/wg/ writing general

[Anonymous No.20157823]

Colorful edition
Previous >>20148606


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

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

Aditional related reads:
>pastebin.com/dXtFsTUh

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

Self publishing websites:
>pastebin.com/zcKB1gN9

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

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

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

[Anonymous No.20157839]

>1829 words
>3.5 good hours on the page
>all solid words
>MC finally met his enemy who becomes his future best friend after 96,000 words of build up
Fuck me I love writing stories so much it's unreal. Reposting to new thread to let everyone know we're all gonna make it.

[Anonymous No.20157870]

>>20157823
I hate naming things and characters. The good names only come to me in random unpredictable flashes of inspiration or are literally revealed to me in a dream. Every time I specifically try, it's ill-fitting garbage.
I think I might just not even give the secondary characters in this book names, if they don't come to me on their own. Just refer to them by their profession or some shit. If those cunts won't emerge from my subconscious to say what their name is, they're not getting one.

[Anonymous No.20157876]

>>20157870
How do you usually come up with names?

[Anonymous No.20157880]

My writing immediately improved once I stopped going on /wg/

Also, no one here reads

[Anonymous No.20157884]

>>20157876
my subconscious brain does it while I'm not looking, and only shares if it feel like it

[Anonymous No.20157891]

>>20157884
I mean, when your names are shit

[Anonymous No.20157899]

>>20157891
association trees and etymology reference databases

[Anonymous No.20157913]

How do I actually build things up instead of skipping to the point?

[Anonymous No.20157916]

Help me pick a color palette
Target audience for the finished product is kids 6-12, but obviously the parents as well

[Anonymous No.20157946]

>>20157899
Names are probably like the actual stories. YOu have to make drafts and polish them by seeing how they sound and how you feel saying it in a sentence

[Anonymous No.20157953]

>>20157839
I'll post a variation the question you got in the old thread because I think its important.
>96,000 words of build up
There better be a lot of important, good, fun, funny, indispensable plot moments happening in those 96k words. Because goddamn.

[Anonymous No.20157989]

Bottom right

[Anonymous No.20158040]

>>20157989
It does feel like one of the stronger contestants. I based that off the typical wizard starry robes

[Anonymous No.20158093]

>>20157916
I think left-center feels warm and nice.

[Anonymous No.20158105]

Her golden hair like aureate curtains of cascading glossy silk, erratically pouring on both sides of her face, lush green irises encroached by a rose-tinged haze of sanguine rays glistening in overflowing tears. One tear crossing a ruddy, more than just physically marooned cheek, towards the ground, like a silvery wet glimmer responding to the light as if demanding attention.

[Anonymous No.20158128]

It's RR writathon time again /wg/!
Where everyone pre-wrote and lies about having 'flow'
>anything you deficient's write in freeform will be better then the entirety of their pre-writen 55k words.

[Anonymous No.20158135]

>>20158128
What an incoherent post! Let's try that again, from the top.

[Anonymous No.20158159]

>>20158135
>Already meet my hieroglyph thingo quota for this day we are upon.
>Come to four dongs for poops and wiggles.
>Autist attempts to force coherent degeneracy upon thine personage.
This place really has gone to the cucks.

[Anonymous No.20158171]

>>20157231
Normal people are bad beta readers. When I shared my first story, everyone kept saying how well written it was, professional quality, a real joy, and whatever. A few years later, I looked at it again and it was full of trivial, embarrassing mistakes and some parts barely made any sense. You have to either get an experienced professional to help, or just hone your own eye for quality.

[Anonymous No.20158182]

>>20158171
>When I shared my first story, everyone kept saying how well written it was, professional quality, a real joy, and whatever
This is why friends and family are your enemy. They know your stuff sucks but lie about it to make you feel better.

[Anonymous No.20158193]

>>20158128
I kinda want to participate for the spirit of challenge and free publicity, but I don't want to post unedited shit, or cheat like those cunts. The concept is just inherently shitty.

[Anonymous No.20158197]

>>20158182
I posted it online and the commenters were strangers. My mom has no issue saying she doesn't like my stuff, but I don't think that's an objective assessment either. And my "friends" don't read.

[Anonymous No.20158229]

>>20157880
k

[Anonymous No.20158255]

I got a five star rating and glowing review on kindle, but I don't know if it's legit. It has a phony feeling to it, but I have no actual reason to believe that. I have imposter syndrome irl.

What do?

[Anonymous No.20158265]

The decor has seen updates. Dramatic dildonics adorn the hall, so many myriad members throbbing in sculpture out from the walls, sprouting from the floor—a veritable boneyard of penises—they come cut and uncut, trimmed and untrimmed, from every angle by which the eye might pass; penises light and dark, large and small, some curving sideways, others in helices reaching up in pairs of two, in triplicate or more, towards the now-darkened lamplights; some rakish penises angled askance, others laid low along the ground; veiny, smooth, hard, soft, every possible configuration of cock expressing some dick dreamer's unbounded gnosis, interred for all eternity—or what remains of it—in marble here, in granite there, some chrysoprase detailing on lacquered hardwoods—ebony, hickory, olivewood—streams of gold sprouting mock-molten from rosewood glans… there are chairs here whose peniform backings rise from cushions of bristling black boarshair, felted brown upholstery, bare alder, to droop lazily down upon the seated’s ostensible shoulder, the crook of its laconic wooden foreskin inviting rest beneath its shade, the embrace would be warm and caring, like sitting under a banyan at the height of summer… and, in the distant past, were one to sit upon one of these chaises, he or she might have listened at dusk, the lights glowed down to incandescence, the timbre of campfire, to waters flowing gently perhaps, from the pièce de résistance, whose flaccid Greek proportions bely a sheer magnitude of scope—its descent from the high-vaulted ceiling, some fifty or sixty feet up, drags nearly its terminant foreskin across the lobby floor—emitting waters which once flowed steady, dribbled fits and starts, or gushed voluminous bursts into an ornate and embossed circular basin of immense proportion held low aloft by a dwarf colonnade in keeping with the finest of Ionian tradition, and whose facade entablature might have been carved by Michaelangelo himself… and which bears still a mysterious ammonic smell whose origin I cannot imagine nor postulate.

[Anonymous No.20158272]

>>20158255
Write more

[Anonymous No.20158285]

>>20158255
Track down the reviewer on social media and harass him daily to get him to remove the review and then keep doing it just for the hell of it, and mail weird gifts to his family, park outside his house at night, go talk to his colleagues at work, and call radio stations to ask them to play songs that you dedicate to him. Do that for starters and see how things develop from there.

[Anonymous No.20158292]

>>20158265
>money is fake
Scarcity of goods and services isn't, if you consume without producing you're just a parasite, a concept a child could understand
>society isn't natural
is natural for dolphins, primates, prairee dogs, wolves, lions, bees and more
>sun is going to explode
not my problem

[Anonymous No.20158314]

Reposting für die deutschsprachigen Anons

Es ist nur der Anfang, knapp 400 Wörter, aber ich bin unsicher, ob sich das Projekt in dieser Form lohnt, es weiter zu verfolgen. Bin wirklich sehr dankbar über Meinungen (und mir ist bewusst, dass aus dem kurzen Text noch nicht wirklich viel hervorgeht, aber naja)

https://pastebin.com/fm2a0wkY

[Anonymous No.20158355]

>>20158292
This post is a landmine. I started to type out a reply a couple times, but each time I did, I just couldn't bring myself to answer "yes" to this question: do I really want to have a discussion with this person? I'm not sure if it was the garden-variety, philistine materialism, the inability to understand that the "society" to which the image refers is the structure of the postmodern, hypercapitalist society that packs human beings into tiny concrete boxes and stacks them to the sky, or if it was just the fucking image of Gaston wearing a scanner from a literal children's cartoon, but the answer is no. No, I don't want to interact with you at all except strictly in this capacity. I just want you to know that you are a retard, and even though I'll never be able to convince you of that, I felt compelled to say it: you are a retard.

[Anonymous No.20158406]

>>20158355
Nice blog homo, classic indignant gaylord "No, I don't wanna talk to you". Then don't respond queer, the fuck is this post about? It shows no information whatsoever but a fag having mental breakdown. Also cute use of "post-modern hyper-capitalist", almost sounds like you know what you're talking about.

Modern life is just medieval life with computers and cars. Medieval life is just advanced tribal life. Go grow some apples to exchange for some oranges and get a job, hippie.

[Anonymous No.20158441]

>>20158406
>Modern life is just medieval life with computers and cars. Medieval life is just advanced tribal life.
You couldn't be more aggressively retarded if you tried.

[Anonymous No.20158468]

>>20157823
Unsown golden seed of hunger while she
Does listen upon the verse and else
Upon the happy thirst of war
Does consume the broad and and praise the lord
While riding to face the breadth of the law
Yet amidst the smoke and fog that hounds
The times of youth that linger in spit
The trifling breed do bread with louts
Sharing tears shed but rarely a-fit
The consecrated sod does trifle the earth
And dense are the lads that foot the shadows
While war is poetry penned by rifle’s girth
The land of the living will hardly remiss
And insolence of times ahead keep the line
And law of the land will prosper
In consecrated tears the seed demands
Excavation for another lover fallen
Death be to one as life be to many
Yet the passing fade will lift atop
And humanity perhaps moves to infinite glory
In the minds of those shot
Now is the time for congregation to pause
And congress will rise and fall by our hand
And the sad satan that roams the dark halls
Will rise of the land to answer our call
And evil is subject to those unafraid
Yet objective words will keep us in line
The heaven will hear the call of man
If the scream does lift above the pain but
Else does the words of pain and joy
The spoils of war left to the spoilt
And the living will forget the lesson living
That what each generation finally figured out
Be free to be who you are
Be free my children of art
Be free for the life is tainted

[Anonymous No.20158471]

The docks were teeming.
The village would gather early every Saturday morning to watch the fishermen set seasonal stalls with fresh hauls: bass, cod, crab, eel, lobster, mackerel, octopus, oyster, prawn, salmon, and tuna; the crowd bid for the choicest seafood, the leftovers were sold at noon to the new wave of T-shirt tourists. Travelers paid sizable amounts for the unwanted fish, and they would continue coming through the week to try it prepared with a mixture of red peppers, black peppers, bay leaves, paprika, ginger, cinnamon, and occasionally salted. When the visitors had left, celebrations were held on the dock for the fishermen as they prepared once more to set sail for another week; and when the moon climbed the sky, the village sang shanties and recounted sea stories and drank and drank until they stumbled home in the gloom of night.
The next day, the now somber villagers crammed to see the fishermen set sail. As soon as they arrived, the men had set about light maintenance leaving the women and children to wait and watch; Mrs. Henry did break the monotony a little by making sandwiches for her husband and his crew but ended up so overwhelmed that she began eating them herself and soon ran out of bread to which she cried more and when the ships were approved, her husband looked more than a little embarrassed at his wife crying on the floor.
The day was losing light. The fishermen embraced their wives and children. Mr. Thomas, the priest, prayed for their safe return and wished them well. Little Alice Petherick told her father she was old enough to sail and she would be going with him, and the whole village laughed; then they boarded, and sailed into the sunset without a glance behind.

