/sffg/ - Science Fiction & Fantasy General

[Anonymous No.13414533]

WRITERS EDITION
>Go on then, tell us about your book.
>What are you currently reading and how is it?

Monthly Reading for July: The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Monthly Reading books: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15ZwgDZVXB-nLqjbgcqgntZDyTddd0eqP

Fantasy:
https://imgoat.com/uploads/0935e4cd59/105363.jpg
https://imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21328.jpg
Flowchart:
https://imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21327.jpg

Science Fiction:
https://imgoat.com/uploads/def184ad8f/124507.jpg
https://imgoat.com/uploads/b44928ae11/114401.jpg
General:
https://imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21332.jpg
https://imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21330.jpg

NPR's Top 100 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books:
https://imgoat.com/uploads/6d767d2f8e/21333.jpg

SF&F author listing with ratings and summaries:
http://greatsfandf.com/authors-full-list.php


Previously:
>>13402997
>>13394421
>>13383500
>>13372298
>>13355879
>>13346515

[Anonymous No.13414578]

Why do mormons write so much shit fantasy for scientologists?

[Anonymous No.13414626]

What does /sffg/ recommends to learn how to write stories? I've been thinking of getting that Neil Gaiman Masterclass.
Also, English is my second language, and I feel very insecure about my vocabulary and grammar. I've spend so much time in the US, writing and speaking English, that I'm terrible at my original language, which I wasn't at an academic level to begin with. Any recommendations?

[Anonymous No.13414640]

>>13413525
>homophobes
There is no phobia of faggots and trannies.
This word has completely lost its meaning. Dislike is not fear. Jesus Christ.
The world of language is getting fucked in our lifetime.
Faggotphobia was probably real back in the day, when faggots were walking std vending machines, but no one fears them now. There is disgust and dislike, not fear.

[Anonymous No.13414754]

>>13414298
>>13414419
>>13414459

Replicating here, as the old thread is already autosaging, thanks for the effort and interesing details.

[Anonymous No.13414807]

>>13414754
Yoai yuri lover fag.

[Anonymous No.13414928]

>find an old tablet I used to write on years and years ago
>recharge it
>check stuff
>Find my old attempts at writing, a very comfy space opera with aliens and robots and AI and shit
>feel compelled to finish it
God damn it man I didn't expect it to be so good. Should I just take a break from what I'm working on right now and just finish this?

[Anonymous No.13414972]

>>13414533
Wasn't bad, but didn't live up to the hype

[Anonymous No.13415010]

>>13414754
I made one last post in the thread, as I wanted to clarify some things regarding my interpretation. It might be interesting to you.

[Anonymous No.13415056]

Divine Dungeon started off so well why, it was shaping up nicely then the author fucking ruined it with, save the world, flying dungeon, impending doom prophecy bullshit. Fuck off.

Is book 5 more grounded or more of the same trend? Also, is it the last book or is he writing more?

[Anonymous No.13415090]

>>13415010
Is that you moogy?

[Anonymous No.13415130]

>>13415010
Is that a pink vibrator that thing in your pic is holding?
What kind of fucked up Japanese shit are you reading?

[Anonymous No.13415171]

>>13414928
If you hit a wall with your current writing, then yes.
If the words are flowing with your current writing, then don't.

[Anonymous No.13415179]

>>13415056
There was a flying dungeon in book one faggot.

[Anonymous No.13415204]

Not a book, but I liked the scene in cowboy bebop where Faye is just chilling in space in her little pod, so I wrote a scene based around that idea for a bit, nothing great but any writing is useful

[Anonymous No.13415212]

Read self published books and stabilize your consumption or your life is forfeit.

[Anonymous No.13415218]

>>13415204
Wrong general, this isn't the writing general.

[Anonymous No.13415239]

>>13415218
>WRITERS EDITION
my bad anon

[Anonymous No.13415242]

>>13415218
t.mouthbreather

[Anonymous No.13415249]

>>13414533

[Anonymous No.13415253]

>>13415090
No, I'm not. Moogy stopped posting on 4chan a long time ago. I do sometimes borrow recommendations from his bookmeter though.

>>13415130
I don't know, I just started it. Probably some kind of alien device since the story involves the first contact trope.

[Anonymous No.13415254]

>>13415239
Shit. The writefags have infiltrated deep. We need another mod purging like last year.

[Anonymous No.13415279]

>>13415254
>We need another mod purging like last year
and have them all replaced with limp dicked yes men that follow hiroshimoots every order?
please no.

[Anonymous No.13415286]

>>13414533
Sauce on OP pic? Hes soooo handsome

[Anonymous No.13415315]

>>13415254
>Shit. The writefags have infiltrated deep.
Anon..you don't actually think mods make the general threads...right?

>>13415286
You newfags really need to start learning to use the reverse image search function.

https://www.deviantart.com/abigaillarson/art/Drawlloween-2017-Frankenstein-709917913

[Anonymous No.13415350]

>>13415010
>>13415253
I read that review of Alice that you posted in the other thread and it reminded me of this recording of Roger Scruton explaining why Harry Potter is bad children's literature (he compares it to Alice, which he uses as an example of good children's literature). He makes some points that relate well to that review, so I thought you might find it interesting if you haven't already heard it. It's only about 10 min. long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHGNf6nWUm0

[Anonymous No.13415489]

Post some xianxia you've liked.
>tfw barely over halfway through Coiling Dragon
>tfw only 6% into Desolate Era although I only read a chapter a day most days for now
>LESS THAN A MONTH UNTIL UNCROWNED

[Anonymous No.13415543]

>>13415489
Desolate Era is based. But it doesn't get really good until after Ji Ning leaves his home galaxy.

Will Wight could have made Lindon a based boy like Ji Ning who fights battle after impossible battle to become stronger instead what we get is a beta pill popping, fruit eating, lucky encounter dependant MC with the personality of a cardboard. I like Cradle but fuck, I hate Lindon.

[Anonymous No.13415595]

>protag uses wits and persuasion instead of brawl
I know Eye of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga and some Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser stories do this. What are some other novels like this?

[Anonymous No.13415667]

>>13415350
Thank you for the video. Really insightful view on Harry Potter. Do not know if I agree with his view on the role of Christianity in society and history, but I do find it beautiful. Sageing since off-topic, but I appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.13415696]

>>13415253
>Alien device
Nah homie, that's a rabbit
>>13415595
Jalan in Prince of Fools is a Cugel/Flashman clone. The Quantum Thief. Tales of the Kin series. Jack of Shadows.

[Anonymous No.13415730]

>>13415595
Plenty if not most Discworld books. Going Postal is a notable one, since the protagonist is a convicted con artist who deals with all his problems through charisma, deception, and grandstanding.

[Anonymous No.13415751]

Black Opal by Steven Helsel
>typical DnD class-based coolness
>evil demons that pretend they're angels and jerk off at the slain
>decent world
>easy to get lost in
>JERKS OFF AT THE SLAIN

[Anonymous No.13415764]

>>13415751
>Not raping the slain
Was Helsel even trying?

[Anonymous No.13415775]

>>13415730
Can recommend. Most of Discowrld is fantastic. only some of the books are weaker but overall its a very great series. Going Postal and Guards! Guards! are my favorite novels of the series.

[Anonymous No.13416074]

>bbbbbzzzzzz
https://www.summer-glau.com/news/serialized_fiction_alternis_narrated_by_summer/2019-05-15-1319
Waspfu does audiobooks now.

[Anonymous No.13416088]

>>13414533
>Go on then, tell us about your book.

Fantasy novel that takes place 5,000 years after an apocalypse which causes magic to be reintroduced into the world. Magic, is tied to music as a means to understand and study it, and more broadly as breaking the modern understanding of physics through sound vibrations. There’s also the Blood Magic route, but that’s “illegal” in such a way that the Nobility of the land does it anyways, under everyone’s noses. It’ll be a Hero’s Journey alright, and it won’t be a 1000-page behemoth.

[Anonymous No.13416126]

>>13414626
>What does /sffg/ recommends to learn how to write stories?

You learn to write stories by writing stories.

>Neil Gaiman

One step above Stephen King.

[Anonymous No.13416132]

>>13416088
tell me about your characters and themes

[Anonymous No.13416251]

>>13416132
Characters are all “normal” humans, or a new race known as the “Baruqhume”, who have deer-like ears and autist chins and have a society based on savants rather than being generalists.
The main characters so far, are a Baruqhume woman, and a “normal” man who was sent from his home in the “undercities” (Deep Underground Military Bases that became city-states akin to Sumeria and Hellenic Greece over 5000 years) to investigate the lack of communications from an undercity separated from the tunnel network by a tunnel collapse. The first viewpoint is the normie guy.

[Anonymous No.13416332]

>>13414640
this is like arguing that hydrophobic materials are literally afraid of water rather than repelled by it

[Anonymous No.13416401]

>>13416251
what's the point?

[Anonymous No.13416495]

>>13414640
Sperg-tastic post

[Anonymous No.13416617]

/sffg/ my setting has a creature that's basically a turtle whose shell is a live-updating 3d map of the surrounding area.

if a bunch of PA survivors were living meal-to-meal, would it be unrealistic for them to leave the turtle alive instead of eating it

[Anonymous No.13416699]

>>13416617
Make where they're going very important and make the area around them treacherous enough to need the turtle to survive. Compare immediate death with no turtle to a slow death with no food. Hell, have them locate bits of food with the turtle.

