/wg/ - Writing Geriatrics

[Anonymous No.20759400]

The Writing General
Post Apocalyptic Edition

Previous thread: >>20754625

For General Writing
>The Rhetoric of Fiction, Booth
>Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, Burroway
>Steering the Craft, Le Guin
>The Anatomy of Story, Truby
>How Fiction Works, Wood

YouTube Playlists for Writing
>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTCv6n1whoI23GmdBZienRW0Q0nFCU_ay Robert Butler
>[YouTube] Lecture #1: Introduction — Brandon Sanderson on Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy


Technical Aspects of Writing
>Garner's Modern English Usage, Garner
>What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing, Ginna
>Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, Tufte

Books Analyzing Literature
>Poetics, Aristotle
>Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell
>The Art Of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives, Egri
>The Weekend Novelist, Ray

Traditional Publishing
>you get to focus mostly on writing
>you must write a proposal to the publishers and sell your story to them
>you make 10-15% profit max, but they also eat all the risk and the costs

Self publishing
>basically like running your own company
>you only need to do some simple marketing and reach out to readers

Self Publishing Options
>https://archiveofourown.org/
>https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
>https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/writinglife
>https://www.royalroad.com/
>https://www.scribblehub.com/
>https://www.wattpad.com/

Self Publishing How-To
>risky, but much more profitable
>you must pay for everything yourself
>if you do, you will spend more time on running a business than writing, but can be worth it
>https://selfpublishingwithdale.com/

Poetry
>This Craft of Verse, Borges
>The Poetry Home Repair Manual, Kooser
>Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, Mason

Anime Writing (^･o･^)
>[YouTube] How To Write An Amazing Isekai Manga | Featuring The AlphaManga App
>https://www.wikihow.com/Create-an-Anime-Story

For advertising
>[YouTube] Starting Ads for the First Time - with Mark Dawson (The Self Publishing Show, episode 229)

AI-generated book covers
>https://nightcafe.studio
>https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini
>https://app.wombo.art/

/wg/ Authors and Flash Fiction Pastebin
>https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ

[Anonymous No.20759426]

>>20759400
best essay writers to emulate and grow from?

[Anonymous No.20759439]

Day 48 editing
Chapter 62 done
>Struggling to balance colloquialisms and english proper.
Given my reader base will likely be in the single digits does it even really mattress?

[Anonymous No.20759454]

>>20759341
>introduction
>that said there's too much thrown at the reader
I agree, less keywords for lore stuff and more alluding to the concepts instead, You're diluting the extent to which people will think about the important aspects you're trying to convey, by having all the relatively irrelevant things thrown in too. And possibly not thinking about the context you already know, that your readers won't. i'd also do less explicit characterization/morality declarations, and more describing / stream of consciousness, since you want it to be a whirlwind through a red light district. Which is a very good setting for something like that.

[Anonymous No.20759457]

Gonna finally put together that chapbook I've been tinkering away at for years. It's gonna be about pirates.

[Anonymous No.20759484]

>>20759454
Noted. I'll see what I can do to improve on it.

[Anonymous No.20759495]

>>20759439
If this is the case, isn't it more important to write for personal satisfaction?

[Anonymous No.20759505]

Draft 3 continues for 4 more weeks if I stay on pace. I think I can finish this.

[Anonymous No.20759512]

Is anyone querying? How is that goinh?

[Anonymous No.20759523]

>>20759512
I'll let you know in November. My plan is to start querying and then shift to next novel and but write a monthly short story.

[Anonymous No.20759544]

>>20759512
I’ve only sent ten so far over the course of a month and a half, but no bites. The actual letter is tricky to me. I’ve read online that agents want contemporary novels for your comps, but I don’t read contemporary fiction. It’s a discouraging process especially since I have a lot of faith in the novel.

[Anonymous No.20759568]

>>20759544
>but I don’t read contemporary fiction
I have been trying to. I like some of it but I haven't read enough contemporaries to really sound convincing. I found several other titles but only one of them was in the past 5 years as suggested so I try to go last ~10.
It's just that contemporary fiction cares about such different things that the modern part of the comp title I can only loosely relate. So I say "this contemporary character arc is similar to my character but other than that it's more like this one classic." Some classics still get a surprising amount of contemporary reading (e.g. Wuthering Heights). I am making a list of titles for the comp title and gonna practice pitching it to find out what sounds stronger. It's a big deal for agents and editors apparently because high-concept is what they want.

[Anonymous No.20759575]

>>20759544
I know people on here hate Reddit but maybe you can ask on there if any novels have similar elements to your book? Just point out the themes or storylines on there and see if anyone can help

The sub is called pubtips

Good luck though. Querying is slower than ever…

[Anonymous No.20759582]

Is there any limit to how far I can bend English grammar laws? As long as it doesn't disrupt the "flow" of the text and is consistent, I can pretty much do whatever I want right?

[Anonymous No.20759583]

>>20759523
Good luck! I’m surprised ppl in here are pursuing trad pub ngl
I’ve read that in here… that’s selling out. I hope to query around then too. I read that querying around Christmas/January is bad though ugh

[Anonymous No.20759592]

>>20759582
Yes but only after you've earned and audience and shown you can write normally.

[Anonymous No.20759597]

>>20759575
>>20759568
My plan so far has been to go at it honestly and just comp the authors I respect. I figure it'd be absolutely ludicrous for them to pass on the project merely because of some out of date comps if the hook was enticing and the pages submitted made for good reading. I'll submit some more queries this weekend. It's difficult finding an agent who represents just good, old fashioned literary fiction. I'd say at least 50% of the agents I browse are only looking for some wretched LGBT slop.

[Anonymous No.20759617]

>>20759454
I'll just reply to this since its easier. Would showing more of stuff around him add or detract as a whole. I.e he sees two people going at it in alleyway, gets an urge but suppresses it. Maybe he also gets approached by someone on the doors offering some kind of deal but he brushes them off before bumping into a group of people. One/more of them grab his arms and try to use their trace to coerce him but get scared off when they sense the Symbiote inside. The place where he gets delirious maybe has someone like blow the aphrodisiac into his face and he gets dragged inside. Then everything plays out and he's so scrambled that the two minds can't decide whether to kill or leave the Kaskari woman. In the end he goes outside for air and ultimately takes a train that will lead him to attack the two people shown at the end of the chapter.

That's a pretty broad summary of what I might to add this chapter, so I apologise for how messy it sounds..

[Anonymous No.20759627]

'In any case, I hate everything that merely instructs me without
augmenting or directly invigorating my activity.' These words are
from Goethe, and they may stand as a sincere ceterum censeo* at the
beginning of our meditation on the value of hi story. For its intention
is to show why instruction without invigoration, why knowledge not
attended by action, why history as a costly superfluity and luxury,
must, to use Goethe's word, be seriously hated by us
- hated because
we still lack even the things we need and the superfluous is the
enemy of the necessary. We need history, certainly, but we need it for
reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of
knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our
rough and charmless needs and requirements. We need it, that is to
say, for the sake of life and action, not so as to turn comfortably away
from life and action, let alone for the purpose of extenuating the selfseeking life and the base and cowardly action. We want to serve history
only to the extent that history serves life: for it is possible to value the
study of history to such a degree that life becomes stunted and
degenerate - a phenomenon we are now forced to acknowledge,
painful though this may be, in the face of certain striking symptoms
of our age.

[Anonymous No.20759641]

>>20759505
What a Chad.
>>20759512
I have a short story I submitted for an online magazine but it didn't make the finals. I need to shop it around more. I also have a fully finished and formatted novel I've done nothing with for over 3 months. I should either shop that around or just throw it up online already.

[Anonymous No.20759650]

>>20759583
>I've read that in here...that's selling out
The way projects are at work they last several years and to get from ideation to market takes a lot of other talent. One could argue that the people that do all the research should get all the money but it's just not like that. I think writing with publishers is a similar way, anon writers feel like they deserve it all. An anon can get it all if he puts in the work, but I'd rather work with others. But I'm not working with anyone who wants to take my story rights and turn it into something else, or demand I write something I don't want to say.

[Anonymous No.20759660]

>>20759400
I'm struggling to keep my stories simple because I always end up overcomplicating things.
My short story began as a story where a man looks at life from a new lens after Death gives him one more year to live. Now it's a fantasy novella where he gains the power to switch bodies with younger, able bodied individuals, thus becoming functionally immortal. Also, it's a commentary on classism with two fantasy cities. One is the proletarian industrial muscle, and one is the aristocratic high society.
This was supposed to be simple.

[Anonymous No.20759673]

>>20759660
There was an anon that had the opposite problem this week. I recommend you limit yourself by deciding on the number of settings, characters, ideas and events. If you limit those then there's only so much you can focus on and it keeps the story short. If only one of them gets a focus and the others are kind of shallow then it can be shorter.

[Anonymous No.20759710]

>>20759617
>Would showing more of stuff around him add or detract as a whole.
If it's mostly brief, to add to the greater atmosphere, it'd be good. You could also use it for implicit characterizations too. The point is just building the same, strong mental picture that something like Blade Runner evokes. The chaos of the busy street and set dressings of the cyber-y aspects, they really stay with you. So use your exotic races and their powers/features to really build the unique world.
Your additions seem pretty good though.

[Anonymous No.20759726]

>>20759400
>writing geriatrics

[Anonymous No.20759737]

>>20759710
I see. Thanks. I think I've got some idea of what to do to make this introductory chapter more immersive and fluid. Turns out I was to laser pointed on the deeper internal struggle plaguing Ryo and his symbiote.

