/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.20111292]

Someday Edition. One day.

Previous Thread
>>20099517
>>20099517


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

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

Aditional related reads:
>pastebin.com/dXtFsTUh (embed)

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

Self publishing websites:
>pastebin.com/zcKB1gN9 (embed)

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

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

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

[Anonymous No.20111302]

>>20111292
how long does it take you to write a short story?
i'm still tinkering with my first after about 2 months, spending time on it about 1 hour per day
writing is bloody hard to do well lads

[Anonymous No.20111355]

My Flash Fiction Anthology is coming along!

"Pancakes vs Waffles"
https://litter.catbox.moe/8icwix.pdf

"Hiding Treasure"
https://litter.catbox.moe/7vxgo0.pdf

"Water Sport"
https://litter.catbox.moe/841omt.pdf

New Stories coming soon!
"Lunch Dates"
"Homework"
"Lemonade Stand"
"A New Boy"
"The Girl Next Door"
"Getting Fat"

[Anonymous No.20111362]

>>20111302
>how long does it take you to write a short story?
I don't know, I don't write.

[Anonymous No.20111376]

>one of my isekai'd heroes is a templar knight
>after he and the other guys summoned beat the obligatory demon king, he goes on to spread his faith all over the land
>he doesn't get to make a 1:1 copy of the catholic church but instead makes a weird catholic cult full of the fantasy world's customs
>another of them is a woman who is implied to have been forced into prostitution before being isekai'd
>she hated it and gets no abilities related to that, it's just to make her look extra miserable
Would Royal Road allow this?

[Anonymous No.20111486]

I'm trying to figure out a trick during a mystery novel. Can you help?

Suppose you meet two women. The first one introduces themselves as Jane Doe. Then the second one angrily says the first one can't be Jane Doe, because she herself is Jane Doe! Neither of them have IDs or distinguishing features to suggest they might be Jane Doe (like a tattoo of their own name or telling racial characteristics).

How to figure out which one is the original Jane Doe, and which one is the impostor? Rule out fantastical premises of doppelgangers or cloning.

[Anonymous No.20111504]

Writing 250 words a day on average for the past month. NaNoWriMo might be out of my league but at this rate I will have a 100,000 word work by the end of the year.

[Anonymous No.20111508]

>>20111504
based every-day writer, keep those words coming

[Anonymous No.20111511]

>>20111486
Tell them "the real Jane doe knows how to suck cock". Proceed to expose cock.

[Anonymous No.20111520]

A systematic approach to writing or outlining a story?

I'm trying to design a document like a fill in the blanks sheet.

Character
1. Want - What does your character want?

2. Need - What do they believe?

3. Lie - What is at stake?

4. Ghost - Why they must succeed?

Character Arc
1. Character believes lie
2. Character encounters truth
3. Character overcomes lie by finding and accepting the truth


Philosophical Conflict
Blank vs Blank

0. Protagonist
1. Ordinary World
2. Call to Adventure
3. Refusal of the Call
4. Meeting the Mentor
5. Crossing the Threshold
6. Tests, Allies and Enemies
7. Approach
8. Ordeal, Death and Rebirth
9. Reward, Seizing the Sword
10. The Road Back
11. Resurrection
12. Return with Elixir

What else could be added?

[Anonymous No.20111532]

So, the themes I’m playing with are
>Purpose/Motivation
>The nature of a sapient mind
Sapience and sentience are two different things. Most of the characters are sentient, but fewer are fully sapient. Sure, they all have motivations and purposes they all fill.
The interesting thing is that our protagonist, while he is slowly revealed to indeed be a sapient creature capable of higher thought, has a distinct lack of purpose or motivation. This is in direct contrast to the first opponent he goes again, who isn’t all that complicated up there, but is dead set and focused on his goal of just surviving

[Anonymous No.20111550]

>>20111504
Good work, that's how I wrote my book of just a bit larger length, but I also did extensive research during the concept and drafting.

[Anonymous No.20111556]

>>20111355
Water sports is the best story. But least fappable.

[Anonymous No.20111561]

I'm getting published bros...... it's in a journal here in tier 3 http://www.erikakrousewriter.com/erika-krouses-ocd-ranking-of-483-literary-magazines-for-short-fiction

first thing ever, been writing seriously since 2017 albeit with a mangled millennial attention span and the very basic vidya/porn addictions that are par for the course. really finding my style and form this and last year though and have written 2 more stories that are much better already, this is it, I can feel it.

[Anonymous No.20111575]

>>20111561
Congratulations!

[Anonymous No.20111599]

>>20111486
(Assuming the reader is guessing)
It depends on if the fake knows the real Jane doe information. If not I would build up clues in the book that lead up to that moment where you can tell by subtle differences in retelling of stories that the fake gets wrong because she didn't experience them first hand. What comes to mind for me is encyclopedia brown desu. There are always subtle clues hidden in the book that you don't see until after you've read it.

(Assuming character is guessing)
If you know no information about the person I would just ask them to call their husband and have them come here or something. Assuming you can't do something that easy I could try to offer a reward to the one who comes clean of lying. If none of that works just go on not knowing which is real and keep it in the back of your mind.

Sorry if this doesn't really help.

[Anonymous No.20111606]

>>20111292
>be me
>dozens of story ideas I need to work on
>browse 4Chan all day instead
I hate myself sometimes.

[Anonymous No.20111631]

I don't have anything to say and only write because I live vicariously through my stories.

[Anonymous No.20111691]

>>20111292
What you think of this pitch:

A man stumbles upon his estranged brother, with which he hasn't had a relationship in years. He discovers that for the last so many years his brother has become one of the founding members of an artistic group that fancies themselves the creators of an entire new form of art: The Furhouse. As there is music for the ears, painting and cinema for the eyes, the culinary arts for the palate and perfumes for the nose, there is now a place where you can be overwhelmed into all manner of textures, from the warm and fuzzy to the cold and cemented to the wet and gelatinous to the coarse and prickly. At first mesmerized by the seemingly bizarre yet somehow intuitive nature of the Furhouse, our hero will slowly discover that the textured world of furs must branch out into infinite genres, experimentations and styles much like music itself, and as the popularity of the Furhouse spreads and more and more Furhouses are initiated worldwide, these experiments range from the sexual to the sadistic to the mind-melting once perception enhancing drugs become part of the equation. How dangerous can it get? How ethical can it be? And how mesmerizing and entrancing are these so called furs after all? You're going to need to enter the Furhouse for yourself to discover!

[Anonymous No.20111706]

>>20111691
sounds like you're catering to a niche audience with a lot of disposable income.
good luck extracting as much money as you can. not my cup of tea.

[Anonymous No.20111710]

>You can write a room which makes sense only within its small confines
>You can write a city which can support multiple rooms cohesively
>You can write a country which can support multiple cities containing multiple rooms
>You can write a world containing multiple counties,cities and rooms.
>You can write a universe that cohesively supports multiple worlds, counties, cities and rooms
>You can write a multiverse which supports all of the above

There is only one patrician choice

[Anonymous No.20111712]

>>20111706
What are you on my man, this is a pitch for a novel, not a business idea.

[Anonymous No.20111713]

>>20111599
Right now, it's set up as a closed-room kind of puzzle. No phones, no outside sources of information. But this is food for thought, so thanks!

[Anonymous No.20111721]

>>20111631
My characters are my imaginary friends.

[Anonymous No.20111782]

>>20111504
>NaNoWriMo
isn't that for kids ?

[Anonymous No.20111812]

>>20111504
Good on you. God, I need to write just anything—anything would beat my extended stay in limbo, where I have a goal to burden me with obligation, but no wanting urge or agency to sit down and type—because then I'd be replacing the possibility for a masterwork with tangible mediocrity, a waste of the pretty picture in my head.

[Anonymous No.20111864]

>>20111486
>>20111713
Then without any more information it's not really solvable. Is there some way he can challenge them for information about something only the real one would know? Does he have a trinket only one of them would recognize? Could the imposter be tricked into revealing herself?

[Anonymous No.20111878]

>>20111691
I've seen this fur fetish bullshit on mcstories before. What's up with the overlap between it and hypnosis? It only sticks out in my mind because it gets in the way of looking for furry porn sometimes.

[Anonymous No.20111881]

>>20111520
You're walking a beaten path. Read something like Story Genius.

[Anonymous No.20111933]

Writing a story based on my life with just enough changed names and distance that I'm able to write about it. Child me completely said bye to reality at the worst of it so maybe that aspect will make it palatable.
Everyone seems to find ways to profit off their trauma these days, I want a slice of the pie. And I am curious to see how people will react.

[Anonymous No.20111940]

>>20111933
They will get mad and try to sue you

[Anonymous No.20111961]

>>20111864
> Is there some way he can challenge them for information about something only the real one would know? Does he have a trinket only one of them would recognize?
No, I'm trying to keep this logic-focused (such as it is...) and not based on prior interaction or recognition. The only thing I definitely should mention is that both would have motives for wanting to be known as Jane, and neither of them are doing it for fun or as a joke.

Let me ask you this: If I said the woman who the protagonist ultimately asserts is Jane will live, while the other dies, does that change the assessment any?

[Anonymous No.20111966]

>>20111878
Not even I am so autistic as to be familiar with either that site or that fetish, it is just a zany story about fucking around with the sense of tact.

[Anonymous No.20111969]

>>20111940

If anybody owns up to some of what happened I can't think of any way it could be anything but social suicide at best.

[Anonymous No.20111999]

>>20111486
Take advantage of either women's personalities in some way. Something that motivates the fake that doesn't motivate the real one, or each one has slightly differing stories to tell about themselves and one's just a little incongruous with reality or with itself. Without any outside evidence it's one of those tricky things to really demonstrate, but it's not impossible.

[Anonymous No.20112005]

On which side do you fall /wg/?

[Anonymous No.20112042]

>>20112005
*sublates the two in a hegelian fashion*
nothing personnel, kid

[Anonymous No.20112186]

I don't know what the fuck to write about. I read Art of Fiction by Gardner and am 50% through Anatomy of Story by Truby.

The last thing I wrote was a 90k word satire about a mass shooter. It took me almost a year and a half to write and I think it might be impossible to publish (either because it's not good or unmarketable premise or both). I've been sending it out for the past few months and just getting rejections and no-reply's.

I want to take my writing more seriously and I was planning to write a fantasy with series potential but I've been banging my head against the wall for the past month trying to tease out an original plot or premise and just feel like I'm wasting my time. I have some other vague ideas but I just don't know how to decide what idea to pursue, what idea an audience would like, what idea I'd be excited to write, if I should even try another book or switch to some other medium like poetry, or just give up writing in general? It's gotten to the point where I feel ill whenever I try to think about it. How do you guys deal with this type of thing?

[Anonymous No.20112366]

Posting here just to give myself some motivation, I'm currently writing a short story that consists of a monologue by a hero after the end of his journey musing about his life on his son's birthday and the twist is that he's really talking about the regrets he has being bound by his duty and being unable to face his son's inevitable death, with a side of sanity slippage being implied by him talking about Death resembling his son.

