/wg/ Writing General

[Anonymous No.21645770]

"We Come In Peace" edition

Previous thread: >>21637452

/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
RESOURCES & RECOMMENDATIONS: https://pastebin.com/nFxdiQvC

Please limit excerpts to one post.
Give advice as much as you receive it to the best of your ability.
Follow prompts made below and discuss written works for practice; contribute and you shall receive.
If you have not performed a cursory proofread, do not expect to be treated kindly. Edit your work for spelling and grammar before posting.
Violent shills should be ignored and reported.

Simple guides on writing:
https://youtu.be/pHdzv1NfZRM
https://youtu.be/whPnobbck9s
https://youtu.be/YAKcbvioxFk

Thread Theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhWZ4gNqPP0

[Anonymous No.21645793]

>>21645770
Whoah! Would you get a load of that top 10? Mike Ma (hon.) retains his rank yet again, as new addition RE: Trailer Trash dislodges John Jay Stancliff's Fedbook from the #2 position. Gardner's Call of the Crocodile remains strongly in the top 5, with L.A. Labuschagne's SHAMAN making a shocking rise from lowest-ranked to #5. Pseudo Bulkington's The Orators, previously a #2 seller, makes a cheeky reappearance at #8 this week. And finally, the heretofore unseen Steven Boswell makes a bid for relevancy with Playtime's Consequences at #9. R.C. Waldun (hon.) shows a downward slide from last week, with two of Gardner's books seeming to have edged Akaso off the ranks entirely. Ogden Nesmer is a notable absence, unable to maintain sales of I Pray to the Hungry God.

If you've been spending too much time in /wg/, it can be easy to lose sight of our place in the broader world of publishing. Therefore, those of us here at the /lit/ Official Register have created a handy infographic to help you keep a realistic perspective.

Exciting rumors have been circulating in the Gossip Catalog, indicating plans for a film adaptation of Horia Belcea's The Synthesis of the Objective and the Subjective, an upcoming new release from Zulu Alitspa, and some closure from the last-known editor of &amp magazine.

[Anonymous No.21645799]

Wrote 460 words now. Probably a personal record.

[Anonymous No.21645821]

>>21645793
I cant believe I'm not even on the fucking list anymore. Fucking kill me

[Anonymous No.21645874]

>>21645821
The list doesn't take e-book sales into account, which is insane when ranking independent authors.

[Anonymous No.21645888]

>>21645793
What do the labels even mean?
>Traditional genre core?
>New wave?

[Anonymous No.21645902]

>>21645770
We're all going to make it lads

[Anonymous No.21645960]

>>21645793
>Boswell at #9
>probably sold 1 book for the 1st time in months
pathetic

[Anonymous No.21645995]

>>21645960
Just another reminder that even the most successful of us are absolute failures.
Feels good don't it?

[Anonymous No.21646043]

>>21645995
Imagine one of us trying to get a real literary agent or big publisher and in the query letter they put something like "I'm the second biggest selling author on lit"

[Anonymous No.21646048]

>>21645960
>>21645960
1 more than I sold...

[Anonymous No.21646141]

>>21645995
In terms of amazon sales, sure. It's mindboggling how much easier it is to get money out of people by offering 20-30k words of advance content on Patreon, compared to trying to sell a completed book of 100-200k words.

[Anonymous No.21646167]

>>21646141
To expand on this, converting the amount of money I make off a single sale (a little under 4 dollars) on amazon to "sales" based on my Patreon income, I could easily say I've sold thousands of copies. It's asinine just how much easier it is to monetize readers through what is basically a freemium model.

[Anonymous No.21646189]

>>21645770
brainlet here. what is the fastest way to expand my vocabulary? im looking for any book or program that i can study on my free time

[Anonymous No.21646191]

>>21646189
Read books with vocab you don't know and look up what words mean when you don't understand. That's it. All there is to it.

[Anonymous No.21646195]

>>21646189
There's this book that has a list of words in alphabetical order with their definitions, parts of speech and common usage. Might be just what you need.

[Anonymous No.21646330]

>>21646141
>>21646167
Now imagined if you set up a gacha model for your chapters.
$1 gets you one roll where the result can be any chapter of any of your books.

[Anonymous No.21646347]

>>21645799
1k words now. I think I'm learning to focus.

[Anonymous No.21646363]

>>21646347
Teach me. Do you turn all your screens off except for one? Do you have music on? I manage like 100 words a day.

[Anonymous No.21646401]

>>21646330
You're not far off from reality. Webnovel has a progressive chapter unlock system where you pay on-site monopoly money to unlock chapters.

[Anonymous No.21646420]

>>21646363
Yeah, turn off everything except your manuscript, and think about it and nothing else. Even music is a distraction. If you let any other thought reach your brain, you will feel the urge to do other things.

[Anonymous No.21646479]

My poem "Grotesque"

Ye unworthy, jack it to cartoons;
Ye plebians, ye jack to sex;
Ye sodomites, ye jack to troons;
Patrician - jaketh to grotesque!

A bride shall be from furthest stars.
A bride shall be from ocean deep.
I dream of one with many mouths,
I dream of consumation reaped.

I know not where her legs art,
Nor where it becometh phallus.
I know not where I shall start,
I shall approach from south.

[Anonymous No.21646620]

>>21646195
what's it called? asking for a person a i have a cordial relationship with

[Anonymous No.21646643]

what's the best "web novel" site in terms of writing quality? just looking to casually browse fictions on my breaks

[Anonymous No.21646649]

>>21646643
RoyalRoad, but that question is tantamount to "what is the nicest crack den on Martin Luther Jr. Street".

[Anonymous No.21646659]

>>21646649
Kek

[Anonymous No.21646664]

>>21646643
RR

[Anonymous No.21646670]

This is what I'm thinking of. Obviously cybernetics are going to be in it but I need to write how grotesque everything is. The killer himself probably should be a walking hypocrisy as well.

What do you guys think?

