/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.19140425]

>Lonely vending machine edition
>https://www.cnn.com/style/article/japan-vending-machines-eiji-ohashi/index.html

For Prose:
>The Art of Fiction
>Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere)
>On Becoming A Novelist
>Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
>How Fiction Works
>The Rhetoric of Fiction
>Steering the Craft
>On Writing, Borges
>Links: https://pastebin.com/i4RLYJEx

For Poetry:
>The Poetry Home Repair Manual
>Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry
>This Craft of Verse, Borges

Related Material:
>What Editors Do
>A Student's Introduction to English Grammar
>Garner's Modern English Usage

Suggested books on storytelling:
>The Weekend Novelist
>Aristotle's Poetics
>Hero With a Thousand Faces
>Romance the Beat

Traditional publishing
> Formatting manuscript
https://blog.reedsy.com/manuscript-format/
> Write a query
https://www.janefriedman.com/query-letters/
> Track your query
https://querytracker.net/

Other Resources
>General grammar/syntax/editing help
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
> When/where/how should I write?
https://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers
> What software should I write with?
https://self-publishingschool.com/book-writing-software-best/
> Amazon Publishing to make that KDP monie
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200635650
> Be like Dickens and write serially
https://www.royalroad.com/
> Basic overview of the Screenplay format
https://screenwriting.info/

>Previously on /wg/
>>19123030

[Anonymous No.19140436]

Fellow bros and writers, it is time. Share your work and be critiqued.

[Anonymous No.19140458]

I got my first rejection today lads. I knew this magazine was a long shot, as they pay pretty high. They gave me a couple pointers too, which was nice.
I'll keep at it!

[Anonymous No.19140464]

>>19140436
I didn't get any feedback last time except for some faggot whining that genre fiction exists.
https://pastebin.com/DUfJi0yJ

[Anonymous No.19140465]

Anyone brave enough to give this a look?

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUaGaorhRQA/

[Anonymous No.19140523]

>>19140465
Maybe you should go to /ic/.

[Anonymous No.19140552]

>>19140464
i don't have any feedback other than it was enjoyable, sorry. if you publish the full thing i would read it

[Anonymous No.19140667]

I was watching a comedy special earlier and the comedian described someone’s prolapsed asshole as “A bleeding truncated sea snake”. Even though that’s not the proper use of truncated it’s immediately recognizable as a word that means “to be shaped into a trunk” and brings on some really vivid imagery.
Would you consider a misuse of words like that to be unacceptable even though it’s so effective?

[Anonymous No.19140764]

>>19140667
nothing's misused your example. he means a snake with a portion cut off, hence the bleeding. that's what truncation is.

[Anonymous No.19140835]

>>19140764
That is true but he does describe it as an elephant trunk in the sentence just before. At least to me a truncated asshole brings to mind a thick 2’ long prolapse that may or may not be prehensile. Just saying “A bleeding severed sea snake” doesn’t hit anywhere close to as hard on the imagery.

[Anonymous No.19140839]

>>19140436
We write? Haven’t seen anyone write something here ever.

[Anonymous No.19140926]

>>19140839
This joke stopped being funny in 2020

[Anonymous No.19141016]

>>19140926
Well your mom stopped being funny in 2019. So there.

[Anonymous No.19141018]

>>19140425
I lost my job recently because I can't travel with covid. Are 5 pages per day good considering I'm a worthless neet with nothing to do all day?

[Anonymous No.19141026]

>>19141018
Sounds very good. I wish I had that kind of devotion.

[Anonymous No.19141027]

>>19141018
5 pages in what font and what size? Word count matters more than page count.

[Anonymous No.19141058]

>>19141018
What you’re writing matters way more than how much you are writing. Unless you only care about pumping out a book for quick monies then you can easily drop that to 500-1k words per day you can be proud of and you’ll be far happier for it.
Of course if you only care about the money then you should turn those 2.5k words per day into some Royal Road femdom and rake in the big patreon dollars. Don’t waste your time with a real story.

[Anonymous No.19141201]

Is it kosher to totally break format? I have a sequence that I’m having trouble figuring out how to tell without showing both sides of the story. In the original draft I stuck to the one POV per chapter thing and ended up repeating plot points just from someone else’s side. To avoid that, I’m thinking of alternating between the two POVs in the same chapter (several times) which is unlike anything else in the book. My excuse is that it’s the first time (all the way in chapter 27) the series protagonists meet so maybe it should a little different to indicate the importance of the moment.

[Anonymous No.19141254]

>>19141027
Bookman 12. I wanted to write 10 pages per day but that's not possible everyday.
>>19141058
>if you only care about the money
Wait, people actually MAKE money writing?

[Anonymous No.19141260]

>>19140425
Comfy image, OP. Ty for startin up a new thread. Here's mine. It's pretty short so i'm just gonna post it.

'Like a swarm of giant wasps, the whirr from twenty four electrically powered propellers echoed across the landscape as the VTOL flew past jagged cliffs and patchy mesas. Tattered figures in dirty clothes squinted up and stared wordlessly after it, and the sound widened and subsided as the flying machine slowly turned into a dot against the pale evening sky. A flash of light was seen where it had disappeared and soon the sound of thunder widened by the distance reached the ragged figures. They stared at each other in awe, then one of them lifted a spear toward the sky and spoke.
“God has struck it down! The demon has been struck by God’s hand!”
“Hallelujah!” shouted another.
The whole group picked up the chant and kept repeating it.
“We should find it!” Another voice shouted above the others. “Find it and kill it if it isn’t dead!”
They cheered in a final praise to their god and set off across the dusty earth toward the thin pillar of smoke rising at the crest of their horizon.'

[Anonymous No.19141276]

>>19141201
Third person exists, YAfag.

[Anonymous No.19141277]

>>19140425
Non-english speaker here. Would it be possible for foreigner to write actually good stuffs in other languages? I ironically really like english but feel like the more I read the more wall of words springs up and block me from proceeding.

God how I envy you english natives

[Anonymous No.19141284]

>>19141260
It kind of bothers me that the first two sentences use "as". You should seek more variation and generally avoid assing.

[Anonymous No.19141294]

>>19141277
I'm a foreigner who has been published in the US. It's easy.

[Anonymous No.19141309]

>>19140839
>Haven’t seen anyone write something here ever.
Same. Wondering why this is even called the writing general to begin with.

[Anonymous No.19141313]

>>19141276
>Has never heard of limited 3rd person.
You should try reading books sometime.

[Anonymous No.19141324]

>>19141313
Like I said, third person exists. You should try it.

[Anonymous No.19141327]

>>19140425
my own recommendation is "the art of character" for writing good characters, now I don't want to make a new thread, so I'm gonna ask it here: Which are the best books about poetry? The ones that OP recommended?

[Anonymous No.19141337]

>>19141327
Asking for recommendations outside of /wsr/ is against theawp8x rules.

[Anonymous No.19141417]

>>19141260
Not bad description, but the flow feels a little clunky. I think there's too many adjectives.

[Anonymous No.19141450]

>>19140464
It's clear and readable, without glaring mistakes. Be careful with passive voice. Overall, just not really hooking me. This orc is lonely and ashamed, okay. Sounds like some people I know.

The name "Gotta" makes me expect endless puns and wonder if I'm supposed to take this seriously. Might've picked something else.

[Anonymous No.19141552]

>>19141284
>>19141417

Thanks guys! Gonna look into it!

[Anonymous No.19141577]

>>19141324
he obviously already is and you're retarded

[Anonymous No.19141607]

>>19139366
I wrote 8k in one day before, but I don't remember how many hours that was exactly.

[Anonymous No.19141660]

>>19141607
I did that a few times as well. Those days feel like fever dreams now.

[Anonymous No.19141814]

>>19140425
Here's my short somewhat edgy story.
English is my third language and I had to translate it in like 15 min, bear with me.
https://pastebin.com/rjpdJj0L
I'm hoping to expand it into something else if it's good enough.
>>19140464
About the name, Gotta. Why not add an H? Ghotta or Gohtta. Even Gohttar or Gothar.

[Anonymous No.19142188]

>>19140552
>>19141450
>>19141814
Thanks. I'll keep an eye out for passive voice.
Wouldn't have really thought the name would be an issue. I used Gotta to give it visual similarity to Hozza (the guy he works under) and specifically avoided using an "h" to keep it from looking TOO similar.

[Anonymous No.19142213]

>>19142188
On the other hand, a name characters can make fun of is ok. One of my characters's names was Anuil. Someone pointed out it looked a bit like Anvil so I made other characters make fun of it. But then it became a feared name after a few adventures, some feats and a bit of renown

[Anonymous No.19142302]

Chapter 50 released.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased

[Anonymous No.19142799]

> DeLillo published his first short story in 1960—"The River Jordan", in Epoch, Cornell University's literary magazine—and began to work on his first novel in 1966. Of the beginning of his writing career, DeLillo has said, "I did some short stories at that time but very infrequently. I quit my job just to quit. I didn't quit my job to write fiction. I just didn't want to work anymore." Reflecting in 1993 on his relatively late start in writing fiction, DeLillo said…
>1960: first short story
>1966: first novel
> born: 1936
> late start
> 24, 30 years old

[Anonymous No.19142856]

Reading my own writing makes me want to die.

[Anonymous No.19142862]

>>19142856
post it here so we can say if you should kys.

Where's this guy from picrel? I want to know the deadline.

[Anonymous No.19142887]

>>19141260
This kind of reminds me of that one copypasta that gets posted a lot, about the US soldier slaughtering a horde of bad guys, screaming random code words into a walkie-talkie and then pounding his chest as a helicopter comes to retrieve him.

This passage provokes curiosity with the immediate contrast between the airship and the primitive people down below. It demonstrates, through the use of almost-natural dialogue, that these people on the ground are apparently English-speaking Christians, which again provokes curiosity in contrast to their primitive belief system. It's so compelling that I'm actually inclined to ignore the minor grammatical issues (tattered and dirty would be more accurate if they were swapped, and the passive voice/filter words - a flash of light was seen - creates distance between the reader and the action).

The main issue is that the POV is too distant and the pacing is too quick to really conjure emotion. How do they actually feel about this? The wasp metaphor is great, it's a natural phenomenon which the cave people would naturally jump to in this type of situation. It might work better with more build-up before the arrival of the airship, with a quick rundown of how the primitive people actually perceive it (do these airships attack them? or just pass over on the way to their real enemy?), just to create a little more relief in the reader when the airship is struck down.