[Anonymous No.13416711]

>>13416617
If they were actively starving with no other prospects for food around, yes. If they knew they could find food elsewhere and the prospect was merely inconvenient or irregular, then it's not unbelievable that they'd leave it alive as a tool or out of curiosity.

[Anonymous No.13416834]

>>13416711
the situation's not "donner party" bad, but its "even chance you'll have to kill a bear with a bow and arrow to eat" bad

[Anonymous No.13416869]

>>13416834
Have you considered just establishing the turtle's meat to be lethally poisonous?

[Anonymous No.13417006]

>>13416869
considered it. one of the things I decided on was that the turtle had a snakes head and a retractable neck, so poison would make sense.

on the other how would they find out the meat was poison without eating it. also, i just kind of thought it would be funny if their map kept biting them

[Anonymous No.13417037]

>>13417006
>also, i just kind of thought it would be funny if their map kept biting them
That's why it's important that the turtle is poisonous, not venomous.

There are plenty of ways you could establish the turtle to be poisonous without killing it. Maybe they come across another animal eating a different turtle and dying. Maybe one of your characters is familiar with the area, or at least has a guidebook. Maybe they come across an ancient artifact that indicates "TURTLE BAD" via pictograms. Use your imagination.

[Anonymous No.13417143]

>>13414626
These won't teach you how to write, but they will help you understand what you're doing much better:
>Story by Robert McKee: the first book on story crafting anyone who knows anything will recommend, with good reason. 90% of its examples are from film, but most of its advice applies to any writing, and almost all of it is truly insightful. Read this first to get the basics down.
>Into the Woods by John Yorke: written by a BBC writer/producer who has read everything of note that's ever been written about story structure, and presents his conclusions here.

On how to write prose fiction:
>The Art of Fiction by John Gardner: written by the guy who taught writing to Raymond Chandler, among other things. Very interesting observations about both theory and technique.
>Stein on Writing by Sol Stein: written by an editor with decades of experience. A chunk of it is about nonfiction, but you can skip that.
>Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Browne & King: what the title says, very solid practical advice on your prose.

On grammar and usage, as a non-native english speaker the book I learned the most from was The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker. Most of it is about syntax, but chapter 6 is about discerning between real and bullshit grammar rules.

On SFF specifically, Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer has been on my to-read list for a while, at a glance it looks extremely interesting.

[Anonymous No.13417185]

>>13414533
Russian litrpg is so refreshing after reading pozzed Western crap. It just seems so much more human. Are they making any straight sff without gamification and stats? What other cultures are producing sff that a normal male can relate to?

[Anonymous No.13417197]

old mans war is shit, why did people recommend this trash

[Anonymous No.13417198]

>>13416332
No, homophobes also aren't affected by a physical force that stops them from sticking to faggots.

[Anonymous No.13417298]

>>13417185
What's with dogshit covers lately? I see them everywhere I turn. Some generic cgi with no taste and design. Shit that I quickly throw together for my einker looks better.

[Anonymous No.13417344]

>>13417298
I suspect that Russian to English (and maybe first-run self published in general) is a low capital venture relying on cheap stock images and fiver-tier photoshop. But more power to them.

If I were a better artists I'd volunteer for these and take payment in points.

[Anonymous No.13417370]

>>13417298
>ome generic cgi with no taste and design. Shit that I quickly throw together for my einker looks better.
because most authors nowadays are a one man show with maybe some PR firm backing them, which in reality just manipulates kindle rankings and maybe provides a newsletter. they do everything on their own. proper cover art can be expensive. and even still most people dont give a fuck about the cover art.

[Anonymous No.13417374]

>>13417197
No one recommends Old Mans War.

[Anonymous No.13417394]

>>13417197
>recommending Scalzi
Not here mate

[Anonymous No.13417475]

>>13416617
>>13416834
>>13417006
>he didn't listen to us and have someone who has to fuck their lizard's vagina

[Anonymous No.13417501]

>>13417298
>>13417370
>even still most people dont give a fuck about the cover art.
This. Most people don't care about cover art. Once it doesn't look like something a 5 year old drew, it could work.
For a litrpg this cover works, because they are dealing with a computer generated world, so, use computer vector image.

[Anonymous No.13417596]

>>13417475
We tried to tell him, but he wouldn't listen

[Anonymous No.13417697]

>>13417198
>continuing argument from semantics and pedantry even after being called out

[Anonymous No.13417722]

>>13415489
Female author

[Anonymous No.13417760]

I'm thinking of falling for the xianxia meme. If you could only read one, what would it be? Pic unrelated, but good

[Anonymous No.13417775]

Okay, now I'm seriously considering the turtle's owner using it like a koopa shell. Her powers are supposed to be an enhanced sense of spacial awareness, so using something that could riccochet around like a hockey puck would make sense, even if it is extremely juvenile

[Anonymous No.13417779]

>>13417760
Do you want a serious one or a joke one

[Anonymous No.13417783]

>>13417775
Ground to Eagle One, you're in a nosedive and closing in on zero. Pull up, pull up.

[Anonymous No.13417798]

>>13417783
okay, realistically speaking, what would you have the turtle do besides serve as an onahole and/or dildo?

There aren't many options. Bite? koopa shell? tiny meteors? or maybe it just fucking breathes fire.

that or I cut the entire pokemon thing out which is probably the best option but I'm trying to splatter my brains onto the pages here

[Anonymous No.13417804]

>>13417798
>inb4 do it literally

[Anonymous No.13417812]

>>13417798
Why not just use it as a map? Because that's considerably more interesting than using it as a blunt instrument.

[Anonymous No.13417851]

>>13417779
One of each pls

[Anonymous No.13417884]

>>13417775
literally just have the character fuck the turtle

[Anonymous No.13417893]

>>13417812
...that's honestly a damn good question. I think you might be right on that front.

to be honest though, I think maybe this pokeshit is me adding an unnecessary snare to the plot. I had a lot of good reasons to work it in, but frankly it's cringeworthy even if it is true to myself

[Anonymous No.13417907]

>>13416401
I’m trying to pull a New Wave Sci-Fi type of move and show that the treatment of autism and aspergers in the media is increasingly tending towards its elimination through thinly veiled eugenics, and that the spectrum could actually be the equivalent of the emergence of modern man ~70,000 years ago. I can’t really say much further than this, anon, I’ve barely begun writing the story.

[Anonymous No.13417938]

>>13414533
I've been sitting on the same concepts since 2016 and I just can't seem to go anywhere with them. I guess I'm not meant to be a writer.

[Anonymous No.13417943]

>>13417851
Cultivation chat group and martial world

[Anonymous No.13417961]

>>13417893
You're falling into a creative trap. Because you think "I want to make something inspired by Pokemon", you start at Pokemon as it is and try to figure out how to retrofit that to something else, instead of identifying what it is you like about Pokemon and how another story in another medium could produce something you like just as much.

You want to write a story with lots of weirdass animals. That's fine; that's perfectly solid ground for a /sffg/ novel. But you assume that because Pokemon made every monster a fighting animal, every monster you create must also be a fighting animal. Pokemon is the way it is because it was first and foremost created as a combat-focused JRPG. A story-driven novel should not be the same way unless it is overtly evoking combat-focused JRPGs. Write weirdass animals, but write them to be interesting and dramatically relevant, not JRPG characters.

[Anonymous No.13417962]

>>13417938
Anon, I know how you feel and believe me you'll get somewhere. I've been sitting on my concepts for the same amount of time but eventually it came together

[Anonymous No.13418008]

>>13417961
really, when I started out writing the idea, I just had a lot of monsters in the setting. I wanted them to be intelligent but at some point I realized none of them were actually characters. So I added in a few monster characters and it was great, but one of them I planned to be a traitor so I needed a way to punish him and I needed a way to spring a jailbreak, but then I remembered how I thought my MC's powers would make him a good beastmaster and it all clicked into place. Suddenly, I started thinking about how a theme of the story was that the MC needed to be willing to overcome his insecurities and ask for help. Once I realized that was an option, and how that played into the whole pokeshit concept. If everyone else had a companion, it would be his own stubbornness preventing him from accepting help from a partner, and rather than it being a punishment for the traitor I could rework it to be a redemption. The enemy was already a mind-controller. Maybe the the traitor had no choice and the MC would free him and himself by stealing control away from the villain and bonding to the traitor himself.

It felt so complete, and it still does, but now perspective is hitting me and I'm realizing I'm a 26-year-old autist trying to shoehorn pokemon into a novel

[Anonymous No.13418038]

>>13418008
Intelligent animals with magic powers being trained by humans is well-settled territory in fantasy; you shouldn't feel embarrassed about writing something like that. Try taking a step back. Read through everything you've written so far, and what you have planned, and try to take the perspective of someone who's never heard of Pokemon. Read it as if it's just being sold as a normal fantasy novel. Maybe even give a draft to a boomer relative who likes fantasy. If anything seems stupid or out of place from that perspective, that's what you need to change. You shouldn't reject an idea entirely just because it had an unconventional inspiration.

