/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.20480495]

Can you really write fiction if you have no life experiences? I've read dialogue written here and they're very unnatural

[Anonymous No.20480526]

>>20480495
Honestly no, you need to have some sort of life ( spent time in the military, traveled, just having deep relationships with other people in general over the years) in order to writer believable dialogue and more so relatable thoughts and views.
Lovecraft was a atheist faggot who hated other races and Jews so much that his own friends and family were annoyed by it

[Anonymous No.20480533]

>>20480495
people who have no friends and don't talk to people can't write good dialogue, simple as. Unless you just ape some other dialogue or character from another story, it'll sound weird if you dont actually talk with other people

[Anonymous No.20480544]

>>20480495
Wasn’t Proust a deeply neurotic loner homo? Yet he’s written one of the most thorough explorations of society and human character in history.

[Anonymous No.20480558]

>>20480495
i have heard that if you suck at smth you should just not focus on it and chose for it some basic but established concept.

the worst you can do is trying too hard. every form of art has a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Often people talk about the strengths since they are ez to remember. But the art of hiding weak aspects is an useful skill in itself which is under appreciated by artists of any kind....

not /lit/ but the most extreme case i ever saw was weirdly enough furry road.
it
>gave up on high strung philosophical concepts
>gave up on characters which have high moral aspects
>gave up on any romance which had otherwise to be shoehorned in

and it grew stronger by giving up these aspects.

Just make an arrangement with your weaknesses. say it´s very basic but it´s ok, since it´s in the background and not your focus.

[Anonymous No.20480614]

>>20480495
It honestly depends on how contemplative a person is. Plenty of people go through life bombastic and heedless of everything, accruing huge life experiences and taking away the most shallow lessons from them. Contrarywise, some people live very mild and sparse lives but take away a lot from their few experiences.
>Lovecraft was a atheist faggot who hated other races and Jews so much that his own friends and family were annoyed by it
Doesn't answer OPs question. HP Lovecraft may have been a shut in, but he had many life experiences, and while his life wasn't one of adventure it certainly wasn't a quiet NEET life like one might have today.

[Anonymous No.20480819]

>>20480495
you can

[Anonymous No.20480850]

>>20480495
>Can you really write fiction if you have no life experiences?
No

[Anonymous No.20480858]

>>20480495
You don't need life experiences to write pure fantasy like he did

[Anonymous No.20481356]

>>20480495
>Life is disappointing and full of sorrow. It would be pointless, then, to write more realist novels. In general, we know already what reality has in store for us; and we have not the slightest desire to know more. Humanity itself inspires in us no more than a mild curiosity. All their “writings” in all their prodigious subtlety, their “situations”, their anecdotes…All this does nothing, once the book is closed, except confirm in us a slight sensation of nausea already sufficiently nourished by any given day of ‘real life’.
>Now, listen to Howard Philips Lovecraft: “I am so tired of humanity and of the world that nothing interests me unless it involves at least two murders per page, or speaks of nameless horrors emanating from the outer reaches of space.”
>We have need of a supreme antidote against all forms of
realism.
Did you think you were reading Maupassant retard? The dialogue sound unnatural because it isnt meant to sound natural. He is one of more stylized writers and if you think all literature should aim to realistically imitate life you need to read more.

[Anonymous No.20481371]

>>20480495
I don't understand the question: you can write derivative by-the-numbers fiction if you autistically absorb the genre and learn or the formulae - your duty isn't to be true to life but true to audience expectation. And you might be more successful than a person who has 'life experience' (which I suppose means they were a firefighter before they change career to being a goat herder or something, what counts as "life experience"?) but either because they don't have a way with words, or maybe tells stories in a very non-linear roundabout way, or simply because of the unprecedented uniqueness of their life experience cannot find a satisfactory narrative structure that will make it intelligible to an audience.
What would you consider "life experience" and what would be "life inexperience" and what would count as really writing fiction?

[Anonymous No.20481372]

Everyone's experience is subjective.
I can write a dialogue where I get a girl to fall in love with me in 8 or 9 minutes, but since 98% of the people on here never had that experience because you're autistic, it will read as unrealistic science fiction.

[Anonymous No.20481421]

>>20481371
seethe

[Anonymous No.20481694]

>>20480495
You can, but you wouldn't be a strong writer.

[Anonymous No.20481702]

>>20480495
Are you saying all those murder mystery writers were serial killers? Not every experience has to be first-hand, you can gain a lot from reading and listening to others.

[Anonymous No.20481724]

>>20480495
Yes. Fiction and reality are not meant to mimic each other perfectly. Good fiction is stylized and is purposefully unrealistic. Real conversations are often purposeless and meandering, people repeat themselves, they don't get to the point. It would be agonizing to read a conversation like that.