[Anonymous No.19143047]

>>19140436
Chap WIP so far, I haven't done any grammar or spelling edits just yet. I was going to wait until I finished the chap to post it but realistically not many will read it anyway, and it could take me a few days to finish it regardless. This is a dream sequence, so the PoV having no dialogue tags is intentional.

[Anonymous No.19143060]

FUCK why is writing magic so fucking hard
Hopefully the lectures on it by Brian Sanderson help me make some fucking sense of it all

[Anonymous No.19143066]

>tfw the story I've been reading for the past few days is a novelization of a quest thread, and the characters all have RPG stats
Interesting

[Anonymous No.19143076]

>>19140425
>be me, writing
>writing a lot and very quickly
>word count increases slower and slower
>be me, editing
>cutting whole paragraphs left and right, making minor additions
>word count won't stop increasing

[Anonymous No.19143081]

>>19143076
As long as you're able to discern fluff from things the reader actually needs to know then you're golden.

[Anonymous No.19143090]

>>19143060
Are you still trying to make a system? I had made one that's based on a character's yearnings, so they can only change elements when the characters actually have life-altering epiphanies. The cost for the magic varies, but the cost is more conflict for the chance at solving a a limited scope of problems. It will be neat I think to imagine that a character's motivations are one way, but when you see the magic you realize that you were wrong about them and make for some tense scenes. I decided on 4 to keep it simple, but the 4th one is actually a secret for a long time. I really can't wait to play with it but I don't want to write fantasy just yet.

[Anonymous No.19143138]

>tfw your story has 16 magic systems

[Anonymous No.19143199]

>>19143138
like you have dnd wizards with superheroes with something else? I don't follow.

[Anonymous No.19143249]

>>19143199
D&D magic schools each developed as their own magic system with a law and chaos version of each

[Anonymous No.19143278]

>>19140425
I wish I had this routine.

[Anonymous No.19143451]

>>19143278
I wish I had the balls to cut off everyone to have this routine.

[Anonymous No.19143560]

I do freelance writing for an investment website. I write about cryptocurrencies. I also have an interview to join a crypto media company tomorrow, where I'm hopefully going to write for their blog.

All you who want to write fantasy will never make real money. Sorry. You got to write about stuff people want to read.

[Anonymous No.19143573]

>>19143560
okay cool

[Anonymous No.19143579]

How do I decide on who's perspective I write a story from? I'm pretty sure the choice affects how the reader digests the narrative, but I'm not certain how.

[Anonymous No.19143580]

>>19140425
Yes, I'm done now. I was never going to become the next Faulkner, the next Nabokov or the next Joyce, but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted. I had thought my country's education system was topmost in the world, but this turned out to be utter bollocks. A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”, and no one likes the expression theory of art anymore, I am likened to a long lost dinosaur.
This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up; I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia. I mix tired and trite idioms together to obfuscate their unoriginality with a veneer of irony; I have continued to recite ornate Jewish chimpanzee parables with diminishing returns. The parable seemed very clearly to me to be asking me whether or not the now-grown-adult can choose. I say yes, of course, but that's not my issue.
I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 82 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. The themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless duelling are not present in my work. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit. Look how many words I wrote, because apparently literature is bodybuilding and just aimlessly typing will somehow improve my writing. I don't even know what genre it is that I'm writing. Is it autofiction? A comedy? A picaresque?
Regardless, I have failed. I have put down my pen. Never again will my fingers click-clack across the keyboard. No more outlines, no more characters. Goodbye

[Anonymous No.19143585]

>>19143560
If you want to make money, yes. If you want to maybe make a hobby into a side income, write whatever you want

[Anonymous No.19143587]

>>19143249
I would say adding a bit more restrictions to each school would be better, not only to help the people reading keep everything straight, but also yourself to ensure everything doesn't end up being an asspull . 16 schools of magic means a lot of potential fuckery. dnd itself restricts magic by number of spells cast per day
>>19143278
I wish I had the trustfund to be able to do this

[Anonymous No.19143592]

>>19143579
No rule that says you can't do multiple. My story has about 11 unique PoVs just so far, but only 3 are MCs.

[Anonymous No.19143594]

>>19143560
>isn't writing a cool story he wants to tell
I'm sorry anon

[Anonymous No.19143613]

>>19143592
Uh... Let's say I'm writing something smaller scale. Probably two characters total.

[Anonymous No.19143619]

Is it even possible to have a scene where a female character is stripped and humiliated without it feeling like the writer was jacking off to it?

[Anonymous No.19143625]

>>19143619
This happens a lot in women's lit

[Anonymous No.19143636]

>>19143625
Well, don't you think the author was masturbating to it while working on it?

Also, I think I was more concerned with it feeling gratuitous. There would be a point to it, but I feel like a lot of readers would just think that I put it there just for that purpose.

[Anonymous No.19143638]

>>19143619
Include a lot of introspection and intrigue
Don't focus on the physical aspect and if you must do it, keep an emotional distance

[Anonymous No.19143646]

>>19143619
Easy answer would be to not show the scene, just focus on the aftermath of it and how it affected the character.
As a retard, the first thing I thought of was Berserk. A character was found with his tongue cut out, scarred, disfigured, emaciated, and all his tendons sliced. What really stuck with me was the reactions of the other characters to the victim.

[Anonymous No.19143652]

>>19143613
Doesn't hurt to show both perspectives. Personally, I'd sway away from showing/repeating the same events but from different perspectives; going through one PoV and then following up the aftermath with the 2nd character can work so long as you establish who's who and (this is a strong preference) keep chapters restricted to one PoV.

[Anonymous No.19143677]

>>19142862
end of October I think

[Anonymous No.19143727]

>>19143636
>And that's when my Doctor Who fanfic character pulled the pants off of the wife he stole from another man and spanked her bottom ohh yess

[Anonymous No.19143736]

No one reviewed my poems about aliens from last thread :(

[Anonymous No.19143752]

Any advice on being a good travel writer? I know you guys all probably hate it, but I have written a few semi popular articles on medium. I am quite amateurish though.

Are there any actual good travel writers out there you would recommend?

[Anonymous No.19143788]

>>19143752
Repetition is the key
>>19143747
Repetition is the key

[Anonymous No.19143812]

>>19143788
Yes, but is there anything interesting going on in the field? I basically find 2-3 big styles and they are all cringe:

1. The 'I am the next Hunter Thompson' gonzo style travel writing

2. I am young and hip, but look at this SECRET place 10 million other people go to. EXTREME MILLENIAL EXPERIENCE

3. I wrote this article for sunset magazine so your mom knows where Malaysia is.

[Anonymous No.19143912]

>When you start thinking about how communion is a form of handing out spirit stones for cultivation

[Anonymous No.19143925]

>>19140436
is there a better way to refer to animegao/kigurumi than just cosplayers?

[Anonymous No.19143962]

>>19143925
fagets maybe?

[Anonymous No.19143973]

>>19140436
1oo3

[Anonymous No.19143977]

>>19140436
2oo3

[Anonymous No.19143982]

>>19140436
3oo3

[Anonymous No.19144009]

If you’ll never be rich and famous from it why bother writing?

[Anonymous No.19144015]

>>19144009
We don't write? No one writes here?

[Anonymous No.19144022]

>>19144009
I don't want to make money off my writing though; being famous sounds scary. I just want to write and tell a story. I'm writing a story that doesn't exist so I can read it and so other people can experience it too.

[Anonymous No.19144044]

>>19144015
Someone already did that joke in this thread. KYS
>>19144022
That sounds hella gay.

[Anonymous No.19144047]

>>19144044
Anon, it’s not a joke. No one here writes.

[Anonymous No.19144061]

>>19144009
I gotta make things and show them to other people. I don't really do much for myself.

[Anonymous No.19144113]

Why is a fatfuck like Martin allowed to write erotica disguised as epic fantasy and be a bestseller at the same time?

[Anonymous No.19144178]

>>19144113
If you think rape is erotica then you’re a nigger.

[Anonymous No.19144203]

>>19144009
I have an incredibly low standard for what constitutes wealth and prestige. Honestly $1000 and a few discussion threads on /lit/ would probably have me strutting around like a fucking king for three months.

[Anonymous No.19144222]

>>19144178
rape is women's no. 1 fantasy. like 70% of women. the fantasy of it, of course, not the reality. erotica is loaded with rape fantasies.

[Anonymous No.19144237]

>>19144222
STFU nigger! Go shine my shoes!

[Anonymous No.19144264]

>>19140425
Ophelia subsumed in the void of her own distress drowned. Faint apparitions of her pale face bereft of life, lights the stream. Ephemeral sight of her face shows her longing, signs of life ... the willow tree with its green veil hides her shame ... clasped flowers held closely to her breasts, while her brunette hair flares out. She at last finds peace in the patient stream's aisle at the end of her transitory life; death's bride —Hunting horns rise from the distant forest.
[...]

[Anonymous No.19144267]

>>19140425
You straighten your arm and place it on the arm rest, make a clenched fist tightly, thumbs in. You are not tense: grip should be tight yet firm, hard yet tender. The phlebotomist equips the syringe which is usually a straight syringe with an open hub where in a vacant collection tube that stores your blood will be inserted. The phlebotomist applies disinfectant on the area near the median cubital vein which is at the junction of your forearms and biceps. Your hands are clearer through that and the phlebotomist calmly pricks your vein with the straight needle. You remain calm because it feels good. It hurts at first but you get used to the pain.
The sensation of the needle pricking at your vein while the blood collection tube is placed in the open hub of the syringe which collects the blood through vacuum suction... you eye the blood drawn it is dark crimson... you have three tests that are need to be done today: complete blood count, vitamin D and another banal test of liver functionality or something;you don't remember and you don't care because drawing your blood feels good. The collection tube makes a swoop with a clack in the end sound, sound of this is subtle yet you notice it. On average the phlebotomist needs 0.6 CC of your blood to sample it. The blood is drawn pretty smoothly in the first tube, second tube takes a little longer ... (you can sense that the vein that has been punctured is exhausted or drained) now the third tube cannot draw your blood out properly; due to the above-mentioned reason. Yet you do not care about that. You like it.The samples are collected ... The phlebotomist shakes it a few times giving it a faint red colour at the top of the tube while the sediment platelets are leftover. A disinfected cotton is applied at the source of the puncture. You hold your arm close to your chest. The cotton is removed, after deliberate look-out the phlebotomist applies the bandage. No blood seeps through the bandage. You leave the room with an air-headed feel.

[Anonymous No.19144289]

>>19143973
A few good lines, some word choices are 'colorful' to the point of feeling more inappropriate than strange. You very nearly have a style, shame about the subject matter.

