/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11987291]

So how’s your novel coming along?

[Anonymous No.11987454]

Every time I try to write something I get scared that I will finally realize that my writing is shitty and will contribute nothing on this and my family and people I met will just remember me as the obese recluse

[Anonymous No.11987616]

>>11987454
>I met will just remember me as the obese recluse
You are obese recluse, might as well be an author obese recluse like JRR Martin, so when you get the money kicking in you can buy any whore you want, so people can remember you like a pimp you deserve to be.

[Anonymous No.11987674]

>>11987454
Don’t be so negative anon you can definitely do it.

[Anonymous No.11987773]

>>11987616
Thanks for the clarification

[Anonymous No.11987778]

>>11987291
I wonder what this guy's cock is like

[Anonymous No.11987792]

>>11987291
I am cursed. I find satisfaction in writing and expressing my ideas, but my writing is also the most atrocious out there.

[Anonymous No.11987967]

>>11987454
I kind of know your situation. I get an idea, begin some rough drafts and write some segments, but abandon it, since I think that my writing or idea is not good enough.
Are there any tips to get past this other than "just keep writing"?

[Anonymous No.11987973]

>>11987454
Fuck I know that feel

[Anonymous No.11987992]

>>11987454
I sympathize entirely. Such is the life of a shitty writer.

[Anonymous No.11988646]

>>11987291
What would be the evolutionary advantages of such a neck? It looks more like a hazard than anything.

[Anonymous No.11988664]

>>11988646
Getting bitches

[Anonymous No.11988709]

>>11987291
I finished writing the first chapter and the final chapter, then I scrapped everything because I hated it. I also went through three drafts beforehand, all of which wildly changed the original idea, and all of which were worse than said original idea but I couldn't find any other way to make it work.

[Anonymous No.11988737]

>>11987454
>>11987792
>>11987967
Literally the only thing you can do is just that, "just keep writing", but changing your mindset about it works wonders

My first three drafts of any short story I write are what I call my "shit writing" exercises. I just vomit up words on a page without much thinking. It's an incoherent babble of 95% garbage, but I mine it and find the 5% gold.

Then I take that 5% gold and vomit up another shit heap, except this one has more direction so its more like 85% shit and 15% gold. Rinse and repeat.

I don't actually start trying until the 4th or 5th draft, and by then I have a pretty good understanding of the story, what works and what doesn't, etc.

I guess my advice is, if you're ever feeling stuck in your writing, just try generating a lot of words on the topic without pausing to think. Just vomit up some incoherent shit on the subject, because the good stuff is always wrapped in shit at first but you gotta get your hands dirty and dig it out. The only way you'll do that is if you get digging.

[Anonymous No.11989334]

>>11988737
TL;DR

[Anonymous No.11989367]

>>11989334
TL;DR version: treat your first few drafts as discovery writing, just write nonstop even if its shitty quality. Then keep polishing it in subsequent drafts. It'll help you get better at translating your thoughts into words.

[Anonymous No.11989770]

>>11987291
finished it ages ago. every so often the publisher will post a message talking about mowing his lawn, picking up dog crap, and, oh yeah, gotta work on getting anon's novel ready for publication.

this has been going on for more than a year.

[Anonymous No.11989834]

>>11988737
I'm currently on my third draft of a 400,000 word piece of shit. It's like trying to sculpt something life-like out of fossilised faeces so that it can be as close to my vision as possible.

[Anonymous No.11989852]

>>11989834
>400,000 word piece of shit.

wow. keep sculpting. and consider deleting some of it, because, tl;dr

[Anonymous No.11989873]

Just had to essentially restart it to cut out a major character (mostly that the big climax had been completely reworked and as a result had a character that I really didn't need anymore). Also renamed the main character to literally Anon but it turns out it sounded a lot better in my head than actually writing that out.

[Anonymous No.11989889]

>>11987291
Tommorow will make it 3 weeks since the last time I even touched my half finished outline.

