been there for 233 days surviving on strange fish from a small underground river while attempting to translate the symbols using a Phoenician codex. Over time the entries became less coherent with many pages spent ranting about how to fix a pocket watch. After reading the diary the man was even more confused and wandered the cave system to try to find an exit. He eventually uncovered a collapsed area and squeezed through a small opening where he found a long rotted skeleton covered in tattered rags. On the skeleton he found a golden pocket watch with his name engraved on the lid.

>>23230440
From my experience writing a timeskip, you either go two routes, a gradual timeskip , or a drastic timeskip. I took the drastic timeskip. I did this by showing the audience a scene that's supposedly a nice moment with contunity from the last chapter. Only for it to become weirder and more dark until it's revealed that what's going is entirely a misremembered memory of the aged up character trying to write her shitty novel. When you go for a drastic timeskip theirs more tension and creativity if you build it right, especially when you don't want to write about what happens to a character within a certain time frame. I personally find this type of timeskip more awarding than adding 2 or more chapters on a period of time that doesn't matter, just because the continuity will be smoother for the reader.

If you don't want this, go for gradual, gradual is great for an entire characters story, gradual can have tension if you care about the in-between moments before the timeskip and character introduction events, theirs some surprise factor (weaker than a drastic timeskip), and it's easier from a writing perspective.

You should try and decide what type of timeskip technique you want. It'll narrow down your decision-making a ton

If you guys were reading a book with a pretty normal structure, would you get pissed off if the author writes 4 chapters that don't seem to tie in with anything going on? My book is weird with the main characters, but my standalone chapters are something else. They either don't connect with the main plot at all, only have a supposedly pointless link to a main character, or they don't seem thematically relevant at all. The four chapters do connect with everything the novel has to say thematically but not in a first read. Is this too daring of a move to make for a debut novel, or would you find this writing interesting if you saw it in action?

>>23231498
doesn't sound like a good idea. people aren't inside your head with you, you really do have to manage expectations. of course if you are some sort of writing god, you could pull off anything.

someone's mad

somewhere someone is shitting and pissing

>>23231279
shut up

>>23231443
damn this cave got amnesia

>>23231575
It's an amnesia cave that has amnesia and causes amnesia and also the man has amnesia. But then who was skelenton?
How obvious is it? Is it a puzzle or does it just stare you in the face?

>Fyodor stood over the broken body of the Brute. Yet he didn’t look triumphant at all. No, he looked kinda miserable.
>This is what was going through the towering Judoka’s head
>“That was a lot easier than I thought. When I heard about what he could do on paper, I was sweating bullets. What can you do against a guy who can do stuff like remove his muscle limitations, control his heart, and even manually operate all of the natural drugs his brain produces? I’m just a rather tall Judoka, what do I do? Then I got around to actually seeing him in action and that fear vanished like it wasn’t there to begin with. Like, I get the impression he was some kind of terrifying inhuman monster but when I finally see him he’s just not very well conditioned or strong at all. Sure, he definitely hit a lot harder than someone his size and weight should, but he was a god damn amateur. His form was all wrong, he was way too cocky with the excessive trash talk, and he kept whipping out completely useless shit. I swear to god this kid is hopeless”

I'm planning out the plot and I could make a good but sad ending where MC sacrifices himself or I could do a small asspull to twist it into a full happy ending. What should I do? The story naturally falls into the sad one but downer endings are fucking gay and the rest of the plot is rich with misery porn anyway.

>>23231596
no

>>23231270
A lucerne. This one is even depicted with a hook at the bottom for tripping people in combat.
>>23231279
I got one character that uses they/them, and that's because they are literally two niggas.
Zesty MFs wanna be callin' them xi/xir/xing ping.

>>23231354
hmmm I don't know if a halberd has the destructive aspect I was looking for

but the throwing spear idea, I think it could work if they exploded. Kind of like a medieval rocket launcher

what's a good way to write an innocently racist teacher like Ms. Morello without it being a total joke?

>>23231622
https://youtu.be/ybIOYGSooPg?t=103

>>23231641
Make the teacher confused when doing roll call. Like she mistakes one black kid from another black kid who doesn't look similar. Another way is to make her comment on stereotypes while venting to another faculty member thinking it's private

/wg/ is in a sorry state.

>>23231867
The folly of elitism, a tale as old as 4chan itself

>>23227200
Shouldn't you be taking your work to beta readers and then to an editor before showing the work to publishers?

Seems to be the most logical route, though I haven't written anything yet that isn't total trash to even be given to beta readers. But I kind of figured that'd make the most logical sense and what I plan to do when I write something that isn't complete rubbish. Is this not the correct route?

>>23231867
Do these people just theorycraft their nonsense in /wbg/ and then write up a few paragraphs of dreck, post it here, then... continue theorycrafting it here? Isn't the explicit purpose of /wbg/ to be a containment thread for these retards? Why does /wbg/ exist if they're just going to keep posting their schlock here and talking about the same shit they do there?

>>23231867
at least there are presently no schizos shill-spamming their untalented gibberish. that's a plus

>>23231214
You presumably want to tell a story and convey information effectively and purposefully arouse certain thoughts and emotions in the reader. That's the purview of novelists. I don't think you can write a good book without loving reading and studying how fiction works, what makes you react to a story. A good writer can make the mundane interesting and pull the sublime from it, someone who doesn't know what he's doing takes a good premise and ruins it.

>>23232043
>>23231867
https://litter.catbox.moe/p885yb.mp4

>>23232203
>stupid anime bullshit video
don't bother watching. you have been warned

>trigger warnings for anime shitposts

>>23226971
How did you guys deal with the fact that you're a shit writer and will never be able to achieve anything meaningful with your writing? I'm going thru it rn...

>>23232546
Write anyway

>>23232546
do people really not just write because it is fun?
i don't give a shit if i ever get published, im not going to stop writing because it is legitimately fun to write

browsing the TV Tropes site was a bit demoralizing and it felt like my character almost fit a precise trope
>tranny gets turned into a woman by a magical twink and ends up hating being a woman
>unable to turn back into his original form, the female body he has begins to deteriorate rapidly, plunging into certain death
>he meets characters along the way that will help him return to his previous form
>then, i haven't figured out the rest...
but I found it hard to care about my character after the first 3 chapters even though I tried to make him believable
I don't think the writing was that bad, though I could be completely wrong, I just don't give a shit at all about the story now and I don't know it it's just me or if the story really is fucking shit

>>23232546
Couldn't be me, my mom told me I'm good

""literary"" authors aren't real authors, btw

What if I don't care about meter or rhymes or any of that gay shit and just want to write poetry but I'm not a woman

>>23232546
It is what it is

>>23232546
i didn't deal with.

>>23232824
why are you trying to restrict your art with rules or some label?

