/wg/ — writing general

[Anonymous No.20068637]

All resources posted are garbage edition

Previous: >>20062463

[Anonymous No.20068646]

[Anonymous No.20068649]

>>20068637
> a technique I learned in Hollywood, where my scripts were always too long. “This is too long,” the studio would say. “Trim it by eight pages.” But I hated to lose any good stuff — scenes, dialogue exchanges, bits of action — so instead I would go through the script trimming and tightening line by line and word by word, cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle. I found the process so valuable that I’ve done the same with all my books since leaving LA.

[Anonymous No.20068664]

Reads related to honing the craft:
>pastebin.com/krJFfUfK (old reading list)
>pastebin.com/1KA24gny (new reading list)

Aditional related reads:
>pastebin.com/dXtFsTUh

Youtube playlist on storytelling:
>youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTCv6n1whoI23GmdBZienRW0Q0nFCU_ay

Self publishing websites:
>pastebin.com/zcKB1gN9

-------------------------------------------

/wg/ author pastebin + anon flash fiction anthology
>https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ

Previous flash fiction anthologies
>archive.org/details/@_lit_anthology

[Anonymous No.20068677]

>>20068649
>a workman's guide to Hollywood-friendly prose

[Anonymous No.20068684]

Redrafted a story I made 1 month ago exactly but forgot some of the minor plot points and scrambled to fix them just now. Holy shit, it’s weird I don’t retain some of the stuff I set up for myself.

[Anonymous No.20068686]

>>20068649
wh-whoa. line by line editing? now I see why he's one of the greats.

[Anonymous No.20068691]

>>20066244 #
In what way do you see your writing as differentiable from the writing of the many, many others writing fantasy? Not the subject matter or the story—these things don't ultimately matter at all—but the writing itself? The voice, to me, is that same voice everyone else has. That is to say, there is no real voice to the writing here. The major problem with contemporary writers, and fantasy writers in particular, is that they try to buttress uninspired writing with novel concepts. Here, you seem to try to subvert the expectations of Fantasy Guy With Sword, as if that alone is enough to differentiate yourself from authors who write stories about their own Fantasy Guy With Sword who does other things. The thing doesn't matter, if you want to seriously improve and eventually write something that's half-decent. Focus on the writing itself. Eliminate useless words like kinda, sorta, really, etc. To me, a heavy usage of these filler words (and I would definitely call your use of them "heavy") signifies a lack of confidence. What it says to me is that without them, you're uncomfortable with how your piece is voiced, so you lean on these colloquial, informal crutches to hope vaguely that your reader won't be offended.

Try reading some actual literature. Get a feel for what actual good writing feels and tastes like. I'm not saying you need to try to be the next Joyce, but without a cultivated taste for the mechanics of the written word, you're just going to fumble around in a fuzzy discomfort with sentences you know aren't great but can't seem to improve.

People will give you specific examples of things you did right or wrong. These are the most useless forms of advice a writer can possibly come across because they address symptoms rather than causes. Expose yourself to more and harder literature if you're really serious about improving and not just asking for dick rubs like most people are. Experiment more, push yourself out of your comfort zone. Allow yourself to reach for something and fail instead of settling for something mediocre and unpolishable.

[Anonymous No.20068721]

Some movie adaptations of books really flop. I saw one that cost 3.6 million but only got 700k at box office, and it has fairly bad reviews. Maybe literature can’t compete with Marvel/DC, bros…

[Anonymous No.20068854]

So, you guys are gathering your following yes?
BAP had 20,000 followers when he dropped BAM.

[Anonymous No.20068858]

>>20068854
I don't know what brap or bam are but I have no interest twitter

[Anonymous No.20068918]

>>20068858
Should interest in some social, need build following or you will scream into void.
No, you’re not JRR Tolkien.

[Anonymous No.20068943]

>>20068721
Literature can't compete with shovelware? Imagine my shock. But as it turns out, the greatest movies are always adapted from DUN DUN DUNNNNN books!

[Anonymous No.20068947]

>>20068918
I never said I was. Still not getting into your social media scam.

[Anonymous No.20068949]

>>20068858
>>20068947
Don't pay attention to the marketing pseud. He has nothing to offer.

[Anonymous No.20068964]

>>20068854
Why Twitter? Tik tock is way better right now with booktok

[Anonymous No.20068972]

>>20068943
>Persona
>Mulholland Drive
>Stalker
>books
Granted, they are very savvy and literary movies, but very few of the actual great films were directly adapted from books.

[Anonymous No.20068974]

>>20068972
>Stalker
Yes, the book is called Roadside Picnic.

[Anonymous No.20068980]

I'm currently working on rewriting an older 60k/w manuscript and I hope that by the tenth draft it will begin to shine.

[Anonymous No.20068984]

>>20068980
You somehow made it worse.

[Anonymous No.20068985]

>>20068984
How? Is it the prose?

[Anonymous No.20068991]

>>20068947
Ah yes big scam fren! Gib me all your monies as I have requested many times!
You wouldn’t know a scam if an Indian called you and asked for your social security number.

[Anonymous No.20068999]

>>20068985
Yeah. It seems like someone advised you that your writing did the bad Purple Prose and should be lobotomized, and that you then summarily capitulated and did a complete 180. Don't get me wrong, the first draft was still very poor, but it seems like you took the obtusity and poor flow of the original and decided to strip it off any and all indicators that you have an individual voice.

[Anonymous No.20069000]

>>20068980
Jesus, are you ESL or something? Those first two sentences of the second draft are wretched.

[Anonymous No.20069002]

>>20068964
I never said Twatter anon, I said socials.
Feel free make own path.

[Anonymous No.20069005]

>>20069000
No, I just haven't read a lot while growing up.

[Anonymous No.20069006]

>>20068691
How do you know if you have a unique voice?

[Anonymous No.20069013]

>>20068999
Is this any better? Should I work on this one instead and abandon the first manuscript?

[Anonymous No.20069014]

>>20069005
Read more. Read, read, read. Actual literature too not genre crap. You have to be a good reader before you can be a good writer.

[Anonymous No.20069018]

>>20069014
All right.

[Anonymous No.20069021]

>>20069014
>he doesn't read literary science fiction / fantasy
ngmi

[Anonymous No.20069023]

>>20069021
Other than Gene Wolfe, are there such things?

[Anonymous No.20069026]

I finally managed to get my draft of my /ffa/ thing done. It's my first time doing one of these, so feel free to tear it apart.
https://pastebin.com/0V8gBtje

[Anonymous No.20069057]

>>20069023
HG Wells, Edgar Allan Poe, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Mary Shelley, Hodgson, Dunsany, and much more. I know plenty of magazines that explicitly ask for literary fantasy or sci fi.
Also, arguably Shakespeare is basically fantasy in many of the tragedies, from Titus to Hamlet to Tempest.

[Anonymous No.20069065]

Just me or this thread has been more active lately?

[Anonymous No.20069066]

>>20069057
You genrefags always try to claim Shakespeare lol

[Anonymous No.20069069]

>>20069066
That's because he wrote in genres. Think about the words you're using.

[Anonymous No.20069080]

>>20069006
You know your voice when you have agonized over it. You know because you're your own harshest critic. You know because you have read enough that your lip will curl in an involuntary disdain when you come across the innumerable, tiny annoyances in the writings you see every day. You know what your voice is as an author because you know who you are as an author and a human being.

All of these things are useless platitudes, but they are also things I know as experiential truths which have meanings beyond the words I've written and draw upon the contextualized body of knowledge-intermingling-experience that only I have.

[Anonymous No.20069099]

>>20069069
Genres of Shakespeare's day were less concrete and incestuous. Genrefags today aren't enthusiasts as much as they are a group of snaggle-toothed hicks who pass around each other's daughters and sisters to have a go with... after they're done, of course. Genreshits are mongoloids who are happy to fuck anything with a hole as long as they're related to it, or if other inbred hicks have daughters whose holes they can vouch for.

[Anonymous No.20069114]

>>20069099
Nice analogy anon. Keep it up.

[Anonymous No.20069146]

>read a bunch of contemporary fantasy literature
>Can't finish a single book
>Everything feels so samey
>Hero's journey + erotica
>Character mcguffin their way to victory
>Settings aren't all that important, just so author can write more sex scenes
>Love at first sight and destiny
Am I missing something here? What's the appeal?

[Anonymous No.20069154]

>>20069146
wish fulfilment, you have to realise this was always the case in the 60-80s too but we forget all the rubbish about sex with aliens and those very same tropes

[Anonymous No.20069157]

>>20069146
>Settings aren't all that important
Can worldbuilding fags kill themselves already?

[Anonymous No.20069162]

>>20069157
You have to have some world building. By all means minimize it, but the world building in these fantasy novels is just a way to insert some sex scene they stole from a hentai.

Also somehow everything is consensual, even fucking a dog lizard with 2 tentacle cocks

[Anonymous No.20069168]

>>20068972
The greatest movies, anon. Not Lynch experimental shit.

[Anonymous No.20069196]

>>20069099
On the flip side, you lit cunts are the bastard offspring of TERFs and br*tish puritans. You’ll turn your nose up at garlic and spice, but you’ll fawn over and even try to co-opt standout pieces for how brave and strong they are.
That being said, we need to be understanding with your bitter self-flagellation. The universal struggle of trawling through detritus to find treasure must be all the more miserable for lack of cumin.

[Anonymous No.20069223]

>>20069065
It's been active as fuck which is awesome to see.
>>20069026
Nice prose and good narrative. I had a good time reading it. Some nitpicks.
>These constant mental toilings that he had to subject himself to wore down on him,
This is pretty cumbersome.
>the air remained still around him.
I think "the air around him remained still" sounds better, since the inversion implies that his air refused to be displaced, as if it had a choice, when you're wanting to imply that the air around his body isn't moving yet.
>Although he considered it at the time to be the final blow to his arduous collapse at the time,
At the time listed twice. Take the second one out, first one is in a better spot.
>When it was fully out of view, Jason ended the recording and, after letting out a breath he didn't know he had been holding, and walked the way back where he came.
Two ands here
>There were threads that had to be tied up, connections to forge, and a world to immerse himself into, not to mention the constant danger he was putting both himself and a wide variety of others into.
It seems like you leaned more into the metallurgy metaphor but you lead with a thread and string metaphor. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it.

