/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.21854152]

The "Washed Up" edition.

Previous thread: >>21845727

/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
RESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvC

Please limit excerpts to one post.
Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.
Follow prompts made below and discuss written works for practice; contribute and you shall receive.
If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.
Violent shills, relentless shill-spammers, and grounds keeping prose, should be ignored and reported.

Simple guides on writing:
https://youtu.be/pHdzv1NfZRM
https://youtu.be/whPnobbck9s
https://youtu.be/YAKcbvioxFk

Thread theme:
https://youtu.be/NGrLb6W5YOM

[Anonymous No.21854184]

Wanted to ask those who use substack here, what their experience been like.

How do you get your name out there?
are there platforms that feature quality lit substacks ?

[Anonymous No.21854190]

also why does he appear to be inside a mausoleum

[Anonymous No.21854345]

A little scene about a bitter socially anxious guy who is going to talk in public. Rate and h8, I need to know if this is any good before continuing.

***************************************************
John's hands shook a little as he stood in front of his classmates. Some of them looked at him and others kept their phones out as he began his presentation.

He was at the mercy of their judgement. Any facial expression or sound they made would dictate his thoughts from this point onward. If they smiled, he was happy. If they frowned, he crumbled. He exclusively danced for the approval of his masters.

He tugged a little at his tie as he lifted a bottle of water to his lips, confidence vanishing from his posture. He wasn't ready to give that presentation. He lowered the bottle and let his eyes drift across the classroom.

He could immediately tell apart the new blood from the ones that were about to graduate into unemployment. The former had momentum and the latter had totally lost it. Some too young and still trying to find a path on life, some too old and desperate to get a degree on something.

His eyes rested on the prettiest girl in the class, Carly. In his mind, pretty girls were like gods. Seeking their approval was a herculean task he was too afraid to tackle yet often forced to face. All through his life there had been pretty girls somewhere around him, and Carly was the ugliest of them all. There was nothing he liked about her, and he found her presence annoying.

The teacher looked at him, amused. Her class was completely useless and she knew it, so she dropped any pretense of teaching. Her decision was still crucial on whether John got his degree or not, so he was forced to satisfy whatever arbitrary task she came up with.

"You can begin now, mister Williams."

[Anonymous No.21854346]

Those unattainable sky blue marbles of his, nonchalantly ignoring my existence. Every time I come in contact with him I feel the same stab wound sizzling. I will never be his, we will never be an item. I will never reach the Ananda of love.
Every day and every single night I weep and whimper. It is easier to cry than it is to smile. My pillow is sticky like honey, but I’m not all honey. I wish for endless rain and tidal waves catching me and washing me away. I yearn touching him, feeling his scent flow through my figure.
“If you’re hearing this, please let me be his and his only. Make him mine.” I prayed like a mouse at full moon. A compassionate tingle surged in me.

I'm totally new and wish to avoid mistakes in the future, what mistakes have I made?

[Anonymous No.21854356]

>>21852560
Just like with the clouds and the thunder, the way you describe the ship should feel more inspired. If this information is so vital it should feel like that, and not like an info dump lacking any creativity beyond plain description. Ironically, the plainest of descriptions would actually be best here, in the first paragraph. Describe only the physical characteristics, just like you would for a woman. You'd never call a woman this, so why the ship?
>, hard iron
, a raging inferno
>conceals a ferocity and temper unmatched
>her strength greater than a thousand wild stallions. When she strikes out in anger, the earth shakes and mountains crumble. Worse yet, is her speed. Should any man ever draw her ire, she will move like the wind, without resting or stopping, until he has been sent to his grave.

Basically, either write the parts originally highlighted in a more creative way or don't write them at all, or reduce all your descriptions of the ship to the most basic form of objectification. Talk about her slightly upturned nose, her rosy cheeks, her lips, and the sundresses she would wear in the summer.

>I said it to add gravity to the statement. Going through the effort of saying the full name makes it seem more formal, thus more serious.
No, the issue was not with saying "Princess Katerina," but with saying that her rule has been challenged. This should already apparent to anyone who read your poor descriptions just a paragraph earlier. You also say that another ship "has laid claim to her domain" in the very next sentence, again repeating yourself. And then you, again, repeat yourself by saying, "The princessen must have satisfaction." The reader knows this, since you purply described it already:
>Should any man ever draw her ire, she will move like the wind, without resting or stopping, until he has been sent to his grave.
Delete that whole paragraph.

[Anonymous No.21854360]

wrote the first major battle for my fantasy genre slop
it will probably be longer in the draft revision
https://pastebin.com/1SpGU5Uj

[Anonymous No.21854404]

>>21854184

There was an anon in the poetry thread a while back who shared some of his numbers. He said it was 150 readers on average, which I'd say is not bad considering it's poetry. I used to post self-published smut on archive which got less views.

He said he publishes on substack to attract publishers which is probably the right attitude to take. Host the stuff you like and send it around to see if there's any traction.

[Anonymous No.21854464]

https://pastebin.com/PeE3Duff
A flash I wrote to read to my writing group

[Anonymous No.21854483]

>>21854184
>How do you get your name out there?

Im also curious about that. It seems like a supplementary platform rather then it's own social media.

[Anonymous No.21854689]

May 5th, 21XX
Today I cleaned the foyer, my bedroom (Soooo many toys), and the dining room. I am so happy! Besides that I saw a big bird above the southern wall.
May 6th, 21XX
I saw an old man past the southern wall. He looked so hungry. I threw some old carrots down there, maybe he'll find them. I don't know what old men eat.
May 7th, 21XX
The carrots were gone! He really ate them! Old guys eat carrots.
May 8th, 22XX
I heard growling past the southern wall! It was so scary! I am going to see what's happening. Mom still isn't back!
May 9th, 21XX
This was a horrible day! I saw a positively DREAMY boy behind the southern wall. He looked so hungry, so I called out to him. Up close, he was even cuter than before- when he reached out to me, I was absolutely stricken with love--- But gave me a stripe! It was another servant of Yaldabaoth, fourth generation and everything. I sent him back to the Archons. That old fart Yaldie has some explaining to do. Ever since the ninth gate opened everything has been so annoying.

[Anonymous No.21854984]

Just wrote a 30k draft and for the love of god I can't come up with a suitable title for it. For context, It is about a nigga who gets tortured in the end by a madman. It is the first book of a series of 4 maybe 5.

So, how do you niggas come up with one?

[Anonymous No.21854988]

Is anyone else delusional like me? I genuinely believe I will be traditionally published. Like I swear, I will be agented this year even though this is the first book I’ve ever written.

[Anonymous No.21854991]

>Don't give up.
>Don't allow sadness to crush your spirit.
>Strive to make the art that will change it all.
>Push back against the failure of culture to maintain its strength.
>Drag it kicking and screaming with you, if you have to.
>Feel pity if you must. Feel sadness, feel rage, feel hopeless, and feel fury. Then write.

[Anonymous No.21854992]

Strength. The means to transform potential energy into movement faster than the conscious mind can follow, an explosive burst hidden in muscle, sinew and tendon, in metal and composite. One looks to the other and recognizes a fellow beast. One is fueled by more flesh consumed, its movement not stilled and lost but merely changed in form. The other is fueled by fuel, the price of which is a cause on consternation to the will that causes the beast to move.
The first beast knows nothing of such things and loses interest quickly. A cicada sings in the dark, the road hums with the passing of cars. The beast is waiting for sensory data that's worth reacting to.
A moth flutters to a lamp. Feline grace uncoils like a spring and the beast is transported with great precision and force to the vicinity of the fluffy insect.
The cat misses and hits the wall. Claws strike out and slow the inevitable fall, resisting gravity and leaving shallow grooves into the freshly painted wood. Once on the ground, the cat acts as if nothing had happened. No lessons learned; it has already forgotten the embarrassing incident.
The other beasts owner finishes taking a piss against the other wall of the building, climbs on his bike and drives away into the night. The cat watches him go. He's in a hurry and doesn't look around properly. The cat sees the truck well in time, he doesn't. The truck hits him, but not the cat. The cat observes the bike and the rider tossed aside by a far greater force, mangled and destroyed, their energy beginning a transformation to another state.
The cat licks its paw. It feels content and curious and moves on into the darkness beyond the edge of light. The bike will never be ridden again. The rider will not reach his meeting in time. The moth bangs against the light again and cannot comprehend what invisible barrier resists it from moving into the light.
A cicada cries and the trucker climbs out of his cabin, cursing. Not at the loss of life, but at the unfairness of life that will now make him late from his own schedule.
The cicada grows silent as the cats jaws close around it and the cat feels the thrill of a kill. The cat chews the crunchy chitinous caraprace and stares into the darkness, ears turning to the noises of any further prey. All throughout the night, matter is turned to energy and energy is converted to movement. Larger forces overcome smaller ones.
The night is young.

[Anonymous No.21855313]

>>21854464
Ah, I forgot to reply last thread.
I enjoyed the story as a fun little oddity and nothing jumped out as bad or wrong. Though I imagine it could be hit or miss just due to it reading like a weird advertisement for the pen.

[Anonymous No.21855344]

>>21854984
That description doesn't give me a lot to work with as far as making a title.
For me I did this.
What is the inciting incident?
Well, a farmer finds an infant in the woods and takes him back home.
So, The Child From The Woods.
Does your story have a defined endpoint? Something it is working towards? Mine does, in a sense, but that ending is far enough away that I don't feel the need to include it in my title.
>>21854988
My delusion is that I will make a couple hundred bucks a month on patreon.
Just enough to give my parents some money and not feel like a total leech.

[Anonymous No.21855372]

>Optunia’s library displayed a masterful centerpiece for the city. A rounded room with books lining the walls from top to bottom. Every inch of the cylindric room carried shelves of different spines blurred together creating a wanton mixture of colored bricks decorating the walls. Rows of books continued this trend and specialty made curved shelves strategically placed to create walkways in between. The entirety were concentric circles of various sizes sharing a common midpoint where an information kiosk was built. The greeter was a portly middle-aged woman. She looked nothing of the sort compared to the Knights working in Pinaceae, but she had a bright smile and cheery eyes, one that has never experienced the problems and hardships that came from protecting the peace.

Can you use your mind's eye to picture this library? Imagine it like a target, and the bullseye is the kiosk.

[Anonymous No.21855413]

>>21854984
Nigger Made Good
Hope you like my suggestion!