[editard No.20112412]

>>20111812
way to pointlessly flower up your laziness, bitch

[Anonymous No.20112453]

>>20112412
This. My work needs improvement, but I actually felt fucking happy just to type something that was at least uniquely me.

[Anonymous No.20112464]

>start writing novel
>hit a wall
>quietly drop it thinking I'll come back later
>start new project
>quietly drop it
>think back to the first one and how it had potential
>start over again instead of coming back to where it was left of
>hit wall
>slowly drop it
>rinse and repeat

[Anonymous No.20112548]

>>20111504
>Writing 250 words a day
I do that just posting on this website.

[Anonymous No.20112658]

>>20112186
I'd go with something you like first, then maybe look at what people are saying they'd want and compare it with what's selling right now.

[Anonymous No.20112916]

Sorry I'm late guys I was busy writinPFFFFTT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[Anonymous No.20112928]

How can I prove that someone is reviewing their own story on AO3? Is there any way to tell 100% for sure using the website's layout, functions, etc? Or do I have to go on the following circumstantial evidence?
A pretentious douchebag in a group I'm in always receives 1 glowing review (per story) 5-10 minutes after he uploads his shit from differently named guest accounts. He's clearly samefagging, right?

[Anonymous No.20112933]

>>20111606
me too anon, me too

[Anonymous No.20112939]

>>20112005
Little of column A, little of column B.
>Writers should have an idea in advance of writing, but be open to change as they rewrite
>Plot comes without planning when your characters are allowed to freely move
>Abstractions good, but not as primary experiences
>Story begins at the first word
>Write today, edit tomorrow. But if you see a better sentence, edit today
>Writer's block comes from inconsistency with work. Otherwise, it comes from the lack of direction in a character
>I don't see the point in classifying drama and melodrama differently
>An organic piece should have intent behind every sentence, even if the intent is subconscious
>The purpose of fiction is to ensure the writer doesn't go insane from keeping a story bottled up in their head

[Anonymous No.20112954]

>>20112939
Pretty good list there. The only thing I take issue with is the discussion of writer's block. I'm one of those people that think writer's block is a good thing. It means you should not be writing--at that time and, if it persists, maybe even never.

[Anonymous No.20112976]

>>20112954
I like what Thomas Harris has to say about writer's block, or more specifically, when you're having a tough time writing.
> In 2019, he elaborated on his process, as well as the difficulty, describing it as "passive [...], sometimes you really have to shove and grunt and sweat. Some days you go to your office and you're the only one who shows up, none of the characters show up, and you sit there by yourself, feeling like an idiot. And some days everybody shows up ready to work. You have to show up at your office every day. If an idea comes by, you want to be there to get it in."

[Anonymous No.20112988]

>>20112464
Are you happy? I can only imagine so.

[Anonymous No.20113015]

>>20111561
That's really good. You must have written something of some quality to get in one of those magazines.

[Anonymous No.20113021]

>>20111561
You made it!

[Anonymous No.20113026]

>>20112928
Yes. He is same fagging. The thing is: everyone does it. Amateur, self published, and traditionally published. There's no difference between some fag on Amazon dropping fake five star reviews on his own Lord of the Rings ripoff and Simon and Sheister getting a bunch of their magazine buddies and celebrities to call their latest social justice dog turd "empowering" and "timely."

You can either join the farce yourself or just accept this is how publishing works.

[Anonymous No.20113083]

>write book
>Go out on date
>She ghosts me
>Lose all motivation to write
Why am I such a hopeless romantic?

[Anonymous No.20113102]

>start up a video game
>get message from friend
>"stop!"
>"you need to work on your writing"
>turn game off
>get to work on writing
Thank you, friend.

[Anonymous No.20113129]

>>20112939
Get too much into it and it ends up like Finnegan's wake.like here's to my dad's arse and a bottleneck of vweiono.

[Anonymous No.20113165]

>>20111561
Well done, baby. Savour that feeling of pride, gratification and achievement. Let it inspire you to excel even further.

[Anonymous No.20113172]

I'm writing a story about the time I nearly castrated myself trying to steal a cast-iron weight plate weighing 10 pounds.

My question is, how do I write "10 pound weight plate"?

>10 pound weight plate
>ten pound weight plate
>10 lb weight plate
>10 lbs weight plate

Which option is correct?

[Anonymous No.20113176]

>>20113172
Any of the first three would work. Fourth one is incorrect, because it's not "ten pounds weight".

[Anonymous No.20113188]

>>20113176
Thanks for the reply. Do I add a full stop after the lb?

>10 lb weight plate

or

>10 lb. weight plate

[Anonymous No.20113196]

>>20111691
If you're not talking about furries then you should use the word "fur" with care
Does sound interesting

[Anonymous No.20113200]

>>20113188
I don't believe so. You'd probably be better served by rephrasing it. The exact weight isn't really relevant and it feels like a weird detail to focus on. Just refer to the plate itself, gives it weight approximately.

[Anonymous No.20113208]

>>20111486
Bluff. Make up something that the original Jane would know and you could plausibly know but would not be widely known. Fake Jane will pretend to know, real Jane will recognize the bluff.

[Anonymous No.20113258]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11f4QBB86vwNEMPVKaWLIwgszLMlUNW6kkYLKaTOq3Fs/edit?usp=sharing

Lots of editing, also added nearly ten pages yesterday. Things are finally moving along, I am revisiting the early parts and being more critical. Still need to make the following changes

>Two beat cop guys more disinterested
>Their superior/Chief guy impatient annoyed he's having his time wasted
>Amara character being a bit crueler with the verbal knife
>Trying to do more "show" rather than "tell" when it comes to the world around

[Anonymous No.20113262]

>>20113200
>The exact weight isn't really relevant and it feels like a weird detail to focus on

You don't even know the sentence, ya dingus! The exact weight is relevant, so I have to put it in. Here is the sentence:

>A vist to the local sporting goods shop, Millennium Sport & Leisure, was a rollercoaster ride of hope and disappointment. Kevin had felt his biceps inflate as he ogled their vast selection of cast-iron weight plates of all shapes and sizes. Specifically, the 10 lb plates looked like the solution to his problem, as just two of them would instantly more than triple the amount of weight he could curl with.

[Anonymous No.20113423]

>>20113262
You should've posted the context up front!
In this case you could opt for omitting "plates", and call them ten-pounders or something. I don't know if that would be better (and that particular word appears to be the name of a fish) but you have very many options.

[Anonymous No.20113618]

>>20112464
>start writing a novel
>successfully complete it
>no one reads it
>...
>start writing another novel

[Anonymous No.20113649]

>>20113618
you may want to try marketing it next time

[Anonymous No.20113777]

>>20113026
Alright, but I still want to pop this guy's insatiable ego. Is there any way to tell if a guest account's comment was written by the author? I'm sure AO3 tracks IPs at least. I'm talking instant indications, I'm not going to bother emailing the site admins if there's no simple way to tell.

[Anonymous No.20113805]

>>20113102
>friend

What is "friend"? Is it an app? Where can I buy it? I think I need it.

[Anonymous No.20113814]

>>20113777
If you're a writer and you don't have an ego, you're a bad writer

[Anonymous No.20113816]

>>20113102
And yet here you are

[Anonymous No.20113855]

>>20113172
ten pound plate

[Anonymous No.20113890]

Kaijuanon here. How does this sound? Context is that the protagonist Kaiju has encountered a giant living statue from Germany who saved his life after he got his ass kicked by the fuckoff dinosaur sonuvabitch.
What happens now is that we're shown that he is in fact a sapient creature with actual thought processes that extend far outside of instinct.
From the POV of the statue.
>She didn't understand why he was here. She may have indirectly saved him by fighting that... Thing, but she left no trace. She didn't smell like anything, she didn't leave any footprints, and even when she left she went back to the mountains of her homeland. Why would he follow her? He surely could not have come to eat her, considering her total lack of organic materials. He was in no condition to fight her either, considering he had multiple fresh wounds on his body and was clearly limping. Hell, the very environment seemed antithetical to his body, considering he had no fur, was cold-blooded, and covered with a watery layer that couldn't have been good for the cold.
>She got her answer when he walked up to her, grasped her shoulder and slowly nodded his head. Before she could do anything, he turned around and began to walk away. As he walked, he limped. Had he actually followed her from Spain to Germany, over the course of 3 days, with injuries, for the sake of... A thanks?
Meh.

[Anonymous No.20113895]

>>20113890
Is this, like, prior to anything from his own perspective, so we've just been along for the idea that he's a mindless monster until this point?

[Anonymous No.20113945]

>>20111030
Thank you so much for the kind words and the actionable feedback regarding the ending. I was attempting to show urgency/the narrators own uncertainty through brevity but it sounds like I went a bit overboard and can flesh it out the walk to the room/in her room scene some more.

And I deeply appreciate the typographical catches, I'll go back for a pass on the m dashes (didn't even know how to do them honestly, damn machines). I thought I did have punctuation in all the quotes but will review, let me know if there was a specific example I should be aware of.

>>20112005
>>20111520
Art of (soulless) Fiction mindset and
muh 3 Act Structure (which is an irrelevant distraction) gave me nothing but headaches - I'm 90% From Where you Dream team now with the exception of starting with a target tone and desired endstate as guiding stars.

[Anonymous No.20113983]

thoughts? I like the second and third acts but the opening may be too long

https://www.scribd.com/document/551280851/Unfiltered

[Anonymous No.20114055]

Rate my new idea for a novel.

Racist guy gets isekai'd. Is confronted with multiple different races. Decide that different humans are still miles better than any non-human abomination. Starts a rebellion and a war against every non-human in existence.
Entire novel is about him genociding the non-humans and learning to live with other races of humans he used to despise.

[Anonymous No.20114059]

>>20114055
Honestly, flip it and make him the villain, it's actually an interesting concept.

[Anonymous No.20114075]

>>20114055
>isekai'd
Dropped.

[Anonymous No.20114081]

>>20114059
>flip it and make him the villain
As in write from the non-humans perspective? But then you won't get to see him learning to live with other types of humans.

[Anonymous No.20114090]

>>20114081
It's a dumb idea to make him the protagonist if the end-goal is "genocide". That leans into the same nonsense as xianxia bullshit. He might be fun to watch, but a lot of people will just dislike him.

[Anonymous No.20114102]

>>20114090
It's a story about overcoming your bias and racism by directing it towards someone else

[Anonymous No.20114107]

>>20114102
It just won't really have anybody read it. Protagonists don't have to be moral, but they usually can't be absurdly villainous unless you do it REALLY well and genocide is always absurdly villainous.

[Anonymous No.20114115]

She comes to me in the darkness. I writhe beneath a sweat-soaked sheet, gasping like a drowning man. Being pulled under the black sludge of memories. Awake, day by day, I can barely keep my head above the surface. Asleep, I sink. Old pains claw me down, tearing.

Until she reaches out her hand and places on my chest. Softly, but it's enough to wake me. For a moment I don't know who she is, or where I am, or who I am. Then, I know her - even in the darkness I recognise her before I remember myself. The scent of citrus and peaches on her fingers; the paths of memory have their shortcuts.