[Anonymous No.21646689]

>>21646670
What's it about
It's not just pretty words and phrase linking scenes right?

[Anonymous No.21646695]

>>21646689
The image literally tells you what it's abou you brainfuck retard mongoloid

[Anonymous No.21646696]

Gentlemen, might I inquire as to what a "violent shill" is? I am having trouble enconjuring a mental image of how a shill might display violence.

[Anonymous No.21646706]

>>21646696
Buy my book
Or else

[Anonymous No.21646796]

>motivated to write something
>come up with the idea of a setting, start to think of some characters, motives, general plot, story twists...
>lose all interested to write it out because I already know whats going to happen in the big picture
Writing is only fun to me if I make up the story on the go. I also prefer writing in first person, like experiencing the story on my own. Don't even care to show the final result to others or read it again.

How do you write?

[Anonymous No.21646806]

>>21646670
>perverses
Jesus H. Christ.

[Anonymous No.21646816]

>>21646806
it's an outline. Perverse then. Jeeze. What the hell is wrong with you crabs.

[Anonymous No.21646855]

>>21646695
The image doesn't explain the theme(s).
So actually, yeah, so far I fear it'll just be pretty words and phrases linking scenes of unrelated murders.
At least, so far.

[Anonymous No.21646885]

How do you get yourself to start writing? I love writing and reading(I can easily end up writing for 6 hours straight and if I don’t control myself, can end up reading for over 12 hours.) It’s easy to start reading, but for some reason it’s a herculean task for me to start writing.

[Anonymous No.21646896]

>>21646670
too edgy for me

[Anonymous No.21646934]

>>21646855
Question:
"How would Jesus Christ be worshipped in a dystopian cyberpunk?"

Themes:
What is the Natural Human State?
How do we know what's considered good?

At leas that's the idea. I'll probably just end up writing like 3 chapters and giving up like usual.

[Anonymous No.21647006]

>>21645770
hit 800 words today, and I feel like my brain is going to melt

[Anonymous No.21647087]

>>21646934
Ah.
Worthy themes to explore.
I don't know if the answer given in "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" by Philip K. Dick will help you, but that book is considered to have started the cyberpunk genre.
But Mercerism was his answer, and it was a total mindfuck.
The idea was first outlined in a short story called "The Little Black Box".

[Anonymous No.21647229]

>>21647006
800 words a day is a lot for people here now? I have to write more than that just for school

[Anonymous No.21647330]

>>21646689
>>21646855
I hope this becomes a thing.

[Anonymous No.21647349]

>>21647229
I can do like 2000-3000 words in a day for an academic paper, I find prose harder

[Anonymous No.21647371]

>>21646896
this is the equivalent of saying
>umm, I don't like wizards
>can you write something else?
when 'critiquing' a fantasy book about wizards
this is middle aged woman picked at random for a focus group giving her shit for brains opinion tier 'critique'

[Anonymous No.21647395]

>>21647349
Same. I have this weird autism where I can't start paragraphs with the same letters and words. Every sentence begins with a different letter unless absolutely necessary in a new paragraph. There can only be one or two clauses at the front or end of a sentence. Variation feels very important.

[Anonymous No.21647436]

>>21647371
Nah it's just in bad taste. Cyberpunk tranny Jesus is just the kind of thing you'd expect an incel from /wg/ to come up with.

[Anonymous No.21647447]

>>21647395
>I have this weird autism where I can't start paragraphs with the same letters and words. Every sentence begins with a different letter unless absolutely necessary in a new paragraph. There can only be one or two clauses at the front or end of a sentence. Variation feels very important.
Not as important s you think. Good writers don't really follow this at all, and make use of repetition very frequently. Your autism over things that don't matter is probably one of the things holding you back. Variation in sentence structure is good, but nobody restricts themselves to what they're allowed to start a sentence with

[Anonymous No.21647457]

>>21647447
>variation is good
>but restricting yourself to variations is bad
uh

[Anonymous No.21647461]

wrote 1.5k words before work today, feels good

[Anonymous No.21647462]

>>21647461
2.6k so far. Was aiming for 4k to finish a chapter

[Anonymous No.21647467]

>>21647457
Learn to read, anon-kun. I said that variation in sentence STRUCTURE is good. Variation in the words you start a sentence with is much less important, unless you're literally starting all of your sentences with the same couple words

[Anonymous No.21647472]

>>21647467
Repetition is only good when it's to instill a message or thought.

[Anonymous No.21647474]

I can't write a place without feeling that I need to an architect which is obviously not the case. Whether it is about movements of the characters across several place (inside and outside) or just their global position
This part of my writing is just bland
Any tips? Something I manage to do it right but I can't grasp why.

[Anonymous No.21647478]

>>21647474
Describe what you want the reader to know, and they'll fill in the rest.

[Anonymous No.21647479]

>>21647472
Well, yes, but good writers don't restrict themselves from starting sentences with the same word a couple times paragraph, because nobody cares. All that matters is that it reads well

[Anonymous No.21647482]

>>21647479
It's going to really weird having six paragraphs start with the in a single chapter.

[Anonymous No.21647484]

Is it weird I wanna write a character reliving random important points of their life in purgatory However the main character is a goat man because in real life they hated their body and did not want to be tied to the thing they hate the most about themselfs?

[Anonymous No.21647490]

>>21647436
Not at all. Would what we know as Jesus Christ today be the same 1000 years from now? A complete dystopia where what was once holy gets changed so much to serve those that lose the message Christ priest.

I got the idea from those fake pastors that make tik tok videos. How much more could Christ be perverted for a person's gain?

[Anonymous No.21647492]

>>21647474
Do you mean you over-describe locations?

Why not just limit yourself to one evocative scene-setting detail per location?

Maybe you write more in the final draft, but as an initial exercise it would discipline you in economic, effective description.