[Anonymous No.20759762]

>>20759400
>I'll tell you what's toxic, he began as he lit a cigar slowly with a jet lighter. It's toxic to put a fucking child on hormones and then plan to cut his fucking dick off in the future because you let some freaks on the internet brainwash him.
Puffs of smoke billowed as he puffed in, out, in, out.
>It's not fucking toxic to teach him baseball or show him how to work a heavy bag so he can handle himself when someone picks on his siblings. It's not fucking toxic to let boys be boys, he said as the wafts of will-o-wisps curled above his balding dome. It's not fucking toxic to tell a boy that one day he's gonna be the man and he's gonna have to protect his family and his shit. Capiche?
The vermillion lipstick on the she-male's lips were skewed and at points smeared over the top lip towards the skin. It was the work of someone who had only started practicing doing themselves up. The she-male leaned forward and took a cigar of their own from the silver case offered on the table.
>Mind if I join you? she asked.
>Sure. Go ahead. But I can't say I've met many women who can smoke one of those stogies, laughed the man. It's a male thing, after all.
A light. A puff. The end of the cigar glowed like a hot iron. The scarlet lipstick wore off and left a puckering kiss on the end of the cigar as she placed it down in the ashtray.
>Tell me about the kids down in the docks, the she-male said, exhaling a puff of Fafnir's smoke. Has it got something to do with Georgie selling smack again now that you know who is off the streets?
>I wouldn't tell a freak like you anything, he sneered. Now get out before I kill you.
The she-male sighed, pulled out a badge from their bra, and pulled out a Colt from their stocking.
>See this? I'm fuzz. This get up wasn't my idea, so you need to shut up about it before I knock those teeth out.
>Woah, woah. Take it eeeeasy. I got honour, too, you know. We weren't brought up like no chumps in Calabrese. And my family treat themselves like fucking knights, okay? I just can't have a guy looking like... that in my shipyard.
>Well, I'll get out of your hair. But first... you need to tell me where the kids are and who's selling the dope.
The last dancing clouds of smoke rose from the ashtray like the ominous sign of an Injun moiety. That Italian mob boss sighed and said:
>It's gonna cost you. It's gonna cost me. Ah, funculo. But what can I do?

[Anonymous No.20759829]

hello.
can anyone distill for me the format and essence of good essay structure? or please point me to such a resource
i feel i write with what resembles structure imitated by writers ive been exposed to, just with far lesser prose

how can i improve? the /wg/ links, i havent even looked at them yet but they dont seem relevant to what im trying to achieve
however in teh few examples of writing i have seen, they do seem to have a lot of flourish which i lack
nuances in their writing im not yet able to capture

[Anonymous No.20759904]

>>20759597
Please… no. The comps matter to the point that marketability trumps writing. Make sure the comps or AT LEAST ONE is within the past 5 yrs…
>>20759650
That’s why when signing with agents and a publisher that you sign with one that doesn’t want to change your work. I wouldn’t sign with an agent who wants to make fundamental changes to my work. It’s not my story atp

[Anonymous No.20759909]

>>20759829
I assume you mean academic-style essays? If that's the case, best advice I can give is to read papers and essays from people in your field, especially ones regarded as being of high quality. The type of stuff that gets published by big boy publishers / magazines or used in yearly reviews and meta analysis. If that's not what you mean, then the best catch-all advice I can give for essay writing of any kind is to try and weave the different parts of your essay into each other as seamlessly as you can. Having strictly partitioned thesis statements, arguments and the like is fine and dandy but I dislike works that kill an author's personal style of expression for the sake of terseness or muh professional style. I've seen a lot of essays/papers that have this bland and overy strict cut-and-dry style of language, 'professional prose' as people in academia (in my experience) like to call it, which I find very dry and unfun. Developing your own writing style / voice takes time and it takes a lot of reading, both in terms of academic and non-academic writing. A 'good' essay to me is one that delivers its argument successfully, has proper backing to the arguments it makes and manages to get its whole point across in a way that isn't torturous to read. Slogging through a thick block of academic gobbledygook is about as fun as eating a glass sandwich, but reading a paper written by someone who actually knows how to write instead of just how to research can be a very fun experience and usually ends up sticking with me a lot longer and better than the former.

[Anonymous No.20759971]

>>20759904
>Make sure the comps or AT LEAST ONE is within the past 5 yrs
I really don't know what to do then. The most recent book I could comp is The Road (2006). I just don't read contemporary fiction as I find older works far richer. I googled "top contemporary literary fiction 2021" just now and what did I see? Most of the novels were shlocky minority pandering or the woes of being a tranny. No thanks, I'll stick with Faulkner.

[Anonymous No.20759987]

>>20759400
made some more adjustments to my subject for a feature film. currently at 488 out of 500 words. Feedback?

[Anonymous No.20760045]

>>20759971
Considering that some authors have staked most of their career on comps like "it's Jane Austen with magic" I think you could get away with saying it's "Faulkner with" some contemporary element that is even obliquely related. We've also come to the point where you're allowed to comp title with recent television and movies, meaning if a beta reader says "hey this reminds me of that one movie haha" don't take it for granted. Watch the movie and if it does you've got your comp title while only suffering for 2 hours.

[Anonymous No.20760236]

how often do you make yourself laugh with your own writing?

[Anonymous No.20760237]

>>20759829
found this on google
https://www.student.unsw.edu.au/writing-your-essay
there's a bunch of such sites
probably a ton of youtube videos too

[Anonymous No.20760252]

>>20760045
a winner of the hugo award was a novella that was "jane austen in the military."

[Anonymous No.20760272]

>>20760252
Is there a single award nowadays that is actually meritocracy based/ somewhat fair?

[Anonymous No.20760276]

>>20760272
The award of public opinion

[Anonymous No.20760305]

>>20760272
there sure are a lot of "jane austin" plus something

[Anonymous No.20760336]

>read another anons written work
>Read published authors
>Read my own work
Fuck it. I'll never get better. I only read shit posts and the news. Non-fiction is too hard to read

[Anonymous No.20760338]

>>20760305
Look at the list of most read books on Goodreads annual book challenge. Jane Austen consistently is up there, and the Bronte sisters are often up there too. Women writers that put a spin on those worlds get lots of sales because Austen's life was cut short and the other girls weren't that prolific so fans of it are always seeking more.

[Anonymous No.20760339]

>>20760236
i don't
i know when something is funny
i know how not to ruin the joke
but since i'm in on the joke, it doesn't make me laugh

[Anonymous No.20760344]

>>20760336
read "red rising"
easy to read and it's good
it's like #6 on reddit's list of best fantasy

[Anonymous No.20760382]

>>20760272
The problem with awards is they've been coopted by women who cannot validate themselves without credentials and accolades. These women are so terminally riddled with imposter syndrome that they label the most basic confidence in one's abilities as an exclusively masculine trait.
>Lord, grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man
they quoth, unironically, as if confidence must be approved by committee.

[Anonymous No.20760394]

>>20760236
Every day. If I laugh at it, there's a good chance someone else will laugh at it.

[Anonymous No.20760414]

Do you avoid canned plot elements that have been done lots of times before, for example
>character needs to find out who's the traitor in a group
>gives everyone different info
>whichever unique piece of info leaks identifies the traitor

The author seems like a genius for coming up with it to anyone first coming in contact with the idea, but seeing stuff like this for the umpteenth time makes my eyes roll so I try to come up with my own stuff

[Anonymous No.20760419]

>>20760414
No, because I'm not a good enough writer to teach the reader anything new about drama. But what I can do is use the drama that they know and find ways to play with their expectations.

[Anonymous No.20760421]

>>20760414
Yes.
Currently researching obscure suicide methods, because i refuse to have a hanging scene.

[Anonymous No.20760424]

>>20760414
Do most authors do canned elements like that and telegraph what is going on? I could imagine that if the author doesn't mention it but allows the reader to notice what is going on it could still be cool because then they'd be looking harder.

[Anonymous No.20760452]

>>20760414
you could do a thing where the spy finds out about the test beforehand and manipulates the test so that he's innocent and the protagonist's best friend is guilty
give an old trope a coat of paint

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20760598]

>>20759505
I believe in you.

[Anonymous No.20760727]

>>20760598
But what are you writing trip fag same fag?

[Anonymous No.20760736]

Every author tells the same story over and over. Your story is unique to you. What story do you find yourself telling in every story you write? It's probably subtle enough that only you would notice it.

[Anonymous No.20760755]

It's really strange how only some stories can maintain my interest long term when writing them.

I have one story that I'm writing that is going to take me years to finish at this rate (around work). But I know I'll never quit it or lose interest. But then other story ideas can't keep my attention past the first week or two of working on it.

Anyone else experienced this?

[Anonymous No.20760756]

>>20760736
I aim for melodrama and sentimentality, with a big focus on nostalgia, and the vast majority of my stories are about level-headed people fighting for their sanity in a world of extremism and absolutes.

[Anonymous No.20760762]

>>20760756
Sounds cool. Anything specific regarding nostalgia?

[Anonymous No.20760786]

>>20760736
Death is a constant in my stories, and in a sense what I tell is the dreams and goals of those who die so it's full of nostalgia and sentiment.

[Anonymous No.20760793]

>>20760736
>What story do you find yourself telling in every story you write?
That things are going to get better but show the despair that even our best lives will still have.

[Anonymous No.20760801]

>>20760344
nice try Pierce

[Anonymous No.20760805]

>>20760736
>betrayal of trust
>comically awkward sex
>transcending our mortal limitations through art
I'd say those are the big three

[Anonymous No.20760808]

Ngl giving advice to you lot feels like casting pearls before swine.

[Anonymous No.20760810]

>>20760762
But anyway, this particular day I was just clicking around on MySpace. Back then you shared one computer with the family, and it was usually in the living room. Drake and Josh was playing on the television behind me.
>I have never been able to find this particular episode online, but it really struck a chord with me. It was the one where Drake and Josh’s Dad and Stepdad is going insane trying to get tickets to a midnight showing of Dazed and Confused at the movie theater where Drake and Josh or maybe just Josh worked part-time. You ever seen that movie? Dazed and Confused? It came out in the 90’s, but it was set in the 70’s. It was about a bunch of kids on their last day at High School, and there was a scene where some of the main characters sneak into a drive-in to watch a showing of Grease. I’m sure you’ve seen that one, it was from the 70’s, but it was set in a High School, during the 1950’s. Well anyway, the main characters in Dazed and Confused are watching Grease, and it gets to the scene where Danny Zuko has to sneak past his dad to get to the big dance, and his dad is passed out drunk with an episode of the Twilight Zone playing in the background. I believe the particular episode they showed was called ‘A Stop At Willoughby’ and it’s about a guy who’s stressed out from the high-paced lifestyle of the 1950’s, and he keeps falling asleep on the train ride home, wherein he dreams of an idyllic lifestyle in the 1890’s. At the end of the episode he finally tries to consummate his misplaced nostalgia by jumping off the train, and it is revealed that he actually sleep walked off a moving train in television real life, leading to his death. I thought it was pretty dumb, but I guess it does make an interesting point about how constantly wishing that you lived in the past, instead of focusing on how you can improve things in the present, is a lot like committing a form of spiritual suicide.
But anyway, the dad from Drake and Josh walks out of the movie theater afterwards, and he’s kinda weirded out because Dazed and Confused was nothing like what he remembered, but then again, he wasn’t actually paying attention to the movie the first time he saw it, he just happened to go see it with his girlfriend on the night he lost his virginity, the last time he truly felt young and alive, and instead of getting that feeling back he just realizes that he’ll never lose his virginity again, and he really botched it the first time.