I wrote this a while back and thinking of revisiting, what do you think of it in its current state/what could I do to improve?

[Anonymous No.20158500]

>>20158406
Based(?)

[Anonymous No.20158619]

>>20158471
I'd cut down the list of seafood and spices. It seems out of place and busts up the flow without adding much of anything.

[Anonymous No.20158877]

>>20158292
Scarcity is real, money is abstract. I write software, my employer pays me, our customer pays my employer, our customer's customers buy our software from our customer, they use it to do work for their customers, and somewhere along the way, a house is built – which probably changes hands a few more times before it's ever lived in. Does my writing software improve the world? I mean, probably. I'm even creating something obviously useful, not engaging in high-frequency trading. But my income only loosely correlates with my good deeds. More importantly, accumulating money won't do me much good unless I spend it, and I should beware of the trap of number-go-up. (But see https://meltingasphalt.com/wealth-the-toxic-byproduct/ also.)
Community is natural, society isn't. Wolves don't live in packs of millions, do they? I'm not against society, but it's clearly insane and unnatural. Doesn't matter if it's capitalism or socialism or mesopotamic serfdom. Do you think they had a 4chan in the ancestral environment? Anonymity is a perversion, including the anonymity of crowds. (And I'm proud to be a pervert.)

[Anonymous No.20158922]

>>20158877
not him but i can't help thinking hierarchy is natural even if society isn't (supposed to be). animal groups have their alphas, humans do too, and they conquer over the others, and so on, then bam, a civilization.
>(And I'm proud to be a pervert.)
made me heh

[Anonymous No.20159040]

>>20158922
I think hierarchy is natural much in the way gravity is. Gravity doesn't mean that our natural state is to lie flat at the bottom of a well. Hunter-gatherer societies have social customs that counteract hierarchy.
Hierarchy increases as scarcity decreases. (I don't like scarcity, so I'll take it.) Civilization doesn't seem to have been tenable before agriculture and long-term accumulation of food (wealth). You can't afford to be rich if it means everyone else starves.
Society is natural in that it was inevitable and unnatural in that evolution didn't prepare us for it.

[Anonymous No.20159061]

>>20159040
>Hierarchy increases as scarcity decreases.
not the other way around? if there is no scarcity, if everyone's current and future needs are fully secured, nobody can really hold power over you.

[Anonymous No.20159076]

I suck at writing, is it because I don't have an habit(last year was the last time I wrote something)? What can help me?

[Anonymous No.20159088]

>>20159076
Writing.

[Anonymous No.20159089]

>>20159076
It's a habit, not an abbit. It's time to follow Ray Bradbury's advice and write a short story every week. Once you've written a story a week for a year you're bound to be better.
So goes the theory.

[Anonymous No.20159094]

>>20159076
post excerpt

[Anonymous No.20159102]

>>20159061
True. Maybe it's inequality that increases, more than hierarchy.
But you can't secure your needs without society. Society holds power over you.

[Anonymous No.20159108]

>>20159089
How do I write a short story?

[Anonymous No.20159120]

>>20159108
I dunno I only write overly long, bloated stories

[Anonymous No.20159124]

How do I make an arc? I feel like I can't make any overarching story plot. It all gets messed up. :(

[Anonymous No.20159193]

>>20159124
Establish goal -> establish method -> establish result. <img class="xae" data-xae width="100" height="32" src="https://s.4cdn.org/image/emotes/49bde730_shoopdw2.png">

[Anonymous No.20159195]

>Read my story
>All these mistakes
God damn I'll never finish editing

[Anonymous No.20159232]

>>20159193
Shouldn't April Fools be over by now?

[Anonymous No.20159263]

>>20159232
The ride never ends
<img class="xae" data-xae width="32" height="32" src="https://s.4cdn.org/image/emotes/bc1ff2b8_AYAYAHyper.png">

[Anonymous No.20159368]

What are some rules for 1-on-1 dialogue writing? I have a dinner scene between a mute and a narcissist but the overall tempo feels like it's: rude > comedy > absurdity > historical > absurdity (again) > wrap-up. There is a "goal" to this conversation but the path to it is muddied.

[Anonymous No.20159385]

>>20157953
There is. The 96k before is setting up the rest of the series. The story is about a young king's entire adult life, so the formative years are most important. He starts the story becoming the defacto king after his mom dies unexpectedly, and under the pressure to succeed, he goes through an inferiority complex redemption arc which culminates in the scene I'm about to write today, where the MC finally meets his enemy and talks to him. There's also the arc setting up a civil war in his middle life since his childhood friend is betrayed by someone trying to steal the throne and the main church basically disowns him for trying to spread the truth to other people. That guy also is having a romance with one of the powerful court members. I'm a little annoyed that I've put him aside for a while to give the MC the reigns, but it's necessary for the rest of the story. He'll need to have his own new arc coming up and it'll probably be about the divide between him (a low ranking noble's son turned royal guard) and his love (powerful royal court leader), since the next step is to get them married to start another chain of events for the MC to follow in his own life.

[Anonymous No.20159386]

>>20159368
>What are some rules
There are none.

[Anonymous No.20159390]

>>20159386
Dope, cheers

[Anonymous No.20159492]

>>20158128
I have arrived at the upsetting realisation that aiming to be a better writer than RR plebs doesn't automatically make me better than them. Some of them can barely speak English, yet there are still things I learn from breaking down their writing.

[Anonymous No.20159606]

>>20159492
well don't be stingy, share them with the class

[Anonymous No.20159672]

>>20158105
>her hair
>curtains

<span class="xae" data-xae="vomit">🤮[/spoiler]

[Anonymous No.20159701]

>>20158105
>Curtains
>Pouring
When do curtains pour?

[Anonymous No.20159731]

Is there any advice you guys could give me for writing effective, quality lyrics?
I know that's more of a /mu/ topic but I went there last time I asked this and apparently their only general for this sort of thing had some kind of shitposting holocaust in 2018 that renders it unusable now.
I'm a complete novice with little to no experience so all tips welcome.

[Anonymous No.20159763]

>>20159731
Read more poetry, especially poetry that was constrained by some rhyming scheme.
Music lyrics tends to be poetry-lite that tries to match a beat.

[Anonymous No.20159807]

Where do I go for review for a piece that I'd like to publish?

[Anonymous No.20159813]

>>20159807
Here, post it niggerboy.

[Anonymous No.20159819]

.

[Anonymous No.20159823]

>>20159813
Can't. Wont' be able to publish it if I put it out here in public.

[Anonymous No.20159830]

>>20159823
Just deny it. Say some nigger posted it here without your approval. Say it's sabotage.

[Anonymous No.20159846]

>>20159823
Jokes aside, if you're looking for a legit critical review of your work, you either find a beta reader or hire an editor.

[Anonymous No.20159897]

>>20159672
This post reminded me I used that line in my previous chapter - just went in and swapped it for veil which is much more appropriate for the transition into the otherworldy atmosphere of the scene. Sometimes you guys catch me.

>>20159823
If it's 4k words or less just post via paste-bin or Google doc on your burner Gmail and delete it later. The only trail on here will be at worst a couple quotes from an anon offering terrible line edits - which, assuming anyone gives enough of a shit to check AND cares about
could easily be argued a coincidence or whatever.

If it's longer you're probably better off with an editor, beta reader, or proper writing group like other anon said.

[Anonymous No.20160034]

>>20158877
>Do you think they had a 4chan in the ancestral environment?
Sort of.

[Anonymous No.20160055]

>>20159830
Can't do that bro.

>>20159846
Alright, thanks. I'm guessing Reddit isn't a good source. Where should I go?

>>20159897
>The only trail on here will be at worst a couple quotes from an anon offering terrible line edits - which, assuming anyone gives enough of a shit to check AND cares about
>could easily be argued a coincidence or whatever.
I've done it before, but this particular piece is too identifiable.

Where do I find a proper writing group (i.e., not retards who do the bare minimum to get published) if I'm a STEMfag out of university with no /lit/ education?

[Anonymous No.20160065]

Finally broke 10k boys, i might actually get somewhere with this thing.

Six pages about weapon systems and maintenance let's go

[Anonymous No.20160071]

>>20160034
They had 4chan in Pompeii and they had Excel in Sumer, but I'm talking a good 10,000 years earlier.

[Anonymous No.20160072]

>>20160065
brother
the first 10k is easy the
20k, 30k, 40k, etc. is when you start getting demotivated as your story spirals into meaningless and distraction

[Anonymous No.20160079]

>>20160072
No worries anon my story is already meaningless and rambling, riding this thing out until the end

I got a vague plan in my head anyway

[Anonymous No.20160098]

I usually don't reach 1k. Not because I lose motivation but because I get to the end of the story.
I once managed 8.5k, but it felt like I chained eleven stories together. Chapters built on each other but the red thread was weak.
Is this a weird problem to have? I've never seen anyone talk about it.

[Anonymous No.20160101]

>>20160098
I usually turn my small, not workable ideas into short stories/microfiction. Sometimes i combine two stories into one.

There are several big ideas that i return to and turn into big stories.

[Anonymous No.20160136]

>>20160098
I'm not sure how you can write something under 1k and call it a story. That's like a single scene.

[Anonymous No.20160142]

>>20160136
Fucking this.
Anything less than 3k for a chapter is wordlet syndrome.

[Anonymous No.20160154]

>>20160098
>I once managed 8.5k, but it felt like I chained eleven stories together
stories are fractals. not necessarily in terms of content (content is meaningless) but rather in the sense that their structure repeats itself over and over again on different scales. letters compose words compose sentences compose paragraphs compose chapters compose stories compose the bigger story.

[Anonymous No.20160167]

>>20160154
this is the most meaningless and pompous sentence I have ever read

[Anonymous No.20160179]

>>20160167
yeah, well, it's just like... you know

[Anonymous No.20160181]

>>20160098
>1k is a thought bubble
>3k is a fever dream
>10k is half assed story
>20k is a short story
>50k is a story
I get that constructing scenes and conveying ideas with eloquence is hard for the adhd kids of today. But stop trying to shorten the goalposts to make yourself feel better about your inadequacies.

[Anonymous No.20160212]

>>20160154
The mental model I've recently migrated to is that stories are all based on Scene as the foundation. Everything you hear about arc, 3 acts, muh heroes journey, etc. is abstract wishy-washy to confuse you.