[Anonymous No.19144294]

>>19142887
Thanks a lot for the effortpost crit, fren. Actually the thing is supposed to be the intro scene after which we switch to the MC, which has a lot slower start. It’s meant to provoke EXACTLY what you wrote in your post (which is incredibly pleasing to read), and thus gives me some leeway with the slower build up of the main plot. And as for the grammatical - i’m ESL and i’m not actually writing it in english, this was just a test. Thank you very much for the critique.

[Anonymous No.19144296]

>2k words written today
yeah, I'm thinking we're all gonna make it bros.

[Anonymous No.19144305]

>>19144296
absolute chadlad

[Anonymous No.19144308]

>>19144294
>i’m ESL and i’m not actually writing it in english, this was just a test.
lol you have a better understanding of sentence composition than most of the native writers ITT

[Anonymous No.19144347]

>>19143973
3rd paragraph is by far the worst despite having the closest thing to a clever line, the 'balls, guts, cheek' bit

[Anonymous No.19144382]

Imagine being 35k words into your novel and still having zero faith in yourself
Couldn't be me, haha

[Anonymous No.19144453]

>>19144308
You’re being so nice i’m starting to think you’re new to the internet. Just kidding of course, but really, thank you for the confidence boost.
And just to suck eachother’s dicks, post work if you want crit and i’ll return the favor if you want.

[Anonymous No.19144501]

>>19144289
Thanks for reading - I'd be interested to hear more on what I nearly achieve wrt style from your perspective - and your thoughts on the subject matter.

[Anonymous No.19144504]

>>19144347
Thanks for your take, anon.

[Anonymous No.19144520]

>>19144382
I've been over 90k into my sci fi for a year.

[Anonymous No.19144621]

>Do all of my reading on my phone
>Trying to do some actual research
>Get pdfs of scholarly works with really tiny text in pdf format I can barely read and can't resize

[Anonymous No.19144720]

>>19143973
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtDwgQd8tTI

[Anonymous No.19144923]

>>19144296
I did that yesterday and did 1k this afternoon.

[Anonymous No.19144927]

What is your biggest gripe while editing your?
for me it's -
>several paragraph expo-bomb about some character trait that I have to cut down.
>rewriting an action that takes place in first person tense, e.g "I went to the cabinet. Opening the door I picked up what I wanted with shaking hands"

Annoying as hell man.

[Anonymous No.19144998]

>>19143579
Write in the POV of the character who is suffering the most at that time.

[Anonymous No.19145004]

>>19144927
I tend to leave out details or include some that I change further down the line. I know drafts don’t have to be perfect but I wish I had everything figured out more when I start

[Anonymous No.19145060]

>>19144927
>several paragraph expo-bomb about some character trait that I have to cut down.
For me it's similar to this. The story I have now has a couple sections to slow reaction chapter down. The sections juxtapose the past with the present more directly. I do this indirectly throughout the story, so I am careful not to be obnoxious or dogmatic about my take on history. I once recited a paragraph from a history book to someone and they said that "opinion" was shit anyways.

[Anonymous No.19145077]

>>19141277
the "nativity" of language isn't actually important, all that matters is how much exposure to it you've had, and "literary" english is just a kind of dialect you can pick up like anything else. if you read english literature regularly then sooner or later you'll develop a better intuitive sense of literary english than all the dumb masses of non-reading americans and you'll be more fit to write in the language than 99% of native speakers. remember that joseph conrad was a polish dude that learned english in adulthood as his third language - and you just need to be decent, not one of the all-time masters of english prose like conrad ended up becoming.

[Anonymous No.19145083]

>>19144927
When characters act based on their personality and feelings instead of any obvious, mechanical need. It feels incredibly retarded to explain emotions, but if the thought process isn't narrated, it'll make sense to no one. I always get stuck for a long time in those parts, trying to make it seem natural.

[Anonymous No.19145091]

>>19143560
whoa, watch out for croesus here, he's about to make some "real money" writing for a blog lol

[Anonymous No.19145105]

[Anonymous No.19145315]

>>19145083
I always think those should be self evident in my writing, and sometimes I realize I'm not writing a film and there needs to be some explanation otherwise the whole book is dialogue-action repeated over and over. It worked for Hemingway but I'm not Hemingway.

[Anonymous No.19145377]

I just wanna read entertainment fiction and write crime/romance/erotica shit without pseudo philosophical aspirations of Changing the world
Fuck what /lit/ I'll do my thing

[Anonymous No.19145397]

hey, /wg/. any of you have any experience with back-and-forth editing with a lit mag editor?
how much are you supposed to thank them? this is my first time. my guy is really nice and he kept thanking me for submitting.

>>19138421
>finished 3 books by 24
hey man that's impressive. when did you start? what's the genre? got a day job? are they published? i'm 24 myself and have written 0 books and am starting to accept that i never will.

[Anonymous No.19145485]

>>19145315
I've read some novels where almost everything happens in the characters' heads. The prose is just lengthy descriptions of sensory experiences and feelings and analysis of those feelings. Holy hell, how can anyone write so much bullshit about practically nothing? It seems like magic to me.

I like those classics better too, where the characters ACT and their feelings are reflected in their actions, not openly dissected in words.

[Anonymous No.19145625]

how do i write better prose? everything I write has no good flow, and is overly descriptive

[Anonymous No.19145639]

>>19143580
>A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”
did he ever post it?

[Anonymous No.19145686]

>>19143973
contrary to the other guy, i think the 3rd (technically 4th) paragraph is the best one. made me smirk a bit. couldn't care less about the one before that, though.

[Anonymous No.19145722]

>>19145485
>Holy hell, how can anyone write so much bullshit about practically nothing
How have you read my book before I published it?

[Anonymous No.19145741]

>>19145625
post it

[Anonymous No.19145744]

>>19145625
Be concise. Use sensory language. Use a variety of words and sentence structures. Use literary devices effectively.

[Anonymous No.19145748]

I'm currently working on the title of a research paper I did in university and the paper was written in English. What I struggle with: Is it arbitrary which letters get capitalised and which not?
I sometimes see "a" written in capitalised and sometimes not. My title would be "Two Minuses Make a Plus" - does "a" have to be in caps too?

[Anonymous No.19145765]

>>19145748
Maybe MLA formatting guide, or whichever is standard for that paper, has an answer on this.

[Anonymous No.19145774]

>>19145744
not him, but what do you mean by sensory language?

[Anonymous No.19145783]

>>19145625
Study the masters. Even a second rate imitation of Flaubert is better than 4/5 writers. He is a true master of rhythm.

>“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss.”

“Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say—a weight here, at one's heart.”

“She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold.”

[Anonymous No.19145799]

>>19145783
>>19145744
This is helpful, thanks Anons. What would be some examples of bad prose? That may be helpful to compare

[Anonymous No.19145874]

>>19145774
Sensory language to engage the 5 senses, evoke those feelings. Glimmer helps describe something visually, but you can do more tgan that. Variety is key, but don't have to engage senses all the time, it slows the story down. You can be more engaging, somwtimes oppressive and disgusting, if you describe the senses as objects performing actions on your character. He touched the sticky
fluid? No, the fluid clinged to his fingers.
>>19145799
If every sentence uses the same structure, you use adverbs way too much, instead of engaging detail, always crutch the same words, chatacters dont have different voices, the pacing is inappropriate for the scene, among other things.

[Anonymous No.19145881]

>>19145874
>as objects performing actions on your character
brilliant way of putting it

[Anonymous No.19145897]

>man makes successful game (not!Minecraft)
>it gets bought out and lootbox mechanics are added
>he gets deleted from all records as ever having had anything to do with it
>people forget he existed in the first place, crediting the guy who stole it from him
>makes another game about loss of identity
>dies before he can release it
>someone else figures out what happened and releases his game posthumously
>it's a smash hit
>within three weeks it's been stolen, repackaged, and rebranded so many times by corporations that nobody even knows where it came from
>It's a repeat star of Top 10 Indie Games You've (probably) Never Heard Of!
>His name is still forgotten

Is this too depression inducing or not enough?

[Anonymous No.19146010]

>>19145897
It's a bit laughable. His name wouldn't need to be erased from the records. The average customer who is buying the new version of the game isn't going to care enough to learn it anyway, and the hardcore "fans" will retroactively say the original was shit because of what it became.

[Anonymous No.19146060]

>>19146010
Anon pitched this idea last thread, I thought the guy got his presence erased for [political reasons].

[Anonymous No.19146066]

>>19145397
I'm the anon you replied to, I started writing them around when I turned 17. They're epic fantasy, total is around 430,000 words for the series. I've got a day job that isn't writing related, and they are self published. I think I learned the hard way how difficult self publishing can be, so for my next series/book I'm aiming for an agent and an editor. It's been about a year and 5 months since my last book was published so I'm about due for another one. I'm almost done with one in particular, but I'm getting writers block pretty hard so it's stalled.
>>19145485
Everything you said I agree with. I just worry when I read my own writing that it's all action and dialogue like a robot generated mess. I try to focus on driving character action with their responses to their emotions, so I don't have long passages about inner thoughts and feelings. In fact, my longest passages are A., summaries, or B., landscape descriptions.

[Anonymous No.19146073]

>>19144998
I'll definitely consider it. What about choosing first- versus third-person?

[Anonymous No.19146075]

>>19146060
socio-political anyways. It'll be like the dev from Flappy Bird who freaked out when he realized that people were obsessing with his game and losing their lives to it

[Anonymous No.19146088]

>>19146075
>losing their lives to it
i thought this was a meme. you know, like with pokemon go.

>>19146066
godspeed anon, rooting for you

[Anonymous No.19146105]

>>19146088
Flappy Bird didn't kill anyone, but the amount of time people spent playing it was the reason Flappy Bird got removed from the app stores

The guy has said so in interviews

[Anonymous No.19146116]

>>19140425
What changes should I make to my lifestyle to gain more energy and concentration? I want to have the endurance to work on writing for longer hours.

[Anonymous No.19146176]

>>19146116
Coffee?

[Anonymous No.19146197]

>>19146116
discipline.

[Anonymous No.19146209]

>>19146116
Improve your sleep

[Anonymous No.19146243]

>your license of office isn't genuine and you may be a victim of software counterfeiting :-( get the real office

lol

[Anonymous No.19146299]

>>19143580

[Anonymous No.19146317]

>>19146116
Close your other tabs and open your document as early as you can. Do not rationalize it, just open it. Take a shower, have breakfast, get a drink and sit back down at your desk. Look at what you have to do next, ask questions and answer them and the youre writing. Keep going until you cant, ask questions and then write more.
Seriouslly though the key to discipline is showing yourself your priorities. Open that document first thing. You see some other stupid bullshit on your screen? Just close it. Personally my coffee maker goes off at 5am. When I hear the water boiling I am done with my routine and ready to write a couple hours before work. When I get home I clean up and do the same thing.