[Anonymous No.20760845]

>>20760736
Fighting despair, weakness and climbing the slippery slope towards ambition. Also stuff related to overcoming personal shortcomings, like cowardice or indicisiveness, and learning to value oneself and become confident enough to strive for greatness without needing external motivators (mostly alcohol).

[Anonymous No.20760862]

>>20760736
>aloof, schizotypical girls who have hearts of gold
>an annoyed main character dealing with the world's bullshit
>being wanted/included and the pain of knowing when a character is unwanted/excluded

[Anonymous No.20760892]

>>20760736
a fully grown newborn (a literal or figurative Galatea) of some kind coping with the bizarre world they've been thrust into, usually struggling with a predestined fate they refuse to accept. Alternatively, creatives, frequently artists in a visual medium, striving for some impossible, unreasonable achievement (a cook at a greasy spoon trying to recreate a dish he ate in a dream). Sometimes both. Also lots of body horror described casually.

[Anonymous No.20760910]

>>20759829
I copy-edit journal articles at my job. I've found you can immediately tell which papers are going to be good just from their introductions, because right up front the authors will make the stakes of their argument clear. Explicitly posing the problem that motivates your essay -- putting the 'why' before the 'how' or 'what' -- will give you the foundation you need to structure the essay itself.

This is in relation to social science papers, which aim at presenting a precise result rather than offering a literary experience. But this clarity of purpose is also at work in a writer as mystically dense and digressive as Walter Benjamin -- the supreme essayist imo. In fact it's an understanding of what's at stake that gives the reader the guidance they need to approach Benjamin's more cryptic sentences. A good example is the 'Little Hunchback' section of his essay on Kafka. Here's part of its intro.

> There are two ways to miss the point of Kafka's works. One is to interpret them naturally, the other is the supernatural interpretation. Both the psychoanalytic and the theological interpretations equally miss the essential points ... It is easier to draw speculative conclusions from Kafka's posthumous collection of notes than to explore even one of the motifs that appear in his stories and novels. Yet only these give some clue to the prehistoric forces that dominated Kafka's creativeness

So Benjamin needs to uncover a force that is neither personal Freudian guilt nor an eternal spiritual condition. And he will uncover it in the way that concrete images appear in Kafka, rather than studying Kafka's overt reflections. The answer to this problem is Benjamin's idea of the prehistoric. With these reference points established, he can get zany and exploratory as he does in the excerpts below while never straying from his central focus.

> Shame is not only shame in the presence of others, but can also be shame one feels for them ... We do not know the make-up of this unknown family, which is composed of human beings and animals. But this much is clear: it is this family that forces Kafka to move cosmic ages in his writings. ... Kafka did not consider the age in which he lived as an advance over the beginnings of time. His novels are set in a swamp world.
> "The spiritual, if it plays a role at all, turns into spirits. These spirits become definite individuals" ... like the totem poles of primitive peoples, the world of ancestors took him down to the animals.
> Whenever figures in the novels have anything to say to K. ... they do so casually and with the implication that he must really have known it all along. ... What has been forgotten ... is never something purely individual.
> Because the most forgotten alien land is one's own body, one can understand why Kafka called the cough that erupted from within him "the animal." It was the most advanced outpost of the great herd.

[Anonymous No.20760925]

>>20759505
If he got in trouble at all for this, it was definitely for having NBA2k installed on his computer

[Anonymous No.20760928]

>>20760910
>that picture
please tell me they're all dead

[Anonymous No.20760939]

I need a bit of advice; My first chapter is a bait-and-switch where I set up a couple of characters that are meant to die. Their deaths are hugely significant, and one of them is a de-facto driving force for the rest of the story so much so that I consider him an 'active' character with how much he gets mentioned and what an impact he has, even if he's dead by chapter 2. My question is, is it too much of a cock to have these guys get so much characterization only to have them get binned at the end? On one hand I really love how it sets up the conflict and motivation, but I don't want readers to get attached to them only to have the slate wiped clean.

[Anonymous No.20760950]

>>20760939
I think it's cool if you play it as if they are the main characters which we expect to have plot armor. I would respect it.

[Anonymous No.20760959]

>>20760928
I'm pretty sure crocodiles are still alive :|

[Anonymous No.20760965]

>>20760959
it looks more like a giant rat without legs or eyelids

[Anonymous No.20760972]

>>20760928

[Anonymous No.20760974]

>>20760276
bad news friend

[Anonymous No.20760981]

>>20760928
They probably looked much friendlier in the wild

[Anonymous No.20760986]

>>20760808
>Ngl
NGR

[Anonymous No.20761019]

>>20760950
I agree with this anon.

[Anonymous No.20761020]

>>20760892
>refuse to accept.
Uh you can just say refuse.

[Anonymous No.20761048]

>>20760928
>>20760981
They're smiling :)

[Anonymous No.20761065]

>>20761020
no

[Anonymous No.20761072]

>>20760736
Immoral person seeking redemption.

[Anonymous No.20761082]

>>20760736
You're not stealing my themes fag.

[Anonymous No.20761083]

>>20760736
Absurd humiliation for comedic effect.
Spiteful caricatures.
Crushing of ego.

[Anonymous No.20761153]

>>20759400
Can someone help me out with dialogue. I don’t know how to make characters sound natural. Also I got myself in a forked path, regarding how to present my first set of dialogue. So basically what’s happening in the story is that a hunter wanders into a saloon/hotel. He talks to the bartender then the bartender talks about his story. I wondering should i show them having a small talk and try to show their personality. Or mention it and get to the bartender’s story.

[Anonymous No.20761185]

>>20761153
Imagine two friends with similar personalities to the characters, give them your characters motivations and then imagine them talking to each other and write it down directly, more bare bones than a script. You’ll have friendly friends, awkward friends, autistic friends, etc. all will interact differently, but you’ll know them enough to predict what they would say in a given situation. Just like when you imagine yourself redoing an argument you lost while showering, but third person observational.

[Anonymous No.20761188]

>>20761048
I used to argue with my mom a lot when I told her crocodiles smiled

[Anonymous No.20761194]

Does any western author write the way NISIOISON writes? 90% dialogue that still works?

[Anonymous No.20761209]

>>20761194
Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited is basically a dialogue.

[Anonymous No.20761222]

>>20761209
I'll keep that in mind. I already bought Blood Meridian, and it seems conclusive that the next book of his to get is The Road

[Anonymous No.20761230]

>>20761222
You can read The Sunset Limited in one sitting easily, it's not very long and like I said, it's a dialogue rather than being heavy on prose. If it wasn't called "a novel in dramatic form" on the cover I'd swear it was a script for a play.

[Anonymous No.20761270]

Panting amidst the cypress of forest, on the ancient road, up the hill Veihir went. Dusk was reaching its end and the darkness of night was rapidly approaching. He needed to leave Eldarwood and reach the usual meeting spot before night, or else he will get lost till the sun wakes up. Veihir saw distant fire flickering, he knew he was near and pressed on, he ran as fast as he could. Finally out of Eldarwood just before darkness engulfed the sky, with only the light of a torch ,jutting from the door of a wooden hut, lighting his eyesight.
“Naithir! Naithir!”, He called loudly.
The door of the hut opened slowly, And an elderly man, with a long white beard, peered from behind the door and said, “He’s not here.” “Come inside until he comes back. I think he went hunting with his friend.”
“It’s fine, I will wait for him outside. Thank you.”, Said Veihir. Veihir was perplexed, He was Naithir’s best friend, or so he thought, And Naithir never went hunting without him.
The door was shut as slowly as it was opened. Veihir found a nice rock to sit on to wait for his childhood friend. The mist rose up the rocky hill ,and if it wasn’t for the torch’s light, Veihir might have started imagining, or seeing, the beasts of the night. He expected to wait for quite a bit, so he brought out his small knife from his sabretache, found a nice twig beneath his foot and started carving random shapes on it.
He heard faint footsteps coming from behind him and turned around.
A young man ,with thick curly red hair flowing beside his ears, stood in front of him. He was carrying a stag over his shoulders.
“Hail!,” He said.
“You aren’t as late as you usually are.” Said Veihir as he jumped up from his rock-chair and walked toward his old friend.

Thoughts on this? the plot twistis that Naithir is dead, possibly even killed by Veihir a couple of years ago when they were hunting together.

[Anonymous No.20761306]

>>20761270
>the cypress of forest
You mean the cypress forest? Forest of cypress?

[Anonymous No.20761313]

Why is it so much more common for the special unique MC to learn about their powers in the beginning of the story, somehow going their whole life as mundane vs having an MC who is adept at their powers already in the beginning?

[Anonymous No.20761314]

>>20761306
cypress forest. I was changed the words a bit in that part and forgot to delete "of".

[Anonymous No.20761324]

For emdash enjoyers I've been noticing this in writing and surprisingly a lot of guides about dashes don't mention this.
>"He l—looked so——" Then she was not laughing and Roger had to hold her up.
I realized it's just two emdashes. You can use that to take up a missing part of a word. You can use emdashes when someone is being interrupted such as with this:
>"and these limeys that would have been goose-stepping twelve months now if it hadn't been—"
>"Shut it," Bogard said. "You sound like a Liberty Loan."
>"—taking it like it was a fair or something. 'Jolly.' "
but if someone simply fails to speak you can put two emdashes:
>It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning——

[Anonymous No.20761327]

>>20761306
cypress forest. I changed the words a bit in that part and forgot to delete "of".