I open my mouth to ask why - why she's come back. It's been so long. I can't see her face in the darkness, can't tell if she's still angry, still hurt. She reaches out with her other hand and brushes the sweat from my forehead like she's wiping away tears. There's my answer; some things are clearer in the darkness. My pounding heart drops a tempo, my aching muscles relax, and I remember I can move again.

I reach up. My fingers close around hers, and she doesn't pull away.

[Anonymous No.20114131]

>>20114055
Listen. This is doable, but you need to have the MC be relatable and justified in doing what he's doing. Captured and enslaved by elves, witness to the terrible blood rituals of the beastmen, you need to have a visceral reason so that the reader can sympathize.

[Anonymous No.20114138]

>>20114131
Even then it'll be divisive. Redo of Healer is a comparable thing in that sense, but he doesn't go full blown "kill all of them", he just hits specific people with extreme fates.

[Anonymous No.20114169]

>>20112658
Thanks anon I'll do that

[Anonymous No.20114193]

>>20114138
>divisive
Good.
He's got to work up to it. Start small, start justifiable. Gradually ramp things up and by the time he's burning whole cities the reader may not have the ability to step back and say, well hold on a second, how did I end up here?

[Anonymous No.20114218]

>>20114193
You just have to be in some way clear that whatever is going on, this is not a morally justifiable thing for the protagonist. Either have a moment of him going "Hang on, wait" before continuing anyway in spite of morality, or some other thing.

[Anonymous No.20114225]

>>20114218
>the protagonist has to be good
no. the protagonist is who the novel is following. he does not have to be good.

[Anonymous No.20114232]

>>20114225
I never said he had to be good. I just said you have to make it clear this isn't a thing you're saying is good.

[Anonymous No.20114247]

>>20114232
>you have to make it clear
I think the reader can make that judgement call without you having to put the character in a black cloak with skull pauldrons.

[Anonymous No.20114253]

>>20114055
It could be funny if you execute it well but it seems a bit thin for a whole novel.

[Anonymous No.20114377]

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/49395/the-undying-emperor

That makes chapter 36. Hard to believe how much I've posted already. Can't tell if time is flying by or what.

[Anonymous No.20114468]

>>20114247
It's not so much the reader's judgement as people tend to assume depiction = endorsement sometimes, and the framing of immoral actions in a story can sometimes make them seriously come across as endorsement. If it's an obviously kinda black comedy sort of story then it's obviously dumb, but it's the "thing".

[Anonymous No.20114495]

>>20113649
If it’s good, readers will come.

[Anonymous No.20114512]

any of you guys writing a novel in blank verse?

[Anonymous No.20114515]

>>20114468
That's why you build up to it so the reader is invested in the story by the time you do it. And while racism is a good thing that fact certainly doesn't justify genocide in any way shape or form. So its a tough middleground he's going to have to tread. No one said writing is easy.

[Anonymous No.20114516]

>>20113895
There are moments where we get in his head. He narration is usually somewhat simplistic, but from this point on it becomes notably more prose filled.

[Anonymous No.20114517]

>>20114512
Isn't blank verse just English

[Anonymous No.20114527]

>>20114517
no its unrhymed lines but with meter, normally iambic pentameter

[Anonymous No.20114532]

>>20114516
Interesting enough moment. Is it meant to be a growing sapience, or was it just "hidden" from the reader? Because the former is interesting to work with.

[Anonymous No.20114543]

>>20113890
Protagonist kaiju? He's not a regular human? I've been misunderstanding your story for some time

[Anonymous No.20114553]

>>20114055
the only thing interesting here is how some isekai'd chudcel gets himself into the position to be leader of anything to start a rebellion in the first place. If you can do that without resorting to giving him convenient mary sue powers or allies then it might be worth reading.

[Anonymous No.20114557]

>>20114055
>How to say you've wasted your entire life on 4chan without saying it

[Anonymous No.20114576]

>>20114557
>How to say you've wasted your entire life on 4chan without saying it
>>20114553

[Anonymous No.20114585]

>>20113172
Avoid using numerals in literary writing whenever possible.

[Anonymous No.20114608]

>>20114527
I write in paragraphs

[Anonymous No.20114630]

>>20111961
Have the detective reveal that he knew who the real Jane Doe was all along and it was all according to keikaku.

[Anonymous No.20114645]

>>20111961
Have him just guess and get lucky.

[Anonymous No.20114649]

>>20114532
Little of A and B. He's not used to being sapient.
He's a fucking frog that's had his genes altered due to genetic testing on his predecessors. Caused a, to put it as lightly as possible, drastic alteration in his physical structure. Frogs are simplistic creatures, and one gaining the ability of full on self-awareness would understandably be confused as fuck.

[Anonymous No.20114661]

>>20114649
Be interesting to see the growth of it. The premise already seems like a hard sell, kaiju stuff is weirdly niche, but if you can pull it off, hey, go for it.

[Anonymous No.20114684]

>>20114661
There's mainly two protagonists, one who's a Kaiju and one who's a human. They don't ever get to really interact, but they're more like two sides of the story

[Anonymous No.20114702]

>>20114684
Dual protagonists can be fine, though people often look forward to them meeting and being a more cohesive unit together than they were alone if that's a thing. That said, with a kaiju thing, it's a bit different, as kaiju stuff with human protagonists more has the human protagonist as an observer and maybe plot mover while the kaiju breaks shit and deals with conflicts.

[Anonymous No.20114783]

>>20114585
I was going to say the same, avoid the numerals and even the abbreviation "lb". If it was me I'd just call it a "ten pound weight" or "ten pound plate".

The theory I've heard is writing, storytelling especially, is supposed to be a representation of the spoken word so anything that creates a barrier/translation point your reader must tackle should be avoided unless necessary for clarity.

[Anonymous No.20114818]

>>20113172
Ten pound plate — pounds are obviously weight.

Also avoid numerals and abreviations at al costs.

[Anonymous No.20114890]

Help me with my English please:

"This was the case during both negotiation processes leading up to the Bla Directives, first adopted in Year X and then revised in Year Y,"

With "first adopted in Year X and then revised in Year Y", is it clear that those are the two directives that I am talking about? Both are called the Bla Directives. I specifically want to point out that there have been 2 negotiation processes and there has been first one which has been adopted in Year X and then it got revised in Year Y.

[Anonymous No.20114936]

>>20114890
I would write something like "This was the case throughout the negotiations of the Bla Directives during their drafting in Year X and their renegotiation in Year Y"

[Anonymous No.20114956]

>>20114936
I think that's a good solution. Thanks!

[Ja2hd !bh/6SRnfu. No.20115088]

Sort of a flash piece/monologue I posted in the last(?) thread, got some decent thoughts and figured I'd repost.

[Anonymous No.20115249]

blood was pouring like... like what? like red wine? strawberry juice?

[Anonymous No.20115266]

>>20115249
Blood has the viscosity of milk, until it starts to dry anyways.

[Anonymous No.20115284]

>>20115249
Well, what's the blood doing? Is it venous (thicker, darker, low pressure) or arterial (bright red, flowing, higher pressure)? Is is spurting, pouring, sheeting, or pumping? What's it do when it hits clothing, the ground, a wall, or skin?

You can possibly just describe it without a simile.

[Anonymous No.20115292]

"The US managed to water down the contents of the proposal" or "The US managed to water the contents of the proposal down"?

[Anonymous No.20115298]

>>20115088
I liked it, I read it aloud and it has a good rhythm. Congrats!

[Anonymous No.20115299]

>>20115292
First one reads more naturally.

[Anonymous No.20115423]

>>20111376
academics?

[Anonymous No.20115470]

>read fantasy novel
>Every other chapter is complete nonsense that doesn advance the plot
>Yes we get your main character is bad ass bounty hunter
>Why do I need to read 30 out of 45 chapters of him bounty hunting
How do I learn to pad my stories?

[Anonymous No.20115495]

>>20115470
i mean you literally answered it in your post, don't write things that do not advance the plot and do not develop your characters in any meaningful way

[Anonymous No.20115498]

>>20114377
My God, this is garbage.

[Anonymous No.20115559]

>it's an "ambitious and angry man gets softened by finding an adoptive daughter" arc
Yeah, I'm liking this turn of events

[Anonymous No.20115568]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HsLfrpEAfB8

How do I get on this show? Are the guys who made this here?

[Anonymous No.20115570]

I'm writing a new story you guys will like. Will keep you posted.

[Anonymous No.20115603]

>>20115559
My adoptive daughter arc takes a turn for the worse when it's revealed that she is the dominant personality of a collective consciousness who enjoys hurting the others.

[Anonymous No.20115609]

>>20115568
It is fucking insane how popular F Gardner has gotten. A couple of my classmates in University were even talking about Call of the Crocodile.

[Anonymous No.20115610]

>>20115609
>>20115568
Shut the fuck up Frank. You're a schizo and you need help.

[Anonymous No.20115611]

I heard there is a writing discord? Can any good anon post it?

[Anonymous No.20115617]

>>20115568
Holy based. They actually interviewed F Gardner?

[Anonymous No.20115626]

>>20115610
Hahaha. Mate. I haven’t even read his book. I was actually shocked when I heard them talking about Call of the Crocodile. I wanted to just ask them “are you fucking kidding me?” This was in a literature class too.

[Anonymous No.20115638]

>>20115609
CotC’s not exactly that obscure anymore. It’s only the other gardnerbooks that don’t really get discussed much.

[Anonymous No.20115656]

What's the best site to do serialized writing? The only thing that matters to me is having some audience, even a few people is fine, a review system, and having full control over the rights to my story if I choose to publish.

[Anonymous No.20115659]

I'm that guy who did that "Hero Who Never Lived" thing. I was stuck on what to really do, and I've since completely scrapped that crappy new chapter and instead made a potential second version of the first one to try and figure out where I wanna take this. Both are present in the link (I've highlighted the point at which the versions diverge). I'm still dithering on having it first-person all the way like V2, or doing the swapping first/third-person thing like V1.
Any feedback is appreciated, of course.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12GTaSTXTmm6KKKgXCT7M0LPOBjxvYFzfTJFHgeD702U/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.20115690]

>>20115656
Seems to be Royal Road is usually it.

[Anonymous No.20115693]

>>20115470
My favorite type of padding is introducing a new character, giving them a small arc, and then pulling them straight back out of the story.
You can then repeat this process as many times as you want, really.
The nice thing about this method is that it gives you a pocket full of characters you can use later on when you need to populate a scene. If you bring them back later and they contribute to the story again it makes it seem like it wasn't even padding and you were planning everything out all along.
If you want to get really fancy you can give them a tiny appearance earlier on in the story to make them feel even more integrated, and it can also become a neat moment if someone reads your story twice.

[Anonymous No.20115706]

>>20115693
The real big move is introducing a secondary protagonist halfway through your book who barely gets involved with the plot but somehow now has half the perspective.

