/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.19524302]

Feminist Prompt Edition

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-form

Last Thread
>>19506415

[Anonymous No.19524311]

Give me your funny lines, /wg/. I'm building a swipe file

[Anonymous No.19524315]

>>19524311
"No one here writes"

[Anonymous No.19524321]

No one here writes

[Anonymous No.19524381]

No one here writes? No one? I find that difficult to believe. Is this not the writing general? It stands to reason such a place would have writing take place in it. Or is the name a joke? Some sort of hippie-dippie postmodernist thing?
But even absurdism is a form of reaching out to touch someone with your art, and your art is done through words. You are, in essence, writing. So why are you feeding me this line about not writing?
Look, I get it. You've got your reasons to hide. Maybe you're a beginner and embarrassed by what you perceive as a lack of quality in your work. Maybe you've legitimately got writer's block and can't really produce anything, it happens sometimes. Maybe you're like me and hiding behind the language barrier, writing in a language the people in the general can't read. Always an excuse. But you're here. You're engaged with this place. You want to write. You're thinking about it. You're working on it. Even if you have nothing to show for it, you are a goddamn writer, just a bad one, a lazy one, an unmotivated one, but you are still a writer, and you'll probably always be one.
This leaves you with a choice. What kind of writer do you want to be? The kind with unfinished pieces on his hard drive when he dies? The kind with all his inner universe left on the inside? Or maybe, just maybe, you want to be the kind of writer who works on his craft, pulls himself together and finishes something, has something to show for his dreams.
You know Ray Bradbury? Of course you do. He said that if you write just one short story a week, you'll have written 52 of them after a year, and they can't all be bad. Now a short story is just 5-10 thousand words long. 5000-10,000. Not an impossible task, surely, not with 7 days to a week, that boils down to less than 1500 words a week AT MOST.
A new year is coming. The year you could learn. The year you could write 52 short stories, that's 260,000-520,000 words in a year with so little effort per day. You can do it. Anyone can. All you need to do is make a start and keep it up. Writing isn't hard. It just takes endurance and will. You have enough of both. Because you are a writer.
52 stories a year. If you start this week, you'll be finished this time next year. Think about it. And then write.

[Anonymous No.19524385]

>>19524302
>the bruise had begun to yellow
Literally except with milf hickeys, including the complimentary makeup to conceal them.

[Anonymous No.19524397]

>>19524302
>ment
>aways
>makeup
>well stocked
>presenation

[Anonymous No.19524475]

Since we're all writing rape stories everyone now has to post their favorite rape scene. This is non-negotiable.

[Anonymous No.19524493]

>>19524397
What words would a battered house wife use

[Anonymous No.19524495]

>>19524381
Unironically kinda inspiring

[Anonymous No.19524509]

Is there any better feeling than finding prose so good that it throws you into a suicidal rage and makes you fall to your knees in awe? I don't think so.

[Anonymous No.19524513]

>>19524495
It would be if I hadn't fucked it up and written 1500 words a week rather 1500 a day.

[Anonymous No.19524520]

>>19524381
You don't have any proof

[Anonymous No.19524530]

>>19523598
>How do I force myself to start writing? I have a general idea already but I'm stuck in this perpetual state of stagnation because I'm scared that it won't turn out the way I want, which it probably won't considering that this will be the first time I try to write a story.
>I'm stuck in this perpetual state of stagnation because I'm scared that it won't turn out the way I want
This is a lie. You are stuck in a state of stagnation because you're a lazy fuck. You are rationalizing being a lazy fuck by claiming oh me oh my, my magnum opus isn't going to come out perfect on first blush. My advice: stop being a lazy fuck and stop lying to yourself.

[Anonymous No.19524556]

>>19524493
meant
always
makeup works, though make-up is more common in certain countries
well-stocked
presentation

[Anonymous No.19524591]

>>19524520

[Anonymous No.19524643]

>>19524591
Ya I post sneed gifs and jack off to traps occasionally but who doesn't???

[Anonymous No.19524750]

What advice do you have for simply trying to get ideas from the mind to the paper, should I just write a stream of consciousness piece so I can work through the ideas? I am not interested in publishing or anything like that, I just want to be able to write down some of the imagined narratives instead of playing vidya as a hobby.

[Anonymous No.19524761]

>Write book
>Show it to another writer
>They get upset I didn't write it the way they would have
I'm still self-pubbing it regardless

[Anonymous No.19524830]

>>19524761
Other writers make poor editors
>>19524750
Yes, stream of conscious works best for chewing through raw ideas first. Five-senses association also works, i.e., thinking of your five senses and writing at least one word down for each sense until you have the idea of a scene.

[Anonymous No.19524911]

>>19524750
Remember that there's more than one way to do this, you'll find a better way for yourself.
For me, it has to start from a question or image that wont leave me. Start with something like that and start asking questions and answering. If you cant answer, simplify or go to a more root question that is easier for you to answer.
Eventually, you will be asking questions about characters, settings, events, ideas, and then literary devices and prose of your story. It's a bunch of questions that you determine the answers and how you want to answer them. It can start with a bit of an outline, but some parts you may not discover until sit down and write the scene. The characters come to life the more you know them, and the basic sketch of a scene will come together. Your first draft is that sketch. The next drafts polish it with clarity, emphasis, style and more.

[Anonymous No.19524975]

>>19524830
>>19524911
thank you for the help

[Anonymous No.19524978]

>>19524750
>I just want to be able to write down some of the imagined narratives instead of playing vidya as a hobby
You and me both frend. I find that, if I have a scene in my head, I'll start writing it down and just seeing where it takes me. A lot of times, I don't get anything from it but I've written a few short stories that way.

[Anonymous No.19524987]

If anyone has any thoughts on this excerpt from my short story I'd appreciate hearing them.

[Anonymous No.19525147]

>>19524987
>sitchaton
Is that supposed to be a slang for "situation" or is that an established thing in your story?

[Anonymous No.19525553]

>>19525147
It's slang for situation, the guy is supposed to be from some undefined Ozark-y territory. Did it not come across?

[Anonymous No.19525663]

This is my homework #3 for my creative writing course. The goal was to set up a scene in which a character wants something, finds out he has a day to live, and must pick between an antidote and the thing he wants. Max 500 words.

I really struggled with this one for a few days. The first draft was over 1000 words. Had to delete large portions of text, which to my mind were to set a funny tone to the story. Some things had to be resolved in a sentence, even if they don't make much sense.

The best decision would have been to write a new story from the beginning, but at this point I feel I want to move on to the next module.

https://pastebin.com/ttTiFjas

[Anonymous No.19525741]

Like the rest of you I don’t write. Any thoughts on the last thing I wrote?
https://pastebin.com/XsMrq5E9

[Anonymous No.19525877]

>>19525663
>The goal was to set up a scene in which a character wants something, finds out he has a day to live, and must pick between an antidote and the thing he wants.
I mean, the only reasonable choice would be between my life and my family member's life. Everything else sort of very easily falls into take the antidote or save a million people sort of situation. Maybe making the MC evil and condemning millions to death would be a way to do it?

The choice in your story is more of a farce.

[Anonymous No.19525982]

Did not make it in time before the last thread died, so pasting a little comment to the Gladiator story.

Too many stylistically irrelevant repetitions. Also, be careful next time of tangling yourself up like you did while writing about the stars and windows.
Some articles seem to be missing, possibly due to the fact that you did not read the text carefully enough before posting.
czwórka plus

[Anonymous No.19526009]

>>19525741
It reads like you are the storyteller that reads the story to audience, instead of removing filters between the character and the reader.

[Anonymous No.19526033]

Are there any single words that you guys find particularly evocative by their nature? Words that just seem to have more impact that others? For me, words like "Engine" or "Silver" or "Library" feel powerful

[Anonymous No.19526131]

>>19526033
Fingers.

[Anonymous No.19526157]

>>19526033
Endemic
Sour

[Anonymous No.19526251]

>>19526009
Well fuck. The previous few chapters were supposed to read like that, more of a third person omniscient thing, but not the last chapter

[Anonymous No.19526967]

>>19525741
I knew something was wrong when you used the word "dagger" instead of "knife". Fantasy niggers should all DIE.

[Anonymous No.19527245]

>>19524987
My biggest complaint is that the dialogue is hard to follow because there are so many explanatory action tags happening. Let me (the reader) paint the picture a little bit too.

[Anonymous No.19527325]

>>19524311
I've decided the funniest phrase I have so far is "[verb] [adverb option] and pretended not to hear [pronoun]". It's so versatile and still makes me giggle.

[Anonymous No.19527331]

>>19524381
I didn't get the reference because I never played the game. What's it like? I've been gaming in my off-time after doing a public reading last week or so, and it made me feel anxious even though people laughed at my jokes and said I did well.
>>19524302
I just realised NaNoWriMo isn't useless, their website can help you keep track of what words you need a day and I get pleasure from knowing how much I'm over or under the line.

[Anonymous No.19527354]

In your own words, write on the difference between pride and ego in the sense of it being a vice or sin.
I know it's different but I can't describe it.

[Anonymous No.19527367]

>>19527354
Leggo my Eggo while I flex my ego
Sip on Prosecco, dressed up tuxedo
Sipping coffee, playing Keno in the casino
Want a lucky number, ask Mike Dino

[Anonymous No.19527466]

>>19527331
>What's it like?
It's a comfy journey through post-war Los Angeles as your cop, Cole Phelps, a goddamn war hero, rises through the ranks and is blinded by the glitz and glamour, leading to his downfall.
Would be a better game without the mandatory Rockstar shootouts but questioning people and collecting leads is a lot of fun, reminds me of Ace Attorney.

