[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 5 KB, 655x244, ftp.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8667943 No.8667943 [Reply] [Original]

How do I write a novel that isn't plot driven? I can't seem to be able to write anything that takes place in a character's mind. I can't write what they're thinking in a compelling way, and I can't make any longer than a sentence or two.

How do I get better at this? I want to be able to write a character driver story.

>> No.8667947

Read Dostoevsky

>> No.8667951

Read Virginia Woolf

>> No.8667953

Think Beckett. Think Pynchon. Think Gaddis. Think.

>> No.8667954

>>8667947
I've read Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

Actually you know what, you just reminded me. Two years ago when I was in my senior year of high school, I wrote a piece that focused on the theme on conflict, and I chose to write a story that was about internal conflict.

What I did was basically take the whole axe murder thing from C&P, and write up my own shit for what the protagonist was thinking.

So yeah, that's actually one successful attempt at writing a character driver story. But it was only five pages. I want to write 150 pages.

>>8667951
What do you recommend?

>>8667953
What do you recommend from Beckett and Gaddis? I've only read Gravity's Rainbow from Pynchon.

>> No.8667961

Write out a basic plot of a story for yourself. Then retell it from the point of view of a third party, mute observer. Describe their thought processes and how they change to the sight of a bank robbery for instance. Once you have done it for something relatively dramatic like that do it again for a more average day in the character's life.

>> No.8667977

>>8667961
But the problem is, I don't know how I'd come up with what the observer is thinking, or what they should be thinking of.

>> No.8667988

>>8667977
/you don't think for yourself? Try making notes or just mental notes of what you are thinking about during the day. Sometimes it will be a long thread of thoughts, sometimes it will jump about.

"Hmm my back aches, if I just roll my shoulders, I wonder if that is because...what is that over there, oh it is just my pen....yes might have been those boxes I carried. I tried to remember that lifting tutorial I did. Fuck that was stupid shit but the guy hosting it was ok, ugly hair though, hmm could do with a cut myself, sniff, hmm and a wash, should I shower now or...what is the time..."

>> No.8667998

>>8667988
Interesting, I'll have to try that out. Thanks.

>> No.8668004

>>8667951
This. The Waves is top.

>> No.8668052

Format-driven novel.

Parnassianism FTW

>> No.8668125

>>8667954
For Gaddis, JR and Recognitions

>> No.8668129

>>8667954
Read Beckett's novel trilogy

>> No.8668176

>how can I write a narrative without it being a narrative?

Get out

>> No.8668195
File: 64 KB, 270x259, Wallace1.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8668195

>>8667953

>> No.8668207

>>8667943
Just keep going with this, repeat your thoughts over and over, edit by adding why you shouldn't say something instead of deleting what you said, and remember to touch yourself sweetly, touch the room your in with flesh, touch the reader as though they're standing above your grave after you've been buried alive. Then go read Bernhard.

>> No.8668230
File: 788 KB, 1920x1080, the foster through the trees.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
8668230

>>8668195
I'm glad it turns out I wasn't just amusing myself

>> No.8668807

>>8668230
>;)

me too, /lit/ has become more and more tone-deaf lately. Thanks for the (you)

>> No.8668832

Read Lolita untill you remember every instance where he refers to himself in third person by heart.

>> No.8668901

>>8667943
Audience does not care about anything but plot! WTF are you doing? No one will read it