>>23229560
"Substantially penetrate" completely kills the flow. As for things you could improve on there's a couple:
>it's dark that night
>stands
You start off by mixing past and present tenses which you should never really do.
All of these are redundant passages:
>dark that night
Nights are almost always dark unless it's a full moon or close to it.
>four lights
The number of lights doesn't matter in this context and "too feeble" followed by "darkness" is sufficient for the reader to figure out the common thread between all the words via association.
>A smell (...) unpleasant smell (...) sickening stench
It being a smell was abundantly clear the first time, repeating it here makes it land flat since you have no follow up.
>bubbling blood (...) metallic (...) rot (...) gore
You are for all intents and purposes describing a metallic liquid of organic origin, there's no reason to outright state that it's blood/gore when there's very few substances that would fit the bill.
>so abject to the average person
The more reason why it needn't be stated if it is truly as you say.
>open field. The field
>of town, the city
Pronouns would be much better employed here.
>open field (...) open terrain
>slightly visible (...) four lights are visible (...) these lights
>her surroundings (...) that surrounds
Use synonyms to avoid repetition when it is not intended.
>, these being (...), but these
Too much lead up kills the momentum in these passages so you end up with three separate passages with no harmony between them.
>the stars, the moon, the city and the fire
While these are ordered from the most distant to the closest the point you're trying to make should be about which is brightest to faintest. City > Moon > Fire > the very Stars (further reinforces the distance and solitude of the contrasting darkness).

It's verbose but most newer writers do this. Just saying "rain stands in an open field" or trying to employ repetition is a step up even if it wasn't perfectly executed.

A.i. is too strong now. Why bother continuing to write?

>>23233022
That's a fair question. I think it has something to do with the idea of obstructions leading to creativity

>>23233022
Because I lost my career. I lent my book to someone for feedback, said person complained it was too sexual and violent, reported me for distributing smut and sexual harassment, then HR agreed and got me fired. I have no job, no career, and no money. Nobody is willing to vouch for me or write me a letter of recommendation. It's all true even if it sounds rediculous. So don't tell anyone of your hobby

>>23232819
Chad, that is the greatest prize

>>23231641
>>23231728
Could even be the names themselves
>"Joe?"
>surprised when black kid raises his hand or a "that's a very unusual name." the unsaid "for someone or your skin color"
or
>Sees weird name
>addresses the kid she assumes it belongs to by name
>that aint my name
Actually done this one when doing roll call. Only an issue when there's multiple

>>23227200
If you need an inexpensive editor, message me at https://www.fiverr.com/matthewg42

I'm free this week

>>23233317

How do you know what to write?

>>23233044
Thanks, anon. Like the other anon, will be considering all this. Much of my writing is a lot less verbose, but as this is from a more reflector chapter made up almost entirely of a character thinking about what happened in the previous chapter.
As for mixing past and present tenses, yeah that's a habit I need to break. But I tend to write something in the way I'd say it, and for some reason when I'm retelling a story to someone in real life mixing past and present tenses it something I do often, lol.

>>23231867
All the real writers are too busy writing to post here

I was pleasantly surprised by the Magos book structure. It's basically half short stories and half a full-sized novel, with the novel having ties to basically every previous short stories in some way. I'd like to try writing something like that but I'm not sure if that's a good way to hook readers, since the book assumes you're already familiar with the Eisenhorn series. Maybe it's just a matter of juggling the length of each story so short stories which come and go in a few pages are placed in-between some meatier bits of a few chapters length before the main one. What do you think?

>>23233493
It didn't feel as coherent as a novel should be. If you want to write something like that, you can't drop random stories based on random lore. At least when you're writing for fiction and not for fluff some fans will read. You need a plot structure, maybe with different perspectives and stories that flow into one point instead of just having ties. There are plenty of books that have shorter stories inside and deal well with it, they just have those stories explain mysteries and timeline that wasn't clear in the main storyline.

>>23233572
I see. You're probably right, I'm trying to write something original but dropping readers off in several stories whose connections won't be apparent until later might be making it too difficult for them. I should try first to make a compelling main story and sprinkle short breaks. I'm so far playing with the number five, which is relevant, so perhaps I'll go with 5 parts, each part starting with a short story (I'm leaning towards in-universe documents), and a single main plotline.

>>23233187
>gave the smut book you wrote to a female coworker
I mean, it sucks, but are your surprised in the slightest?

>>23233654
It wasn't a smut book. Similar to all the modern Fantasy books today. Game of thrones isn't smut but now it is.

>>23233147
If your writing is threatened by what little A.I. is able to accomplish at the moment, you were never a good writer. The same goes for people whose jobs are being replaced by what little A.I. is able to do presently, e.g. journalists, fast food order takers, and government bureaucrats.

>>23233268
>>23233274
>>23233278
>>23233282
>>23233292
>>23233297
Jason, stay in your containment thread >>23197986. This thread is for writers.

>>23233324
Most people who write do so because they have something to say. If you don't, then why do you want to write?

>>23233463
at least you're comfortable admitting you're not a real writer

>>23233699
Post your work?

>>23233699
Better yet, post how many sales you've made today?

>>23232546
Do it anyway. Have fun. I’m shit but people still enjoy reading my slop. Not enough to pay for it but I’m not in it for the money

>>23233893
Haha

Do you think there is space in YA for a thirtysomething male having an existential crisis and hooking up with weird, crazy chicks? I remember really liking Murakami when I was 14 for some reason.

>>23234381
the most important thing about YA is probably managing expectations. you can use murakami, but it will need to have a recognizable structure

>>23234388
>managing expectations
In the sense of what? Of the 'genre'? Or some common principle within it?

I feel like ennui and the surrealism it creates is a very relatable thing to YA readers. I was sort of half joking about depressed 30 year old protagonists, but I think there's both something to adult protags in children's lit and how well you could spin a Murakami into something much younger.

what do you think of this passage of two people transforming into gigantic horse beasts

>The two forms stretched, the taller father reaching ten feet tall. They were shaped roughly like a man, but their torsos and arms were huge, and their bodies were brutally muscled. Their faces were horselike, with their polished horns growing even larger and heavier looking. Their hooved feet became razor sharp, the fur on them becoming longer and shaggier. Their hands were huge and hard, and the spikes on their knuckles transformed their clenched fists into great morningstars of bone.

>>23234471
Dogshit. The sentences have no juice. What the fuck is this shit:
>The two forms stretched, the taller father reaching ten feet tall.
ngmi

>>23234471
The twin abominations loomed, their grotesque forms stretching skyward, the taller entity dwarfing humanity at a staggering ten feet or more. They bore a hideous resemblance to man, yet their torsos and limbs were grotesquely oversized, swathed in sinewy, brutal muscle that writhed under their leathery skin. Their faces, fiendish parodies of equine features, were crowned with massive, polished horns that thrust upward, menacing and heavy, as if challenging the heavens themselves. Their hooves, sharpened to deadly razors, clicked ominously with the rhythm of witches' tongues, the fur around them matted and unkempt, bristling with malice and smelling of sulfuric musk. Their hands, if one could call them that, were monstrous appendages of hardened flesh, with spikes protruding from the knuckles, transforming their clenched fists into bone-crushing instruments of torture and prose shredding, ridged and spiked like the carapace of a nightmarish, jealous crustacean from the darkest depths of a literature forum populated by sociopaths and Frank-haters.