[Anonymous No.19527479]

>list of /wg/ authors pastebin
https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
If you want to be on this list then reply to this post with the site you posted your novel on and your pen name.

[Anonymous No.19527488]

>>19527479
Can you put me on?
>t. F. Gardner

[Anonymous No.19527557]

>>19527488
Sure! do you want me to link your amazon page or..?

[Anonymous No.19527566]

>>19527557
Sure! Thanks.

[Anonymous No.19527641]

Have you ever edited something you wrote before and thought;
'i dont even'

[Anonymous No.19527668]

>>19522780
Excellent post
>>19524381
Excellent shitpost.
>>19527331
Might as well not be a game and the ending is retarded, just watch it on youtube if you're interested in the story.

[Anonymous No.19527821]

Presently chopping up my very first ever manuscript. Going from 120,000 words of soft bloat to 60,000 words of lean story. It's a bittersweet feeling. Obviously there is a shitload of good material in there, but I still remember the sinking feeling when I realized I was 60,000 words into the story and the inciting event hadn't even happened yet. And kind of reflecting on my original outline and realizing I had strayed away from the clean, simple story I had set out to tell. I am now getting much closer to that story, and I think if the guy who wrote this shitheap could see the alterations I am making now, he would be relieved to see that I finally worked up the courage to make some hard choices.

My biggest mistake was refusing to admit that I had fucked up. I told myself instead that my writer's intuition had taken me down this road for a reason and spent a year trying to justify a hundred pages of backstory by changing it all into set-up for huge emotional pay-offs in the second half. I am crafting a rich world of transcendental depth, just like East of Eden, I told myself. The really frustrating part is that on this round of cutting, I am still keeping all of that shit, but instead I now realize that I don't need to show a side-character having a conversation with their parents which demonstrates a clear lack of parental affection, hence laying the ground for her skillful manipulation by the main antagonist three chapters later, if I want the reader to buy that the antagonist is manipulative. And she certainly doesn't need some kind of weird suppressed lesbian attraction subplot, and I have no clue why I thought that would enrich the plot in any way. Leading to my next point:

And a huge part of what I've learned, having gone on to do other manuscripts since this one, is that you don't necessarily need to cram every hot-button topic and subtle thematic symbol or merchandising opportunity you conceive into your very first novel. There will be other novels.

I'm sure I read tons of shit like this when I was halfway through the rough draft for the first time, four years ago, and I probably thought "whatever dude that's you, I'm weaving an intricate web of betrayal with over a dozen POVs, this story deserves that level of patience" but maybe some other writer will be spared my frustration and heartbreak and self-loathing.

[Anonymous No.19527868]

>>19525663
>rests of food on the floor
this is possibly the most obtuse wording to describe uneaten food that you could have chosen
>Delighted as he was, [he] had
>ever let[ting] it go
>hints of it
personally I would use "hints about it"
>spend my last savings on
personally... "the last of my savings on"
>Lost in thought, [he] recalled his journey
>but combining [them] with alcohol
>his consciousness snapped, and [he] found himself in darkness.

>Waking up next day, the first words he heard were[,] “After such damage to your liver, it's unlikely you get to see another day[,]” by [from] his doctor, next to a hospital bed. The words shattered him: now he would never finish the book he was just about to start.
This part is pretty awkward. "Day" and "words" used twice.
I couldn't give less of a fuck about colons so I don't know if you used it correctly


That will be $3.50 for proofreading your homework sir. I will assume in good faith that you left the mistakes to stay under the word count. Overall a retarded story for a retarded prompt with a retarded arbitrary word cap. I hope the rest of the course is more rewarding for you but I'm glad I was never subjected to bullshit like this.

[Anonymous No.19527878]

>>19527821
Autism speaks. It's time to listen.
Good job anon, proud of you. Don't delete the excised content though, unless you need to for psychological reasons.

[Anonymous No.19527886]

>>19527821
Ah, a genre writer still yet.

[Anonymous No.19527907]

>>19527354
Pride: a spook
Ego: a spook

[Anonymous No.19527977]

>>19527878
>Don't delete the excised content though, unless you need to for psychological reasons.
I still have the original manuscript printed up and sealed inside a manilla envelope. For the last three years I considered it my most precious document and kept it next to my SS card and birth certificate, in case of fire.

The main story is dope and the stuff I am deleting is well-written, just very dragged out and repetitive and unnecessary to any of the real suspense or tension in the second half. Imagine if there was a version of Lord of the Flies that started three days before the crash and featured each character having long flashbacks to their most formative moments while also engaging in dialogues with their parents and peers wherein they take moderate-opposite positions criticizing contemporary English culture before they left for the island.

[Anonymous No.19528008]

Is it possible to make hidden messages in a book or story? Could you make some esoteric reference that only the most dedicated reader could make out? I want to add "hidden messages" or "easter eggs" (for a lack of a better word) in a book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_(media)

[Anonymous No.19528092]

>>19528008
I do it all the time in everything I write. However, I only place them there for my own pleasure. .

So do it as much as you'd like, but don't get tacky and don't let it ruin the flow and grade of your book.

[Anonymous No.19528141]

If you read manga and watch anime, your brain is probably fried to a point its impossible to write well (to any proper standards anyways).

[Anonymous No.19528199]

>>19528008
>linked to the fucking wiki page for easter eggs
good lord

[Anonymous No.19528226]

Why can't I leave my STEM job for a bit, do a uni course with Creative Writing, use those two years to hone my craft, and then, if writing doesn't work out, I can join the STEM field again?

[Anonymous No.19528237]

>>19528226
Why don't you keep your STEM job and write during your free time you little fucking nigger who can't think for himself. You probably should not be writing for the rat that you are. What are the chances a random lurker in a Tibetian basketweaving forum will make it writing books? Chances are fucking slim. Not only will you lose your job, you are never getting a new one after a ridiculous >1 year pause in between. You have no skill and you shouldn't write. No one here writes.

[Anonymous No.19528250]

>>19528237
kek based

[Anonymous No.19528315]

Just finished my first draft of my first novel which I'm pretty pleased about. 75000 words. Took me long enough.

Before I printed it off to go through line by line I thought I'd run it through Microsoft Word's Editor to check for any spelling or grammatical errors. Was a bit bemused at finding that in addition to these, Microsoft Word Editor now has an 'inclusiveness' section which wanted me to:

-Change 'the disappearing man' to 'the disappearing person' on account of gender bias
-Change 'men and women' to 'people' to ensure gender neutrality
-Change all uses of the word 'Mrs' to 'Ms' on accounts of gender bias
-Change 'crone' to 'older lady' on account of age bias

Needless to say I accepted none of those changes. Absolute fucking clownworld.

[Anonymous No.19528321]

>>19528315
The way you wrote all of this shows that your novel writing procedure is shit and ignorant of all basic things. No, I'm not going to elaborate.

[Anonymous No.19528336]

>>19528321
it is amazing the amount of hubris “writers” are capable of.

I met this guy within my social circle who would coyly shill the fact that he was writing a novel every chance he got. And when he sent me an excerpt, it was absolute fucking schlock. I wrote better in 9th grade.

[Anonymous No.19528344]

>>19528321
Cool story anon. Show novel. What, you haven't written one? Damn - guess your opinion is worthless to me then.

Also, fucking kek you think I'd write my novel with as little care and structure as firing off a random post on 4chan.

[Anonymous No.19528458]

>>19528336
Why haven't you then? You're like the fat fuck that lurks on /fit/ and criticises deadlift forms whilst not having set foot in a gym since high school. Too insecure to actually try for fear of failure, desperately criticising all around him in a sad attempt to mollify the pain of inaction. i'm going to give you some advice even though I don't think you'll ever take it. Get off 4chan, reddit, and any other lit/writing communities you might currently be lurking in. Use that time to create something instead, and then put it out into the world. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

[Anonymous No.19528546]

>>19528458
>you can't criticize my shit writing because you supposedly don't write at all

[Anonymous No.19528565]

Royal Road's nanowrimo-knockoff event just ended. Users were asked to write 55,555 words in 5 weeks. The list top wrote over 180,000 words. In 5 weeks. That's over 5000 words every single day. How does that make you feel?

[Anonymous No.19528585]

>>19528565
That some people don't have daytime jobs and can write a ridiculous amount of useless fluff. I guarantee any of those +150k stories can be cut down to 50k

[Anonymous No.19528622]

>>19528546
Yes.

[Anonymous No.19528798]

>>19528141
You can say the same overly generalized non-committal statement regarding posting on /lit/ too.

[Anonymous No.19528807]

>>19528798
Get help:
https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Over-an-Anime-Addiction

[Anonymous No.19528865]

Just wrote this a few minutes ago, what do you think?

https://pastebin.com/dqknQpQQ

[Anonymous No.19528881]

>>19528865
Thanks for sharing it, I'll include it in my book.

[Anonymous No.19529019]

>"It ends here!"
>story continues
>"It ends here!"
>story continues
>"It ends here!"
>story continues
Is there any worse anime trope

[Anonymous No.19529036]

>>19529019
>but muh unreliable narrator!

[Anonymous No.19529133]

>>19528226
Bro I'm working in a lab, have been for years, and self taught on writing and literature on my own time. Read everyday before work and at lunch, write at home. If you are sharp and organized and learn new things at work, you can also teach yourself writing. You don't need a teacher.