[Anonymous No.19146500]

>>19141814
Feels like it's part of something bigger but it's ok I got somewhat addicted. Some sentences are worded in a strange way tho.

[Anonymous No.19146559]

im gonna write in present tense and no one can stop me!

[Anonymous No.19146626]

>>19146559
Book I'm reading now is doing present tense very well. It's only given to the weak character and used to highlight her nature and the danger she keeps getting in. Rest of story is mostly past tense.

[Anonymous No.19146635]

>>19146559
>>19146626
Why people act like this is difficult when AO3 teenagers do it literally all the time?

[Anonymous No.19146675]

>>19146559
Based, unironically been doing the same desu. Might be completely unpublishable if you market it as anything other than YA if you seek tradpub though.

[Anonymous No.19146725]

I had a funny short story I wrote read aloud by this YouTuber a few days ago. This guy got me into sword and sorcery so I know it doesn't seem like much but it meant a lot to me. Thanks for all the feedback you've given me on my writing /lit/.

[Anonymous No.19146776]

>>19146725
We're all gonna make it, bros...

[Anonymous No.19146808]

>>19146725
A literal who youtuber read one of the fanfics I made years ago years after I had published it, but the faggot never credited me or even notified me that he was using me for his literal no views content. I only found out by googling my username.

[Anonymous No.19146847]

>>19144453
Here you go: https://pastebin.com/cetTe64H

pastebin is cucked as fuck right now so I had to change "meth" to "math" or it wouldn't let me post. I've probably posted this one before, it's part of a novella I've been working on since January, about a rogue scientist who has gone missing in the Florida panhandle and a paramilitary contractor who has been hired to find him.

[Anonymous No.19147029]

>>19144296
Been doing that every weekday for the last few weeks. Gonna start putting shit on RR soon.

[Anonymous No.19147032]

>>19144382
I'm over 550k into 3 separate drafts of a novel and I still have zero faith in myself. Don't worry about it.

[Anonymous No.19147036]

>leave link up of 1st draft sections for a week before it expires
>get 360 unique views and a critique
Do that many anons browse /wg/ in a week? Seems like alot.

[Anonymous No.19147108]

>>19145897
read the manga billybat

[Anonymous No.19147601]

>>19147108
I hope this is also a statement that it's a good manga, not just related

[Anonymous No.19147710]

>>19143090
I only have 3 systems of magic for this particular setting (excluding the BBEG but I'm keeping their magic system soft anyway so it's not that big an issue).
The first 2 magic systems are race-based ones
>Elemental magic, but not like AtLA and more like actual weather magic like Ice, Rain, Fire, and Lightning among other "elements" of weather. This is entirely exclusive to the race of Storm Nymphs who channel this magic through archery and ride across the skies on their own personal clouds that are tied to their souls.
>A type of alchemical magic that is not only able to do basic transmutation or manipulation of matter but is also able to create illusions or alterations of reality itself for a short time. Of course this kind of magic requires a heavy amount of skill from the race that has access to this magic from their patron deity.
The mechanics I have for this one so far is that this magic is achieved through an understanding of the "language" of reality, and with the right rune or symbol are able to otherwise master a specific alteration. But on top of being heavily skill oriented each "spell" requires further study and mastery in order to have a wider range of abilities to use.
Honestly I'm still not confident in this one fully, I feel like I need to work on this a lot more before it's air tight enough to be used narratively.
And for the last one I don't want to it be too big as far as range of abilities but I still want to have it play a major role in both the story and as a utility in fights. This is the one that has had the least work but I want it to be a type of "holy" magic that is mainly utility oriented. It would have abilities like
>teleportation
>cleansing of evil
>protection from curses
>blessing/healing
Basic cleric stuff, but I want to further split this into two branches of magic with one being combat focused and the other utility focused.

[Anonymous No.19147949]

>>19146776
That's right we will anon!
>>19146808
I'm sorry anon, that's super annoying. At least you can take some pleasure knowing that it was good enough for that guy to pillage. Even if he stole it that is a compliment.

[Anonymous No.19148093]

Here are my requests:

1. Is this a powerful passage or not? It's clear what I'm going for, but I don't know if it lands.

2. Critique on word choice and rhythm and phrasing and stuff like that. Anything awkward, and any incredibly poor choices.

Thanks
-
A girl is running with her little brothers on the farm. She slows down to taunt them, and their grubby fingers swipe the air trying to catch her flowing dress and tag her. One stumbles, and wobbles for two steps, before sprinting at her with his arms stretched to their fullest, and his shoes pounding the grass with his haphazard run. She turns and laughs, and runs faster. Her dress lifts up further in the air behind her, brushing the tips of the tall yellow grass she’s entering. She has chores to do, but she hasn't ran with her brothers for a long time.

She remembers playing tag with her older sister. Eventually, after what felt like hours of running, her sister would slow so she could tag her. When she touched her, she’d yell Ouch!, and pretend to fall down.
She would come to her sister and tug on her arm, squealing her laugh and yelling Get up! Get up, you're not really hurt!
She'd say, I can't, you tagged me so hard I broke a leg!
They used to run and roll for hours in the sunny yard before they got called into dinner.

She ran faster into the grass, away from the house and farm. She saw the sun start to light the grass with it's orange fire,
as it sank lower towards the rolling hills and the distant roads. She stopped, and soon her panting brothers came up and grabbed her. At this moment, she thought that she’d like to remember the warmth she felt in her chest.

-


When I was 5, I sat at the bed of an old woman I had never seen before. The room was dim, and warm with yellow light. The sun
streamed in from a small window, washing her sheets with its color as it slid across the bed to kiss her on her shoulder.


Adults stood around looking at her, taking turns to grab her hand and smile, and kneel in close to whisper to her ear. They moved in closer as she whispered back,
straining to lift her neck when she spoke. She pulled the hand into her chest, tightening her old grip as she recounted her favorite memories.

I sat there next to her, confused and bored, breathing in stale hospital air while I watched the adults. I didn't know she was dying.

I remember that I held her hand too, and she whispered something to me, but I don't remember what.
I like to imagine that she said Please live a full and beautiful life.

[Anonymous No.19148119]

>>19146847
I very much love this shit, gj

[Anonymous No.19148247]

>>19143619
You have to write completely unashamed. Writing sex in general is hard because peoples timidity and trepidations bleed into how they right it. If youre confident, much like in the real world, it won't come off nearly as autistic.

[Anonymous No.19148269]

How do you find the motivation to write? I constantly have good ideas and have a pretty good grasp on prose, I dont think I cant write or anything. I just end up sitting there doing nothing like I'm depressed.

[Anonymous No.19148461]

>>19148269
You're not depressed, you're likely just distracted. I had this problem. My brain was too full of outside stimulus and other problems to focus on the task at hand. Sometimes writing is a venting activity and sometimes it's a therapeutic activity, but you can't do either if you're thinking about other things. What helps me is to throw my phone across the room, put on headphones and turn on a set music playlist that cues my brain to get into writing mode. If I'm really having a loud brain day, I'll go walk (an easy pace, not like my exercise pace) for no less than 3 miles and try again. I hope this helps.

[Anonymous No.19148518]

>>19148247
I try but I also want to be as clear as possible with the purpose of what I put on the page; but I can't shake this feeling that many readers will just interpret that I have a public nudity fetish or something, which I do but that doesn't have anything to do with the situations I'm writing.

[Anonymous No.19148702]

>>19148093
I grew up in a rural area. While I can't speak to technical critique I can share a bit of how I felt:
>the children running around, ignoring chores, pretending to get hurt, all the rest I remember experiencing many times in my own yard
>visiting old people dying in a bed either at a hospital or their home happened a few times growing up
>first time I didn't even know their name or couldn't remember anything from that day either
>it wasn't until I was maybe older than 10 that I was at a funeral for my great grandmother and burst into tears when I realized what death really was
>felt that your prose was sincere, easy to understand with a vivid sense of nostalgia
>thought the motherly verbs of warming, washing and kissing reached a bit too much, but I accepted it since children do often look to their parents as examples
Really enjoyed it anon, you got soul.

[Anonymous No.19148830]

>>19147108
You're killing me. The scans Im finding are dog shit. Straight up a bent photo with MS paint typing

[Anonymous No.19148844]

>>19148830
really? I never experienced that

[Anonymous No.19148856]

>>19148844
Ah, found another site without the issue, I'm set. Interesting premise so far.

[Anonymous No.19148930]

HELP! guys, I'm two chapters into drafting my novel and I realized I've just set up a Hero's Journey/Monomyth.

So far the main character is meeting wise old man character, and meanwhile girl character is in trouble (but the main character doesn't know she exists yet)

The characters are interesting and somewhat original on their own, but obviously loose a lot of that when put into such a predictable format.

Should I lean into it, subvert it, or try change it completely? It's a post-post-apocalypse sci-fi(?) story with an emphasis on religion, technology, and geopolitics. It's my first book but I've written and scrapped multiple other attempts, and this one is the first time I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere.

[Anonymous No.19148956]

>>19148702
Thanks, I really appreciate the reply. It's my first time posting in here.

The woman dying is the second half is supposed to be the girl in the first half but I suppose it looks like they're separate.
I tried to link them together using imagery with the sun.
I wanted to present whatever beauty could be found in that as she's dying, she's being touched by the same light she once played in. It's hard to do the way I imagine it, and I wish I could pace it slower.

[Anonymous No.19148995]

>>19146116
>What changes should I make to my lifestyle to gain more energy and concentration?
Stop fapping

[Anonymous No.19149005]

>>19148930
do what you want, don't force change on your story because you're afraid of it being unoriginal

[Anonymous No.19149052]

>>19148930
I'm of the position that we need more straight monomyths, subverting it has gotten stale by now.
Just make sure you have something to say.

[Anonymous No.19149074]

>>19148930
just so long as your MC isn't a farmboy or equivalent

[Anonymous No.19149294]

>>19149074
I misread farmboy as femboy for a second there.

[Anonymous No.19149315]

>>19149294
go back, the other version was better

[Anonymous No.19149831]

What's your writting fuel? Coffee? Tea?

[Anonymous No.19149835]

>>19149831
Cum

[Anonymous No.19149867]

>>19149831
sips

[Anonymous No.19149876]

>>19149831
Writing?