>>23234415
>In the sense of what? Of the 'genre'? Or some common principle within it?
yep
>I feel like
agreed, but you'll need to sell it. if you aren't already working with an agent, it may be a tall order.

>>23234556
I was more interested in it theoretically, applying the themes of an adult novel to a children's book. I don't know if I'd write such a thing, but stretching the bounds of what can be often leads somewhere interesting. I had notes on a surreal little novel like that at one time, but I don't know what happened to them. It's probably been incubating long enough to make something out of it by now.

It doesn't matter either way to me, but how to sell a novel with a young protagonist seems to be a massive hurdle, especially when it doesn't quite fit in the bounds of the usual fare.

>>23234381
>>23234415
>>23234574

Have you heard of Catcher in the Rye?

>>23234583
I wasn't thinking of anything remotely like that. There's a book I either read or dreamed a long time ago that came close, or I wrote half this shit in my head already and forgot about it. Think more 60s-70s euro novel with surreal elements.

>>23234618
it's all been done; though, YA is a marketing term first. yea? so, it must be YA in some form.

Is Harper a pretty name for a girl?

I'm struggling to find a proper balance between keeping the plot moving + exciting but also taking the time to really dig into my characters to show what makes them tick. After months, I'm finally at the point where I have a barebones overarching plot finished from beginning to end, and I also have a cast of characters that I love to death and that fit the world. The only issue is every time I start to write the chapters out, I scrap huge chunks of shit because either A. The plot is moving way too fast, and these characters aren't getting nearly the time and respect that they deserve, or B. I spent way too long in a deep character conversation or fleshing out other aspects of my characters that the plot literally hasn't moved in ages. Of course I couldn't just do both but the pacing becomes extremely fucky and inconsistent, making the slower parts even more of a chore to read.

I was recommended Picrelated and Demon Copperhead by some friends as books that strike the balance perfectly, so I'm probably gonna order those soon.

I think it's just a matter of me wanting too much out of my book maybe. I want slow deliberate moments of reflection and change that comes with a slower character novel, but I also want the reader to be jumping out of their seat when the story is ramping up. It's annoying.

>>23234836
yes

Nobody here writes.

>>23234844
do you feel you have a grasp of storytelling structure? i feel like if you had certain intention with your dialogue, you might not be having the same issues. ideally there are layers to what you aim to accomplish with it.

>>23234973
I wrote two pages of dialogue and one poem yesterday
No you can't see them

>>23233268
>five-beat alliteration within the first sentence
>aiming to turbocharge him like a haste spell
You lost the benefit of the doubt within the first paragraph for me. Alliteration is not an evil, in and of itself, but it really runs the risk of seeming kitschy and corny if done wrong. It's way overdone here.
>... some magic in a game from another lifetime
Nigger, who the fuck doesn't know what a haste spell? It's like saying
>he drove a car, some machine from the streets of another world, powered by gasoline (a refined petrochemical derived from crude oil)
Everyone knows what you're talking about. You don't need to explain.

I stopped reading partway through because nothing seems to be happening. You seem to be trying to shock me with the depravity of meth use, which again, everyone already knows.
>meth, meth, meth, wham, bam, then a heckin one-liner
It all just seems so inconsequential. The rest of what I saw reads more like a low mimicry of a Hunter S. novel, even down to the fucking motorcycles. It's spastic but not charming.
>Vancouver
And now I know exactly how and why this all happened. You're that lolcow whose name I can't (and don't want to) remember.

This is the first description of the main character in my current book. How can I make it better?

There’s a woman. She stands on the side of a road once busy, but now quiet. On a sidewalk, she stands. The concrete is worn and cracked with age, or years of motion. The night is cold, so she wears a thick blue coat. Her hair is a shade of black so dark one can not see it when she stands against the night sky. Her face is white. Too white, as though she’d been drained of all blood. Like a porcelain doll, but she doesn’t like that comparison. Her eyes are blue. Around her neck is a scarf, and a crucifix.

>>23235026
Leans a little too hard on cliche, in my opinion. You use two really common ones in the same paragraph:
>dark as night
>white as porcelain
I get that you're new, but try to stretch yourself a bit. Experiment. Don't use the old standards just because you can't think of anything better. The job of a writer is to express himself, not to assemble blocks of prepackaged stock phrases.

>>23235035
You are right, I've seen the dark as night and the porcelain comparison used quite a lot, though I did put some thought into it. I wanted to throw the porcelain doll comparison in there to compare her to something that is meant to resemble humanity, but isn't humanity, as that fits very well with her character and the general themes of the story. Though, yeah, I could probably figure out something better than "black as the night", lol.

>>23235043
If they weren't good, we wouldn't be so tempted to use them. Cliches are often packed full of the meaning and nuance and elegance writers are always looking for. But they are cliche for a reason. It's on us to leave the cliches to comedians and news presenters.

>>23235055
I usually try to steer away from cliches to the best of my ability. Even in this story, I was a bit hesitant to add this one character who's a detective since there are like a trillion detective characters across all of fiction. Since I'm here I might as well post the description for the second protagonist, since there are probably a couple of things I can improve here as well.

Momma. Momma is coming home soon. It’s one of the few things he had to look forward to. The “he” in question is a man named Jeremy Erkin. He sits in his truck, driving home after a day of work. The road is empty as usual. His eyes are green, his hair is blonde and unkempt, and his skin is slightly tanned from spending time in the sun. He wears square black glasses, and his face is stubbled, with the centerpiece being a thick, bushy handlebar mustache. His eyes are cold, but cold in a strange way. A thoughtless kind of cold, the kind that makes him look as though he’s off somewhere else. He wears a dark green military jacket from his time at war, and this is the only jacket he wears. He doesn’t listen to music. He doesn’t watch much television. He has a computer, but only for work and online banking. He’s in bed by nine o’clock on the dot, every night. He has the same thing for breakfast every morning. He has the same thing for dinner every night. He doesn’t eat lunch.

>>23234504
Sorry it pissed you off so much. I'll try to juice my sentences like it's a bodybuilder next time

>>23234528
Shit dude, thanks! That actually helps a lot.

>>23233493
>and half a full-sized

>>23234381
No. There’s no space in YA for thirty-something leads in general. You can maybe get away with a Scott Pilgrim clone or an age-gap romance between a college girl and her mysterious, six-foot-five, billionaire professor, who’s also a serial killer. But that would put it in the “New Adult” genre. Which is basically YA with smut.

>>23235026
There's a woman.

She's standing on the side of a road that, hours prior, had hummed with the constant procession of automobiles. It's quiet now. No noise, no people. Just a lone woman on a cracked sidewalk under a multitude of stars, blanketed by the cool, unforgiving night. She shivers, exhales a visible breath, and pulls her thick blue coat more tightly around her small body. Her ebony black hair, spun in soft waves around a face leeched of color, shifts with the breeze, mimics the motion of her scarf, and catches her across the eyes. She doesn't flinch, doesn't move until the wind stills, then, gently, hand trembling from the cold, she combs her hair back and glances about her. The area is vacant still, and it matches her eyes, which are blue and round and no larger or smaller than other eyes, but extraordinary because they're hers, vacant because ____.