[Anonymous No.20115728]

Ein Spinnennetz um uns herum gespinnt.
Oh wie tot wir alle sind.
Oh wie schwach wir alle sind
Von den Spinnen eingespinnt

Heut nacht flüstert der Mond mir zu, was er alles sieht. Er spricht zu mir, er hat soviel gesehen, zu viel, er muss es erzählen drum erzählt ers mir. Er sagt mir, wir sind alle verloren, er sagt mir, dass es Pläne gibt, Verschwörungen, schlimme Ideen, die alles was den Menschen adelt vernichtet wollen. Er sagt die dies planen sind trunken vor Durst, rasendem Durst nach Macht. Sie bauen an einem gigantischen Netz, so sagt mir der Mond, ein Netz in das sich alles menschliche verfängt, doch nur sie können sich frei in ihm bewegen und es spinnen. Sie sind die Herren des Netzes und alle werden wir uns darin verfangen, so sagt es mir der Mond und er hat die blanke Angst in den Augen, weil er es noch nie gesehen hat, dass solche Pläne realisiert wurden. Sie selber sind wie Ameisen, dass macht ihm so große Angst, sagt mir der Mond. "Es fürchtet mich ungeheurlich, mein Kind", spricht zu mir der weise Mond und meine schwache Seele erzittert. Siehe in deinem Geiste, die Millionen von Chimären die doch einem versteckten Geiste folgen und einen Plan umsetzen den sie nicht verstehen, sie wollen alles unterjochen und alles einspinnen in ihr endloses Netz, sie bauen und alles was ihrem Bau im weg steht, sie vernichten es! Sie vernichten alles, was sie hindert. Sie verjagen es, sie töten es, sie stürzen sich drauf, sie fressen es, sie fangen es und foltern es. Doch ganz... doch ganz ohne Ausdruck, ohne Gefühl, ihr Pathos ist ihr unerschütterlicher Ernst. Und erst jetzt sehe ich, wo du bist und warum. Erst jetzt verstehe ich es.

Also sprach der Mond zu mir, bis seine Stimme entschwand. Ich richtete mich auf und ging zum Fenster und suchte den Mond im Himmel. Er war nicht sichtbar, doch er erleuchtete die Straßen meiner Heimat. In den letzten Wochen war ich erfüllt von einem Gefühl von Angst. Etwas fürchterliches passierte und der Mond, der heilige und weise Mond hatte diese Worte zu mir gesprochen, gerade er! Das war mir noch nie geschehen. Sprach er die Wahrheit? Ist es so?

[Anonymous No.20115751]

>be me
>spend 2 weeks reading and not writing
>something flips
>spend 2 weeks writing not reading

How do I balance myself?

[Anonymous No.20115755]

>>20115751
accept who you are and what you want to do and stop forcing shit.

[Anonymous No.20115758]

>>20115690
Doesn't posting on royal road give away some of your rights to publishing? like you published it there first so publishers won't be able to buy the right to first publishing

[Anonymous No.20115761]

>>20115659
I like the 2nd version because you keep it 1st person all the way through. It just seems more coherent to me that way. I can see how that would be difficult if you continue to have Abel as a voice inside both of their heads going forward. That seems like it'll be messy.

[Anonymous No.20115763]

>>20115603
Uh oh. My adoptive daughter comes from the nation my MC was currently genociding

[Anonymous No.20115767]

>>20115758
No. Its just that publishers don't want to buy the rights to a book that's been published anywhere else first unless its some megahit already like 50 shades.

[Anonymous No.20115773]

>>20115761
See, my original concept was that, going forward, all chapters from the present onward would be from perspective of either of the girls, and there'd be flashback chapters from Abel's first-person perspective interspersed. I'd probably still have flashbacks in an all-first-person version, but having the character as first-person DOES allow for a colourful "not-quite-third-person" narration.

[Anonymous No.20115792]

>>20115773
I'd prefer you have it be first person from either of the girls going forward. And then if you want flashback chapters from Abel do that, as well. The girls are main characters, right? Seems odd to have them play the 3rd wheel (5th wheel?) to a disembodied voice in their heads.

[Anonymous No.20115809]

>>20115559
>>20115603
>>20115763
I can't believe my cute daughter is part of a collective hivemind I am trying to genocide!?

[Anonymous No.20115810]

>>20115792
It's a fair point, but first person with multiple characters feels tricky. The general concept is they'd be dual protagonists, so they'd have a roughly equal amount of screentime, and if you're gonna have first-person and multiple perspectives, it makes more sense for only one to explicitly be first-person. It could even be a diegetic first-person of him telling these things to the others, so the 'true' narration is third person anyway. I think the first-person writing I can do is pretty strong, so I don't want to scrap it entirely, at any rate.

[Anonymous No.20115840]

>>20115809
As long as she's cute I don't care what she is

[Anonymous No.20115926]

The hero and the villain have a weird relationship.
The villain is a challenge seeker, and initially just BTFO's our hero in an instant. But slowly, as time goes on, the villain eventually develops legitimate respect for the hero. And not in the "Huh, you're pretty strong" kind, but in the "I legitimately care about what happens to you" way, to the point of freaking out when he seemingly dies. For a number of reasons, actually.
>First person to actually stagger him in a long time.
>Actually sees himself in the hero because he was similarly aimless

[Anonymous No.20115952]

Anyone done anything with BookSirens or similar advance reviewers? I'm thinking once I finish tightening up the last parts of this book, I'll get some advance reviews and start a month-ish long marketing plan.

[Anonymous No.20115981]

>>20115926
I like the sound of it.

[Anonymous No.20115984]

>>20115926
Sounds like a less interesting Zenos.

[Anonymous No.20116016]

>>20115249
It's got a bit of a pulse to it, cause it's your heart that's pumping the blood through your body. So you could say the blood poured out like cum from my dick.

[Anonymous No.20116042]

Post writing music
https://lifeformed.bandcamp.com/track/forest-spirit-friends

[Anonymous No.20116054]

yea, i just did my 2k word goal today after my 9-5 you neet losers

[Anonymous No.20116078]

>>20116042
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_bm0ARFrjI
Going through quite a few to try and get into the right mood for expressing how the character feels.

[Anonymous No.20116158]

>>20116054
while you wrote your book, i studied the blade...

[Anonymous No.20116185]

>>20116042
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNvOqHtd74Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7m4cyT3ydM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-rj8HVW3PQ
This is a weird fucking story

[Anonymous No.20116197]

What appears to be the central subject of the story I'm writing, and the thing I feel will interest readers the most, is just setup for the epilogue, here's an analogy:
>protagonist is a hunter
>finds out about a legendary wolf and decides to try to catch him
>main story is about the hunter trying to catch him and failing and then undergoing an arc that will allow him to eventually successfully hunt the legendary wolf
>epilogue is him setting out to catch the legendary wolf with no clear conclusion

I feel like readers would latch onto the legendary wolf and be disappointed that he was never resolved, even though he and his impact on the world tie into the hunter's arc. I know it's technically doable, but would you say a formula like this is a setup that's more likely to fail then succeed? How likely is it that I'll be able to execute it correctly.

[Anonymous No.20116246]

>>20116197
Depends a lot on how you focus on the hunter in my opinion, if he has a satisfactory arc even without capturing the wolf it might work but that sounds like an uphill task.

[Anonymous No.20116255]

>>20116197
It could be good if you get to moby dick levels of autistic discussion about the craft of hunting and hunting wolves, in particular. If you haven't read it melville spends quite a bit of time talking about whaling. I'm talking going into the aspects of tracking, talking about the environment the wolf is in, the effect of the seasons and on and on and on. Its doable. You may still want to include the hunt. Mobey Dick without getting to see the whale would have been the biggest cocktease.

[Anonymous No.20116262]

>>20116185
>Lindsey Stirling
I know an IRL writer who was so obsessed with this girl that he wrote an entire fanfic about him and her going on a fantasy adventure together.

[Anonymous No.20116374]

>the moon is a giant glowing spider nest sack
>when it hatches the sky goes black and billions of giant spiders fall to Earth
is it worth a story?

[Anonymous No.20116378]

>>20116374
What is the theme?

[Anonymous No.20116406]

>>20116378
probably something shitty like "muh stagnation" I haven't thought too hard on that yet, just a cool mental image

[Anonymous No.20116415]

>story falling apart
>maybe making it too "deep"?
>may have to shelve it
>or i can keep it simple stupid to finish it
What do?

[Anonymous No.20116426]

>>20116415
What's the story and why is it falling apart?

[Anonymous No.20116455]

>>20116426
I'm the Adahfag, and it's falling apart because it doesn't feel good enough. The scenes feel so cheesy.

[Anonymous No.20116495]

>>20116455
post it, so we can laugh at it.

[Anonymous No.20116524]

>>20116455
post it

[Anonymous No.20116540]

>>20116455
so we can laugh at it

[Anonymous No.20116543]

>>20116540
>>20116524
>>20116495
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11q39jdlnZxvZe5jRuz8bpfESLQikJDOnV5ixJSht7uE/edit?usp=sharing

[Anonymous No.20116559]

>>20116543
>read it
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHA
>What's wrong with it?
????? The first page reads fine.

[Anonymous No.20116585]

>>20111486
You're ripping off Chinatown.

[Anonymous No.20116801]

>first chapter: x views
>latest chapter (9): x/2 views
I can't even decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand I think that's probably above average, but on the other hand I'm somehow filtering half my readers on a chapter that has very little to do with the actual plot besides introducing the main character.
Fuck.

[Anonymous No.20116802]

>>20116374
I fucking love the "moon as an evil egg" concept. I have no idea where it came from but it's always appealed to me more primally than any other horror idea. Sort story, though. Not a novel.

[Anonymous No.20116820]

>>20116543
What the fuck anon? Incest?

[Anonymous No.20116831]

>>20116543
>>20116820

Is incest a popular kink in romance novels these days? Got a couple hot incest stories, but I don't know if they'll sell. Everything seems to involve werewolves and reverse harems these days.

[Anonymous No.20116842]

Going to write a casual short story every day for practice. Here's the first.

[Anonymous No.20116875]

>>20116831
Anything good sells in that market
If it doesn't sell, it's not good
Such is the nature of romance

[Anonymous No.20116878]

>Keeping strong on my 1k a day average
>i will stop to edit properly one day i swear

[Anonymous No.20116902]

>>20111292
What are the best unis for creative writing in the UK?

>inb4 "worthless degree"
idgaf, im not paying for it

[Anonymous No.20116915]

>>20116831
>>20116875
Pretty sure Amazon bans incest in its erotica. Don't know many other commercial type sites, but they'd likely have similar rules.

[Anonymous No.20116929]

>>20116915
the story isn't erotica, but there's incest elements in it.

[Anonymous No.20116953]

>>20116543
This has potential. It needs some thorough editing but it's quite intriguing.

[Anonymous No.20116995]

I hope you guys don't repeat information in your books and treat your readers like retards.

[Anonymous No.20117004]

>>20116995
I barely even explain information the first time and just trust that they'll figure it out from context or paying attention to details. Retards can still read what I write to enjoy bang boom killy man make big murder lol, so it's all good.