[Anonymous No.21855429]

>>21855372
>decorating the walls
cut
>Rows of books continued this trend and
cut, capitalize curved
>The entirety were concentric circles of various sizes sharing a common midpoint where an information kiosk was built.
cut
>The greeter was a portly middle-aged woman.
The greeter at the central information kiosk was a portly middle-aged woman.
>She looked nothing of the sort compared to the Knights working in Pinaceae
what does this even mean? rewrite so whatever it is you're trying to say gets across

[Anonymous No.21855474]

>>21855429
Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.21855724]

>>21855372
>books lining the walls
>shelves of different spines
>Rows of books
You don't have to remind the reader every sentence that the library has bookshelves.

>Rows of books continued this trend and specialty made curved shelves strategically placed to create walkways in between.
Reads bad. Remove "continued this trend." There should be a comma before the "and." And "specialty made" should also be removed. Look up any other synonym. I don't know, bespoke? Or better yet, nothing at all.

>concentric circles of various sizes sharing a common midpoint
Water is wet. Concentric circles are circles with a common midpoint.

Many ESL-y mistakes. Almost one in every sentence. But the bigger problem is the creativity that your writing lacks.

[Anonymous No.21855729]

>>21854984
Think about the core themes of your story and see if there's a catchy term or phrase that encapsulates that idea. Alternatively, if your story follows a particular arc thats reminiscent of another, popular story, then use a permutation of that story's name.

[Anonymous No.21855877]

>>21855313
So long as it's fun. Thanks brah
It's my first time having an in person writing group. I had a meet and greet last week and they seemed alright. Hope they like it

[Anonymous No.21855951]

>>21855724
>Many ESL-y mistakes
How do I know I'm making these mistakes?

[Anonymous No.21855954]

>>21855951
I want to avoid them in my own writing. It sounds fine when I'm reading the passage out loud.

[Anonymous No.21856287]

[Anonymous No.21856538]

>>21854345
Is it me or could you cut the last sentence from every paragraph and still know exactly whats going on ?

[Anonymous No.21856733]

How do I make chatgpt improve my prose?

[Anonymous No.21856755]

>>21856733
ChatGPT doesn't output information; it outputs information-shaped sentences.
If you need ChatGPT to improve your prose, you're NGMI.
This is like asking how AutoTune can make you a better singer.
It can't, and that's why modern pop music sucks.

[Anonymous No.21856798]

>>21856733
Use it like Grammarly... just get it to cut down your flower bush.

[Anonymous No.21856860]

>>21856798
Isn't grammarly garbage for creative writing?

[Anonymous No.21856881]

>>21856733
I've been using it a lot for editing mostly, replacing words and whatnot. If you aren't a good creative writer then you're fucked. Otherwise tell the ai to rewrite some passages in the style of an author you like, it'll give your mind some better ideas maybe

[Anonymous No.21857149]

What went wrong?

[Anonymous No.21857216]

>>21857149
Hard to tell from just a blurb, but it comes across as overly purple fantasy YA lit.
Also, I don't buy e-books. I demand paper. e-books can be retroactively removed from one's online account if the Woke Powers That Be declare it "problematic' or whatever.

[Anonymous No.21857224]

>>21855951
>>21855954
Try running your text through a quality AI text-to-speech generator, like the one ElevenLabs has. The narration will sound distinctly off when reading the ESL parts of your text.

[Anonymous No.21857250]

https://twitter.com/arleysorg/status/1640764662009700352

If wytpipo want to get published in *checks bio* Clarkesworld, Fantasy and Sci-fi, Locus, or Fantasy Magazine you gotta stop committing LESS crimes per capita than other races.

Just face it, you will never be published.

[Anonymous No.21857277]

>>21854152
this might be cringe but how does this sound as a short story, im trying to get this idea out of my head. also plz give suggestions. im a big reader but i dont really write a lot.

Placed in Brazil, a former Hitman (or Sicario) Bruno, tells a story through journal entries of how he's killed many people and done many terrible things in his life for his own selfish greed yet he feels nothing for what he's done and that is his main struggle throughout the story.
As he is older (52) he expresses how he feels nothing for the evil things he has done when he was younger, but he feels terrible that he doesn't feel terrible. He feels a sense of shame that he doesn't feel guilty. He doest feel an ounce of responsibility or sympathy. Over time he has grown to have a family; a daughter and wife. Bruno has not told his wife or daughter his past life and the things he has done. He has adapted to a better life as he escaped the gang lifestyle, not because he didn't like it, it was just means for money, but now he is financially stable in other ways of income in Brazil, being a gangster wasn't very stable or safe as the times have changed. He can support himself and his family legally. He uses his journal as a way of confession. We go through his life and his thoughts and memories of things he's done. Near the end Bruno finishes a journal entry in the morning and leaves for work, before he leaves he looks at his wife and tells her, i have something to tell you when I come back (alluding to confessing his past). The story ends with Bruno coming back to his home, finding his wife and daughter slaughtered by the son of a man Bruno killed 20 years ago. The story ends with Bruno still not feeling anything, he understands this was the cost of his evil deeds, and all the people he's killed and hurt. He can not cry when he finds his family killed, he can't fathom vengeance or any emotion behind his selfish self loathing for not feeling anything at all. He suffers from the idea that he cannot suffer from others' pain but only his own.

[Anonymous No.21857353]

>>21857277
ideas are worth less than dirt
just fucking write god dammit

[Anonymous No.21857383]

How mad are you arrogant pieces of shit that F Gardner bought a fucking penthouse, in downtown chicago? Maybe you should be asking him for help instead of calling him a shill. Plus, his latest book is realy good, i didn't know F Gardner was redpilled on the Jews.

Unlike your parents, F Gardner's must be pretty proud.

[Anonymous No.21857395]

>>21857149
I stopped at the font and image and didn't read the description, I can already tell the author has no aesthetic principles so there's no point in wasting the time

[Anonymous No.21857464]

>>21857395
My book cover is basically black with a free amazon picture. Are you saying that is not good enough? Preposterous. All black covers are clearly teh best of all time.

[Anonymous No.21857483]

>>21857383
Gardner writes better than the fucks that wrote those unreal stories. Hilarious they would make fun of gardner when their writing isn't any better

[Anonymous No.21857662]

>>21857383
You didn't buy squat, Frank.
And you certainly didn't do it with the proceeds from your "books".
Your latest brain-dropping is around #500,000 on Amazon's "top seller" list.
That'll be enough to make /unreal/'s sad "best of /lit/" list tomorrow, but that's about it.
It's a pathetic LARP, and you're too stupid to understand how transparent you are.
>>21857483
Wow, you're seething more than usual.
Are your lies finally catching up to you, maybe?

[Anonymous No.21857672]

>>21857464
And which book would that be?
>>21857483
Don't you get tired of having your posts deleted by the jannies for rule violations?
To anyone else, that would be a clue that you're a gigantic troll.
Somehow, you're too dumb to figure that out.
Guess buying 4chan fell through, huh?

[Anonymous No.21857673]

>>21857277

I say go for it

[Anonymous No.21857676]

>>21857662
You're just seething about F Gardner's success. Did you see his new video? No green screen. Enjoy the view.

[Anonymous No.21857736]

>>21857676
No seething necessary...you have no success.
And I'm not impressed you found someone to let you LARP about owning such an apartment.
You can't even afford a cardboard box, and you know it.
Besides, I hate city views. I prefer countryside.

[Anonymous No.21857742]

>>21854152
I'm on the grind and determined to succeed, one day you'll all brag that you knew me back in the day.

[Anonymous No.21857752]

>>21857250
There was a nigger in 2021 that shot a white toddler in the head and was filmed screaming "Black lives matter!" when he did it. It wasn't listed a hate crime.
If the government reported hate crimes properly, 99.9% of them would be blacks.

[Anonymous No.21857920]

>>21854152
https://pastebin.com/nt0StA6r
Give it a read, pretty please? Then you can rip me a new asshole if you like.

[Anonymous No.21857959]

>>21857277
It's a pretty good premise but it's missing a story in the current time frame. It's not enough to tell backstories of past adventures. There needs to be something happening now.

If you just have this guy moping around feeling bad, it gets boring. And if suddenly his family is dead at the end, it won't feel climactic either because there was no tension built up going into this.

The backstory would have to be the entire arc of this conflict that leads directly to the death of the family and it has to be intersecting with things happening in the current timeframe. He's noticing things, getting suspicious, wondering... etc. Then you can have the tension you need to pull it off.

Otherwise this story is dead flat.

[Anonymous No.21857962]

>>21857277
Also this is way too much for a short story. This is a novel-length story.

[Anonymous No.21858001]

>>21854152
>https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/57441/the-elevation-chronicles-grimdarklit-rpgfeels/chapter/1154218/chapter-81-the-end
I did it senpai's! I finally finished my magnum oppai!

[Anonymous No.21858006]

>>21858001
congrats!! ill read the rest of this story sometime

[Anonymous No.21858116]

>>21857959
If Im being honest, This is actually going to be a short graphic novel / manga(?). I’m kinda going for an old guy moping around regretting everything type of perspective. I want to start short so I don’t burn out. I appreciate your feedback though, it makes the structure a lot more clear to be honest. Maybe I can work on a short condensed version first and then full commit to a longer story.

(this is young Bruno)

[Anonymous No.21858273]

>Listen up. If you’re going to live here, and you will, you’re gonna have to just learn some ground rules. One, you, or anyone else for that matter, doesn’t cross the threshold all wily nily. That’s something you need to prepare for. Two, you don’t sleep on the floor. Have some self respect and actually use a bed. Three, be ready for anything. Because you will inevitably need to fight some absolutely horrible things at some point.
I dunno why I wrote this

[Anonymous No.21858371]

>>21858006
Thanks anon, I'm not much of a proof reader but I'll be happy to give your stuff a view if you need.

[Anonymous No.21858478]

>read great prose stylists like Updike and Nabokov
>the diction and prose is actually quite simple
>somehow still extremely intense and vivid

Is this what writing from the heart is like?

[Anonymous No.21858489]

>>21854988
>I will be traditionally published
I was so sure I could. Then I participated in a small writing contest just to test how good I was and didn't even get among the 20 finalists. If some scummy magazine jury wouldn't give me the time of day, there's not a snowball's chance in hell any credible publisher would look at my work.