[Anonymous No.19529145]

>>19525982
>Too many stylistically irrelevant repetitions
I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by this.
>Also, be careful next time of tangling yourself up like you did while writing about the stars and windows.
I don't know that I did get tangled up, as there are only two sentences that refer to them, but it's a valuable reminder regardless.
>Some articles seem to be missing, possibly due to the fact that you did not read the text carefully enough before posting.
Possibly. I wrote it past midnight in about 20 minutes and then posted it. But could you give me some examples?
>His footwork was good but his reflexes dull.
>Sometimes we use wooden swords, but Henryk is truly master of the staff.
Did you think "were" and "a" should have been used before "dull" and "master"? Because I would disagree, those were done consciously, but they were the only examples I could find.

[Anonymous No.19529174]

>>19529019
Yes, the trope that anime is still written

[Anonymous No.19529276]

>>19528565
I dont know but I'll write today after work. Just gotta grill some hotdogs first. I need to save one day out of the week for short story work, probably choosing Wednesday. For today, working on a Ch. 5 scenes I havent finished:
>moment where protag begins to lose assurance of his wife 's humanity
>a conversation that leads to backstory I already wrote
>chance to slow down narrative with settings and ideas as characters react to disasters of previous scenes and grapple with a dilemma

[Anonymous No.19529302]

>>19528565
stephen king if he royalroaded

[Anonymous No.19529362]

>>19528565
It makes me feel like I need to finish researching the East-West Schism of the church in order to get good ideas for the unintentional religious schism my brain decided to give me last night after crawling into bed

[Anonymous No.19529412]

>>19528565
I wrote a 50k word story in a week once, which is a similar word count per day though for a shorter period. Not difficult if the muses are burning inside of your heart. I probably could never do it again though, these days if I write it's usually only 2-3k a session and only once or thrice a week.

[Anonymous No.19529469]

>>19529362
You mean when the Western Church released Filioque, then Rome demanded to have the leading role and when Constantinople had the anti-icon movement crisis, Rome sold out to France's king, and in doing so also sold out all of the churches that followed it?

[Anonymous No.19529501]

>>19529469
Yeah, and the following massacre in 1183 and the sack of Constantinople in 1204 that helped pave the way for Christianity in the east to collapse and pave the way for Islam's total domination. You know, the only reason I started on this was because I had a twinkling thought last night about how to adjust a character interaction between one of my major characters (a knight for the story's church) and the bishop who frees him from wrongful imprisonment for a false treason charge.

[Anonymous No.19529532]

>>19529501
East's Christianity didn't collapse, it migrated to Slavic kingdoms via Vladimir the Red Sun, fought off the western knights with Nevsky and fought off mongols with Ruriks who founded Tsardom of Rus, and whose dynasty had ties to royalty of Eastern Roman Empire.
And one of Rurik dynasty princesses was wed into England's royalty, so they followed East's Christianity for quite a while too.

[Anonymous No.19529568]

Is discovery writing an effective technique or is it just an excuse for not outlining?

[Anonymous No.19529577]

>>19529568
Stephen King does it and he writes a lot of books. That's as far as it will take you though.

[Anonymous No.19529630]

>>19529568
Why don't you just do it and discover (heh) for yourself instead of asking a bunch of retards online

[Anonymous No.19529631]

>>19527245
Thanks anon, that’s really helpful to hear. Appreciate you taking the time to read.

[Anonymous No.19529658]

>>19529630
It’s weird how you niggers make a writing thread and then discourage any discussion of writing.

[Anonymous No.19529684]

>>19529658
It would be worth discussing if you had practiced it a bit and then came here to report and discuss the results. As it stands, the only way you'll really know is if you do it yourself, and the only thing you'll gain from asking about it is the anecdotes of others which barely matter. That's why people write before asking for critique of their examples, not before. Cope.

[Anonymous No.19529688]

>>19529568
Take an approach with a little of both. If you pants too much without understanding what drives your character and the plot, it may go nowhere. If you plot too many details, you might find better ideas as you draft and struggle to incorporate it. Each project has its challenges, to me impetus is more valuable.

[Anonymous No.19529847]

I struggle with antagonist/villain motivations so much, I think any writer's hack levels show through the best in them.

[Anonymous No.19529893]

>>19528315
lol, google docs autocorrect just made me realize that I've been saying "jipped" my entire life when I meant to say "gypped"

[Anonymous No.19529995]

I'm going to be the best horror writer of all time. Believe it.

[Anonymous No.19529997]

>>19524302
good parents, thanks.
don't be dramatic or neurotic, it was a thing of circumstance and it's already over.

-no funeral service
-no social media posting
-cash on shelf
-this tablet has been wiped and overwritten
-most possessions disposed of for easy cleaning
DO NOT RESUSCITATE
------------------


sorry about the body, if you find it and I still have a pulse I will be in a permanent vegetative state. do not resuscitate. hopefully it doesn't bloat too much and I don't defecate to the nauseating bewilderment of the unfortunate paramedics and you, or if it causes excess mess and the location of this death was less than admirable as I suspect the body might block the door or I'd collapse leaving an even more unsightly scene on the door opening.

this was not an impromptu act, it was selfish but necessary and destined to happen.
again, thanks. this is not the letter of a devout homosexual. I have no self pity and was lucky to be alive and experience what I have. it's been fine, thank the big guy I wasn't born any other animal bound for the abattoir or heavens forbid an african or a male spider! hopefully he doesn't spite me, I've accepted the magickal jew and great high priest of heaven into my heart in case of the future event he is vengeful and real.

I was originally going to write this on paper however, due to the fact my abysmal handwriting looks like it was jotted down by a man with parkinsons mid-stroke I decided against it. it's "the future" after all and it would probably look like more of a mental breakdown as opposed to something I'd been lingering on doing for a while.
sorry if any scornful thoughts ran your way, my hairline and moral compass had gone with the wind dragging with it common decency and my ability to be affable.
you were above average parents and virtuous people. I'm in high hopes this note doesn't
trigger a bout of CPTSD in the mother.

good people. good luck with future endeavours. have a nice life. don't take it so seriously.

you were objectively better people than most. reading back at this text file will probably make you think "seriously, really? how did we fuck up this much. is he really this mentally impaired. why is he so unreasonable and what is all of this facetious gibberish?" and I probably would too nevertheless, I'm finished and I've experienced everything I've wanted to and endured nothing but apathy. I also don't think I'll findany meaning in any for-profit charity scam or anything "greater than my self" which really equates to doing things for somebody who wants to use you, being "stoic" and "taking it like a man" whatever that last one means.

[Anonymous No.19530006]

>>19529997
forgot complementary image

[Anonymous No.19530065]

It's work in progress.

[Anonymous No.19530075]

>>19528321
The only major thing one could take away from that post is that anon isn't too concerned with gender inclusive california cancer, which means that you are, having taken umbrage with him, which makes you a faggot. So sorry. Maybe reddit is more your speed.

[Anonymous No.19530218]

I can only write when I'm feeling deep waves of insecurity

Which what im feeling right now

[Anonymous No.19530250]

>>19528321
I don't get it

[Anonymous No.19530267]

>>19524302
commas are a manifestation of order and the patriarchy down with punctuation

[Anonymous No.19530270]

How the fuck do I write movement and action? Writing a still scene is so easy for me, but action is like bruh wtf

[Anonymous No.19530286]

>>19524302
Many of you underestimate my writing talent and oratory.
https://youtu.be/pEAXHLgFwno

[Anonymous No.19530289]

>>19530250
He’s an asshole with nothing of value to say and only exists to discourage others. It’s like the crabs over at /ic/. Or do we call them crabs here, too? I’ve never bothered to stick around these threads long enough to pick up on such cultural aspects of /wg/ because it’s easy to tell you’re wastes of time. Go and actually write, anon. Only come back here when you hit a block and want to divert yourself for a moment by watching the monkeys fling their shit.

[Anonymous No.19530290]

>>19529847
how? a villain wants something and little things like morals don't necessarily get in the way. it doesn't matter what they want - it could be a good thing - but the key differentiating factor is they're not put off by stepping on people to get it.

[Anonymous No.19530374]

How does one get proper instruction and feedback on writing? For everything I want to improve at, I usually find a teacher and take classes, as I have found that self-teaching is neither effective nor efficient, plus it breeds bad habits. However, I'm not sure there is such a thing as "writing classes" for a hobbyist to undertake. Please help an aspiring writer out, bros.

[Anonymous No.19530428]

>>19529847
>bad guy is bad because...he just IS okay???

[Anonymous No.19530439]

>>19530374
Reading one good book teaches you more about writing than ten teachers

[Anonymous No.19530558]

>>19530439
I don't believe that. I've listened to many seminal albums but I'm still a shit guitarist. Obviously actual application and perfection of the art is necessary, and writing is no exception.

[Anonymous No.19530622]

>>19530558
I get this feeling like you should just stick with your goddamn guitar

[Anonymous No.19530624]

>>19530558
listening to someone play guitar vs reading sheet music while they play and following along with your guitar in hand are two totally different things.
>Obviously actual application and perfection of the art is necessary
practice is important. if you need a teacher to force you to practice, well, you do you

[Anonymous No.19530640]

>>19528865
I think it was a too abstract to the point where it was too impossible to follow.
>the last one she would passively, yet hopefully to the end, experience the fullest
In sentences like these, for example, I couldn't really tell what you were trying to say. Did you mean that she was hopeful she'd experience it to the fullest until the end? I know you want to say things in an interesting way but that's not worth it if the reader can't understand you.
The paragraphs themselves also felt disjointed which made it even harder to follow. This may have been what you're going for but I don't think it worked.
It sounds like you have some interesting ideas but I think you just need to clean it up some more. Keep at it my bro.