[Anonymous No.20117093]

>>20116995
Does it count if it's something like this?
>Character A reads a book about research into whatever the power system is
>Character A later finds a book expanding on that and part of it is cut off, leading to character A pondering what it is about

[Anonymous No.20117132]

>>20116995
As opposed to treating your readers like geniuses? What are you? A fucking slave to your master? Jesus Christ shut the fuck up.

[Anonymous No.20117165]

You guys gotta stop posting your novel ideas here, I'm stealing everything

[Anonymous No.20117181]

>>20117165
So what you're saying is if I write you more ideas, I can waste your time infinitum?

[Anonymous No.20117191]

>>20117165
Can I give you some of my shorter ideas so you can have fun with it?

[Anonymous No.20117193]

>>20114115
The text has a feel of essence. Good material for rewriting.

[Anonymous No.20117228]

>>20116042
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGvlpTFljC8
thinking about death too much

[Anonymous No.20117271]

>>20111504
Doing at least 500 a day myself after I got the idea from reading about Terry Pratchett's career. I've kept it up for about 3 and a half years now with nothing to publish, but that's because I am a coward. You'll absolutely improve if you keep it up, too. I've had a good time writing some fun shit now that I have the consistency and confidence to sit my ass in my disgusting chair every day and do it.

[Anonymous No.20117283]

>>20116054
I had to do my 250 word minimum at 12am yesterday night after a 9am-10pm work day and it was fucking awful. Just got done rewriting it to be readable. 9-5 gang is pretty based.

[Anonymous No.20117289]

>>20117283
9-6 gang here, someday I'll be able to be this consistent bros...

[Anonymous No.20117306]

>>20116374
I had a concept once of a spider that hides behind the moon. It steels feels cool but I think the trick is to explore the rest of the story in which the moon gimmick exists rather than dangle what amounts to a twist for a whole story.

[Anonymous No.20117534]

>>20116995
I use LaTeX to label paragraphs like theorems and hyperlink back to them later

[Anonymous No.20117685]

>>20116016
>blood poured out like cum from my dick.
sounds like something george rr martin would write

[Anonymous No.20117770]

>>20116801
The first in a series of things will always have the most audience by far, because it's the point where most people will drop it if they do drop it.

[Anonymous No.20117776]

>>20116801
why are you putting your chapters online? were you rejected by the publishers/too poor to self-publish?

[Anonymous No.20117779]

>>20117685
Pretty sure Neil Gaiman had someone ejaculate blood in Sandman

[Anonymous No.20117792]

>>20117165
So if you post your novel ideas, they ARE going somewhere?

[Anonymous No.20117844]

>>20115298

Ty, that was the goal with the piece

[Anonymous No.20117882]

>>20112005
right

[Anonymous No.20118137]

>>20117792
pige

[Anonymous No.20118221]

>>20113172
TEN pound weighted plated

[Anonymous No.20118568]

>>20117165
Try stealing mine:

>A young man working on a river boats discovers a talent for violence and picks up boxing. In one port of call he falls in love with a ballet dancer who is also being courted by a sleazy movie producer.

[Anonymous No.20118577]

>>20117776
>anon is too pretentious to even consider that some things are written specifically for web publication

[Anonymous No.20118614]

How do I make my writing more mature? Should I add rape? More swearing?

[Anonymous No.20118655]

>>20118614
What's wrong with your writing that you feel the need to make it more mature?

[Anonymous No.20118682]

>>20118655
You guys told me it was silly and stupid. You also said I need to do more world building and better develop a language like Tolkien and Paolini did.

[Anonymous No.20118833]

>>20118682
Maturity is not a number.
If someone complains your writing is immature then that means it has immature elements that bother them. You can't compensate for that with naughty words. The immaturity would still be there.
You have to fight it at the root, by improving the things that bother them. (Or you can ignore them. Not all critique is good, and you can't please everyone.)
Whoever told you to create a language was probably trolling.
Post your work or link to the last time you posted it and I'll try to give you actionable advice.

[Anonymous No.20118885]

>>20118833
https://www.scribblehub.com/series/436962/a-hero-among-monsters/
But the last time I was told I should develop a language and do more world building I’d shared something from about a quarter of the way through book 2.

[Anonymous No.20118940]

>>20118885
You don't need to make a language to tell a story. At most you'll need an understanding of different cultures in your world and what sort of names they'd have if you have people from different parts of your world, but that's not something that's required if you're sticking to a pretty localised area.

[Anonymous No.20118942]

>>20111355
Nice anon. Host somewhere better though I'm not clicking that, it's known to host malware.

[Anonymous No.20118963]

>>20118940
I do need a language to tell a story. You people said that the names were silly and there didn’t appear to be a firm logic to them and so it was unreadable.

[Anonymous No.20118964]

>>20118568
It's mine now.

[Anonymous No.20118973]

>>20118963
That's not making a language. Names can be a lot of things, they just have to sound relatively appropriate relevant to other names from the same locale.

[Anonymous No.20118980]

>>20118973
So, what, are you all just a bunch of retarded trolls or something?

[Anonymous No.20118981]

>>20118964
Her dress is blue btw

[Anonymous No.20118990]

>>20118980
I dunno, some elitist dipshit probably gave you terrible criticism for what your story is, goblins having simple, straightforward names is very on-brand for them, it's not an issue.

[Anonymous No.20118999]

>>20118980
Don't tell me you're a tourist. We have enough troubles as it is.

[Anonymous No.20119009]

>>20118990
It was the elven names. Multiple people said they couldn’t read past T’loran. Also a lot of people complained about the orc name Gotta because “that’s a real word.” That complaint never made sense to me unless they also throw fits about characters being named Archer or Smith. I’ve since renamed those characters to Toran and Gohta (which was how I always pronounced it in my head.)

[Anonymous No.20119015]

>>20118999
No, I used to be a regular. I’ve even started a lot of the /wg/ threads, but I mostly avoid you stupid niggers these days after you told me I had to develop languages. Fuck you faggots.

[Anonymous No.20119023]

>>20119015
Man don't be upset. Just discard bad advice and change your direction. Aren't you glad someone told you making a language is a waste of time? Now you don't have to do it at all and can spend your hours working on your core story. You came outta here a winner today.

[Anonymous No.20119028]

>>20119009
Apostrophes in names aren't usually that odd, but they can come across as pretentious sometimes. "Gotta" is a bit of an awkward name. Those prior names are awkward, but not impossible to deal with. I wouldn't use them, but you do you. Names just have to be readable, really.

[Anonymous No.20119042]

>>20119023
Yeah, but now that I know you’re all just a bunch of trolling idiots how can the advice you give now be anything other than suspect?
What even is the point of these threads?

[Anonymous No.20119052]

>>20119015
There are a couple pseuds that joined lately. People who think that writing has to be some high art entirely separated from capitalism. They obviously have no real advice to give but like to hear themselves talk. You know they read back their own 800 word post a dozen times with a smug look on their face.
Just learn to ignore bad advice from retards.

[Anonymous No.20119054]

>>20119042
It's not necessarily trolls. Some people just suck at giving advice, or give the wrong advice for the story you're trying to tell. Seemingly valid criticism can still be ignored if you think changing the thing would severely harm your story. You know more about your own story than they do. If the criticism feels like it's trying to shift the tone to something you aren't wanting, it's basically something that boils down to "this isn't the story I want to read", but do you want to write a story some asshole wants to read, or one you want to write?

[Anonymous No.20119063]

>>20119028
Yeah try "Gottor"

[Anonymous No.20119069]

>>20119052
>>20119054
>Just learn to ignore bad advice from retards.

[Anonymous No.20119072]

>>20119063
My general rule for names of major characters is "does it flow well when read, and does it feel right to say". You can have occasional trickier names, but they should be able to be shortened or some such.

[Anonymous No.20119075]

>>20119069
Pretty much. It WOULD be good advice for another story sometimes, but it's often clear they don't want what you're writing.

[Anonymous No.20119078]

who am I
who are you

[Anonymous No.20119083]

>>20119075
STFU, retard.

[Anonymous No.20119084]

>>20119078
You're some guy, you know?
I'm the kinda G little homies wanna be on my knees in the night, saying prayers in the street lights

[Anonymous No.20119091]

>>20118885
Why did you delete your Royal Road? I thought you had more chapters than that.

[Anonymous No.20119109]

>>20119091
I got into a pissing match with the retards there (much like you retards here). The mods deleted a post of mine on the forums because I dared to tell someone they weren’t so good a writer that they could get away with not revising their stories (one of those pantsing faggots who insisted that not only did he not plan, but didn’t go over the work again later). So I set up shop elsewhere. Unfortunately I’m not getting nearly as many eyes at Scribble Hub. I did put the story back up on Royal Road, but I’m keeping it behind Scribble Hub. And I know not to engage with people on the forums.

[Anonymous No.20119139]

>>20119109
>>20119083
If you're not someone who's been writing for a while I get being mad about the advice but no one's in a pissing match with you right now. I still don't see how you can even be angry. You got good news. Are you just upset your time got wasted or something? The names sound better now than they did. The worldbuilding and story complaints only came because you picked a section in the middle of the story; those should have been discarded immediately as advice given out of context.

[Anonymous No.20119204]

>>20119139
I hope your family gets raped to death by a pack of feral niggers and gets aids.

[Anonymous No.20119239]

Imagine deleting your story because you got a negative review and your forum posts got deleted.
Some writer you must be.

[Anonymous No.20119244]

>>20119078
You're Anonymous
And I'm stroking my dick

[Anonymous No.20119270]

Hey guys so I have a complicated situation
I wanted to make a fangame for a series that I liked but then I wanted to focus on the story and now I realize I want to write an original story more than I want to make a game

Should I acknowledge the influence of the other franchise on my story or should I hold it completely separate

[Anonymous No.20119283]

>>20111292
I'm writing an essay this afternoon on Hamlet and the connections between England during that time (i.e. assassinations, anxiety around the succession and who will be the heir, etc.) and the religious themes in Hamlet (and how they're relevant to Hamlet at that time). One thing that I know needs to be in the paper, but I'm having trouble writing about is the relevance of the idea of purgatory. England was Protestant dominated at that time, and the Catholics had to worship in private, yet purgatory makes it into Hamlet in the form of King Hamlet's ghost being stuck there. Could someone help flesh that out a little more or give me some more detail?

[Anonymous No.20119295]

>>20119270
That is literally how almost all original IPs are made. So no you don't need to acknowledge it.

[Anonymous No.20119325]

>>20119283
Bump

[Anonymous No.20119354]

>>20119283
>>20119325
Claudius is named after the Roman emperor who conquered Britain. Add that.

[Anonymous No.20119576]

>>20118614
>How do I make my writing more mature? Should I add rape? More swearing?
Stop being 12 for starters, you retarded faggot

[Anonymous No.20119697]

My prose fucking sucks. What now?

[Anonymous No.20119723]

>>20119697
get good

[Anonymous No.20119740]

>>20119697
The fuck makes for good prose anyway.

[Anonymous No.20119799]

>>20117193
Thanks. Which bits would you cut or rewrite?