[Anonymous No.19149881]

>>19149831
Water
>>19149835
Based only if it belongs to someone else

[Anonymous No.19149882]

>>19149831
Coffee, but I've been toning it down to only 1 cup a day nowadays. It's mostly non-caffeinated loose tea.

[Anonymous No.19150011]

>>19149831
My pure hatred for the world

[Anonymous No.19150068]

>>19149831
Diet cola, melatonin, cannabis, and nicotine. I'll pour like 60 oz of cola but probably only drink half of it before I start to nod off. I'd urge every writer in this thread to experiment with melatonin, it's cheap and legal and mixed with caffeine, it's a good way to expand your thoughts a bit.

[Anonymous No.19150076]

>>19150068
the fuck...

[Anonymous No.19150108]

I walked through the glass doors and said goodbye.

Janet screeched goodbye back from her perch in reception. I want to kill her.

I infiltrate the crowded streets. As I walk I check Reddit for news, memes, pornographey. I check more obscure websites after for more news, news I shouldn’t be reading. The train stinks of piss and I want to hurt a fat woman sitting next to me breathing through her nose.

I’ve swiped right on every female untill my likes run out and I’m at home now in front of the computer. I’m messaging a girl named Amy - she seems sweet and we’ve set up a date for tomorow night.

Time passes and I’m in the food place. She comes in and I assess her. She looks like her pictures - a bonus, given what I’ve dealt with in the past. I look at her tits - I have already masturbated to her pictures on the app, imagination meets reality and I feel warmth. I smile and say hello and how beautiful she looks and her chinks are slightly pink from the cold weather. Do her cheeks go pink when she fucks? I smile and she looks away and we begin to chat and order.

I can see her cleavage and I can barely hold onto the veneer of the mask with the effort it takes not to look. I want my fantasy to be true - I want warm perfect white cum to cascade down her chin, her neck and upper chest and to settle between those breasts. I excuse myself to the bathroom. She thinks it’s going well. I’m sweating when I return and hope she doesn’t notice, and the stickiness below is a constant distraction.

As we leave I put on her coat and we hold hands and I feel sick with pleasure at the thought that I’ve already contaminated her - the residue on my hand now a part of hers.

As we walked I smiled and nodded and wondered how long I had been like this for. After a while I decided it didn’t matter - I had captured my prey and walked amongst the pretty lights in the rain.

[Anonymous No.19150159]

>>19150076
It's just something I noticed. I take melatonin for dreams every night, after a while I noticed that my prose was coming out a lot less flat when I wrote right before sleep, and it still held up when I checked again later.

It's like there are moments when I'm writing sober when I realize that the words I'm putting on the page don't really reflect what I'm trying to say. Whether it's a character thinking about their situation or the fundamental truth of a certain type of experience, it's like there's this solid gray wall where accuracy and honesty are hidden and I can only resort to tired cliches or very plain language. And then when I pop 10mg of melatonin and smoke some weed and sip on cola and vape nicotine I can grasp and communicate these ideas more clearly.

[Anonymous No.19150192]

>>19149831
Attention on /lit/

[Anonymous No.19150445]

So I can earn money writing erotica?

[Anonymous No.19150446]

>>19149005
>>19149052
>>19149074
Thanks anons :)

[Anonymous No.19150452]

>>19150445
one can, I don't know if you can

[Anonymous No.19150458]

>>19140425
>ywn be a student in rural Japan

[Anonymous No.19150463]

>>19150445
Saw a vid of someone releasing erotica monthly on amazon and making a pretty penny. Rules are they can't write bestiality of any living animal so there's a ton of books of people fucking dinosaurs.

[Anonymous No.19150507]

>>19150463
Why read a book of someone fucking their dog when there is a plethora of people drawing other people fucking their dogs
Or IRL versions if you're a degen criminal

[Anonymous No.19150521]

>>19150463
>>19150452
So amazon publishing is the way to go? Or some freelance as well

[Anonymous No.19150591]

>>19150507
>Why read... when there is a plethora of people drawing... Or IRL
What is the actual answer to this question, I was told it was because people enjoy reading but I may have misheard him

[Anonymous No.19150854]

>>19146635
Because all the AO3 teenagers are fucking bad at it and made everyone doing it look bad

[Anonymous No.19150935]

I'm going to write even if it's wrong.

[Anonymous No.19150950]

>>19149831
A good night's sleep. No joke.

[Anonymous No.19151449]

>>19149831
peace of mind. rarely, the opposite.

[Anonymous No.19151931]

I have made a new chapter, it left me feeling fuzzy because it had a love confession in it.

[Anonymous No.19151967]

>>19150854
What are the common trappings of writing in present tense? I think I'm missing something since it doesn't sound hard in my head.

[Anonymous No.19151985]

When writing lets say a novel with a map, whether it be fantasy such as ASOIAF or just a general alternate universe map of say WW1, how would you go about naming things? Are things different, such as languages (do you bother creating a conlang and a lexicon in this game), how do you handle the sound/letter of H (its usually dropped over time for instance as time moves on. How do you handle what animals you'll be using (whether real or fictional)? What about family trees, etc?

tl;dr: How much effort do you put into your world building, what all do you do?

[Anonymous No.19152067]

>>19151985
I say that the in-universe language is sunconsciously adapted by the reader's world. And then just write what I'd like to read, with characters who live in their world.

[Anonymous No.19152166]

>>19151985
World to fit story, not story to fit world.

[Anonymous No.19152188]

>>19152166
Not always true. Sometimes you build a detailed world with the proper themes and complexity, and then you can zoom in to tell a story within it

>t. made a cyberpunk city and am now writing murder mysteries in it instead of civil war action

[Anonymous No.19152265]

>>19151931
>editing 1st chapter in 2nd draft
>start cutting out the problems I noticed writing 1st draft but kept going
>working on the intro to capture the feeling better of the overall story and ending
>emotion hits me like a falling anvil and feel a bit better at expressing the themes
Can't wait to get back home and write some more.

[Anonymous No.19152279]

>>19146635
>Why people act like this is difficult when AO3 teenagers do it literally all the time?
Because the the teenagers on AO3 write and people on /wg/ don't?

[Anonymous No.19152327]

>>19151967

Some common ones:
1. Inconsistent tense. Slipping between past and present, often mid-sentence. Very amateurish and very common.

2. Awkward time. Since present tense gives the impression of shit happening right now, writers often struggle to present time passing between scenes, or within a scene, which gives a disjointed feeling.

3. Fucked up pacing. Action is randomly interrupted for descriptions or observations at unfitting times which seems like a slap in the face and take you out of the narrative.

4. Insufficient description. The author can't find a spot for fluidly setting the scene so they just don't. The result is confusing as fuck.

5. Unfitting emphasis. Present tense can be used to deliver very fast and dramatic scenes. But sometimes the effect is unwittingly given to scenes that don't need it. Which results in...

6. Monotonous narrative. Everything seems to happen now and is really urgent and dramatic. But if everything is like that, without any variety, it just gets numbing.

[Anonymous No.19152335]

>>19151985
Depends on what I'm writing. For instance, currently I'm making a map, I've done specific conlangs for certain kingdoms/nations, and then I've roughly mapped out how they would have eventually evolved over time, to a rough scale. It's relatively impossible in a fantasy setting to have it entirely make sense. Think of it this way, you speak English, as does a good majority of the world, so most of your writing is perhaps going to be in English. Now you can imply that they do in fact speak another language, but then you run into the problem of specific words, especially if you begin to differentiate peoples based on their own languages, it becomes muddied and hard to discern whether they're speaking in your native language (English in this scenario), or they're speaking something entirely different as to just seem exotic.

There are fine lines between everything and it will never be quite perfect. So it just depends on your writing process. As for some of the other questions you pondered, naming things usually depends on the biome I've made for a particular area, or what I want that particular place to be, maybe they're on the coast, but they speak a language I made up. Well my first question is, who made this particular map, is it someone from an English speaking language romanizing it, is it someone from an English speaking language translating it. For instance, you have a place called "Yurath Spec", which may translate to Blue Tree Land from their root words. Well does the map say Yurath Spec or does it say something like "Azure Forest". It all depends on perspective, the characters, the world, biomes, trade (maybe a place trades in Amber and Blue Dyes).

Generally though, not everything is going to be consistent or perfect, that is the reality of things, our world is a mess of languages and migration, hell your world could have invented ships much sooner and language spread out drastically and strangely from that. Maybe someone developed Celt from Latin, which evolved into French, but just down south it became more Greek from Latin in the reverse in your world, maybe those French people split into two groups and one formed a strange African clicking language and the other German. It just all depends on what you want to build and how you want to build it.

At least this is how I do things, whether its good or bad or not is a different topic entirely.

[Anonymous No.19152450]

>>19152327
Now that you point it out, I've seen all of this before in the works I roll my eyes to and don't finish. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.19152468]

>>19146847
>https://pastebin.com/cetTe64H

sorry for the late reply, i'm the guy with the VTOL and the christian cavemen as you named them.

Overall the idea is really good: a letter of warning that seemlessly turns into a short story. Also, things turning slowly from just your regular "care for the swamps, there's gators there" into something horrible and unexpected is very good and a good plot idea. I don't know if this is not as surprising if one has already read previous parts in your novella but the idea is still good.

I think the one thing i reacted to was that i feel that the narrator is a mix of themselves and you, the author. I feel that sometimes it turns into a more descriptive perception of things and in other parts it turns into the voice of a guy telling a story at a bar. I think this is sort of an example of it:

>There was a gentle hum. The melody rose and blossomed into a rich harmony. Rising and falling, rising and falling. It seemed like a new voice joined the chorus every instant. A hundred voices all joined together in a haunting tribute to the most divine insights of the universe.

It then turns to

>Believe me when I tell you it was the most beautiful goddamned sound on the face of the planet. Immediately my mind was filled with images of glowing angels, so goddamned beautiful and shining it would make a grown man weep. It took every ounce of willpower I had not to go out there with Jem, but somehow I managed to resist.

Maybe it is a bit redundant with two descriptions of beautiful harmony, or maybe it could just be shortened a bit. But what i feel is a bit off is that the person writing this letter goes from it being a warning to it being a description of what happens (the conflict between his voice as a dude warning someone, and yours, the author, who wants to write vivid descriptions so that we get the right images). I think that if it is genuinely a warning it would have a lot more "you won't believe me, but they were the vilest little things i've seen, some kind of..." a more active voice of sorts. Or maybe it should be the more descriptive thing, but then it doesn't really fill the function of a warning.