Clutching her crucifix, she takes a step forward.

I kind of treated this as more of an exercise for myself I guess, but I would agree with the first poster. I would also say that you don't need to write that "she stands" twice, back to back. And I think if you're going to write clipped sentences to describe things (The night is cold, so she wears a thick blue coat) it would be better to just write that "She's bundled up in a thick blue coat" or "She's shivering in a thick blue coat" because it's obvious enough that it's cold without outright saying it.

>>23235115
I like these changes a lot, though I probably wouldn't write it this way myself. I tend to prefer to describe things much more plainly, which some may not like, but it's how I prefer to write, and more often than not, it is what I enjoy reading. Even with long stretches I prefer to just let the words the characters are saying speak for themselves, without describing their facial expressions and actions for everything they say, unless there's something I feel needs to be pointed out. This is probably the best example of how I write most scenes of actual action, once again, open to criticism:

400. 401. 402. 403. 404. She was here. Standing in front of the room he was in. It was time. Her hands shook and she reached toward the door. She tries the nob, but of course, it’s locked. Then, she knocks. After she does so, she reaches into her coat and takes her gun into her hand. She has problems with this, with what it will mean for her, but it must be done.
But as soon as the door opens and she sees his face again, all reservations she had about what she was going to do leave her mind. He doesn’t even get a “hello” in before she shoots him. He limps back into the room, blood now staining his fancy loungewear. He tries to call out to someone, but before he can get anything out she fires again. Point, fire. Point, fire. Very soon she’s fired seven, maybe ten rounds into him. He’s gone. Long gone. His corpse slumped over on the ground, forever stuck trying to reach for the window to call for help.

>>23235065
>The “he” in question is a man named Jeremy Erkin
Nigger... don't fucking do that.

>>23235131
Okay. Why?

>>23231498
Sanderson pretty much does this in his Stormlight books, but I think they're titled "Interlude" each time. Can't remember. Mixed reception: I think most Sanderson fans are fine with them/love them, and readers who aren't Sanderson fans just get more angry with him when they come across those chapters. They feel it makes a door stop off a book even more bloated.

It's been done, not every reader appreciates it, but execution is key.

>>23235130
yes I read a lot of old crime novels which can be "plain" so I figured you were going for something like that. I do think what you just posted is better.

>>23234528
So I'm writing a bit more of the story, the premise is that a father and son of a longma (dragon-horse) beastman race are off to trade with humans when they get hassled by bandits.

https://pastebin.com/HhrWz6By

How is it so far? I tried to be a bit more creative with my writing.

Your transformation description is really helpful by the way, I appreciate it and I'll modify it for later descriptions.

>>23235095
I remembered my original premise and like it more. The same kind of slightly fabulist modern novel, played straight with a younger protagonist. Which probably places it firmly in mature literary fiction, with how things are these days. I haven't looked for where I squirreled away old notes from almost a decade ago, but I think I was going for a story about a very young man who is treated like an adult by everyone in a strange town, and how the notions and concerns of adolescence (and contemporary YA fiction, now that I think about it) are illusory.

Probably a little too on the nose for YA readers of all ages.

Does looking at artists drawing cats for thousands of likes ever get to you when youre struggling to find a readership?

>>23235698
No, I love cats

>>23235698
Do you want those kinds of readers? I sure don't.

>>23235698
People like what they like. If you really want to seethe, watch videos of kids opening boxes, and look at the number of views and likes.

>>23235698
The people who use AI to generate furry porn earn more

>>23227510
Only jf you find yourself in an isekai.

>>23235698
No, it's a completely different audience engaging in a fundamentally different way with another fundamentally different medium.

>>23235425
That opening line is terrible. Made me want to insta-close the window. The rest is actually decent, if a bit of a cliched situation. There's a tendency to beat the dead horse (no pun intended) with descriptions. You make the point about the bandit being disheveled several times, when once would have been sufficient.

>>23236513
I admit I was inspired by the GRRM "more she drank more she shat" passage. I thought a good shocking line like that would be a good way to draw the reader in.

What would be a better way to reword it? I couldn't think of another way of the boy needing privacy in the woods for an extended period of time, since if he needed to pee his father would just tell him to piss on the side of the road.

Fair point on the descriptions, I think I'll try to shave them down. I saw your well written description of the transformation and wanted to try and match it, but I realize it doesn't need to be that in depth for everything.

>>23236705
>I saw your well written description of the transformation
That wasn't me (and I wouldn't call that a good description either imho--it reads like it was AI generated). I don't think you should reword it. Just cut it entirely. The second line is already a good hook by itself. They can fly but they choose to walk instead? Tell me more, etc.

>>23236722
>That wasn't me (and I wouldn't call that a good description either imho
I liked it

So how should the son tell his father he needs to poop? Or should there be some other reason he walks into the woods?

>>23236734
Why not just have the father notice his son needs to go? Or have him say it, but do it a bit later on after the exposition on how he's been drinking water etc. where it actually fits. You start off with this line of dialogue and then it's like you do the *record scratch freeze frame* meme and start dumping a whole bunch of exposition before hitting play again. It's jarring and unnecessary.

Any advice for this screenplay logline:
An aging special forces captain confronts his humanity when stranded on a spaceship controlled by an AI convinced humanity is too dangerous to keep alive

>>23236892
I don't want to watch a man float in a box and argue with a toaster for 2 hours. Write another Lighthouse, I want to fuck a mermaid.

>>23236904
It's more of a thriller like predator. There's a lot of action, the philosophical conflict is brief. I just felt something like. A special forces team stranded on a spaceship controlled by a homicidal AI fights for survival was too generic.

>>23236892
It's too vague and doesn't really grab the imagination in a way that would make me want to watch it. A good logline has some element of surprise, incongruence or irony.

E.g here's the logline for Predator:
>A team of commandos, on a mission in a Central American jungle, find themselves hunted by an extra-terrestrial warrior

Notice the "hunted". You have a bunch of commandos, who are supposed to super badasses, in the jungle, but they're the ones being hunted. Surprise, incongruence, irony.

>>23236930
>Notice the "hunted". You have a bunch of commandos, who are supposed to super badasses, in the jungle, but they're the ones being hunted. Surprise, incongruence, irony.
Thanks for that, I am pretty much ripping that aspect off. The element of surprise I'm trying to play with is that the AI is misanthropic but makes some good points about how robots might be morally superior which is why I threw in "confronts his humanity" but I agree it's too vague

>>23236946
Yeah so there's really no irony or surprise there. "An aged special forces captain" doesn't really spark anything in that context. What if he was a war criminal instead? Or hell, a robot (or cyborg) himself?

>>23236956
Yah I've switched it to
A ruthless special forces captain must survive on a spaceship controlled by an AI convinced humans are too dangerous to keep alive.

I got a tornado warning on my phone. Neat. Never gotten one before.