[Anonymous No.20119859]

>>20119697
I'm no pro, but have gotten a few compliments on my prose from the psueds on here recently. Alliteration is one easy method to improve sentence feel, but I've also begun using "Loose Alliteration/tongue side preference", I'm sure there is a real term for this among poets but this is what I call it after learning about it in a historical linguistics book.

I'll explain it like this, written language is a reflection of the spoken word, so you should be reading all your prose aloud for mouth feel. The human tongue is often prone to tripping up on shifts from sounds made at the front of the mouth (ta- da- na- sha- sa- th-) to those made at the back of the mouth (ma- ba- fa- ka- la-). It can feel really pleasant to maintain focus of sounds in a sentence (or extended periods of a sentence) in one of these two realms for this reason. Think of when you hum a song - you probably say "doo-nee-noo-nee-noo" or "fa-la-la-laaaa" and subconsciously do not cross this barrier. Within words crossing the tongue sides can also result in sounds being dropped or unintentionally added (e.g. some people say athlete as 'ath-uh-lete") and is thought to be a primary cause of linguistic drift over time.

Unrelated, but there is also the poetic idea of "sound painting" I believe it's called where you select words that make a similar noise the object being described.

[Anonymous No.20119887]

>>20119859
I do try and sound out sentences in my head when I write. It's not ALWAYS correct, sometimes you sacrifice how well it flows for something else (a very terse style will likely have harder shifts in sounds for example) but it's not bad advice. I do feel like sometimes I just put in alliteration without thinking about it sometimes, and it feels a little lazy if that makes sense. Like I'm just having it there to have it there.

[Anonymous No.20119905]

ok i'm gonna start writing a book and i want to know if i can tell what i want in it ? like fcking rape or other crazy stuff like that

[Anonymous No.20119955]

>setting is a Victorian mansion
>Don't what the fuck a mansion looks like on the inside

What do I do

[Anonymous No.20119968]

>>20119955
Perhaps https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=victorian+mansion+tour

[Anonymous No.20119984]

>>20119859
This is good advice.
>>20119697
Something I've been trying to do, with limited success, is to incorporate poetic techniques. Alliteration is one, consonance is good, cacophony, assonance, rhymes and near rhymes. When you have all of them working together, things sound really great. It's just a pain in the ass to consciously be thinking about all of these elements all of the time.

[Anonymous No.20119995]

>>20119905
No, you can only write in your story what you promise to write about in the beginning. If you promise a pleasant story and write about rape your readers will stop reading. If you want to write about rape, have some sort of sexual violence in the beginning to signal to your readers this is the type of book it is.

[Anonymous No.20120029]

>>20119859
I had no clue about the tongue side preference. I'll do something experimental with this this weekend for my flash fiction.

[Anonymous No.20120030]

>>20119984
>consonance
>cacophony
Not familiar with those terms in a writing sense.

[Anonymous No.20120040]

>>20119995
cool thx

[Anonymous No.20120050]

>>20119995
Not strictly true, though if you twist a story's trajectory on its head you need to at least hide the promise of that twist somewhere early on. Not too well-hidden that nobody'd even think to look, but not so overt that it can't be ignored. Something that, on a second read-through, is obvious, but without that added context is meaningless.

[Anonymous No.20120052]

>>20120030
Consonance is just repetition of similar consonants, basically the same as assonance. Cacophony is discordant and difficult sounds, kinda like what the other anon was saying about tongue side preference. Referring to gunshots as 'choked cracks' would be cacophony, it draws attention to itself and the clunkiness is part of the point. It's super situational, I struggle to find places to use it, but it exists.

[Anonymous No.20120055]

>>20119995
cause i'm going to go real hard in the book

[Anonymous No.20120082]

>>20120052
Ahhh, I see. I tend to almost subconsciously use alliteration, but assonance and stuff like that always tends to be something I have to think about. I'm also never really sure when to use these sorts of tools.
I often just sort of write what comes to mind and sometimes it seems to just work out, but I'm pretty poor at judging good prose so I have very little idea if I'm doing well on that front. The most I'll do is go "I don't really like how that sentence reads", and that's more just the structure of it feeling off (unnecessary repetition within a sentence, weak phrasing, etc.)
The only real writing sample I have on-hand was already posted in the thread ( >>20115659 ) and it was mostly done off-the-cuff, with only a glance-through second pass, if that.

[Anonymous No.20120092]

>>20119984
>It's just a pain in the ass to consciously be thinking about all of these elements all of the time.
Shouldn't you be working these in as they arise? That is, when the scene calls for it? Or are you trying to actively change your prose as it stands now? I might be going in that new prose direction with a story I'm working on, but I haven't started it yet.

[Anonymous No.20120118]

>>20120092
I am trying to change my prose. It's moreso reminding myself that these techniques exist and not allowing myself to fall into lazy sentences that's my biggest issue right now.

[Anonymous No.20120122]

>>20120118
I have that same issue. I've considered deliberately experimenting with different styles, but I have an annoying tendency to fall back into the same sort of writing rhythm whenever I do write.

[Anonymous No.20120139]

>>20120118
>>20120122
Same here. I made a few posts last week about finding my voice where I experimented with different styles. I haven't really found anything changed except I'm more mindful of looking for places to stretch my metaphor muscles. It's especially hard to adapt a current book to a new style since it's so easy to follow the tempo you have.

[Anonymous No.20120172]

>>20120139
My problem is I'm not even sure if my "natural style" or whatever you'd call it is even good. I guess I need more outside critique but most feedback I get on my writing is mostly stuff I generally agree with that doesn't really touch on stuff like prose and whatnot, or stuff that seems more like "I don't like what you're trying to write" which isn't useless, but doesn't really help. I guess the lack of any noticeable dislike for the prose is something positive, but it's also just "Is it too basic and unnoticeable?", that sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.20120191]

How do you write a smart protagonist for a, most likely, dumb audience?

[Anonymous No.20120207]

>>20120191
Explain things. Pic-related, even though it's about TV, is a pretty solid idea of what makes a smart character seem smart and what makes them simply be smart because the writer told you so. Don't cheat except in small ways, show the thought processes, etc.

[Anonymous No.20120208]

>>20120191
Have the protag make predictions and plan for things. Those predictions turn out to be right and the plans work. Woah, so smart.

[Anonymous No.20120226]

>>20120172
Here's an example of what helped me a little. I wrote this for the thread some days back. Most feedback centered around Clipped being the favorite "style" and Standard (my usual prose) being perfectly readable, but utilitarian and uninteresting. Which I had figured, so I waxed a little extra in Flowery and Impressionist. I came to the conclusion after a week's testing by myself that what I need most is to mix up the prose. Any one of these styles on their own won't always work in a story with many dynamic beats. Now I try to mix my Standard style with the other three depending on the mood.
It's most likely you're in the same boat I was. You've reached a point in your general prose that you can clearly convey ideas and situations. The next steps you would take get into a plateau zone of serious grammar study or even more rigidly defined exploration of ideas that, while technically masterful, might be unfulfilling to read--kind of like the way Germans play piano. So you may need to hit the experimentation button and try to write even just one paragraph in many distinct ways.
I should note this is an ongoing project of mine, still. I should be putting more time into this than I am, but I fall into the "Well I know my Standard prose feels comfy to write in and I want to get some work done so I'll just write in that" zone too often after a long day of work.

[Anonymous No.20120234]

how do i make money doing this shit
I want to quit my job already....

[Anonymous No.20120243]

>>20120234
>>20120234
Don't expect to ever make money off this unless you write like a businessman like sanderchad.

[Anonymous No.20120244]

>>20119799
If this were my text and I’d give it one round of editing my way (not implying you should do the same), I would consider following:

>She comes to me in the darkness. . .
Good one. I’d not touch this
>Until she reaches out her hand and places on my chest.
Maybe i’m me but this feels ’off’. Places what?
Softly, but it's enough to wake me.
Good one
>For a moment I don't know who she is, or where I am, or who I am.
This feels unuseful, too loose context. Also because the sentence is followed by:
>Then, I know her -
This is a realization without a cause. This would work if the text is written in past tense because narrating self knows this before the experiencing self in the story.
>even in the darkness I recognise her before I remember myself.
Feels redundant. We already know we’re in the dark and in state of forgetfullness. Yet the narrator knows as he narrates the story that goes on that he’s about to remember. He knows too much as a present narrator. I’m even thinking maybe the whole unknowingness stuff should be in the beginning somewhere.
>The scent of citrus and peaches on her fingers; the paths of memory have their shortcuts.
Now we’re in business. This is the reason why narrator knows her. The realization ’I know her’ could be better placed after this sentence because we’re in the present tense. He sniffs -> he knows.
>I open my mouth to ask why - why she's come back. It's been so long. I can't see her face in the darkness, can't tell if she's still angry, still hurt. She reaches out with her other hand and brushes the sweat from my forehead like she's wiping away tears.
Good stuff, i’d leave this untreated also
>There's my answer; some things are clearer in the darkness.
This is a punchline. If the text was written in past tense, this would be better to be put in the first sentence, but because this is present tense, the cause must precede the effect.
>My pounding heart drops a tempo. . .
Good stuff.
There’s a momentum and almost anything could happen. Intimate emotions are being evoked. This is also what worked: not only that there was an emotion at the beginning, it was in a move and at the end it was wholly different. Lot’s of stuff at play. The incongruence in temporalities of knowing stuff could go unnoticed but it gives that little jarring feeling that i felt must be addressed.
First person narrating the present time must never know anything before there is a cause for it (he sniffs -> he knows). First person past is narrated by the later self who can know things before the experiencing story self can (he knows -> he sniffs). Somehow it works like a good rule in this way. Not that it couldn’t be broken.

[Anonymous No.20120246]

>>20120234
royal road

[Anonymous No.20120250]

>>20120226
Fair enough. I'm not exactly pursuing writing to any serious degree right now, more just an idle hobby, throw out a thousand words a week or something like that. I might try an experiment like that myself, though I have a hard time identifying how to really split up my natural style as-is into other things. I get an idea, based on your own example, but I've already done some stuff where I've shifted to a more terse/clipped style to reflect the current perspective's lack of clarity, leading to only moment-to-moment quick thinking, stuff like that. I've definitely found my strength lies in a more character-driven narration rather than a more objective one, hence why I've found first person to be a bit easier to write in, but I want to push my third person stuff more just for the sake of expanding how I write different character perspectives in the same story (first person makes that trickier).

[Anonymous No.20120251]

>>20120243
if I have to write 500,000 words to make money i'm fine with that
as long as i get 50,000 to write my passion

[Anonymous No.20120254]

>>20119887
>I do try and sound out sentences in my head when I write
Reread what I wrote. "Rereading in your head" is not enough, you have to say it out loud inban edit pass. And what I'm primarily describing is not just straight up alliteration which can get repetitive.

>>20120029
Very cool and good luck, it is applicable to just about everything so long as you're not too putist about it - clarity/relevance of info comes first but it can really help you choose the best word choice and polish sentence flow.