As always with questions in this thread, it would be good to see examples of what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.21647494]

>>21647478
Thank you. I don't know why it bothered me but thinking about it there was no problem to begin with

[Anonymous No.21647499]

>>21647494
I've been there. Overthinking all the little details. Reality is you only really need to give one or two to establish an image or mood.

[Anonymous No.21647502]

>>21647492
I see thank you

[Anonymous No.21647510]

>>21647490
I think the question is interesting, but your answer in bad taste. "What would Christ worship look like in a cyberpunk dystopia?" surely has better/more interesting answers than "he would be a tranny". Compare that to something like A Canticle for Leibowitz, which has a similar premise (albeit with a post-nuclear dystopia instead of cyberpunk) but handles the question with more nuance and variety. Obviously it's just an outline so there's plenty of room to change, but I feel like you need think harder about the answer to that question. Just my two cents.

[Anonymous No.21647522]

>>21646670
Anon, you’re trying to pack too many things into 60-70k words. In order for all those things to happen, you basically have to have every page advance the plot at a blistering speed. The pacing would be abysmal.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying you company write this story—just that it’s going to be a lot longer than 70k words, this is at least a 100k story. Unless you want the book to read more like a script or summary of a novel than an actual novel.

[Anonymous No.21647523]

>>21647510
Tranny didn't really matter to me. In my head it could just be a chimera with a lizard head similar to raptor Jesus 20 years ago. I just felt having a man nailed to a cross changed into a woman would be the biggest affront to the religion itself. It would just have to be something highly offensive and grotesque.

[Anonymous No.21647524]

>>21647522
>*can’t

[Anonymous No.21647525]

Does anyone here consider greentext stories a legitimate genre, or style of prose?

[Anonymous No.21647528]

>>21647474
I have the same issue. But I write genre trash, where it's more justified to describe spooky dungeons or weird spaceships or whatever.
Do you have aphantasia?

[Anonymous No.21647550]

>>21647525
>legitimate genre
No.
>style of prose
An argument could likely be made for that

[Anonymous No.21647576]

>>21645770
>/wg/ AUTHORS & FLASH FICTION: https://pastebin.com/ruwQj7xQ
Can somebody put me on the list pls https://www.webnovel.com/book/dark-crow-rising_14515049706684405

[Anonymous No.21647588]

>>21647522
you think so? 100k words? Possibly I guess. It's still a outline phase so who knows. Maybe this is just too ambitious for someone like me. Maybe I'll write some other idea.

[Anonymous No.21647596]

>>21647576
>58.3 k views
You really shouldn't be added on here. Keep doing whatever you're doing and forget you ever came on here. It's not worth it. 4chan shouldn't be anywhere near a story as popular as yours

[Anonymous No.21647638]

>>21647596
I wouldn't say that 58.3k views is necessarily popular on webnovel, but it isn't bad. I guess most people here have a hard time writing something that's even readable

[Anonymous No.21647648]

>>21647638
Most people here have a hard time socializing well enough to have 10 people buy their books.

[Anonymous No.21647649]

>>21647638
Do views on webnivel counr per chaoter like on RR?

[Anonymous No.21647651]

>>21647638
>I guess most people here have a hard time writing something that's even readable
This is true but what do you expect, its a containment thread for retards who are learning to string sentences together.

[Anonymous No.21647662]

>>21647638
Do views on webnovel count per chapter like on RR?

[Anonymous No.21647667]

>>21647662
Yeah, chapter views are added together, so if you have a ton of chapters, something like 50k views wouldn't really be that many people. Xianxia novels with thousands of chapters easily get well into the millions of views

[Anonymous No.21647759]

I'm in the process of writing a fantasy series, and in it, there are a couple of beast-races. It is now that I am well into the writing that I've made the realization that beast-races might be considered "furry".

Now I will have it known that I am no "furry" nor do I wish to appeal to their sensibilities. Given this, how can I distance my races from the notion of them being "furry"? Any advice is appreciated.

[Anonymous No.21647784]

>>21647759
Furrys are sexual degens so don't do that

[Anonymous No.21647798]

>>21647784
I understand that furries are, but how can I make my animal humanoids distinguished and unappealing to them?

[Anonymous No.21647814]

>>21647798
Impossible. Sexual degeneracy will corrupt even the most innocent of things. We've seen it with Dora the Explorer

[Anonymous No.21647820]

>>21647814
Do you think then that the only answer to my problem is to just go forth and continue writing them as I am? If it's really inevitable, then maybe I should just include some kind of disclaimer and be done with it.

[Anonymous No.21647824]

>>21647814
Dora has been Corrupted. The West has Fallen.

[Anonymous No.21647840]

>>21647759
It can't be done, once you have lost your innocence, you can't gain it back. You can either continue and accept what you will attract, or live in denial. Obviously though don't wax poetic about their animal features too much and most people who are still innocent will not be put off.

[Anonymous No.21647846]

>dream sequence chapter
>Switch it to first person
Any other stories do this so I can see what the author did?

[Anonymous No.21647887]

>>21647576
about time you ask to be added, though i probably shouldve asked you way earlier. seeing your consistent word counts always inspire me. keep working hard dude!

[Anonymous No.21647890]

>>21647759
Don't make them animal headed beastmen. Do like the Greeks. They had centaurs, mermaids, fauns, harpies, and gorgons. Apply random animal parts to a human.

[Anonymous No.21647913]

>>21647759
>Writing a fantasy series
>Doesn't want the coins of suspiciously wealthy furries
Retard

[Anonymous No.21647919]

>>21647913
Didn't look at it that way before...

[Anonymous No.21647973]

>Reading thousands of niche smut because I enjoy it and want to write it
>95% of the stories are either incompetently written or incredibly simplistic
>4% of stories are the same but they at least have accompanying images
>the remaining 1% of stories are competently written, and of this 1%, there are only about 20 or so stories that are genuinely good
>resorted to reading completely unrelated horror short stories instead in an effort to synthesize something i could get off to
>ended up just writing a horror-comedy instead

Am I doing something wrong?