[Anonymous No.20761334]

>>20761270
>Panting amidst the cypress of forest, on the ancient road, up the hill Veihir went.
is he in a forest, on a road, or on a hill? There isn't an intuitive way for the reader to combine all of these things. You need to find a better way to describe it.
>Dusk was reaching its end and the darkness of night was rapidly approaching.
don't repeat the same thing twice just to make the sentence longer
>He needed to leave Eldarwood and reach the usual meeting spot before night, or else he will get lost till the sun wakes up.
don't state what he "needs" so plainly, express it via how his body moves, or how he turns to look apprehensively, or whatever
>Veihir saw distant fire flickering, he knew he was near and pressed on, he ran as fast as he could.
you're transitioning out of setting the scene, so stop using "saw" or "knew" or "watched"—you're in the character's head. Fire flickers somewhere far off. He doubles his pace.
>Finally out of Eldarwood just before darkness engulfed the sky, with only the light of a torch ,jutting from the door of a wooden hut, lighting his eyesight.
Why was he there in the first place if nothing happens there? The story should start with him emerging from the forest already exhausted. Also your commas are messed up. And don't repeat "light" twice. This sentence is really a mess, structurally.
etc. etc.

[Anonymous No.20761448]

>>20761324
Wanna really get your mind blown? This is my favorite way to use emdash.
>"I think you'll find"—he stuck his fork into the steak—"that I'm a little hard to convince."

[Anonymous No.20761493]

>>20761448
Oh yeah I've seen that too. It's a good one because it shows how the action is even more telling that what he says.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20761561]

>>20760727
an emotionally gripping sports drama.

It's called "Balls Above the World!"

[Anonymous No.20761596]

>>20761561
Wouldn’t surprise me

[Anonymous No.20761601]

>>20760727
I was the southern anon writing the singularity story set in a comfy small town. The wife gets the mark of God and the husband questions everything he's ever believed in his desperate attempt to reject what he does not believe is eternity. I know I've been at this for a long time but I've got more impetus than before.

[Anonymous No.20761614]

>>20761153
read it out loud
maybe get a friend to take one character will you take the other

[Anonymous No.20761669]

What's the name of the trope where a character is treated unfairly or just very unfortunate constantly so that the audience feels empathy towards that character?

[Anonymous No.20761681]

>>20761334
thanks! He's supposed to be going up a slope in an ancient forest, on some kind of ancient road. (like the one in Mirkwood in the hobbit) to reach the mountainous areas. like pic related but upward. I will just rewrite the whole forest-slope-road part. thank you for the other points too, will fix them.

[Anonymous No.20761692]

>>20761669
Cosmic plaything

[Anonymous No.20761721]

>>20761669
Either a scapegoat or collateral damage during a witch-hunt? A reproach I'm not sure how else to think about it. Psalm 69 in the bible uses that kind figure:
>Because for thy sake I have borne reproach; shame hath covered my face.

[Anonymous No.20761743]

>>20761692
Yeah, something like this is what I was thinking

[Anonymous No.20761750]

>>20761743
You can always look up related tropes:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CosmicPlaything

[Anonymous No.20761773]

>>20761020
imo ending that sentence the way you suggest sounds more awkward

[Anonymous No.20761803]

what's a book that handles having two concurrent storylines well? Maybe with a few asides into micro-stories that are physically and temporally separate. Should I just alternate between the two each chapter?

[Anonymous No.20761826]

>>20761750
Thanks mate

[Anonymous No.20761834]

don't mind me, I'm just writing a sex scene

[Anonymous No.20761838]

>>20761803
Call of the Crocodile

[Anonymous No.20761848]

how do you stylize an alarm's speech? Quotation feels wrong, but caps just feels juvenile.
"This is not a drill."
THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

[Anonymous No.20761859]

>>20761834
Remember to use a lot of cringy metaphors.

[Anonymous No.20761873]

>>20761859
I present:
>And there the drama of the sheets reached its climax, wherein a play the old king might die by the hand of his son, there on his bed the curtain raised over blossomed skin.

[Anonymous No.20761876]

>>20761803
From what I've read, Joe Abercrombie's books have pretty good multiple storylines that intersect at times and have strong influences on one another. Some of them happen in the same places at the same time or within days / hours of each other, while others take place half the world away. If I had to pick one go-to author for multi PoV's / storylines, I'd say check Abercrombie out.

[Anonymous No.20761899]

>>20761803
Way of Kings for contemporary fantasy. House of Leaves for experimental stuff. Anna Karenina for classics.

[Anonymous No.20761902]

>>20761838
Lmao. This is actually true.

[Anonymous No.20761914]

>>20761876
Sweet, another person who's read Abercrombie. I second this anon's suggestion.

[Anonymous No.20762151]

How do you guys feel about letting others read longer works, like novels, that you're still in the early stage of? Is it better to wait until you've got a completed first draft?

[Anonymous No.20762184]

>>20762151
I don't bother letting anyone read until I'm at least down three drafts because of the way I draft. I basically have everything in my head and rant on page until it just all makes sense. I do have a little outline to keep track of where I put things and my goals but the first draft tends to miss lots of things.

[Anonymous No.20762208]

>>20761669
grim dark is like that in some ways
no good deed goes unpunished
"arcane" is grim dark
nothing good happens to anyone

[Anonymous No.20762358]

>>20762151
I just toss it into the void and hope someone is bored enough to help me

[Anonymous No.20762365]

Hey /wg/ how can i meme my book into being memed like Call of the Crocodile once I finish writing it

[Anonymous No.20762373]

>>20762365
Buy 4chan ads. Why is this such a mystery? That’s what F Gardner did.

[Anonymous No.20762392]

>>20762365
Go to your local psychiatric institution and ask for an internship / work as an orderly. Observe the sypmtoms of any schizotypal / schizoid / schizophrenic patients you see down to a T. Then, try to emulate their thought patterns in your writing and sprinkle in /x/ memes whenever possible. And viola! You're Gardner #2.

[Anonymous No.20762432]

>>20762365
Here we go again.

Fuck off Gardner.

[Anonymous No.20762542]

any music recs or youtube playlists i can put on in the background while i write?

[Anonymous No.20762548]

>>20760236
fairly often.
I don't mean to come off as a narcissist but I think I am funny.

[Anonymous No.20762551]

>>20762542
What are you into?

[Anonymous No.20762571]

>>20759400
How did you start writing?
How can I start writing?

[Anonymous No.20762575]

>>20762551
i like this "medieval music" playlist a lot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNwv4cH-i5k

conan the barbarian soundtrack, nightcore music, happy hardcore like S3RL, etc. During writing sessions I kinda like to mix it up.

[Anonymous No.20762630]

I've continued with the storywriting. There's something I figured I'd bring along:
I'm making the magical character of the team unable to do any actual magic. My reasoning is that it's similar to how Gandalf got done most of his time - she won't be casting fireballs or chanting to heal someone's wound, but because she's a blessed, pure being her presence itself is harmful to evil critters, and also something with making her somehow tanglibly lucky?

[Anonymous No.20762707]

>>20759987
In case you didn't notice, the West is currently in the grips of rabid sinophobia at the moment. Why don't you think of something else that might tempt a bite?

[Anonymous No.20762730]

>>20761153
you are at a forked path and wondering...

the solution is simple, just write the damn dialogue no matter how crummy it is. you're going to go back and edit the shit out of it anyway. never stop just because you dont know how to "make it sound natural."

just get to the end. that's the only thing that matters in your first draft.

[Anonymous No.20762736]

>>20759400
Everything is dead
August is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
The earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20762771]

>>20761185
I can gather this kind of shit advice that appears on /wg/, put it into a book, sell it on Amazon and make a fortune.

Those kind of books don't need to give good advice they just need to give advice that 'sounds' good and that's 90% of what you see on here.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20762784]

>>20761596
It shouldn't, because it's happening. Already planning the movie deal with Netflix.

[Anonymous No.20762826]

>>20762784
Cringe. What do your stories even teach?

[Anonymous No.20762870]

>>20761803
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard-Boiled_Wonderland_and_the_End_of_the_World

[Anonymous No.20762876]

>>20759512
>how is it going
vodka is still cheap so it's going well.

[Anonymous No.20762893]

>>20760414
lmao promised neverland already did this better than you. idk have you tried being original and not just consooming and regurgitating mass media? boring people write boring stories.
>>20760736
>Every author tells the same story over and over.
false
>>20762542
lofi girl

[Anonymous No.20762909]

>>20762542
For whatever reason Passion Pit - Chunk of Change songs have always been my creative energy songs

[Anonymous No.20762916]

>>20762365
Write a book as crazy as this
>>20762392
Also this
>>20762432
Just go to /r/ writing, mate. Your spams are getting old.

[Anonymous No.20762917]

>>20762893
>lofi girl
can recommend

[Anonymous No.20762926]

>>20762916
I kinda agree desu. If you’re not down with F Gardner then fucking off to Reddit is probably a better place for you to fit in.

[Anonymous No.20762941]

>>20762916
>>20762926
Seems pretty apt when you realize that the main guy hating Gardner has a 10 year old Reddit account where he posts all of his stories.

[Anonymous No.20762968]

>>20762909
Passion Pit absolutely fucks.
>>20762542
For my rec, a Zen album. Not none of these "10 hour Zen" videos on YouTube where it's just 10 hours of the same song. Get a real Zen album. The Zen Garden video from 11 years ago is my favorite.

[Anonymous No.20763026]

What's better? YA fantasy OR YA Science fiction fantasy?

[Anonymous No.20763075]

>>20763026
fantasy where it turns out the fantasy world actually takes place after the fall of a hyper-advanced sci-fi society

[Anonymous No.20763122]

What's wrong with third person omniscient viewpoint? I don't get it. You get to see everyone's thoughts.