Every scene is a link in the chain if the story. Every link of the chain is similar in the same story (sharing characters, plot, themes, tone) but each scene shows change in 2 or so of those aspects - a transition in emotional/mental state from high-to-low or low-to-high

[Anonymous No.20160232]

>writing primarily for woman
>trying to make sure the zodiac signs of my characters are relationship compatible
Why do people believe this bullshit? This sucks so much.

[Anonymous No.20160235]

>>20160232
thats why you have to write for MEN

[Anonymous No.20160240]

>>20160235
Men don't buy cutesy romance books and that's all I know how to write.

[Anonymous No.20160243]

>>20160240
im sure there has to be a genre that appeals to men and women equally but can allow you to essentially write for men

[Anonymous No.20160262]

>>20159763
Gotcha. Thanks!

[Anonymous No.20160264]

>>20160243
There probably is but, like I said, I can only write cutesy romance and those seems to only be read by woman.

[Anonymous No.20160282]

>>20160181
I'm up to 45k for my current story but I've only finished the first act.

[Anonymous No.20160291]

>>20160181
>500k is RR serial
>1M is fanfic trash

[Anonymous No.20160309]

Where do I find a proper writing group (i.e., not retards who do the bare minimum to get published) if I'm a STEMfag out of university with no /lit/ education?

[Anonymous No.20160318]

>>20160309
you walk around your nearest homeless street and talk to people. You'll meet a couple of writers.

[Anonymous No.20160359]

I am so saddened by how much of reality gets lost in my words.
I could never translate to a person what it feels like to see a beautiful woman. Or feel the wind against their skin. Or someone they love hugging them.
its all a pale imitation. God is dead!

[Anonymous No.20160406]

>>20160136
They're often single scenes. Maybe it's microfiction or flash fiction or something, I don't care what it's called.
I have an idea, I want to put it into words, and I'm done pretty quickly. Maybe I'm supposed to use more than one idea? Or I need to be more willing to repeat myself? Or go for variations on a theme, interrogate it from multiple angles? Add filler when I see an opportunity to say something interesting that doesn't advance the main idea? Abandon my focus on conveying ideas and write what comes to mind? Lose my perfectionism? Start stories without knowing where they'll go?
I legitimately don't know what to do. I like reading longer works but almost nothing I write turns into that shape.
(Actually, now that I'm rereading my post, I remember one thing I started without knowing where it'd go that did run rather long by my standards. So maybe I should try more of that.)

>>20160181
I ruminate on the idea for a while, I spend a few hours writing it, I count the words, and it says there are just 700. I do a few rounds of editing and it shrinks to 600. I read through it and I don't feel like anything's missing. I post it here or somewhere else and people seem to like it. I've never gotten a nasty comment.
Twice somebody suggested I expand it or asked if there was more, but I didn't know how. I felt like I expressed what I wanted to express and adding more would alter what was already there.
>stop trying to shorten the goalposts
I did call it a problem.

[Anonymous No.20160798]

>>20160181
If you try to submit 20k “short stories” to get publish in a mag or journal, they’ll always be rejected for being too long. 20,000 words is a novelette pushing the line on novella.

[Anonymous No.20160859]

>>20157823
So faggots, can I get some honest to God criticism of this excerpt?

I suppose I should tell the truth about one thing though. I didn't meet Prosperine in my dreams at random for no reason. It happened one night when I had stopped at a gas station. To put it short, I interrupted Prosperine at it's time of hunger. It turned the gas station into a nightmare that could only be described as Lovecraftian. I intervened to save the gas clerk before Prosperine came back to finish her off. And that's when we met.

It read my mind in the first glance and it did it with it's third eye sticking out from the middle of the three small horns on it's head. It read everything about me and knew why I wasn't terrified as I stared defiantly into it's two magnificently fiery yellow, orange, and red, eyes.

And I even think it felt the fire that was burning in my chest from the impression of it's blood red lips curved into a full smile baring it's hooked teeth.

Since that night, it's stayed with me and I stayed with it. Two polar opposites, two different halves, complementing each other in ways that can only be expressed through the worlds or film or literature. Nothing comes close in this "reality" to what we are.

I don't know if it's a demon or not, but it's not the only one of it's kind. I know that for sure since the dreams i've had of other visitors that Prosperine brings to show off it's other half. It doesn't terrify me even though sometimes they threaten me in a language I can't comprehend. It only lightens the flame in my chest for more; For more glimpses into their world, for more comprehension of their language and culture.

And maybe even the chance to become what they are.

I think they could turn mortals but it's only done on rare occasions that require the utmost religious devotion to the ritual, so Prosperine tells me. I have no reason to doubt it but the chance of this magnitude passing by because I fucked up was a fear that tightened in my stomach like a serpent that threatened to put out the fire in my chest.

Doubt is a poison greater than that of cyanide. It festers inside you, sapping your strength and will; It eats away at your resolve until you're second guessing yourself and others constantly. I loathe it so damn much.

But I have to be greater than that, not just for myself.

But enough for now. It's night and the crescent moon is high in the sky, watching over the earth like a mother to her child. I have work tomorrow but I think i'll stay up and watch the stars start to fade away as dawn approaches. Not alone mind you, after all Prosperine is here with me right now; Musing as I write this and smiling it's ever devilish smile.

For now, we were bathing in the rich life of this world.

For now, we were whole.

[Anonymous No.20160874]

>>20160859
Well, first off is you're using the wrong "its". For a possessive of it, it should be "its", not "it's", because "it's" already means "it is".

[Anonymous No.20160895]

>>20160874
I'll make note of it. Anything else? Be brutally honest.

[Anonymous No.20160948]

>>20160895
I'm in a pretty bleh headspace right now so it's hard to specifically find much. The descriptions are too much for the whatever it is, yet not enough to give any sort of idea of what we're actually supposed to think of it as. It's... Fine? Not particularly compelling to me.

[Anonymous No.20160981]

>>20160859
> I didn't meet Prosperine in my dreams at random for no reason. It happened one night when I had stopped at a gas station.
So was it in the dream or at the gas station?
>I interrupted Prosperine at it's time of hunger.
I interrupted Prosperine at feeding time.
>It turned the gas station into a nightmare that could only be described as Lovecraftian.
Doesn't describe anything. Actually describe the scene - a quick description - instead of saying lovecraftian. Matter of fact having a flasback of him stopping his car, wandering into the gas station because the credit card reader at the pump isn't working would be better. This whole excerpt is telling telling telling.
>It read everything about me and knew why I wasn't terrified
would be nice information to share with the reader but I get that may be coming at some point.
>as I stared defiantly into it's two magnificently fiery yellow, orange, and red, eyes
just say fiery eyes
>all the rest of it
I can't say I care at all because nothing happens. a lot of masturbatory nothing

[Anonymous No.20160992]

>>20160282
So you have either overly described or dramatized your characters. If its done well the reader wont notice, but if its done poorly you will loose them at around the 15k mark, no matter how good your intro is.
>>20160291
Most of RR is xinxia wuxia filler trash, some of the ones i can stomach are still 30%-40% filler with pointlessly repeated descriptions or flashbacks/rehashes.
>>20160798
Some institutions just gatekeep and use excuses to do it. If your shit is good bet on yourself, start up your own site and post it there. Because its either that or get told by some hack who doesn't actually write, that it isn't what they are looking for, for the sole fact that it didn't meet some specified flavor of the month diversity quota.

[Anonymous No.20160995]

>>20160859
>it's
its
But beyond that, using it/its for a person is jarring, and it might be better to ease into it. Right now you introduce the name Prosperine first, like a person, and then attach pronouns to it, but I'd try to reverse that order. Describe finding a monster at the gas station, and call the monster "it", because using those pronouns for a monster is natural. Then once the monster has settled in the reader's mind have it introduce itself as Prosperine.

>a nightmare that could only be described as Lovecraftian
First, consider writing:
>a Lovecraftian nightmare
"that could only be described as" doesn't really do anything. Always look out for superfluous words.
Next, consider describing it some other way. "Lovecraftian" is too vague.

>in ways that can only be expressed through the worlds or film or literature
Anything you can express through literature you can express by just talking, so this isn't saying much. And it can be expressed by literature and you're writing literature then why not just express it?

>I think they could turn mortals but it's only done on rare occasions that require the utmost religious devotion to the ritual, so Prosperine tells me.
"I think" sounds like an educated guess, but that's not what's going on here.
Leading with the attribution to Prosperine flows better. "So X tells me" sounds like an afterthought.
The sentence is too rambling, you should give it time to breathe.
Consider:
>Prosperine tells me they could turn mortals, but that it's only done on rare occasions, and that it requires the utmost religious devotion to the ritual.

These points apply to other sentences too. Try to re-read with a critical eye for rhythm and implied meaning and superfluous words and phrases. Look for opportunities to make sentences more pleasing, and worry about the way they will be interpreted.

[Anonymous No.20161075]

The nigger nogged up to the white girl "yo you muh bitch right" he asked as he undid his belt buckle which hung down by his knees.
"Oh yes, shuga daddy, sir," the girl answered. A moment later her mouth was so filled with black cock she could barely breathe.

[Anonymous No.20161080]

What was the conclusion on using onomatopoeia during a rape scene while a character recites their current stats?

[Anonymous No.20161089]

>>20160859
Excerpt implies there's more. If you wrote this recently, I'd let it sit for a couple days and then go back and line edit it. It helps me be more critical of my own work if I let it sit for a bit, especially if I read similar stuff during downtime. Also, proofread it while you're at it. It's not a huge issue, but it can be a bit jarring to have random errors like lowercase "i" when referring to oneself. I'm a huge fan of lovecraft so that definitely gives you a few points in my book, doubly so if you change every character's name to Niggerman.

[Anonymous No.20161103]

>>20160992
>So you have either overly described or dramatized your characters.
I really haven't, it's just a lot of shit happens. I don't think it would be very popular, but it's fun to write. Kind of epic-adventure.

[Anonymous No.20161122]

>>20160859
>I suppose I should tell the truth about one thing though. I didn't meet Prosperine in my dreams at random for no reason.
>Stopped reading
This is fucking terrible. It reads as if you just jotted random words to create a sentence. Read it out loud yourself.

>I suppose I should tell the truth. It is not by random chance Prosperine meets me in my dreams.

Done. Ends the "I do this" repetitive structure of your sentences.

[Anonymous No.20161136]

>>20161103
If you are writing for yourself that's fine. Just remember just because YOU think a lot of shit happens, your readers may not.

[Anonymous No.20161144]

>>20160318
Based, but does anyone have a serious answer?

[Anonymous No.20161275]

I was holding a container of fruit with both hands. Then suddenly I just dropped it. It landed all over my feet & floor. I looked down and couldn’t help but think this had to do with the critique. Maybe I’m wrong. /wg/ robbed me of confidence in holding my own food.

[Anonymous No.20161355]

>>20161275
speaking in both definites and possibilities. The critique was correct. You do need to improve.