>>23235667

I don't see how what you're describing is any different from standard YA or coming of age novel. How do you expect to position this? What's the angle?

Does this automatically kill the chances for a script?

>>23237113
That's what made me shelve it originally. It's too bland for current YA, but also not high concept enough for litfic. I haven't read YA in a looong time, but didn't see much subdued fiction then and what I have seen now is for middle aged women.

I might figure out how to chop it down into a short story and go from there. I found some of my notes and vignettes and I want to work with the tone and aesthetic more than anything else. Really, I just want to write something and have an idea that's been cooking long enough to yield something if I approach it right.

I'm thinking of writing a short novel about a neet incel whose only source of excitement is browsing 4chan, detailing the history behind events like chanology, gamergate and the closure of /qa/, from the joyful moments such a getting quids or the sad ones where he's unfairly banned by the mods.
I can even sell it as a groundbreaking and experimental literary piece that touches upon a contemporary niche that isn't explored anywhere else.

>>23237248
Nobody wants to read your autobiography.

>>23237252
Says who?

>>23237248
Are you really sure there isn't a novel about that already?

got rejected from my first literary magazine today but dont worry

>>23237252
The best writing is usually drawn from what the author knows best

>>23237108
no, it was a tormato warning. an aging hippie prog-rock fan is nearby

>>23237248
too close to "the emily project", which didn't do so well

>>23237117
it's cringe... i cringed

>>23236744
I see.

https://pastebin.com/wfFXNgwn

I restructured the intro a bit and shaved some of the descriptions down. Think it's better?

Also I don't know if there's another term besides "leg pouches" for the thing I had in mind. It was something like picrel. I wanted all members of their race to wear them but I wonder what might be the cultural reason for it, or if it's just something fashionable.

>>23237371
Being funny is hard. ANybody got any advice if you want to make relatable characters?

>>23237384
it really is hard. if you want to write funny (anything), you'll want to keep a notebook and jot down things you pick up from books and other media. deconstruct them.
spend time writing your own-- write heaps, and then sift through it all for anything that might be decent.

>>23237380
Not really, desu. As I said, I think you can just cut that first line and maybe use the new description of the bandit and you'd be good to go. All that extra dialogue now feels like maid and butler. Exposition is better delivered as internalization, using dialogue should only be used for exposition when the other party actually wants/needs the information for the scene.

>>23237380
it fucking sucks. try again, rewrite it. i believe in you.

>>23237384
Part of it is context. This exchange is between two vietnam vets during the late 70s, so the joke is fitting the time period and makes sense between these two.
I think that your script comes off as overly cheesy and forced. It doesn't read naturally to me.

Let me give it a try, while maintaining the spirit of your text.
>You'd hit that?
>Married, four sons.
>Got a picture?
Niko then shows him his wife and sons.
>Which one of them is your wife?

My version is much shorter, but I think it is more natural sounding, and could be used as a base for your script.

>>23237450
>>23237380
sorry, feedback--

you're 'appropriating' an antiquated style; it sucks. in theory it might work, but you aren't pulling it off-- and then the fixation on your character going pee pee and poo poo. yea, i've read like a dozen fantasy books this year that never felt the need to do this. and it contradicts the style you're going for.

dialogue is stilted. pacing is alright, but it's uninteresting. they aren't human, and? lack of worldbuilding. needs more showing.

seems like you're getting hung up on something. hence the rewrite suggestion. also, fuck a prologue.

>>23237422
>maid and butler
What does this mean?

>cut the first line
So like, the whole bit at the beginning where he explains it why they're not flying?

>>23237471
>you're 'appropriating' an antiquated style; it sucks. in theory it might work, but you aren't pulling it off
I'm not sure where or what is like that. Can you go a bit more in-depth about it?

I'll admit most of my literature experience has been either scientific studies or the ASOIAF book series, which I know were actually written a pretty long time ago.

>and then the fixation on your character going pee pee and poo poo. yea, i've read like a dozen fantasy books this year that never felt the need to do this. and it contradicts the style you're going for.
I admit it was just a reason for him to be alone in the woods away from his father. I suppose there could be another reason like the kid being a dumbass and wandering off during a rest because he was bored.

>dialogue is stilted. pacing is alright, but it's uninteresting. they aren't human, and? lack of worldbuilding. needs more showing.
Do you have any suggestions? I don't have much experience creative writing unfortunately, most of my writing has been scientific papers and presentations, and my presentation style relies a lot on body language and audience engagement.

>seems like you're getting hung up on something. hence the rewrite suggestion. also, fuck a prologue.
So the basic premise is there's a war coming and I wrote this prologue to set up the incoming invasion. The emblem the first bandit has on his tabard is of a kingdom that fell to an invading force, he's a bandit that fled up north when the invasion first occurred.

>>23237463
I don't get it...

>>23237557
Comedy is highly subjective, sometimes it doesn't even make sense, and trying to explain it can be very hard. It's something that you just kinda know when you see it.

>>23237557
Irish are just pale niggers

>>23237568
I figured maybe it had something to do with the term "black Irish" used to describe Irish people with dark hair.

>>23237576
During the 70s, the prevalent viewpoint was that the Irish, along with the Italians, were little better than other minority groups such as the Chinese, Hispanics, and the Blacks. So yes, I wrote the joke meaning that he was put into the Black unit because they ran out of both Blacks and Irish soldiers to fill it out.

>>23237294
Is there? I dunno.
>>23237354
Emily Project was about an incel falling in love with a robot. Mine would be about neet finding comfort in the simplicity of an online space.

>>23237463
Thanks, that is way better. I figured the scene was somewhat salvageable. It's not terribly important but wanted a bit of characterization.

>>23237555
i'd rather not go back and forth on it; i may not have enough context, know what i'm talking about or how to give feedback. i'd like i think i do, but this is for feedback in general.
it's more for you to question "why are they giving this feedback?", and you take it or leave it.

rewriting it is good for new angles/perspective. like how an illustrator will constantly flip something they're working on.

>>23237555
> >maid and butler
>What does this mean?
https://www.google.com/search?q=maid+and+butler+dialogue

Sorry if this is a dumb question that makes me sound like a novice writer (I kind of am) but it's been bothering me on and off.
I want a character in my non-real Earth modern fantasy setting to use cologne, but considering cologne is named after the city in Germany, can I still call it that?
I can't really use "perfume" in its place, since that has connotations of it being feminine, which I want to avoid here.

>>23237781
Either make up a word or just call it "fragrance".

>>23237781
i've seen 'perfume' more than once, for men in fantasy settings.
describe MANLY fragrances. "a faint scent of (fantasyspice)and (fantasytree)wood"... earth, grass, resin. whatever

>>23237673
Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra 3 covers some of those things, but not all. There's a section about moot conspiracy and vaguely about the rest. While your idea is interesting, I would guess anyone interested in those things would read non-fiction instead. It could be nice context but I'm not sure if that is itself a novel plot more than it is a parallel event that can answer questions in your story.

>>23237707
I think I've been approaching creative writing like a science or math, which is probably not the best way of doing so.