Ok i have to go, but the tl:dr is that it is a really cool idea, both in form and plot, but maybe there are conflicting voices in the narration. I hope i haven't overstepped with my critique since who am i to say, right? But this was my honest perception of it and what might improve it, if anything would. wagmi

[Anonymous No.19152530]

>>19152468
Very insightful criticism and I thank you for taking the time. You did point out something that I struggled with, the conflict between the two voices. Ultimately I decided to just accept the discordance in tone, later amplifying it until it becomes almost absurd in the last and final letter that this particular narrator sends. But much like your excerpt I think the images and overall story will compel the reader to keep going.

[Anonymous No.19152586]

>>19152530
>I think the images and overall story will compel the reader to keep going.
Yup. Is it a series of short stories that will reach novella length or a timeline? It's called interlude 2 so i'm guessing this is something in between chapters.
I must say, the unexplained weirdness and the character's reaction to it as being almost natural (no confusion, no "what are these things?") really makes one wonder what has happened. good job, anon!

[Anonymous No.19153578]

How do I increase my vocabulary? I feel like I have a very small vocabulary and when I read things written before the turn of the 19th century I almost cry with shame at how verbose those people are capable of writing.

[Anonymous No.19153645]

>>19153578
Because that was the style at the time. That's one way people flexed their competency was by having a wide vocabulary when now, I find, it just makes one look like a psued.

[Anonymous No.19153733]

>>19153645
>tfw try to write normally and people complain about purple prose

[Anonymous No.19153943]

>>19153733
These days, having a big vocabulary isn't about trying to use all of the words you know at once, but about knowing the best, most fit word for a given situation and using only that.

[Anonymous No.19153968]

>>19153578
Don't worry too much about vocabulary. Good prose is clear and purposeful and knowing a lot of words won't necessarily help you achieve that. I'd advise you to go on wikipedia and just do some mindless reading about whatever it is you're writing about, you'll pick up a lot of specific vocabulary on your subject that'll help you describe things more accurately without bogging down the pacing by being too verbose.

[Anonymous No.19154063]

>>19152586
It's a highly experimental structure. The main narrative (the paramilitary contractor searching for the scientist) is told in clear, straightforward, unemotional language. The secondary narrative (the interludes) is what I posted here, a series of absurdist, surrealistic letters which gradually shift away from "warnings" to the writer just shamelessly indulging in nostalgia for his youth in Florida. If I hit the note I'm aiming for, it'll all come together in the climax in a way that feels seamless, natural, and inevitable. My main concern is what you pointed out: there are inconsistencies in the language used by the two narrators, and their characterization suffers from my urge to write as vividly as possible. Aside from that, I intentionally bog down the pacing in certain areas in order to reflect the overall theme of my novella, but according to feedback I've gotten in previous threads, the subject matter is compelling enough to overcome these two issues. Good luck to you as well, fren. I think the two of us are going to make it.

[Anonymous No.19154086]

I cant write. I have fbi agents monitoring my computer activity and I'm afraid they either laugh at my ideas and poor writing skill.

[Anonymous No.19154101]

>>19154086
We don't laugh, we just read. Nothing more.

[Anonymous No.19154151]

I'm thinking bards would be the primary cultivators of xianxia 5th century Britain. Should I put Arthur in bard school?

[Anonymous No.19154209]

>>19153943
>but about knowing the best, most fit word for a given situation and using only that.
Or, to simply put, the mot juste

[Anonymous No.19154340]

>>19154151
Xianxia and litRPG shit is the first sign of someone who doesn't have a story to tell.

[Anonymous No.19154364]

>>19154340
We are entering the Progression Fantasy age. By all means get left behind.

[Anonymous No.19154375]

>>19154340
Absolutely this. Maybe one in a thousand of these stories are actually stories with real plots, characters, and something to say. The rest are pure retard garbage for teens who are actually too stupid to just read YA. It's horrifying. Great way to get attention though.
>t. Writing a story which is basically a litRPG bait and switch because it mentions a HUD in chapter 1 but never actually uses it for reasons which make total sense

[Anonymous No.19154376]

So I'm writing a novel that takes place in the current year; should I just use the names of well-known internet apps/services or should I name them something slightly ironic so people will know what I'm talking about but I won't get sued? For example, should I just say that the character logged on to Discord, or, instead of Discord, should I just name it something like Harmony? I don't want it to sound gimmicky

[Anonymous No.19154378]

>>19154364
Once these kids graduate high school the government isn't going to cover the Ritalin anymore. What are you going to do when the literal retards who make up your audience can't pay attention to your epic chinaman who kicks slightly harder every 8 chapters?

[Anonymous No.19154393]

>>19154378
Progression Fantasy is predicated on universes with a natural order, where there is a clear path to improving yourself and your life. As the world gets more chaotic and uncertain, people will become more attracted to the genre, not less.

[Anonymous No.19154422]

>Xianxia
>litRPG
>Progression Fantasy
Explain.

[Anonymous No.19154434]

>>19154422
LITRPG is fiction about a video game and/or where there are video game mechanics. These stories tend to focus around characters grinding to get exp and loot and blowing shit up with their +9 longsword of dickslap.
Xianxia is fiction about mythological daoism. These stories tend to focus around characters grinding to get exp and loot and blowing shit up with their +9 flying longsword of dickslap.
Progression fantasy is a genre where the focus is on characters gaining strength and loot over time so they can eventually blow shit up with their +9 longsword of dickslap.

[Anonymous No.19154458]

>>19154393
Sure just write some less than YA trash because it's popular for the moment. If you're going to sell your soul you will find a better price learning to draw fursmut.

>>19154422
The new hot trend among 10 - heavily stunted 17 year olds.
Imagine off brand SAO except you need to spend multiple chapters explaining every game mechanic. The idea is based around power fantasy and always involves the incel wish fulfilment of Isekai. It's also very easy to write because it allows an author to replace character development with numbers to express progression. A retard doesn't understand the difference between a character coming to understand a theme and growing from it versus upgrading his sword from iron to mithril.
Xianxia is just the Chinese pandering version of litRPG.

[Anonymous No.19154482]

>>19141027
Both are bullshit measurements. You can fill 100 pages a day with worthless drivel or write 15 extremely well-placed words, and the latter will be better exercise than the former.

[Anonymous No.19154502]

>>19154458
>t. crab jealous of Will Wight

[Anonymous No.19154602]

>>19154502
litRPG and Xianxa shits are just another reason Anime writing will always be looked down upon.
There's been a running theme with new writers where they realize they are too unlikable and poor to ever throw their dream team together for a real game and too stupid to learn RPGmaker. These retards turn to writing only as a last resort to get their totally 100% unique and life shattering ideas out of their head and into their potential fans hands. Just because half a dozen of these people find an audience does not make the other 21 thousand failures any less pathetic.
I don't tell you to stop out of bitterness, I tell you to stop because it makes me cringe internally when someone comes to me with an idea that is literally just "What if King Arthur was a bard in an RPG and I wrote it serially?".

[Anonymous No.19154909]

>>19154376
Have fun

http://www.rightsofwriters.com/2010/12/can-i-mention-brand-name-products-in-my.html

[Anonymous No.19154958]

Got ch94 out earlier today.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31062/saga-of-the-cosmic-heroes/chapter/760031/chapter-94-embers-of-ishtar-bitter-dreams-good

[Anonymous No.19154976]

>>19154958
94 chapters and you still haven't learned how to do dialogue tags?

[Anonymous No.19154986]

>>19154976
If you're talking about the first part it's because it's a dream, and Vick even realizes she's not actually speaking a little later into it.

[Anonymous No.19154991]

>>19154976
Cry about it to all your readers.. Oh wait...

[Anonymous No.19154992]

>>19154986
I'm not talking about the first part. Even after Vicky tugs Friederika's cheeks you have no understanding of how periods and commas work around dialogue.

[Anonymous No.19155045]

>>19148093
>and his shoes pounding the grass with his haphazard run

That broke my flow. It was fine until that. Something about it ... pounding the floor is cliche, and haphazard ... it doesn't feel right, that word, like it's clinical or overly formal; there's no fun in that word when it is a scene of fun. Also if you think about where you are sending my brain with that sentence about the wobbling it is like: medium shot of boys running, close up on stumbling individuals, closeup on sprinting (legs, feet), closeup on arms, closeup on feet. I'm being sent up and down the body here. Maybe move the last bit, the shoes pounding closeup to after the bit about sprinting and put the outstretched hands last, as if it is a panning shot from feet to arms.

>she hasn't ran

Run, not ran.

>Eventually, after what felt like hours of running, her sister would slow so she could tag her.

Don't like 'eventually'. I feel like you just summarised a big stretch of time for me as if it wasn't important. You're also segueing into past tense here, moving from present, and 'eventually' just feels like a sudden and clumsy way to do it. Go smoother. I'm also very conscious now of how many times you have used run or a variant of that word. The repetition here of imagery too, the slowing so she can tag her, feels repetitive with how it's worded ... I'm thinking if the following sentence was joined to this one it could alleviate that as the following action adds something fresh to the scene: ouch! I don't think you need that comma after the exclamation mark btw.

>she would come to her sister

Did you want to write run again here and stop yourself? lol This doesn't work either. Come is very ... casual, isn't it? And it does not fit the preceding scene. We have been running, hard, the little sister is catching up, she touches her finally and the big sister yells and pretends to fall. That is not where the sister 'comes' to her. She is falling on her, perhaps, jumping on her ... she has been in a full run so you can't kill the energy now with 'she comes to her'.

Also, note the energy in this scene and how it relates to your punctuation. That full stop after 'pretend to fall down.' is a sharp ending, I think. Remove that full stop and just put 'and', make the sentence run on and keep the energy flowing until you can naturally slow it or otherwise reshape it within the rest of the sentence.

>she ran faster into the grass

Okay, so we're back in the present. I know that because of the shift in tense and the grass imagery, though I feel it could be a little clearer. Give us a big wide shot maybe, include the brothers in this image.

I won't do the rest because I'm tired now and at a glance it looks like a sharp shift in content. Are they even related? It moves into first person ...

[Anonymous No.19155091]

>>19153578
Keep a list for words and their definitions. Every time you see a word you don't know that you like, add it. Review the list every so often.

[Anonymous No.19155116]

>>19155091
to add on to this, you can also purchase dictionaries that are sorted by category and include pictures. the oxford-duden pictorial dictionary.

you can use it like this: You are writing a scene in a house. You pick up the dictionary and find the bit on houses and look it over and find all of the terminology there you may not think of or be aware of, door jambs, eaves, sills, different styles of windows, furniture etc. Now you can enrich your scene with precise words. Same goes for scenes on ships, piers, hospitals, forests, the body ...