[Anonymous No.13418055]

>aspiring author edition

[Anonymous No.13418071]

>>13418055
Me under the desk succeeding as an author (female)

[Anonymous No.13418105]

>>13414533
Are there any battle scenes that were intended to disgust you with the horrors of war, and it actually succeeded in doing so?
Ilium's first battle scene did it for me. Reading about guys having arrows puncture through their groins and erupt out their anuses, and others fucking getting disemboweled and stripped naked was absolutely disgusting.

[Anonymous No.13418113]

>>13418071
Author isn't gendered in English.
Maybe in Japanese or Spanish, but not English.

[Anonymous No.13418169]

>It was because he was a virgin who didn’t even hold hands with a woman for more than 1000 years.

Korean web novels are brutal

[Anonymous No.13418171]

>>13418169
holy kek sauce

[Anonymous No.13418189]

In the near future, a private security company operating from a satellite in Earth's orbit offer on-the-ground personnel anywhere on Earth at a moment's notice, ready to extract their ultra-wealthy clientele from even the most hostile of environments. What starts as a series of unrelated missions across the globe, becomes the prelude to one of the largest and most ambitious crimes in history.

On an unrelated note, I'm reading Snow Crash right now and I'm having mixed feelings about it. I like a lot of the ideas (The whole concept of the Snow Crash virus, Hiro's long chats with the librarian) but there's just so much 90s cheese I can hardly stand it. A blasian hacker MC running around with duel katanas and spouting off future-80s slang is so "nothin' personnel kid" I just can't take it seriously. The metaverse idea, while certainly forward-thinking and prophetic, is basically just VRChat if internet culture had gone down a very different path. I can't help but laugh at so much of the stuff that was probably once considered to be, like, totally rad, bro...

[Anonymous No.13418223]

>>13417938
I’ve been sitting on my ideas for that long too, anon. Write everything down in the mean time, it helps motivate you.

[Anonymous No.13418228]

>goodreads recs haven't updated since may 10th
>read 13 books and clicked not interested on a load since then
why is it such a fucking unreliable site? it's owned by amazon and uses a basic alithogram to rec stuff
im running out of stuff i want to read

[Anonymous No.13418386]

>>13418228
>and clicked not interested on a load since then
Because most reviewers liked shit and those make up your recommendations.

[Anonymous No.13418394]

how was your firework day /sffg/? I went to a barbecue at my uncle's house, and my vegan cousin accidentally bought a vegetarian chorizo sausage that was shockingly good after being grilled.

also after an email exchange with my DM I now have access to an octopus familiar I can't wait to exploit

[Anonymous No.13418424]

>>13414533
As an aspiring writer, I'd like some advice.

I'm currently trying to write a novel. This is my first major writing project, though I've written a decent amount of short fiction. My current draft stands at about 45k words, which is about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through what I imagined the story was going to be. My problem is that I see no dramatically satisfying way to continue the story. Without going into excessive detail, I'm juggling three different main character PoVs with separate character arcs and sources of internal conflict who are all dealing with three unrelated factions with conflicting goals centering around a mystery that the character arcs demand not be revealed until the end of the second act. This is also considering multiple as-of-yet unexplained events and character motivations. In short, I got too ambitious without a real plan and now the whole thing feels like nothing fits together.

I don't consider the experience a total wash. I'm still interested in the setting I've developed and some of the characters; my problem is just that the main plot has structurally failed. So after banging my head against the wall for a month, I took a break and tried to write something completely different with some of the elements I've already built.

The test project is much more tightly defined than my original plot ever was. It's just a simple hero's journey story with two main characters and a villain. I haven't written a lot, just 5k words of an intro and an outline, but I feel like the concept I've developed here is much more achievable with my skillset.

I feel like it would be better to continue with the new concept than persist with a project that feels dead in the water. But at the same time, I know that most amateur writers abandon their work around the point at which I've arrived, and I don't want to just flit from idea to idea without making real progress. So if anybody has any advice from experience, I'd like to hear it.

tl:dr Magpie Syndrome vs. Sunk-Cost Fallacy

[Anonymous No.13418439]

>>13418424
Before we can help you, you need to give us more details about your plot and premise.

[Anonymous No.13418454]

>>13417722
Who wrote three great series, yes.

[Anonymous No.13418461]

>>13418424
anon, as an author who dealt with the exact same situation you're talking about, I'll give you this advice: work on the new idea and get it to completion, then turn your attentions back to the other one. It might take another year and a half, but you'll find a way to create a satisfying ending to your original idea, and over time it's going to evolve to be very different from the new one

[Anonymous No.13418470]

>>13417760
You could read Coiling Dragon, like I am, since it popularized xianxia. However, it is outrageously lengthy.
I would read Cradle because it is due for a 7th book soon so the amount of current content leaves it in a good spot and you can join in discussion with all of us faggots.
Of course, you could read The Ellimist and fall into the hole that is Animorphs although the writing is very YA ESPECIALLY early on so you could breeze through the mainline series.

[Anonymous No.13418488]

>>13417943
Ty anon

[Anonymous No.13418503]

>>13418038
I've been thinking this over, and it seems to me that there's room for simplification

I can keep the idea of the traitor and the MC being a beastmaster, but maybe not everyone will have a pet. The turtle's easy enough to work in, but keeping the scrapper's robot bird is risky and the artist's ink cat is straight out.

that said, I did originally have a plan for a different character's pet firefly to follow them so maybe she can replace the bird. The artist could also try to get close to the traitor, but they'd be incompatible which would actually be a nice bit of foreshadowing. that brings the actual creature cast to a manageable level (assuming the turtle is unintelligent and treated only as a map instead of a character).

In that case, it would also mean that the MC is the first one of the group to take an animal as a battle companion

[Anonymous No.13418526]

>>13418461
To be perfectly frank I made that post hoping for advice along this line. I just wanted to know that I wasn't inevitably setting myself up for a chain of abandoning idea after idea and never finishing anything. Thank you, anon.

[Anonymous No.13418531]

>>13418503
As long as it works as a story, anon.

[Anonymous No.13418724]

Any warhammer 40k books that are about inquisitors working with the grey knights? I read the first horus heresy book then jumped into the eisenhorn omnibus. I like the mystery part of eisenhorn but want some more space marine action. I asked about books on /tg/ but I think they care more about the game

[Anonymous No.13418734]

>>13414533
>tfw you've finally got burned out on writer's angst and now you're just impatiently waiting for your brain to release the writing juice

[Anonymous No.13418866]

I've started writing probably a dozen projects throughout my life. I always begin totally brimming with enthusiasm, and my story and characters are all i can think about for usually a couple weeks. Then i get bored and it becomes a chore before long, and i ultimately always give up on it before i'm even a third of the way done with the first draft. Does anyone else have this problem? How do you stay focused on your writing projects?

[Anonymous No.13418890]

>>13418470
Read the first chapter of True Martial World and Coiling Dragon. The translation for coiling dragon seems more readable. The writing is similar to the Vampire Hunter D books, not bad not good, but holy shit almost 6000 pages

[Anonymous No.13418913]

I've been conlanging for a few years now, and I've lately been getting the feeling that my languages, even when I make a point of starting with an uber-naturalistic protolang, progress largely arbitrarily. should I do what Tolkien did and expand into fantasy lit to make my conlangs more realistic? I mean I'm not really interested in writing fiction to begin with, but from what I've heard, neither was Tolkien

[Anonymous No.13418964]

>>13418913
Thing about Tolkien is that he wasn't just interested in languages, he was also way into mythologies and folktales. I doubt he would have written a fictitious mythology that employed his languages if he wasn't interested in both, just as I doubt you'll get very far in the project if you don't get anything out of fantasy.

[Anonymous No.13418998]

>>13417907
fair enough, godspeed myman

[Anonymous No.13419052]

>>13418964
fair point, I'll have to consider it further

[Anonymous No.13419130]

>>13417697
What the fuck does "-phob" mean then?
You can't change randomly the meaning of words and expect the rest of the world to keep up with your rape of language.

[Anonymous No.13419145]

>>13419130
>rape of language
jesus christ you people are overdramatic
Language changes, my man

[Anonymous No.13419317]

I genuinely enjoy purple prose when used by writers who know what they're doing with it.

[Anonymous No.13419404]

Thinking about picking up asoiaf, mostly because i'm interested in the plots the show decided no to bother with. Barristan, Doran, Young Griff

[Anonymous No.13419442]

>>13414626
Zen in the art of writing by Ray Bradbury is a minor resource you might like.

[Anonymous No.13419450]

>>13415696
>Jack of Shadows.
Now that is a book.

[Anonymous No.13419474]

Hello friends.

I want to re-read a book, but I can't find it.

The plot involves a professor being handed a falsified thesis. He confronts the student, who tells him he got it from a slot machine.
The professor takes the bait, and he finds himself transported to some other world.
In this other world, he meets a robot, a poet, a general, an engineer, and maybe some other character - they go on a little adventure.
I remember it was a fun read, but it's not on my shelf anymore.
Anyone recognize it?

[Anonymous No.13419498]

I'm reading a Philip K Dick novel for the first time (A Maze Of Death.)
Is his prose supposed to be mediocre?