[Anonymous No.20161369]

>>20158471
bump

[Anonymous No.20161390]

>>20161275
I got a scathing critique last year and I haven't mentally recovered since. I open the Google doc, sit there for a few minutes wallowing in shame, and close it. I almost finished my 2nd draft, but I just don't have it in me any longer. Writing is pretty much the only thing I had going for me, now I just read and play video games.

[Anonymous No.20161391]

>>20158471
Is; this; nonfiction?

[Anonymous No.20161395]

>>20161391
nope

[Anonymous No.20161437]

>>20158471
>the docks were teeming
cut this line
>to watch the fishermen
as the fisherman. they're not gathering to watch they're gathering to bid. but apparently everyone is a fisherman so why are they bidding? how about they're picking the choicest of the catch before the tourists get in. no bidding involved.
I don't know why Mrs. Henry ate 5 or 6 sandwiches. Or are they going out all week so she ate 40 sandwiches? Either way, 5 or 40, that's odd and beyond gluttonous. How about she ate her husband's sandwich, only?
>what could I do to improve
go somewhere with it because right now its a scene and nothing more. are we following poor sandwichless Mr. Henry. Is Mr. Thomas, the priest, fucking every woman in town while the fishermen are away. Or are we following Alice who gets seduced by a mermaid and led out to drown at sea.

[Anonymous No.20161506]

>>20161437
Agree with this advice and the a on saying to reduce the lists. I don't mind lists on occassion but a more focused list on a specific types of dish (all deep sea vs lake or whatever) and specific spices we can vividly taste would be harder hitting.

Overall well written though, but yea the lack of a strong sense of POV/plot makes it just a meandering thought piece at the moment. With that added it could be great.

[Anonymous No.20161547]

I want to write a 10,000 page epic to end all epics but I fear no one will read it.

[Anonymous No.20161552]

>>20161390
Reading is the first step towards making your own writing better. Before you can write, you need to learn to write, before you can learn to write, you need to learn to learn. Use others' works to figure out what works and what doesn't, then adapt it to your style. It's a long, difficult process, but nothing worth having comes free.

As for the criticism, I was ~120k words into a novel I'm writing which I sent out for review before publishing, only to have it get fucked into the ground by 20 swarthy chinese men. I threw 80% of that into the dumpster. Now, having read a whole lot of stuff within my genre, I'm around 4 chapters and 12k words into the revised version, and it's going much, much better. My sentences have a better flow, my character interactions are a lot less stilted, and most importantly, my prose isn't purple as fuck. I'm not saying I'm a good writer, but at least I'm not (as) dogshit as I was. Criticism is there to make you better, so pick yourself up and get to writing. I know you can do it, fren.

[Anonymous No.20161565]

>>20158619
sweet! thank you for the feedback! i'll try use less + make it more relevant
>>20161437
wow thanks for the feedback!
i actually got the same feedback regarding the first line back when i wrote it so i will remove
i explain it a little further on but i guess that isnt useful and basing it solely on this (which is what i wanted anyway) you are 100% right and i'll tighten this up; same with the part about the woman eating! I tried to use her to add some comedy to this image but it didnt work so i'll rewrite
>go somewhere with it
the premise was: Alice's father sails off to catch the weekly haul with the rest of the fishermen but he disappears on the journey leaving the girl alone
She grows a little older until she finally sets out to find her father
>>20161506
yeah, i can definitely see a specific list would be much better so i'll change that up and correspond it more to the area in which i'm envisioning (should have done that anyway lol)
ty for the feedback!!

[Anonymous No.20161629]

>>20157870
Seconding this. If the name comes in a dream and feels right, then it’s right and that’s better than any forcefully contrived name. Some say that good characters have their own will in write’s mind. Try to force them a name and they won’t cooperate with your authorial orchestrating of things.

[Anonymous No.20161631]

>>20161565
>Alice's father sails off to catch the weekly haul with the rest of the fishermen but he disappears on the journey
If that is the case we should see and hear Mr. Petherick (whatever the name is) as he gets ready for the trip. Have his wife making him a sandwich. Have him talk to the priest on the way out and have little Alice running around his feet making a nuisance of herself and witnessing all this while he's getting ready to leave.

[Anonymous No.20161639]

>>20161629
I'm personally awful at names, because names end up either being real-but-fantastical-sounding names or just some syllables I put together that sound name-like. I dunno how to make names... Work. Place names too, I suck at those.

[Anonymous No.20161656]

>>20161275
What story was it?

[Anonymous No.20161689]

>>20161547
Write it anyways.

[Anonymous No.20161690]

>>20161639
Yeah, names suggest that there are parents who gave them that name and so on. Places and things have implications that touch history, culture and whatnot. It’s a can of worms. Tolkien pulled it off nicely.

[Anonymous No.20161715]

>>20161690
So, like, for example, my story idea has two major nations involved. The home nation of the protagonists is a large, half-unlivable nation with a few major cities and every other settlement being semi-nomadic for magic reasons. The other nation is a smaller, but much more resourceful nation, and the origin of the larger nation is somebody getting exiled to what was seen as a barren wasteland and then making it livable. It stands to reason they'll have similar roots for their languages and names, then, but a few millenia split apart means that it'll be tricky to connect things together TOO tightly. And then I wonder if I'm just overthinking things and should just give whatever name feels right because I'm not much of a worldbuilder I'm more focusing on character stuff.

[Anonymous No.20161730]

>>20161715
a few millennia is a long, long time. their current languages may have absolutely nothing in common.

[Anonymous No.20161735]

>>20161730
I feel like the names of places would be similar to a point, but the names of people will have drifted wildly. I'm also not sure on the timescale, I keep sort of dithering on it being a few thousand years to maybe just a few hundred.

[Anonymous No.20161744]

>>20161547
If it's really 10k pages long you can be sure someone will read it.

[Anonymous No.20161768]

>>20161656
lol my story got basically ignored. I'm actually in the worse position of being so obsessed with perfect sentences that I can't write at all anymore

[Anonymous No.20161774]

>my litrpg story's plot is a guy that travels through the world just to spank a loli

[Anonymous No.20161821]

>>20161774
damn brat...

[Anonymous No.20162002]

I really need to find a way to meander just a bit. My writing gets to the point too quickly.

[Anonymous No.20162017]

>>20162002
Insert downtime between events for characterisation, prolong things a bit more.

[Anonymous No.20162036]

>>20161275
>&

[Anonymous No.20162053]

How do I get over my superiority complex when it comes to my writing? Over the last few months, I've felt certain subjects or pieces of larger narratives have been "below me" and not worthy of writing, but coddling my pride is killing my productivity. Can anyone relate?

[Anonymous No.20162070]

You guys are advertising your book right?
You guys don’t actually believe it’s noble to not try and reach your intended audience, right?
You guys understand you’re more powerful in free marketing than a trad pub ever will be, right?

[Anonymous No.20162081]

>>20161390
even great writers receive scathing critiques. you have to edit, like all writers.

[Anonymous No.20162084]

>>20162070
That is an absurdly high level of engagement, Well over 20x what I would expect to see.
Explain. What is being considered engagement and where are you advertising?

[Anonymous No.20162106]

>>20162084
No meerkating!

[Anonymous No.20162120]

Everybody says that 10% of the rough draft should be cut out during editing, but what if I feel like I’m not writing enough to get rid of 10%? Like my story has what it needs and not too much extra fluff? I don’t want to not cut something out and then critiques say “too much that didn’t have to do with the story.”
Where do you usually find the words that need to be cut? Dialogue? Narration? Description?
Do you try to keep the ending fat ‘n juicy or make it short but sweet?

[Anonymous No.20162128]

>>20162120
You listen too much to others on bullshit metrics.
Here’s real advice.
Cut out what isn’t fun, doesn’t advance the plot, or build character.
Other than that, it’s just revisions on spelling and finding more interesting ways of delivering a story.

[Anonymous No.20162130]

>>20162070
I have a 2 month advertising and presale plan once I get a few advance reviews lined up. BookSirens charges $100 for an author account. I don't know how many reviews that translates to.

[Anonymous No.20162133]

>>20162120
Everybody should develop their own writing habits rather than mimic others, but I don't think that answers your question.
If you think you've done all you can, than I say ship it rather than be stuck in editing hell forever.

[Anonymous No.20162148]

>>20162130
Presale for what audience?
Do you have an existing platform?

[Anonymous No.20162151]

>>20162120
That advice is typically for novels. It sounds like you’re doing shorter work though, since you wouldn’t know if you had too much in a novel if you were only 30k words in.
With short stories the editing process doesn’t need to take away as much because there’s not a whole lot there to begin with. I’d argue the pitfall of short stories is not writing *enough*. But then you feel like you might as well turn the thing into a novella or fill out novel and that’s a whole other mess of worms.

[Anonymous No.20162158]

>>20162148
Got a Facebook, active blog, Goodreads. Audience is people who liked Wilt and Hitchhiker's. I'm thinking of going very hard for this self publishing run and then go hard for a traditional publishing for my next book.

[Anonymous No.20162172]

>>20162158
I’d stay self pubbed myself but I can’t stop you. Tell me more of your blog, audience size, etc.

[Anonymous No.20162194]

>briefly considered writing for Royal Road
>literally all of the trending and soon-to-be-trendings are all 100+ chapters
how do these stories go on so long?

[Anonymous No.20162201]

>>20162194
It's arguable a lot of them would be split into several books if they were published (and indeed many that got published are split up, Mother of Learning for example) so it's more accurate to look at them as a whole series instead of one overly long book.

[Anonymous No.20162233]

>>20162172
Small audience. About 100 followers on Facebook, email list. I didn't do too well with my first three books. I just threw them out there and didn't expect much save a few reads from friends and family. Didn't market them well. But since they've been up which has been 7 years, I've had about 5k downloads/sales from all three. Probably made $300 overall. The website is where I do most of my stuff now. I publish a flash fiction or short story every weekend. Sometimes I'll put up writing blogs or my thoughts on things. Low engagement there too. I'm at that stage where I've got to make the jump into self shilling to really get the word out and garner an audience, but frankly, I'm afraid of breaching that barrier and getting my name out there again. Making new connections and all that.

[Anonymous No.20162244]

>>20162194
cultivation tier filler

[Anonymous No.20162252]

>>20162084
>>20162070
meerkaters OUT

[Anonymous No.20162284]

>>20162070
is this twitter?

[Anonymous No.20162293]

>>20162233
Yeah, what I can say is this.
The blog will NOT grow your readership.
You need to increase visibility and get off of facebook.
Facebook is a platform for the elderly at this point, get on a new platform.
Build up email lists and drop a book.
I’m currently building my email list and my free platform and will hopefully drop a book around 1000 email list subscribers.

[Anonymous No.20162318]

>>20162293
I really really need to get on tiktok.