[nokomcnulty No.11989934]

Have written 632 words so far today. My biggest concern is that my final word count is going to be measly, the plot is progressing fairly quickly, which is pretty much how I want the story to work... but I just don't have a lot of words to show for it. The initial chapters are definitely going to get reworked though, as my writing is now markedly more focused than when I started, so hopefully I can figure out some ways to beef it through that. Literally anything can happen in my story though and the plot will still work, so it shouldn't be too hard to add in some extra shenanigans. Anything in particular you guys want to see in print?

[Anonymous No.11989942]

>>11987967
why not just write for yourself?

[nokomcnulty No.11989953]

>>11989934
spoiler: the character wakes up and it's all a dream

[Anonymous No.11989969]

>>11989934
spoilers: Story ends up with character waking up from his dream. He looks around and sees ass cheeks on his face.

Ah! Yeah Margaret! Your tranquil BRAPS really do do wonders!

*Laugh track*

That's my boy. She responds.

Haha. Would it not be funny if you did id again?

Fin.

[nokomcnulty No.11989982]

>>11989969
It's 12,384 layers of dreams.
Think naked lunch meets inception meets the butterfly effect

[Anonymous No.11990056]

I'm rewriting the only draft of my only novel.
it's going pretty shit. I get I just got bored with the story and characters after having read it so much

[Anonymous No.11990122]

What's a decent offline word processor? I usually write in google docs for convenience but soon I'll have sporadic at best internet for a while

[Anonymous No.11990129]

>>11987291
across your girlfriend's tits

[Anonymous No.11990162]

>>11987291
Not great OP. Started about ten days ago, and I've only got 2,000 words, but I like most of what I've written.

[Anonymous No.11990183]

>>11987291
Stuck at "interviewing" people with differing perspectives and collecting information for the sake of my OCD driven need to be as accurate as I can. Got a few chapters in, had to stop and start rewriting. WHOO.

[Anonymous No.11990186]

on the 4th draft but it's remained largely the same as the 1st. I think I need an editor to scream at me and tell me to scrap parts of it so I'm getting some friends to read it eventually

[nokomcnulty No.11990216]

>>11990186
I'll give you an honest opinion G, as long as you return the favour when I'm ready with mine.

[Anonymous No.11990333]

>>11988646
Getting the tastiest leaves on top of the tree.

[Anonymous No.11990336]

>>11989834
How many pages are that ? Like 400 pages right.

[Anonymous No.11990339]

>>11990122
I just save my files to a dropbox honestly. It's working pretty good so far.

[Anonymous No.11990382]

>>11990339
What do you write them in?

[Anonymous No.11990393]

>>11990336
that's between 700 and 1000 pages desu.

[Anonymous No.11990403]

>>11987778
Incredibly short and thick

[Anonymous No.11990422]

>>11989834
Ok, so a larger work is a bit different. If the foundation layer is shit, it's probably going to fail no matter how good the layers on top are. Foundation & principles are most important.

At this point you might have to consider summarizing what you have so far and evaluate what's working and not working . Write the gist of your story into a short story and ask for review, maybe. You might have to do some serious reworking if you've written yourself into a hole

[Anonymous No.11991638]

I've got a basic plot, a character, a theme with literary theory that's visible, ambitions to try something, but I feel like I don't have a solid enough character and this has made for a very boring first 40 pages. I completed a long scene this week, and now I am trying to think of what I need to add to this story to make it more engaging and less abstract. This is a challenge for sure.

[Anonymous No.11991680]

While we're on the subject, what are some good sites to publish a story chapter by chapter? I've got an idea for one, but it wouldn't exactly fit the novel format; it'd be better to call it a collection of interconnected stories with no clear ending in mind.