[Anonymous No.21647980]

>>21647973
>Reading thousands of niche smut because I enjoy it and want to write it
>Am I doing something wrong?
Hmm, hard to say.

[Anonymous No.21647988]

>have reached a point where the thought of opening the Word dcouments fills me with dread and doubt
>constantly wracked by indecision, could have written two entirely different versions of the story if I just wrote instead of worrying
>can't stop scrolling and wasting my time
>can't even clean the dishes in my sink or maintain a relationship

Is it over for me, bros?

[Anonymous No.21648248]

>>21647988
Just do it.

[Anonymous No.21648272]

>>21646796
>lose all interested to write it out because I already know whats going to happen in the big picture
The common symptom among those who enjoy their "ideas" more than the actual craft of writing.

[Anonymous No.21648382]

>>21647988
Try to find back the joy of writing. I'm sure there must have been times where you were absolutely engrossed in your writing, not the written stuff but the process.

Maybe walk away from your project for just a bit. Pick a lousy paragraph some anon posted on /wg/ and rewrite it in a way that you would actually want to read. Or go off on some random tangent within your own story, one you will never actually use (to take the pressure off) like: what did this minor unimportant side-character have for breakfast this morning and go crazy.

Also clean your fucking house. It really helps. Put on some music while you do it.

[Anonymous No.21648389]

>tfw yet another new story idea
Please no. I have a pile of like a dozen outlines already and no time to write any of them. Whenever a vision of a new story hits me, I just have to drop everything else and start working on it. I just can't help it!

[Anonymous No.21648402]

>>21646620
it's the dictionary
ffs zoomers you're killing me

[Anonymous No.21648409]

>>21648389
Teach yourself to have ideas about the story you are writing.

[Anonymous No.21648421]

>>21648389
Dump some here. I need ideas.

[Anonymous No.21648422]

>>21648409
But it's already complete in my head, it doesn't need anything else.

[Anonymous No.21648434]

>>21648422
Sounds pretty bad. You can always change a lot. You can examine every part and connect them seamlessly, you can improve the flow of information. You can tweak the promises. You also don't know what will come to your head when you're actually writing. You don't know what prose and dialogue will be before your last edit. "It's complete", lol, bullshit.

[Anonymous No.21648458]

What would be a better setting with a story about an assassin/serial killer that questions a benevolent God?

>Cyberpunk
>Historical fiction in the Mediterranean in the 1500's? 50 years after the fall of Constinople?

[Anonymous No.21648470]

>>21645793
/wg/ - how to sell your shitty book that you made for money and discord clout general

[Anonymous No.21648483]

>>21648421

Here's a couple I'm not actively working on. I left a lot open for you to fill in as you please.

>1. Supernatural exploration
Spirits from the moon are secretly invading the Earth. Wherever a lot of spirits gather, the natural world becomes replaced by the realm of spirits. Before the change is complete, people must enter these realms and defeat the spirits' leader to restore the world back to normal. Defeating major spirits earns people moon coins, which can be exchanged for a lot of real money and interesting goods at a special vendor. Only people with moon coins are able to enter the spirit realms. If the spirits kill you there, you won't die for real, but lose all the moon coins you've gathered, can't ever enter a spirit realm again, and they say a personal tragedy awaits you. Money-hungry people take a big risk to get rich quick while protecting the world. But does this arrangement have some deeper meaning besides just taking over the Earth?

>2. Science fantasy
Tajjirians are known as mercenaries who will do anything for money. When a greedy empire plays the clan as a disposable diversion in their sneak invasion against the capital of Alberion, the protagonist ends up the lone survivor and at the mercy of the struggling locals. This calls for good old revenge. Can the protagonist win the trust of the resistance, heavily prejudiced against Tajjirians, and can his/her knowledge of modern military tactics and magictechnical weapons help turn the momentum in the sudden war?

[Anonymous No.21648484]

>>21648434
>You can always change a lot.
Don't try to fix what ain't broken.

[Anonymous No.21648489]

>>21648458
Best genres to question God are historical fiction about Italy, western or post-apocalypse.

[Anonymous No.21648491]

>>21648483
Can you explain how detailed your outlines are? Don't need to post them, of course, just let us understand how much of story you actually have before writing.

[Anonymous No.21648505]

Thoughts? It's a youtube script and this is my first draft.

It gets lazy towards the end but I wanted to see if I'm completely worthless as a writer or if I convey ideas quickly etc

I realised I want to get indepth about every concept I mentioned within the lines

[Anonymous No.21648514]

>>21648491
My outlines are just basic wikipedia-style summaries, who does what, where, and why. As simple and succinct as possible. The finer details are in my head, the outline's purpose is just to reinforce the key points, so I won't forget anything important, and can see things make sense, the pacing works, and the events form a logical continuity from the start to end. I've done enough stories to tell roughly how long each part is going to be when properly written.

[Anonymous No.21648520]

>>21648505
Are you going to use it to help while you are recording and speaking more elaborately? It sounds like an outline of a script.

[Anonymous No.21648523]

>>21648520
yes, but the latter part was written, spoken as written

so if it comes off as just outliney im very disappointed, but can sort of see it now.

but the parts between the lines are very much just outlines i want to show as a diagram briefly to explain before i go indepth on the first point

[Anonymous No.21648525]

>>21648491
My outline was extremely long and detailed, about 13,000 words. (For context, I’m editing on the second draft of edits and the entire story is about 250,000 words.) I probably spent about a month working on it to flesh out everything before writing the story. There’s definitely stuff I wrote that wasn’t in the outline, but at no point did I want to hit writers block and not know what should happen next, so I made sure I’d understand and settle on every major plot point before writing.

I have two other note files on my phone for the book—one for prose (whenever I think of a good line while I’m away from my computer) and one for ideas I’d like to tweak in future drafts. I use Scrivener so it’s all full of comments and stuff.