[Anonymous No.20162357]

>>20158105
Genuinely beautiful, unlike most of the morons who try to do prose around here.

[Anonymous No.20162370]

>>20162318
Whatever feels right go with that. You’ll only grow socially if you’re on a platform your fundamentally enjoy using.

[Anonymous No.20162388]

I'm having serious problems writing a mentally ill character.
He has complex trauma and delusions/hallucinations, etc. I'm here trying to work it out how recovery looks like for him, or if his trauma is too bad to even be something he's able to recover from.
I'd appreciate any resources that could help me write this character in a humane, accurate and engaging way.

[Anonymous No.20162403]

>>20162370
i don't like to use any social media.

[Anonymous No.20162406]

>>20162293
I've got 100 on the email list. Twitter and TikTok are both platforms I've seen and know of, but can't bring myself to use. I know that's like digging coal with a pick when there's wall crawlers out there. I can make up all the excuses in the world, but the true fact is if you're aiming to self pub, active social media and a large email list are mandatory. It's not the only way, really. But it is a proven one.
There's a few notes I've taken from other people. Calls to action, running regular discounts. Platform SEO optimization. Advance reviewers I've been told help the most. Review exchanges too.

[Anonymous No.20162409]

The palace labored fifteen days and brought its lord to the brass temple of Amegiddah’s priests, in the eastern salt waste's barren heart. The level plain made easy travel, and navigation was as simple as following the palace’s own wide trail of old footsteps. When had those been laid down? How long since rain had touched this place? Cuth knew that his father had never come to seek guidance here. Which grandsire had been so lost, too? He leaned on the throne terrace’s balustrade, thoughts drowned in great machine groaning, as each thunderous step brought his destination closer.

-

All I've managed to wring out of my shriveled brain so far today

[Anonymous No.20162418]

>>20162406
Yeah, it really just comes down to sheer viewership at a certain point.
I could write a 10/10 book but never get more than 10 reviews with jo platform vs writing a 10/10 book having 1,000 on email list, 10,000 followers on a social media account and get 100 reviews in under a week. It really is that giant of a gap.

[Anonymous No.20162466]

>>20162388
Go spend some time reading posts on /r9k/ and /x/. More seriously, read psychology journals/books on the trauma he has and see how likely it is for people to recover.

[Anonymous No.20162488]

>>20162418
Gaming the algorithm also comes with those reviews. There's a guy I read an article about who landed 25 reviews the hour his book went up thanks to advance reviews and it rocketed his viewership. I think the rest after that initial bump is just shilling shilling shilling. People have always shilled before, but the internet really opened the floodgates. Everybody is trying to sell you everything. Hell I can't even look at my email on my phone without seeing ads for stuff I looked up half a minute ago. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by the magnitude of all that noise. Is this even comparable to what it was like 100 years ago? Everyone has a global megaphone sitting in their pocket now.

[Anonymous No.20162522]

>>20161547
You will never write it.

[Anonymous No.20162532]

>>20161547
If you actually write it I'll actually read it

[Anonymous No.20162558]

>email lists
Did I get ripped back to 1998? You retards actually think email lists are going to generate sales?

[Anonymous No.20162566]

>>20162558
only that retard. Tiktok is where the real money is. it's gotten so big that Barnes and Noble have a section just for TikTok Books. Everything can be shilled on TikTok. FFS Ice Planet Barbarians is now a best seller.

I need a new phone and start posting on tiktok

[Anonymous No.20162574]

>>20162558
Your alternative faggot?
Bet you’re going to say something retarded

[Anonymous No.20162623]

>>20162558
it's surprisingly effective if your audience are boomers

[Anonymous No.20162643]

>>20162566
>Tiktok is where the real money is
I feel like Ed Tom when I read shit like this. Outgunned, outmatched, and wholly unprepared for this kind of environment. Even delusional. I thought I'd put up my first book and change the world with it. I thought I'd have people running to beg for more. Instead I'm realizing the most popular I ever was was when I published serial gay fiction on Fictionpress back in the early 2010s. I didn't have Twitter then. I just posted and people came to read. We didn't care about making money. We just wanted to get readers who loved our shit as much as we did. Did I really get passed by like this? I feel like I'm having an existential crisis.

[Anonymous No.20162646]

>>20162574
sign spinning

[Anonymous No.20162677]

>>20162574
Targeted advertising towards a demographic that would be interested in your books.
I keep seeing these fucking gimmick strats from you people. Pay the $200 for advertising when you finish your book. It’s that simple. Make sure you have put out something worth reading and recommending.
You need to understand that your success is tied directly to word of mouth. Your advertising is simply a way to kickstart that word of mouth. It does not matter if the initial impression is 1000 people or 100000 people, if it is not worth recommending then you have already lost.
>but an email list is targeted advertising to my demographic
No it’s not you fucking retard. Email lists have been dead since the late 00’s. No one wants to be advertised to when they check their emails, even if they asked to be. People have been conditioned to understand that any advertising in an email is a scam. None of this is even accounting for the fact that a large portion of your email list is likely made of bots attempting to scrape active but hidden emails addresses.

Stop worrying about your advertising. This is a solved problem. Go sell your Nintendo Switch and put the money in a box labeled “ADVERTISING FUND”. Stop looking for gimmicks, channel that autism into your writing instead.

>>20162566
>>20162643
Are you tards really falling for corporate botting? The Barnes and Noble Twitter account has 270k followers and averages 12 interactions per post. The #booktok meme is the exact same shit.

[Anonymous No.20162712]

>>20162677
>Are you tards really falling for corporate botting? The Barnes and Noble Twitter account has 270k followers and averages 12 interactions per post. The #booktok meme is the exact same shit.
Normally I would agree with you, but the amount of tiktok faggots and articles such as this
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/26/1068063564/booktok-is-a-new-force-driving-book-sales-and-publishing-deals
and this
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jun/25/the-rise-of-booktok-meet-the-teen-influencers-pushing-books-up-the-charts

Makes your argument completely moot. If we're going to advertise and make money, this is a way to do it. It's not Barnes and Nobel doing the BookTok, it's normies on reddit.

[Anonymous No.20162728]

>>20157823
I want to publish a story but I don't want to put my real name out there. Any advice on using pseudonyms?

[Anonymous No.20162747]

>>20162728
Amalgam of your name. Sheesh how creatively bankrupt are you?

[Anonymous No.20162782]

So what do I need to do if I just want people to read my book?

[Anonymous No.20162791]

>>20162712
I'm sorry, but you have this all backwards. You'd may as well be suggesting to set up a Youtube channel to advertise your book. Sure, it may have worked for Joseph Anderson and R.C Waldun, but for each success story is 10k trend chasing failures.
The people who succeed in #booktok are people who are conventionally attractive influencers or people who have some sort of corporate backing. You likely fall into neither category.

>>20162782
$200 in targeted advertising and two weeks of $0 copies on Amazon. Reviews from this should carry your word of mouth if you have produced something worth sharing.

[Anonymous No.20162800]

>>20162791
that's everything. It's a shot at it. Even RR is 100k people trying to be the top 10. Onlyfans is another.

[Anonymous No.20162834]

>>20162800
As long as you understand that there is a 99.99% chance of a miserable failure that will leave an embarrassing stain on your name forever.
I want you to imagine a video of F. Gardner flossing with a soulless fake grin on his face, a copy of Call of the Crocodile in each hand. Now replace F. Gardner with yourself and his book with your own.
That nightmare future is more likely than you succeeding in your #booktok endeavors.

[Anonymous No.20162851]

>>20162834
>0.01%
So you're saying there's a chance?

[Anonymous No.20162863]

I need help. I don't know how to write this scene.

I have two swordswomen that captured a man and tie up his hands. The man needs to take a piss. The women now has to unbuckle his belt and pull down his trousers. That's the easy part. But how the hell do they pull it back up?

Does she do it from behind, or from the front? If it's behind, she'll get her boobies groped and a spinning knee to the face. If it's the front, she'll get a swinging dick in front of her then a knee to the face.

Both sound ridiculous, but also the most logical. Or I can just skip this silly scene and have the man break the ropes tying his hands together because Women don't know how to tie knots or the Man is just super strong.

[Anonymous No.20162865]

>>20162863
What type of pants is the man wearing?

[Anonymous No.20162882]

>>20162865
Tighter fitting jeans. Which also forces the girl to tuck his dick back into his pants. I can change it to loose trousers which now forces her to tie his pants back together while staring at his dick

[Anonymous No.20162900]

>>20162882
>Tighter fitting jeans
That fits what I imagined then.
Had an embarrassing incident in college where I couldn't undo the top button of a girls jeans from the front. It's a lot trickier than you would expect. You'd think they were built that way for a reason.
Maybe have her try to undo his jeans from the front only to be unable to. After 15 seconds of fumbling about have the guy ask her if she needs some help.
When she puts them back on she does it from behind to avoid that situation again.

[Anonymous No.20162937]

>>20158105
>more than just physically marooned cheek,

[Anonymous No.20162944]

>>20162863
They tell him to piss his pants. And how would he knee anybody with his trousers down? That's harder than it sounds, especially if the other person is holding onto the trousers. Hitting the face is liable the fail because her arms would be in the way and she could just push him down. Why would he try to fight with his hands bound and trousers at his ankles? Is he suicidal? If there are two holding him, the other one can kill him if he tries anything, doesn't he realize that? What exactly are you trying to tell through this scene? "Haha women stupid, man stronk!"

[Anonymous No.20162946]

>>20162863
Have the women free one or both of his hands to let him piss, but leave his legs hobbled? They're carrying swords and it's got to be pretty easy to kill an unarmed man with his ankles bound together.

Undoing his pants for him is porn logic.

[Anonymous No.20162963]

>>20162946
>>20162944
Well he's going to get his pants up before he knees her. Then run away as fast as he can.

[Anonymous No.20162969]

>>20162944
The idea is one unbuttons, the other watches. Pisses, pants goes back up, he knees one girl, and runs while arms are tied. Jackie chan jumps to get hands in front then fights two sword girls with his legs arms and head. Or runs away fast enough the two girls can't catch him

[Anonymous No.20163016]

>>20162946
>Undoing his pants for him is porn logic.
I'd agree with this. He'd have better luck trying to seduce the female guard. The female guard.
OKAY HOLD THE FUCK UP

Two swordswomen captured a man? You know what, just go with the porn logic. They should be taking one look at this slab of man meat and they should be creaming their jeans. They should be fighting over who gets to suck his pecker first. That's what your two swordswomen should do.

[Anonymous No.20163036]

>>20162969
>Jackie chan jumps to get hands in front
I dare you to try this in real life.

But if he's such a John Rambo Jnr, how and why did he get captured in the first place?

[Anonymous No.20163057]

[Anonymous No.20163067]

>>20163057
This is also ridiculous.