>>20120118
>>20120092
For me doing some while drafting helps, but often I can't really do it effectively until I have a nice chunk of draft material to go back through and polish since all the ideas are down so it's easier to reorganize based on these ideas than come out spittin' fire every time

[Anonymous No.20120267]

>>20120254
I mistyped when I said "sounding it out in my head", I'll sort of silently sound it out to myself.

[Anonymous No.20120270]

>>20120208
>>20120226
Thanks, anons.

[Anonymous No.20120273]

>>20120251
No when I said, "write like a businessman like sanderchad" I meant writing for the market that sells, like generic fantasy or LitRPG. Doing market research into what sells the most. On top of that, don't worry about prose, it has to be big and exciting. Write the equivalent of a marvel movie, a popcorn flick. Prose is just the vehicle to tell the grand story.

[Anonymous No.20120282]

>>20120207
>>20120208
Thanks, anons.

[Anonymous No.20120287]

>>20111292
>only able to write in first person

What the fuck do I do about this?

[Anonymous No.20120290]

>>20120282
You don't ALWAYS have to explain, by the by. If the effects of a smart protagonist's plan are obvious, you can even leave it ambiguous if it was truly a plan or not (sometimes people just get lucky).

[Anonymous No.20120296]

>>20120287
Write first person stories. No shame in that.

[Anonymous No.20120336]

>>20120250
>I've definitely found my strength lies in a more character-driven narration rather than a more objective one, hence why I've found first person to be a bit easier to write in, but I want to push my third person stuff more just for the sake of expanding how I write different character perspectives in the same story (first person makes that trickier).
I'm nearly the opposite. First-person is very hard for me so I struggle with mental narrative prose (another thing I need to work on since writing is the only real domain that lets you inside a person's head). But third-person always came easily to me and most of my stories have many characters in many different perspectives. My first book series had 6 major, 6 minor, and 6 villainous characters. Yes, I went overboard.

[Anonymous No.20120342]

>>20120296
I want to learn how to write in third person though, but I have no idea how to make that pivot. My brain is too set on first person.

Are there any obvious points I should keep in mind? I tend to get way too stream-of-consciousness with the character's thoughts and have abrupt jumps from descriptions to interior monologues for one. How do I fix this?

[Anonymous No.20120344]

>>20120273
Is there any room for romance in those?
I'm not writing anything that focuses on romance but I always notice that it somehow sneaks in into my stories and ends up playing an important part.

[Anonymous No.20120364]

>>20120344
Sure, mass market crap is based off wish fulfillment so if it appeals to some sort of fantasy, then even better.

[Anonymous No.20120366]

>>20120342
Read a fucking book in third person, simpleton.

[Anonymous No.20120378]

>>20120366
I'm an autist so I don't gather much apart from prose and new words. Also, the techniques I'm currently employing are from other books, but I figured there was no harm in asking other people on here.

[Anonymous No.20120387]

>>20120342
Well, third-person limited is still anchored to a perspective, it's simply less characterised by being how the character specifically is viewing it. You're in their head, but you're not hearing how they're describing it. Like, I'm not great at third-person, but you can easily just scale back on how "personalised" the narration sounds, unless you're going for a Pratchet-esque narrative style which is something else entirely.
An example is, say, in first person, you'd write this:
>I rushed to get through the train's door, barely able to see who I bumped into the moment I stepped on board.
In third-person, you'd write more like this:
>He barely got onto the train in time, so blinded by his rush that he didn't even see who he collided with as he boarded.
A little more concrete-feeling, even if coloured by the perspective character. This isn't a great example but it's all that came to my head and I hope it at least helps.

[Anonymous No.20120397]

>>20120336
It's not that I can't write multiple character perspectives, it's more that I can't write any of them that strongly with third person, as I find you have to be a bit more, well, narrative about the story telling in third person. It's tweaked by whoever's perspective you're anchored to (if you're doing limited and not omniscient) but it's still a lot more objective and "clear", where with first person you only really need to describe what your perspective character is actively seeing, hearing and doing.

[Anonymous No.20120418]

>>20120397
The problem I have with 3rd person is I don't like to show characters thoughts when I'm writing that way. It feels odd for an external observer to hear someone else's inner thoughts. 1st person on the other hand is like 50% the mc's thoughts and the story always feels closer as a result.

[Anonymous No.20120429]

>>20120418
Well, third-person limited is anchored to a perspective, so hearing their thoughts isn't that weird. Just use italics or something, it works fine. Even omniscient narration lets you hear thoughts (doesn't Dune specifically do this?). You don't have to be overt with showing their thoughts with italics or what-have-you, you can simply make their thoughts clear from their actions or words, or from the narration itself in a more oblique way.

[Anonymous No.20120445]

>>20120429
I understand you can do it that way, I understand its been done that way. I don't like it, I think its dumb. Purely personal preference.

[Anonymous No.20120449]

What is the point of royal road? You will never make any real money off there

[Anonymous No.20120455]

>>20120445
Well, then don't show thoughts. Keep character's explicit internal thoughts an unknown, only show their outward actions.

[Anonymous No.20120457]

>>20120449
Tell that to the guys making 200k+ there

[Anonymous No.20120463]

>>20120449
royal road is a great place to get betareaders

[Anonymous No.20120477]

>>20120455
I've done this. Maybe it's just my prose, but it really chokes your writing. The only time you get to write fluid prose is when you're describing landscapes.

[Anonymous No.20120493]

>>20120477
You can still get across a character's headspace just through their actions, the tone of the narration, the phrasing of the narration, etc. Somebody who's sulky might spend a lot of time looking at everything but people, leading to overly-descriptive portions, whereas somebody who's upset will not be thinking straight, so the narration will be focused exclusively on their hasty actions, etc. It's trickier, to be sure, but you ARE hampering yourself by cutting off thoughts entirely if you think they're useful to have.

[Anonymous No.20120494]

Do I need an editor before publishing shit on Royal Road?

[Anonymous No.20120553]

>>20120494
You don't even need a keyboard.

[Anonymous No.20120557]

Does /lit/ prefer one space or two spaces after a sentence? I was taught to use two spaces after a sentence but was made to unlearn two spaces in college and to use one space instead. Now I notice most people seem to use one space after a sentence and using one space does seem to speed up my typing speed by just the slightest amount.

[Anonymous No.20120561]

>>20120557
One space is standard now. I think you only use two in official documentation or something.

[Anonymous No.20120566]

>>20120557
Have you ever read a book?

[Anonymous No.20120591]

>>20120557
Since when do people use two?!

[Anonymous No.20120594]

>>20120553
So it can have grammar issues when I post on RR and no one will care?

[Anonymous No.20120602]

>>20120594
There is a separate rating for grammar but most of the time no one will notice small punctuation errors. Just don't be ESL and no one will care.

[Anonymous No.20120606]

>>20120594
A couple issues here and there can generally be ignored as long as your story is readable. Try to avoid them, of course, and fix them if you notice them after the fact, but it's not a deal-breaker.

[Anonymous No.20120608]

>>20120566
If I've ever read a book before I wouldn't be on /lit/, I would be on a website where people actually read books.
>>20120591
The way I was told back in elementary school was that two spaces was always the right way to do it. I guess maybe it's just an antiquated southern thing. All through primary school I was told to use two spaces but suddenly in college my paper would get an F if I didn't use one space.

[Anonymous No.20120636]

>>20120608
Yeah, it's a weird remnant of the education system. For typewriters and shit, we used to use double spaces after full stops, but now it's just a single space, with some exceptions.

[Anonymous No.20120772]

I've noticed that almost every new paragraph in my novel starts with a character doing something.
paragraph one: "character saw...."
paragraph two: "then the character..."
paragraph three: "character decided that..."
is this bad writing?

[Anonymous No.20120779]

>>20120772
Not particularly, though starting with a more passive voice in a paragraph isn't terrible here and there.

[Anonymous No.20120798]

>>20120772
Most stories are just a chain of characters doing something, so it makes sense most of the sentences or passages would be about a character doing something. If you feel the language is repetitive, try mixing it up a bit. Opening a paragraph with a description of a setting or object other than a character could be a good thing to do as well.

[Anonymous No.20120841]

>>20120772
While not technically wrong it does lead to very boring prose most of the time. It can feel very inorganic, as if it's all just a list of actions taking place. Many of the fight scenes I see posted here suffer from this.

[Anonymous No.20120867]

Anons who write serially, how far ahead do you plan your stories? I like my chapters to have callbacks and foreshadowing, which I do not know how to do in a serialized format.

[Anonymous No.20120877]

>>20120867
Just plant seeds for future pay-offs. You may not know EXACTLY how it'll pay off, but you can get a good idea of what will go on, and it gives you a goal to start writing towards how the set-up pays off. Callbacks... You just... Call back to something significant from an earlier chapter, I don't know why you'd really need to specifically think about that one.

[Anonymous No.20120883]

>>20120867
I don't write serially but the only way I can think of to have foreshadowing in a serial format is to plan your story ahead to the point which gets foreshadowed. Personally if I were to write serially I would have a basic written outline of the entire plot for foreshadowing and consistency's sake.

[Anonymous No.20120888]

>>20120867
Call backs and foreshadowing are easy in serials as you generally write a few months ahead and have planned far more than that.
The thing I absolutely despise with serial writing as having each chapter feel like a fulfilling read. If I cut a random 3k words out of my current project and just read it as is it is absolute trash. I can't imagine posting that and saying "Okay guys, come back in 7 days for another one!".

[Anonymous No.20120893]

>>20120888
Every chapter needs to either leave the reader satisfied or wanting more, with serial stuff, I'd say. You don't have to end every chapter on a cliffhanger for the "wanting to see more" stuff, but it's somethig to note.

[Anonymous No.20120903]

>>20120877
>I don't know why you'd really need to specifically think about that one.
It's the little details. I'm writing a story where I realized that a character needs to clean his shoes in a future, and he needs to do so in an unorthodox manner. There's a perfect way to relate this to his hobbies in this chapter, which I would have missed if the chapter wasn't pre-planned since the only way a detail so small would come up is organically.

I'm thinking of writing three chapters in advance so I can add a sufficient amount of tiny details, without having to plot every single thing in my story at the start.

[Anonymous No.20120907]

>>20120888
>a few months ahead
So how much of your story should you have finished before uploading it as serial?

[Anonymous No.20120916]

>>20120903
Write chapters in advance, or simply make a note of an unresolved pay-off that you've set up earlier on in whatever planning documentation you might have, and where you're roughly planning to have it happen.

[Anonymous No.20120920]

>>20120602
>tfw ESL but have never been singled out for it on 4chinz

[Anonymous No.20120936]

>>20120907
I would go with enough chapters to unload the inciting incident + at least 2 months of a backlog incase you get sick or writer's blocked. Not uploading for a while can really kill momentum in building readership.

[Anonymous No.20120945]

How do I get readers on royal road?

[Anonymous No.20120951]

>>20120936
2 months of backlog meaning how much? Bi-weekly is the "usual" output people have, right?

[Anonymous No.20120958]

>>20120951
I think most people do once per week. 2.5k-5k words.