[Anonymous No.21648530]

>>21648514
You don't break it down into scenes? Do you make character sheets? Do you highlight parts of the story that are related to past or future parts?

[Anonymous No.21648540]

>>21648525
>My outline was extremely long and detailed, about 13,000 words. (For context, I’m editing on the second draft of edits and the entire story is about 250,000 words.)
Holy shit, man, two and a half volume novel. No wonder you got bored. Well, the only thing that is left to you is to push through. I don't know, do you have a publisher or something? Paying editors would be pretty expensive.

[Anonymous No.21648558]

>>21648530
>You don't break it down into scenes?
I think it's clear just by looking at what happens what is one "scene", there's no need to go out of my way to tell that to myself.

>Do you make character sheets?
Sometimes, but I often end up ignoring what's in them. It's hard to tell yet at the outlining phase what type of character suits the role in the story and it's more fun to discover what they're like in action.

>Do you highlight parts of the story that are related to past or future parts?
No. Connections like that are fairly obvious.

[Anonymous No.21648603]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x51oxy08lfhf3lr/Sample.pdf?dl=0
Hey /wg/, been a while since I've been here. I think I'm finally going to finish the short story this time. Here's the first section/mini-chapter of it. Description text provided:
>Tobias is a five-thousand year old man living in a world that hasn't changed since the governments of the world cast The Eternity, a spell that makes large changes impossible, such as the transition from life to death. As he goes through a divorce with his seventeenth wife, he begins to hate this never-ending world he finds himself in and wonders what he can do about it.
As always, if you want to do a feedback-for-feedback thing then let me know and post/link your work as well. Also, feedback ranging from basic "I thought it was good/bad" or "I would improve X by doing Y" is all great.

[Anonymous No.21648615]

>>21648505
Hello Immanuelle. Could tell right away that this was more catgirl immortality speak. While your content certainly isn't for me, I can try to help.
From watching your videos, I can tell you that the biggest issue isn't your scripting. While it is an issue, any amount of scripting won't cover the issues with your delivery. You waffle about without cutting your flubbed lines and your microphone quality is still not where it needs to be. Your mic is picking up an absurd amount of reverberation from your voice. This means that you are speaking too loudly in an untreated room with a microphone that does not handle background noise rejection. If you can't afford to throw $125 at acoustic foam then your next best option is to turn the gain down and move the microphone closer to your mouth. 6 inches away with the capsule and 15 degrees away from the front of your mouth to stop direct plosives.
As for your Vtuber avatar, upgrade or ditch it. People who put up with Vtube avatars don't really have patience for some VRchat model whose entire range of movement consists of craning its neck 10 degrees—and that's without even accounting for the terrible lighting and schizophrenic eye tracking. It looks cheap, cheaper than if you had nothing at all there.
As for the scripting, I'm not sure what to tell you. I'll second the other anon's observation that this appears to be less of a script and more an outline, but I'm not sure expanding upon the outline can lead to an entertaining final product. Your content has always had this absurd clash in how you attempt to sound professional and how unhinged your actual argumentation is. I feel like you need to ease people into the insanity instead of lobbing it at them after a wall of philosophy and self help speak.

[Anonymous No.21648639]

>>21646796
Everyone has their own writing methods. I remember taking a novel writing elective in university where we talked about how some people plan, others just see where their writing takes them. We inspected Joan Didion's Play As It Lays I remember, and Joan Didion had this interview about how she very much figures things out as she goes.
You can read it here if you're interested: http://franciscovazbrasil.blogspot.com/2013/01/joan-didion-interviewed-by-linda-kuehl.html (I had to look a while for a non paywalled transcription)
We actually specifically read this interview because of this:
>INTERVIEWER: You have said that writing is a hostile act; I have always wanted to ask you why.
>JOAN DIDION: It's hostile in that you're trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It's hostile to try to wrench around someone else's mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.
Which I think is a really good discussion point about how texts are subjective and whether the goal of a writer is to impose their mental image onto the reader or not.

[Anonymous No.21648674]

>>21648603
It reads okay, only a few unintuitive sentences mess up the flow. I think you will fix it if you have a beta reader or an editor when you are close to finishing it.
>For a moment, Eleanor was the smiling, joyful soul who loved to hang over my shoulder again.
Like this, "again" is too far away from "was".
Also since it's a story that uses normal people, normal locations and a standard way to start, I would put some exposition about abnormal parts first. As a warning, at least. I'd go a well trodden route and let the protagonist rambe about his life.

[Anonymous No.21648710]

>>21648674
Thank you for your feedback. I agree with everything you said. I couldn't think of any good way to include some paranormal elements in the beginning (I was thinking about magic painting methods, but decided against it). I figure a paranormal inclusion or two should suffice since the focus of my story is the characters and their interactions anyway, not the fantasy world (i.e. opposite of isaac asimov).
How would you rate how interesting it is in general as a hook thus far (whether plot, prose, or both)? I was thinking about my hook topic and I have my doubts about it.

[Anonymous No.21648738]

>>21648710
>How would you rate how interesting it is in general as a hook thus far
I don't really see the hook, except for the fact that your protagonist is sad and angry. It is enough for a back story, but nothing that would motivate him actually happens. I don't know if he is going to try to return his wife, find another woman or change his outlook on life.

[Anonymous No.21648774]

>>21648738
The plot of the story will go something like:
>main character is aimless and hollow after his divorce
>he becomes obsessed with The Eternity, the spell that traps them all due to its nature (i.e. no change greater than a threshold allowed, thus the world remains effectively the same for all time)
>he meets some random hobo, which is quite rare in this post-scarcity society, and they share a common interest in wanting to end the eternity (despite the impossibility)
>the hobo is quite knowledgeable about the eternity - the hobo goes around showing him all his attempts to put an end to the eternity, including many random people and the likes
>turns out the hobo was one of the lead officers who supervised the construction of the megaproject during the "cold war" during which it was enacted
>they head to a flux tube where once again, the hobo cannot bring himself to do something as simple as cast a fireball to destroy the energy source and end the eternity (because of the eternity's effects on him)
>later that day the MC is compelled to strangle the hobo to death (very dramatic), as the eternity has had enough of having to work around this hobo and decides one death is acceptable
>the MC buries the hobo and finally finds peace with his eternal life and the state of the world

I suppose the question is whether A. it is interesting enough at this point to keep reading and B. whether the content to come will be good enough. I was also thinking about adding a sort of dual-story with a switch in perspective every chapter of the hobo, in which it follows the hobo's promotion from foot soldier to commanding officer and his tragic backstory of having had a big role in enacting the eternity.