[Anonymous No.20163348]

>>20158468
do me you fucks

[Anonymous No.20163671]

>>20162728
Take two people you like (artists, musicians, authors, actors, etc) and smash them together til you get somethin’ you like. Ex. Alice Cooper + Harrison Ford = Harrison Cooper. Maybe don’t use that as another Harrison Cooper has his own website. But Alice Ford could work and you can bank one female diversity points with ‘Alice’. Making a pen name is literally the easiest thing to do.

[Anonymous No.20163710]

>>20163348
It's shit. Poetry isn't an excuse to write lines of things without punctuation or structure. I'm not saying you need to rhyme or write in meter, but it's just a formless and shapeless mess of words and half-realized images that kind of sound okay sometimes but often don't. It would be a good first or second attempt at poetry, so keep trying.

[Anonymous No.20163836]

i recently found a bible bound book but with completely white pages, i want to be writing something into it that'll preserve something about me but not a diary, what would you do with it (for inspo for me)

[Anonymous No.20163838]

>>20157913
Anyone? I don't even know how to structure buildup, or writing character interactions to show how one character is losing trust in the other, causing them to end up in a dangerous situation...

[Anonymous No.20163854]

>>20163836
Draw dirty pictures

[Anonymous No.20163861]

>>20163838
This is the danger of a rigid, plot/story focused approach to writing. You become so locked into the Thing That Needs To Happen that you forget The Thing has no significance, in and of itself. Your story becomes not assisted-by but beholden-to the structures and the key moments you've become attached to.

Nobody actually knows how to do those things, in the same way that nobody actually knows how to write well. It's just something that happens intuitively, in the moment, and can only be fuzzily motioned towards ex post facto. If you're having trouble with something like this, I'd imagine it's because you're trying to think your way into it instead of writing your way through it. The process of writing is primarily an intuitive one. You need to let go of all that analysis of the rules and the plot points you're trying to beeline between. If you have an idea for a scene, write that scene. Let itself imagine what it's actually like to be in that scene and provide enough detail such that it becomes evident the characters are losing trust.

Read more; write more.

[Anonymous No.20163866]

>>20163348
Not evocative of anything coherent, for me.

Here's my reading of the first ten lines:
>Line 1: There's a woman who will want something, but doesn't yet.
>Lines 2 to 5: She's at times religious while at other times bloodthirsty, and apparently in conflict with the law.
This is okay, seems like it's going somewhere. The hunger isn't relevant to the next four lines, but maybe it'll become relevant later.
>Lines 6 to 9: No idea. Youth are idiots, there's possibly a reference to breaking bread that you fucked up, the youth are sad.
>Line 10: A consecrated thing trifles a mundane thing, for some reason.

The problem is, nothing ever goes anywhere. There's just imagery piled on top of imagery, but none of it has any clear link to anything else. I'm not asking you to break everything down into stanzas or make it boring and explicit, but at least make sure that your writing relates to itself.

Additionally, half of it is self-contradictory. Why does consecrated sod trifle the earth? Is this an anti-religious stance? Did you really mean the opposite, and want blasphemous sod to trifle the consecrated earth, but got it wrong? This is the kind of thing that I'd be able to piece together from context, except that the poem has so many disconnected themes that I don't have any idea which one relates to this line.

Go read Yeats for a bit: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43291/sailing-to-byzantium.. He breaks his poem into stanzas to give the reader a well-earned break every eight lines. Each stanza obviously and trivially relates to the key theme. Each stanza builds on the core thrust of the work. He evokes images that are striking and which never contradict themselves, and doesn't abandon them after one line.

[Anonymous No.20163885]

>>20158468
>The land of the living will hardly remiss
Remiss is not a verb, and there is no cogent way in which it can function as one. This is one small problem I have with this. The other is that there seems to be very little recognizable "poetry" in this. That is, there's no sense of rhythm or of the beauty that can be found in language. It is a dull and mechanical exercise in the use of certain vocabulary, and the machine is misfiring. Much of this is due to the complete lack of punctuation, but punctuation alone wouldn't solve it. Line breaks and punctuation in poetry are there to govern the rhythm and flow of poetry, which is essentially intended to be recited, if only internally. Poetry's canvas is language. It is the precise manipulation of language in which beauty and poignancy and all that good stuff is all teased out. It is not just the vehicle for the demonstration of the use of specific, esoteric words or a parade for turns of phrase.

[Anonymous No.20163894]

>>20163861
But my hero needs to complete stage 4 of the heroes' journey (Fartquisition of the Mentor's Mantle) by the beginning of act 2 at the book's 40% mark or his archetype (Heroic hero : Type Earnest Grower, not Shower) will no longer be applicable!

[Anonymous No.20163921]

>>20163861
This. Allow yourself to write and be surprised, sometimes that's how the pieces in your mind fall into place.

[Anonymous No.20163969]

>>20163036
>>20163016
Screw it. He's just going to go super Saiyan with magic and break the ropes. Or he cuts it with a small shard he finds

[Anonymous No.20164008]

>>20163969
Just think about this for a second. You're a female swordsman. You're guarding a man. He says he needs to piss but his hands are tied. Do you:
A) pull his pants down for him and go anywhere near his penis?
B) not do that and just uncuff him?
C) be a bitch and tell him to piss himself?

If you'd choose A, why? What's the reason? He's too dangerous to uncuff and too important to mistreat? You're in a porno and you want to touch it? You have some kind of rule that requires you to do it? You want to humiliate him? You're new to this and you have no idea what you're doing?

If you think it's consistent with your characters, then do it. You haven't explained why it would be consistent, though.

[Anonymous No.20164029]

>>20163969
>Phew, glad that wasn't a challenge at all. I'm almost wondering why I let myself fall into this predicament, but that would require using my brain.
>Now, time to rape these elf mercenary bitches for my amusement.

[Anonymous No.20164034]

When did we become so friendly to /trash/-tier shit? There is LITERALLY a thread SPECIFICALLY FOR THIS on /trash/.

[Anonymous No.20164048]

>>20163057
>>20164008
They're cops/guards/government officials so there's always some rules, laws, humanity in them. Theyre not going to just kill the prisoner. The prisoner is also one of their own but that doesn't matter.

The prisoner needs to escape and this felt like an opportune time for him to do so .

[Anonymous No.20164049]

>>20164034
we created that thread for you to have a home desu

[Anonymous No.20164071]

>>20162409
Too many questions, too muslim sounding

[Anonymous No.20164073]

>>20164048
Okay here's the entirety of it
Two swords women just escaped from a dungeon after being captured. They recover and meet with the male, the third guard. The third accidentally gives away hes a traitor and sold them out. the two capture him. They tie his hands up with makeshift cuffs and now traveling back to HQ for him to answer for his crimes.

Now I'm at the part where he needs to escape, and the 2v1 fight happens. I can also have random guy appear out of nowhere to save the prisoner, but I felt this bathroom scene is the least cliche and funniest to write

[Anonymous No.20164075]

>>20164049
That doesn't make any sense. I'm not the one writing smut and kitschy Patreon scam garbage. There's no reason why your shit should be able to sneak onto /lit/ when you already have a thread specifically tailored to you.
>>>/trash/46458029

[Anonymous No.20164098]

>>20164075
i'm not posting my shit here either but yopu're the faggot complaining so you should go back to your thread

[Anonymous No.20164112]

Give me a good work for something (a problem) that "steadily" remains unsolved...
I'm looking for a problem like "robust" but I know that this doesn't fit well...

[Anonymous No.20164114]

>>20164098
This is the only general thread across the entirety of 4chan that I frequent. If I have any one thread which is "mine," it's this one. Which thread would you like me to go back to, again?

[Anonymous No.20164122]

>>20164114
can't even read jeez, i'll leave you to it hahahahahahahahhaahahahaha

[Anonymous No.20164132]

>>20164075
/wfg/ isn't for Royal Road potboilers, Patreonbux, and shitposting about advertising, any more than /wg/ is.

It IS for smut, but this guy isn't writing smut. He seems to be writing a prisoner escape sequence with no actual lewdness other than some slaps-dick comedy.

[Anonymous No.20164133]

>>20164122

[Anonymous No.20164136]

>>20164073
Just have him run away when he gets out of the car, barreling through the first woman that takes him out. We've all seen women cops and their inability to hold a guy down.

[Anonymous No.20164151]

>>20164136
But if I do that he can't go pee. This scene is supposed to be somewhat plausible. What do female guards/cops do if they are confronted with this situation? Especially if it's an escort mission, not just shoving someone into a bathroom.

[Anonymous No.20164249]

>>20164132
heh

[Anonymous No.20164262]

>>20162388
Just write him after me

[Anonymous No.20164313]

>>20163894
Are you also using a character template that guarantees you'll have a believable, interesting, and compelling character with achievable goals who remains grounded? I paid $14.99 for that one myself.

[Anonymous No.20164339]

>>20164151
Not that guy, but they'd tell him to hold it in for ten minutes and get him to the nearest police station, then pressure hose the moulded plastic wagon clean.

My best guess at what they'd do when guards carried swords and didn't drive cars is >>20162946. Lie him down, hobble his feet, take out their swords, uncuff, let him take a piss himself, lie him down again, cuff again, unhobble. If he fucks with his restraints or tries to rush one of them, take a step backwards and stab him.

He could probably get away if they got lazy and stopped lying him down to hobble him, he managed to open his cuffs while walking, and they weren't willing to stab him during an escape attempt.

[Anonymous No.20164366]

>>20164339
Oohh I like that. Thanks! They fuck up by getting lazy. Perfect. Makes sense too since in the story they just recently escaped a dungeon themselves.

Thanks /wg/. I knew you guys read and write.

[Anonymous No.20164417]

>>20164366
We don't do either of those things but we'll still give advice.

[Anonymous No.20164442]

>>20164313
>I paid $14.99 for that one
No, you invested it my friend. But no I get my character templates free with my Future Cosmere Writers of Amercia membership (patreon tier 3). They include functioning sliders to set character likeability, proactivity, and competence.

[Anonymous No.20164478]

>>20164442
>They include functioning sliders to set character likeability, proactivity, and competence.

[Anonymous No.20164498]

>>20164442
This sounds like it could make for a good comedy story.

[Anonymous No.20164519]

>>20164073
So I have to ask. Why would they capture the guy right then and there and not just try and get him to walk himself into HQ with them for the debrief? Assuming this guy is your mc then you could have an actual escape sequence where he escapes HQ instead of this 3 stooges version you've got going on.

[Anonymous No.20164533]

>>20160181
5-6k words alone is 30 minutes of reading. 10-15,000 would be an hour+. Readers experience stories, like they would a movie so 10-15000 words is more reasonable for a short story.