[Anonymous No.19155253]

I'm working on a farce comedy book and I'm looking for some source material to draw on during my editing phase. Here's my basic idea for the book, which is 90% done by now
>lampoons/farce of the dead end low wage job in a loser city with an overbearing boss, cool but useless coworkers, and weirdos
>unexpected enticing event changes everything, but the core relationship stays the same
I'm looking to get more involved in the farce aspect. Currently, the main character is the only straight man in the book. What else can I do to make my readers really bust a gut laughing at the absurdity? I have the following ideas used in a general sense
>impossible situations
>deadpan delivery of punchlines
>misunderstandings that evolve throughout a chapter or series of chapters
>long passages of "humorous summary" which doubles as exposition dump (cheating, I know)
>satire/retelling of "the straight boxer in a tense fight against the mob trying to make him throw a fight", "lone wolf gunman tracking down leads", and "Count of Monte Cristo esque romance betrayal" archetypes
>very sparing 4th wall breaking

[Anonymous No.19155856]

>>19155253
Can you post some jokes?

[Anonymous No.19155983]

>>19140436
I have no writing experience whatsoever and am just testing the waters, so hit me with your best shot.

[Anonymous No.19156047]

Celtic chakras and Pelagianism... I'm reading weird stuff for "research".

[Anonymous No.19156091]

>>19155983
I almost suspect that this is a parody of an amateur writer. With an excerpt this short, it's difficult to tell if any given issue is a quick mistake or bad habit, but you repeated mother in the first sentence, and I don't think you need to have it explained why you should avoid that. Aside from that, "pierce" feels like an ineffective choice of word, because although it does convey the notion of harming or attacking, it just doesn't convey anything that wind does, so it only half-fits. That sentence in total is a little awkward. Always, always, you should be thinking of how each part of a compound sentence effects the meaning and perception of every other part and how that meaning can shift. "Unlike the kind snow-" makes it seem like you're getting ready to draw an observation from the comparison between the wind and snow, but instead you go on to simply elaborate on the wind. Things like that are disorienting, on a level which most readers wouldn't consciously recognize but which would definitely contribute to an overall impression of sloppy prose.

Major rookie screw-up: too much exposition too quickly. All the endless harping on your character's bitterness is worthless next to one actual scene of your character behaving or thinking in a bitter way. The major issue is that your choice of imagery and subject matter is incredibly cliche, and your word choice seems like its just a bit too elevated to be taken seriously. Hence why I said it's like a parody of an amateur writer. It's like you're convinced that "good writing" always has esoteric words and always tries to plumb the depths of the human soul. The first paragraph I wrote probably seems like grammatical nit-picking, because it is, because the execution of this piece is acceptable in all other categories. But the conception is bland and unengaging.

[Anonymous No.19156098]

>>19155983
>>19156091
The simile of the mother in line one immediately transitioning into a painting in the second is jarring to me.

[Anonymous No.19156255]

>>19156098
I didn't even put that much thought into that, I just saw two really stale cliches. They seemed to go perfectly with one another because they were both so kitsch. But again I'd like to emphasize that this passage was competently constructed on a fundamental level, very impressive if this is your first ever crit-ready piece, and the question of whether or not two successive similes are in harmony in terms of imagery is kind of a higher level consideration.

Do you have any words of encouragement to offer our young anon here?

[Sailor No.19156263]

judge me.

[Sailor No.19156269]

>>19156047
My research has become increasingly symbol-based

[Sailor No.19156275]

>>19155983
>The many terrors, broken promises, and disappointments he had seen
dreary
obvious self-insert chatacter

[Sailor No.19156279]

>>19156091
>you repeated mother in the first sentence
it's called a motif bro

[Anonymous No.19156358]

>>19156279
Motifs are usually a bit more spread out and not so repetitive.

[Anonymous No.19156416]

Give me thoughts on this please

"At eight P.M. that evening, Tucker sat on his bed and turned on his Sony RC (a replica of the very one his parents had owned when he was child) and rewatched his favorite mecha anime of all time: Neon Genesis Evangelion. He had made it to episode seven the previous night before stopping his marathon so that he could savor the moment when his favorite character from the show, Asuka Soru Langley, is introduced. Although he had seen the entire show well over a hundred times—and this particular episode three times that number—he never grew tired of watching the fire-haired vixen on whom he had developed a crush at the tender age of eleven. Watching her do everything from fight abstract alien creatures known as Angels to make small talk in class with the school’s vice-president to impatiently wait in an elevator alongside her arch-nemesis Rei Ayanami—all of it filled Tucker with an immense longing, which he could only satisfy through an act of intense masturbation. Yet as soon as he became cognizant of the screen that separated their worlds, their respective genitalia, his longing would transform into a hollow pang. He would despair not that his dream girl existed purely in a celluloid dimension, but that the real world of which she was a vestige—the world of empty high school hallways, of bulging summer skies, of young people in love—remained forever at a distance. It was the fact that such love was possible for others, but not for him, that hurt Tucker the most. The age in which he could have requited these things had long past him. No matter how hard he now tried to achieve happiness, it remained forever elusive. The closest he came to experiencing it was when he watched its sad imitations project from the blinking box of light positioned at the end of his rickety mattress. A temporary placebo that in the long run only exacerbated the real thing’s absence."

[Anonymous No.19156436]

>>19156416
I don't even masturbate to anime and yet this made me want to kill myself.

[Anonymous No.19156482]

>>19154602

What if I wrote a story about some midgets who had to throw a ring into a volcano?

I mean feel free to look down on other peoples ideas, but it just makes you look like a drooling retard.

[Anonymous No.19156506]

>>19156482
anything can sound stupid when you reduce it to it's base components
but litrpgs are stupid no matter how deep you go with the concept

[Anonymous No.19156511]

>>19156482
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ZsGjQevO0
This stuff seems all connected to me

[Anonymous No.19156524]

novice comedy writer here making something dumb and need input
>does a hikikomori character getting an apartment roommate to be able to continue paying for his lifestyle sound too contrived, or should it work in reverse, with the hikikomori being kicked out of his parent's house and having to room in with someone to be able to afford housing?
>reasons why a hikikomori character would be forced to go outside for a prolonged amount of time?
>how do i write developing friendships in a way that feels natural?

[Anonymous No.19156739]

>>19156524
Read It's Tough Being Neeko. Might inspire you.

[Anonymous No.19156966]

>>19156416
reading something like this on here, where there's an abundance of anime related things, risks it drowning in the flood of said things. It's interesting to note that while i read it, the quesiton of whether this was an objective description of a fictional character (a representation of the pinnacle 4channer) or if this was just a self insert was bogging me and preventing me from taking it in as i would anywhere else.
I honestly think it is a good description of a person that needs to tone down his anime focus and start living his life. I hope this isn't you, anon. If it is - go outside. It's time to grow up.

Still is well written. It gave me the right feel.

And please don't take this as a critique of anime. I love NGE but i've watched it two or three times. Not 2-300. It's a question of amount, not type.

[Anonymous No.19157112]

>>19156482
Just because you can reduce the works of people more successful than you down to a single sentence does not make you are any less pathetic for writing the line
>King Arthur casted the [FIREBALL]: CRITICAL DIRECT HIT!!! 574,641 damage!!!
>King Arthur Leveled up!!!
>King Arthur learned [FIREORB] !!!
If all you care about is money go draw fursmut.
If you actually have even the smallest shred of a hope that you are going to create some masterwork out of this then killing yourself might be a better use of your time.

[Anonymous No.19157122]

>>19157112
>fursmut
Correction, if you want western audience, make furry smut, if you want asian audience, don't do that.

[Anonymous No.19157128]

>>19157122
Why would asians read western trash, when they produce vastly more shit themselves in their own language?

[Anonymous No.19157133]

>>19157128
Because quite a few of them are westaboos.

[Anonymous No.19157138]

>>19157122
>he doesn't know about the massive SEA audience for western furshit
Not to mention Japan has their own entire classification of fursmut. I mean it is far less offensive but still.

[Anonymous No.19157151]

>>19157138
It's the difference between humanoid animals doing jackhammer and monster girls being lewd, yes.

[Anonymous No.19157182]

>>19157151
Nah, Japan has all the horrible furry stuff you would expect from western artists. Kemono doesn't just cover monster girls with slight animal features and is nowhere near as vanilla as you are probably used to seeing.
Most of will never see it though because booru sites are generally well moderated for quality. You need to trawl about on pixiv if you want to see a loose-leaf drawing of two animal creating a vore ouroboros.
When I say Japanese fur art is less offensive I just mean the art style, not the content.

[Anonymous No.19157195]

>>19157182
If you dig deep enough, you'll find lots of twisted stuff, yes. While on the surface, west has plenty of animals having sex, while japan has monster girls.

[Anonymous No.19157226]

>>19157195
I'm not gonna flood this thread with horrible fur that I don't like just to make a point but I will say that you should go to Pixiv and type in the tags for Monster Girl and Furry and see which one is more popular and by how much.
The only reason we don't see this twisted stuff as much as we ought to is because we have a well moderated lens of Japanese art.

[Anonymous No.19157257]

>>19156091
Thanks for the criticism, I'll try to keep what you've written in mind while writing.
>All the endless harping on your character's bitterness is worthless next to one actual scene of your character behaving or thinking in a bitter way
Especially this part. I think everybody knows that showing is better than telling but I had completely forgotten it while writing, no idea why.
>It's like you're convinced that "good writing" always has esoteric words and always tries to plumb the depths of the human soul.
I don't think that I've tried to do that, to be honest.
>>19156098
Yeah, I just read it again and I understand what you mean.
>>19156255
>But again I'd like to emphasize that this passage was competently constructed on a fundamental level, very impressive if this is your first ever crit-ready piece
Yes, it's my first crit-ready passage. Thanks for the kind words but I don't think it's that good.
>>19156275
I wasn't self inserting actually.

[Anonymous No.19157262]

>>19156416
bad. you have this really banal premise and you do nothing with it but puff it up to the size of a paragraph. you fill up space with detail about the anime that you do nothing with, you try to convince me that this shit is very important with adjectives and adverbs (everything's intense and immense and purely and forever and "the very one") but at the end of the day if you replaced the whole thing with "a lonely man masturbated to anime and cried" nothing would be lost because you've failed to introduce any kind of specific insight or surprise that would justify the paragraph even existing; in fact with my replacement sentence i might be able to imagine someone worth reading about while your "expansion" into generic narcissism and self-pity kills that chance.