[Anonymous No.11991747]

I have no preference for communism or socialism but I’ve taken an interest in writing a world war 2 novel from the perspective of a 23 year old man who never went to university as he is the primary breadwinner for himself, mother, and aging father who had a leg crushed in a railroad construction accident. The story starts in the finals days of the battle for Stalingrad when the young protagonist is exposed to the brutal and terrifying sights and sounds of war. Fortunately for him he’s taken under the wing of a patriotic and battle hardened sergeant who knows how to stay alive. The story follows their fight in the rout of the German army across Russia in isolated scurmishes as they try not to freeze, starve or be shot by the enemy. The novel follows the pair as well as a sporadically appearing smaller characters in a sharpshooter, medic and deranged engineer. They’ll travel by foot, truck, rail, and on the back of tanks from Stalingrad to Berlin in a story of bravery, sacrifice, and loss of innocence and brotherhood under the umbrella of the deadliest war in history.

I’ll have to do a lot of research but I’m confident I can create the grit and scale of a story this size and scope

[Anonymous No.11991773]

>>11991747
I like your self confidence much better than most other self loathing losers here. I'm sure you'll be able to pull it off.

[Anonymous No.11991784]

>>11987291
Pretty good, all things considered. Planned out the next section and I think I've got a better idea about where I want it to go between now and the end. Just wish I had more time to write the novel instead of other things.

[Anonymous No.11991816]

>>11990382
Word 2007 for now, although I have taken a peek at scrivener and maybe I'll upgrade to that. But since I split my chapters per scene it's easy for me to keep track of everything.

>>11990393
Pretty good. I would split it over multiple novels though. Nobody likes slogging through a thousand pages for a single storyline.

>>11991680
Maybe create your own webpage where you can post them ? That's what I would do anyway.

[Anonymous No.11991838]

I'm never comfortable writing anything meaningful because all my protagonists end up as self-projections. I'm aware this isn't necessarily bad, especially considering a lot of my favorite writers just write about their own life, but I still feel like my work is presumptious at worst, a mediocre piece of worthless self-deprecation at best.

More often than not, I write genre fiction as a way to avoid the above, but even there I feel I lack any creativity whatsoever, and so my drafts are never worth revisiting.

[Anonymous No.11991853]

>>11991816
>Maybe create your own webpage where you can post them ? That's what I would do anyway.
Hum, never considered that. How would I be able to get exposure for free, though?

[Anonymous No.11991867]

I had an idea about writing a novel from the perspective of a guy who wakes up one day alone in the world, but I gave up about 40 pages in once I realized it was getting boring without any character interaction; I'm not that good at introspection to make that the entire focus of a novel.

I still haven't given up on the idea, but I'm struggling to find ways to freshen things up without compromising the integrity of the premise. I was thinking of interspacing the normal alone time with dream sequences focusing on the character's past, but I feel that would be far too cliche and corny.

[Anonymous No.11991880]

>>11991867
Definitely cliched and corny. I believe that you should have gone a bit crazier while still retaining that self introspective facet. Have weirder and weirder shit happen while keeping the focus on the main character; that's what I would have done. Then again, I've never written a novel so take my advice with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous No.11991929]

>>11991747

I love the idea! If you ever finish it, post some exerts on /lit/ and I'll definitely consider buying it if you do it justice.

[Anonymous No.11991981]

A new acquintance of mine, a nice looking bar cashier lady in her mid-twenties lent me a fantasy novel, that I remember having read, some nearly twenty years ago.
A sentence after a few dozen pages, describing the main character meeting with a soon-to-be pet, a quite unfamiliar and peculiar little critter, an [l]otak[/l], truly made me smile, just a little bit, inside.

Have any of you, fellow readers, ever possibly read this classic?

Anyone of you, fellow readers, remember which book I'm in the middle of?

[Anonymous No.11992264]

>>11991929
Good deal. I’m researching the T-34 Russian tank at the moment and will probably start a timeline of the Russian German war in the next week so I can weave an accurate path across the terrain and seasons