[happiness !!a/OIDIldPy9 No.19530768]

>>19530374
Don't worry about "bad habits", it's bullshit.

Post your stories on critiquecircle, scribophile,

[Anonymous No.19530778]

>>19530270
This but inverse. How do I write still scenes that aren't landscapes. Do I just describe everything I can think of and provide commentary on it? Isn't that bad writing?

[Anonymous No.19530784]

>>19530778
read infinite jest

[Anonymous No.19530798]

>>19530768
> critiquecircle, scribophile,

I'll look into these. Good feedback is what I need. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.19530821]

>>19525663
gonna have to go with with what >>19527868 said at the end of his post. This is such a stupid assignment in my opinion. The fact you are limited to such a specific set of parameters with only 500 words really makes me think the professor found this on like tumblr or some shit and just made that their own assignment for the class.

[Anonymous No.19530848]

>>19530374
There are creative writing classes that you can take a community college, there are (expensive) workshops run by published authors, finally, there are MFA programs. I think the best source of feedback is probably some sample of your intended audience--beta readers--but they can only point out when something is wrong, not really give you advice on how to fix it. Crowd-sourced critique works if the writers that critique you are representative of the audience you're writing for. Otherwise it can be a crapshoot. It's also tedious and slow to navigate the token economy all these websites use.

[Anonymous No.19530852]

>>19530778
I read a Eudora Welty short story called "the Key" recently and very little happens. Despite that, the description really brought me into the story. There is so much feeling that can go into a room of people sitting still. No one says a single word the entire story, but a deaf couple communicate with eachother.

[Anonymous No.19530898]

>>19530778
In the Art of Fiction by John Gardner (first book on the OP), he has a description exercise that you might find helpful. The general pattern of the exercise is to describe the setting from the viewpoint of a specific character in a specific situation. e.g A barn as described by a grieving father. Or a sunrise as described by a woman who's just left her abusive husband. The key, according to Gardner, is to reject the first things that come to mind because they will tend to be cliched. The hack mind leaps to images of decay or death, but if you persist better, "truer" images will come.

That said, I think the modern taste has veered away from description as a vehicle for emotion (because of film probably), and it's really only seen in literary fiction. In fantasy and sci-fi its more about creating a world for the reader to escape into, so the objective is more about treading the line between familiarity and novelty.

[Anonymous No.19531021]

>>19530898
>A barn as described by a grieving father
THAT’S where this came from…a while back there were a few folks in /wg/ and /ffa/ discussing this like a flash prompt and I could not figure out where it originated.

Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.19531074]

>>19530558
have you tried actually playing the guitar, and not simply playing at playing it?

[Anonymous No.19531391]

>>19527331
Here’s your ‘oh wow oh you did a public reading??? Whoa!!’ response that you are craving

[Anonymous No.19531559]

>A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

Is this book a meme?

My grammar is really horrible and I'm struggling with page 13.

[Anonymous No.19531593]

How do you "write for yourself" when you know what's going to happen? Or when you don't care about what's going to happen, and are content with a still-life description of some scene?

It's a non-starter, for me. The only way I could do it is if I wrote with someone else in mind, in which case I commence to thinking of ways to condescend to the general public. Otherwise it would just become an orgy with nothing resembling a plot. Why would a plot exist if not to tantalise someone else?

It confuses me that so many eminent writers recommend writing "for yourself" - are they just being disingenuous? Was it all some freakish coincidence that they wrote a coherent story that doesn't have have any personal wish-fulfilment in it, and which pivots on the assumption that the expected reader - who is totally the author by the way - doesn't know what is coming next? If these people lived on a desert island, would they get up at 7am sharp, iron their shirt, and making sure to be clean shaven? I don't believe it for a minute.

[Anonymous No.19531603]

>>19531593
>How do you "write for yourself" when you know what's going to happen?
You know each and every detail? No, you don't. You can know all the big sort of milestones in what you're doing but there is a lot of nitty gritty which, when you work through it, will pleasantly surprise you. And then you'll make some changes here and there and the place you thought you were going is where you're headed anymore.

[Anonymous No.19531652]

>>19531593
>How do you "write for yourself" when you know what's going to happen?
If you give me a premise, I visualize an ending and start writing at some random juncture and find my way to that destination. It requires a much heavier rewrite than a planned story, but it's way more fun and feels like you're living it.

[Anonymous No.19531761]

Any tips for having interest thoughts lol or keeping them in mind. It feels like tbey come to me at random and never when Im writing

[Anonymous No.19531792]

>>19528565
I write like 250-500 words a day lmao

[Anonymous No.19531840]

>>19531761
I always take that as a sign that my environment or something around me is preventing me from thinking clearly, i.e. I'm distracted. When your subconscious takes control it has ways of drawing all the lines for you while you think about other things. Then I just pen them in a notebook I keep in my pocket at all times or on my phone

[Anonymous No.19531861]

>>19531761
Keep a journal and write them down when they do occur

[Anonymous No.19531872]

>>19531652
Yes this is how I do it and it is very satisfying

[Anonymous No.19531885]

>>19531593
Yeah I agree with you anon. I think a lot of the writers who say that (and I'm not sure that it is writers, so much as "writing gurus") are being disingenuous. People write for a lot of reasons: money, fame, glory, madness, but "for themselves" feels like a chestnut to cope with failure.

But then I think of something like Moby Dick. Melville wrote it and published it to no acclaim and maybe even knew that it would turn out that way from the beginning. It was just too odd of a novel for its time. Still, he wrote it. Who did he write it for, if not for himself? (Hawthorne maybe, they had a close correspondence while he was writing it).

As to your original question, I think that it really comes down to a kind of game that you play with your audience. You know what's going to happen but you also know--or at least have an idea of--what the reader is expecting at any given point in your story. The game is mostly about playing around with these expectations--some of which come even before the reader opens your book (e.g genre)--and ordering your work in a way that is most aesthetically pleasing or suspenseful or emotional. To give an example from a book I'm reading right now: there's point in David Copperfield where David runs away to his aunt's house. His aunt decides to write a letter to David's abusive stepfather informing him where David is. David's stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, decides to come and take David back. Dickens knows that, in the end, his aunt is going to take custody over David. He also knows that the reader expects his aunt to return David to his stepfather. And because he knows that expectation, he plays it up. He plays up David's fear. He has the aunt keep silent about her plans. When Murdstone arrives, Dickens makes it clear that he's wants to take David back with him and that the abuse will continue. We also know from the beginning of the book that the aunt doesn't particularly like David (she wanted a niece not a nephew). He helps us expect one thing only reverse it with something else.

So in a certain sense, the game only begins once the author knows what's going to happen, because only then can he start thinking about how to convince the reader to expect the opposite. Obviously this requires keeping a reader in mind, but it's more of an abstraction, a shadow-boxer. And it never devolves into condescension because in a certain sense you're playing the game with yourself. And I think the same was true of Melville and Moby Dick.

[Anonymous No.19531914]

>>19524761
>They get upset I didn't write it the way they would have
This is why I'm super worried about finding a local writing group

[Anonymous No.19531923]

>>19524987
>Dungas
>Caelan
Fucking dropped

[Anonymous No.19531928]

>>19531872
God that looks like absolute trash.

[Anonymous No.19532013]

>>19531914
All my characters are black pilled and I dont want to share it. Like right now I'm writing a section where a charcter reflects before a battle that he never had any real goals or ambitions.

[Anonymous No.19532373]

Thoughts on this as an opening paragraph? It's still the first draft but I feel like parts of it, especially the first two sentences feel disjointed and I can't tell why because I've been looking at it too long.

>Pete sat looking out across the vast expanse of the farm from his porch as he had done each day since he bought the simple little house he now called home. The first green sprigs of the year were sprouting out before him on either side of the dirt and gravel driveway that led back down towards to the road. Both Pete and the sprigs sat idle, one watching the other sitting still in their place as the Sun moved upwards just as slowly into the late-morning sky watching over the sprigs, Pete, and the whole of the Earth surrounding them. The music of wind chimes, lightly played by the occasional soft breeze, and the occasional song bird were the only sounds to be heard for a mile in any direction. These were to be known as the good times.

[Anonymous No.19532384]

>>19532373
For what it's worth my goal with the opening is to portray the main character as having a calm, idyllic life and to place a general idea of setting, and obviously, to hook people.

[Anonymous No.19532441]

>>19532384
I think it accomplishes that. Don't like "the whole of the Earth surrounding them" that much

[Anonymous No.19532531]

>>19532441
What in particular?

[Anonymous No.19532561]

>>19532531
It just sounds awkward. I try to avoid odd phrasing like that and prefer being succinct.

[Anonymous No.19532616]

I did it.

[Anonymous No.19532622]

You do realise that self-publishing is vain and stupid and vanity publishing is a death sentence, whilst traditional publishing is uber cucked (especially Big Five) and small presses are usually just autistic?

[Anonymous No.19532625]

Does anyone know any resources for learning when to use certain prepositions?

e.g what is the difference between:
>We were stationed in the village of Carentan
and
>We were stationed at the village of Carentan

[Anonymous No.19532771]

>>19532625
We were stationed in the village of Carentan.

We were stationed at the garrison (or the castle, or the camp) on the west side of the village of Carentan.