[Anonymous No.20069235]

>>20069196
I have no fucking clue what you're talking about, but I'm pretty sure you're a retard.

[Anonymous No.20069241]

Does anyone else's story change genres as you're writing it?

[Anonymous No.20069247]

>>20069241
I have never once paid a passing fucking thought to which genre's standards my writing does or doesn't adhere.

[Anonymous No.20069272]

>>20069223
Thanks anon. I was going to spend more time on it before sharing, but I didn't want to keep the /ffa/ guy waiting. I'll work on cleaning it up.

[Anonymous No.20069288]

>>20069247
I'm not talking about adhering to a standard, but you have a story planned out then writing half way it shifts and your original outline is not even close to what you ended with

[Anonymous No.20069301]

>>20069288
Then maybe you should have asked if anyone's story ever deviates significantly from its outline if you wanted an answer to the question of whether anyone else ends up with a story significantly different from how you outlined it. As you probably know, the answer is probably something close to "yeah, no shit."

[Anonymous No.20069310]

>>20069301
Do you wake up this condescending or does it take practice?

[Anonymous No.20069311]

>>20069301
I am esl please forgive

[Anonymous No.20069315]

>>20069310
A lifetime of petty annoyances will do the trick.

[Anonymous No.20069323]

>>20069311
Sorry, anon. I'm a bit grumpy today.

[Anonymous No.20069342]

I can't stop thinking about art hoes again. They keep crawling up my legs and asking for me to knock them up, and they're all wearing those big stupid glasses and they all have fringe cuts and are wearing those fuzzy red sweaters and beanies. What the FUCK do I write to get them to go away

[Anonymous No.20069391]

>>20068858
>autocorrected bam to brap
Nice browsing history lololol

[Anonymous No.20069398]

>>20069391
>autocorrected

[Anonymous No.20069401]

>>20068858
>autocorrected bap to brap
Nice browsing history lololol

[Anonymous No.20069410]

>>20069401
Take the L

[Anonymous No.20069676]

>>20068691
Well, personally, I intend to keep much of those filler words only for first-person narration, which I view as naturally being more informal and stream-of-consciousness. Third-person limited has aspects of that, but it's more restrained, even if coloured by the perspective of whoever you're anchored to. This is also just extremely unhelpful advice, as it boils down to "write better".

[Anonymous No.20069689]

>>20069676
>This is also just extremely unhelpful advice, as it boils down to "write better".
Everything does. The trick is in convincing you sufficiently that it's bad such that you don't make dumb excuses like "it's just my style," or "hey man, that's just stream of consciousness." I see that I've failed.

[Anonymous No.20069696]

>>20069689
On what standard are you judging?

[Anonymous No.20069707]

>>20069676
Stream of consciousness isn't an excuse to write poorly. You still have to write well. In fact, because so fucking many people make the EXACT SAME mistake that you do in assuming you can just write like it's a diary entry because SoC, the bar is set even higher. Because people like you will hand-wave away criticism of poor writing as being a function of SoC, a lot of people hate the technique in and of itself. So, thanks for that.

[Anonymous No.20069718]

>>20069696
There are no standards. That doesn't mean your writing is good. It only means that nobody can tell you WHY it's not good. It is not good. I know this intuitively because I've spent a lifetime reading everything I can get my hands on. It's just not good. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you can start getting better.

[Anonymous No.20069724]

>>20069707
>>20069718
I appreciate the critique, but I simply don't understand what I'm supposed to take from it.

[Anonymous No.20069747]

>>20069724
Nobody understands anything about writing. Have you ever read Bloom's book, The Flight to Lucifer? If you don't know who Bloom was, he was one of the titans of academic literary criticism. He "knew" and "understood" everything there is to know and understand about literature. He knew and understood so much that he wrote a novel. It was hilariously bad. Despite all his knowledge and learning of writing, he couldn't write. Have you spent decades of your life trying to learn and understand writing? No? Then what fucking chance do you have of ever understanding writing such that you can write well.

Ditch that mentality. The only way to keep improving is by reading more and writing more. Read things that stretch you out of your comfort zone, then write things that stretch you.

[Anonymous No.20069828]

>>20069747
*talks to himself*

[Anonymous No.20069845]

The older i got the more frustrated i became with authors who had a great premise and opening of a book, only to screw the pooch in their second third and fourth acts.
Now i'm a writing myself, i feel myself falling into the same predictable traps.

[Anonymous No.20069848]

>>20069747
Fair enough, it's just a little disheartening. I have read a fair bit, admittedly of varying qualities, and I have the annoying tendency to care more about what's being said as opposed to how it's being said, unless it's just egregiously bad, typos and shit.

[Anonymous No.20069852]

>globalhomo OP pic
kys

[Anonymous No.20069875]

>>20069845
Have you tried writing non-chronologically? As in, begin writing in the middle or end of the story, then restart from the beginning until you’ve caught up.

I’m not talking about writing a nonlinear story, I’m talking about putting together a story in a nonlinear way.

[Anonymous No.20069894]

>>20069747
NTA but why would I read anything if Harold Bloom read the entire Western canon and more and still couldn't get a good novel written?

[Anonymous No.20069941]

>>20069875
i'm already doing split pov's timeline shenanigans and its engaging, but i'm experiencing that plothole plugging is making for some hefty info dumps and i loose the earlier verve with which the first part contained.

[Anonymous No.20070024]

>>20069894
Clarice Lispector read almost nothing (it's a common anecdote that she had never been seen reading) but became a prominent literary figure of her time and of the 20th century in general. It is what it is.

[Anonymous No.20070054]

>>20068691
This is not only bad advice but actually dangerous advice. No one who reads fantasy reads it for the prose. They don't care if the writing sounds the same as everybody else. A unique voice may in fact turn them off from the work. They read primarily it for the subject matter and the story. Your advice is only narrowly applicable to the vein of literary writers that try to buttress their uninspired stories with good prose. The subversion or reversal of the common fantasy tropes is precisely what is necessary to set oneself apart from other fantasy writers. That IS the thing. That is the fantasy writer's bread and butter. Try reading some actual fantasy. Get a feel for what fantasy feels and tastes like before you try giving advice to someone writing in the genre.

That said, >>20066244, your writing is still not near a professional's and is riddled with fantasy cliches at the micro-level. It's also the most obvious and easiest subversion of the trope--not that it can't be done well--but if you don't want your reader to eventually roll his eyes at you, you need to make sure you write something they couldn't come up with on the spot. Remember that the greatest advantage you have against the reader is time, so don't just take the first thing that comes into your head.

[Anonymous No.20070093]

>>20070054
Guess I’m nobody then, cuz I found stuff like Witcher or Narnia deadly dull compared to Tolkien or R Jordan.
But then again I also literally get off to interesting prose, so you’re probably right overall.

[Anonymous No.20070199]

>>20070093
I heard the other day that fantasy readers want and expect the same shit that they just read but with a different hero. If the last book they read they had a guy in a red cape, now they want to read a book with a guy in a blue cape. Those people are braindead, as are the people who write it (assuming they aren't just doing it cynically to try and make money).

[Anonymous No.20070219]

>>20070199
I read a lot of fantasy and I have to disagree with this.

[Anonymous No.20070260]

>>20070199
Nah bro. I might write the same old character tropes and arcs over and over, but that’s because it’s what I know best. I crave new characters, untold stories.

[Anonymous No.20070327]

>>20070054
>riddled with fantasy cliches at the micro-level
Such as? It's a bit broad to say such a thing. And I understand it's a simple subversion, but the grander subversion of the story is that it isn't about the hero, it's about what the hell happens after all that. And that's admittedly where I've hit a stumbling block, I have a decent premise and no idea where to take it.

[Anonymous No.20070364]

>>20070327
Actually, coming back to this, I've considered making it a rather low stakes novel potentially. Not exactly slice of life or anything, but focusing on what two less-restricted pseudo-heroes could do after all's said and done.

[Anonymous No.20070425]

Can I skip the personalization part of the query letter? I feel like every time I write about why I queried that agent I sound like a retard, and it's likely an assistant reading it anyway. "Since you only listed off a bunch of meaningless buzzwords for what you want in a novel, I hope you enjoy my book." It's all such horseshit. Then I worry I got rejected because of my query and not because my writing sucks. I'm not sure if that's the best cope to have.

[Anonymous No.20070482]

>>20070327
>I have a decent premise and no idea where to take it
Is it really a decent premise if you don't know where to take it?
I once read an observation that the top submissions on the writingprompts subreddit have some of the worst stories, because the prompts that get upvoted are the ones that are fun to read in and of themselves. They are essentially already stories, and therefore bad prompts.
I don't go there, so I don't know if it's true. Point is that an attractive premise doesn't have to make for an attractive story.

I like your idea, it suits my own tastes too. But notably, while I can think of fiction that gave me the same feeling (I can give recommendations if you'd like), I don't think any of it tried to stretch it. They all pull the rug out from under it, or escalate so that it's no longer a win condition, or just end the story then and there. Winning is exciting, but having won is boring.
You could rework your story, tease and explain your premise some more, but extend it not even a little bit past the current ending.
You could have it fail, and have your pseudo-heroes struggle to fix things, and maybe eventually achieve their original goal—at which point you end the story.
You could make it the backstory for the heroes of a narrative that's basically unrelated (and not easily resolved, either because of power creep or because force doesn't apply).

[Anonymous No.20070508]

>Story gets approved for RR
>First comment within like 30 minutes
Now to let everyone down by uploading more chapters, dashing their hopes and dreams of a good story. All according to keikaku.

[Anonymous No.20070526]

>>20070482
My thoughts were more towards the latter, as well as actually a sort of split perspective thing where the present and onward was further third-person from the two survivor's PoVs, and flashbacks of the hero's few emotional moments in his life, contrasting with the chapter that'd come before or after in some way (feeling truly alone in a crowd in a flashback while enjoying the warmth of companionship with just a few true friends after, as an example off the top of my head). I didn't quite play it out, either, but I wanted there to be a sort of rivalry between the two survivors and that could lead to some conflict, but neither are narratively villainous so they aren't going to be more than a small arc for each other. I suppose it'd be an idea to make a vague outline of where I want things to go, or I could just discovery write it without a clear resolution in mind, more pathways I want each character to take but not how they get there.