[Anonymous No.19157399]

>>19141294
was your work translated or did you originally write in english?

[Anonymous No.19157802]

Local schizo here. Written pre-meds!
This is what I got:

https://controlc.com/95e4669a
https://controlc.com/89ff2625
https://controlc.com/e6af8fa0

[Anonymous No.19157905]

>>19152265
>Can't wait to get back home and write some more.
Based Excited Anon.

[Anonymous No.19157959]

>>19155856
The only "joke" I think I have is one that I ripped directly from a conversation with a coworker. Every time I read it it becomes less funny, but when it happened to me the timing was so perfect I laughed about it for the entire day.
>“What are you doing?” Dick asked.
>“Leaving my umbrella out to dry,” Kyle said.
>“Why don’t you leave it inside?”
>It’ll get water all over the floor.”
>“Who cares about the floor? Aren’t you afraid it’s going to go missing?”
>“No way, it’s not like someone’s going to steal it. I mean, who doesn’t have an umbrella in Florida?”
>“I don’t.”
>“Why not?”
>“Because someone stole it.”

[Anonymous No.19158153]

>>19157399
I wrote in English.

[Anonymous No.19158260]

Old idea came up again, like it usually does when the leaves start falling. Story of an old man with a secret cave, and in the cave some paintings made in prehistoric times. Painted by another old man. Both felt out of touch with their families.
Not sure what to make of it, but it keeps coming back to me.

[Anonymous No.19158308]

>>19158260
This thread is for writers, not idea guys.

[Anonymous No.19158322]

>>19158308
I wrote 297 words of it.

[Anonymous No.19158389]

>>19158260
Parallel storylines that deal with an overarching theme and similar events despite being set several thousand years apart?

[Anonymous No.19158402]

>>19158153
do you actually live in the us? if not, did that cause any issues?

[Anonymous No.19158455]

>>19158389
I'm debating between switching between the perspectives on the fly or having the present day thing as a framing device and the caveman stuff in the middle.

[Anonymous No.19158525]

>finish writing novel's raw form
>have essentially edited it now so much I can no longer come up with anything more to edit and am sick of rereading it
>not really sure what to do next, probs will print some manuscript copies to give to friends to read in binders
>crushing indirection, isolation, loneliness begin to set in day by day that I'm not writing or working on it anymore, realizing that I used writing as escapism

[Anonymous No.19158531]

>>19158525
1. Put it aside for 2 weeks, spend that time writing other shit
2. Reread it
3. Edit again

[Anonymous No.19158587]

>>19158525
Start writing the next thing on your list then. Look into publishing. Get outside feedback. Etc.

Don't try to address your personal issues, use the avoidance of them as fuel to be a great writer like most great writers do.

[Anonymous No.19158715]

Does conflict always equal unsafe?

[Anonymous No.19158748]

>>19158715
Conflict is when a person has to make a decision, or two or more sides oppose each other and can't get to their goal without solving that. Danger is just the easiest way to create tension.

[Anonymous No.19158883]

>>19158455
I think telling the same story through both storylines, but switching perspectives every so often is a better way to do it. That way your reader isn't just starting to get invested in one story and then it suddenly switches.

[Anonymous No.19158891]

>>19158531
>never stop editing dude! your work will never be perfect!

[Anonymous No.19158897]

>>19158587
>Start writing the next thing
fucking this
some writers get hung up on just one project
>>19158525
you're a writer, work on something else

[Anonymous No.19159055]

>>19158402
I don't live in the US and it didn't cause any trouble other than having to wait months for copies

[Anonymous No.19159125]

>>19158531
>>19158891
tbqgfah the obsession around endless editing around here comes off as a way of both avoiding the fact that your work may just be shit to begin with and no amount of editing will ever make it good and also a means of procrastinating the very difficult task of sending the completed manuscript to publishers and getting rejected over and over again. If you're in the infinite editing cycle it spares you rejection of your work you poured possibly years of your lifeclock into. As well, you can keep telling yourself, "Yup, just another year polishing my turd, and it'll be gold. It's not that I'm a bad writer, it's just that ALL first drafts are terrible until they're edited for five years!" When professional authors speak to the importance of editing, a lot of anons seem to take it for a crutch to just never be done.

As well, the less structured your initial writing process is, the more editing you need, and conversely, the more structured your initial process, the less editing you'll need later. If you've frontloaded your revision process into a heavily refined planning phase at the start and rereading all along the way, you just saved yourself a shit ton of time later by doing all that work first, whereas if you free-wheel your writing as I'm sure many people here do you'll wind up with a giant mess on your plate you then need to push endless time into fixing up. It takes far more time to fix some shit that you made broken than if you'd planned it out to make it right the first time.

[Anonymous No.19159340]

Is 12 characters too many?

[Anonymous No.19159382]

>>19159340
fucking Gravity's Rainbow has around 400 characters and everybody thinks that book is incredible

[Anonymous No.19159457]

>>19159382
"Everyone" should not include /lit/
>>19159340
I had 6 major characters, 6 minor characters, 6 supporting characters, 5 gods, and 3 villains in my last series.

[Anonymous No.19159634]

Anyone else feel like they are not honest enough with their writing?

Trying to write about love but it simply does not feel real. Only been in love one time, so maybe that's the thing

[Anonymous No.19159636]

>>19159634
>Anyone else feel like they are not honest enough with their writing?
Writing?

[Anonymous No.19159662]

>>19159636
ESL go easy on me

[Anonymous No.19159696]

>>19159634
Sometimes I'm afraid of writing what I really feel from life experiences, including love. But I think that kind of authenticity is critical for good writing, even if it's ugly. Or rather especially if it's ugly

[Anonymous No.19159704]

>>19156263
it's ok. I'd change it up with the room mate bursting in being the first thing that happens and then we can see the MC think back to class earlier that day when she had corrected the teacher.
As for correcting the teacher on the subconscious vs the unconscious that's... i don't really know what you're going for so i can't say if you've failed or not. A teacher mixing those up isn't really a big deal and someone correcting them wouldn't be such a big deal. Now if our MC is impressed by someone correcting someone obiouvsly misspeaking, so be it. If you, on the other hand, want this weirdly named thomasin character to correct the teacher on something actually important i think you'll need to do some research into.... well it seems you're going with fraud, i mean freud, so i'd say look something more obsure up or something that is actually hard to interpret correctly.
Right now it seems you haven't really put the effort into actually researching freud.

Actually the only bad part about it is the first paragraph. Maybe it would be better if it wasn't first, but i honestly just dislike it.

[Anonymous No.19159709]

>>19159696
Hard to write about idealized experiences, things you never felt

[Anonymous No.19159788]

>>19159709
Why don't you write about things you have experienced?

[Anonymous No.19159883]

Okay guys I've been writing a lot of smut recently and I was wondering if any of you got any guides specifically about writing erotica.
I feel like my writings are getting less attention than others', and I'm not sure if it's because of my style or because of the story itself

[Anonymous No.19159962]

>>19159883
I read smut as sushi at first. Maybe this will give you some inspiration.

[Anonymous No.19160001]

>>19159883
Might be your female characters have too much depth. Make sure they don't talk about anything other than their desire for all night babymaking sex with (You). That and your "Ngh..."s and "Aaaahhhhh...!"s that are so popular with the kids' hentai doujins these days, because being descriptive is for people who've actually had sex.

[Sailor No.19160014]

>>19159704
No, I don't care about Freud, and no, it's not a big death to correct a teacher misspeaking. Later into the story the MC makes a big deal about correcting the teacher, thinks she made a fool out of him, but only really makes a fool out of herself. This is what's referred to as an "unreliable narrator." She's a fucked up woman, and only gets more fucked up as the story progresses.
Also, it's worth noting that this isn't the opening of the story. Pic related is. Pardon my bad Latin, I'll figure out how to write that correctly before I submit it anywhere.

Also, thanks for the feedback!

[Sailor No.19160019]

>>19160014
forgot pic

[Anonymous No.19160076]

>>19160001
what I write is read by at least 50% women, so I'd say dumping the talking and feelings is a bad idea

[Anonymous No.19160122]

>>19160019
I think "Then I would" reads better in this style of straight to the point prose as "I would then". Beginning each sentence the same way works to the juxtaposition between landscape images each sentence leads to.

[Anonymous No.19160185]

>>19140425
I'm thinking on writing a novella where the protagonist would be a dyke who voluntarily has sex with a male monster to get what she wants. She obviously doesn't like it and she will feel demeaned by it. I'm wondering if it would be weird if those two characters will gradually transform into earnest allies.

[Anonymous No.19160193]

>>19159634
Write from your heart but think critically and honestly of how relationships or the like would naturally progress. It's the same way how we can imagine advanced alien races or wonderous technology.

[Anonymous No.19160226]

>>19160185
>voluntarily has sex
Just make it rape. I cannot find anything in the real world where people exchange sex for anything but money and drugs.

[Anonymous No.19160245]

>>19160226
Well, it is subject to change, but it would be to allow access to a place or to get information. My real question is if such a relationship could progress to being to, perhaps not friends, but allies who trust each other nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.19160436]

>>19160245
Definitely, I think finding peace with an abuser (even if it's against the will of her partner) is an interesting theme.

[Anonymous No.19160496]

Good thread lads. See you in the next

[Sailor No.19160616]

>>19160122
That's a damn good tip, I'll change it to that, thank you

[Anonymous No.19160669]

/wg/, I've got a story idea in my head that I really want to write, but there's one detail I'm kind of unsure about

the story is a fantasy story set during the rise of nazi germany. Two of the main characters are settled on, being an old shyster who is secretly king solomon and the wandering jew, a golem posing as his grandson which isn't entirely wrong and a young girl made a pact with a genie to escape a pogrom and draws the other two into the plot by revealing that angels were taking part in the massacre.

The thing I'm hesitant about is I want to name the girl "Anne" and never state her last name but hint that she's Anne Frank as inspired by a certain tv show. I know I can get away with the rest of the stuff, but this seems a step in a dangerous direction

[Anonymous No.19160702]

>>19160669
I think you should go for it and damn the pressures, but if you really feel so scared, just make the character an expy or something to that.

[Anonymous No.19160769]

>>19160669
Brilliant! I'm all for escalating scenarios, and one where Anne potentially makes it out alive is hardly the worse thing you can do with her.

[Anonymous No.19160843]

>>19160669
Why affiliate yourself with a fabricated character

[Sailor No.19160854]

Welcome to page 10. Here's a new thread
>>19160852
>>19160852
>>19160852