[Anonymous No.19533184]

Well bros it's happening. I've got Tom Sharpe's Wilt downloaded for my Christmas road trip. What else should I read for maximum understanding of funny?

[Anonymous No.19533924]

>>19531559
I've never studied a higher learning English textbook but this one seems pretty good. I feel bad for people who struggle with basics like grammar since it's always come so naturally to me. I can just tell if something is right or wrong based on how it sounds in my head. Yet my definition of right and wrong is challenged by this assertion:

>Perhaps the most important failing of the bad usage books is that they frequently do not make the distinction we just made between STANDARD VS NON STANDARD DIALECTS on the one hand and FORMAL VS INFORMAL STYLE on the other. They apply the term 'incorrect' not only to non-standard usage like the [b] forms in [ 1 ] (I done it myself) but also to informal constructions like the [b] forms in [2] (He was the one she worked with). But it isn't sensible to call a construction grammatically incorrect when people whose status as fully competent speakers of the standard language is unassailable use it nearly all the time. Yet that's what (in effect) many prescriptive manuals do.
This is an important consideration for writing stories. It's advantageous to know which version is the correct one to use in the context of what you're writing at the time.

>Often they acknowledge that what we are calling informal constructions are widely used, but they choose to describe them as incorrect all the same. Here's a fairly typical passage, dealing with another construction where the issue is the §3 Grammatical terms and definitions 5 choice between I and me (and corresponding forms of other pronouns):
>[3] Such common expressions as it's me and was it them? are incorrect, because the verb to be cannot take the accusative: the correct expressions are it's I and was it they? But general usage has led to their acceptance, and even to gentle ridicule of the correct version.
Fucking kek. English moment.
>cont'd

[Anonymous No.19533925]

>>19533924
>>19531559
>Grammar rules must ultimately be based on facts about how people speak and write. If they don't have that basis, they have no basis at all. The rules are supposed to reflect the language the way it is, and the people who know it and use it are the final authority on that. And where the people who speak the language distinguish between formal and informal ways of saying the same thing, the rules must describe that variation too.
A most logical supposition, and probably one of the most important things to mark and remember. This essentially means that you can study grammar all the time by paying real attention to the books you're reading, which is probably how I developed my own sense of grammar, now that I think about it.

How horrible is your grammar? You could provide an example if you wish. Maybe you just think it's horrible because it's non standard or informal (however, if it's ebonics, it is horrible). And what are you struggling with? Are you ESL?
I don't have time to read all of it up to page 13 but what exactly about it is the issue?

[Anonymous No.19533934]

>>19533925
Translator's note: I skipped to page 13 and read it as well.

[Anonymous No.19534090]

[Anonymous No.19534092]

>>19534090
a lot of your commas are awkward

[Anonymous No.19534104]

>>19534092
still not sure how much awkwardness I actually want, but I think of shirley jackson and figure I can experiment with putting them places for effect even if they don't quite work at first, so thanks

[Anonymous No.19534174]

>>19531391
Thanks, anon. Your cynicism keeps me going.

[Anonymous No.19534190]

>>19524302
I get such immense joy from describing and writing about the observations I have about people and nature. For example, I just described a character the same way I noticed that my mother looks when speaking to my grandmother. I love it. It feels like I’m immortalizing my loved one.

[Anonymous No.19534198]

>>19534104
I read it and instantly did not give a fuck about anything that was going on.

fix ur shit

[Anonymous No.19534209]

>>19530778
My perspective is, stop considering it "describing" and start considering it "creating." That is, the very core purpose should be to invoke the feeling you want in your reader, not to give them a scene they can picture. Piece by piece, every word should add deliberately to the image in their head, the same way an artist can draw your attention to one object in a scene and then another, and another, rather than you seeing everything at once. And remember here that words have more than meaning, definition. They have sounds. That's part of the invocation, also.

[Anonymous No.19534222]

>>19531885
I shouldn't have said "so many eminent authors" when I only had Nabokov in mind, but it does seem like a common sentiment among post-Romantic writers.

What I'd like is to have some narrow subset of the general public to write for, but I wouldn't know where to look for such a thing. Maybe I'm dwelling too much on the reader's characteristics and should just imagine that some unknown person is looking over my shoulder.

[Anonymous No.19534228]

>>19524302
How can I find people to test my literary fiction? Just to help sort out kinks and get various reader perspectives/feedback

[Anonymous No.19534248]

I have read the Simian Deluxe and would like to congratulate everyone who participated, some were great and I wouldn't call any outright bad. Made me realize just how far behind I still am in terms of skill.

[Anonymous No.19534319]

>>19532622
Yes.

[Anonymous No.19534354]

>>19534248
Glad you enjoyed it, anon, you should give it a try!

FYI, while /ffa/ is between official volumes, we’re joining /wg/ for those who want to practice writing and discussing flash fiction!

How it works:
1. Choose a prompt (full list of unused prompts below)
2. Write a story 1,000 words or less based on the prompt
3. Post it in /wg/ with the tag [for FFA]
4. Leave a new prompt to add to the list

>Unused prompts
A closet full of skin suits
A dating app with extraordinary risks and rewards
The academy of Paranormal Life Coaching
This will be India in 5 minutes
What? I can’t hear you!
A first responder who summons tornadoes
A grizzled detective goes undercover on 4chan
You reap what you sow
"Please don't forget what I told you"
The location the GPS took them to seems to be a little off
A tapestry constantly being added to
Murder in the Cathedral's sanctuary
The cellar houses wine and... bodies?
Finding a one-of-a-kind book in the library stacks
A co-worker has a hidden talent
A shut-in decides to go trick-or-treating
The best way to die on a dessert island
Horrible timing for a pregnancy announcement
A game of twister at a nursing home
There is a ship museum in Utah
A librarian goes blind every Thursday
Someone crashes a child’s birthday party
POV of an alley cat in Istanbul
An unusual item at the bottom of the sea
Pina coladas and long walks in the rain
A gateway opens between hell and earth
a slasher villain's first date
An elevator that doesn't work
A flooded castle, sinking into the mud >In progress

[Anonymous No.19534383]

Wrote this to practice writing in a simpler style.

Near Winter’s end, a father travelled through a barren land under a hot sky with his daughter, where they came to a farm. Their skin sunk around their eyes that looked at the fallow fields. Over the ridges, their feet scuffed against the dry earth, towards a wooden house. His daughter gazed at the ankle-high clouds of dust they kicked up. She tripped and fell onto her stomach, where the upset dirt irritated her throat. Coughing in the furrow, she did not attempt to stand.

When he picked her up, she lay her head on his sharp shoulder and draped her arms over them.

At the house stood an old man with a rifle. A small boy peeking from behind his legs was kicked inside. Beside the house, a thin horse limped round in its pen. Laying his daughter down, the father approached with his palms held up slightly. He asked for food. There was non. He begged. The farmer looked at the girl in the dirt. The two men spoke. The farmer nodded to the girl. Her father turned. She looked like a fallen tree branch. He walked over to his daughter and lifted her in his arms. Asleep, she wheezed softly. The father looked beyond the farm. The nicker of the horse died in the empty land. He carried her towards the house under the farmer’s eyes.

He lay her on a dirty bed. The boy watched from the corner. The father brushed the hair from her sweaty brow.

The old farmer watched until the father disappeared on the horizon.

[Anonymous No.19534453]

Just started my ad campaign for the last five years of my life. Can't wait for this thing to drop.
>I spent time in the megaslums tracking bounties across South East Eurasia. Protected politicians that don’t even hide their exploitation. I have confirmed kills on terrorist cell captains and freedom fighter heros and the like. My very first mission I gut shot a social activist protesting against the Hong Kong concentration camp systems. Still nothing has deeply upset me the way seeing slaver cities like this does. The beautiful mansions, opulence and bountiful fields of cash crops will always be spit shined shit when you have to ignore the children getting fucked in breeding pens.

[Anonymous No.19534596]

I can't stop writing about penises. Everything always involves a penis. The plot circles back to the narrator's penis. A descriptive passage, in which I really stretch my legs and explore the rhythm and flow of language to the best of my ability, is nearly inevitably capstoned with some anatomical banality. I don't know how to stop myself. Penises and penis imagery are baked into literally everything I write. The title of my book, I now realize, itself contains a reference to phallic imagery. What do I do? I feel trapped by my obsession with cocks. I'll write entire sections of rigorously obfuscated, coherent philosophy, and its overarching point, the one single element which ties everything together is the context of how it relates to the male anatomy. Heartfelt moment? Yeah, looks like a great time for a penis interlude. War scene? Better remind my reader that my narrator's cock is gone. The whole FUCKING PLOT is that the narrator's lost his penis and is trying to find it.

What the fuck do I do?

[Anonymous No.19534633]

>>19534090
Not bad. Perhaps slightly cliche in the second paragraph but overall nice

[Anonymous No.19534647]

>>19534596
Unironically have sex. Or maybe even gay sex, lots of it.

[Anonymous No.19534648]

>>19534090
When "write what you know" goes wrong. The stack of saccharine/bittersweet retrospective romances dripping in that very specifically inoffensive, autumnal rose must fill the desks of every single mid-tier MFA professor who's ever lived... and because they too "write what they know," on the top of those resks lay mostly-interchangeable stories about college professors who date students, do drugs, cheat on their wives, etc., ad nauseam.

Take some fucking risks. Experiment a bit. Say something worth saying.

[Anonymous No.19534649]

>>19534647
Are you trying to flirt with me? I'm not gay.

[Anonymous No.19534660]

>>19534596
Post a couple paragraphs.