[Anonymous No.21858533]

He remembered. It was a lousy day. No one moved around any longer, especially not in circles, since they were all dead, even reanimated from the looks of it. But still, frozen solid, they began shuddering at the grim cold. In order to get into the habit of hunting the dead, one should be aware of this much. They always bite at the jugulars. And the bodies are shaped like elongated barrels with large horns coming out of their dime-rounded heads. Beneath them, a giant barnacle made out of many legs carry them on the road. Their arms are saw-like discs that are connected to their barrel-trunks by large veiny tubes that constantly leak blood. It’s hard to stare at them but one must make do with what he has. It’s gruesome, contemplating just what one should do, but this much can be said. They eat livers, and the men around these parts have their livers exposed.

-An excerpt from my RPG

I'm planning on continuing the game's story in a book format.

[Anonymous No.21858548]

>>21858533
ah, nice to see someone else's makin a vidya too.

[Anonymous No.21858566]

>>21858548
Thanks anon. I figured that since I'm not good enough to become an author in my own right, I may as well just make a video game. GL on your game too, anon.

[Anonymous No.21858571]

>>21858478
Yes. It's what we call SOVL on /ic/.

[Anonymous No.21858586]

>>21858533
I also remember being shat on by /lit/ the last time someone posted my book here:

>>19106469

If someone's interested, here it is ;3:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/6rz89ho2r61sz7n/Schizo.pdf/file

[Anonymous No.21858621]

why does my most soulful writing come out when I’m at fatal-driving-accident-guaranteed levels of sleepiness, and how do I access this without nearly being on the edge of sleep?

[Anonymous No.21858625]

Anons, what is the best website to post and share my writings?

[Anonymous No.21858644]

>>21858621
try drinking it gets you in the same zone

[Aaron Morales No.21858652]

Hear ye, hear ye, town smut peddler coming through, peddling mine smut to yon horny villagers

[Anonymous No.21858656]

I can't write smut without it turning into some sci-fi war story

[Anonymous No.21858657]

>>21858652
christ your covers are horrible

[Aaron Morales No.21858658]

>>21858657

Have you seen typical smut covers?

[Anonymous No.21858670]

>>21854152
Bros, I've just read a newly published Japanese Web-Novel (in runes cause I'm not a fucking JSL) that I read eons ago; and from the first sentence, the improved prose tore my heart out... so this is it; this is what 8 years of experience did to a writer with innate talent.

I can't do this. I'm utterly exhausted as a writer and a wordsmith.

[Anonymous No.21858675]

>>21858657
glory hole academy is boner (accomplished its aim pretty well) inducing. the rest is absolutely horrendous

[Anonymous No.21858679]

>>21858533
Woah, the artstyle reminded me of Gekidan Inukare, nice!

[Anonymous No.21858696]

>>21857464
>>21857395

On the topic of book covers: what is the implication, legal or PR, of using stable diffusion for the base image of a novel.

E.G. Yoshitoshi ABe's LORA model to create a cover and add title and other texts to it.

[Aaron Morales No.21858702]

>>21858675

This is typical of smut as the cover isn't the point of it. They're always just backgrounds from unsplash or pexels and GPL images of thots on top. I promise you won't be looking at the cover images while reading, this isn't manga

[Anonymous No.21858730]

I had to look up wtf gpt-4chan is,
I don't know why I didn't realize it before but you can't even make a comment without having an AI trained on you. Fucking freaky. Can't make a youtube comment, reddit post, 4chan post, post a picture without having your thoughts fed to the machine. I don't want any part of bringing on the anti-christ

[Anonymous No.21858745]

>>21858702
Where can I download these for free?

[Anonymous No.21858751]

>>21858730
Good, fuck off schizo. I'll be training the AI to piss on your faith in the meantime.

[Aaron Morales No.21858754]

>>21858745

lemonparty.org

[Estella Gallegos No.21858764]

>>21858751
I hope you upload yourself to the singularity too. Christ says in the final days man will seek death but will be unable to find it, good luck getting stuck in your techno-hell, heathen<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21858769]

>>21858764
God DAMMIT

[Anonymous No.21858805]

>>21858675
agreed desu senpai

[Anonymous No.21858831]

I am trying to write a harem story where my SI's friend, a teen prodigy, passes an entrance exam into the most elite Uni in the world. However, there he has to grapple with the fact that his low social status and high performance makes him an object of attention - positive and negative.

And then he has to deal with the fact that the University may be involved in a shady government conspiracy to implement a socialist revolution and usher the country into a dystopia.

My only problem is that without either the standard plots of "Childhood friends" or "Magic Aphrodisiac person", I don't really know how to start the harem. Maybe meet cutes?

I put a lot more time into the conspiracy plot than in the harem one.

[Aaron Morales No.21858857]

>>21858831

Either he starts a cult or deals hard drugs and coaches the girls to start OnlyFans to pay for said drugs

[Anonymous No.21858867]

Any serious advice?

[Anonymous No.21858873]

Any tips about writing descriptions of buildings and interiors? I feel I'm really struggling with coming up with that.

[Anonymous No.21858882]

>>21858873
Look up expensive property agents' websites and see how they describe these places.

[Anonymous No.21858995]

Any advice for an underwriter? The fault isn't that I do not describe enough because I have actually been criticised for being overly descriptive. What could it be?

[Anonymous No.21858999]

>>21858489
Why does lit blame it on politics for not being able to get published when the truth is that they just aren't that good at writing?

[Anonymous No.21859096]

>>21858999
It's easier to externalize the causes for your misfortune. When you have no power nor worth, all you can do is blame others for not making it in life.

[Anonymous No.21859114]

>>21858999
Who said anything about politics?

[Caroline Mejia No.21859223]

How should I describe the Silly Me gesture? Here's a try:
//*//
Touko slowly raised his head and stared balefully at the culprit: her own sister.
Mizuki, the little brat, just stuck out her tongue and bonked herself on the head with a wink.
//*//

Doesn't feel quite right.<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21859301]

>my book will never be good enough to even be self published on Royal Road

[Anonymous No.21859343]

Where is a good place to post stuff that isn't good enough to publish for real.

I have zero motivation to complete anything if I know the final product won't be read, but I will never git gud without a ton of practice.
Super duper short stuff I can post on 4chan, but for longer stories I don't know. I don't want to go to redzit or have my real name connected to anything. That way I can be shit or edgy and it won't get back to me 10 years later.

[Anonymous No.21859407]

>>21859223
I'm not a bot, btw.

[Sherri Cardenas No.21859414]

>>21859407
>>21859223
You shouldn't be trying to artificially import a technique of a visual medium into writing.<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21859486]

>>21858873
Why would you have to? and is this a real world or fantastical setting?

[Anonymous No.21859565]

>>21858873
travelogues

[Anonymous No.21859582]

>>21859414
Probably not. But isn't writing all about making readers see images through text?

[Anonymous No.21859586]

>>21858586
Holy shit...6,205 pages?!
Post it as a serial on RoyalRoad. They might like it there.

[Anonymous No.21859600]

>>21858621
Isaac Newton used to supplement his creativity through sleep deprivation.
So it really depends on how dedicated you are to your craft.

[Anonymous No.21859615]

>>21858696
https://www.cartoonbrew.com/law/midjourney-ai-images-us-copyright-office-226437.html
The U.S. Copyright Office has already ruled that images generated by Stable Diffusion can't be copyrighted.
Personally, I don't care if someone tries to steal the image I use for a book cover. At worst, it sounds like free advertising.

[Anonymous No.21859622]

>>21859223
just have a little piece of dialog that signals intent.
>Touko slowly raised his head and stared balefully at the culprit: her own sister.
>"Hehe, whoops!" Mizuki said, sticking out her tongue and bonking herself on the head with a wink.

[Anonymous No.21859634]

>>21859223
What is your story so i can read it

[Anonymous No.21859667]

>>21859223
vague
>playfully tapping her fist against her head.

[Anonymous No.21859681]

>>21859586
Good idea, thank you anon.

[Anonymous No.21859705]

>>21859586
Nvm.

"Hate speech and pedophilia of any kind are prohibited in all areas of the site, including within fictions that have mature tags."

[Anonymous No.21859713]

>>21858999
Because it's literally true?

[Anonymous No.21859727]

>>21859223
How about "she winced as she smacked her forehead"?

[Anonymous No.21859735]

>>21859705
Then, ScribbleHub or WattPad?
Something that long definitely needs to be serialized.

[Anonymous No.21859750]

>>21859634
I'll be damned if I know. I've got the world and the protagonist(s), I've got the villains, and I know what I want (basically a LN tier story about fighting Azathoth to save humanity), but I have no idea what the actual story should be.

Currently my main problems are:
1. What is the magic system? I need that because writing battles is impossible otherwise. I want something with scope for both spells and physical combat. I'm vacillating between Fate and DnD at present.
2. What do the villains even plan to do?
3. How the hell do I write webnovel tier comedy?

[Anonymous No.21859759]

>>21859705
Which is it? Pedo fantasy or /pol/tard ranting?

[Anonymous No.21859763]

>>21859759
>/pol/tard ranting?
I went through a phase that I'm now ashamed of. I might need to clean up some of my stuff before releasing it.

[Anonymous No.21859774]

>>21859750
>1. What is the magic system?
Don't waste your time tackling this autism. Nobody but other autists will care about the intricacies of your magic system, so long as you don't use magic to trivialize or handwave important plot points.
>2. What do the villains even plan to do?
Keep it simple and relatable. Nobody wants another "the heroes must find the 9 chaos emeralds in order to defeat the reawakened ancient evil whose motivations are beyond our mortal comprehension!"
>3. How the hell do I write webnovel tier comedy?
I can't help you here, I'm a comedic black hole.

[Anonymous No.21859778]

>>21859750

My 2 cents
1. Just write, no one cares about complex magic system. If you really need to have it, try the RPS system
2. Sounds like you haven't got the villains yet
3. Just write: seriously, WN tier comedy is literally just the author chuckling at their own characters.

[Anonymous No.21859790]

>>21859343
I check my email sometimes, so if you just want feedback and analysis of your character, but don't want to post it in a forum for whatever reason, you can send it here: [e-mail]. Of course, if it's good I'll send it to my agent and get it published under my name. we'll have fun in court then, but as of right now, you don't have to worry about those

[Anonymous No.21859883]

>>21859705
so wait you cant even reference that someone got abused as a kid?