[Anonymous No.20763125]

>>20762893
Dude Kim Kardashian did it to catch which of her friends was leaking photos of her baby, it's been a tired trope for decades now

https://www.businessinsider.com/kim-kardashian-fake-baby-photos-2013-6

[Anonymous No.20763136]

>>20762571
Read a lot. Read from various writers about writing and apply yourself. Have stories to tell and get familiar with the creative process.

[Anonymous No.20763140]

>>20763122
who says there's anything wrong with it?

[Anonymous No.20763147]

>>20763125
is it really a "tired trope" if it's something that people in the real world do consistently over a long period of time? that's like saying driving cars is a tired trope because people have been doing it so much for the past century

[Anonymous No.20763158]

Does this make sense?

It was good to see Franko take care of someone. He was a natural but like anything else, if you didn’t practice, you got rusty. And you were always the last one to know. It had been a while since he had someone to practice with.

[Anonymous No.20763170]

>>20763147
I think the issue is trying to portray it as this grandmaster chess move when it's handguide territory for anyone with too many friends. I think there's nothing wrong with it as long as you characterize it as something more mundane and not this epic "gotcha" with an "I planned this allllll along!" speech

[Anonymous No.20763177]

>>20763158
you need a comma after natural and optionally after but
i might phrase it like "It came naturally to him, but without consistent practice, even his skills would get rusty."
no idea what the third sentence is or why it's there. it doesn't make sense

[Anonymous No.20763180]

>>20763158
>>20763177
oh, also, it should be "had had someone"

[Anonymous No.20763220]

>>20763140
I asked which perspective I should consider writing in and someone here said 3rd person Omniscient is not a legitimate perspective.
Is there any reason why people think this?

[Anonymous No.20763233]

>>20760237
>>20759909
>>20760910
thanks peeps

[Anonymous No.20763260]

>>20763220
Omniscient POV is less personal, the reader will feel more distant than a third person limited with a closer distance to particular characters in a given scene. Going from one thought to another in Omniscient is also called head-hopping and can give readers whiplash as it can be confusing. One of the often cited examples of this is Dune. I have not read the ones by Frank Herbert but I've heard that he did it well as it just worked with the plot.
You might want to think about the kind of story you have first before deciding on the POV. Some stories are just better suited to others.

[Anonymous No.20763304]

Which famous writer do you write like, /wg/?
>https://iwl.me

[Anonymous No.20763316]

>>20763304
not sure how to feel about this

[Anonymous No.20763347]

Have you ever written a friendship between two characters in such a way that it legitimately makes you feel sad and broken when one of them dies? Not to suck my own dick, but fuck me does writing drunk produce some kino shit. Sure its barely legible, but some hard editing will spruce this up right and proper.

[Anonymous No.20763352]

I'm going to write a sci-fi novel. Any feedback on the intro?

Slinker's brine was hot and rolling. He cracked the shrimps from out their plastic and threw them in the mix. And so nimbly, with his eyes on the pot -- oh Slinker, you sharpshooter, you unappreciated dunker -- he released with a flourish the plastic case, which spun direct above his sweat-slicked shoulder into the mouth of the refuse chute. This he was sure of from the echoes that reverberated up. And if we were to descend into its world of mulch and matter, and brought with us a light to pierce the pungent dark constriction, we'd read on the label at the summit of the heap the warnings of Pyskomantic Crustaceal Meat, to be boiled at the risk of your own mental integrity.

It was the eyes that did it, the beady filmy things, which popped and hissed and released their compounds. With an ear to the steam he awaited those pops, and on their signal breathed deep the mineral aromas infused with ocean secrets no Slinker was ever supposed to sniff. The vapours were to Slinker's senses as the fissures' issues were to the third-eye foresight of elder oracles. That is to say, Slinker saw beyond the polyflexal sidings of his high-stilted hut and out into the yonder shacks of all who simmered similarly in this the hour of the breakfast ceremonials. That is to say, specifically -- for much mental discipline had given Slinker the capacity to direct these abilities to specifics -- into the shack of velvet interiors in which padded the soft-stepping feet of Marillion Kress, Earthling of uncommon elegance.

[Anonymous No.20763353]

A short scene I wrote in roughly 200 words. The goal was to make use of the ABDCE structure.

*
I took a deep breath and hit the hive with my stick. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a thousand bees taking revenge upon my body. I had no particular dislike of bees prior to that day, in fact, I even like them. But having got a reputation for being a wimp among my mates, I was willing to take any opportunity I could to prove them wrong. The bees must have stung me a dozen times in the five or six seconds I needed to outrun them. When I got where my mates were, nobody was there. I was left alone, my whole body burning and slowly swelling with pain. I caused quite a shock when I got home and could barely walk because of the nausea. My efforts to breath left me exhausted, to the point my entire vision became blurry and, quickly, I found myself in darkness. I woke up the next morning being in a hospital bed. It turns out, I have a slight allergy to bees. Although it was a good scare, there's nothing to worry about now. I only need to take medicine for the next few days, and find better friends.
*
>>20763304
>I write like Stephenie Meyer
I'm ok with this.

[Anonymous No.20763359]

>>20763304
OH yeah! I'm the Stainless Steel Rat, bitches!
As well as "Make Room, Make Room", i.e. the book that became "Onions Green".

[Anonymous No.20763363]

>>20763359
>Onions
Eh? I typed "Onions Green". I don't even have autocorrect turned on. That was weird.

[Anonymous No.20763366]

I got bored and made this meme image. It's regarding methods for your first few sentences in a novel.
Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.20763370]

>>20763363
>Onions
S! o! y! l! e! n! t!
DId 4chan start doing auto-correct...?

[Anonymous No.20763374]

>>20763370
Onions Green

>>20763366
The 'exposition' one made me chuckle

[Anonymous No.20763380]

>>20763177
last sentence implies he hasn't had anybody to take care of.

[Anonymous No.20763381]

>>20763370
That wordfilter's been around for quite a while now

[Anonymous No.20763382]

>>20763366
>alright
god this triggers me way more than it has any right to

[Anonymous No.20763388]

>>20763380
i know that. that one makes perfect sense. i said the third sentence

[Anonymous No.20763392]

>>20763304
Can I mention this in my query letters to agents? LOL

[Anonymous No.20763394]

>>20763380
>>20763388
unless the third sentence is meant to mean that the one who is out of practice is always the last one to know that they're out of practice, in which case that is just objectively wrong and worded very weirdly

[Anonymous No.20763402]

>>20763304
I get a different answer each time I paste in a different short story.
I don't know about this one...either I'm destined for greatness, or this tool is bogus.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20763403]

>>20762826
What do my stories teach?
It doesn't teach shit.
It's just basketball with JoJo vibes.
And also kind of gay.
But JoJo is gay.
A lot of JoJo fans don't know that they are watching a gay show and are secretly gay.

[Anonymous No.20763406]

>>20763304
>Mary Shelley
Strangely accurate considering where my horse fucker story goes.

[Anonymous No.20763407]

>>20763316
>Chuck Palahniuk
i got that pasting in some text from our least favorite shill spammer...

[Anonymous No.20763414]

>>20763407
i'm a newfag here (came from /a/ last night). is that the gardner guy? the plot of that book seemed schizo, but i've not read it, so maybe the prose is easy to digest, since that seems to be the case with palahniuk's works (and mine, apparently)

[Anonymous No.20763428]

>>20763304
I got another hit on Harry Harrison...but then I got this.
And this is just blasphemy.
Kurt Vonnegut is one of my literary heroes.
I'm not even vaguely worthy.
This tool was fun and all, but I need to stop using it.

[Anonymous No.20763437]

>>20763381
What does 4chan have against "S-o-y-l-e-n-t Green"?
Hopefully that doesn't become "Onions Green" again.

[Anonymous No.20763444]

>>20763437
surely at this point you're just trolling? if not, lurk moar or google

[Anonymous No.20763446]

>>20763437
It was put in place to mess with spammers, mainly on /v/, but the filter is sitewide

[Anonymous No.20763448]

>someone comments that my story is getting darker
>I say oh yeah it will be lighter past chapter 20
>I just wrote 2 chapters
>the second one is about what it means to be human
>If a soul is born in the same process as a child formed in the womb does that make it a living thinking human soul if it believe itself to be?
I have my ideas about where I want to take the story, but I want to make it lighter.
I think I will just rewrite the chapter so that other people don't know about it, letting me set that up for later instead of just having it revealed now and the conflict coming from that.
And at least some of this stems from my choice to make the MC be messing with souls, though at this point its been animal souls, not human.

[Anonymous No.20763457]

>>20763414
I’ve only read Call of the Crocodile and Call of the Arcade but yea they were easy to digest and readable. If you can get past the unnecessary commas it reads fine. I actually liked them both a lot mainly due to how absolutely schizo tier they were.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20763462]

>>20763366
Well done.

[Anonymous No.20763475]

>>20763304
Well then...

[Anonymous No.20763488]

>>20763122
It's a lazy way to show all perspectives.

[Anonymous No.20763500]

>>20763304
>Which famous writer do you write like

Considering this is /lit/? Probably F Gardner.

[Anonymous No.20763502]

>>20763122
Very difficult to adapt to TV/movie scripts.
You DO want to sell the TV/movie rights to your work, don't you?
That's where the real money is.

[Anonymous No.20763503]

>>20763304
Bullshit website. I put the bible in and then my writing and both times it gave me Mario Puzo. Next time don't post links to garbage websites.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20763510]

>>20763304
https://iwl.me/s/ac075e8f

I write like Hemmingway.
Eat a dick, haters.

[Anonymous No.20763526]

Anyone know when the August issue is set to come out? I’m still working on a piece that I wanna submit, but I don’t know if there’s a deadline.

[Anonymous No.20763553]

>>20763304
>Gertrude Stein
>Ray Bradbury
>George Orwell
>Raymond Chandler
>Oscar Wilde
Come the fuck on, which part of my book do I have to post for me to get James Joyce?

[Anonymous No.20763563]

>>20763366
p good, except for all the spelling/grammar errors

[Anonymous No.20763580]

>>20763563
Fuck of

[Anonymous No.20763632]

>>20763526
On that note...is /ffa/ still on?
I have more to submit.