[Anonymous No.19534667]

>>19534453
this sucks

[Anonymous No.19534688]

>>19534453
>>The beautiful mansions, opulence and bountiful fields of cash crops will always be spit shined shit when you have to ignore the children getting fucked in breeding pens.

[Anonymous No.19534692]

>>19534660
Jeffrey wants to scream but doesn’t know why. He wants to reach his fingers into his hair and tear it from his skull, to fling it in bloody clumps down to the ground, where eventually the follicles might take root and sprout slyly between the grassblades, like a jew walking down Main Street, to be stomped down upon first notice into a paste—a hairy, bloody paste—beneath the worn heel of his catholic schoolboy’s shoe. The feeling soon passes, after around seven seconds.

“I’m Jeffrey.”

“Well there, Jeffrey. I’m Theodosius Quartese Hǫfnun,” says Theo, and reaches out a brown hand. Jeffrey reaches out to take it. The men shake hands for a time beneath the lime tree as behind them the sky darkens and darkens. The men sit beneath a lime tree at a precipice. It begins raining. The precipice overtakes them. The rain makes soft sounds as it deflects off leaves. Raindrops land on Jeffrey’s head. They consolidate and run down his forehead. He doesn’t wipe them off.

“What does it mean,” says Jeffrey.

“What does what mean.”

“What does it mean,” as if meaning were more than just a passing phenomenon in strict subservience to circumstance. The rain’s really going now and the wind’s kicked up. Lightning alights from behind the Santa Barbara mountains and briefly limns them in transient halos of monochrome. The world is all a’mix with the blacks and whites and the inbetweens and little else save the small profanities dotted ephemeral across the landscape like puny protests against the permanent night which lurks unseen, unseeable, and beyond ken of anyone or whatever; a billboard here, on whose illuminant placarding peeks through the image of a man from beyond the sheets of falling rain—the men are still shaking hands—he stands head-and-shoulders on a field of the only blue in sight—thank Light, fuck Dark—and he’s going to drink his goddamn cup of SneedBucks Coffee—and you’d be goddamned if you didn’t crave one yourself (the rain’s filter distorts the light and gives his eye an obscene twinkle)—; some neon signage there in advertisement of the pleasures of FLESH PARADE PENIS PUMPS. Who wouldn’t want a bigger cock or clit?

“I’ve always wanted a bigger cock,” says Theodosius, apropos of something or another. The men stop shaking hands and walk off into the dark and the rain and the cold.

[Anonymous No.19534700]

>writing my thingie about the guy and the prostitute he hired for the day
>he tells her about some guy who hurt him as a kid for cussing at him
>she makes him go stick gum in that guy's lock while she takes a shit in his mailbox
I didn't expect this to happen.

[Anonymous No.19534706]

>>19534700
This is the quality comedy I come here to farm ideas from. Isn't it amazing what your brain will decide is the natural flow of events?

[Anonymous No.19534715]

>>19534706
Why do you take other people's ideas? Don't you have any ideas of your own?

[Anonymous No.19534750]

>>19534706
It's a magical thing.

[Anonymous No.19534798]

>>19534715
Why wouldn't you take inspiration from other people's ideas? A whole wealth of human knowledge and perspective is out there and your own ideas can be enhanced by them

[Anonymous No.19534824]

>>19534798
Which one is it? Are you "taking inspiration," or are you "farming" ideas?

[Anonymous No.19534831]

I don't steal any of your ideas because I only see shit ideas here.

[Anonymous No.19534863]

>>19534706
>I come here to farm ideas
It's this more than anything that's shitty. The way you phrase this, it sounds like you take without giving anything back. Then, when confronted, you spout some fantastical platitudes about the wealth of human knowledge and taking inspiration from it. I'm sure it's great when it all flows one direction.

[Anonymous No.19534884]

Hi /wg/, new here, haven't been lurking long. What programs do you use to write? I've been using Scrivener but it's a bit... off, for me. Are there any alternatives that you personally really enjoy using? If so, what are they?

[Anonymous No.19534967]

>>19534884
I use Wordpad, but I may switch to Word. I use two monitors, one for writing, one for notes.

[Anonymous No.19534975]

>>19525663
what cretaive writing course, if you dont mind me asking

[Anonymous No.19535034]

>>19534884
Scrivener. I used ywriter, but the compile feature in scrivener is a necessity when formatting manuscripts/epubs, so it's either scrivener or hours in word tweaking things.

[Anonymous No.19535093]

>>19534975
It's from Coursera, it's called The Craft of Plot

[Anonymous No.19535142]

How about utilizing Jungian Active Imagination technique for fiction writing? Is it doable? Should i do it?4mdnv

[Anonymous No.19535177]

>>19534863
He's just trolling. Ideas are meaningless on their own.
Case in point: the people who have hundreds of ideas and not one book.

[Anonymous No.19535258]

Self-publishing bros.... it's over

[Anonymous No.19535291]

>>19535258
Where did you advertise?

[Anonymous No.19535301]

How do I cope with the fact I'm ngmi?

[Anonymous No.19535302]

>>19535291
Amazon, I think I priced too high in the beginning

[Anonymous No.19535303]

>>19535258
I read yesterday that most publishers don't even market your book and rely on your pre established audience and your own marketing talents to market the book for them. Then they take a huge cut anyways. I feel totally demoralized thinking about the publishing world now.

[Anonymous No.19535307]

>>19535301
You convert all your pain and frustration into a heros journey character arc and become the next JK rowling

[Anonymous No.19535312]

>>19535303
Thinking about reviewing books on youtube to extend my reach

[Anonymous No.19535317]

>>19535302
Don't worry about losing a bit of money on advertising. You're not just buying sales through that, you are buying recognition. Gardner probably lost money on his 4chan advertising campaign over the course of it but built word of mouth over time. $34 is nothing for 170k impressions (even if only about 30k actually even saw your ad).

[Anonymous No.19535324]

>>19535312
I remember a guy who reviewed RR stories on youtube.

[Anonymous No.19535326]

>>19535317
Ya the sales and clicks are saddening but I was mostly kidding and laughing at myself

[Anonymous No.19535349]

>>19535258
It's not over... BUT

people who make a living from self-publishing novels publish frequently. For example, romance authors publish a novel per week.

[Anonymous No.19535357]

>>19535303
WTF I'm not an advertising agency

[Anonymous No.19535359]

>>19535349
Absolutely disgusting (Good to know)

[Anonymous No.19535361]

Well boys, I wrote this sci-fi short story a while back for a competition but didn't win jack shit. I personally thought it was a banger, please critique, I think the plot is good enough that i'll eventually want to expand it to a novel.
That said, this is essentially just a second draft I banged out in four days without any feedback or beta readers, would really appreciate people telling me what works and what doesn't work.
https://pastebin.com/fNkwhGAc

[Anonymous No.19535392]

>>19535357
Sorry small author, but if you want to make it in the big world, you have to write, edit, query, publish, and market it all yourself just like the good old days. What do we do? We print and ship the books, staple our name on it and collect 75% of all sales and drop you if you make a mean comment.

[Anonymous No.19535413]

>>19535392
Good grief!

[Anonymous No.19535414]

>>19535303
A publicist is more what anon needs. Believe it or not, book sales is still mostly determined by word of mouth. Online ads dont move the needle nearly as much for a book as it does with a consumer item like toothpaste.

[Anonymous No.19535429]

>>19535361
>the destroyer of worlds
Anon pls, at least put a creative twist on it, this has been used in everything and would immediately put me off reading it because I'd assume it was a WH40K story or worse.
>gargantuan black leviathan
Feels redundant, as leviathan implies a monstrous size.

I only read the next 2-3 paragraphs but you have lots of direct ADJECTIVE /noun/ and /noun/ ADJECTIVE pairings, maybe look through and see if there are better ways to fit them more inconspicuously into your sentences.
>The VACUOUS /command center/ was DARK, its TWO DOZEN /inhabitants/ DEAD SILENT. There was a FOREBODING /tension/ in the air, /breaths/ BATED and expectant, the room devoid of the OMNISPRESENT /buzz/ required to coordinate an armada to wage interstellar war.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with pairings like that, as they're a necessary part of sentences, but there are smoother ways to implement them. Maybe try to think of ways to make the reader feel like the inhabitants are silent and anxiously anticipating something without stating it directly.

[Anonymous No.19535446]

>>19535414
Oh I believe it. I had a substitute teacher once way back in high school and he said he got the word out for his books by printing flyers and sticking them in the pages of popular books commonly checked out at libraries and bought at book stores.

[Anonymous No.19535484]

>>19535429
Thanks anon, how do you recommend improving prose?
The title ties in directly to the subject matter of the story, the subject of which is literally destroying planets, I can't think of a better fit than that.

[Anonymous No.19535518]

>>19524302
How can I expand my abilities? I write poetry as a bit of a hobby but it seems like I can ever produce depressing material. I'm hoping to publish my material one day, even if just self-published but I don't want to be a one trick pony. I want to be able to write about anything, any emotion.

[Anonymous No.19535520]

>>19535392
The question is how do they get so powerful in the first place?

[Anonymous No.19535523]

>>19535520
Oh you know, long noses reach the furthest.

[Anonymous No.19535569]

>>19535520
Large supply of authors with a very narrow pool to target in an arguably low fund field means they can be picky, rape the content providers they have, and still get praised for it

[Anonymous No.19535585]

>>19535518
>How can I expand my abilities?
What would you do if you wanted to get better at playing the piano? You'd practice playing piano and listen to a lot of music, right?