Good point on the illustration metaphor, it took me a long ass time drawing figure after figure to develop even this method and the face is still off.

I think I'll rewrite it, not sure what are some good ways to show what I want the reader to know instead of having a character say it though.

>>23237750
Is maid and butler taboo? Should it be avoided unless it's not very obvious?

>>23237795
>>23237811
Thanks, I'll think more about it.
I definitely wasn't going to overlook the description. But the POV character has a thought about it, to the effect of "what brand does he use?", which is why I wound up needing an actual term for it.

>>23237835
"Maid and butler dialog" is exposition, and exposition is boring for the reader. Better to engage the reader through actual scenes (i.e. goals/conflict/outcome, where outcome is mostly disaster). See >> p23230864 picrel

>>23237835
Not an artist myself, but I think a part of why the face looks off is that your lines have uniform thickness.
Try putting her facial features, other than the eyes, at half that line thickness, and see if it looks better.
Also, on the left shoulder, the bra strap should be compressing her fat, your shoulder is even on the right side of the strap, but a cliff on the left, where as it should be more of a valley.

>>23237903
I didn't even notice the shoulder, thanks.

Yeah that was more a practice on drawing the general figure. I think I got the general shapes down and I just need to work on details like the face and stuff like folds.

>>23237894
I'll try to find a PDF of that book, thanks

today i write

>How many times have I been hit?
>Boxers, Nak Muay, Judoka, the lot of ‘em.
>What I find especially strange is that my doctor said I haven’t shown any signs of brain damage or CTE at all.
>I’m mildly inclined to agree with him because I’ve been hit in the face a ton but I don’t really feel anything beyond immediate pain. My motor skills and memory are fine, my other bodily functions are normal, it’s weird.
>Am I just immune to concussions? How strange

>>23238210
is this a passage you want critiqued or are you actually rambling to us?

today I wait until it's 2 am to write

>>23238259
Anon, it's 2AM. Start writing.
I'm just editing a chapter before bed.

How much are mythologies geographically determined, like if I made a similar mythology to Egyptian would that make sense in a tundra setting?

>>23238221
Do not respond to the martial arts autist

>>23238289
I won't claim to be an Egyptologist, but from what I do know, other than a lot of emphasis on the nile river, the mythology is reasonably divorced from the region.
Their stuff about not burying the dead because burying things in sand kinda sucks could be transmuted to a frozen setting or a jungle setting, since both have soil or other conditions that make burying bodies annoying.

>>23238289
sphinx titties, ok?

>>23237750
>>23237707
https://pastebin.com/wfFXNgwn

So I started reading the Techniques of the Selling Writer.

I decided to try and nix run-on sentences and arrange the words in a way that made sense like it suggested.

I also changed the premise of it a bit to something a bit more creative. And I also tried to cut down on the exposition as much as I could and have it portrayed through actions and thoughts.

What do you think? You know you were right, rewriting it is really helpful.

>>23238508
This is so rushed. You're writing a paragraph where there should be a page. Also you're using words that are too blatant and on the nose. No cutthroat would call a fantasy creature a "lizard-horse", it almost reads like a gag. Especially since you didn't give us a description, you just said that they are lizard-horse-men. With how simple and rushed everything is, it reads like a children's book, not the HP children's book, younger.

>>23238508
Alright since you seem to be sincere and making a concerted effort, I'll try to help you out. First, you shouldn't take any advice as gospel. Readers can usually pinpoint that a problem exists but they can rarely articulate or solve it.

The first thing you should do is figure out some global structure for your scene. You can do this after your first attempt or before, but it's important to do this (and revise this) before you submit anything for critique. This structure will help you understand the criticism you receive and filter anything that doesn't apply. You can come up with this structure any way you want, it could be a single line or a small set of notes or a list of bullet points. The point is to draw the line somewhere, put down on paper the things you're not willing to change (without an extremely compelling reason).

Since you're using Swain's book (which is as good as any other imo), you can use his Goal-Conflict-Disaster structure. What is each character's goal in the scene? How do those goals interact to create conflict? How does that conflict result in disaster for the main character of the scene? (If this is part of a larger work you'll probably want to come up with the theme first as well, which I think in Swain-speak is the "starting line-up" but let's just focus on this scene for now). This alone already reveals a serious structural problem: it's not clear (i.e it's not on the page) what the main character's goal in the scene actually is, nor his motivations for having that goal. Let's make something up for now: his goal is to protect the goods because his clan is depending on them. Now, to create conflict, we need to come up with another character or characters whose goals oppose this one. Swain doesn't talk about this (or maybe he does, it's been a while since I've read the book), but there's basically only three ways to create opposing goals: a) characters want different things, b) characters want the same thing but for different reasons, c) characters want the same thing for the same reasons but want to get it by different means. A scene can have multiple of these (and usually does because it makes the scene more rich with conflict) so let's aim for one of each. The protagonist wants to protect the goods. What does the father want? Let's say he's in camp (a), he doesn't care that much about the goods, he just wants to protect his son. The bandit is camp (b), he also wants the goods but he wants them for himself. Finally, for the sake of completeness (though it is by no means necessary) let's add a third character to the scene, maybe a rival, say an adopted son, who also wants to protect the goods, but for an entirely a different reason: to impress his adopted father.

You have to first make clear all of these different goals. Then you have to develop the conflict in tight cause and effect and finally you have to resolve the conflict in some kind of disaster to keep the story moving.

1/2

>>23238664
Since you've chosen limited third person POV, all of this will have to be revealed through the eyes of your protagonist, primarily by his thoughts and feelings because such exposition delivered as dialogue will seem stilted. People in real life generally don't declare their goals and motivations out loud, but they do often think about them. One trick you can use is to focus on hopes and fears. What does each character hope will happen in this scene? What do they fear will happen? The protagonist hopes his father will return soon so the goods will be safe. The father likewise so his son will be safe. The bandit hopes otherwise so he can steal the goods. The adopted son likewise so he can take on the bandits by himself and impress his father. The protagonist fears the goods being lost. The father fears his son being hurt. The bandit fears losing out on an easy score. The adopted son fears embarrassing himself. Can you see how this exercise clarifies what the disaster should be and how the scene should develop?

Obviously there's a lot of flexibility here, but as an example: the scene opens with the father realizing he forgot one of the goods. He suggests they all go back (because he wants to protect the protagonist), which the protagonist is happy to do (because he wants to protect the goods), but which the adopted son argues against (because he wants to impress his father). The father decides to (reluctantly) go back alone. Bandits show up. Adopted son wants to fight them. Protagonist wants to run away with the goods or maybe negotiate to keep the bulk of them. Bandit wants to grab the goods without a fight. Protagonist tries to scare them off with a bluff but fails. Adopted son starts the fight. Then you have your fight scene and even here the goals should be reflected: the protagonist gets injured trying to protect the goods, the adopted son goes all out to try and wipe the floor with the bandits but ends up destroying some of the goods in the process, the bandit manages to run away with some of the more valuable stuff but he's lost most of his men. The father returns to find his son injured and severely rebukes the adopted son, humiliating him. End scene.