[Anonymous No.21648790]

>>21646189
Shakespeare

[Anonymous No.21648815]

>>21647759
>how can I distance my races from the notion of them being "furry"?

you can't

[Anonymous No.21648820]

>>21648540
Hmmm? I didn’t get bored, far from it. It’s all very exciting. I’ll share some pictures of the outline when I get home. Here’s what my prose notes look like, when I’m at work or out and about I just stop and quickly type down the phrase into my iPhone notepad lest I forget them, because these little bursts of writing insights are fleeting and any attempt to simply “remember them” will inevitably result in you losing it.

[Anonymous No.21648833]

>>21648540
I don’t have a publisher, but I don’t want to traditionally publish because I want to control everything. I’ve set aside about $4k for editing and I’ve already found a wonderful audio-book narrator. I’ve got the cover professionally done too, I just have to adjust the spine to match the width of the book depending on how thick it is after formatting. I think I’ll try the Patreon method that some people here have talked about, where they release individual chapters / sections for a few bucks each. I don’t have the money for it yet, but I’m trying to save up another $8k to have it translated into French since I’ll be distributing through Ingram and they have a large European distribution to both English and French bookstores.

[Anonymous No.21648847]

>>21647890
Smart. He won't attract furries, but he will attract weebs
>>21647759
You can't expect people not to meme. They call WH40k space wolves furries while they are just animal worshipping weirdos. Alternatively you can make them barbaric, disgusting and unreasonably cruel like modern fantasy demihumans are usually depicted. Not even childplay that is WH beastmen, go with Meekhan beastmen right away, make your readers throw up.

[Anonymous No.21648892]

>>21648774
I think your solution to the puzzle is not clever enough to be satisfying. He just... kills the guy dramatically and the spell (which is supposed to prevent any major changes) just decides to permit it...

I think something like the hobo slowly poisons the main character (or vice versa) so that the change from day to day is too low to trigger the threshold would be more interesting (though even this is too easy a solution and depends on the specific rules of the spell).

[Anonymous No.21648970]

>>21648603
>Tobias is a five-thousand year old man living in a world that hasn't changed since the governments of the world cast The Eternity, a spell that makes large

Who does the farming and labor? Forget painting for millennia, how miserable is the guy who works in the paint factory that whole time? These are the sorts of questions that would totally distract me from what's actually going on in your story. Kinda the risk in such a strange setting. Is it like permanently summer or what?

[Anonymous No.21649005]

>>21648458
Anon, you're the one who comes up with the details of the setting. You can twist it to suit your themes as you please

[Anonymous No.21649036]

>>21647988
If you can't do it for yourself do it for me you little princess
I expect to see you post a paragraph everyday
Better not let your daddy down

[Anonymous No.21649063]

Take psychedelics

It’ll help

Here’s a thought.
Proof of god: there’s infinite abstract aspects of reality that are infinitely abstract.
Also every thought is a soul, as all is a thought. Thoughts have infinite abstract properties. Many say relativity implies that every thought is infinite multiverses.

So… only think what you love. Give all your soul/thoughts to what you love. Only invoke good fun thoughts in others, because a thought is an all.

Study ever goodder abstract generacy.

All has a soul. All is connected.

Magic is the thought that all matters.

[Anonymous No.21649077]

>>21648458
Are you qualified to write about history? Historical fiction authors are usually academics who invest years (if not decades) into studying the period in which their story takes place, reading sources in their original language and so on.
Cyberpunk is essentially fantasy so it's a more forgiving genre.

[Anonymous No.21649086]

It's ogre. I'm ngmi

[Anonymous No.21649103]

Is trad publishing a lost cause for new authors?

Seems like nowadays you're supposed to use web novel platforms, open patreon and then advertise your shit on social media by constantly being in the replies of other authors, hoping their retweet you.

[Anonymous No.21649112]

>>21649103
>Is trad publishing a lost cause for new authors?
for genre fiction at least

[Anonymous No.21649228]

>>21649063
>Take psychedelics ... It'll help
>Magic is the thought that all matters.

I disagree. Deleuze quotes Henry Miller: 'To succeed in getting drunk, but on pure water'. The most intense things are the subtlest, and to achieve them you need to be careful and alert. Every time I've got better at writing, and felt like I was developing my aesthetic sense, it's been because I've become better at discriminating and selecting, at figuring out which things 'work' and which things are fluff or cliche or energy-dissipating.

Negativity is one of your most powerful aesthetic tools, because it's the instinct that pushes you to go beyond the mediocre cultural baggage that doesn't actually give you the ineffable 'thing' you're looking for. Because that 'thing' is ineffable, it's easier to say what it's not than to give a positive definition of what it is. Being negative and critical and discerning therefore helps you avoid those traps and dead-ends that take you further away from the 'thing'.

Making unexpected connections is good, but you have to learn to sense which connections are the most intense and meaningful. You can't just blend everything together into a big abstract soup. If you mix together every colour of paint, you end up with grey. The most intense things are the most concrete and specific, because they contain abstract forces in a delicate one-off configuration that can't be untangled.

I don't think any writer (that I've read) makes language as eerily intense as Samuel Beckett, but he doesn't achieve it by some big sprawling opera about the mystical creative soul of language; he achieves it by stripping things down to the bare essentials of teeth and tongues and lonely unanswered voices in small rooms. There's a reason traditional magic proceeds through carefully planned rituals, in carefully demarcated spaces.