[Anonymous No.21859895]

She felt the sharp sting of epiphany, her cup a vortex of thoughts below. Mom was there when she felt the cool ceramic, and dad the steaming brew. On the antique screen above, two athletes battled with perfect symmetry. A sweetness filled her cheeks as the room spun into black. This humble diner doubled back on itself, the family reduced to flickering neon.

[Laurie Booker No.21859910]

>>21858831
Have him meet girls who got in through some connections and are running the risk of flunking out so they come to him.
Then they of course expect him to try something, which they can then use to blackmail him into doing their work for free.
But he knows what they are doing and depending on your tone, he turns it around on them, or he chooses to help them anyway.
This selfless action despite their own attempts to fuck him over would then win their hearts as they can't come to terms with somebody who is genuinely good without any ulterior motives.
Generally speaking I think in your setting which is going to be filled with either people who are too smart for those around them or rich students, I imagine many of them would have some history of being used.<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21859917]

>>21859343
RoyalRoad, Scribblehub, Substack.

[Anonymous No.21859922]

>>21859917
WB wattpad?

[Anonymous No.21859944]

Haha, very funny 4chin, marking my post as AI generated and giving me a name.
I'll admit, when I saw the posts up above with the tag I thought it really was AI posts.
>>21859922
There are a handful of different sites, just forgot to mention wattpad since I've never actually used it myself.

[Anonymous No.21859969]

>>21857920
I'm about to continue my own writing, so I don't feel like reading the entire thing.
But in those first 13 lines you say Dark Ribbon 5 times and that was the first thing that jumped out to me.
You don't need to constantly repeat her name like that and doing so makes it a bit clunky to read.

[Anonymous No.21859974]

why do I feel like a stupid loser when I write fantasy?

[Anonymous No.21859983]

>>21859974
Why do you also feel like one when you're not writing fantasy? Same reason I feel like a Chad no matter what I do. It's true.

[Anonymous No.21859990]

>>21859983
>Why do you also feel like one when you're not writing fantasy?
I don't feel like a loser when I'm writing my uni papers. I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile.

[Anonymous No.21859993]

>>21859974
You are afraid of showing yourself through your work.
Fantasy is a 'nerd' genre and you don't want to be seen as a sweaty basement dweller.
I felt like that at first too, but I feel better writing my story in as genuine a manner as possible even if it might come off as cringe to some people.

[Luis Spears No.21860001]

>>21859993
That is very well put, thanks man. Have you ever published anything? If so, what was your first feedback like? How did it feel?<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21860016]

>>21860001
I write the story "The Child From The Woods" On RoyalRoad.
My first comment was someone complimenting my first chapter for feeling comfy, which did feel pretty great.
Overall the worst thing anyone has said on the site is a review where they called it meandearing, but that is kinda true due to the nature of the story.
The worst anyone said on /lit/ was that I needed to go back to school so I could get a 5th grade level of punctuation.
I've since gone back and edited a lot of it, so the punctuation should be fine unless I was doing it at 4AM on my phone while drunk.

[Anonymous No.21860023]

>>21860016
I see
I've never published anything and am currently working on a rather big story. Do you think I should publish something short first to see if I'm any good? I hate writing short stories though

[Anonymous No.21860051]

>>21860023
I personally finding writing short stories to be harder than a serialized one, but the important part is that you write something.
I sometimes feel like I should've written out my first 200k words before publishing anything just because I think I've improved by leaps and bounds since I began.
But, I also think that posting anything at all is an important first step,
I'm not sure about you, but I get anxiety over comments, and this stopped me from doing anything with the story for months.
Eventually I decided to do a full edit of what I had written so that it matched what I currently was doing with the story tonally and grammatically.
Now I don't let the idea of comments (they have been nice and it is just a fear of mine to have others commenting on my stuff) stop me from doing anything because it is my story, not theirs, and I want to write it even if not everyone, or anyone likes it.
This reply from someone on the general also helped me feel better about what I've done so far and it might be good for you as well.

[Anonymous No.21860055]

>>21859910
That's Incel stuff. I'm not writing that. Even a former fanfic writer like me has standards.

[Anonymous No.21860092]

>>21859910
How typical of GPT...it can only give old answers that are no longer fashionable. It can't adapt to new realities.
It's fine for replacing customer service agents and government bureaucrats, but fails at creative endeavors.

[Anonymous No.21860107]

>>21859974
Because the whole point of fantasy is to substitute magic for rational causation.
Then you end up using magic to handwave important plot points, and you blow your dramatic tension.

[Anonymous No.21860135]

>>21860092
I'm pretty sure that's not GPT.

[Anonymous No.21860148]

>accidentally named 2 chapters 128 and now I need to increment the number on 10 chapters that I've written after that
Mild inconvenience in effect, activating suicide protocols.
>>21860135
Yep, I think random posts are being marked as GPT for April fools.

[Anonymous No.21860150]

>>21859883
Nah, or Idk.

>>21859735
Yes, I think I'll upload it there.

[Anonymous No.21860185]

>>21860051
your pic is a weak cope IMO. Because people not liking your "execution" doesn't necessarily mean that you just need to edit some things, rewrite some paragraphs. Perhaps the whole thing is bad and you need to go back to square one. Like failing uni and then enrolling again.

[Anonymous No.21860282]

>>21857149
Papyrus font.

[Anonymous No.21860502]

> if you can’t be the hero, write the hero
Do you agree with this statement?

[Anonymous No.21860505]

>>21860502
I do. I like writing heroes who can kill the RL villains I don't have the ability to face.

[Anonymous No.21860512]

>>21858999
literally noone mentioned politics you nutcase

[Anonymous No.21860560]

>>21860282
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVhlJNJopOQ&ab_channel=SaturdayNightLive

[Anonymous No.21860617]

So I've written a 26k novella. I've redrafted it enough that only an editor could improve the mistakes I can't see myself. I'm mostly interested in getting feedback on the story but I don't want to post it to Royal Road. Any ideas?

[Anonymous No.21860622]

>>21860617
There are other websites you can post it to, but you'll have to exchange critiques. Just look it up on google.

[Anonymous No.21860636]

>>21859486
Just to paint a picture for reader. I don't intend to go super into details, but I want to give enough to reader's imagination without making it clunky. I'm writing fantasy story and right now I'm at the description of a tavern.

[Anonymous No.21860672]

"...Isiah?" Mary asked. The boy was panting as if he had run a race, his eyes bloodshot. "What are you doing in my room?"
He didn't answer. He walked in, still with those smoldering eyes fixed on her like a wolf with a helpless lamb.
Her heart missed a beat when he softly closed it behind him.
"Do you know how long I have waited for this?" He said, his voice hoarse with an unidentifiable emotion.
"...don't do this. Please." She said, sinking back in her bed.
Her fear seemed to excite him. His lips, so red and striking before his pale face, curled into a smile that made her heart beat harder, even now.
"What do you think I am about to do?" He said softly, stepping closer to her.
"Please..." she said, tears welling in her eyes. He grinned suddenly, exposing his white teeth in a predatory snarl.
"Remember, you asked for this." He said, and lunged.
__*___

The rest is not fit for this channel. But what about this part? Do I get the emotions across properly?

[Anonymous No.21860683]

>>21860672
It's a romance story, believe it or not. This is the midpoint after a lot of conflict between the MC and the creepy boy, which culminates in a moment where they both lose themselves for a while.
They make up soon, and get married in a Church.

[Anonymous No.21860860]

>>21854152
It's Top Tennin' Time! We were watching the tickers all week, and were shocked to find that Mixtape Hyperborea and Kabbalah of the Crocodile both managed to handily overtake Harassment Architecture in the rankings several times over. However, by the time the dust settled, Mike Ma (hon.) was still on top. Word to the wise: if you're gonna come at the king, you'd best come in the second half of the week, because the official rankings are recorded on Saturday morning. Anyway, Fedbook, Tales of the Unreal, and Call of the Crocodile continue to demonstrate their staying power as each surges back to a position in the Top 5. Mixtape Hyperborea has registered in 6th place, despite an increase in the overall BSR. K.R. Hartley's Chicken World appears to be doing a brisk trade, Re: Trailer Trash is still sliding downwards, and Gardner's other new release has a precarious grip on the 9th place position. Zulu Alitspa's Modem Waves has made a blip on the radar with spot number 10.

In other news, &amp and the Official /lit/ Register are considering a full-scale merger. The deal has not been finalized, but we have discussed including a real-time ticker on the &amp website, and other concepts for expanding the influence and outreach of /wg/ authors. We look forward to bringing our weaponized /wg/ autism to a more professional outlet.

If anyone cares: there's no Gossip Catalog this week, but you can expect to see the fruits of the Register/&amp merger sometime in the upcoming week.

[May Bush No.21860887]

>>21860860
>no gossip
You could have included the fact that my next book, Five to Four, is releasing on monday. And its not an insane shitpost like Kabbalah<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21860907]

>>21854346
Do NOT substitute eyes for another word. That is wattpad Ao3 tier writing. Even if it isn't objectively "bad," in this day and age when people see that they think of the internet tier writing cliche.

[Anonymous No.21860910]

>>21860860
you joiners are about as far from the 4chan aesthetic as you can possibly get

[Anonymous No.21860939]

How is this prose? Im going for style without gaudiness.

>Molasses was in the air ever since it crawled up from the twisted dirt they had been scrubbing for damn near four hours. Phineas was the same as he ever had been with that look in his eye watching the necks of his men like cattle dumb enough as they were to step in clay ditches and pour gunpowder out of a keg broken on both ends. Clouds that once hung over them retreated behind Hawks mountain and the men were left to bake between swaths of birches and maples all in haphazard rows thin enough to see your exit but still tethered. A cut path stretched for miles both ways waiting for the track to be laid on it but the ground wasn't nearly smooth enough yet. Burlington Railroad wasn’t accepting any more slackers in the crew shack after ten supposed malingerers had already been neutralized by back breaking shoveling all along the rail path in the spots requiring firm earth to be laid and leveled and treated right like how they had been taught to for years. Five hard years figuring out how to obtain a managerial level of expertise and somehow the day had dawned not too long ago when they gave Phineas the creased foreman cap he had been picturing in his head for far too long, most painfully when he spent those nights in Uncle Davis’ attic, chewing seeds, fiddling with the straw bed under him, waiting for another job to stop his jaw from twitching relentlessly. Phineas would blink when he had to cogitate on something… a few imperceptible flares of the nostrils, a pulse in his temples, and then a flurry of blinks.