[Anonymous No.20763666]

>>20763304
I pasted an excerpt from Tom Sawyer and it said I write like Mark Twain.

Guess it's not complete trash.

[Anonymous No.20763707]

>>20763666
No, you simply fed it the training material it used to come up with these judgments.

[Anonymous No.20763733]

>>20762571
>how did you start writing
I've read a lot, so I got all kinds of ideas about my own would, and I eventually decided to put my thoughts into words.
>how can I start writing
open google docs or notepad and just start writing, your first chapter is probably going to be shit, so you refine it until you feel you know what you want to do and then you continue from there.

[Anonymous No.20763748]

>>20763304
Most recently written chapter got James Joyce.
another chapter which I wrote in first person said JRR Tolkien.
4 chapters ago it says Gertrude Stein.
I am almost tempted to run all my chapters through it and seeing if there is a pattern to them.

[Anonymous No.20763819]

The Irvine Hotel has PBR on sale, three bucks a can. The bar is surrounded by neon VLT machines and thumb-tacked flyers for fish fries and biker rallies. We split a bucket of short cans for eighteen bucks all-in. The toilet looks like it could give me novel sexually transmitted diseases and the only food available is from a popcorn machine that looks like it was last cleaned by a suffragette. We guzzle down the cheapest beers we’ve ever ordered at a bar; they’re also, not incidentally, the best we’ve ever had.

When we’re finishing up our last cans, a woman comes storming into the bar solo. She’s mid-thirties wearing leopard print yoga pants and a hot mess of a top bun.

“Something strong,” she barks at the bartender. “Wait, is that Cliff in the back? Who’s in the office, is it Cliff? Tell Cliff I want to…” She pauses to burp, clear her throat. “Tell Cliff I want to drink with him.”

“Maybe a glass of water first, Kim?” suggests the bartender.

“Give me a fucking break,” she spits back. “My boyfriend is in jail for touching my daughter. Can you believe that? For touching my baby. I need a real drink.” The bartender shakes his head and slides her a glass of something clear. She takes a sip, sloshes the liquid around the rim of the glass, inspects it closely, then throws it in the bartender’s face, splashing his hair down to the collar of his t-shirt, now stained a darker shade of grey.

“The hell’s a matter with you, Kim? Get the fuck out of here.”

“Don’t be a baby,” she slurs. “It’s water.”

“Get out.”

“You know, I still love him. After all he did, I still love the fucking asshole.”

“Get out!”

“Hey, Cliff.” She hops up onto the bar and wiggles her ass against the counter. “Hey, Cliff, want some of this? Don’t fuckin’ lie to me now, Cliff. I’m done with lies.”

Ben stands up to leave, and I chug the last of my beer, grateful to have paid up front.

The bartender walks out from behind the bar and grabs the woman by the wrist; she promptly shakes the man off of her with a whip of her arm.

“If you don’t get the fuck out here, right now, I’m calling the police,” he shouts.

A bell chime rings: the sound of the door as it shuts behind Ben. I follow his lead, throw my bucket on my woozy head, and get back on my bike. The lady stumbles out of the bar, screaming something unintelligible, as we pull away from the premises. She picks a child-sized bicycle off the ground, laying unlocked, and starts riding away before falling flat on her stomach. She gets back up, tosses it into the middle of the road, then shouts something that I cannot hear because we’re already too far away.

It occurs to me that I’ve never rode my bicycle while day drunk before. Or day buzzed, or day confused. Whatever this state is. Time passes faster than usual, and, before long, sobriety wrests control from the throes of immediate feeling and I return to a bleak state of understanding.

[Anonymous No.20763830]

>>20763819
for context, this is part of a novel about a cross-Canada bicycle tour I did with a friend a few years ago. This scene takes place in a tavern on the side of the highway in rural Alberta (pic rel). It's a bildungsroman that explores, primarily, masculinity and mental health in our atomized and digitally alienated youth landscape. This dialogue is still very rough.

It's a day by day account of our journey across the country, and it explores my own mental health progression (and regression) along the way. I'm hoping to make it a Gen Z/Millennial spin on Zen and the Art, but less Eastern philosophy and more a commentary on finding ways to adopt a pro-social worldview amid an increasingly desolate world. It's about finding purpose in the continuing, and finding material ways to overcome immaterial struggle. It’s about the only alternative to wallowly helplessly, giving in to despair and allowing alienation and suffering to turn you spiritless. How the physical mirrors the mental - for instance, the winding undulations of the road represent various fluxuations in my state of mind (e.g., by virtue of optical illusion, hills appear far steeper from afar than when you're actually surmounting them; when riding down the highway in heavy fog, the road always appears to be straight - you aren't aware that you're turning until you've already turned and you view your path retrospectively). I'm also playing with the prose style. The novel starts off staccato with short sentences and fragments to represent my anxiety and closed sense of self, gradually becoming more relaxed, protracted, and expressive through stretched and elongated sentences as time passes and I open myself to the world and how I feel and perceive it to both my riding partner and to the reader The ultimate goal of this novel is to help people who need it; to help the reader not hate him or herself, and to help them find reasons to keep going, and maybe even turn around.

[Anonymous No.20763860]

Describe your cast members in one sentence in a way that communicates the gist. For example, the protagonist
>A frog in a well knows not of the vast ocean.
What do you think I mean?

[Anonymous No.20763867]

I recently realized that my all of my writing, across various stories, has 4 "stock characters"
1. Badass edgelord gray hero/villain man
2. Happy-go-lucky, outwardly cheerful and internally depressed/unhappy hero man
3. Ruthless successful woman dedicated to a higher ideal (a religion, a state, a company, etc.)
4. Woman who sacrifices everything, is tortured/humiliated/etc, and in return what she loves is saved

Is this bad? How can I develop more nuanced/different characters?

[Anonymous No.20763870]

>>20760736
My stories end up being about how we aren't who we think we are, that an identity is rarely concrete, that free will exists and is a blessing and a curse, and everyone is ultimately the chosen one; all it takes is a great awakening to realize the power to make the change we want to see. There are seemingly endless dimensions within as there are without; as above, so below and all that jazz. Coincidentally, my characters are always depraved and hated at first and find their potential for great works, only to fail in the end because of a lack of an objective moral system, which had lead them on a path of short-sighted conquest, or hubris.

[Anonymous No.20763872]

>>20763819
>PBR on sale, three bucks a can.
Even in Biden's Amerikkka that is straight up a crime against humanity.

[Anonymous No.20763882]

>>20763872
dirt cheap for Canadian standards. Can't find any beer less than 5 bucks in a bar here

[Anonymous No.20763885]

>>20763867
>Is this bad?
Nope

[Anonymous No.20763906]

It's in a museum

[Anonymous No.20763959]

>>20759400
Writing on the phone sucks ass. And it also gives an excuse to not write.

[Anonymous No.20763960]

>>20763959
Any tips?

[Anonymous No.20763991]

>>20763304
>Dan Brown
Aww... I'm a shit writer..

[Anonymous No.20764056]

>>20763304
I tried two different pieces, one was the snails from last thread and the other was a post-apocalyptic thing I did the thread before and here's what I got

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764084]

>>20763867
Embrace the archetypes.
They just need to be likeable.
(or purposely unlikeable)

[Anonymous No.20764106]

>>20763959
>>20763960
Don't modern phones have a feature that lets you type with the microphone?

[Anonymous No.20764113]

>>20763304

What are the odds, we’ve got the same guy.

[Anonymous No.20764145]

How do I get better at editing? I write a sentence think it's perfect, then my friend comes along, completely rewrites it and it's 10x better. What's the secret?

[Anonymous No.20764155]

>>20764145
read more. a lot more

[Anonymous No.20764159]

>>20764145
wait atleast 3 days before trying to edit it

[Anonymous No.20764173]

Day 49 editing
Chapter 64 schmicked
>>20759495
Very well.
>farcical verbage intensifies

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764175]

>>20764145
Keep reading and writing.
Consistently.
Over a long period of time.
Read quality shit.
Read old shit, even if it's boring.
Don't try to emulate, but understand what words can do.
Then accept you are not one of them and stick to a young adult style of writing.
Pepper in a quality description here and there.
Keep it simple 95% of the time.
You'll be fine.
In 5-10 years.

[Anonymous No.20764178]

>>20764173
isn't it verbiage?

[Anonymous No.20764181]

>>20764178
Yes, I learned that word from Halo 2

[Anonymous No.20764185]

>>20764181
i can never remember where i learn any words

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764191]

>>20759495
If you don't find satisfaction in a journey towards excellence then you are either a simple minded bitch, or writing porn.

Put that quote in front of a sunset and hang it on your fucking wall, faggot.

[Anonymous No.20764194]

how much profanity is too much profanity when it comes to YA works? i naturally tend towards the "swears like a sailor" end of things, and so when i try to write dialogue which seems natural to me, there's a decent amount of profanity in it. is this actually an issue? i'm obviously not doing it to the degree of the nigger guy in that one story, but it's not exactly PG either. does that matter for the YA genre?

[Anonymous No.20764197]

I've self published 2x 60k word novels.
The first generally gets good reviews, 4 or 5 stars. The second hasn't picked up much traction but has a couple 5 star reviews.
I'm soon to publish a third.
These books are all comedic-ish fantasy. I'm going to start a new novel, a serious sci-fi cosmic horror in a dystopian future.
Should I publish under the same pen name, or use a new one?

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764198]

>>20764194
Probably doesn't matter.
On the off chance you get hooked up with a publisher then their editors will tone down whatever they have a problem with.

[Anonymous No.20764200]

>>20764191
>not doing the things you like doing is a journey towards excellence
No it isn't

[Anonymous No.20764203]

>>20764194
swearing is a crutch for hacks

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764207]

>>20764200
Good evening, you simple minded bitch.
Write any porn recently?