Finally, on the actual page, you'll want to make sure every beat follows tight cause and effect (what Swain calls "motivation-reaction units"). You'll need to employ foreshadowing to create this in some places. For example, you could have the protagonist think about how impoverished the humans were despite how many of them there were--the cause for the "effect" of banditry. To get even more specific maybe there was a recent war or famine that's brought on hard times. Exposition should likewise respect cause and effect. You don't need to dump everything at once just the minimum for the reader to understand what's going on. E.g instead of writing "should we go back" you could write "should we fly back". Hint, don't explain.

>>23238508
>a deep voice loudly growled.
I got the ick

What are some English Language Books that will remind me of things EFLs already do but don't know we do?

>>23238733
that's neat

>>23238333
What’s the problem with martial arts

>>23238975
they were made completely obsolete by firearms. even in martial arts movies, the final scene usually involves apprehending the bad guys at gunpoint

For many verbs, of course, the past participle is the same as the simple past tense (eg. walk/walked/walked), while some, especially the most common verbs, are irregular (eg. fly/flew/flown). This is very natural to native speakers and not especially interesting to non-native speakers. However, participles can also act as adjectives. The present participle, which may be universally derived by adding an -ing to the simple present form of a verb, and the past participle both acting as adjectival forms depending on whether the subject of the adjective is agent or patient of the verb. For example: The walked dog... (passive) vs The walking dog... (active). Some interesting irregularities: burned is now universally the correct past and past participle form of burn, however we would never use burned as an adjective, rather burnt survived the more-or-less complete deaths in the Americas of the -t in dreamt, spelt, learnt etc. Another: break/broke/broken, both simple past tense and past participle may be used as adjectives, but with different meanings. The man is broke. vs. The man is broken. Some verbs are not conjugated at all: cut/cut/cut, while some can't be conjugated as a single word: can/[was/were] able to/[has/have] been able to. Some, the present an past participle are the same, while the simple past is different: run/ran/run.

>>23239030
>can/[was/were] able to
could?

>>23239030
We have such conjugals to show you.

>>23239083
Grim.

>>23239103
We lose more of it every day, it's very grim.

>>23238733
we have no motivation to tell you. broken english is how we pick out spam e-mails and phone calls so quickly

>>23238986
This is a story about a martial arts competition

>>23239285
for the reason i outlined above, a martial arts competition has no real-world relevance, and that may limit reader engagement. still, feel free to write whatever you want, just don't be surprised when it has absolutely no impact

>>23239312
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aODxjsyIIg

>>23238648
I couldn't think of a racial slur for a longma anthro race.

I'm also not sure if "longma" would work if in a race's name. Would people get confused by it?

>>23238664
Actually the father's goal is to get the bandits to come out of hiding. My intention is that the bandits were scurrying about and he wants the bounty on the leader, but since they're in the woods he needs a juicy target and a teenager with a lot of goods is a good bait. That's why at the end he goes "lol why do you think I was talking to him in human language?"

Thanks for the goal conflict disaster scenario explanation. I admit I get a bit bored of Swains book here and there and can't read much of it at a time.

Also yeah I used to write CYOAs on tg and I posted drawings on /ic/, yeah sometimes some feedback is not usable.

>>23238731
Fuck I realized how sexual it sounds now. Goddammit.

I am working on a full-length medieval fantasy action adventure genre fiction novel that I aim to have published. Nothing fancy, just typical bread-and-butter stuff. I am under no illusions that this will ever become profitable. Currently 106k words in and nearing the finale.

I always fantasized about being a writer, that was my go-to answer for what I really wanted to do with my life instead of my current line of work. Now that I'm doing it, I come to realize that I hate it. Working through it is such a pest, I constantly leap to any excuse to distract myself (like right now), walk away from the keyboard, etc.. I sit down with the intention to write, and I know what happens next, but putting it into words and making it interesting is incredibly exhausting. I get that it's WORK, it's not a game, but it's much worse than I had hoped it would be.

The book is set up to allow for sequels, I even have a name for the series, but I can't imagine having to write another one. I will do my utmost to finish this one, but after that, never again.

>>23239332
>the father's goal is to get the bandits to come out of hiding
OK, but not only is that not clear (even if you wanted it to be a surprise, it should have been foreshadowed by, e.g the protagonist wondering why his father was talking to him in a different language), it isn't in any direct conflict with the protagonist's goal (because we don't even know what that goal is, because you didn't put it on the page).

Anyway, Swain's book is antiquated but it has all the elements. Pretty much every craft book on genre fiction is a rehash of what he writes about in that book. For fantasy in particular, you can look at Fantasy Fiction Formula (written by an author from the same school of thought) which uses different words to say the same things.

>>23239341
Yes, being an writer is a lot hard the people expect. There is no way around that. Some people are just naturally suited for the process. It's why it's said only 3% of those who start to write a book actually finish it. So if you do you are part of a select crowd. Being an author is even harder, only 20% of those who complete a book then go on to get it published.

>>23239341
I remember reading an article by Cornwell (author of The Last Kingdom series) who wrote something to the effect of: you have to first get good enough that you actually like the process of writing. If it's a chore, it's a clear sign that you haven't yet reached that level and should focus your energies on improving your skill rather than producing work. Then he goes on to give some advice on how to do this, which mostly boils down to careful analysis and imitation exercises of works you love (which he himself and many of the authors he's spoken to admit they did).

I wanna write in English but it's not my first language, are there any writers like that? I don't want to write some God tier prose, just some readable sci-fi.

>>23239386
The only other bigger mistake than writing fantasy slop is taking notes from the author of fantasy slop. What's worse, an author who admits to copying other fantasy slop. It's like a ten times filtered turd in the making.

>>23239411
Cornwell doesn't write fantasy and neither did the author he imitated. These threads get stupider by the day.

>>23239419
Historical fiction is just fantasy without magic

>>23239463
>doubling down on retardation

>>23239483
>I've been defeated
Yes, we can tell

>>23239419
Do yourself a favor. Don't bother arguing with the trolls and idiots. It's a waste of time.

>>23239386
In addition to that, I see novices trying to work from ideas that aren't fully formed or aren't their own. They take a flashy idea and try to run with it instead of letting it develop longer, or try to write what they think some imagined group of readers will like. Both fail spectacularly. Fantasy is infinitely guilty of the latter and why I think it has degraded so much.

>>23239502
Is that a fault of the writers or the publishers? After all it is the latter that has a far bigger part in the decision making process on what gets put on shelves.

>>23239312
What the fuck are you even talking about

>>23239502
The other side is also a problem, when novices will try to stuff too many ideas into a single work (generally seeming to take inspiration from anime and video games), in a way that just becomes incoherent.

>>23239508
It's the old chestnut of wanting to play music or wanting to be a rockstar. The former takes practice and learning the craft through loving and coming to understand what music is about and where it comes from. The latter is jacking off in front of a mirror when you don't actually like the process of it all. It's saying KISS is your favorite band.