[Anonymous No.13419620]

>>13418189
>In the near future, a private security company operating from a satellite in Earth's orbit offer on-the-ground personnel anywhere on Earth at a moment's notice, ready to extract their ultra-wealthy clientele from even the most hostile of environments. What starts as a series of unrelated missions across the globe, becomes the prelude to one of the largest and most ambitious crimes in history.
This was posted a few months ago in the general.

[Anonymous No.13419634]

>>13414578
>>13414626
>>13414640
>>13414754
>>13414807
>>13414928
>>13414972
>>13415010
>>13415056
>>13415090
>>13415130
>>13415171
>>13415179
>>13415204
>>13415212
>>13415218
>>13415239
>>13415242
>>13415249
please for the love of god just read some of the sean f kay befoer you spout your shit here incels

[Anonymous No.13419655]

>>13419145
We don't like the way "you people"(literal faggots and dudes with breast implants) and fucking with our (straight people) language to use as a weapon. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.13419663]

>>13419634
Looking for (you)s tranny? Go to >>>/lgbt/mtf general and get your you pills.

[Anonymous No.13419670]

>>13419498

Dick has a lot of good ideas but his prose isn't the best. One of the cases where the person is far more interesting than their own works and how his books reflect the decaying state of his mind.

[Anonymous No.13419931]

>>13419634
>replying to all those posts
Have sex

[Anonymous No.13419958]

>>13419317
Read Sanderson then; Stormlight Archive is good for this.

[Anonymous No.13419984]

>>13419958
>Asked for good purple prose
>Suggests Sanderson
You know what I don't even think you're trolling.

[Anonymous No.13419994]

>>13419984
>le I hate Sanderson because it's popular to hate Sanderson meme
this is just getting old now

[Anonymous No.13420014]

>>13419317
K.J Bishop
Patricia McKillip
Susanna Clark
Tanith Lee
Valente
Clark Ashton Smith
Bradbury
Jack Vance

>>13419958
>>13419994
Have you only ever read Agatha Christie that you think Sanderson's prose is anywhere near purple?

[Anonymous No.13420021]

>>13419958
>>13419994
I don't think you know what purple prose means, anon.

[Anonymous No.13420025]

>>13419994
It's not about liking or disliking him you mouthbreathing ape, it's about the objective nature of his prose which EVERYONE who is not a fucking moron including him knows is very straightforward and "workmanlike" and as far from purple prose as you can get.

[Anonymous No.13420093]

>>13420014
>>13420021
>>13420025
Holy Christ, CALM DOWN you utter faggots. Sanderson has great prose and a good deal of it is 'purple prose', so just let the guy read it and stop fucking whining about people recommending things to others who want recommendations.

Also, if you're telling me this has NOTHING to do with the fact that hating Sanderson is in vogue right now then you're either lying, naive or stupid.

[Anonymous No.13420099]

>>13419317
Name of the wind is purple prose. Ignore the wise man's fear.

[Anonymous No.13420123]

>>13417961
D/A But what you say is very intriguing. About 7 months ago, I thought up the basic plot for a Pokemon fanfic, but I got so engrossed with the story that I wanted to attempt to convert it into a YA fantasy, and thus far, I’ve outlined the basic plot and progression of events across a 4-volume series. For a while I was imagining it written from third person limited, but then I thought of having the monsters themselves narrate the story, a different one for each volume. But I’ve been seriously bogged down by the whole monsters = fighting tool thing, and your post has made me realize that I have to rewrite how the monsters factor into the story without being used as tools for fighting or defense.

[Anonymous No.13420126]

>sanderson
>purple prose
what the fuck am I reading

[Anonymous No.13420133]

>>13419317
Tigana is peak this.

[Anonymous No.13420255]

>>13420093
anon, you truly, TRULY, have no idea what purple prose is. I'm not even shitting on Sanderson's prose because his prose his no different from the vast majority of fantasy writers, but his prose is NOT purple. Also you should know that purple prose is considered a bad thing by snobby cunts so a Sandersonfag such as yourself should take it as a good thing his prose isn't purple.

[Anonymous No.13420279]

>you'll never be able to discuss fantasy and sci-fi without children around

[Anonymous No.13420285]

>>13420279
Have your head wife take your sex slaves to another room, dumbass

[Anonymous No.13420326]

I've been reading Dan Abnett again, some random Gaunt's Ghosts book. I say random because that's both the strength and the weakness of his prose - he has a knack for mil-fiction lingo, even when he uses terms like 'Balkanization' in a WH40K universe, but his books are an endless array of conflicts and (tabletop-like) skirmishing episodes, unrelenting, boundless. Perhaps that's the point but every time I read him I get to the point where I'm really enjoying it, and then endless strife saps my reading energy away.

I did not have that problem with Eisenhorn/Ravenor though, would like more of that rather than grunt prose. Even Bequin would be okay. His Embedded novel is quite decent but his best work is Eisenhorn I believ.e

[Anonymous No.13420345]

>>13419317
give some examples

[Anonymous No.13420356]

did CJ Cherryh write any fantasy rather than sci-fi? I read one fantasy tale of hers and liked it very much, but her work seems to be centered around space colonies, world building and the like. Is there a book that collects her fantasy fiction or something?

[Anonymous No.13420407]

>>13420345
Clark Ashton Smith for a classic example. More recent would by The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor by Byron Roberts. Purple prose seems to fit perfectly with Sword & Sorcery though. I don't think purple prose would work with, say, a Star Trek novel. But S&S and Lovecraftian horror? Definitely.

[Anonymous No.13420512]

>>13419404
I read up till A storm of swords really liked it . I couldn't get to feast of crows right away because It felt like a big cliff hanger with all these new characters & plot lines

[Anonymous No.13420688]

>>13419404
don't pick it up
it's an ever-unraveling mess and GRRM knows it, hence why he's he's so content to not finish it - he knows he can't really, especially not with the precious few months/years he has left

[Anonymous No.13420775]

Gonna start in on pic related today finally. Hopefully it's based despite being first-person narrative.

[Anonymous No.13420841]

>>13420775
>first person narratives are bad
have you read book of the new sun, lad?

[Anonymous No.13420851]

>>13420841
Heroic fantasy should always be done in third-person. Book of the New Sun is its own unique thing.

[Anonymous No.13420979]

>listening to Life Reset audiobook
>starts off with an interesting premise
>devolves into descriptions of grinding
What the fuck, this is torture. I don't wanna listen to someone grinding while I'm grinding. Not to mention how much he looks at status screens.

Please, recommend some isekai. One without the litrpg bullshit.

[Anonymous No.13421009]

>>13420979
life reset is all about that goblin sex

[Anonymous No.13421016]

>>13420979
>Please, recommend some isekai. One without the litrpg bullshit.
People are divided on this. Some like it and some don't. overall i enjoyed it but sometimes i skipped the villain chapters. Starts of a bit slow but really kicks into gear in the second book.

[Anonymous No.13421033]

>>13421016
I remember seeing it on amazon and avoiding it just because how fucking ugly that cover it is. Jesus, look how ugly it is.

[Anonymous No.13421049]

>>13421033
Give it a try.
Chemist gets stranded on a planet of humans and has to assimilate into their society. Brings along some innovations and has to help the clans of the island he landed on defend themselves from and invading force that wants to supplant them by enslaving them and removing their heritage. The technological level of the natives is from around the mid 1800s so they arent too primitive.

[Anonymous No.13421068]

>>13420014
Based Tanith Lee poster
>>13420356
Yeah she wrote a few fantasy novels and series,but they aren't well know.
i only read The Paladin and Fortress In The Eye of Time,they are fun but they were a drag sometimes but that's mostly because i'm not a huge fan of worldbuilding.

[Anonymous No.13421076]

>>13417185
What's so refreshing about this one?

[Anonymous No.13421206]

>>13419145
If you've not noticed by his syntax, he's clearly ESL. Handle the autistic Euro with kiddy gloves, Anon.

[Anonymous No.13421500]

/sffg/ is there such a thing as western LN? I feel like the stuff I write is basically anime or adult cartoons in a written format. im not sure what else to classify myself as, because im too cartoony to be YA, but too raunchy to be middlegrade

[Anonymous No.13421570]

>>13421500
House of blades by Will Wight is western anime in prose.

[Anonymous No.13421575]

>>13421500
LN is close to Agatha Christie prose/simplicity most of the time right?
Your best bet is probably YA.

[Anonymous No.13421637]

>>13421500
Define western LN. What are you looking for?

[Anonymous No.13421651]

>>13421637
He probably things lots of talking and lots of exposition without much happening.

[Anonymous No.13421657]

>>13421500
Brandon Sanderson might as well write light novels desu

[Anonymous No.13421773]

>litrpg
>isekia
>cultivation
>dungeon diving
What?