As a question, what WOULD interest you as a follow-up to the premise? It's a premise that's more of a hook to something else, I think, rather than the story all on its own, so it's pretty open-ended.

[Anonymous No.20070544]

>>20068980
The first is a lot better imo. A little can go a long way.

[Anonymous No.20070545]

>>20070327
>Such as?
Well for starters, how about the fact that hero is carrying a greatsword that can "cut a stone wall to pieces"? Or the bit right after about the rusty butterknife? Or the gold and red carpet to the throne? Or the pale sorcerer sprawling on the throne in a loose fitting robe? Or the whole "we're not so different you and I" and let's not even get started on the dialogue, the uninspired reactions. The only thing going for you is the premise and even that, as I've already said, is the most basic subversion possible. Everything you've written reads like you put it down as it soon as it came to you, no deliberation, no "have I heard this somewhere before", no "can this be cut?", no "what is the point of this?". The other guy was right about one thing: you need to read more. If its a first draft and you're just putting the scaffolding down (in which case why are you requesting critique, when you already have things you need to fix?) that's fine, but if you can't even detect the cliches you're using, that signifies a lack of knowledge. This reads more like you consume video games, anime and D&D modules than actual fantasy fiction. Now I admit the possibility that it might all be intentional, done to create an ironic effect, but then it can't go in the beginning. The modern reader has no patience for tedious expository brooding. Read the openings of twenty fantasy novels published in the last fifty years and compare them to your own. That will be more helpful than any advice any one person could give you.

[Anonymous No.20070572]

>>20070508
>the comment came from a bot asking you to sign up for Goodreads

[Anonymous No.20070573]

>>20070545
The very fact that the hero's the one with the "not so different" bit alone is sort of meant to tip off that, yeah, it's not really playing it fully straight. And the opening line makes it clear he's gonna die, which, while not wholly uncommon, tends to stray from the cliches, especially as he does it without it being a big sacrifice to save others or whatever. I get where you're coming from with these critiques, but some of these just read like "tropes bad".

[Anonymous No.20070623]

>>20070572
It came from a person with a animu avatar who said he liked the first chapter. Seems like I nailed my target audience.

[Anonymous No.20070635]

>>20070623
Nukem has good taste in games, but there's no Gareth in his picture, so I'm afraid I won't be donating to his Patreon.

[Anonymous No.20070675]

>>20070573
Looking at the comments, it seems like I'm not the only who picked up on your cliches. At this point, there's nothing more to say. Reducing everything I wrote to "just reads like tropes bad" (which is not at all what I said, so I don't think "you got where I'm coming from" at all) is not going to help you in the long run (or even in the short run). As the other anon hinted at, even your premise is not all that good, as evidenced by the fact that you're asking OTHER people for a follow-up, when the development and puzzling out of the premise is supposed to be one of the primary pleasures--quite literally the job--of a genre writer.

Anyway, good luck. Nothing I said was intended to discourage you, but only to put your priorities straight. I don't think you've read enough fiction to able to write it or to do your premise justice.

[Anonymous No.20070691]

>>20070675
Discouraging, but fair enough, I suppose. I have read a fair bit, but most of my favourites are nigh-impossible to emulate (I have no illusions of being Pratchett-esque) and I admittedly haven't read a wide variety of novels. I'm pretty confident in my basic ability to craft a story, but creating the story itself out of whole cloth is always the tricky part. I can't think of where the premise would go, because I keep second-guessing myself with each potential follow-up I do think of, thinking it sounds too hackneyed.

[Anonymous No.20070719]

>>20070691
Ah, should add on I'm not necessarily SEEKING to emulate other authors, I do want to find my own style, but this is the first time I've tried to properly craft a story that's more than a couple pages long, my only other consistent writing is as a character in TTRPG stuff. I'm generally more interested in character writing than the overall plot and setting, but I'm well aware those are very important, it's working out my own methods of how to make them is where I'm sticking.

[Anonymous No.20070722]

>>20070526
It is a story all on its own. That's most of what I was trying to say in my post. It's a story, not the start of one.
A followup would essentially be a sequel, even if it's published together. I don't have an opinion about what that sequel should contain. Aim for something compelling in its own right.
Watch the first episode of the Netflix Castlevania series, particularly the very first part (before the time skip). Its plot is similar to that of your story. Note that it has the following properties:
- It's compelling on its own
- It's left underexplored
- It's somewhat separate from the rest of the show
Those are all good decisions. You don't have to make those exact choices, but you should seriously consider it.

>>20070573
I can't say it bothered me much personally, but then I don't read a ton of fantasy.
Do keep in mind that something doesn't become interesting merely by being part of a subversion. When Pratchett has a vampire, and he says that that vampire doesn't show in a mirror, he does that for a gag about having trouble shaving. If not for the gag he wouldn't have brought up mirrors at all.
Everything you write has to serve a purpose.

[Anonymous No.20070755]

>>20070722
Also fair points. I'm generally bad at self-critique, so I often do just write what comes to mind and feels right. Only a couple lines did I go back and redo, most of those are the first or second thing that came to mind. I suppose there's an argument for taking this 'prologue' and setting it more as the first flashback later on, and starting instead with all of that already having happened and the aftermath to be its own story.

[Anonymous No.20070900]

Now I'm scared of my story. Can anyone read my Adah story and see if I'm falling into cliches, traps, and inconsistencies?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11q39jdlnZxvZe5jRuz8bpfESLQikJDOnV5ixJSht7uE/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.20070931]

>>20070900
This is absolutely fucking awful. Your first sentence is an "as" sentence, you keep double spacing, your opening scene guides the eye all over the place, focusing on their steps first, then to their armlets, then to their boots again, then their chainmail, then dried leaves stepped on by their boots again. Up, down, up, down. They moved "gently" to be quiet, yet there's such a description overload it turns to a "cacophony." It's a totally unfocused first paragraph. What should be the lasting impression? That there's danger lurking? That's what the last sentence says, but it's too far removed from the previous mention of the enemies, especially considering your cacophony contradicted that supposed gentleness. Then you move to dialogue, and you use more commas than you should on top of the wrong articles, then for the second dialogue you skip a comma, then you just use a redudant tag.

[Anonymous No.20070938]

>>20070931
Double spacing? You mean between a period and starting a new sentence? Isn't that what you're supposed to do?

[Anonymous No.20070949]

>>20070938
You people need help even to wipe your asses.

[Anonymous No.20070952]

>>20070900
Not trying to be an ass but in the first two sentences you have 'knights' twice. Use 'they'. Don't be redundant.
Your stylistic problems go on and on. Can't copy-paste so can't really help. Have your sentences more concise and information-dense.
>Their path was lit
okay
>allowing them to forge ahead
kind of redundant again
You also break up the description of the nights with action sentences. Either go full descriptive or not. It's important to compartmentalize somewhat or you'll lose the attention of the reader.

[Anonymous No.20070954]

>>20070938
ctrl+a
ctrl+2
You're welcome, I just fixed the number one reason your manuscript keeps getting rejected.

[Anonymous No.20070961]

>>20070949
I never heard of this until today.

[Anonymous No.20070966]

>>20070961
Did you ever, I don't know, read a book? And see they don't use double spacing?

[Anonymous No.20070969]

>>20070949
>>20070961
I remember being told in my first English class to double-space it, but then everything else ever was just not that. I remembered it being a 'thing' but I figured it was just some odd thing only for professional documentation or something.

[Anonymous No.20070972]

>>20070966
I don't notice these things. Are you autistic?

[Anonymous No.20070989]

>>20070969
It's for adding corrections by hand, which doesn't matter in the slightest if you're submitting a .docx file.

[Anonymous No.20070992]

>>20070969
This is what I've been taught for years and nobody has ever mentioned this ever. Nobody has even spread this standard until you started splurging out. Doesn't matter I already formed a muscle habit. I'll just single space it after I'm done.

[Anonymous No.20071000]

>>20070989
That's for spacing between lines. He's talking about pressing the spacebar twice after a punctuation mark.

[Anonymous No.20071003]

Hm. I'm staring at my thing I wrote yesterday after getting feedback, that 2000 word prologue thing, and I feel like I've lost the inspiration I did have. Maybe it was just a flash of something kinda neat. I am horribly sleep-deprived today though, so who knows if it'll come back. I can see a few clear flaws that I could correct, I'm pretty sure I'd even know how, but the overall problem remains that it's just not quite as gripping as it should be, I feel. Maybe even there's too much overall, could condense it down. I get the first draft will never be the best version, but how do you deal with knowing how much of work you were relatively happy with you'll have to cut apart?

[Anonymous No.20071015]

>>20071003
You get a second opinion.

[Anonymous No.20071019]

Guess who's back

[Anonymous No.20071023]

[Anonymous No.20071025]

>>20070755
dont' worry about it. you'll never make everyone happy on /wg/. Everyone is a critic with prose, style, sentence structure, etc. Hence why you post it, get ripped on and try to fix it the best you can.

One time I literally copied and pasted the first page of Gone with the Wind changing some of the nouns, adjectives and verbs with something similar, and STILL people told me it was complete utter shit. Take all advice here, but at the end of the day it's just advice, not mandate.

[Anonymous No.20071029]

>>20071023
>Fire to Mankind
Now that's a good title. I'm stealing it.

[Anonymous No.20071031]

>>20071023
These fonts are physically painful.

[Anonymous No.20071032]

>>20071019
the discord server bois?

[Anonymous No.20071038]

>>20071023
I like these covers. Not too big on the font itself, but I do like the style.
>>20071019
I rather have a more clear picture of the pictures itself rather than the orange filter over it.

[Anonymous No.20071039]

>>20071015
I've had a few of them throughout this thread already. This is still largely unchanged even with the feedback (I only really get into a writing mood quite late at night, but I am just fucking shattered today) but getting more eyes can never be bad I suppose.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12GTaSTXTmm6KKKgXCT7M0LPOBjxvYFzfTJFHgeD702U/edit?usp=sharing
I have an idea of where I'm doing well (decent story beats, characterisation) and where I'm suffering (style errors, bit of a deadend prologue, run-on sentences) but it's hard to properly internalise what criticism works. I guess the general rule is "Do I agree with this criticism, and if I do/don't, why?"
That said I'm also a person who has a hard time flat-out rejecting critique that I think just doesn't really come from the place I'm looking to grab.