[Anonymous No.20164545]

>>20164498
Agreed.
:rofl:

[Anonymous No.20164548]

>>20164545
Why did it give me the option of using the emotes and then it didn't work? Gookmoot get your shit together

[Anonymous No.20164592]

>>20162791
You're write about the idea that if something is good it will eventually gain traction. People are willing to share it and even without advertising it will get big.

[Anonymous No.20164615]

>>20162791
Joseph Anderson wrote a book? I've watched lots of his videos but never knew that.

[Anonymous No.20164635]

>>20164615
See >>20088646 for a taste.

[Anonymous No.20164654]

>>20157870
t. Otto Von Ruthless

[Anonymous No.20164662]

>>20164519
One of the girls is the MC. They're on an escort trip so they're far from HQ. Here's a quick summary

4 cops. 3 captured, 1 dies in captivity, 2 escape. Meet with the 4th, but 4th fucks up and gives himself away by going toward somewhere that wasn't part of their mission. Other two capture him then and there.

So now they have a prisoner, far from HQ, and the prisoner needs to pee.

[Anonymous No.20164664]

>>20159819
Kek

[Anonymous No.20164666]

>>20160309
>>20161144
Bump.

[Anonymous No.20164672]

>>20160181
My current book is 300k. Almost finished with it but fuck, I’m not even sure autists will be able to tackle it.

[Anonymous No.20164683]

>>20164662
>4th fucks up and gives himself away by going toward somewhere that wasn't part of their mission.
I don't see how that, in and of itself, would be a big giveaway, but whatever. Them taking him prisoner just seems like a huge unnecessary hassle on their part. Women aren't as strong as men. Most of them are very aware of this. Your swordswomen would be even more aware of this from their training. It would be an integral fact of their life. I don't understand why they would use brute force - tying him up, especially when they are very far from HQ - instead of guile.

[Anonymous No.20164709]

>>20164683
You can't exactly kill your own colleague even if he is a traitor. They can't exactly trick the guy into submission. They know he's a traitor, he knows he's a traitor, in enemy territory, and far away from any reasonable backup.

The easy thing to do is to kill him then and there. But morals, arrests, and laws. Same thing with cops today.

This is why writing this scene feels so difficult for me. I may just have the 4th guy get killed by "random sniper shot" and call it a day.

[Anonymous No.20164714]

>>20164672
>book almost 300k, almost finished with it
are you me?

[Anonymous No.20164745]

>>20164709
>I may just have the 4th guy get killed by "random sniper shot" and call it a day.
you will do no such thing. write it out, post it here, let us shit on it, then rewrite it again, post it here, let us shit on it again, then rewrite it again until it makes sense.

[Anonymous No.20164747]

>>20164709
>But morals, arrests, and laws. Same thing with cops today
Are you stuck in 1950? Cops today kill people left and right. Its difficult because you are being bound by a moral code that seems completely out of place for the world that they're in. They're using swords, for god's sake, life is nasty brutish and short. I don't care if they're cops, they would either kill the guy - a surprise attack like a knife to the neck while he's asleep - maybe interrogate him first if that's your intention, and then kill him, or they'd let him go. Far behind enemy lines with a traitor they'd have to have bound and gagged because he can just call for help is not a justifiable situation. It just isn't.

[Anonymous No.20164766]

>>20164672
I'm thinking of my first proper 'novel' being more like 100-150k.

[Anonymous No.20164789]

>>20164747
no they don't. There's been less cop killings today than in the 50's. Your'e letting the media distort your view on cops. Cops don't just go out and kill people for fun.

[Anonymous No.20164799]

>>20164789
Maybe not your people hwyte buhoi

[Anonymous No.20164823]

>>20164789
So you're saying there were even more killings in the past. Killing a known traitor while you are very far behind enemy lines is not killing someone for fun. Its a matter of survival.

[Anonymous No.20164845]

>>20164498
>>20164545
Flash fiction. Zero editing but might polish it more later for keks

>The Fantasist's Grindset
https://pastebin.com/Wn9iSztR

[Anonymous No.20164852]

>>20164845
>max brightness
It's funny already.

[Anonymous No.20164882]

>>20164823
what? they're not in war. and even in war, people didn't just kill their prisoners. Cops don't just execute people in their custody.

I am very confused with your morals and thought process.

[Anonymous No.20164895]

>>20164845
Made me kek for sure.

[Anonymous No.20164941]

Does spiritual enlightenment better your writing? If it does, in what way(s)?

[Anonymous No.20165004]

>>20163861
But I can have a little structure, right? If I try to write by the seat of my pants I get nowhere at all. I don't even know the characters, I vomit words on a screen without any passion besides seeing the wordcount go up.

[Anonymous No.20165011]

>>20164882
This is a traitor and spy. Traitors and spies aren't given the same rights as enemy combatants.

But they're not in war? So they're not behind enemy lines. That changes things. I don't see why they don't at least attempt to convince the guy to get out of there. Because 2 women simply don't have the physical capability of forcing a man to walk with them for a long distance. Shit, even 2 men would have extreme difficultly with that. The easiest would be 2 men capturing a woman, but they'd probably have to hit her a couple times first to let her know there'd be consequences if she tried to escape - and even then if she was a traitor she'd still attempt escaping because she'd know that going back to HQ isn't going to be good.

[Anonymous No.20165041]

>>20165004
Creating an outline and a vague timeline of key events is fine, just make sure you write between those events without thinking TOO much about how you're just writing towards the next big thing.

[Anonymous No.20165106]

>>20164845
kek well done

[Anonymous No.20165133]

>>20161547
whats this pic from its great

[Anonymous No.20165157]

>>20165133
Looks like a Ghibli movie.

[Anonymous No.20165168]

>>20164672
>>20164714
what genre takes 300k to explain a story arc?

[Anonymous No.20165257]

>>20165168
Multiple plotlines converging, or character building stuff between plot events, etc. Any reason a story can take that long. Sometimes the author just sucks at pacing.

[Anonymous No.20165263]

>>20162194
Why would anyone willingly publish on Royal Road?

Id rather dump it on Amazon next to the gay interracial stuff

[Anonymous No.20165267]

>>20165263
Royal Road is easier to get an audience on.

[Anonymous No.20165284]

>>20165263
What do you have against RR, anon?

>>20165168
LitRPG of course.

[Anonymous No.20165294]

Should I setup my discord and patreon before posting the first chapter on RR or should I wait to see if people are interested in my book first?

[Anonymous No.20165297]

>>20165294
It's a little ambitious to set up a Patreon before you even have an audience.

[Anonymous No.20165299]

>>20165263
I started publishing on RR when I had just over 200k drafted. I've drafted just shy of 300k now, and it'll probably end at like 325k. Publishing serially has given me the opportunity to edit - in hindsight I should have edited more before I started releasing but w/e I wanted to start putting it out there to get feedback. Once this book is complete I'm going to start drafting the sequel. I'm really looking forward to that because I'm changing the mc so it'll give it a totally new feel and I've been brainstorming it for a bit now. Also not having to release a chapter a week will be a huge weight off my shoulders. Once the sequel has a high enough wordcount drafted I'm going to start posting it on RR and move the completed one to kindle. Kindle and RR have 2 separate audiences.

tl;dr I post on RR and use the feedback I receive, both comments and metrics, like betareaders. And I hope I can cajole some of them into giving my book good reviews on Kindle.

[Anonymous No.20165348]

>>20165297
I'm writing isekai litrpg cultivation. Isn't that a guaranteed 10k a month?

[Anonymous No.20165358]

>>20165348
Not unless it somehow manages to stand out amongst the thousands of others like that.

[Anonymous No.20165375]

>>20165299
I'm one of many but I hate people who do that because sometimes I will fall behind on a book for a couple of months only to come back and realize the author had to take down the book to publish it on kindle. Makes me want to give a bad review.

[Anonymous No.20165386]

>>20165375
I get why, especially if it's going up on Kindle Unlimited. With KU the barrier to entry for dedicated readers is the same as most people who read a lot will have KU already, so they're not paying any more than they would have to read it on Kindle. They also can't have it distributed anywhere else if it's on KU.

[Anonymous No.20165448]

>>20165375
Well, I'm going to make it abundantly clear that's what's going to happen and it'll probably take me about 6 months of drafting the sequel, maybe more who knows, before I start posting it, so the completed book will be up for at least half a year before it gets moved. I'm also thinking about posting a short vignette, maybe 5-10k words from a 3rd perspective, a couple months before I start releasing the 2nd book.

You can never make everyone happy and frankly I'm not someone that's inclined to try.

[Anonymous No.20165506]

>>20165133
I think The Secret World of Arrietty

[Anonymous No.20165526]

>>20165263
Yeah, if I'd post anywhere besides Kindle, it'd be AO3, on account of them allowing loli shota content.

[Anonymous No.20165628]

>>20162677
Ah yes because I have such little interaction.
Eat shit faggot, email lists are actually the greatest marketing tool and always will be beyond hyper active fans bleeting word of mouth recommendations to close friends, and the sales back that up.

[Anonymous No.20165643]

>>20164592
No it won’t retard, get real.

[Anonymous No.20165702]

>>20165628
to this day i still have no idea what platform this is. Why don't you just tell me?

[Anonymous No.20165758]

>>20165448
link your work please?
>I don't listen to people who larp as writers.

[Anonymous No.20165784]

>>20165702
It's Twitter.

[Anonymous No.20165794]

>>20165628
How much did you spend on that?

[Anonymous No.20165801]

>>20165702
Do not listen to meerkater anon, he hasn't even begun writing yet.

[Anonymous No.20165835]

>>20165784
oh. I thought twitter was useless in general though.

[Anonymous No.20165839]

>>20165758
A certain amount of skepticism is always healthy.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased
My new cover is also coming along, but it needs at least another 10,000 hours percolating before being subjected to ~~ridicule~~ constructive criticism.

[Anonymous No.20165849]

>>20165839
Oh shit you were the one posting your awful cover a few threads back. I didn't think you actually had a story.

[Anonymous No.20165878]

>>20165839
>Round and round they roll, careening and rattling in their cage. Then cast out, sound deafening and motion a blur, spinning across the table.
this is an exceedingly poor opening paragraph. the grammar is awkward and does little for the flow, which already suffers immediately and right off the bat from "careening and rattling," which strikes me as a nasty-tasting pair of words... not in terms of what they evoke with respect to the subject matter, put on a purely linguistic level.

[Anonymous No.20165884]

>>20165878
I often wonder how important a good opening paragraph/opening line really is. I can generally power through about 10% of any book before dropping it if it's not for me, but I guess some people will look at the very start and just "nope" away immediately if it's not for them.

[Anonymous No.20165895]

>>20165884
an opening sentence is worth a hell of a lot. would you say that i would raise similar objections at more points further on if i had continued reading?