[Anonymous No.19535628]

>>19535484
Destroyer of Planets, Planet Destroyer, Planet Decimator, Planet Crusher, World Crusher, End of a World, World Decimator, INTENSE POPULATION REDUCTION METHOD VIA PLANET GO BOOM idk. It's not a bad title if it's related, just horribly generic so autists like myself would probably immediately turn away and never find that out.

As for improving prose, it comes with editing and rewriting. Once the story is done, go through everything with a blank mind and try to imagine what a reader would think given only the details you're giving them.
If you're talking about generally improving prose though, emulate authors you like. Read them and think critically about each sentence as you do, how it gets across what it does, how it fits into the paragraph and into the page/chapter, how long they're taking to say something, etc.
For your particular opening sentences, I understand exactly what the scene is, but I felt nothing. There are geeks in the dark that are waiting for something, the tone is trying to be ominous but there aren't any good sensory words, no memorable descriptions or clever word pairings which make it something that sets it apart from something else. If you feel like spending time on it (or another story), a practice exercise would be to rewrite the same paragraph a number of times, forcing yourself to imagine different details and find new aspects which could convey what you want. Maybe there is a mother in that group of inhabitants which is trying to stifle a child from crying, which would simultaneously make the reader sympathetic to the inhabitants, were anything to happen to them. Maybe the buzz sounds like a bee just as its going by your ear, but it never stops, and it's only growing louder. Things like that force the reader to pull on prior experiences and it engages the imagination, which pulls you into things more than direct description.

[Anonymous No.19535654]

>>19535414
It's 100% social media these days. You need chatter on the social networks. Twitter is, regrettably, more or less essential to book publicity these days. I'm personally acquainted with one (admittedly upper class, well connected) writer, and her viability stems from having 200,000 followers on twitter. She's her own publicist. This is why, very regrettably, cultivating a social network is key to getting a writing career . The author themselves also has to be involved, engaging with whatever interested readership they can find. If someone likes your writing there's a good chance they like your mind and they want to be closer proximity to it. So you have to perform and make anyone who likes what you do feel special.

It's tragic because I very much want to be the reclusive writer type who vanishes in a cabin and remains remote and mysterious. But you have to submit to social media if you realistically want people to know you exist and do what you do. It's the only way to break through the attentional barriers which cancel out any one book from the mass of stimuli competing for their attention.

Personally I've been avoiding this because twitter disgusts me and the prospect of building a following from scratch is demoralizing. Maybe I'd sit there for weeks with a measly handful of followers and no ideas how to grow my follower-base and get discouraged.

[Anonymous No.19535668]

>>19533924
I also recommend the book Image Grammar (have to buy it unfortunately since there's no electronic version) for an alternative take on grammar that focuses on the construction of images by emulating the works of professional authors.

[Anonymous No.19535670]

>>19535654
Personally acquainted with a career writer I mean, rather than a hobbyist or undiscovered one.

[Anonymous No.19535698]

>>19535484
You may not realise it, but you're quoting Robert Oppenheimer.

>>19535654
Can't you just pay people to promote your book on Twitter?

It makes sense to have an account that can announce releases, or post clickbait exerpts, but the chattiness can be farmed out.

[Anonymous No.19535701]

>>19535484
One very quick and simple way to improve prose is to take a piece of prose that you consider good (and is generally considered good) and copy it, emulating the structure but changing the content. Start with small passages then slowly expand to longer ones. Don't just focus on one author but sample from many (an anthology is a good place to start--I'm actually thinking about creating my own anthology of instructive public domain snippets of literature that I have heavily annotated wrt how the authors wrote or might have written the respective piece, similar to the book Narrative Design but with public domain works--would anybody here be interested in such a thing?)

[Anonymous No.19535702]

>>19535698
...Also, you can just buy followers. That's not immediately useful, but it makes you look more popular than you are, which makes people more inclined to take you seriously.

[Anonymous No.19535734]

>>19535702
Apparently following people is a good way to get follow backs

[Anonymous No.19535932]

>>19535361
Too many noun-adjective pairs. Not every table has to be of a luxuriant brown, and not every control room needs to be vacuous and festooned in technicolor cum rags or whatever. Sometimes a table can just be a table. A control room can be just a room.

[Anonymous No.19536009]

>>19535361
>>19535932
Apart from prose, what do you guys think about the plot and ideas?

[Anonymous No.19536039]

>>19536009
>plot and ideas
Focus on Characters, Warhammer is what happens when you only focus on plot. All icing, no cake.

[Anonymous No.19536094]

>>19536039
>All icing, no cake.
Sure you don’t mean ‘all cake, no icing’?

[Anonymous No.19536106]

>>19535654
Twitter disgusts me too. I worry I'm not gonna make it. It's 100% a second job at minimum and a full time job at most and it's a grind against everyone else. It's not even better to die in obscurity because you'll be drowned out and forgotten now more than anytime in history.

[Anonymous No.19536107]

>>19536009
Plot and ideas are delivered by prose. Great (read: good/decent) writing is more important than the "content" because your short story may be real clever but I already dropped it because it didn't keep me hooked.

[Anonymous No.19536125]

>>19535324
It's the Wish Mountain guy who does that

[Anonymous No.19536248]

>>19536094
No lol the big plot points (icing) enhance your characters (the cake). The characters don't enhance your battles, they give them meaning and weight. Like in the webm, what is the context? Why should I care about that the space marine gets clobbered?

[Anonymous No.19536638]

Chapter 60 released
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased

[Anonymous No.19536665]

>>19536638
Sorry dude I don't read or write

[Anonymous No.19536677]

>>19536638
>Comedy
>Gore Profanity Sexual Content Traumatising content
But why?

[Anonymous No.19536728]

>>19536677
Not him but it's better safe than sorry to add them if you think you have content that falls under it. Nothing else more to it. Your fiction might get removed otherwise.

[Anonymous No.19536790]

>>19536728
This craft is infused with suffering incarnate

[Anonymous No.19536883]

>>19530065
i liked it anon :)

[Anonymous No.19536931]

>>19536677
what's wrong with black comedy as a genre?

[Anonymous No.19537122]

>>19536931
Genres are a problem, the only thing they do is market, not describe

Therefor, why would you intrinsicly market yourself as repulsive?

[Anonymous No.19537225]

>>19537122
I'm sorry you don't like
>Gore Profanity Sexual Content Traumatising content
If I ever write a children's book it won't have any of those. Maybe the last one but kid friendly.

[Anonymous No.19537285]

>>19536638
>“Uh, sure.” Drinking what was left in his bowl and bringing me the .

>Turning to leave the camp and the wolf taking the lead, bumping me again, sending me stumbling a pace over.

Honest question, what's your goal? Improvement? Success? You have 60 chapters now of unedited, unfiltered crap, and you continue to have to shill each new addition individually because there's no organic following. What is driving you, the model of hopeless unsuccess, to write more than people here who might still have some reasonable hope for their stories?

[Anonymous No.19537373]

>>19537285
Hey thanks for the heads up on that. I write in a word doc, edit that. Copy it over, edit that. Then paste it back. Sometimes shit happens and friendly people like you help me catch it.
>no organic following
I seem to be gaining readers most each and every week. When this book is complete I'm going to begin drafting the sequel, go through another round of editing on this one, start positing the sequel on RR, and then remove this and put it on kindle. I'll give people a decent heads up before I pull it down.

[Anonymous No.19537589]

Came up with satisfying ends to my character's arcs
It's syfy fantasy so I'll spare pseuds the details but don't give up!

[Anonymous No.19537605]

>>19537589
Don't hold out on the details.

[Anonymous No.19537653]

>>19537605
Basically two side characters find their purpose when they're pretty black pilled at the beginning
One guy is a chad warrior who gets cursed with immortality and wishes he would die, learns to embrace his life as a warrior.
The other is some Russian chick who always felt like a worthless piece of meat becomes crucial to the war effort as an accomplished inventor/engineer.

[Anonymous No.19537800]

>>19524315
God what a fucking faggot

[Anonymous No.19537816]

>>19537653
Have both character become trannies and then off themselves.

[Anonymous No.19537826]

>>19537816
This is why I don't give the details to my stories

[Anonymous No.19537831]

>>19535698
>Can't you just pay people to promote your book on Twitter?
If you're rich yea. There's a whole bullshit career these days called social media manager or something like that where people just post shit on social media promoting stuff. But I would hate to pay for something I could so easily do myself.

>It makes sense to have an account that can announce releases, or post clickbait exerpts, but the chattiness can be farmed out.

Yeah but you need to build an audience. The challenge is to actually get heard . The algorithms--as in life--benefit those who are already popular.

[Anonymous No.19537832]

>wander around the local shoppes for 3 hours grabbing bits of conversation
>only piece I find worth keeping when I get home is a short title for a book I thought sounded cool
Guess I'll shelve these and write...

[Anonymous No.19537838]

>>19535701
Sounds good to me anon I'd check it out.

[Anonymous No.19537841]

>>19536106
Not to mention I don't want some halfwit representing me online. Who knows what they'd post. And if I have to sign off on whatever tripe they come up I might as well do it myself.

[Anonymous No.19537902]

Nepotism of the elites

[Anonymous No.19538091]

>>19535701
One very quick and simple way to improve /wg/ posts is to take a post that you consider good (and is generally considered good) and copy it, emulating the structure but changing the content. Start with shitposts and pepes then slowly expand to long effortposts and /crit/. Don't just focus on one anon but sample from many (a general is a good place to start--I'm actually thinking about creating my own anthology of /wg/ effortposts that I have heavily annotated wrt how anons wrote or might have written the respective post, similar to Plutarch’s Lives but with /wg/ posts--would anybody here be interested in such a thing?)