[Anonymous No.20071048]

>>20071029
Aha!

>>20071031
I am going to fucking

>>20071032
No I just posted it there for extra feedback on my font selection

>>20071038
Probably would make for better contrast

[Anonymous No.20071053]

>>20071019
>>20071023
When I get a better title I'll come back with a req. These look pretty great.
>>20071003
>how do you deal with knowing how much of work you were relatively happy with you'll have to cut apart?
I think of it as I just polished to the first shiny surface of the diamond under the rock and there's a whole lot more to still do.

[Anonymous No.20071064]

>>20071039
I'm wondering if I should take this prologue as-is and more-or-less distill it into a planning document, get some better ideas forming (and some better names I am awful at those) around those. Discovery writing to find the characters and general tone, then scrap it to bits to actually plan something with that.

[Anonymous No.20071077]

>>20071039
First impression, if you write first person, try to separate internal monologue from external action. Also keep an eye on your vocabulary, it still gives off ESL vibes.

>As it was, I was simply bored. I couldn’t even feel any anticipation for everything being finished, because I just felt like it never would really be done. The hero can’t just retire, he’s too powerful and important. He can’t do what he wants, because he’s supposed to want to be the hero. He can’t have his own life, he must live for the people.
This is loose and too wordy.
Instead, something like this.
>I was simply bored. No chance of it all being over. The hero can't retire, isn't allowed to do what he wants. Damn having a life of his own, he must live for the people!

The voice can be any tone you want, but the point is to be more personal and direct when you write first person. And it has to be consistent.

[Anonymous No.20071082]

>>20071064
The only advice I have is if you keep restarting you'll never be happy and you'll never finish.

Even a flawed story that's finished is better than an amazing one that never will. Look at all the unfinished works from Canterbury Tales to HunterxHunter.

[Anonymous No.20071084]

>>20071077
>try to separate internal monologue from external action
How exactly do you mean? Make it clearer when something's a thought/internal observation (italics or some such)? I've seen it done a few ways, depending on how 'conversational' the first-person narration was done.

[Anonymous No.20071088]

>>20071082
Fair point, but this is barely a start and I've done zero concrete planning.

[Anonymous No.20071099]

>>20071084
Take this paragraph.
>I stopped ruminating so much on destiny as I planted a leather boot on the front of the iron slabs, then kicked the door open. My hands were too full with the heavy greatsword I carried. It was one of the first things I’d ever bought, instead of being something that was just handed to me. It wasn’t some grand hero’s weapon, no matter how much people insisted. Helara just insists it’s impractical. Just because it could cut a stone wall to pieces didn’t mean anything. I could’ve done that with a rusty butterknife.
You mix action with internal monologue. It's a bit jarring.
>planted a boot, kicked the door
Then
>It was one of the first things I’d ever bought, instead of being something that was just handed to me. It wasn’t some grand hero’s weapon, no matter how much people insisted.

It's no different from conversation, you know like when someone was telling a story, then goes off on a 3 minute tangent that has nothing to do with it and by the end you don't even care what happened any more?

[Anonymous No.20071112]

>>20071099
I... Maybe I'm just not parsing what you mean correctly (English is my first and only language, but I'm not ENTIRELY well-versed in writer nomenclature). So simply split those pieces up? I could also use italics, I expect there'd be less internal monologues in the other first-person chapters (which'd largely be flashbacks, I for some reason felt like a mixed-perspective book would be neat, I've also considered the possibility of first-person footnotes from him in the third-person narration, because I may have been a tad too influenced by the Bartimaeus trilogy for whatever reason).

[Anonymous No.20071152]

>>20071112
It's just the start that is choppy (where you mix internal musings with action on the part of the character). I would just frontload all that, then jump into the action. There's the switch to third person that is a bit off-putting. That's all that stuck out.
I'd have to read more to see if the prologue works for the whole, I guess it throws you right into things.

[Anonymous No.20071236]

>>20071152
True enough. As I've said, my plan, for whatever reason, is that the hero's chapters are all first-person, and after the prologue they're only flashbacks, everything after is third-person. Maybe it's a diegetic thing that he's telling the girls? I'm a little unclear on that. I'm also unclear if I should even do that, it feels a little extravagant.

[Anonymous No.20071243]

>>20071236
The only book I read which switched was one of the Dexter novels and it was only because it entered the voodoo metaphysical lore part of the series.
It still wasn't my favourite thing.

[Anonymous No.20071256]

>>20071243
The book series that inspired me was the Bartimaeus trilogy, the titular Bartimaeus has a very sarcastic first-person narration, where the other two viewpoint characters have third-person limited narration with a light colouring of their own perspective, but nowhere near as harsh as Bartimaeus'. I found it worked really well there, but perhaps it's not the best thing to attempt to emulate. I suppose the point is what does it add? In Bartimaeus, it added humour as he was often bitingly sarcastic in his own constant internal monologue, and sometimes got distracted from the fact he was telling a story just to waffle on about some crap. It also added a bit of unreliable narration, as there's one moment where in his own narration he's saying something calmly and confidently while they're in a bad situation, then it jumps to another character's third person view and he's clearly panicking and has no idea what to do so he's just shouting "STAY CALM".

[Anonymous No.20071257]

What do you think about the protag literally being an animal or a lower life form, and through manipulation of the in-world mechanics and magic system, eventually becomes human, super human, beyond super human, demigod, beyond demigod, god, creator of all reality, beyond creator of all reality?
This is my lifelong project, I'm already some 60k+ words in

For some reason I never liked a story where the main character is already good at something. I've always liked stuff where there's legitimate struggle and a learning curve, from a nobody to becoming an elite through skill, intellect, sure luck as well, change encounters, and an absolutely massive scale story (that is character focused, not a massive scale story where we're focused on nations and societies).
Where else can I find something like this? All massive scale fantasy stories focuses too much on entire areas, countries and kingdoms. Think ASOIAF, with no -clear- main character. I realize the execution relies entirely on how likeable the main character is.

[Anonymous No.20071259]

>>20071257
Sounds like any LitRPG or xianxia.

[Anonymous No.20071318]

>>20071039
Anyway, I'm going to bed, but I'd appreciate any more looks at this and some critiques/thoughts and maybe I'll be more alive-feeling tomorrow.

[Anonymous No.20071345]

>>20071257
It depends on the magic system, if its a litrpg kill yourself

[Anonymous No.20071396]

>>20071236
Switching from 1st to 3rd person is awful. Maybe you can pull it off. I doubt it. I'd create another narrator character if I were you - your main narrator character from the sounds of it - and have the whole thing be 1st person. Maybe have some fun and have the 2nd narrator be ostensibly the villain.

[Anonymous No.20071400]

>>20071257
>Where else can I find something like this?
There are a lot of litrpgs and asian webnovels with this theme. One of the many problems I've seen in the genre is that the progress of the MC goes too fast and that after becoming a human he loses his animal likeness and is just like any other human.

[Anonymous No.20071409]

ESLfag here. When writing a novel, short story, etc. in the past simple tense, do you always have to use "that" instead of "this" in indirect speech? For example: "Walking pensively, he suddenly stopped--he found himself mesmerized by the artistry of this/that singer he happened to come across just around the corner."
Another example: "He didn't want to carry that/this burden of never being able to communicate his feelings to her."

[Anonymous No.20071415]

>>20071409
Uh, I don't think you would use this/that. You would use 'the'.

[Anonymous No.20071443]

>>20071409
>Walking pensively, he suddenly stopped--he found himself mesmerized by the artistry of the singer he happened to come across just around the corner.
This would be "technically" correct, but it still sounds awkward.
>Walking pensively, he suddenly stopped just after rounding the corner. He found himself mesmerized by the artistry of the singer he happened to come across.
is probably better, at least if you're going for readability. "Artistry" is also a strange word to use here, "Performance" would be better.
>He didn't want to carry that/this burden of never being able to communicate his feelings to her.
should be
>He didn't want to carry the burden of never being able to communicate his feelings to her.
but it would be better to concatenate it to the end of the previous sentence like
>Walking pensively, he suddenly stopped just after rounding the corner. He found himself mesmerized by the performance of the singer he happened to come across, and didn't want to carry the burden of never being able to communicate his feelings to her.
Also what kinda fuckin gay shit is this boi?

[Anonymous No.20071445]

>>20071415
Maybe I've given bad examples then. This is from Dune by Frank Herbert, and the novel is supposed to be in the past simple tense:
>"Kynes looked at Bewt, and Jessica noted that the other conversations around the table had stopped while people concentrated on this new interchange."
...
>"Hawat bowed, obeyed. That drunken fool of an Idaho! he thought. He
studied Jessica’s face, wondering how he could save this situation."
...
>"And he knew that whatever the facts proved to be in the end, he would
never forget this moment nor lose this sense of supreme admiration for the Lady Jessica."

[Anonymous No.20071448]

>>20071443
>Also what kinda fuckin gay shit is this boi?
Kek, those are just sentences that I wrote as an example

[Anonymous No.20071452]

>>20071448
Nah you can't fool me, you're writing some homo shit for women to schlick off to, I can tell already. How dare you appeal to the largest reader demographic that is also among the easiest to satisfy in order to make a ton of easy money! Writing is supposed to make you poor and miserable, if you're successful then it isn't art.

[Anonymous No.20071468]

Why the fuck would anyone write for "art"? Just write simple prose that's easily digestible and make a few bucks. This is a hobby, not a lifestyle.

[Anonymous No.20071471]

>>20071445
All those are acceptable. So for example for the examples you first provided.
>Walking pensively, he suddenly stopped--he found himself mesmerized by the artistry of this singer.
This works, but not if you qualify it as 'this singer (that) he....'
And.
>He would never be able to communicate his feelings to her; he didn't want to carry this burden.
This works too, so it depends on how you structure your sentence.
I'm not English major so I can't tell you the rules about it. For me it's all built on intuition from reading hundreds of books, but hopefully you can see the difference.