Ray Bradbury never flew a rocket, yet he wrote a lot about space travel. Flannery O'Connor spent most of her life bedridden but wrote some of the best American stories. And there are lots of terrible self published books written by women who probably have lots of life experience.

[Anonymous No.20481728]

>>20481356
Fundamentally misunderstands Lovecraft

[Anonymous No.20481731]

Yes but it wouldn't be believable without real experiences to make the reader immersed in the fiction you are creating.

[Anonymous No.20481739]

being well read > having life experience

[Anonymous No.20481742]

>>20481739
virgin retard

[Anonymous No.20481744]

>>20481356
>realism is faggotrism
No. That guy is a faggot. You can live a fullfilling life fully knowing you will die or will not accomplish all that you could. And its not about being comformist but about understand what did you do wrong and what you can do the next time something like that happens. God how I hate these faggots. These are retards who literally can't live without God and they are atheist.

[Anonymous No.20481748]

>>20481739
You can have both. Like actual good writers like Cervantes and pretty much all the good spanish authors from the spanish golden age.

[Anonymous No.20481749]

>>20481739
0 pussy mf

[Anonymous No.20481820]

>>20481421
Why are you seething? I asked a question because I don't know what "really write fiction" means, then again whenever someone uses the qualifier "really" 9/10 it means they aren't even sure what they mean themselves. I see no reason to seethe about my post, and I apologize if it made you feel bad but I don't understand why: it's just asking for clarity.

[Anonymous No.20481825]

>>20481820
you're seething so hard

[Anonymous No.20481828]

>>20481421
>>20481742
>>20481749
the NPC in the wild

[Anonymous No.20481862]

>>20481742
>>20481748
>>20481749
when it comes to being a good writer, being well read is far more useful. Writers who don't read books are completely tone deaf and they all have the exact same prose. Life experience can lend authenticity to a story but you can get the same results from research.

[Anonymous No.20481898]

>>20481702
>all those murder mystery writers were serial killers

Not all, but many of them were, yes.

[Anonymous No.20481899]

>>20481702
murder mystery writers are disproportionately murderers

[Anonymous No.20481902]

>>20481898
Not the most popular ones, though, which shows all you need is powerful imagination.

[Anonymous No.20482000]

>>20481702
>Are you saying all those murder mystery writers were serial killers?
Can you think of a better cover? No one would suspect them. You could always claim that you were "doing research for the next book." Especially if the methods of murder were totally different to the ones they write about, you'd expect a murder mystery writer who always writers about gouging out eyes to be the serial killer who gouges out eyes. But they don't, so they can't be. If someone put forward the case it would seem so ridiculous, especially if they had the sheer audacity to write a novel about a writer who was accused of murder based on the plot of one of their novels!
The press tours, the long periods of isolation spent hammering out manuscripts give a plausible cover long trips disposing bodies, and even if someone does see you, you could just claim it was "research" or you could feign that you've been following the news and see some potential inspiration for your next novel in this case (then write something totally different, because again, throw them off the scent).
Haven't you read Misery, reverse the roles, there's no end of obsessive fans who will fawn over their favorite murder mystery writer. Many of them lonely, isolated, the kind of people that if they disappeared one day it would be a while before anyone noticed. Gone without a trace.
Most murder mystery writers probably are serial killers, because the very nature of their work makes them a lot harder to catch.

[Anonymous No.20482098]

>>20480495
Not OP but I rarely go out or interact with people outside of my family. I wrote this dialogue which is part of a larger story about an incestuous relationship between a brother and a sister (it's not a pro incest story)
This dialogue takes place the day after the two siblings first make love with each other and they're taking a walk by a river and reflecting on childhood memories.
The boys name is Frans (Francis) and the girls name is Anna (Anastasia)
I'm not necessarily wondering if the dialogue itself is good or bad, more if it feels natural and like it was written by an actual human being.

[Anonymous No.20482722]

>>20480614
>Plenty of people go through life bombastic and heedless of everything, accruing huge life experiences and taking away the most shallow lessons from them.
This.

Johnny Depp has lived a life few in history can match. He can't manage a single coherent sentence. The same goes for 99% of actors and musicians and 95% of heads of state.

Meanwhile a lifelong incel can see more deeply into the essence of women from a single brutal rejection than Chad can from a lifetime of thoughtless success.

[Anonymous No.20482769]

if life experience was all it took to be a great writer or artist in general, then hood niggers like gucci mane and kendrick lamar are the greatest writers and poets of all time LOL

[Anonymous No.20482798]

>>20480544
>Wasn’t Proust a deeply neurotic loner homo?
NO lol proust was very outgoing

[Anonymous No.20482815]

>>20480526
What about Kafka, Beckett, Pessoa? Afaik they didn't exactly have a great wealth of life experiences

[Anonymous No.20482850]

>>20482815
Kafka's dialogues are bland, but it fits into the overall existentialist idea that the world is meaningless and overly complex. Interpret that however you will