In writing fantasy, it's autism. There is nothing more autistic than worldbuilding and rehashing the same coming of age fetch quest with a group of teenagers. It's also all they know and all they can imagine. The witcher proved there was at least one more profitable archetype to milk to death again, and it's still the same slop behind the scenes, but at least the slavic coat of paint was fresh. I think if Howard had lived to make a masterwork with Conan or similar, we wouldn't be so beholden to Tolkien.

If you look, genre fantasy had a brain drain over the past 40 years and writers moved into YA or more speculative works that defy immediate classification. Market demand has an influence, but stuff like Piranesi sells well enough and wins all the awards. There's definitely a symbiotic double ass to mouth between publishers and the whales that drive the market and binge the same epic bricks, but I don't think that influences what people set out to write.

Publishers will publish anything they think they can sell, it's the writers who polish the same turds. I do think one issue is that we lost all the print magazines that offered alternatives. There's Tor good and there's zine good and they're not the same.

I don't know, I'm starting to ramble. This is why I lost interest in fantasy, it's all the same shit at this point.

>>23239553
The more /tg/ minded call it DMG writing, where it's a digest guide for some kind of sandbox that doesn't need to be. That I chalk up more to a thing teenagers tend to be guilty of. They want to rip off the cool thing they like, but hide that fact by adding more cool things they like.

>>23239502from what i’ve read, now most fantasy/sci fi short stories are more literary short stories with a wizard or some future tech thrown on it to make it genre

>>23239645
I admit to not having the answer. On one hand I believe it's like Pavlov's dog, publishers have trained modern audiences on what they should like. But on the other hand if all the complaints about modern fantasy being trash and there is a huge demand for fantasy in the style of the older classics then where are all the successful self-published authors producing such work?

>>23239682
Sitting in the discard pile probably.

>>23239553
I do think, and call me retarded but it's what I keep hearing, that Dark Souls and Sekiro have made fantasy consumers more amenable to subtlety and not needing everything explained. Little of what goes on in that shit really works in a novel or epic romance, but they've grown to like "lore" that doesn't overstay its welcome.

>>23239682
It's a clusterfuck, is what it is. Readership was declining between the 80s and 00s, so they marketed more books to women, who were reading more fantasy. Then the whole thing shit the bed due to the 08 global depression, and men stopped reading entirely for various reasons, some of which have to do with exactly that shift, outside of a few legacy authors and Brando Sando. So now we're left with something that parallels anime, where all the "good" shit that used to be made is otaku pandering SoL moeshit because those are the ones buying the $70 dvds with 3 episodes on them, and all the merch.

I'll also be the first to point out that men (for this is 4chan and everyone bitching about the state of fantasy are men, except on r*ddit where women are bitching about nearly the same thing, as the better woman authors also got the shaft) are just as bad as women when it comes to knowing what they really want and putting money where their mouth is. Too many people now are superlative seeking and risk averse, so they don't try shit just to find out how bad or good it is.

I'm getting too old for this shit and stopped caring, but what needs to happen is for someone to blow his inheritance on a digital distribution platform and/or literary quarterly that's worth a fuck and has good curation. Someone tried with Sword and Sorcery and there's a few weird fiction ones, but no platform for curated digital fiction because the hurdle of making it profitable is immense.

>>23239715
Oh I missed the self-publish part. Ignore

>>23239718
> men stopped reading entirely for various reasons
And many posters here don't know this. Something like 80 percent of fiction sales in the english speaking world is by women. It's not as marked in fantasy but they are still the majority. So if people ask why doesn't their favorite genre seem to appeal to them anymore, that is why.

>>23239319
ugh, anime. i could never get into it. between the low-grade animation (seems like 2 frames per second), boring drama (oh noes bad guys! let's defeat them with stock footage!), and awful voice acting, i fail to see the attraction. still, if you're into it, go for it

>>23239718
A third issue is also the Bing Bong Bazoopafication of the genre, where your casuals and tourists expect shitty D&D tropes and are absolutely filtered by any variety outside of that or the spells of crying and weeks of depression that come from reading any given Robin Hobb series. They have a limited image of what fantasy was and is and anything outside their Overton window makes them cope, seethe, and dial8; as the kids are saying.

I think we could fit second and third order fiction in there as well, as a kind of counterargument. Your Undertales that are like a game that isn't a game based on fanfiction of a game that doesn't exist. Your lesbian orcs that run a coffee shop. litrpg. The fantasy we're shitting on was based on D&D campagins based on books based on books by Tolkien. It's too Academic Contemporary Art for me, even when done well. Most don't recognize that it isn't good or hide behind the irony that it isn't supposed to be.

Given that, the only thing to do is do that consciously and with some skill in order to pull a Borges, or make fantasy more real and start over.

>>23239756
I hate to say it, but even reasonably intelligent men my age can't read or don't know why you would. It's a shame women have shit taste and can't appreciate the peaks of literature, because that's all there are reading now.

>>23239773
is this pasta? how did you even make your way onto 4channel, dawg? let me guess, you don't read either.
not that big on anime either, but that's a closeminded ngmi-tier take

>>23239838
wrong on all counts

What modern rules of filmmaking do you think are leading to the decline in quality?
>You have to hook the reader in the first 3 pages of your script
>The antagonist can't be pure evil
>Woman need to be 3 dimensional

>>23240224
>there needs to be bipoc representation

>>23235425
>"I need to poop, father," Faag Geoi said
breh

>>23239360
Thanks for the advice.

>>23240668
>>23240668
>>23240668

>>23240224
No contest here...films are supposed to be entertaining. These days, they contain some heavy-handed message, usually a political one. Disney has literally destroyed their business over this.
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2023/11/27/nolte-looking-back-at-disneys-year-of-flops/
Movies without woke messages, e.g. Dune 2 and Kung Fu Panda 4, are cleaning up at the box office.

By the power vested in me, I command you to stop.

wow, look at this pile of crap: https://files.catbox.moe/d9sukc.zip

how the fuck do i start writing

>>23241265
Most people who write do so because they have something to say. If you don't, then why do you want to write?

>>23241322
i have a ton of stuff to say, i just don't know how to start writing it
starting my "novel" is extremely hard desu, i don't know how to open the story

>>23241332
then write short stories

>>23241342
still can't start
how do you start writing a story?
that and the absolute inability to name characters are my problems

>>23241348
write poetry instead? maybe you're not cut out for writing

>>23241375
i can't make rhymes to save my life desu
i would love to make a film or a tv show (anime maybe) but that's too expensive and i suck at drawing to make a comic so i thought of just trying to write but the openers are so hard

>>23241388
even people who make anime have to write. just start writing and then get critiqued by a professional to improve.

>>23227200
congrats anon. I recognise this Caitlin stuff from a few months back and your voice is as strong as ever. I have a few contacts from my MA year but they're in Australasia. Your next step I guess is to query agents who will hopefully find a publisher for you, and see if in the meantime you can get some excerpts or separate short stories published and make the beginnings of a name for yourself first. Even if none bite, I'm endlessly stoked to see you finished a proper book. Good luck