[Anonymous No.20071494]

>>20071468
>/lit/erary genius can't recognize obvious sarcasm

[Anonymous No.20071495]

>>20068854
Would it be disrespectful to Brian Jacques memory to write stories that are in the same vein as Redwall? You know, mice and other woodland animals fighting tyrannical enemies much larger than themselves, emphasis on heroism and friendship, pretty brutal deaths that contrast with innocent scenes of food and merriment, etc.?

[Anonymous No.20071512]

>>20071494
i read it and got it. seriously though who is actually writing for "art"?

if a banana on a wall is art, books with terrible prose, unreadability, breaking all conventional norms, and an utter waste of time is also art.

Just put out

"THE WORST BOOK EVER"

Then go on a diatribe of everything wrong with writing.

[Anonymous No.20071518]

>>20071452
>you're writing some homo shit for women to schlick off to
I've actually considered this option before, but eventually decided that I would only contribute to the worsening state of contemporary literature and thus debase myself as a conscientious human being.

>>20071471
Thanks. I just wanted to know whether it's acceptable to use "this" at all when writing in the past simple

[Anonymous No.20071526]

>>20071512
Some people enjoy crafting well made shit. They’re artists who artifice for the sake of art.
No one here is like that.

Captcha JHOOS

[Anonymous No.20071529]

>>20071495
Go for it. But be aware that the reason he used animals is to allow for socially acceptable racism. You're not allowed to say niggers are stupid and violent or jews are evil, rotten schemers. But weasels and rats aren't good. They're not good at all.
Keep that in mind when writing your story and embrace the stereotypes because stereotypes are based on empiric wisdom and children need to learn it somehow. Its good for them.

[Anonymous No.20071531]

>>20071409
This and that are not tense related. You use this to convey proximity and that to convey distance.

>>20071445
I'll try to give example of what I'm trying to say.
1) "concentrated on this new interchange" to "concentrated on that new interchange" the interchange now is happening at a place long enough that while they can see something is happening they can't hear it.
2) "how he could save this situation" to "how he could save that situation" in the first the this indicates proximity in the time sense so it's a situation that happened just now (in narration) while in the second one it's referencing a situation that happened sometime ago in narration and he couldn't deal with it at the moment for whatever reason.
3) "forget this moment" to "forget that moment" first one is something that just happened, the thing that was just narrated will become a cherished memory; second one implies the moment has happened already and he is remembering it fondly. So if you wanted to reference the memory after writing "he would never forget this moment" at some later part of the book you could write something like "and so his mind went back to that moment he knew he would never forget"

Hope I was able to help.

[Anonymous No.20071534]

>>20071526
Monkeys with typewriters anon. Monkeys with typewriters. That's a better way to do it.

[Anonymous No.20071539]

>>20071468
I think you got it backwards. If it's a hobby why are you trying to make a buck instead of just doing whatever it is enjoyable to you?

[Anonymous No.20071553]

>>20071539
because hobbies are fun and making money off hobbies make it double the fun! Hence video game tournaments and selling baseball cards

[Anonymous No.20071570]

>>20071518
But the money though

[Anonymous No.20071581]

>>20071570
Here's the thing.
If you go down that road, you're going to enter an arena already full with dipshits doing the same thing for a pittance, and worse you'll find that all the skills you have real or imagined don't amount to shit. It's an entirely different ballgame.

[Anonymous No.20071589]

>>20071581
All you need to do is get a few dozen roasties addicted to your particular brand of fetishistic smut though. Women spend money at huge rates online. Bonus points if the fetishistic smut has your fetishes in it.

[Anonymous No.20071604]

What is the most cashgrab genre litrpg serial or fetishistic smut?

[Anonymous No.20071608]

>>20071604
LitRPG serial is like a casino
Fetishistic Smut is a job at a corner store

[Anonymous No.20071617]

>>20071531
Yeah, got it. I don't know why I've always thought that the usage of "this" and "that" depends on the tense of the text (when writing fiction), probably got misled from somewhere and never actually bothered to check it out. Thanks for the reply

>>20071570
>But the money though
I prefer timeless remembrance to temporal gratifications and self-indulgences

[Anonymous No.20071619]

>>20071534
Sure, if your goal is to create something beautiful. But an artist who loves their craft doesn’t want that. They want to /create/ something beautiful. They want to master the process, to understand the patterns hidden in our world.
And they’re MEGA gay. Love em.

[Anonymous No.20071624]

>>20071581
Oh please, you're either going to be involved with a bunch of dipshits that can't find their way out of a paperbag, or a bunch of dipshits that LARP as intellectuals that claim they're the gatekeepers to "fine literature".

You'e fucked either way. May as well make some money.

[Anonymous No.20071625]

>>20071608
Wait.. litrpg is lucrative??

As someone who’s put decent effort into some play transcripts, I’m amazed. I’d have thought they’d be dwarfed by even philosophy papers.

[Anonymous No.20071627]

>>20071619
The problem is that these "artists" NEVER finish anything.

[Anonymous No.20071631]

>>20071625
>Wait.. litrpg is lucrative??
There are a bunch of them in royalroad that make six figures from patreon.

[Anonymous No.20071634]

>>20071624
Hey I'm not saying it's not an option. Just that it's going to be a slog.

[Anonymous No.20071644]

>>20071627
Patently false. I used to make video james, and I finished several. They were absolute arse, but they were finished and I enjoyed learning to make them.
I also hate game development now. So.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Anonymous No.20071645]

>>20071625
There are motherfuckers pulling in 20k a month writing pure shit. LitRPG is incredibly lucrative if you can get it to take off.

[Anonymous No.20071648]

>>20071624
This guy seems to be in both camps so it may not be bad company.

[Anonymous No.20071651]

>>20071645
So what’s the appeal? Wish fulfilment? Stockholm syndrome?

[Anonymous No.20071660]

>>20071651
6 billion people in the world. 5000 people paying 5 bucks a month is 300,000/yr

That's why. Why hasn't anyone jumped on the LITRPG genre I will never know.

[Anonymous No.20071665]

>>20071651
Both, plus it's usually isekai so it gets weeb money.

[Anonymous No.20071670]

>>20071660
>>20071665
Damn. Time to hire an agent and hammer my shitty notes into a readable format.

[Anonymous No.20071681]

When do I need a prologue?

[Anonymous No.20071682]

>>20071670
>agent
Just write shitty 1500 word chapters everyday and post them. Offer people to 15 dollars to read 20 chapter ahead. You need 1667 people to make 300k a year.

[Anonymous No.20071693]

>>20071681
when you're writing a litrpg or a isekai

[Anonymous No.20071708]

>>20071693
I'm actually working on an isekai but what makes a story litrpg?
Vidya mechanics?

[Anonymous No.20071721]

>>20071682
Bruh, I was doing twice that for free at one point, plus art! Fookin ell

[Anonymous No.20071733]

>>20071681
The government doesn't want you to know this, but a prologue is just chapter 1.

[Anonymous No.20071737]

>>20071708
I don't know anon. What do you think the genre called literature rpg is defined by?

[Anonymous No.20071750]

>>20071681
When you want to give insight about a character who is not the protagonist, or something that happened without the protagonist being present, before the story begins proper

[Anonymous No.20071755]

>>20071737
Fuck, man, idunno. Look, I just want the money, bro, I don't even read this shit.

[Anonymous No.20071776]

>>20071257
Is he going to turn back into a lower life form/inanimate object by the end

[Anonymous No.20071783]

>the chapter where the protagonist shits himself while vomiting then collapses into a bush unconscious is filtering people according to my views
I'm not changing it

[Anonymous No.20071817]

>>20070931
>>20070952
:(

I'm not sharing my work ever again

[Anonymous No.20071850]

>>20071817
On the one hand, you should never share work on 4chan unless you're prepared to have retards give you hot takes and troll you just because.
On the other hand, if you can mentally adjust "holy fuck you're retarded for doing <X> kill yourself" into "maybe <X> is bad" the feedback can be valuable.

[Anonymous No.20071851]

>>20070900
>>20071817
I'll be a little nicer; it's alright technically, and you have a good grasp of spelling and grammar. The issues are that it's a little clunky, and there's not much personality to it. You do tend to fall into clichés, or do nothing at all interesting. You need to have the confidence to take the prose and really make it your own rather than just aping phrases and expressions you've read.
But it's honestly readable. Just kind of boring.

[Anonymous No.20071864]

>>20071817
Readable but boring is also what I'd call it. This is labelled "Book 2" so I assume "Book 1" gives us some reason to give a fuck about these characters? If not, they're pretty much cardboard cutouts with fantasy stereotypes pasted on top.

[Anonymous No.20071881]

>>20071864
This is very true. And the reality is you don't need excellent style to get someone to read your work. All you need is interest.
But of course better structure helps your audience.

[Anonymous No.20071940]

>>20071864
>>20071851
Disagree. He does have problems with a hook, but fantasy always starts slow. Information is slowly leaked to you Do you honestly think Bilbo Baggins and the hobbits celebrating his 111th birthday was interesting?

[Anonymous No.20071944]

>>20071940
The entirety of LotR is one boring slog. The birthday was probably one of the best parts of this literary pit of boredom.

[Anonymous No.20071946]

I want to do more style testing tonight. I need an interesting dynamic topic to write a paragraph about. Any suggestions?

[Anonymous No.20071955]

>>20071946
I guess I could just give you what I just wrote. MC has a sword sparring session with his mates in front of the local peasants.

[Anonymous No.20071956]

>>20071940
There's a difference between having compelling characters and leaking information slowly and having barely two dimensional character templates and leaking information slowly. Also LotR is boring, by modern standards, but any character from that book is at least a character. The ones in anon's example are so generic that they might as well not exist. If you can't write complex characters, you at least need to give me a reason to care about your generic ones.

[Anonymous No.20071958]

>>20071940
yeah? The first chapter of LoTR is fantastically fun. It's full of humor and wit, it describes Hobbiton and the relationships between the hobbits in a way that makes you actually interested in them. It's fun to learn about Merry and Pippin, about the Sackville-Bagginses, about Bilbo himself. "slow" doesn't have to mean "uninteresting".
That being said, anon posted book 2, so if we read them in order, we know about these characters already. So on the one hand, it wouldn't bother me as much if I had read book 1. on the other, it doesn't excuse starting book 2 in a boring way

[Anonymous No.20071968]

>>20071733
genuinely this
just name your prologue Chapter 1. If you really feel like it's so different from the rest of the book that you have to label it a prologue, then it's not worth having at all.
I never read prologues they are always boring and irrelevant.