[Anonymous No.21860949]

>>21860939
Just the same Corncob sentence of same length repeated over and over.

[Anonymous No.21860961]

>>21860949
Switch up the pacing? Or throw out the corncob style entirely.

[Anonymous No.21861011]

>>21860961
Corncob style is fine (you have to imitate to discover your own style anyway). The problem is a lack of contrast in the sentence length and structure.

[Anonymous No.21861632]

Alright, I will use some placeholders because I am too paranoid about the university AI being able to scan the internet too thoroughly but I am struggling with this expression:

Framework W was designed by Person X and Person Y as a structure-based model alternative to what they considered as the causally inadequate model Z.

I want to keep the structure of the sentence as it is but I just don't know if it's "alternative to what they considered as the causally inadequate model Z" or something without the "the" or whether I should erase the "as"...?

[Anonymous No.21861642]

>>21861632
Prefer the active voice, and prefer clauses.

> Person X and Person Y designed Framework W as a structure-based alternative to model Z, which they considered causally inadequate.

What does causally inadequate mean, anyway?

[Anonymous No.21861657]

>>21861642
Yeah, I would have chosen the "which they" as well, if I didn't continue with a ", and with the aim to"...

The causally inadequate is basically copied from those persons x and y who say that the other model is an "inadequate causal theory"

[Anonymous No.21861702]

>>21861657
Clarify your ideas. Was the *main* reason for the creation of Framework W the inadequacy of model Z, or was it the separate aim that you intended to express next? In either case you should lead with the primary motivation and then note the secondary one in the following sentence. If you judge the two to be of equal import, then you should say so explicitly.

> Person X and Person Y designed Framework W as a structure-based alternative to model Z, which they considered causally inadequate. In creating Framework W, they also aimed to...

> Person X and Person Y designed Framework W with the aim of <....> . They intended also that it may serve as a structure-based alternative to model Z, which they adjudged causally inadequate.

> Person X and Person Y designed Framework W with two key aims in mind: to serve as a structure-based alternative to model Z, which they regarded as causally inadequate; and as a <....> .

Do you see? Often when a writer struggles with structure it implies that their underlying idea is imprecise.

[Anonymous No.21861721]

>>21861702
Well, maybe that's a problem of me being paranoid. In general, there are three reasons for why they created the new framework but in order speak too long on the reasons for its inception but more about the framework itself, I want to write as few sentences as possible. That's why I went with

"what they considered as the causally inadequate X, and with the aim of..." My next sentence then would be "Additionally, they...", before I then go on talking about what the framework itself is about

[Anonymous No.21861733]

>>21861721
Edit ideas, not text. Instead of taking everything you want to say and trying to play word games to make it all fit compactly in a paragraph, pare down the ideas themselves and then give what remains room to breathe. Your readers will thank you for it.

[Anonymous No.21861736]

>>21860636
I'd say fantasy has to describe locations more than modern day. You can just say 'run down gas station' and everybody knows what that is. But a 'haunted crypt' could look like anything.

Download an architectural dictionary and learn some basic terminology. Most of it will be super autistic labeling for the details inside cathedrals or parts of a Greek column, but there will be more useful terms as well. And even if the reader doesn't know what a corbelled arch or a quoin or an architrave or putlog hole is, it will still add to the fantasy tone.

[Anonymous No.21861740]

>>21861632
>being able to scan the internet too thoroughly
Just post it in an image anon. It'll be gone when the thread 404's and I doubt it'd scan any photo files.

[Anonymous No.21861745]

>>21861740
eh he's right to be paranoid. the image will be scraped and then might end up going through an ocr bot for some reason because loads of shit gets ocr'd on the net these days (this is why searching for memes works way better than it used to).

[Anonymous No.21861756]

>>21861733
This doesn't make sense though. As this is my theoretical framework chapter, I more or less have to reproduce what the developers of the theory said. I can't just come up with new ideas on why they saw the need for a new model.

[Anonymous No.21861760]

>>21861745
Regardless, I'm not sure they'd pull him up on a single sentence. I remember when I was at university your work needed to be at least 80% unplagiarized, cutting everyone slack for pieces of their work which may coincidentally appear somewhere online.

[Anonymous No.21861764]

>>21861740
No, everything here ends up archived.
>>/lit/thread/S21854152

[Anonymous No.21861766]

>>21861756
you should still summarise and abstract

[Anonymous No.21861781]

>Want to write
>Open laptop to write
>See all the projects I started and haven't finished
>Freeze up and come to /lit/ instead
Help...

[Anonymous No.21861792]

Can't finish anything I start. Hate everything I put on the page. I can't think like a writer. I don't know what my characters want to do or be. It all ends up too easily resolvable. Whatever I come up with to prevent to resolution sounds contrived. The characters have no reason to speak to each other.

I don't understand how people can do this. It's so fucking hard.

[Anonymous No.21861804]

>>21857149
Papyrus font
Awful cover image
Awful font color for author's name
First four words of blurb are some nonsensical names
First steps as an adult sounds like YA junk
rakshasa is a nonsense made up word that
second sentence is horribly written all around
third sentence has an awkward break at the beginning and includes another dumb name
last two sentences sound like it will have a boring plot that will not interest anyone

[Anonymous No.21861810]

>>21857216
>Woke Powers That Be declare it "problematic' or whatever
This is not a thing, please touch grass

[Anonymous No.21861820]

>>21861810
Bullshit.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its-rights-to-remove-access-to-your-kindle-books/
Just a few links on the topic.

[Anonymous No.21861839]

>>21861792
>It all ends up too easily resolvable.
Fucking A
Same problem I have with 99% of modern real-world setting based movies. Every problem can be solved with a cell phone which everyone now has.

[Anonymous No.21861866]

>>21861781
WRITE NIGGA WRITE

[Anonymous No.21861903]

>>21861866
My writing will never improve because I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[Anonymous No.21861912]

>>21861903
WORKSHOP NIGGA WORKSHOP

[Anonymous No.21861914]

>>21861866
Okay, which one:
>Semi-autobiographical story about accepting that the feeling of hopelessness will never go away because even if things personally improve society keeps getting worse and finding comfort in darker areas of life
>Story of down-on-his-luck kid who enters into a fantastical casino for a concierge job that devolves into an eldritch horror involving powerful people as a very on the nose critique of our systems of power in the west and how its destroying us
>Story about a naive young man chasing after the lost generation scene after it has already passed by going to Paris in the 1930s, falling in love with a low class african girl, and fathering a child without knowing before he is forced to go back to the US only to find out years later the germans killed the girl and his child causing an existential crisis around his failure to accept his duty as a man
>Crime drama about illegal undercover union busters in the Baltimore area steel mills so that the governor can get photo ops for tearing down the "dirty" mill and replacing it with a shipping warehouse on his path to trying to get elected president and the knock-on effects to the communities
>Neo-noir, vaporwave-styled novel vaguely about how social media kills people but the boomer cop refuses to think its not a regular killer but ultimately no one cares because one less person means their social rank automatically goes up
>American sex tourist in Vietnam thinks he's a chad but fails to realize he's just easy pickings for sex workers and fails to realize that America isn't the greatest country in the world, somewhat comedically.

[Anonymous No.21861919]

>>21859917
>>21859922
Never heard of these but I will check them out.

Hope they aren't too restrictive since my favorite stories are inspired by true crime, thrillers, and horror.
Like the story I am working on now is based on the historical rumors giant wolf packs during world war I that became so bad that the Germans and Russians had to temporarily join forces to deal with them before going back to fighting each other. It might end up being my longest story yet.

I guess I will find out looking at their terms of service and reading around the sites to get a general vibe.

[Anonymous No.21861935]

>>21861914
Of course you aren't finishing anything when all of your ideas are intended to be commentaries on why X sucks. That shits making you miserable.

[Anonymous No.21861952]

>>21861912
I don't even know where or how. I'm just a neet stuck in my room. I don't even know a discord to post in

[Anonymous No.21861963]

>>21861935
You just described like 99% of all published novels of the last 200 years

[Anonymous No.21861987]

If a fictional character were highly intelligent (like, in the top 0.1% smartest people), how long would it realistically take them to attain moderate proficiency at learning a new language if they were studying it intensively every day and doing little else? The language isn't closely related to any languages the character previously knows.

[Anonymous No.21862001]

>>21861914
I personally like 2, 3, and 4 better. 1 seems like maybe the toughest sell unless you have a really unique story.

[Anonymous No.21862028]

>>21861963
Sure, some people are motivated by spite, but you clearly are not, so you have to find something else to motivate you to write.

[Anonymous No.21862074]

>>21861952
How are you stuck in your room?
Physically or emotionally?

[Bridget Lang No.21862119]

>>21862074
Both. I have terrible IBS so I can't ever go out to eat out of fears of embarrassment<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21862155]

>>21860672
“Edward?” Bella gasped as the boy entered her room, panting as if he had run a race, his eyes bloodshot. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
Edward remained silent as he strode in, fixating his smoldering eyes on Bella like a wolf with a helpless lamb. Her heart skipped a beat when he shut the door behind him.
“How long have I waited for this?” Edward said, his voice hoarse with desire.
“Please don’t do this.” Bella sank into her bed as he drew near.
Her fear excited him. His lips red lips curled into a smile that quickened her heart.
“What do you think I’m going to do?” he whispered, brushing his pale fingers on her tender cheeks.
“Please don’t...” she pleaded. Tears welled in her eyes.
Edward grinned, exposing his white teeth in a snarl.
“Remember, you asked for this,” he said, and lunged.

[Anonymous No.21862161]

>>21862119
I've not been able to be physically active since 16.
I thought about writing for months, but I lacked the confidence to actually do anything until this last June as my 23rd birthday got closer. You need to write something, anything. It is going to be shit, because you don't know better, but that doesn't matter, you will learn, improve, and write again.
Whatever you write, post it here, someone will probably be brutal, but that does matter because the person who is saying it is probably doing it for your own good.

[Anonymous No.21862236]

>>21862001
1 is really more of a passion project anyway.

2 was just an idea that came to me in a shower while I was drunk and so I wrote the idea down as fast as I could while drunk so I wouldn't forget.