[Anonymous No.21649235]

>>21649228
post more pics like this

[Anonymous No.21649241]

>>21648470
>t. bitter because he cant even fucking self publish a book
Ngl anon, might be time to kys if something so small makes you so jealous

[Anonymous No.21649274]

>>21649235
Unfortunately there's nothing else quite like it in my 'locations' folder.

[Anonymous No.21649350]

>>21648833
I admire your dedication, but every time I get a quote from an editor, I can't justify blowing through 3k.

[Anonymous No.21649419]

>>21649112
Lit fic has no takers either

[Anonymous No.21649432]

>>21649419
But genre fiction readers are willing to buy self published stuff. Do lit fic readers? I assume they're more likely to trust the gatekeepers of the publishing industry.

[Anonymous No.21649443]

>>21648421
Most people who write do so because they have something to say.
So you're saying you don't?
Then what is it that attracts you to writing?

[Anonymous No.21649497]

>>21648774
It sort of reminds me of the plight of the Qs as detailed in "Star Trek: Voyager".
There, too, there was a race of eternal beings, and some had grown tired of living and wanted to die.

[Anonymous No.21649548]

>>21649235
https://www.google.com/search?q=brutalist+architecture&tbm=isch

[Anonymous No.21649591]

>>21645770
Been writing a story about a 19th century opium smuggler generally being a piece of shit. I think I've written myself into a corner, the more confident and happy with anything I write, the more irredeemably despicable the man becomes. I love writing triumphant rebirths/redemption but I have no idea where to take him because my competence is failing me here. At this point I'm thinking of just calling it on the entire thing and letting his story reach its logical conclusion and letting him die.

[Anonymous No.21649598]

>wrote one MG fantasy novel draft last year
>did not like it
>spend a year studying stories
>figure out why i didn't like mine
>almost ready to try again
Maybe this is just a manic phase I'm feeling but god damn it I'm going to milk a book out of it if I can. I've come up with two usable ideas in the last year and have been waffling between outlining each of them. I just need a to flip a coin at some point.

[Anonymous No.21649628]

>>21648970
Eh, that's not really the focus of my writing. I would figure that out as I go. But I suppose the answer would be: the state of the world was generally decent before the eternity began, and since small changes are allowed the world gradually became a good place to live in where most people don't have to work and magical golems do most of the labor. And there would be day/night cycles and seasons and whatnot - there would be forever, since the world couldn't go from a world with seasons to a world without seasons. That is admittedly a bit of a conundrum but who cares.

[Anonymous No.21649638]

>>21647759
Speaking as a furry, it's not something you have to worry about. If you aren't tuned to the desires of furries, you're not going to stumble into them. There are plenty of furry novels over on sofurry and they're all basically fitting themselves to one of three or so different, very specific tones. If you do your own thing and are talented enough to be distinctive, nobody's going to think it's furbait. The real problem, though, and the thing you should be more worried about, is the fact that nobody is going to read your book.

[Anonymous No.21649639]

>>21648892
Hm, I will have to think about it. I want the main moral of my story to be acceptance of the unchangeable and the story to focus on the MC's journey as he goes from vehemently hating this fact to accepting it. However my story could use a bit more flavor in the plot (although I would like to keep the murder part - it would make sense from a logical standpoint since the eternity would take a "lowest-effort" standpoint to maintain a world without change, and this dude would have been so much of a pain in the ass that a death would be a lower change than having to brainwash this guy into not committing terrorism against the machines that keep the eternity running every day for all time). I'm still trying to figure that part out, though.

[Anonymous No.21649678]

>>21648603
So, in all that time...they haven't successfully moved off-world and tried to colonize space?

[Anonymous No.21649773]

>>21649639
>I want the main moral of my story to be acceptance of the unchangeable
Sounds like self-help ideology

[Anonymous No.21649785]

>>21649773
Uh, sure.

>>21649678
I find these somewhat stupid questions a good sign, as it indicates interest.

[Anonymous No.21649793]

>>21649591
Sounds intriguing. My kind of thing. If you feel that escalating his wretchedness is what generates the best writing, then I think you should indeed commit to going full speed towards the edge of the abyss, don't compromise with a redemption.

Care to share any examples of his despicable deeds?

[Anonymous No.21649876]

>>21649785
I find your insult a bad sign, as it indicates I'm wasting my time trying to help you.
Back into the crab bucket you go.

[Anonymous No.21649879]

>>21649876
You aren't really helping by asking a bunch of silly lore questions that are rather irrelevant. That's what fanfiction writers do.

[Anonymous No.21649891]

>>21649591
Just have him be contacted by the British to sell more dope to the Chinamen.

[Anonymous No.21649918]

>>21649639
I think you need to be crystal clear about the rules of the spell. Part of the fun of reading a story like this is trying to come up with the solution to the puzzle before the main character does. So you need to give the reader enough information to do that and you also need to be more clever than they are with your solution, otherwise they'll feel let down.

As for your theme, fine. I would also try to think about its opposite and make a strong argument for that as well (e.g using the hobo character). The plot can then be exploring different facets of these two opposing sides as they explore the world, making peace with eternity vs. "the courage to never submit or yield". If you just argue one side it will be dogmatic and preachy. You can still play favorites in the conclusion (though it's better to come up with an answer which lies outside of the dichotomy).

[Anonymous No.21649945]

>>21649879
I thought I was trying to help you strengthen your plot/theme/story. My mistake.

[Anonymous No.21649960]

>>21649918
That makes sense. I imagine what I will end up doing is something like:
>they try to use some clever solution using incremental change and force the eternity to choose between two equal changes
>the eternity bitchslaps them by forcing the MC to kill the hobo for their attempt at this
I always intended the moral to be more complex than "just be happy with your cirumstances lole". I plan on fully exploring the benefits and downsides of being a miserable adamant fighter against one's circumstances, and to paint the hobo as a valiant fool. That said, it's always about execution and nuance more than planning. So I should get to writing.