[Anonymous No.20071990]

>>20071956
>>20071958
book 2 anon here (it's just a nameholder, it's my second attempt at a fantasy rpg)

I honestly have no idea how else to make the first chapter any more interesting without giving everything away. 4 of the characters are dead by the end of the chapter.

[Anonymous No.20071999]

>>20071958
and Hobbiton meant absolutely fucking nothing the rest of the series. Nobody was interested in Pippin or Merry until they actually joined the Fellowship in the middle .

It only gets interesting in the first chapter is when Bilbo disappears. The fireworks, the party, all that crap was a pointless slog.

[Anonymous No.20072005]

>>20071958
okay okay i'll change the title already.

[Anonymous No.20072008]

>>20071955
Alright, I'll take up this challenge best as I can.

[Anonymous No.20072035]

>>20071999
Pointless? not at all. It's always valuable to have insight into how the protagonist lives his daily life. We know that Frodo is sheltered and hasn't faced hardship in his life before, if the biggest problems his family have faced are intrusive and rude cousins. We get the picture that the Shire is comforting, and yet stifling, and as a result we can understand why Frodo is so curious about what lies beyond.
It all stands to give depth to Middle Earth. All the lore and history, though it can be a slog to read, pays off, because at the end of the day, Middle Earth feels like a real place, not just a movie set. And that's what anon's woods at the beginning of his book are - a set piece.

[Anonymous No.20072080]

>>20071783
I include filters of this kind in all my stories. It would be a great shame if someone whom I would personally dislike were able to enjoy my story.

[Anonymous No.20072082]

>>20071999
nice trips but I disagree. the first chapter is filled with comfort. it's then juxtaposed with the rest of the book filled with hardship and despair.

[Anonymous No.20072087]

>>20071783
I like it. If you want to include it, include it.

[Anonymous No.20072099]

>>20072035
>>20072082
you guys are reading based on the completed story. Not just the "first pages." We know all that opens up after you get past the first chapter. But since you're criticizing anon being boring, it's an unfair comparison.

Assuming the first page of anons book is about 500 words, i just read the first 500 words of LOTR. It doesn't even get to Frodo yet.

[Anonymous No.20072102]

>>20072080
based. I consider the multiple complaints about my amputee wizard stump-rape scene to be proof it was necessary.

[Anonymous No.20072108]

>>20072099
I take that back. we just know Frodo is Bilbo's favorite. Nonetheless it's a fantasy book, make it a slow burn.

Besides, anon can always just post it on RR and collect patreon dollars.

[Anonymous No.20072113]

>>20072099
nice dubs. I criticized no one, I just entered the thread and decided to disagree with your criticism of LoTR.

>implying i read the thread and don't just respond to the most recent posts

[Anonymous No.20072128]

Describe a feast in 250 words.

[Anonymous No.20072161]

>>20072108
What’s RR? Shouldn’t there be a George Martin in there?

[Anonymous No.20072175]

>>20072113
my mistake.

[Anonymous No.20072185]

Alright, round two of voice testing. Prompt was MC sword sparring with his buddeh. I tried to really stress the differences and hopefully this time the prompt paragraph was interesting enough to get clear differences in scene style. I can tell they're particularly tryhard and not finely edited, but I'm going for differences in tone to see which direction I should be taking my voice. I'm willing to be cringe to improve.

I'd really like some feedback from everyone who can give it. Which one do you like the best and why?

[Anonymous No.20072195]

>>20072128
We're not writing your book anon.

[Anonymous No.20072198]

>>20072128
I just can't stop writing sci-fi

[Anonymous No.20072203]

>>20072195
I'm only write bad poetry about girls I want to fuck. This is an exercise and I'd like to see what you guys come up with.

>wine
>platter
>lounge

Include those

[Anonymous No.20072205]

>>20068649
>cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle
maybe he should apply this technique to his body?

[Anonymous No.20072213]

>>20072198
I like it.

>>20072185
I prefer clipped. But that's how I think. Impressionist strikes me as homoerotic.
Standard is good.

[Anonymous No.20072274]

>to write the next great novel
>make a commentary about human nature
>a criticism of consumerism
>peter pan syndrome
>cheap entertainment and addiction to instant gratification
>desire for praise from others
>replacement of pets as children
>incel problems
>over sexualization of certain groups

What else can we criticize about the culture of the past decade?

[Anonymous No.20072281]

>>20072198
remember to end quotes with a comma and start a dialogue tag with lowercase letters

[Anonymous No.20072282]

>>20072274
your life.

[Anonymous No.20072291]

>>20072281
Nigga I wrote that shit in 2 minutes, I didn't exactly edit it or pay attention to grammar.

[Anonymous No.20072933]

>>20072291
Not an argument.

[Anonymous No.20072939]

>>20072933
>nearly 4 fucking hours later
sasuga retard-san

[Anonymous No.20072946]

>>20072939
>WAAA YOU NEED TO BE HERE TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME AT ALL TIMES WAAA
No.

[Anonymous No.20072948]

>>20072291
Then why post it? Are you just looking for dick rubs?

[Anonymous No.20072954]

>>20072948
It's an advanced form of humor called a joke. You may not have heard of it. Specifically, it's a sub-category known as a shitpost.

[Anonymous No.20072957]

>>20070054
>no, you have to understand... in fantasy, people WANT bad writing
Ladies and gentlemen, the archetypal fantasyshitter.

[Anonymous No.20072960]

>>20072954
Yet, here you are defending it.

[Anonymous No.20072962]

>>20072960
I don't even understand what you're implying, so I'm just going to assume you're retarded. Considering the rest of the posts you made in the last 7 minutes, I'm pretty confident in my opinion.

[Anonymous No.20072963]

>>20072962
>>20072954
>I was only pretending to be retarded
Take the criticism. Improve. No excuses.

[Anonymous No.20072964]

>>20071783
Good for you anon. I had that happen to me (the actual shitting and vomiting part) and it ended up as part of an experience that made me stronger.

[Anonymous No.20072966]

Does anyone here actually read or write?

[Anonymous No.20072968]

>>20072962
>make a shitpost
>anon, this is shit. here's why...
>no, you don't understand, this is a shitpost, it's SUPPOSED to be shit, you just don't get the fact that it's a shitpost
>then why defend it?
>well i really just don't understand what you're implying so you must be a retard
Sound accurate?

[Anonymous No.20072986]

>>20072966
I can't speak for others but I log my writing on nanowrimo and do about 600 words a day and read an average of 2-3 hours a day. I need to do a lot more but if I force it, my brain just doesn't take in what I read nor can I produce anything serviceable in terms of prose or poesy.

[Anonymous No.20073004]

>>20071733
But prologue is not chapter 1, it's prologue. It sets up the story, or mood, or character arcs by showing information vital to understanding the book, but is not necessarily part of the story itself, or structured like a regular chapter.

Of course, many bad authors include a prologue just to have a prologue and don't think about the contents.

[Anonymous No.20073014]

>>20073004
My prologue has pirates in it.

[Anonymous No.20073020]

Reading something with actually great prose and characterization, and Jesus fuck, I need to step up my game. I don't have it in me to be this good, but I should at least try to do wonderful things with language, even if that means putting out garbage.
And I should read more.

[Anonymous No.20073022]

>can't even manage to finish writing the scenes for a short visual novel, where half the writing can be skipped with shit the artist draws
God help me I can't make this not read like shit, I can't get a single word down on the page for the last 3 weeks

[Anonymous No.20073079]

>>20073020
That's the spirit, anon. But don't get down on yourself. Reaching for something and failing to grasp it doesn't mean anything more than the fact that you reached that one time and came up short. It doesn't mean you'll never actually grab what it is you're reaching for. It just means you didn't. In a similar vein, when someone gives you some harsh criticism (as is the norm here), try as hard as you can to not take it personally. Even though there probably will be an actual personal attack in there, it doesn't mean the personal attack should be listened to any more than it means the criticism should be discarded.

And I know I'm preaching right now, but one last thing. Reading and appreciating Joyce doesn't mean you need to try to become the next Joyce. It's not even s standard you need to try to force yourself to adhere. I think that in the process of appreciating the amazing masters of the written word, your taste will develop on its own, on a more basic and intuitive level. You'll find your standards rising more and more, imperceptibly over time, for your own writing. With a lot of practice in writing, you'll be able to meet them... until your standards rise and it's time to start the process all over again.

This is the philosophy of Read More; Write More. No shortcuts, no cock rubs. Just hard work and a holistic approach to the creation of fiction. Follow it, and you will succeed.

[Anonymous No.20073084]

>>20073022
Having tried to write some in the past, VNs are not half as easy as people think.

The flow and integrity of the narrative are even more important than in a regular novel. Because with the text, audio, and visuals playing in sync, even smallest disruptions become so much more obvious and jarring than if there was only text. Readers read books at their own pace, but VNs are read at the pace the director sets, so the responsibility for the experience is entirely on you. Every line should move things forward and be informative, or you risk losing the audience.

So, yeah, lots of things to consider.

[Anonymous No.20073174]

>>20070544
Is this any better? Is there any noticeable improvement?

[Anonymous No.20073203]

>>20068637
Do literary pioneers necessarily suffer from little readership, poverty, and obscurity?

[Anonymous No.20073212]

>>20073203
Basically, yeah. There are obviously some exceptions, but I think it's more often played out that the greats and the pioneers and the visionaries and the iconoclasts are recognized only late in their lives and careers if they are at all.

[Anonymous No.20073215]

>>20073203
No, but they did in the past as it was far more difficult for their works to find their way into the hands of those able to appreciate them
Regardless, you are not a pioneer

[Anonymous No.20073237]

>>20073079
I feel like I haven't been trying, not that I failed. My writing is competent but unambitious. Feedback has been kind, maybe even less harsh than ideal. I need to start failing to advance.
The funny thing is that I'm not reading Joyce. The novel that's inspiring this feeling was published last week on AO3 and is (to put it crassly and reductively) about Discord coomers. But the author says he's a professional writing under an alias, and it shows.