3 is almost done actually. I wrote about 52k words for nanowrimo a few years ago but then lost the thread and its getting a bit too rambling and I can't figure out what I want to do or how to introduce direct conflict near the end.

4 feels like the toughest to write because I feel I'm generally not good at slow burns and I think the story demands it

[Anonymous No.21862396]

>>21861011
Thank you

[Anonymous No.21862441]

I'm getting tonnes of practice with writing, but I feel like I'm holding myself back by not reading enough. I just can't find any material I like, because I have no patience for rambling prose.
In the last several years I've read two fantasy novel series, a bunch of fanfiction, and that's it. I haven't read a single other book.
And yet, I've written 250k-300k words in the last year and a half. So I guess I just like writing more than I like reading? Yet reading has a noticeable impact on my writing quality, so I really should be reading more.

[Anonymous No.21862567]

>>21862441
I mostly read nonfiction.
Do you at least do that?

[Anonymous No.21862669]

>>21862155
Go to hell. I never said I was Shakespeare.

[Anonymous No.21862705]

>>21861804
>rakshasa
No, it's a D&D monster.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16990-rakshasa
I think the D&D variant was based on mythology.

[Anonymous No.21862780]

>>21862705
iirc rakshasa is like an evil spirit or something in hindu myth

[Anonymous No.21862785]

>>21860150
>Nah, or Idk
Welp fug. Thanks for warning me so i can move my fiction senpai.

[Anonymous No.21862801]

>>21862780
Hindu here. It's basically a word for the race of demons/ogres.

[Anonymous No.21862895]

>>21862669
It’s just a prank, bro.
But for real, bdsm romance tends to do well. So go for it.

[Desiree Chase No.21862926]

>>21862895
It's weird how amateurs go berserk if you point out that they're copying from older writers.

Like, yeah, who doesn't? No need to feel insecure about it.<div class="xa23b"><span class="xa23t"></span><span class="xa23i"></span></div>

[Anonymous No.21862943]

>>21862926
I'm not accusing him of stealing from anybody. I just change the names as a joke, that's all.

[Anonymous No.21862979]

>>21860860
Fedbook bros… we’re so back

[Anonymous No.21863397]

>>21862705
>>21862780
>>21862801
So again some made up nonsense word that no normal person will know

[Anonymous No.21863424]

>>21861804
>>21863397

[Anonymous No.21863448]

>>21863397
To counter your point, I had heard of it through osmosis of other media, though to reinforce your point, it looks like it's YA and most YAs would not know it.

[Anonymous No.21863585]

If there's one thing he knew, derived from his extensive experience with the concept, it was that luck had a bad habit of running out when it was needed the most.

Such were the morose thoughts of Aehriman "Aku" Muhammad Khan, 15, as he ducked and dove from the scythe-arms of the troublesome monster the bastard wizard had summoned.

Said bastard Wizard, in the manner of all cruel men when they feel they have someone in their power, was jeering and laughing from the background. More like an ape than a "wise man", that one. If only he could reach him....

A quick thrust to his knee was deflected by his iron staff, and a fireball defied by the crazy girl's shield. Like him, she was struggling to fight this versatile abomination.

It was such a long day....maybe he should never have been roped into this mess in the first place.
__*___

How's that as an opening? The narrator isn't the protagonist. He's kinda like Dr Watson in a Sherlock Holmes story. He narrates what happens.

[Anonymous No.21863633]

Why isn't this thread being bumped? I just posted. Is there something wrong?

[Anonymous No.21863642]

>>21863633
everyone is busy writing, including me

[Anonymous No.21864024]

>>21854152
What are some believable motivations for being a serial killer? I'm a bit tired of serial killers who do it just for "the rush and taboo of killing", and even worse, killers who do it for the money

[Anonymous No.21864058]

>>21864024
'Nam spec ops vet goes into brief frenzy whenever he hears a loud noise.
This would also let you do some fun courtroom/ trial stuff if you're into that.

[Anonymous No.21864065]

>>21864024
man whose wife is detective and realizes they have the best sex when she's trying to solve a really tough case so he becomes a zodiac-style serial killer

[Anonymous No.21864074]

>>21864024
Insanity, simple as. That's the only motive.

[Anonymous No.21864102]

>>21864074
if that were the case, then more of them would be getting off with an insanity defense

[Anonymous No.21864105]

>>21864102
Do you even know what an insanity defense is?!

[Anonymous No.21864115]

>>21864105
it means you couldn't form the requisite mens rea to be convicted of the charged offense because of mental problems
If serial killers were all insane, they'd assert, and win, on this defense more often. In actuality, serial killers are just shitty people. They're obviously disturbed in some way, but they're nonetheless still fully lucid when they're committing their crimes.

[Anonymous No.21864131]

>>21864102
You don't "get off" on insanity defenses in murder trials, you get sent to mental institutions probably for the rest of your life, which, if you're sane, is worse than prison.

[Anonymous No.21864144]

>>21864131
Its a defense which, if asserted successfully, results in an acquittal. You might be involuntarily condemned to a mental institution for the rest of your life, but thats different from prison. Going to prison, depending on your perspective, either serves the purpose of punishing someone or attempting to reform them. Sending someone to the looney bin is just done to keep an active danger out of society, its not punitive or rehabilitative.

[Anonymous No.21864259]

Is there any point to having a scene where the characters come up with a plan if the next few chapters are about them executing the plan? It just seems redundant at that point.

[Anonymous No.21864263]

>>21864024
You don't necessarily have to give the character a decent or sane motivation, but you should try to make the character relatable and interesting to the point where the reader only cares about the story.
Hannibal Lecter and Patrick Bateman are good examples.

[Anonymous No.21864273]

>>21864024
Religious convictions? Killing “demons” for a righteous cause? It falls under “insanity” though because only crazy people believe in the magical sky daddy.

[Anonymous No.21864275]

>>21864259
Typically if the reader knows about the plan before it is executed, then that means that the plan is going to go horribly wrong and will need fixing in the moment. If the plan isn't told to the reader, then the plan is more likely to succeed. The main reason for this is that you set up an expectation and have to pay it off. If the reader knows the plan and things go straightforwardly, the reader will feel underwhelmed and will be expecting something unexpected to happen soon after.

[Anonymous No.21864292]

>>21863397
You're not very well-read, are you.
Are you sure you belong here?

[Anonymous No.21864295]

>>21864275
Good point. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.21864303]

>>21864024
Eliminating the vermin of society seems to be a big motivation with real-world serial killers.
Prostitutes, gays, homeless, etc.

[Anonymous No.21864304]

>>21864292
Not reading and writing is the requirement to be here, retard.

[Anonymous No.21864312]

>>21864105
>>21864115
The problem with an insanity defense is that, to make one, you implicitly have to admit you committed the act.
If your insanity ploy fails, you're effectively left with a guilty plea.
Which is why it's not used very often.
Seriously, you people are naive children.
No wonder your "writing" is full of holes.

[Anonymous No.21864314]

If there's one thing he knew, derived from his extensive experience with the concept, it was that luck had a bad habit of running out when it was needed the most.
Such were the morose thoughts of Aehriman "Aku" Muhammad Khan, 15, as his suicide vest failed to detonate.
The entire class of heathens, Mrs. Richard's second period English, looked on him in a mixture of confusion and contempt.
It was only then that he realized that the carefully prepared sticks of dynamite were nothing more than extra large hotdogs arranged in a row. Porkflesh both mocking and sullying.
By Allah, he though, even the baths of paradise won't wash away this embarrassment.
------
anyway as far as yours goes, the one line I can point to that sort of encapsulates the issues is: " and a fireball defied by the crazy girl's shield"
so you just toss this line like, oh yeah, btw there's a fireball and it gets blocked. what showing you have isn't visceral. everything that occurs seems like it's at arms length.

[Anonymous No.21864318]

>>21864304
Then you're NGMI.
Have fun LARPing as someone who'll ever be relevant.

[Anonymous No.21864325]

Are there any discord servers you’d recommend for more structure discussion?

[Anonymous No.21864336]

Aside from /lit/ do you guys go to any other writing forums?

Reddit can be useful for some “hobbies” or subjects but for writing is utter trash. Most others I’ve found seem more dedicated to marketing strategies.

[Anonymous No.21864345]

>>21864336
As it should be. Unless you’re some autist who thinks what you produce “matters.” What’s really important is SELLING what you produce.

[Anonymous No.21864354]

>>21864312
>you implicitly have to admit you committed the act.
well duh, its an excuse defense, not an outright denial.
>If your insanity ploy fails, you're effectively left with a guilty plea.
not if you argue insanity in the alternative.

[Anonymous No.21864363]

>>21864336
for whatever reason, /lit/ is the only writing community that isn't full of retarded video essayists and grifters trying to sell classes. Everyone speaks confidently about "figuring out the formula" and it turns out they're writing YA trash.

[Anonymous No.21864364]

>>21864336
I don't like reddit because they like the smell of their own farts, they police every little thing you do, they approve or disapprove of ideas based on mob mentality. They're all a bunch of cunts.

[Anonymous No.21864376]

>>21864354
What are you even talking about?
Do you mean "guilty but mentally ill"?
Not much of an alternative.

[Anonymous No.21864377]

>>21864314
>what showing you have isn't visceral. everything that occurs seems like it's at arms length
English, please.

[Anonymous No.21864390]

>>21864336
discussions about writing is gay. i just write

[Anonymous No.21864395]

>>21864390
>discussions [...] is gay
illiterate
opinion discarded

[Anonymous No.21864398]

>>21864395
are you okay?

[Anonymous No.21864432]

>>21864377
really? okay, I'll spell it out real slow
you introduce 4 characters in five sentences
as far as description we know your narrators name and age. his age is at odds with your earlier statement that he has extensive experience
he dodges the scythe-like arms first. then he casually deflects a sentence later. so the monster in my mind goes from huge and towering to much smaller. I have no idea how big it is it anymore
calling the wizard an ape is actually decent description, but ape like face, ape like arms, ape like demeanor, maybe totally ape like I dunno, but this character I can actually see in my mind
the girl is an afterthought, but she's your protagonist I'm guessing. is the fireball coming at her like a little baby fireball and she's blocking with a buckler? is it some big honking thing that she's deflecting with a tower shield. I dunno. I dunno how dangerous it is either, as she just carelessly swats it aside.
finally, you abuse ellipses

[Anonymous No.21864473]

>>21864377
>beginner writer
>is retarded and can't parse language
Many such cases

[Anonymous No.21864518]

>>21864376
No, I mean you put this in your answer
>I didn't commit the crime alleged
>If I did, it was because I was mentally ill
You're making it sound like you literally have to stipulate to the murders to argue insanity, but thats just not true.