[Anonymous No.20764214]

>>20764203
i'm not doing it as a writing tool or literary device or something. i have just ended up speaking like that in my daily life (probably from growing up on 4chan, in all honesty), and so when i write dialogue, i just write what i would say in that situation (not for every character obviously, but you get the idea). i don't care whether it's a "crutch" i'm just more concerned whether it would be off-putting to readers or publishers or whatever

[Anonymous No.20764217]

>>20764207
I have no idea what you're upset about but since you're namefagging I'm going to assume you're an attentionwhore. This is an anonymous board you know.

[Anonymous No.20764219]

>>20764217
>This is an anonymous board you know.
it's not and has never been. it's "a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images" in which users "do not need to register an account before participating in the community" i.e. they are provided with the OPTION of anonymity. if users weren't meant to be able to name or tripfag, then the function wouldn't be available in the first place

[Anonymous No.20764221]

>>20764219
It's there to filter out attentionwhores.

[Anonymous No.20764222]

>>20764221
then filter or anonymize them instead of feeding into the problem by specifically bringing attention to the fact that they're name/tripfagging

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764277]

>>20764217
I never get upset.
Bask in the comfort of your mediocrity.
The world's population has exploded. They won't allow this to continue.
Even the necessary grunts will be replaced by machines.
Only those who achieve excellence shall be spared.
And there you sit, writing porn and talking about "doing the things you like"
You sicken me.

[Anonymous No.20764311]

>>20763304
two different parts.

[Anonymous No.20764424]

My manuscript is now 100120 words.

[Anonymous No.20764522]

What do you think is the best way to copy a writing style (other than rereading over and over)?

[Anonymous No.20764528]

>>20764522
deconstruct grammarwise

[Anonymous No.20764540]

>>20764522
learn everything about the author and LARP as him while writing

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20764562]

>>20764522
Wait for AI to get better, then just give it a summary of the story you would like to write with the instruction to do it in the style of the writer you wish to mimic.

[Anonymous No.20764650]

>>20764562
The only thing I will use AI for is playing.
There is a difference between using a tool to do something and depending on it to do it.
I want to write a book, to have the satisfaction of having created a world, characters, themes and situations that can only come from me.

I want to give it my all and not just write to clutter up libraries or device storage.

(And let's not lie, it will take a looooooong time for artificial intelligence to make a good story and not only a coherent one).

[Anonymous No.20764656]

>>20764528
What do you mean by that?

>>20764540
Good idea, thank you.

[Anonymous No.20764667]

>>20764656
adjective conjunction adjective, pronoun noun verb adjective

[Anonymous No.20764689]

>>20764656
What are the 9 word classes?
Every word belongs to a word class, which summarises the ways in which it can be used in grammar.

There are four major word classes: verb, noun, adjective, adverb.

There are five other word classes: determiners, preposition, pronoun, conjunction, interjection.

So there are nine word classes (or parts of speech) in total. Here are some examples of the different word classes that you might come across:

Verbs are action or state words like: run, work, study, be, seem.
Nouns are words for people, places or things like:mother, town, Rome, car, dog.
Adjectives are words that describe nouns, like: kind, clever, expensive.
Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs, like: quickly, back, ever, badly, away generally, completely.
Determiners are a word that introduces a noun. It always comes before a noun, not after, and it also comes before any other adjectives used to describe the noun. E.g. The bunny went home, or I ate the chocolate cookie for dessert.
Prepositions are words usually in front of a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element, like: after, down, near, of, plus, round.
Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns, like: me, you, his, it, this, that, mine, yours, who, what.
Conjunctions are a word that joins words, phrases, clauses or sentences, like:but, and, yet, or, because, nor, although, since, unless, while, where.
Interjections have no grammatical value - words like: ah, hey, oh, ouch, um, well

[Anonymous No.20764691]

>>20763304
I also got Arthur C Clarke. I think I got Joyce because one of my characters is named Joyce after a relative's first name.

[Anonymous No.20764720]

>>20761313
It's easier to explain to the audience how the powers function if the MC is learning along with them.

[Anonymous No.20764735]

>>20763304
...Huh. Interesting.

[Anonymous No.20764739]

got a brilliant idea for a book but I think I'm gonna just keep it in my head for years until it warps into something completely unrecognizable because I am a lazy POS.

[Anonymous No.20764767]

>>20763304
Huh. Funnily enough, I've never even read Harry Pothead.

[Anonymous No.20764780]

>busy with several projects
>get an idea for a new story
>don't have time to write it but I figure I'll write down any ideas and get to it when I have the time
>manage to write down quite a lot of notes for how things should go over the course of several months
>finally get around to finding time for it a year later
>can't decipher what half the notes are supposed to mean

[Anonymous No.20764926]

>>20764780
I have plenty of ideas on the back burner. My issue isn't that I can't remember what I meant, it's that the stories are increasingly dark and perverted. At least the tone I am writing doesn't lend itself to erotica so I think I am more going for weirdness if not pity. If I'm not careful I will end up with the Mellick audience.

[Anonymous No.20764934]

Why is writing in first person so much easier?

[Anonymous No.20764971]

>>20764934
When I was much younger, I thought the same, but now I find third person a helluva lot easier. Don't know why.

[Anonymous No.20765176]

>make some writing prompts about issues raised in my story by looking at what other novels and non-fiction has written about it so I can have some intertextuality
>???
>write 15k words in the process
>now I have to figure out where the text fits into the story

[Anonymous No.20765185]

>>20765176
>>make some writing prompts about issues raised in my story by looking at what other novels and non-fiction has written about it so I can have some intertextuality
That sounds like an interesting exercise but I don't totally get what you mean. Could you elaborate?

[Anonymous No.20765200]

>>20763403
Morals faggot my stories teach morals. Holy shit your stories sound worthless. They’ll be forgotten before they’re finished being read.

[Anonymous No.20765211]

>>20765176
Sasha really hit the wall fast

[Anonymous No.20765220]

>>20765185
So I take notes in margins when I read, and any big ideas that I agree with or want to add to or challenge I make note of it. After a few months I go back to the books and review them all and throw the quotes into a document with the source and page number.
Then I write down why I think the idea is plot relevant and then start writing on the idea. Sometimes I will just quote it word for word but it's better to write it in your own style and perspective if you can.
>By wound, tho from their place by violence moved. (Paradise Lost, Milton, book 6.406)
This idea that Satan only enters people who have harmed themselves plays into the influence the foil plays on the protagonist in my story, and there is a scene where to protag is coming to terms that his injury was not an accident. That's an example of what I mean.

[Anonymous No.20765264]

>>20765220
Cool, thanks for explaining. I can see how that could create some productive connections.

[Anonymous No.20765307]

>>20763352
>Any feedback on the intro?
Just my personal opinion, but the prose is a little dense. It takes work to read.
Your audience might like it, idk.

[Anonymous No.20765328]

is this good dialogue? Why and why not and how do I improve it?

The landline rang; he picked it up immediately.
“Bernie,” it was his daughter. The lightness of her voice flowed like cold milk.
“Hey,” he said with a smile.
“Don’t call me ever again, please.”
“What? Why?” He frowned.
“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t respect you, and I don’t like you - and I definitely do not love you. Since I’m starting college soon, I’ve realised that trying to keep this charade of a relationship going is a detriment to my mental health. Goodbye, Bernie.”

[Anonymous No.20765356]

>>20765328
>how do I improve it?
yeah, it doesn't sound authentic
read it out loud
if you can, get someone else to read the girl's part
how do you fix it? read a lot
find a book you like and study how the author does dialogue

[Anonymous No.20765358]

>>20765328
Most women are a lot more vague and terse. Unless she's supposed to be that specific personality of melodramatic, high-strung, and explicitly verbose, it's a bit clunky/uncanny.
I'd just do
“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t respect you, I don't like you - and I definitely do not love you. Goodbye. "

[Anonymous No.20765391]

Can anyone give me feedback on my dialogue? I'm trying to write more naturalistically.

>"If we look at it closer," he continued, "we are both acting very foolishly, very culpably. Two very noble natures, both of which have the closest claims on our affection, we are leaving exposed to pain and distress, merely to avoid exposing ourselves to a chance of danger. If this is not to be called selfish, what is? You take Ottilie. Let me have the Captain; and, for a short period, at least, let the trial be made."

>"We might venture it," said Charlotte, thoughtfully, "if the danger were only to ourselves. But do you think it prudent to bring Ottilie and the Captain into a situation where they must necessarily be so closely intimate; the Captain, a man no older than yourself, of an age (I am not saying this to flatter you) when a man becomes first capable of love and first deserving of it, and a girl of Ottilie's attractiveness?"

>"I cannot conceive how you can rate Ottilie so high," replied Edward. "I can only explain it to myself by supposing her to have inherited your affection for her mother. Pretty she is, no doubt. I remember the Captain observing it to me, when we came back last year, and met her at your aunt's. Attractive she is,--she has particularly pretty eyes; but I do not know that she made the slightest impression upon me."

>"That was quite proper in you," said Charlotte, "seeing that I was there; and, although she is much younger than I, the presence of your old friend had so many charms for you, that you overlooked the promise of the opening beauty. It is one of your ways; and that is one reason why it is so pleasant to live with you."

[Anonymous No.20765419]

How do I learn what it’s like to love so my writing can feel more authentic?

[Anonymous No.20765459]

>>20765391
I love it man. It's naturalistic if people actually spoke like that, but concessions must be made.

[Anonymous No.20765592]

>>20765419
read romance?

[Anonymous No.20765595]

>>20765419
Pay for the GFE with a high-class prostitute

[Anonymous No.20765622]

Why am I supposed to “kill my darlings” when revising? If I make it a point to get rid of every passage I like then won’t I just be left with the weakest parts?

[Anonymous No.20765628]

>>20765391
Nobody talks this scholarly when speaking about everyday subjects.from what I gathered it is also between two people of equal or similar social standing, and they're close friends as well. They'll speak with more slang and quicker pace.

>Hey Charlotte, the Captain has an eye for Ottie.
>You noticed it as well?
>Every hog farmer to the man in the throne seen it. I personally do not see the beauty.
>She has her charms. But the Captain is not much older than yourself. I do not see how he'll be capable of loving a girl as young as Ottie.
>Men never fall in love, the create it.