[Anonymous No.20073288]

Do you have to actively try to have good prose?

[Anonymous No.20073414]

>>20068649
>cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle.
unironically a good advice. It's much better to say more with less than less with more

[Anonymous No.20073426]

sometimes i read something so absolutely apart from what im expecting that it makes you sit back in awe, even if the content is absolutely radical shit

[Anonymous No.20073436]

>how to literally never, ever get traditionally published

[Anonymous No.20073443]

>time to add simile/metaphor/personification
>open a compiled document of like 15 ebooks
>ctrl + f
>look up the keywords I need
>go through the document until I find a good example
>copy it
No rules just tools right? I've been doing this for 3 months now

[Anonymous No.20073460]

>>20073436
just don't call them jews.
>Bernard Marx: Named after Jewish revolutionary Karl Marx. He has an inferiority complex since he is shorter and thinner than other males. He is very critical of society out of jealousy because he doesn’t feel accepted.
>Morgana Rothschild: Named after Rothschild Jewish banking family
>Polly Trotsky: Named after Jewish revolutionary, Leon Trotsky
>Mustapha Mond: Named after Jewish Zionist Alfred Mond. He is the World Controller for Western Europe (how fitting?). He is very intelligent but uses his knowledge to manipulate people. In Chapter Three, he is desribed as “a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark”.

Meanwhile, the noble characters in Huxley’s story are clearly not Jewish:
>Helmholtz Watson: Named after German physicist Herrmann Vonn Helmholtz
>The main character of the story, John “The Savage” was not named after a specific person but symbolizes the traditional idea of a “hero”. He grew up on a Native Reservation in America but didn’t fit in because he was a blonde European. He is chivalrous, disciplined, and intelligent but introverted and feels isolated.
>Huxley’s predictions are fascinating to read from the modern perspective. For example, the word “God” has been replaced with “Freud”, the Jewish psychologist behind the Sexual Revolution.

[Anonymous No.20073478]

>>20073288
depends on what you're writing.

[Anonymous No.20073490]

>>20073288
Trying makes it better.
I don't know where "good" is.

[Anonymous No.20073504]

>>20072185
Standard and impressionist have some good elements. The latter, I think, suffers from thesaurus use and is much too heavy with the figurative. And this passage
>Simon stayed in the high guard, elusive, evasive,...
feels too forced. I would cut it off like this.
>Simon stayed in the high guard, elusive and evasive.

Anyway this is what I had, sanitized and rewritten in one paragraph.
>Cries of encouragement came from the crowd as he spun his sword to deflect Simon's blow. Soon every thread-spinning man, wife and child who had heard the noise had gathered around them. As he lunged into his opponent’s overreach, he got in a hit to the clavicle, making him stumble. With every exchange the crowd cheered. Whenever Simon would think he could come in close, David used his shoulder to glance the sword away from him. He could have just dodged, but the spectacle had him in a playful mood.

[Anonymous No.20073514]

>>20073288
You have to try to make it better, but once you're there you won't have to.

[Anonymous No.20073516]

>>20073288
>Do I have to write prose that people can understand and enjoy?
Yes.
>Do I have to reach for some external heavenly standard that I don't even understand?
No.

[Anonymous No.20073554]

>>20073516
>understand
This part isn't strictly necessary.

[Anonymous No.20073561]

>>20072213
>>20073504
Thanks for the feedback. I'm starting to get slightly more vague ideas of what I've been doing wrong. I think I can be boiled down to what this guy said >>20073237 I feel like I haven't been trying hard enough. I need to step out from the "just zone out and write as it flows to you" and retool that flow like I did several years ago when said flow was cringe self insert baloney.

[Anonymous No.20073674]

>>20068637
Does there have to be a balance between the different techniques of describing the characters' thoughts? I do that in two ways. For example, I either write
>"the sky is red" he thought
or
>the sky looked red to him
Should I try to use one writing technique as often as the other?

[Anonymous No.20073683]

>>20073674
You should probably stay consistent. For my current work I've stuck to the second and occasionally I do:
>The sky is red, he thought.

[Anonymous No.20073700]

>>20073674
Why would you narrate a red sky filtered through the third person inner monologue of a character? Why not just describe the sky?

[Anonymous No.20073727]

>>20073674
the latter 100%
>Free indirect style is at its most powerful when hardly visible or audible: “Jen watched the orchestra through stupid tears.” In my example, the word “stupid” marks the sentence as written in free indirect style. Remove it, and we have standard reported thought: “Jen watched the orchestra through tears.” The addition of the word “stupid” raises the question: Whose word is this? It’s unlikely that I would want to call my character stupid merely for listening to some music in a concert hall. No, in a marvelous alchemical transfer, the word now belongs partly to Jen. She is listening to the music and crying, and is embarrassed—we can imagine her furiously rubbing her eyes—that she has allowed these “stupid” tears to fall. Convert it back into first-person speech, and we have this: “‘Stupid to be crying at this silly piece of Brahms, she thought.” But this example is several words longer; and we have lost the complicated presence of the author.
>What is so useful about free indirect style is that in our example a word like “stupid” somehow belongs both to the author and the character; we are not entirely sure who “owns” the word. Might “stupid” reflect a slight asperity or distance on the part of the author? Or does the word belong wholly to the character, with the author, in a rush of sympathy, having “handed” it, as it were, to the tearful woman?
some of those books in the recommended reading list are actually pre good desu

[Anonymous No.20073732]

>>20073700
It's just an example, maybe not the best one. I'm writing from the perspective of that character, I feel like I should occasionally specify that world is seen though his eyes and it's not just 100% accurate descriptions of things. I guess a better example would be trying to describe a character believing he's seeing something in the dark or something like that
>he thought he saw something in the dark
or
>"there's something in the dark" he thought

[Anonymous No.20073746]

>>20073727
what is this from?

[Anonymous No.20073758]

>>20073732
If you're consistently writing from a single character's POV you could just say there's an indistinct shape in the dark and trust the reader to understand that it's subjective.

[Anonymous No.20073958]

When I write my story I just write whatever comes to my head

[Anonymous No.20073973]

>>20073554
I personally can't enjoy things I don't understand much, but to each their own

[Anonymous No.20074162]

>>20073973
The understanding of information is the cheapest, most trivial mundanity of contemporary life. In a world where the majority of human knowledge is accessible freely on your cell phone screen, from where comes the value of meaning and understanding? You drive up to McDonald's and you're bombarded by easily comprehensible, utile information. Meaning is everywhere you look, and it's exhausting. You literally cannot help but understand things in today's world, and if you lack the comprehension it comes down only to your own unwillingness to find it. Meaning is trite; analytical processes are boring. I want to read and write things which pulsate and seethe with irrational, incomprehensible humanity. For everything else, there's Wikipedia and drive through fast food and doctorate degrees from machines designed to churn out another generation of overgrown children coloring within the lines.

Fuck that. And fuck niggers.

[Anonymous No.20074179]

>>20074162
Absolute pseud shit.

[Anonymous No.20074185]

>>20074179
Okay there, Bug Man.

[Anonymous No.20074205]

I just did it bros. I just finished the final draft of my novel (not counting if agents/editors eventually want me to do another draft or w/e). It's 142k words long and took me just over a year, including 3 major re-writes and 3 rounds of drafting.

[Anonymous No.20074211]

>>20074179
nta but is there anything more genuinely ironic on 4chan than single-line shitposts calling someone a pseud?
>no, i don't have anything to actually say except to state my disapproval and by the way you're an idiot

[Anonymous No.20074218]

You ever go to McDonalds and like read stuff off the menu? It's not writing at all. Like writing is things I don't get so that's not writing. If you write something that can be understood you might as well write a McDonalds menu lmao. Joyce never wrote a McDonalds menu.

[Anonymous No.20074219]

>>20074205
It's too long. Cut out half before the editor does.

[Anonymous No.20074236]

>>20074205
K... Keep me posted.

[Anonymous No.20074278]

>>20074211
Pseud is something that is instantly recognizable and rarely deserves more than a 3 word shitpost. If you can't understand why his post is pure pseud, that reflects more on you than it does the shitposter.

[Anonymous No.20074303]

>>20074278
Pseud.

[Anonymous No.20074308]

>>20074278
>If you can't understand why his post is pure pseud, that reflects more on you than it does the shitposter.
you'd rather explain why you don't have to explain why someone else is a pseudointellectual. if pseudointellectual is supposed to be an insult, then it presupposes that you, the "pseud-caller," are not a pseudointellectual. the assumption from there is that either you don't consider yourself to be smart enough to be an intellectual (but somehow, in the process, smart enough to tell other people that they aren't either) or are yourself supposed to be considered a TruIntellectual™. or maybe you're a self-hating and self-identifying pseudo-intellectual resentful of others not having your same humility?

either way, the summary dismissal plus ad-hom is just a dead giveaway of someone too dumb to actually address what's being said. i'm not even vouching for what that anon initially said. it's obviously a super hot take. i would actually be curious if he'd defend an actual, cogent attack on it, but my gut says he wouldn't.

my only point here is that you are not only being cruel, but that you are actually the very same kind of retard you think you see... and maybe even the only one in this interaction.

[Anonymous No.20074355]

>>20074162
Something can be hard to understand without actually being meaningless.
Some meaning is easy. Some isn't. Tough but attainable meaning gives you things nonsense can't.
Even apparent nonsense has to contain actual meaning in order to stay engaging. If not intentional, then accidental: Terry Davis got quite far with a literal random number generator. You want a puzzle, not noise.
Humanity is meaningful. The meaning is just hard to access.

[Anonymous No.20074381]

>>20074355
>Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos.
gaddis said it best

[Anonymous No.20074394]

>>20074308
Very cringe but I'll give you an answer anyway.
The idea that stories should not be understood is sure pseud speak because it falls back to the fetishization of writing culture. Reading and writing should be something that only those of a higher breed can take part in, the type who is dressed head to toe in twill while being driven around in a 60's Jaguar, a pipe in one hand and a pen in the other. It's the same attitude you see from people like R.C Waldun. It comes from a love of being seen as a writer and not from the love of sharing a story.
No one who actually wants to share a story ever says "I want this to be incomprehensible. It should only be for me!". The only person who would ever approach writing that way is someone is either an extreme eccentric from a bygone era, or someone who wants to emulate them for the infantile desire to be recognized at a dinner party.