[Anonymous No.21864562]

>>21864363
>>21864364
That’s basically it. Reddit writing subs seem to mostly just fetishise the idea of being a writer rather than discuss how to write. The times they do discuss it it’s all specific to YA fantasy world building.

[Anonymous No.21864590]

OHHHH IMMM WRIIIIIIIIIIIITIIIINNNGG HNNNNNNNNNNNGGG
NNNMMNNMMNNMMMMMM
OOOOH I'M WRIIIIIIIIITING GOOO OOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOoooOOOOOO
MMMNPPHH it's so WRRRIIITTTENNNNNNNNNNOOOAAAAAA HAHHHHHHAHHHHHAAAAAAAA

[Anonymous No.21864611]

I hate that I can't write comedy.

[Anonymous No.21864641]

>>21864611
You can't force comedy. Hence why there are so little big name comedians

[Anonymous No.21864645]

>>21864611
post a funny line from your story

[Anonymous No.21864655]

>>21864611
It's okay. My attempt at comedy wasn't great either.

>Zareth had the most unfortunate stench about him. Wherever he went, others would hasten the conversation and reach the end as quickly as possible. I too was guilty of this. I could not tell you how often I would feign an excuse to leave the conversations I had with Zareth. Yet, the oddest thing in Zareth's predicament wasn't his smell, but rather the unwillingness of others to inform him of his foul odor. The world tolerated it, afraid of offending him. Such preposterous nonsense — that we — would be scared of offending the man that offended us! I tapped my fingers on my chin, in a thought telling Zareth he simply stunk. A direct approach would be the answer, yet, I could not possibly bear the burden of telling him directly, and be the one to suffer the shame that would hurt the man; but it must be done. Mustering up the courage, I took a step toward my destiny. A creeping of the door and to the hallways, the all too familiar smell lingered. It grew stronger with every step. Zareth was near.

[Anonymous No.21864684]

>>21864655
don't put spaces around your em dashes
the only time you put spaces around an em dash is when you're writing a news article. In fiction you don't use spaces.

[Anonymous No.21864696]

>>21864684
I never knew that. I'll make sure I keep that in mind. I swear I saw spaces in PKDs books.

[Anonymous No.21864703]

Burnt out and feeling hopeless. Cannot write another sentence. Keeps meandering to describe the scenery. Cannot write serious dialogue anymore (banter is fine).

I feel like I can't think. Halfway through the plot. Sentence structure is getting worse, vocab choice, and a lot of non-sequiturs. How do I get out?

[Anonymous No.21864718]

>>21864703
Put it away and do something else. Or have a second story about nonsense. That's what I'm doing. It seems to help. I'm writing a serious story, and my burger story. I think my burger story is 10x better though.

[Anonymous No.21864723]

>>21864696
It's a pretty pedantic thing that nobody will care about except maybe an editor.

[Anonymous No.21864759]

/pol/ is starting to discover F Gardner now thanks to his new book.

[Anonymous No.21864803]

>>21864590
better cover
>The water has turned to blood -- the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, these are taken away, as a mysterious incident leads to mass illness and death across an entire midwestern county
>in the anarchy of a mass cover up, an apocalyptic cult rises to seize power, leading to a bloody war between the establishment and a mysterious figure only referred to as the Clarion
>As the Clarion's people forcibly convert and seize control of Brett Hampton's town, neighborhood by neighborhood, he is suddenly faced with a choice: bow to the will of the Revealed God, or fall in line with the Men in Black -- who always seem to know where he is, and what he's thinking.
>Or, if the words of the madman in the woods are true, he can drink of the fetid, red waters of the closed off lake... where his eyes will be opened.

[Anonymous No.21864939]

>>21864318
Lol. This dumb faggot takes /wg/ seriously.

[Anonymous No.21864950]

>>21864562
So it’s the same as here, then. Well okay, there’s some difference due to a few of you shitlickers (the ones who don’t write at all, of course) constantly whining about genre fiction/ya.

[Anonymous No.21864984]

>>21864759
Probably more like Gardner discovered /pol/

[Anonymous No.21864998]

>>21864950
Nobody wants to read litfic. Look at the authors list, I think only 2 people attempted litfic. And both failed miserably

[Anonymous No.21865026]

>>21864759
Enough of the pathetic spam-shilling already.
No one has discovered any of your brain-droppings, and no one ever will.
You did NOT buy a Chicago penthouse with the proceeds from your "writing".
The Amazon rankings are public knowledge, and not once have they gotten high enough to make any real money for you.
And everyone knows it.
You will never BS your way into becoming an actual success, any more than you can jump to the moon.

[Anonymous No.21865031]

>>21864984
He hasn't even discovered his own pee-pee yet.

[Anonymous No.21865045]

>>21854988
I am. And may my delusion became reality

[Anonymous No.21865090]

>>21864518
Let me guess...your next motion to solidify the insanity defense is that anyone who would hire you as a lawyer would have to be insane?

[Anonymous No.21865183]

>>21865026
And yet he’s still the most accomplished /wg/ alumnus.

[Anonymous No.21865198]

Kid im sorry but this shit is getting outa fuckin orda ova hea. Smatta wit you, you havin some kinda fuckin conniption or sumptin? Scuse me, uh, kid, come ova hea, I wanna ask you sumptin. When are you gonna stop fuckin switchin between social agility and social impairment? Im worried about you, weve noticed that youve been voluntarily retreating into schizoid faze, or are you gonna become all gregarious and charming? Quit fumblin the fuckin bag and using your innate verbosity to derive narcissistic supply. I don’t know what we are gonna do about this, but this is starting to become a fuckin problem. Weve talked it over, and we are gonna need to get you some help.

[Anonymous No.21865213]

>>21865090
You would have to be insane to hire someone who isn't a lawyer to represent you, actually, yeah.

[Anonymous No.21865357]

>>21865183
not even true though. other authors who post in /wg/ make more money and have greater overall name recognition (though not on 4chan, admittedly). And if you're arguing by artistic merit ... well obviously he's not the greatest there, either.

[Anonymous No.21865372]

>>21854988
Yes, and i'm like that for everythng. I understand the concept of dunning kruger and other psychological explanation for it. But my ego just can't reconcile it. I'm starting to think that it is the source of all my self sabotage: so that i can just explain away every failure as "I can do it if i try, the situation was just against me"

[Yusuf Reis !!WJh3Qmu5nf/ No.21865382]

>>21861820
You can’t buy ebooks if your account is locked and wiped but you can still download them to your kindle by disconnecting it from your account and adding titles by plugging it into your computer and adding them from there

[Yusuf Reis !!WJh3Qmu5nf/ No.21865386]

>>21865382
Although admittedly this wouldn’t work for e-books you purchase on Amazon but it will for pirated books

[Anonymous No.21865443]

>>21865183
As if. Churning out unedited pre-kindergarten gibberish isn't an accomplishment.
All your brain-droppings put together don't equal the length of many of the serials, written by authors here and posted to RR/SH/WP.
"Re: Trailer Trash" comes to mind; the printed version is pretty consistently in the top 10, despite the lack of shill-spamming and samefagging.
You are a phony, a LARPer, a sadcringe lolcow, and a developmentally-disabled alcoholic, and you'll never rise above any of that.

[Anonymous No.21865462]

>>21865443
Whatever. I’ve won nanowrimo 15 times.

[Anonymous No.21865477]

>>21865357
But what if the anon is arguing on autistic merit?

[Anonymous No.21865493]

>>21861914
Please PLEASE do NOT write the first one. There are so many depressing semi-autobiographical novels about people with somewhat banal, if tragic lives. 2 and 3 sound very interesting, and you can still find a way to vicariously insert themes you would've put in 1 into a certain character in 2 or 3.

[Anonymous No.21865506]

>>21865462
Your brain-droppings weren't written solely in November over a period of 15 years, so what you claim is literally impossible.
Do you realize that you're much stupider than the people you associate with, and that we see your nonsense coming from a mile away?
You're like a 6-year-old trying to act like he's a grownup, unaware that he's failing completely.
I'd feel sorry for you, if you weren't such an obnoxious, mean-spirited pseud.

[Anonymous No.21865579]

How does /wg/ feel about building suspense with something that ends up not being important? For example, say a character is alone at home, when suddenly they hear a voice. The chapter ends. Afterwards, there's another chapter about a different character doing something else, and then we go back to the first character. It turns out they just left the radio on, or something.
Feels like a good way to keep the reader going, but at the same time, it feels really cheap.

[Anonymous No.21865660]

>>21865579
Your reader will feel cheated.
Something similar happened with the 3rd season of "Star Trek: Discovery".
They set up a mystery at the beginning of the season, dropped a bunch of clues, and literally none of them were relevant; they pulled the ending out of their ass.
The fans were pissed.
https://trekkingwithdennis.com/2021/08/14/discovery-s3-what-was-the-burn/
Don't make your fans sorry they gave you a chance.

[Anonymous No.21865704]

>>21865506
How the fuck would you know? Wait, you don’t think I’m Gardner, do you? That’s some prime retardness you’ve got there.

[Anonymous No.21865794]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WCSU7Nqg48b5WHNAkrC1iN6_BB49vrRDsF-bnK6xKqk/edit?usp=sharing

Been working on this short story. Took some feedback from this thread a few weeks ago. What do you guys think?

[Anonymous No.21865842]

>>21865704
How the f would I know *what*?
Also, you're the only one that talks about you.
During your somewhat-frequent bans, literally no one mentions you, not even as an aside.
It's like you don't exist, until you show up and then it's all "hurr durr everyone look at me but I'm not me I'm someone else, gawrsh I'm so clever".
I understand why you're so desperate to not be you, but I don't see why we have to suffer continually for your mental hangup.
Everyone here is REALLY sick of your seething, lying, and same-fagging.

[Anonymous No.21866037]

>>21861987
SpongeBob and a half.

[Anonymous No.21866045]

>>21854152
Still going to vote for Trump.