[Anonymous No.13421778]

>>13421637

an LN is Light Novel, basically the prose equivalent of a manga or anime. despite the memes, Sanderson's works aren't light novels. aside from the animeseque powers and action scenes, Sanderson's characters still behave like human beings rather than exaggerated caricatures

[Anonymous No.13421783]

>>13420979
Three Hearts and Three Lions

[Anonymous No.13421834]

>>13421773
>litrpg
fantasy subgenre where tabletop/video game mechanics are appropriated in literature. it's shit
>isekia
you probably meant isekai, an anime/manga/LN genre where a completely normal male MC in modern day Japan ends up in a fantasy world by dying, falling through a portal, being kidnapped, or whateverthefuck and ends up treating it like a video game, becoming peak Gary Stu, and amassing a harem. it's shit
>cultivation
no idea, sorry
>dungeon diving
refers to the tabletop/video game act of clearing out a dungeon (a usually underground area full of monsters and treasure). not sure how that's relevant to /lit/
>>13421778
>Sanderson's characters still behave like human beings rather than exaggerated caricatures
you haven't read Sanderson

[Anonymous No.13421865]

>>13421834
>and ends up treating it like a video game, becoming peak Gary Stu, and amassing a harem. it's shit
That's not part of the definition, that's just a cliche in japanese mangos. Isekai is really just another term for Sword and Planet, but since japs have no culture, they invented another term.

[Anonymous No.13421881]

>>13418724
Not the specific thing you're looking for, but "Lord of the Night" by Spurrier's has both Inquisition mystery and Space Marine action (albeit mostly Marine vs. non-Marines).
The Space Marine PoV is a heresy-era (thus not especially Chaosy despite being a traitor to the Emperor) Night Lord plopped into a 40k hive world after 10k years stuck in time. The Inquisition-side PoV is a qt psyker Interrogator waifu who just lost her Inquisitor and got assigned to a new one who's of much more suspect character (and much less supportive).
I liked it. ADB took a big shit on one of the main characters in his Night Lords Trilogy despite writing his own characters way more Mary Sue-ish, which kind of soured me on him despite some of his HH books being pretty good.

[Anonymous No.13421885]

>>13421834
A books is combining all of these >>13421773

[Anonymous No.13421895]

>>13421773
isekai is japanese for other world. its a trope there for literature and manga. its actually a pretty old trope reaching back to the 1600s.
its slowly being appropriated in western literature to refer to books that feature mcs traveling to other worlds or dimensions.

[Anonymous No.13421919]

>>13421895
I can't stand it when the term is used for non-japanese shit, as if we didn't already have perfectly serviceable terms for this ancient fucking genre. I saw someone call Lord Foul's Bane isekai and wished I could strangle them over the internet.
Maybe I should calm down and have sex but no fuck you it still makes me mad

[Anonymous No.13421921]

>>13421865
>That's not part of the definition
I seem to have touched a nerve, isekaifag
>but since japs have no culture, they invented another term
having a different term is evidence of having culture
>>13421885
oh good lord

[Anonymous No.13421923]

>>13421773
Dungeon Samurai

[Anonymous No.13421944]

>>13421919
it has to do with pop culture. in japan isekai manga and anime currently are all the rage and as such it had a resurgence in referencing. Weebs brought it over and repeated it to the point were normies picked it up. Its just a fad but it will probably stick around in certain literature circles.

[Anonymous No.13421946]

>>13421921
>defends the term isekai
>calls others isekaifag
nice projection.
Also, let me rephrase:
>japs have very little knowledge when it comes to literature, so they made up their own term not knowing there already was an existing one

[Anonymous No.13421948]

>>13421773
>>13421885
Are you talking about >>13420979 ?

[Anonymous No.13421956]

>>13421948
Naw. One that was shilled a few months ago.

[Anonymous No.13421963]

>>13421946
defending a word is different from defending what it represents, so nice projection

[Anonymous No.13421974]

>>13421944
Oh I'm not unaware of the hows and whys of this crime. I'm just mad about it. Weebs and uncultured fanfic writers will be among the first against the wall when my literate revolution comes.
[Spoiler]Shortly before I'm put up against the wall along with other genrefags when one of my more extreme subordinates seizes control of the revolution[/Spoiler]

[Anonymous No.13421990]

>>13421974
ctrl+s in the replybox.

[Anonymous No.13422024]

Trying to come up with a title for my story, lads. Hoping you folks can help.

What's an archaic/esoteric word to describe the feeling you get when you finally see the transcendent beauty in a beautiful natural landscape when previously you were unimpressed or unaware of the beauty?

[Anonymous No.13422032]

>>13422024
surprise boner

[Anonymous No.13422043]

>>13422024
This isn't exactly right but "paroxysm" might not be a bad choice

[Anonymous No.13422061]

>>13422032
interesting, I'll keep it in the maybe pile

>>13422043
this is definitely along the right lines, though I'm trying to evoke more of a sense of 'I was blind but now I see', or an unveiling, rather than a sudden and intense wave of emotion, but very specifically related to natural beauty

[Anonymous No.13422084]

>>13422024
>>13422061
pretty

[Anonymous No.13422345]

Are The Hunger Games books worth the read?

[Anonymous No.13422354]

>>13422345
no

[Anonymous No.13422377]

>>13422345
I mean, it's not completely without merit; the way it seems to satirize modern teen lit in the first book is pretty interesting, and the action isn't bad. on the other hand, it pretty much loses all steam by about one third through Mockingjay, and eventually the love triangle stops being satire and becomes unbearably post-ironic. the ending of Mockingjay is mindbogglingly bad in pacing to the point where it feels like the author suddenly changed her mind on the ending right before it happened
I wouldn't say I regret reading it, but honestly, you're not going to get a lot of enjoyment out of it unless you're a teenager. read it if you already watched the movie(s) and take interest in the plot, but I don't really see any other reason

[Anonymous No.13422437]

>>13422377
I watched the first movie a few years back but I only remember the part about kids killing each other. What's the SCIENCE fiction element in it?

[Anonymous No.13422672]

>>13421773
>cultivation
Is a term from Chinese fiction wuxia and xianxia respectively, where warriors refine their inner ki through cultivation to improve their fighting/mage-like abilities.

[Anonymous No.13422717]

>>13421076
I posted that right after reading a throwaway passage of casual homophobia that was not editorially condemned by the author. Also the MC's Tartar GF could not appear in a western book.

Plus it has the Russian litrpg thing going on where the MC doesn't choose good over evil but advances himself by weaving his way through alliances of convenience with stronger powers.

[Anonymous No.13422719]

>>13422672
I know what everything means. The book just tries to combine all these tropes? Cliches? Into a coherent whole.

[Anonymous No.13422724]

>>13422717
>MC's Tartar GF
Explain.

[Anonymous No.13422763]

>>13422437
it’s mainly terraforming, creation of monsters, and generic future tech, which is used almost exclusively in the Games themselves

[Anonymous No.13422781]

>>13422724
She's that in both senses of the word -- a literal central asian and a domineering bitch. She's unreconstructed, written from the perspective of a man who had a domineering bitch gf and liked it for what it was worth. She's not a major character or anything, but men in western genre fiction don't talk about women in any way that is recognizable as male, so when he editorializes about her in a funny relatable way it's like reading something smuggled across the Iron Curtain from the free states. It wouldn't be anything if things weren't the way they are now, but it do.

Sadly he dumps her for a more generic QT in book 2 or 3.

[Gaskun !!LKQ0Koj4uFz No.13422793]

Doing final rewrites/edits to put my space opera shit to market.
volume one drops January 2020
And then a new book every 90 days through fall 2022.
Vampire book will probably barter that
Book about the devil after that.
Jetpack girl book after that. And I’ll probably have a few more books after that one of which I want to be a hunter s Thompson “gonzo” thing

[Anonymous No.13422860]

>>13422793
yo can i get a libgen link

[Anonymous No.13422870]

>>13422793
ding ding

[Anonymous No.13422917]

>>13414533
>my book
A fantasy novel based on Tarot magic. I'm not sure if I should change the setting to modern instead of medieval

>reading
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr by John Crowley
So good. I'm not a fan of Little, Big; I thought it was pretty but too slow. Ka isn't slow and still has the great prose and I like what's going on with the shaman.

Blue Girl by Charles De Lint
I'm halfway through but I feel like it's taking forever so I might have to drop it

Strange Invasion by Michael Kandel
Kooky fun

[Anonymous No.13423325]

>>13421778
>Sanderson isn't anime

[Gaskun !!LKQ0Koj4uFz No.13423367]

>>13422860
A google search of “Beyond Tomorrow” will get you what you want but you’ll have to wait until January 1

[Anonymous No.13423458]

>>13423325
>>13421834

did someone else write the mistborn series, or have you people never watched an anime in your lives?

[Anonymous No.13423514]

>>13422061
Maybe epiphany?

[Anonymous No.13423542]

OH GOD
THE PLOT THICKENS

the guardian is Felix' Uncle and Vinces dad and also Melodies dad

[Anonymous No.13423608]

i cant stand sanderson

[Anonymous No.13423697]

>>13423542
What book?

[Anonymous No.13423890]

>>13423458
>did someone else write the mistborn series
Mistborn, which is extremely LN, was written by Sanderson
>have you people never watched anime in your lives?
you're speaking to a weeaboo, yes

[Anonymous No.13423936]

>>13423890
>have you people never watched anime in your lives?
>yes

that explains it

[Anonymous No.13423942]

>>13423936
>misinterpreting a statement when you know the actual meaning

[Anonymous No.13424129]

Is this even better than Throne of Glass?

[Anonymous No.13424359]

>>13415543
Well I've been focusing on it for the past two days and I guess I will for a few more just to knock off a couple more percentage. I'm in book 5 and only have 4 more chapters left or so and I am expecting Ning to become a Zifu Disciple pretty fucking soon.
All I'm reading right now is this, CD (Linley & Friends just got to their first Infernal Realm city) and Dungeon Madness, which I'm a little over halfway through.