[Anonymous No.20074410]

>>20072964
Yeah I actually drew on my own experiences with food poisoning for it. I've shidded and vomidded myself more times than I would like to admit.

[Anonymous No.20074419]

>>20074381
That's just cope. At times we can literally quantify chaos and unknowability.
Chaos is not fundamental. It's generated by knowable rules. Reality is not fully knowable, but it's built out of information.

[Anonymous No.20074420]

>>20071783
post it

[Anonymous No.20074429]

>>20071817
Good.

[Anonymous No.20074435]

>>20074394
>The only person who would ever approach writing that way is someone is either an extreme eccentric from a bygone era
I'm pretty fucking eccentric, but I'm very much of this era. I don't give the slightest shit about image or Jaguars or pipes and pens. I get the feeling that we've probably had permutations of this argument before.

[Anonymous No.20074491]

>>20074435
>I get the feeling that we've probably had permutations of this argument before.
It wasn't me, though it's far from surprising that others have asked you to cut this shit out.

[Anonymous No.20074511]

>>20074491
Cut it out, and then what? Write up the droll little package of discrete information dressed up in characters and storylines and plot twists? Submit it to the slot machine of commercial success and hope for a Hollywood adaptation and a nice little prize or two? Fuck off with your condescending, conformist bullshit. If there is even one place left on the internet where you're allowed by society to be eccentric, it's this little shithole corner of the internet, and I'm not going to sanitize myself on your benefit so you can go back to discussing your anime-inspired Patreon cashgrabs and whether or not you "should" write thoughts in quotations or as narrative observations. Your attitude is completely and incorrigibly asinine.

[Anonymous No.20074521]

>>20074491
>>20074511
Would you two just find a dark alley and fuck already?

[Anonymous No.20074526]

>>20074419
>>20074435
You two watch way too much Jordan Peterson

[Anonymous No.20074532]

>>20074511
You can do whatever it is you want, I'm not here to dictate that. I just want you to keep your bad takes to yourself. We don't need any more pseuds shitting up discussion.

[Anonymous No.20074537]

>>20074532
>I'm not here to dictate that
No, but you ARE trying to vouch for it, aren't you? What a slimy little way of squirming out of the discussion.

[Anonymous No.20074539]

>>20074511
>>20074435
Is this the retard who was seething a few threads back about people making money from their work?

[Anonymous No.20074545]

>>20074539
Yes. There's someone that seethes for not writing some intellectual garbage. Until they learn that the most intellectual thing you can do is to make some money

[Anonymous No.20074556]

>>20074539
believe it or not, there's more than one person on the internet who thinks the patreon scam crowd should fuck off.

[Anonymous No.20074565]

>>20074556
>if you don't write something incomprehensible for free then you a patreon scam tier writer
I'm seconding the first anon in this fight. Pure pseud.

[Anonymous No.20074571]

>>20074565
>gross mischaracterization of initial, half-understood concepts you never bothered to clarify and make sure you understood before attacking
>"Heh. Yeah. Pure pseud."

[Anonymous No.20074579]

how do you guys write a story in a story? Do you just have a person tell the story to another character in a huge monologue? Is the format a block quote?

>>20074556
You can always ignore the patreon scam posts.

[Anonymous No.20074597]

If you're going to gatekeep who is allowed to write you should at least post your own work. It's weird to argue from such a position of authority when you've done nothing to back that up.

[Anonymous No.20074598]

>>20074579
I frame it like Conrad did in Heart of Darkness. You've got one narrator telling the story all the way through. I started my current book off with a mom telling her son (the MC) the history of their nation as a bedtime story, interspersed with usual childish exclamations and questions. It's an important scene since it sets the conflict up for the first half of the book and introduces the closeness of the mom and son, which characterizes what the MC wants out of his future relationships with women--which is the main gut of the story, and contributes to nearly every major conflict. Tangent aside, have a narrator tell the story in quote blocks, and break it up if necessary. If it's a long story, tell it all the way through.

[Anonymous No.20074600]

>>20074579
>You can always ignore the patreon scam posts.
they deserve rational counterpoint. nobody attaches a disclaimer to their post like (DISCLAIMER: I ONLY WRITE TO MAKE MONEY). they toss around insults and their voices drown out everyone else and they do it under the guise of writing advice, when in reality they're just trying to teach you how to set up a business selling smut and kitschy fantasy garbage to retards. anyway.
>how do you guys write a story in a story? Do you just have a person tell the story to another character in a huge monologue? Is the format a block quote?
yeah, a monologue is a really good framing device. it's pretty battle-tested and still leaves a lot of room to add in more detail to the metanarrative (the metanarrative, as in the people in the story who are actually listening to the nested, "primary" narrative) if you want to. that said, it's perfectly viable to just do a minimal setup and tell the entire story in quotations. i'm gonna assume you've read heart of darkness, but it's basically the archetype of the framed story.

[Anonymous No.20074615]

Who cares about writing technique when it's not supposed to be read by anyone else, let alone understood. Just scribble in a coloring book and pat yourself on the back.

[Anonymous No.20074622]

>>20074597
>>20074615
>xhe's still passively trying to start fights to claw back a little bit of that ego
let it go! don't be a pseud! you're supposed to be championing the traditions of intellectualism in its purest form!

[Anonymous No.20074623]

Writing is an exercise in communication. If nobody reads what you write, you fail as a writer.
If people want to read what you write, you have succeeded.
If they pay for it, you already have achieved more than anyone who tries to act superior because of the contents of their writing.

[Anonymous No.20074632]

>>20074622
>s-samefag!
Who's attempting to claw back ego?

[Anonymous No.20074643]

>>20074623
Desu senpai, if I even got a fanbase of 50 people who looked forward to reading each book I put out, I would be excited as fuck.

[Anonymous No.20074645]

>>20074622
>ego
Funny to call others out for that when coddling your own ego is the only reason you seem to write.

[Anonymous No.20074649]

>>20074623
>Writing is an exercise in communication. If nobody reads what you write, you fail as a writer.
why? is there a difference between communication and expression? if so, does this statement fall apart if you substitute communication for expression?

[Anonymous No.20074656]

Notice how the quality of the thread instantly took a dive after the lull in activity? It's quite interesting how one dedicated shitposter can absolutely ruin something when the jannies refuse to do their fucking jobs.

[Anonymous No.20074661]

>>20074649
Expression in a void is meaningless. It's the opposite: keeping things inside. I'm sure there is a very small part of writing that is personal and therapeutic, but the base drive of it remains communication or expression. The two words are interchangeable.

[Anonymous No.20074666]

>>20074656
It always surprises me to go away from /wg/ for an hour and come back to more than 30 new posts. Usually it's 2 or 3.

[Anonymous No.20074669]

>>20074661
I'd argue communication is attempting to get another to understand what you're putting out, whereas expression is putting out something for others to understand on their own.

[Anonymous No.20074672]

>>20074649
Absolutely no one gives a shit how well written your diary is.

[Anonymous No.20074677]

>>20074669
But not being understood leads to frustration, I guess in that sense communication is a more purposeful method of expression.

[Anonymous No.20074680]

>>20074526
I barely know who that is, my posts are a mix of Greg Egan and Scott Aaronson

[Anonymous No.20074686]

>>20074677
To a point, sure, but there's some who enjoy expressing themselves to an audience regardless, and some who enjoy getting a specific idea/story across.

[Anonymous No.20074735]

>>20074661
>Expression in a void is meaningless
if expression into a void is meaningless, then expression itself is meaningless.

communication into a void is meaningless, sure, because communication has a purpose: you transmit meaning. again, is that all that art and literature are? is it just a dressed-up way to transmit information? a way to transmit information in a way that's just clever and inventive?

that seems to me to be a very grim view of the human experience. it gets even grimmer when you add in the economic aspect of people purchasing your information, because writing then becomes this very cynical, transactional exchange of goods for currency. it's this idea that i have problems with, primarily. i think it unnecessarily constricts the definition of art into packages suitable for commercial transaction. it seems to be having a deleterious effect on the quality of the medium as a whole. it precludes the success of the kinds of experimental, groundbreaking works that served as the foundation for literature as a medium. is a system which precludes the presuppositions of its own establishment an effective system?

unless your goal is primarily to take advantage of the system to "succeed" in your transactional goals, i would suspect the answer is no.

[Anonymous No.20074739]

>>20074162
didn't read lol

[Anonymous No.20074759]

>>20074623
It's okay to write for an audience that's just yourself.
I don't do it, I can't bring myself to write unless I intend to publish. But you can do whatever you want. You can have whichever goals you want.

[Anonymous No.20074795]

>>20074759
I have no issue with that either. People have kept diaries since writing has been a thing. I do, however, have an issue with this tard going on another 20 post rant about how you should never write for an audience and how you're not allowed to make money from your work.

[Anonymous No.20074806]

>>20074795
I think I'd personally have an issue with 'writing for an audience' if it was just some corporate executive decision to find an author and make them write [popular genre], like happens, but somebody individually doing that, that's fine, go ahead.

[Anonymous No.20074835]

>>20074795
>how you should never write for an audience and how you're not allowed to make money from your work
well, hey. if you're happy to keep mischaracterizing the argument in bad faith, i'm willing to keep on repeating it until you actually understand.
>I can't bring myself to write unless I intend to publish
why can't it be just writing to the best of your ability? it's just fucking painful to me when people are so willfully subservient to the trends in the commercial market.
>>20074806
>but somebody individually doing that, that's fine, go ahead
the corporate executives don't even have to do that. people clamor all over themselves trying to write for money, so they can escape the soul-sucking economic machine they are either cynically or unwittingly continuing to support by doing so -- by making that decision to try to personally profit. non-participation in it is the only justifiable action, but the machine punishes you severely for it.

people just don't care anymore. it's a mad rush of individuals scurrying for their own economic security who care only to the bleeding edge of its utility. it's sad, and it's depressing that even here at the ass-end of the internet, it's still got its apologists preaching the party line that money = success. and nobody gives a shit because they think they can Generate The Currency from it as long as they sufficiently learn the rules.

[Anonymous No.20074850]

>>20074849
>>20074849

Fight in here.