[Anonymous No.20165902]

>>20165895
I'm not the author, I was just commenting on that being a thing. I'm trying to think back to some great books I've read and I don't truthfully remember a lot of their opening lines. I remember a few more recent ones (for all the shit people give Sanderson, the Way of Kings opening line (discounting the prelude) is pretty good), but just as many I've lost. I suppose they don't affect me as much as others, but it's nice to know they're relevant. My own work's opening line is one I've actually waffled back and forth on because I'm not sure if it's too schmaltzy.

[Anonymous No.20165906]

>>20165878
Okay, how about
Round and round they roll, ratting around in their cage. Cast out, spinning spots a blur, careening across the table.

[Anonymous No.20165908]

>>20165835
Twitter is a platform for building an audience like anyplace else. I could get similar numbers on Facebook or TikTok or Instagram, but the audiences are all different.

[Anonymous No.20165914]

>>20165906
It's just an oddly passive-voiced opening, personally. It feels clunky to read.

[Anonymous No.20165922]

>>20165914
I just didn't want the first word to be dammit. I also wanted the juxtaposition of the first line followed by dammit.

[Anonymous No.20165942]

>>20165922
If you wanted that, honestly I'd suggest making the first line a little more flowery. And just make it more explicit they're dice.
>The cubes rattle wildly in their cage, before the uncaring hand jostles them out. Their dots dance a dizzying blur as they launch across the table.
That's how I'd do it (I'm not too proficient with present tense writing admittedly) but that's just my suggestion.

[Anonymous No.20165950]

>>20165902
>I don't truthfully remember a lot of their opening lines
remembering things is overrated. if you are a critical and active reader, you are intuiting things about the author from the very first sentence. for example, from that guy's first sentence, i sniffed out some clunky and inattentive use of language. i smelled the attempt and the failure at a linguistic quirkiness that would be forgivable if the sentences weren't so fucking ugly and unwieldy in the mouth.

if you want to go beyond just that very contemporary, workmanlike minimalism--as, maybe paradoxically, i believe everyone should--you really need to justify it. it's not enough to try to be good by bucking trends and allowing a more avant stylism. it needs to actually be good in the process or you're just giving the MAKE IT LIKE THAT EXCEPT SIMPLER BECAUSE SIMPLE IS... LE GOOD! crowd more ammunition they can shoot at you from behind their horn-rimmed glasses.

[Anonymous No.20165952]

>>20165942
I think I'm changing it to
The bones roll round and round, rattling around in their cage. With spinning spots a blur they're sent careening across the table.
To get rid of passive voice.

[Anonymous No.20165956]

>>20165952
Reads a little better (maybe change 'sent' to something else because that hurts the present tense thing a little).

[Anonymous No.20165968]

>>20165952
fuck it, changed careening to clattering to better (false) rhyme with rattling

[Anonymous No.20165976]

>>20165956
guess its back to cast. thank you

[Anonymous No.20165977]

My opening line.
>I emptied my bag of family sized M&M's and separated the contents by color. I had 78 green ones, 85 blue ones, 100 red ones, 82 Yellow ones, 97 brown ones, but only 20 orange ones. Only twenty. Clearly a mistake from the company, but it was too coincidental. Mars Corporation is watching me. They know I like the orange M&Ms best, yet, for this bag, orange had the fewest number available. Grant Reid must be nearby. It's unfathomable how I obtained so little M&M's. I must buy another bag to confirm my suspicions.
Is that a good hook?

[Anonymous No.20165981]

>>20164071
>too muslim sounding
audible kek
I guess that kind of fits the setting though

[Anonymous No.20165984]

>>20165977
Is the story about a delusional paranoid protagonist? If so, sure.

[Anonymous No.20165995]

>>20165952
>The bones, they roll around and 'round; they set their cage to rattle. With spinning spots a blurring whorl, the dice careen the table.
This is how I'd write it, but I am admittedly pretty heavily autistic.

[Anonymous No.20166001]

>>20165995
writing like shit doesn't make you autistic.

[Anonymous No.20166004]

>>20166001
What's shit about it?

[Anonymous No.20166008]

>>20166004
It just sounds really off. I don't think bones is the right noun to use.

[Anonymous No.20166011]

>>20166008
Well, I can't COMPLETELY rewrite it. "Bones" is, after all, a valid term for dice. Rolling the bones, or whatever.

[Anonymous No.20166012]

>>20166008
I know you're talking about dice, but for me, especially in the first sentence, using slang takes me out.

I just use dice.

[Anonymous No.20166026]

>>20166011
or reorder the sentences.
>The bones roll round and round, rattling around in their cage. With spinning spots a blur they're cast clattering across the table.

to

>With a flick of his wrists, the dots on the bones blurred as they spun across the craps table. Everyone waited with baited breath as both dice displayed one dot.

[Anonymous No.20166045]

>>20166008
The term bones serves as a double entendre, for both dice and people rattling their cages.

[Anonymous No.20166049]

>>20166026
one dice showed one pip, the other two.

There fixed to match your story of getting 3.

[Anonymous No.20166052]

>>20166045
so are the dice being thrown by people (because that's what the next few sentence implies) or are they rattling in a premade shaker?

Are the fists to hold the dice cages? What's going on?!

[Anonymous No.20166067]

>>20166052
I never specify but I figured a dice cup, held in one hand and potentially with the opening covered by the other when they felt really spicy.

[Anonymous No.20166097]

>>20166067
Okay that's probably what's getting me, since in America we don't really use dice cups. and our only game that involves dice in casinos is craps

[Anonymous No.20166154]

>>20165839
Good on you anon! Virtual reality gender bending isn't exactly my thing, but your work ethic is impressive.

[Anonymous No.20166193]

>>20165839
How much money are you making on patreon?

[Anonymous No.20166275]

>>20166154
Thank you. It was a really fun concept that allowed for all kinds of fish out of water humor and stupid situations. Macarthy's personality is a combination of legitimately crazy and so sane as to be considered crazy. The book is also anti the current trans agenda because what they're doing to people is monstrous, hacking them apart and chemically castrating them with hormones. Basically in order to actually transition you'd need magic. Which we don't got.

And gender bending may not be your thing so you don't know, but a sort of staple of the genre is like 10 seconds after the change the new girl goes on a clothes shopping spree and gets dolled up with makeup. I find it revolting. There was an anime I saw a few episodes of a few years ago called Zombieland Saga. Basically they're rotten corpses but they splash makeup on them and wow they're cute idols now. I found the concept horrifying and quit 3 episodes in.

>>20166193
I don't have a patreon. My plan was always finish this book, start writing the sequel, throw this on Kindle and then start the patreon and have it off to the side. Obviously if this was a smash hit I'd have started it sooner but I'm aware the themes of the book aren't exactly mainstream.

The next book I switch mcs to one of the other girls and explore a different set of themes, some related. Some of the villains will be vampires and rats. The rats will literally worship Yahweh. The setting will be the capitol city, I'm thinking some huge multitiered inside a mountain city where the rich people and rulers have access to sunlight but everyone else is down below. I was thinking more spread out at first but the claustrophobic feeling may be better. Then they get sent off to war and while they're away the rats spread.

[Anonymous No.20166322]

Realized the first chapter of my book was way too long (97 pages) so now I'm working on reformating it to be a 3 - 4 chapter story arc.

[Anonymous No.20166348]

>>20166322
H o w ? ? ? My guy, I write in Merriweather 10.5, 1.5 space and my 3.5k word chapters take up ~8-10 pages. How in the blue fuck did you end up with a 97 page chapter? What's the word count? I'm genuinely curious.

[Anonymous No.20166381]

>>20166348
>Merriweather 10.5
Not bad, it'll do in a--
>1.5 spacing
Oh no nigger, no, no I'm not letting you walk away from this one. Everyone see this fucking faggot? Completely tasteless. Fuck you. Quit this hobby and pick up painting where they accept prancing la la homos like yourself.

[Anonymous No.20166390]

>>20166348
desu I do write in 14 font so the words are a lot bigger and I write with single space. I've been thinking of changing it to 12 font

[Anonymous No.20166449]

>>20162747
>>20163671
I know how to come up with pseudonyms. I'm asking if there's anything I should know before using one?

[Anonymous No.20166492]

>>20160071
they had computers back then before the cataclysmic pole shift

[Anonymous No.20166521]

>>20166348
Fuck off. Double looks like a nigger's goatse'd asshole and single space is eye rape. Embrace 1.5, the true writer's spacing.

[Anonymous No.20166533]

>>20166449
Pick a GOOD one. You only have one shot. Unless you decide to do it again. Also, using one does not mean you have to go down to the courthouse and get a legal name change. Unless you want to. Ditto for the DMV.

You may also consider having business cards with both names so people aren't confused. You are free to answer to whichever name you want, but I suggest a wardrobe change when going around as your pen name persona.

[Anonymous No.20166590]

>>20166533
How easy would it be to find out my real name if I used a pen name?

[Anonymous No.20166623]

>>20166533
Depends on the pen name and how autistic the lengths you're willing to go are. If your name is Matt Jarbo and your pen name Jatt Marbo, no shit it'll be found out. There's also the pitfall of using specific words, phrases or in-jokes that your friends / family may recognise when making it, so stuff like nicknames are generally a no-go. Or you could play the double surprsie and actually use your real name with someone else's face as your pfp, works especially well if you have a common name.

[Anonymous No.20166625]

>>20166590
Depends on the name. If your real name is Nate Higgers and you want something a little more stylish for your book cover it may be fairly easy to deduce. :^)
I'm assuming you're asking because you want to get a web domain and you're worried about people looking up who bought it. There are ways of doing that anonymously.

[Anonymous No.20166678]

>>20165884
Writer's tend to overthink first sentences (thinking they need a crazy hook) but the first two paragraphs are incredibly important for establishing your competence around basic clarity/flow. You know it's the reader's first impression and they know it too, so the expectation is you'll be on your best behavior chapter 1 - and if you can't even have clarity on that intro paragraphs what are the odds the writing improves on chapter 6?

Especially anything self pub I will drop after two paragraphs if I'm seeing cracks. But I probably drop half of the books I pick up after reading just the first chapter and not being grabbed which I feel is common.

[Anonymous No.20167658]

>>20165977
Good hook, but the prose could be tighter. Your opening lines are worth slaving over.
e.g.
>The family-sized bag had 78 green M&M's, 85 blue ones, 100 red ones, 82 yellow ones, 97 brown ones, but only 20 orange ones. Only twenty. It can't be a mistake. Mars Corporation knows I like the orange M&M's best, and this bag barely had any. It's unfathomable. Grant Reid must be nearby. I should buy another bag to confirm my suspicions.
You don't need to explain emptying the bag of M&M's and sorting it if you can instead imply it by starting off with the counts. "Mars corporation is watching me" is already implied by them knowing the narrator's M&M preference and Grant Reid being nearby. Etcetera.
(I think it's stronger like this, but you should use your own judgment.)