In comparison to litRPG or wuxia/xianxia, Sanderson isn't anime.

[Anonymous No.13424412]

>>13420326

I think its something you either like or don't like. Gaunt's Ghost is an endless slog through campaigns punctuated only by characters we've come to be used to left behind or disappear, or reappear only to have their journey ended there. It can be depressing to some extent, and I can see why the seeming pointlessness can turn people off.

[Anonymous No.13424732]

If I want to upload my short novels for people to read, where could I do it?
If I were to upload my stuff, would you people read it?

[Anonymous No.13424759]

>>13414533
Currently reading this, more as an exercise in tolerance. See how much more I can go before I cringe to death.

[Anonymous No.13424775]

>>13422345
No, not really. The MC reads like a stiff board with no personality. The plot itself is from Battle Royale, or even Lord of the Flies if you will, so nothing original.
The writing style is chopped up and grating, but that's just preference.
Didn't make it past chapter 3, book 1.

[Anonymous No.13425084]

>>13424759
I've dropped it on the third or fourth chapter.

[Anonymous No.13425110]

>>13424759
I'd like to read this novel since the premise of half-orcs riding giant boars appeals to my inner 13 year old, but I can't get past how edgy the writer is trying to be with all the cussing and sex. He literally cusses in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENT page of this book. It's too much cringe because it reads like it was written by my inner 13 year old who was impressed by curse words and sex.

[Anonymous No.13425203]

Just finished the second book of the Malazan Series.

You guys keep telling me it will get better from now on.

Is this true?

Because I haven't enjoyed a series as much as this in a long time

[Anonymous No.13425261]

>>13423458
Mistborn is sanderfags most anime series of all tho. Just a bunch of faggots jumping from rooftop to rooftop while spouting exposition, all according to Kelsiers keikaku

[Anonymous No.13425284]

>>13423608
I feel sorry for you, then. Missing out on one of the best and most chill fantasy writers right now. He is not amazing, but compared to the rest...

[Anonymous No.13425300]

>>13425284
Sanderson is the Big Bang Theory of fantasy.

[Anonymous No.13425389]

>>13424759
Wait til you get to the part where he sets off a nuke by starting a fire.

[Anonymous No.13425628]

>>13425284
Everything he does is YA though. If you're not an avid reader I guess he'd be a good choice, but I cringed my way through the first mistborn and won't be touching the rest. My chick swears alloy of law is good, but I've got better shit to do than read through another 1000 pages of mineral vore and teen drama
I still read stormlight tho

[Anonymous No.13425684]

>>13420688
This critic somehow manages to be such a pretentious faggot, that I want to start finding good things about Martin's writing just to not be in agreement with him.

[Anonymous No.13425699]

>>13424759
Why every half-educated hack today tries to write grimderp, even though "m-muh dark and realistic world" is the best way to draw attention to the fact that you really don't know much about history or about how people work, for that matter.

[Anonymous No.13425767]

>>13425699
>is the best way to draw attention to the fact that you really don't know much about history or about how people work, for that matter.
Just because you are a blind faggot and lie to yourself about the inherent goodness of the human race doesn't mean others agree with you. After reading two thousand plus books I'm fed up seeing the good and bad, black and white, never grey. Grey moralists books are a fresh air to fantasy. Where it's always some do-gooder knight shitting on the goblins.

Also, GUR-Martin knew history and wrote grimdark, Bakker knows more about philosophy and the human condition than you and wrote grimdark. If you want goody two shoes books, then go read them and stop posting in every thread about "muh grimderp". It's getting annoying reading this shit from you every single thread. If you can't contain your autism and let someone read morally questionable books, then seriously kys, no joke, do it.

[Anonymous No.13425860]

>>13419404
It's good, Anon. All the haters are just buttmad their Kween got BTFO
>>13420688
See above

[Anonymous No.13425879]

>>13424129
You’re right. Nothing is better than throne of glass.

[Anonymous No.13425881]

Why is every fucking fan translation unreadable garbage?

[Anonymous No.13425887]

Are the Witcher books worth reading?

[Anonymous No.13425912]

Is this even better than Throne of Glass?

[Anonymous No.13425915]

>>13425767
>two thousand plus books
>only ever black and white
Yea right.

[Anonymous No.13425938]

>>13425881
Because most fans are retarded and have never actually thought about translation beyond this word = that word. They're not even a step up from machine translation in many cases. A good translation conveys the tone, the meaning, and the ideas of the original into a new language. Most of these fan translators are not writers, they're not trained translators, they're just normal people. They see X word, they turn it into Y word, with no sense of style or tone or mood, and sometimes without even grasping the ideas behind the original text in the first place. Is it their fault? Not always, everyone has to start from somewhere. Can they be doing better? Absolutely. And don't get me started on localizers.
t. someone who knows just how bad his translation skills are

[Anonymous No.13425958]

>>13414533
which fantasy series had the best ending in your opinion /lit/ ?

[Anonymous No.13425959]

>>13420688
You gotta love a review that critiques the plot of an entire series and ends with the reviewer admittting that they haven't finished the first book. This on top of the "it's just pointless deaths" argument, which is tryhards' favorite way of attempting to look smart by criticizing ASOIAF, while only showing that they are unable to get anything from a book except for the most basic memes that are always repeated about it.

[Anonymous No.13425962]

>>13414533
Don't mind him. He has autism.

[Anonymous No.13426005]

>>13425915
Reading since young. All the YA shit I read through the decades were cleansed with morally questionable books.

[Anonymous No.13426017]

>>13425767
>Just because you are a blind faggot and lie to yourself about the inherent goodness of the human race doesn't mean others agree with you.

Just because you have an extremely simplistic black-no-white view of human race does not mean you are right.

>Grey moralists books are a fresh air to fantasy.

No such thing as grey moralism. Morality is by necessity black and white, else it cannot have even prescriptive power, much less power to compel anyone to follow prescriptions against their self-interest.

>GUR-Martin knew history and wrote grimdark,

He knew jackshit, and so do you. Or more precisely he disregarded history to write grimdark.

Children of John Lackland (the prototype of Aegon the Unworthy) weren't killed. Indeed, the rebel party was happy to seek reconciliation as soon as he did the royalist side a favor by dying.

Edward I (the prototype of both Lord Tywin AND Geoffrey) did not have a tangle of bizzarre sexual complexes that made him prone to excessive irrational bloodthirst. And while in his youth he acted as could be expected from an out-of-control teen whose teen gang consists of sons of some of the most powerful men in the kindgom, effectively placing them above the law, he cut that shit once and for all after getting married.

Pathological cruelty of William the Conqueror aka William the Bastard (the prototype of Ramsay Bolton) did not prevent him from being deeply in love with his wife or trying to do good things, like taking measures against slavery out of Christian sentiments, when he wasn't in a fit of rage.

>Bakker knows more about philosophy and the human condition than you and wrote grimdark.

Given that Bakker by all indications is a reductive materialist, I'm pretty sure that his understanding of both philosophy and human conditions is extremely limited.

And finally, if you cannot stand disagreement, I think Reddit would be more your speed.

[Anonymous No.13426030]

>>13425203
>Is this true?
Memories of Ice will definitely keep it up, 4 & 5 will introduce new (or not so new) characters and after that there will be some fluctuation.

Personally 2 & 3 were the highpoints of the series, but that doesn't mean that there is a sudden drop.

[Anonymous No.13426039]

as someone who's never read sword&sorcery and wants to try Conan, where do i start?
from what i understand there are no novels, just stories and i should stay away from anything not written by Jordan himself.
would reading pic related from start to finish, in the given order, work?

[Anonymous No.13426050]

>>13426017

Not the dude that you were talking to, but I find it absolutely hysterical that you felt the need to write all of that only to wrap it up with, "gb2reddit"

[Anonymous No.13426052]

>>13419404
It's pointless.
Best case is that you like it and have to realize 5 books in that nothing is going anywhere and now you have to pray that after Martin's eventual death someone can pick up the pieces and put together a halfway decent conclusion.

[Anonymous No.13426069]

>>13426052

Post your face when Cormac McCarthy picks up the baton.

[Anonymous No.13426093]

>>13414533
>tugs braid until scalp falls off
>sniffs farts
>puts arms under lactating man breasts
>throws arms up into a mushy , juicy cow's anus

[Anonymous No.13426116]

>>13426039
It would work. However the Del Rey editions (first one is recommended in the OP) are generally considered better.

[Anonymous No.13426186]

Could /sffg/ give any examples of non-native English-speaking authors that write in English primarily and are successful?

[Anonymous No.13426234]

>>13426186
I don't know any, but if Joseph Conrad could do it back before the Internet, so can you.

[Anonymous No.13426268]

>>13426186

Hannu Rajaniemi comes immediately to mind

[Anonymous No.13426592]

sffg pill me on this

[Anonymous No.13426595]

Any novels that do "first contact" justice?