[Anonymous No.19538116]

>>19530289
How is he an asshole I don't understand

[Anonymous No.19538119]

Is it possible to be a good person and want to population control (but not genocide) an ethnic group? What reasoning could there be for that?

[Anonymous No.19538145]

>>19538119
your own ethnic group or another? your own I can see - need to keep numbers in a certain amount for balance or to be able to feed them.
A different ethnic group either you recognize the group is deleterious in some way and genocide is appropriate, or they're not. if genocide is appropriate a half measure like population control is evil. if genocide isn't appropriate managed population control is evil.

[Anonymous No.19538162]

Thus swayed Carrion's black winds.

[Anonymous No.19538164]

>>19538145
Another ethnic group. But the way you responded, population control is always evil?

[Anonymous No.19538170]

>writing flash fiction for dumb flash fiction competition
>go over word limit 1/4th into the story
>say fuck it and just write the story without paying attention to word limit
>I like it
>go back and rewrite story as a 4chan greentext
>now it's flash fiction
>and also 10x worse than the longer version of the story
flash fiction is trash fiction. It only exists because people have the attention spans of a gerbil.

[Anonymous No.19538185]

>>19524302
>Working on my first short story
>Trying to tell it in third person
>Opening starts with protagonist trekking across abandoned town
>Character is supposed to be paranoid and feel he's being watched
>It's just him with no dialogue
How do I convey this without using dialogue. I don't want it to be all tell and not showing. I feel like it would all come natural to me if I used first-person.

[Anonymous No.19538188]

>>19538091
Unbelievably based. And yes, I would unironically be interested in an anthology of annotated /lit/ effort posts.

[Anonymous No.19538194]

>>19538185
Shifty eyes, jumping at noises

[Anonymous No.19538196]

>>19538164
if imposed on another group, yes. better to genocide them, because that'll either be where its heading down the line and you're just trying to keep your conscience clean and someone else has to clean up the mess, or they're so subservient they can't be considered sapient and are just a slave class

[Anonymous No.19538200]

>>19538188
Why? None of you dumb niggers can write aside from isekai faggotry.

[Anonymous No.19538201]

>>19538170
>lash fiction is trash fiction. It only exists because people have the attention spans of a gerbil
rejoice then. no one actually reads flash fiction at all

[Anonymous No.19538209]

>>19538185
>I feel like it would all come natural to me if I used first-person
seems like a sign

[Anonymous No.19538211]

>>19538196
Slave class, huh? Is there any way to play this without it being an analog of whites and blacks in America?

[Anonymous No.19538215]

>>19538185
Then why don't you use first person? That's probably why all the hard-boiled noir novels use first person, come to think of it. If it's an exercise or something, you can create the feeling of paranoia by careful description and careful selection of images. e.g using eye motifs or voyeuristic metaphors. Maybe take a look at some of Hitchcock's films for inspiration.

[Anonymous No.19538216]

>>19538200
There's not even anyone here—that has posted their story—writing isekai, though. The closet is maybe Erased, but it's more like Avatar sort of isekai.

[Anonymous No.19538230]

>>19538216
You’re all piece of shit anime writers and your whore mothers should’ve aborted you.

[Anonymous No.19538232]

>>19538216
>replying to 10 million year old bait
I honestly hope that guy feels better at some point. You can't be in a good state of mind if you're robotically posting the same shitpost over and over in every thread.

[Anonymous No.19538258]

>>19538216
I wrote isekai back in September/October

Most people missed the part where he was from Earth though

[Anonymous No.19538259]

>>19538232
We are legion, faggot. I’m only responsible for posting these kinds of comments maybe 10% of the time. You idiots have a reputation, and it’s well deserved.

[Anonymous No.19538290]

>>19538215
Because I'm not writing a noir. It's a story I'm doing for fun. The idea is that the first third is from one perspective, then the rest is from two or more. I'll look into Hitchcock.

[Anonymous No.19538337]

>>19531761
try going for walks, no music/podcasts/whatever, writing when you get back

[Anonymous No.19538357]

In the end, does length matter? Isn't it more impressive if a piece and get a thick feeling across in only 40 pages?

[Anonymous No.19538366]

>>19538357
I get more intimidated by holding Shogun in my hands than I do when I hold As I Lay Dying. I would argue length can sometimes be a great detriment.

[Anonymous No.19538377]

>>19538366
I mean, I want my writing to be approachable by the average person. No sane person these days is gonna read hundreds of pages. While it's possible you can get someone to invest that much time into the work by making it compelling, it makes it seem like your aim is to be a drain on their life.

Great for selling books, bad for making a point.

[Anonymous No.19538398]

>>19538377
In that vein, Pound once said it's better to write one Image than produce voluminous works. If you can say everything in 40 pages what it would take other authors 400, that is only an advantage in the current publishing world.

[Anonymous No.19538511]

frens do I use LaTeX or Markdown or HTML or just plain text to write? dont like word because its just bleh.
what editors to use?

[Anonymous No.19538636]

>>19538170
>flash fiction is trash fiction
From what you describe, you’re just not good at it. Flash fic teaches efficiency and economy, if you have a story that deserves to be longer don’t try to shoehorn it in. Either embrace the challenge, pick a different story, or don’t write it as a flash.

Word count is an arbitrary constraint…but the same could be said for rhyming/meter and those have produced some great work. Some constraints can make a writer more thoughtful and intentional.

[Anonymous No.19539327]

>>19537653
do not listen to the other anon i think it is a good idea as long as they do the sex and are also siblings

[Anonymous No.19539462]

How the FUCK am I supposed to invent a geography for my Planet B separated by a wormhole from my dystopian sci fi? Draw an arbitrary blob of Pangaea landmass on a material of some sort, shoot it, call the cracks I made fault lines of tectonic plates, and extrapolate continental drift from there? What material could I use that would crack like that and not just have a hole poked through it and or turn to dust?

[Anonymous No.19539479]

>>19524315
oh god oh god his voice in my ears no no get him out out out

[Anonymous No.19539488]

>>19524381
yes, sir. thank you, sir.

[Anonymous No.19539490]

>>19524513
I knew what you meant, anon. forgive yourself

[Anonymous No.19539491]

>>19538511
I would say either Emacs/org-mode or vim/markdown. But it's not that big of a deal.

Consider ventilated prose if you're going to be converting to HTML or LaTeX. I find it useful for keeping an eye on my sentence structure, and it all collapses together into normal paragraphs when converted, anyway.

[Anonymous No.19539720]

>>19539462
Write the story first and draw the map based on wherever things need to be for the story to make sense. Or just don't draw a map.

[Anonymous No.19539740]

How rapey is too rapey? I want to write about a guy who rapes Justice into rapists using a special ass tearing dildo that injects the victims with STDs. So it’s like Dexter but rape instead of murder.

[Anonymous No.19539753]

>>19538636
>flash fic teaches efficiency and economy
Green text stories do that as well. The problem isn't that the story is too long, the problem is I'm sacrificing good prose to meet an arbitrary restraint. I was able to get all the necessities down to 600/1,000 words easily. Green text stories are a fucking breeze to write. Now I'm going back to put back in as much of the good prose that's in the longer draft as I can. It seems counter productive.

It's like the flash fiction story is a little tumorous conjoined twin on the side of a good short story's ass. Instead of cutting off the flash fiction and letting the normal sized short story be the default, I'm spending time making this little one eyed goblin look and sound more like his normal sized brother. But even if I manage to give this little faggot goblin two eyes and two arms and a mouth, he's still just a freak show twin compared to his big brother.

[Anonymous No.19539792]

>>19539753
Given your use of metaphor in this post, I’m sure the long version of your story was a goddamn masterclass.

The place you went wrong was writing it long in the first place. I tend to write flash to 1200-1300 words and then try to trim the fat. If your first draft is double or more the final length, you’re going to get something that feels abridged. Flash isn’t just about cramming/editing a full story into 1,000 words, it’s about composing something that conveys as much as possible in a limited space. It teaches you to keep your pace fast, to discover the details that matter most and not to get too masturbatory with your prose.

[Anonymous No.19539864]

>>19539740
Rape for rape's sake is too rapey imo. It should be at best plot driven or plot caused and at worst a cheap pity builder for a female character

[Anonymous No.19539871]

>>19539740
what >>19539864 said but probably not necessary. Not many rapes in fiction have seemed necessary

[Anonymous No.19539954]

Is it time for another /wg/ thread?

[Anonymous No.19539978]

>>19539954
If you have to ask, no.

[Anonymous No.19539981]

>>19539954
You can make one

[Anonymous No.19539985]

>>19539954
Yes, but make the OP about rape again.

[Anonymous No.19540042]

>>19539985
I gotchu
New >>19540040
New >>19540040
New >>19540040

[Anonymous No.19541738]

>>19524381
Any tips, tho? I want to get into writing for animation, but I'm always afraid of the blank page and too embarrassed to begin, even when I'm perfectly aware that no one is going to read my stuff.

[Anonymous No.19542011]

>>19524302
Stylistically speaking, when should you NOT use a comma or semicolon before a new clause or a conjuction?

For example:
If you go there, you'll die Vs. if you go there you'll die
He was tired, and she was scared Vs. He was tired and she was scared
The brave ran away; and the braver died fighting. Vs. The brave ran away and the braver died fighting.