[Anonymous No.20765656]

>>20765622
"Kill your darlings" refers to removing passages you like...if they don't support the story.

[Anonymous No.20765674]

>>20765391
soul
>>20765628
soulless , stop trying to force everything to be contemporary garbage

[Anonymous No.20765699]

>>20765391
>>20765628
Both are incredibly soulless. One is underwritten and the other is overwritten to the point where it becomes a chore. Stop masturbating, be entertaining. Entertain me entertainer.

[Anonymous No.20765705]

>>20765699
Well if watching me masturbate isn’t entertaining to you then I don’t know what to say other than that you’re probably a faggot.

[Anonymous No.20765720]

>>20765391
You don’t observe to someone.
Is this some historical setting?

[Anonymous No.20765956]

>>20765419
You'll know when you feel it.

[Anonymous No.20765966]

How to earn money writing on kdp

[Anonymous No.20766050]

>>20765966
Write a book first

[Anonymous No.20766058]

>>20765966
there's a lot of videos on youtube about this topic

[Anonymous No.20766160]

>Opening chapter is 6.3k words
Hm. Maybe I should dial it down a bit.

[Anonymous No.20766180]

4 hours down on writing today but now I'm experiencing an aura so I have to take a break because I can barely see or concentrate. It'll be gone in a bit.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20766216]

>>20765200
I hope the moral it teaches is related to not being a cock sucking twat.

[Anonymous No.20766220]

>>20766160
Mine is 9.2k, what's "normal"?

[Anonymous No.20766242]

>>20766160
No fucking clue, but I'm going off of my boy Abercrombie's chapter wordcounts, which generally range from 1.7 -6k, but his openers are kinda short, around ~2k from the 3 books I checked.

[Anonymous No.20766248]

>>20766220
Between 1500 to 5000 words. Adjust it according to your pacing. There are plenty of classic lit books that don't play by these standards though.

[Anonymous No.20766258]

>>20766220
>>20766242
Replied to my own post kek.

[Anonymous No.20766267]

>>20766248
>>20766258
fug. guess I should probably debloat and start getting outside opinions.

[Anonymous No.20766294]

>>20765628
What YA does to a man.

[Anonymous No.20766303]

>>20765328
>The lightness of her voice flowed like cold milk.
delete this,

it's the hallmark of a novice to make use of unnecesary metaphors.

Ignore the others.
Nobody can tell you if the dialogue is good or bad. The dialogue is supposed to fit the character. We cannot tell if the dialogue is ok without reading more about the characters.
Do the characters speak like that in the rest of the story? That's the only question you need to ask yourself. Even the most awkward dialogue will work if you show that is is a quirk of the speaker, and this must be revealed in other dialogues,and in the psyche implicit of your characters.

[Anonymous No.20766315]

>>20766267
If there are multiple scenes in your chapters you can just break them into different chapters. If you plan on working with an editor at all they might have some advice for you on the best sections to break at.

[Anonymous No.20766321]

>>20766216
Ironic

[Anonymous No.20766518]

>he rounded the corner
>he rounded a corner
why do both sound right, even when "the" corner is being mentioned for the first time? Or am I just dumb.

[Anonymous No.20766557]

Pretty much all my ideas revolve around a genre I like but disatisfied with when it comes to the creative output of what currently exists.

Be it fantasy, superheroes, sci-fi, etc.

My motivation to write is 'This is how it could be done better'.

Don't know if that's a valid enough reason to tell a story. 'Only way to do it right is to do it yourself' mentality.

Not saying I actually could do it better, just the intent.

[Anonymous No.20766594]

>>20766557
>My motivation to write is 'This is how it could be done better'.
same, it's difficult to even watch a movie or show anymore and actually be satisfied with it enough to not want to write my own version

[Anonymous No.20766711]

>character fulfills their plot purpose and arc
>kill them off because I don't know what else to do with them
>story nears closing
>bring them back for a happy ending

I do this like 3 times in my story, is it too much? It's not in close succession and all the fakeout deaths and survival reveals make sense, at least I hope.

[Anonymous No.20766760]

I'm a digital artist, I think I'm pretty decent, got my degree in illustration and all, people say I draw nice and I'm satisfied with my work

But I would LOVE to write some stories for some characters I want to design

The thing is I know I want to design characters based on mystic symbolisms, but I don't have a story for them, which is like starting to make a cake by it's frosting rather than by the base ingredients

I know I want these characters (Because I like esoteric themes on an aesthetical level and because I think the idea is marketable enough for me) but I don't know how to flesh them out into a story

What should I do? Where should I start?

(Context if you want to know: I learned about Birth Charts, and even though I don't believe in astrology, I found the concept fascinating and wanted to make conceptualize characters from signs and astral bodies "How would Saturn look as a person?" type of thing
Then I started to daydream about "How would Tarot cards look as characters?" just for fun. I talked to someone about it and he told me "Oh! It would work great as a Sakura Card Captor type of story" and got me thinking of how I can incorporate these... proto-ideas into a story, specially since I don't know anything about writing, less than average I would say)

[Anonymous No.20766762]

>>20764934
Because you're a shitter.

[Anonymous No.20766779]

>>20765328
>The lightness of her voice flowed like cold milk.
huh?

[Anonymous No.20766836]

>>20766760
>Where should I start?

a lot of writers start at the end and write backwards. Endings often being the hard part.
So you could start with your symbols and expand or extrapolate things from there.

[Anonymous No.20766844]

>>20766557
>'This is how it could be done better'.

a lot of writers start with that idea in mind
so go for it

[Anonymous No.20766872]

Whats the deal with Royal Road?
Why does it seem like most of the rising stars are lit rpgs?
Can normal stories become successful on there or is it all the DnD crap?

[Anonymous No.20766906]

>>20760421
I once took a bunch of sleeping pills and drove in the highway. I got scared, couldn't sleep and drove back home.

[Anonymous No.20766973]

>>20765622
Those parts aren't weak.Your darlings are weak. We have a tendency to over-value our purple passages so it's hard to judge them objectively. The rule of thumb is a sound one. Kill Your Darlings.

Don't let your prose get in the way of the story.

[Anonymous No.20766988]

>>20765391

If it's a period piece, it's more or less fine.

Minor quibbles only. I would go with "so highly" rather than "so high." And "proper of you" insead of "proper in you." And other minor stuff you don't have to worry about until much later stages of editing...

[Anonymous No.20767004]

>>20766872
Its 80% LitRPG, yeah.

[Anonymous No.20767058]

>>20765328

The tags are excessive. Definitely delete the milk bit. But even this smiling and frowning bit is completely unnecessary.

The first line should avoid semicolon (use a simple "and"), because they're ugly and should not be a first choice option.

You can be more efficient with the dialogue lines. I would drop the "hey" line and the last line I might change to this:

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore. I don’t respect you, and I don’t like you and... I don't love you. Since I’m starting college soon, I’ve realised that trying to keep this charade of a relationship going isn't good for my mental health. I'm sorry. Goodbye, Bernie.”

[Anonymous No.20767072]

>>20764145
You need fresh eyes to edit. If you looked at his sentence, you could do the same thing.

[Anonymous No.20767099]

>>20767058
>they're ugly and should not be a first choice option
False.

[Anonymous No.20767115]

>>20765622
>following other people's writing platitudes as law
ngmi

The sort of authors who adhere to one-sentence thoughts of other authors as if that must define how they write are the sort who'll churn out generic garbage or be forever frustrated.

[Anonymous No.20767124]

>>20764145
have your friend write your book

[Anonymous No.20767178]

I just started wading into the world of literary agents and it's a fucking nightmare.

[Anonymous No.20767222]

>>20767178
Don't give up.

[Anonymous No.20767269]

>>20767222
I'm thinking of just KDPing for right now, breaking my book into three parts to be more profitable, and then selling the complete thing at 2/3rds the price of buying each part separately, and recording my own audiobook.

[Anonymous No.20767288]

>>20767283
>>20767283
>>20767283
Next thread, brothers

[Anonymous No.20767297]

>>20766594
>>20766557
You sounds like fanfic writing chads

[Anonymous No.20767298]

Day 38 of my novel writing journey:

I am relentlessly staggered by my own brilliance, though I yet dare wonder what the critics will have to say. No doubt they will be 'triggered' by my no-holds-barred takedown of woke culture. So be it. Destiny's Prejudice is not just the title of my groundbreaking novella, it is become the reality that I, and so many other europeans, live with every day. But alas, I will sally forth. I will never stop saying there are only two genders. I will hiss those words with my dying breath. They claim to live rent-free in my mind, well, they're about to find out exactly what happens when you mock your landlord. For you see, not only is my novella humorous, insightful, and original, but it is also something of an instruction manual. I have included a list of all power stations in the United States, as well as instructions on how to disable them (spoiler alert: you just use bombs, simple as). We'll see how long they stay 'transgendered' without their precious electricity.

[Sange !Fde5Qjfb5g No.20767318]

>>20767298
Go suck a dick.

[Anonymous No.20767365]

>>20767298
Don't lump decent Americans together with the legacy media and their trans worship.
The vast majority of us did nothing wrong & are as disgusted as you.

[Anonymous No.20767381]

>>20767298
Have you red picrel?
Sounds like your book is in the ballpark.

[Anonymous No.20767501]

>>20766836
The thing is that I don't think I want an ending, just stories, not necessarily continuity

[Anonymous No.20767702]

>>20767501
You sound like a worldbuilder, not a storyteller.

[Anonymous No.20767786]

>>20767702
yeah
Still don't know what to do, gonna have to keep thinking

[Anonymous No.20768321]

How is my poem?

She will never love you.
Even if you manage to attract and marry one, she will tolerate you at best.
She will decide who father(s) of her children be.
You may pretend you have a say, but you won't.
Her "headaches" will become more and more common.
Her "performance" will be that of a dead starfish.
She will think about all the pretty boys from her past, not you.
Gf or not, wife or not, you will forever be alone.
And it won't change.
Ever.

[Anonymous No.20768336]

>>20768321
Depressing?
What is your intended market?
Don't the socially awkward have enough people ripping on them?