[Anonymous No.13426601]

>>13426595
Blindsight

[Anonymous No.13426607]

Well this is out.
>Sameerixis, or Sam for those who actually know him, isn’t what you’d call normal.
>He’s a door-to-door salesman, of sorts. One that peddles wares, wishes, and whims to anyone willing to pay his prices.
>Prices that usually involve a few years of your life, maybe a handful of days, or a single night of pleasure that’ll cost a few hours.
>He’s an Incubus that solves problems. Mental, emotional, spiritual, material, and anything and everything in between. Sam can provide an answer and resolution.
>A one-man shop and service provider.
>Or he was. When he had work available to him.
>Unfortunately, he’s been unable to work for quite a while. Due to the simple fact that he’s been imprisoned against his will by an old business partner.
>Except something’s changed.
>A portal, a way back to the planes, has opened with his name on it. On the other side isn’t what he wished for nor what he feared.
>Sam’s made the choice to go back and start up his business again. From the ground up. In just a moment he’ll make that leap over and into another plane.
>Little does he know that with that first step he’ll move straight from the known, to the unknown, then to the inadvisable.

>Warning: This novel explores dark subjects, and what people will give up of themselves, and each other, to get what they want. The main character is written as a demon from another plane in a tough situation, and will not make choices that line up with societal and cultural norms.
>It contains adult themes and moral ambiguities

Who is touching it? I bet the protag will be angry with the world.

[Anonymous No.13426667]

>>13426607
Take a dive for me and tell me how it is.

[Anonymous No.13426668]

>>13426601
>>13426595

This.

Also, Anathem

[Anonymous No.13426672]

>>13426668
>>13426601
I was recommended The War Against the Chtorr, how is it?

[Anonymous No.13426678]

>>13426607
already read it. it happens in the swing shift world but before the events of that series. also see >>13423542
ive personally enjoyed it. it sets up a bit more background lore and seems to tie a lot of the characters together.

[Anonymous No.13426689]

>>13425767
Stop reading modern fantasy and YA

[Anonymous No.13426720]

>>13414533
>What are you currently reading and how is it?
Circe. It's good. For most of the book Miller manage to stay faithful to the source material and balance modern writing with the ideals of the Odyssey but after the death of Odysseus the book stray a little for no apparent reason but drama. With 20 pages left I'd say it's a weak 4/5.

[Anonymous No.13426781]

>>13426672
>The alien invasion is an ecological one. Instead of Earthlings terraforming another planet, the aliens are "Chtorraforming" Earth. Instead of armies, the unseen aggressors gradually unleash plants and animals from their older, more evolved planet (which is indicated as being perhaps a half billion years older than Earth, and evolved into a higher effective competitiveness). These outcompete and displace their terrestrial counterparts and Earth becomes more and more Chtorr-like as the "war" progresses.

Have not read it but the premise seems interesting.

[Anonymous No.13426784]

>>13425767
>Grey moralists books are a fresh air to fantasy.
Martin was nearly entirely black and white though.
The first book is quite literally about a man being too virtuous for the world he lives in being tortured by the virtueless.
The only "innovation" of Martin is that the good always loose, maybe a bit more realistic, but just as black and white.

[Anonymous No.13426811]

I'm outlining a few short stories that share a sci-fi setting which depicts space travel realistically--all conventional travel is sub-light speed with an emphasis on exploiting orbits, as you might expect. I've been pondering some of the implications of respecting physics (to the best of my ability, anyway) and figured y'all could help the brainstorm a bit.

>What does warfare in space look like when respecting physics?
>What tropes are subverted or made more interesting?
>What books use a similar setting?

[Anonymous No.13426872]

>>13426050
Not the guy you quoted either but kys.

[Anonymous No.13426882]

>>13426811

Depends entirely on what kind of energy budgets are available to the parties involved and what their various motivations/agendas entail.

Need more details.

As for books that portray space travel in a reasonable way, I quite like Neptune's Brood. It's light-ish, fun, imaginative.

[Anonymous No.13426896]

>>13426811

Here's a favorite. The later books in the series are pretty hit-or-miss, with occasional forays into outright doggerel....

but Count to a Trillion is fantastic.

[Anonymous No.13426904]

>>13426811
Read up on Arthur C. Clarke, particularly his short stories but also The Songs of Distant Earth. He wrote a lot of space travel stuff that didn't cheat around the speed of light limit.

[Anonymous No.13426918]

>>13426595
Mote in Gods Eye

[Anonymous No.13426923]

>>13426811
>>What does warfare in space look like when respecting physics?
There is a game called Children of a Dead Earth that is all about this

[Anonymous No.13426937]

>>13426811
The problem I see, and this is somewhat explored in "the three body problem" and the follow-up novels, is that the distances are far too great.
It would take hundreds of years to travel between star systems, and imagine the nightmares facing a Admiral having to prepare a navy to fight a war in three hundred years (given his latest information is 300 years old too), just the technological difference between the forces might make any attack complete madness.

Ignoring that, I see basically two doctrines, either you want quick engagements, probably involving ramming too, or sustained battle without escape.
In the first case you enter orbit rotating counter to the opposing fleet and try to deal as much damage as possible before your are carried apart again. In the second you enter orbit rotating with the opposing fleet, basically guaranteeing that the engagement will be to the last ship as you have to fight against momentum.

But that is kinda irrelevant if the defender has decades to prepare...

[Anonymous No.13426955]

>>13426937
Interstellar distances are only a problem if you have to write interstellar conflicts. There's no reason you can't write a conflict that takes place within a star system.

[Anonymous No.13426957]

>>13426030
His books really are a breath of fresh air. I honestly do not know why he isn’t more popular. The whole Coltaine arc on book 2 was fucking impressive. Everything until the very end really paid off.

[Anonymous No.13426983]

>>13426955
>There's no reason you can't write a conflict that takes place within a star system.
Of course, but then that conflict has to be between two groups already on that star system, else an invasion fleet would have been a necessity.
And in that case, the answer is pretty simple. Nukes, a lot of them and orbital battles are practically irrelevant, you just need means to deliver your nukes.

[Anonymous No.13426986]

>>13425110
It's fun

[Anonymous No.13426991]

I need some dank fiction to read with my gf. Don't really care about SF vs fantasy, but it needs to make me not seem like a total manchild(even if I totally am), but also be interesting so I can make it through. Like Ocean at the end of the lane or rememberance of of Earth's past. Thanks mates

[Anonymous No.13427003]

>>13426991

Starfish, Peter Watts

[Anonymous No.13427013]

>>13426983

Proxy wars are a thing. You don't necessarily need to invade a place to start and exploit a war in that place.

You just find some disenfranchised assholes and either arm them, or give them the means to arm themselves (e.g. money)

[Anonymous No.13427055]

>>13424732
Wattpad

[Anonymous No.13427069]

>>13427013
Yeah, you can have Vietnam equivalents, but that isn't really all that different, just the same thing with higher tech.
No involvement between orbital forces.
Basically Cold War 2.0 or Hot War 1.0.

Realistic travel speeds make interstellar communication, and all other interactions, basically impossible.

[Anonymous No.13427073]

>>13426093
That pic isn't inCase's work, anon.

[Anonymous No.13427082]

>>13426592
>magic sword
>elf slut
>spear "maiden" who probably fucks her spear every night
it's shit

[Anonymous No.13427092]

>>13426882
>Depends entirely on what kind of energy budgets are available to the parties involved and what their various motivations/agendas entail.
Conventional fuel would be at least an order of magnitude more efficient than what is available today, so a mission to any particular celestial body could be done in a ship with 1/10th the mass or less of a comparable modern ship. One could also exploit this leap in efficiency to get somewhere more quickly at the cost of fuel to slow down to actually be captured by the destination body.
>Need more details.
For example, the often used crutch of communications traveling instantly. Was pondering limiting interstellar travel to unstable wormholes generated (briefly) by massive stations. The only way to reliably get information from one system to another would involve any ships passing through to relay huge caches of data to satellites in the system they traveled to, not unlike how jumbo jets fulfill a secondary role of carrying mail.

>>13426937

>In the first case you enter orbit rotating counter to the opposing fleet and try to deal as much damage as possible before your are carried apart again. In the second you enter orbit rotating with the opposing fleet, basically guaranteeing that the engagement will be to the last ship as you have to fight against momentum.
This is pretty much how I imagined it: brief (a few minutes tops) engagements with fleets exchanging fire near the point of encounter of their respective orbits. Though, this is probably suicidal for both parties involved as they could fire millions of pieces of shrapnel at each other with little time to correct. Longer range engagements would rather act more like a war of attrition to deplete fuel and/or ammunition. A tiny adjustment to an orbit can cause a projectile that would hit several hours later to miss by a margin of 100's of kilometers, and for this reason I'd imagine that torpedoes which activate and pursue their target after reaching a certain proximity would be preferred.

[Anonymous No.13427112]

>>13426592
>swordslinger

[Anonymous No.13427124]

>>13427069

So you're looking for, what exactly?
Plausible scenarios for ship-to-ship combat?

There probably aren't any. Intercepting a craft travelling at interplanetary velocities is prohibitively expensive to do with another ship.

[Anonymous No.13427134]

>>13427124
Nothing, I was just saying that assuming our current understanding of of physics makes interstellar battles pretty much impossible.

[Anonymous No.13427172]

my dudes, any sci fi set in space that's actually a pretty good horror? and yeah there's a bonus if it's grotesque in atmosphere

[Anonymous No.13427181]

>>13426896
>The later books in the series are pretty hit-or-miss, with occasional forays into outright doggerel....