[Anonymous No.20120964]

To keep readership, do I need to upload all the time on Royal Road? Or only when I have an ongoing story?

[Anonymous No.20120974]

>>20120958
I wasn't sure if my own personal output would be enough without a significant backlog (though I don't think I'd do a particularly long-form story anyway, at least at first), though I'm finding I'm getting around 2-4k words a chapter and if I had something pushing me I could probably crank out that amount per week (it takes me about 2-ish hours to really put down 2k words if I have a really clear idea of what I want to do in a chapter) so it's good to know for if I ever try to get into it and put my work out there or just let it linger forever as a barely-touched project.
I should probably put together, like, a planning document sometime.

[Anonymous No.20121034]

>>20120964
2 chapters a week, up to 10 - 25 chapters ahead for patreon payers.

So your book will have minimal edit. zbut it's okay, it gives it "character"

[Anonymous No.20121043]

>>20120772
Yes, it is bad writing. There's more going on in your world than what your character's experiencing, right?

[Anonymous No.20121050]

>>20121034
>up to 10 - 25 chapters ahead for patreon payers.
Not doing Patreon.

>So your book will have minimal edit. zbut it's okay, it gives it "character"
I think I'll just stay inconsistent and cry about it later.

[Anonymous No.20121067]

For serial work would it be smarter to spend each week writing several chapters to build up a backlog, or spend a week focusing on each chapter to ensure it's as good as you can get it?

[Anonymous No.20121070]

>>20120511

[Anonymous No.20121086]

>>20121067
You want a backlog to begin with so if circumstances like writers block or real life knock you on your ass, you'll have content to post no matter what. I personally would write several chapters in advance. This will also outline your "lowest common denominator" performance, instead of you writing a carefully edited post one week then the next week failing to edit and putting out something that fails to meet heightened audience expectations.

[Anonymous No.20121104]

>>20121086
Well, I can put out maybe 2-3k words a day if I'm motivated, though I'd probably only do that twice a week at most. I could spend a few hours the rest of the week tweaking what I've written that week. I realise quality will vary wildly regardless, but still. I'm not really sure what you meant by the LCD thing.

[Anonymous No.20121137]

>>20121104
I guess it depends on your overall ability to begin with then. Some people will need more editing than others, and if you think you need to edit 2-3k words instead of write another 2-3k words or whatever, then do it. The backlog advice stands - really try to write in advance as much as possible. And with the lowest common denominator, audiences will definitely be able to tell if you half-ass a chapter, so better to set the bar low in the first place and exceed it instead of set the bar high and fail to reach it.

[Anonymous No.20121161]

>>20121137
That's fair enough. Probably best to only really have your "weakest" chapter be several chapters in, I assume. Because what I've written so far for my thing is just two chapters (well, one chapter with two versions and one really mediocre second chapter), and the first generally seems pretty strong based on the little feedback I've gotten but the second was rough as hell so I'm going back to the drawing board overall, hence the first chapter getting a second version. I should probably seek a better place to find feedback on early writing than /lit/ though, because... I don't hate this place but most people don't even read what you ask for feedback on so you're lucky to even get anything, and most advice is pretty mediocre.

[Anonymous No.20121176]

>>20111691
What's the story with th brother though? You start out with the brother and then go on all about the furhouse, which sounds fun, but where's the story? You still need to have a story.

[Anonymous No.20121181]

>>20121161
/lit/ is very hit or miss for advice I agree, with competing recommendations and different tastes (if someone else responded to your initial question, for all we know they'd say the opposite of what I said with just as much logic to back it up). But, if you're not getting very far with your work, to the point you're going back and revising so quickly, I can see why you might prefer to revise or plan beforehand instead of push forward at a faster pace only to end up revising afterward.

[Anonymous No.20121183]

Anyone interested in strategic deathgames? That's what I'm writing

[Anonymous No.20121188]

A cute girl ghosted me... Now I have no more motivation to write my book.

[Anonymous No.20121195]

>>20112186
You want to avoid investing a lot of time in a long work that may be unpublishable. So write short stories first and get feedback on that. This will tell you if your ideas are publishable, if your writing is good enough and where you have to improve. You have to shorten your feedback cycle. You can't be like 90k words and two years later, let me get some feedback.

[Anonymous No.20121201]

>>20121181
It's more that I have a strong start, but then I realised I had no idea what to DO with that start. I'm not a great worldbuilder, I've tried, so I want to mostly keep the illusion of worldbuilding intact (develop only really relevant areas, keep other things oblique) and I guess I'd need to start planning out things. Also I need to get better at creating fantasy names. I've got some concept of how to make them, but I've got this odd mixture of very fantastical names, semi-fantastical real-world names, and me just kinda making noises until I came up with a name. Probably better to plan at least SOMETHING first though.

[Anonymous No.20121206]

>>20121183
I am. Like a Hunger Games kinda thing, or more like Danganronpa/a detective game?

[Anonymous No.20121214]

>>20121206
I guess closer to dangonronpa?

[Anonymous No.20121219]

>>20121201
It helps to have a plot at least from A to F, even if you have no idea what will happen by Z. Travel plot, war plot, romance plot, training plot, whatever. Just something that both you and the audience can put up as the nominal goal early on, instead of the story appearing to be entirely filler.

[Anonymous No.20121223]

>>20111486
Why can't they both be named Jane Doe? It's just a coincidence not a mystery.

[Anonymous No.20121231]

>>20121219
Yeah, that's fair. The problem with my start is it doesn't really lead to any particular plot hooks. I can think of a few maybe, but I'm not sure how to implement them. I was honestly thinking of making it relatively low-stakes, doing something just because of personal reasons and not because the world's at stake. I'll... Probably start throwing some notions around in a planning document, see what sounds right to build upon.

[Anonymous No.20121232]

>>20121214
If you're doing that, consider checking out more traditional murder mysteries to see how they contrast. Kodaka applies some really clever writing techniques in the games, but a more "normal" mystery can give an idea how he made the detective/trial element fresh. Post about it more sometime.

[Anonymous No.20121234]

>>20114055
don't wast time writing or thinking about anything that cannot be published. any kind of wiping out of races, even alien ones, is a non-starter

[Anonymous No.20121237]

>>20121234
based realist take

[Anonymous No.20121242]

>>20121234
You can post it somewhere, but publishing it is another thing entirely. As I said, you'd need to have that guy be the villain if you wanted to do anything with that concept, and that's too much for a villainous protagonist.

[Anonymous No.20121249]

>>20121231
Well it has to lead to something, it's just a question of whether people will read that something. Even mundane local conflict can become engrossing if it's portrayed well enough (though it won't attract the reader who only clicks on the isekai and harem tags during their searches).

[Anonymous No.20121265]

>>20121249
Valid, valid. Honestly, I'll probably shelve writing the actual story in anything more than an exploratory way until I have a more concrete idea of what I want to do. I thought pretty hard on how to really create the opening, but then nothing else followed up from it in my head, which probably suggests a rough opening. I considered changing what is currently my opening to a 'prologue' and then time-jumping ahead with the new status quo the prologue introduced and creating a whole new journey (the prologue does that thing where it starts at the end of what would be another story, but a 'thing' happens to shake it up).

[Anonymous No.20121294]

Should I write a story 1st pov or 3rd pov?
I'm undecided

[Anonymous No.20121302]

>>20121294
third, 3rd, the one after 2nd and before 4th

[Anonymous No.20121306]

>>20121294
Depends. First person tends to offer a better characterisation of your perspective character, but it can diminish characterisation of others as they're all coloured through your narrator. Third person tends to allow easier use of multiple perspectives, and means characters can stand more on their own, but it can be hard to get a proper idea of any character's headspace. People tend to have their preferences of what they use and like, but just try both out for a sample chapter and see where it takes you?

[Anonymous No.20121314]

>it's an army battle chapter
Yep, just gonna have to get it over with.

[Anonymous No.20121318]

>>20121314
Skip it. What's the big deal?

[Anonymous No.20121324]

>>20121318
It's got a few necessary evils: MC meets his enemy, discovers that his best friend's woman tried to have him killed, learns his enemy actually isn't so bad after all, etc. Things that could be done over a diplomatic table, but need to be done on the battlefield for some other stuff I'm setting up in the future. I can tell I'm getting autistic with details of the battle, so I'm trying to get it churned out ASAP without stopping every two seconds to ask Google another question about medieval warfare.

[Anonymous No.20121338]

>>20121324
"Hello, my enemy. It appears you aren't so bad after all. However..."
Protagonist-kun said, still recovering from the grievous wound his best friend's woman had given him.
-fin-

[Anonymous No.20121339]

>>20121324
Is the battle's outcome itself important, or simply the events mentioned? If not, just breeze past the events leading up to the important shit.

[Anonymous No.20121347]

Does this scene make any sense?

[Anonymous No.20121356]

>>20121232
The Deathgame itself is a game of mafia/werewolf if you're interested in how the strategy works. But yeah I'll post about it more when I get more done.

[Anonymous No.20121368]

>>20121338
Holy shit. I'm deleting my chapter for this.
>>20121339
The outcome is important. It's the first time MC-kun has battled his enemy like this and it leads to them having actual combat for the first time. The battle ends with no winner because the two sides agree the war they're perpetuating is from the old guard and they don't want to continue something pointless anymore. Writing this out, I just realized I have questions to answer about what the MC's generals will feel about this. They're all old guys too. Everyone wants the war done with at this point, it's just HOW it gets done that's important to the political scene. I am breezing past the "unit X moved here, then swords etc etc" FWIW.

[Anonymous No.20121375]

>>20121347
It makes sense.

[Anonymous No.20121376]

>>20121368
Seems more like the issue is figuring out how to get the brass on both sides to suddenly agree to a ceasefire. You'd probably need a clear "thing" you can point at, some event, that shows how pointless it really is. Maybe you already have that, I don't know.

[Anonymous No.20121419]

>>20121347
>"..."
Stopped reading here.

[Anonymous No.20121426]

>>20121376
There's a clear event. The MC basically gets Talk no Jutsu'd and realizes he and his enemy want the same thing, so even though he hates the enemy, he admits he's got good points and continuing the war will collapse both of their countries. Going back to my original post, though, before I spend the next 9 or 10 posts explaining everything in the book, I mostly just wanted to complain about the few scenes I have to write to get to the Talk no Jutsu part.

[Anonymous No.20121427]

>>20121419
Is it better just to have a sentence:
>Adah did not respond.
???

[Anonymous No.20121433]

>>20121427
You could do that, or describe the man waiting for a reply or moving around and not getting one, or just continuing to talk. Then it's implicit that she's not answering.

[Anonymous No.20121437]

>>20121433
Thanks anon.

[Anonymous No.20121518]

>>20121515
>>20121515
>>20121515

[Anonymous No.20121550]

>>20121356
Maybe check out Raging Loop since it also does the werewolf approach.

[Anonymous No.20121924]

>>20115249
It depends on the speed of the flow. Deeper cuts bleed faster. Cuts to the veins spew blood like crazy. Is it even coming from a human? Or a body?