[Anonymous No.21866058]

>>21866045
/r/onesentencehorror

[Anonymous No.21866192]

>>21866045
Me too.
The Democrats' utter desperation to defeat him outside of the ballot box, by fair means or foul, and in spite of the damage it does to our society...is just epic.
They're total cowards & they can't govern worth a crap.
Give me the self-aggrandizing blowhard any day.

[Anonymous No.21866207]

>>21866192
>>21866045
Go to bed Frank

[Anonymous No.21866239]

>take a single random sentence from my story
>paste it into chatgpt and tell it to make it sound more detailed and interesting
>in a split second, it gives me back the same sentence, but a million times better

I didn't realize how bad I was at writing, oh my god.

[Anonymous No.21866253]

>>21866239
I've never used it for that, I really don't like using it at all. But the one time I did use it I gave it the same scene I had just written, one where a knight is stuck inside a mystical fog and a sea god taunts.
What I found very interesting was the way that both me and the AI added the detail that the way she taunted the knight was by singing sailors laments.
I didn't use anything that the AI said directly, but I did decide to rewrite the story to be entirely about the knight living for days on the ship alone as he runs out of food and drink, and not about how he got there.
If it does help you, then go for it, but I'd avoid taking it wholesale from the AI.

[Anonymous No.21866257]

>>21866239
Apparently this book is made by ai.

[Anonymous No.21866426]

Fuck bros I cannot come up with an interesting story idea. I have plenty, but they are all so basic and I struggle to think of an engaging ending / climax. Most of them are slice of life or generic adventure stories. I've started about five stories, gotten 5000 words in, then think of an idea I like better and repeat the cycle.

[Anonymous No.21866462]

I'm thinking of formatting my story after Kokoro by Natsume Soseki.
Basically a college student comes home for the summer, strikes up with a friendship with a seemingly wise old man that is secretly plagued by depression and regrets. Old man hates his bitch wife, divorces her, shoots himself in the head on his boat, and leaves everything to the young man. May even write a exhortation from old man POV but that would be very hard to write because I don't know what it is like to be old.
Thoughts? I suck at writing, have never finished a story over 5000 words, and just want to finish something for once, so I am just aiming to write a short story or novella.

[Anonymous No.21866470]

>>21866426
It sounds like you need to find a theme that you care about instead of just writing fun things for the fun of it.

[Anonymous No.21866477]

Getting published is basically impossible. My dream is for a handful of people to tell me they enjoyed my novel. I'm just so desperate for external validation.

[Anonymous No.21866495]

>>21866426
a story is just a device to logically sequence a bunch of interesting scenes and character moments. A plot is rarely, in and of itself, interesting. Slice of life and adventure are perfectly good frameworks for telling a story so long as the stuff contained in them is well-written.
>but they are all so basic and I struggle to think of an engaging ending / climax
Endings are naturally disengaging, because they're the disembarkation point of your story. The safest and most reliable method is just to have an ending that doesn't make having read through the rest of the book seem like a waste of time, such as with "It was all a dream!" endings.

[Anonymous No.21866811]

>>21866477
if you want that just post it on wattpad and cease your craven whining.

[Anonymous No.21866875]

For some reason, I find that writing does not come more easily to me than after having spent some time reading before. Often I will find that my words flow better and more easily than they would otherwise after reading a particularly good short story; this happens even if I happen to read from the lowest primordial dregs of human literature. Does anyone else do this? Can any anon here help explain why reading that immediately precedes any form of writing leads to better and easier writing than without?

[Anonymous No.21866929]

I'm basically only making it a harem story so that I can have lots of sexy girls around a pretty boy but without any actual NSFW things happening. Gotta keep it safe for work.

All that I want is to write a fantasy story where I can show off battles between my conworld's various civilizations and characters.

[Anonymous No.21866937]

>>21862441
please read poetry

[Anonymous No.21867175]

thank you

[Anonymous No.21867180]

I hate myself so much for being unable to write something that matches the lyricism of what I want to express. I have no trouble writing a raw draft but when it comes to refining individual sentences I become increasingly frustrated.

[Anonymous No.21867279]

>>21860860
Wait, why's my RE: Trailer Trash 'sliding downwards?' Because you arbitrarily pulled the paperback ranking instead of the higher hardback ranking? Aren't both print? And, why aren't you registering ebook rank, again? You know, ebook; the format the overwhelming majority of books are published in.

[Anonymous No.21867327]

>>21867279
Why do Converse shoes turn me on this much? (on the feet of pretty women, faggots)

[Anonymous No.21867416]

>>21867327
Don't blame you. I like barefoot girls and make sure to describe the Love Interest girls as being barefoot. Never so much to make it feel dirty, of course.

Anyway, I'm still struggling with comedy. I have no sense of humor IRL and it shows. The only types of humor I can think of is anvils falling on heads.
What should I do?

[Anonymous No.21867426]

What are some good videos on creative writing?

[Anonymous No.21867428]

Going to write a Light Novel style story entitled "My little sister gains temporary powers every time my dick goes inside her, therefore we must constantly fuck to save this doomed world!"

[Anonymous No.21867450]

Can you give me side by side two paragraphs with a similar context, one badly written and the other great? How do I know if my writing is shit? There are people here who praise wriing I find horrible and vice versa.

[Anonymous No.21867454]

>>21867428
Better let the world perish.

[Anonymous No.21867456]

>>21867450
You have to figure that out for yourself. Read books until you find authors whose writing styles you think are amazing, and try to mold your style to be more like theirs.

[Anonymous No.21867467]

>>21867456
I love Conrad, Melville, but my way of phrasing is substantially opposite to theirs

[Anonymous No.21867533]

>>21867450
Good prose can be good in many different ways, because they often contain a style unique to the author or to the work. There is no one singular example. Many classics have good prose, but those are antiquated examples, and most people don't want to emulate those. Most modern publishers think having a "strong voice" and writing in ebonics is good prose, which I disagree with. It's best to find an author you like want to emulate. It can take a long time to find one.

Bad prose is often bad in the same way. They contain the same cliche expressions. They tell stories the same way. With the same tone. The same beginning. I recommend looking at the free samples on Lulu for bad prose.

[Anonymous No.21867682]

Is it
>The two explode into fits of laughter.
or
>The two explode into a fit of laughter.
?

[Anonymous No.21867687]

I released my 4th book today, no I am not going to buy ads on 4chan to shill to the 50 people who log in to /lit/ regularly.

It's a curious feeling to release a book that feels casual. I think in the last few months I've begun to breakthrough a skill plateau I hadn't realized I was on. I'm not sure what I will do from here, but I think my 5th book will need an extra editing pass.

[Anonymous No.21867697]

>>21867682
singular "fit of laughter" refers to both of them, so "fits of laughter" reads like multiple instances of laughter over time while the singular reads like they both laughed once

[Anonymous No.21867728]

Mr. B. Grimm-Goose Lovatabitz

https://voca.ro/1lYvUxh0Wh8V

[Anonymous No.21867737]

The Man, The Burger, and The Ass

https://voca.ro/17iNzjGKedFn

[Anonymous No.21867743]

I Ask You

https://voca.ro/1oTdYsJCeibN

[Anonymous No.21867762]

Gunther

https://voca.ro/1hdKp4Tc2z7U

[Anonymous No.21867769]

Gino

https://voca.ro/14M0Ub1c2HTL

[Anonymous No.21867777]

>>21867533
Thanks. I would post some kind of sample of my own writing but the AI shitters have made sure I"ll never post here again.

[Anonymous No.21867786]

>>21860910
This. What the fuck is with all the discord group faggotry. What the fuck happened to this general.

[Anonymous No.21867871]

>>21867697
thx bruv

[Anonymous No.21867877]

>>21867687
>the 50 people who log in to /lit/ regularly
try the 5 people who log into /lit/ regularly and still haven't figured out how to install an adblocker

[Anonymous No.21867935]

>write for more than a decade, achieve next to no success
>call it quits
>wife tells me an idea she had
>genuinely decent idea, just a bit "Oscar baiting" type of story
>convince her not to do anything with it
>convince kids not to pursue creative endeavors

I refuse to let my family suffer through this bullshit waste of time

[Anonymous No.21867941]

>>21867935
dude this is legitimate crab-in-a-bucket behavior

[Anonymous No.21867949]

>>21867941
I don't really care what it is, I will protect my family from the bullshit that is writing and the publishing industry in general.

[Anonymous No.21867979]

>>21867786
It's driven by seething over the fact Gardner has more name recognition than anyone else on that chart.

[Anonymous No.21868004]

>>21867279
/wg/ pretends ebooks don't exist

[Anonymous No.21868090]

>>21867935
She should write it.

[Anonymous No.21868123]

>>21867935
>write for more than a decade, achieve next to no success
how many novels did you write in that time? have you posted any online? do you have a website?

[Anonymous No.21868203]

>>21867949
Are you absolutely certain that you're not afraid that your wife will find the success you never had if she wrote her chick lit idea?
Search what "crab in a bucket" means on your favorite search engine.

[Anonymous No.21868206]

>>21868123
I did short stories.

>>21868090
She already said she won't.

[Anonymous No.21868217]

>>21868203
I don't give a damn if she succeeds or fails. As a matter of fact, I'm certain that she would succeed. But it's a moot point. She's not writing it.

[Anonymous No.21868223]

>>21868217
>As a matter of fact, I'm certain that she would succeed. But it's a moot point. She's not writing it.
Dude, encourage her. Why wouldn't you want her to succeed?

[Anonymous No.21868235]

>>21868223
I don't want her to deal with the bullshit that comes with being part of the publishing industry.

[Anonymous No.21868274]

I think I am making a mistake by making my protagonist too cold, stoic, and "cool" in the way I would have defined the term a decade ago.

I'm going to make him more of a nice lad. Compassionate, sensitive, friendly, and overall *decent*. Socially awkward, yes, and he still keeps his workaholic nature, but he's someone I can tolerate writing.

No brooding. Not anymore.

[Anonymous No.21868375]

>>21868206
>I did short stories.
okay. did you post them online, on your own website. how did you try and connect your writing with your potential readers?

[Anonymous No.21868422]

>>21868375
I sent to magazines and other publications. In roughly 12 years I had maybe 5 stories get accepted and published, except only by non-paying places. The publishing industry kills your soul. The sooner AI becomes capable of writing good, cohesive stories and kills the industry, the better

[Anonymous No.21868436]

I fugged up linking the old bread.
Its important to remember where you came from.
Because no one else will
New bread !
>>21868425