Chapter 1: On the Nature and Limits of Duty
Chapter 2: Anime Foxgirls...with HUGE TIDDIES!
Chapter 3: The Substance of the Body is a reflection of the Essence of the Soul. But...
Chapter 4: Foghorn Leghorn pines after his lawfully wedded wife
Chapter 5: What if the foxgirls were also the NKVD?
Chapter 6: "Faust was a fucking pussy, I will BECOME Lucifer"
Chapter 7: *twenty pages of technobabble*
Chapter 8: A Treatise on the the Non-Computability of the Good
Chapter 9: Epsilon Eridani is a Catholic in good standing
Chapter 10: Can Planets Fuck?
Chapter 11: teehee, let me change your diaper! silly baby!
Chapter 12: Even the angels will not be saved, except by Faith

etc.

[Anonymous No.13427202]

>>13427092
>I'd imagine that torpedoes which activate and pursue their target after reaching a certain proximity would be preferred.
I suppose there would a focus on torpedoes and Torpedo defense. Evading them will be pretty hard, as they are rather light and tracking should be good enough not to be easily fooled.
Debris might also be an issue, you might not want to have your fleet jump in behind a Torpedo curtain, as the remains of destroyed ships could be a danger by themselves.

[Anonymous No.13427234]

>>13427092

>woops, there went your war fleet bro

why would anyone ever attempt to intercept a fleet in orbit with another fleet?

[Anonymous No.13427240]

>>13427181

Made me laugh.

[Anonymous No.13427253]

>>13427234
>>woops, there went your war fleet bro
But also any chance to have your own fleet in Orbit and there is not enough material to put this into orbits further away, opening you op to orbital bombardments.

>why would anyone ever attempt to intercept a fleet in orbit with another fleet?
Why do wars happen?

[Anonymous No.13427259]

>>13426811
Read the Bobiverse to see how it should be done.

[Anonymous No.13427268]

>>13427253
>Why do wars happen?
Because people like the stuff you have, and want it for themselves.

[Anonymous No.13427275]

>>13427268
That should answer the question why you would want to intercept an orbiting fleet.

[Anonymous No.13427323]

>>13427181
It sounds fucking awesome, need to check.

[Anonymous No.13427516]

>>13427275
I'm not the writerfag anon, I just answered your question.
It's a free questions and free real estate,

[Anonymous No.13427518]

>>13426017
I hear that 'tism train a rollin
It's derpin round the bend
And it's keeps herp-a-derpin
Cuz, he needs a fren

[Anonymous No.13427583]

>>13425887
If you like the Witcher games, you'd probably like them. I read a few before playing W3 and it added to the overall experience. Quality wise, they're not too bad either, but the translation from Polish gets a bit wonky at times

[Anonymous No.13427794]

Why aren't more elves turned into walking onaholes?

[Anonymous No.13428172]

>>13427259
Not the writefag, but I did read all of those a while ago. I'd hoped it would be more hard scifi instead of how soft it turned out to be.

[Anonymous No.13428202]

>>13428172
I dropped bobby verse the instant he used volatile to refer to explosives

[Anonymous No.13428216]

>>13428202
I think I remember something like that. Also, the enormous idiot balls everyone, especially the humans on earth had. Almost made my eyes roll out of my head.
>>13426811
I forgot to mention that Atomic Rockets projectrho is what you want. It's got a huge amount of information on hard and soft scifi concepts, as well as a section of recommendations for aspiring authors.

[Anonymous No.13428257]

>>13422717
>>13422781
>identity politics are bad
>unless they cater to me
You are part of the problem

[Anonymous No.13428289]

>>13428257
Let them have media that caters to them. The problem isn't that it exists, it's that they demand a monopoly.

[Anonymous No.13428378]

>>13428216
>the enormous idiot balls everyone, especially the humans on earth had
Explain. you talking about how they would rather kamikaze the earth with no survivors than trust a digitized mind?

[Anonymous No.13428381]

>>13427794
>Why aren't more elves turned into walking onaholes?
Please, by all means. Tell me more.

[Anonymous No.13428423]

>>13428378
yeah, and just how much disrespect was thrown around. It made me think I was reading about some dumb young master from xianxia being setup for having his whole clan drawn up by the roots after offending the protagonist

[Anonymous No.13428457]

Something I lament about contemporary fantasy fiction is the lack of that Jack Vance/Gene Wolfe/Clark Ashton Smith use of archaic language. I've noticed more and more modern vernacular creeping into the language being used to tell these stories. I don't think either approach is inherently good or bad, but I do prefer archaism; it makes a setting feel that much more Other.

[Anonymous No.13428520]

>>13428289
Basically this

[Anonymous No.13428552]

>>13426986
I just can't get past how edgy the author is trying to be. Even if the content of the story isn't that edgy compared to regular grimderp.

[Anonymous No.13428588]

>>13426039
Buy or download the Del Rey collections. They are the absolute best collections of Conan and REH's other characters and stories. Don't bother with the book you posted; only get the Del Rey collections. The stories are in the order they were originally written with a ton of extras in each book too and lots of great illustrations.

[Anonymous No.13428610]

Grimderp is shit and so are Martin and Bakker and every other grimderp writer. If writers want to write "darker" fantasy they should take inspiration from Sword & Sorcery and make it more about horror instead of SUBVERTING DEM EXPECTATIONS and misery porn.

[Anonymous No.13428651]

>>13428610
Whenever I read the synopsis of a Bakker story it always sounds really cool and bizarre, but the text itself reads like a boring philosophy lesson. I actually like how ugly his setting is and how virtually all his characters are lunatics, I just wish he'd written a story about those things instead of using them as a front for his lame personal agenda.

[Anonymous No.13428722]

Any recommendations for someone who likes Joe Abercrombie? I read all his novels and while I enjoyed them, they were a bit too bleak and depressing. I want something in the grimdark vein, but a little more uplifting if that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.13428730]

>>13428651
If you can make it through Warrior prophet, thats about the end of the philosophizing

[Anonymous No.13428777]

>>13428722
Try David Gemmell's Drenai series.

[Anonymous No.13429022]

>>13424732
If it's not shitty
>>13428730
Yeah, that's when the 1000 page hardcore cannibal fuckfest begins. It's very yin/yang

[Anonymous No.13429077]

THREAD WHORE

[Anonymous No.13429104]

>>13428722
Prince of Fools
Black Sun Rising
The Dragonbone Chair
Shadowmarch
The Vagrant

[Anonymous No.13429188]

>you will never be an author

[Anonymous No.13429213]

How come /sffg/ hates Sanderson so much?

[Anonymous No.13429221]

Why is Endemyon so different from Hyperion?
Can't say I'm really enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.13429236]

>>13429213
Reddit loves him so by law sffg must hate the Son of Sander

[Anonymous No.13429237]

>>13429213
He is popular.

[Anonymous No.13429255]

>>13429213
Because his prose is 8th grade, he tacks on hundreds of pages explaining the same magic system to every book, and half of his plot lines revolve around le angsty teenage girl

[Anonymous No.13429300]

Holy fuck that monthly book was great, any recs for those reality bending unique type of books of the sort which are neither space opera or Fantasy Adventure?

Thanks in Advance.

[Anonymous No.13429331]

>>13429213
in short because he is popular for the wrong reasons.
he writes entertaining stories and has a talent for creating interesting worlds. but his "plots" are dogshit and the majority of the characters he creates are just flat out bad.
then theres his tendancy to write "anime" as it where. because the story telling he does has a lot of parallels with shonen animes.
this made him into some sort of role model for normies which made them want to emulate his writing style and narrative design. its lauded as "perfect" and the peak of literacy by his fans which wont hear any criticism and lable you as a racist, women-hater, nazi or a combination of any flavor of the month derogatory term for white pople just for suggest that sanderson might not be as good as people think he is.

[Anonymous No.13429365]

>>13429331
anon, be honest. You called sanderson or one of his characters the N-word, didn't you

[Anonymous No.13429378]

/sffg/, does anyone else here have a habit of dismissing all your successes as flukes and accepting all your failures as reality?

[Anonymous No.13429447]

>>13429365
Not the anon you replied to, but shut up nigger

[Anonymous No.13429459]

>>13429447
and you wonder why people call you racist when you criticize sanderson

[Anonymous No.13429477]

>>13429459
I don't because I'm not that guy. I don't go on Reddit and I've never spoken to someone who tried to defend his shit tier writing ñigger

[Anonymous No.13429484]

>>13426039
The only sword and sorcery experience better than reading through conan is reading it to your children and trying to do the voices.
It works for the barsoom trilogy too.

[Anonymous No.13429493]

>>13429484
Only if you do Conan's voice with Arnold's accent.

[Anonymous No.13429496]

>>13429493
based

[Anonymous No.13429583]

>>13429493
What was Jason Momoa's accent in that other one?

[Anonymous No.13429604]

>>13429583
Gay

[Anonymous No.13429653]

>>13429604
So... Gilbert Gottfried?

[Anonymous No.13430055]

Wew, someone finally made a new thread. Thanks anon.

>>13430053
>>13430053
>>13430053
>>13430053
>>13430053

[Anonymous No.13430735]

Last post