[Anonymous No.21649968]

I want to make another AO3 account to post my regular stories separate from my degenerate smut account. Will people be able to tell both accounts are from the same IP?

[Anonymous No.21650035]

>>21649793
He sold out his brother to evade the police assuming that his brother would receive a lighter sentence, but his brother was immediately sentenced to death and was hanged. Then it became a downward spiral of lunacy and escapism involving his own addiction to opium, increasing criminality etc.

[Anonymous No.21650039]

Which cover is better for the RR crowd?

Waifu bait or Fantasy bait?

[Anonymous No.21650042]

>>21650039
First is far more eye catching. Author name looks like shit though.

[Anonymous No.21650057]

Today, I finished my manuscript at 84k words.

[Anonymous No.21650072]

Poem I wrote for a shy girl. Let me know if it's retarded before I tell it her.

A thousand words would not suffice
Describe your rousing gaze
A thousand throwing of the dice
Would pale against your praise
A thousand bleak and restless nights
Would I endure alone
To look upon your smile
And let you know you’re known.

[Anonymous No.21650077]

>>21650072
she wont' fuck you.

[Anonymous No.21650079]

>>21650072
>A thousand throwing of the dice
That's pretty stupid. But I'd say that it's okay to write cringe poetry. I mean, the girl is probably going to love it.

[Anonymous No.21650084]

>>21650077
Go write instead of being spiteful about everything and wasting time.

[Anonymous No.21650096]

>>21650079
I'm a gambling addict so it makes sense to her

>>21650077
i'm a catholic

[Anonymous No.21650109]

>>21650096
Perfect set up for a hopeful marriage and a disastrous divorce.

Who wanted a story premise?

[Anonymous No.21650133]

>>21649968
Why not just create a new pseud from your current account? AO3 allows that.

[Anonymous No.21650184]

>>21649350
Oh yeah I wouldn’t pay $3k for an editor of a regular-length novel. It’s only that expensive for me because 250k words is a lot. (But not as many as some would have you believe; two of the three Mistborn books are the same length, and they don’t even feel that long.) For under 100k words you should shoot for $1k, probably less if you’re just doing proofreading and grammar and not copy editing.

[Anonymous No.21650203]

>>21650057
Congratulations anon, that’s a big accomplishment.

[Anonymous No.21650226]

>>21650184
I don't think I can even justify paying $200

[Anonymous No.21650232]

>>21650203
Thanks anon. Going to write a short story now, there's an anthology I want to submit to.

[Anonymous No.21650239]

>>21650035
Sounds great. If were a publisher of lurid pulp paperbacks I would give you a handsome advance.

[Anonymous No.21650247]

>>21650035
I want to buy the rights to the manuscript and misleadingly publish it as a lurid pulp paperback.

[Anonymous No.21650248]

>>21645770
Cats, the graceful felines,
With a soft purr and sleek design.
Their eyes, like jewels, gleam and shine,
Their movements, graceful and divine.

They are creatures of mystery,
A bundle of contradictions, you see.
At times aloof, and then, so loving,
Their hearts as warm as the sun shining.

With a flick of their tail, and a playful meow,
They bring laughter, joy and light to our home.
They are friends and companions, never alone,
Their love and loyalty, always shown.

Oh how they make our lives complete,
With their soft fur and gentle purr, so sweet.
Cats, the graceful felines, we do entreat,
To stay with us, forever and always, our treat.

[Anonymous No.21650287]

>>21650226
Bruh that’s like $5/hour, what editor is going to work for 1/3rd minimum wage? And what level of quality and attention to detail do you expect for that price?

[Anonymous No.21650341]

There's no way I'm finishing the entire thing before 14th. I run out of ideas. I'll just post it here and start writing an outline for a real work of fiction tomorrow. Will be glad to know what you think though.
https://justpaste (put your dot here) it/8fi6l

[Anonymous No.21650342]

>>21650057
Congrats! Genre/topic and would I have seen any samples here?

[Anonymous No.21650354]

>>21650287
I get it. For a 60k manuscript editors are charging 4k-5k. Which is fine. I PERSONALLY cannot justify it. If you want to pay by all means pay for it.

[Anonymous No.21650365]

>>21650354
I looked at his webpage. He wants to go serious. I guess if the expectation is that this is going to sell and make money, the price is warranted.

[Anonymous No.21650403]

>>21650342
Cyberpunk serial killer. If you read any passages about a Clyde that was probably me

[Anonymous No.21650407]

>>21649628
>That is admittedly a bit of a conundrum but who cares.
Reviewers. Expect lots of hyper nitpicky comments and reviews.

[Anonymous No.21650423]

>>21645793
Buy Fedbook. Now.

[Anonymous No.21650427]

Puss in boots is the best film I've seen in a long long time. I feel kinda stupid by writing philosophical stories when the journey of a talking cat can display the same ideas in a more entertaining and nuanced way. Should I migrate to genre shit and write about dragons and knights and sword fights?
I mean, is it better for the "point" to be slapped on the reader's face or to hide it behind adventures and talking animals? Genuine question

[Anonymous No.21650435]

what is some good practical advice for writing dialog other than "everyone has a secret" I see over and over? I've been writing practice dialogs, but I don't think I'm improving.

[Anonymous No.21650438]

>>21645793
I'm amazed how fast my ranking dropped only after a day without sales.

I sold 5 books, ranked to 300k, then 2 days later I'm now at 800k

It's nuts.

[Anonymous No.21650454]

>>21650427
Genre fiction can be good and profound, anon. You don't even need to go hero journey shit. Just create an imaginary world out of what you like about historical fiction of different places and time periods. Or craft science fiction where everything is much more exxagerated and shoves the point into the readers face.

[Anonymous No.21650455]

>>21650403
Oh the dude with the weird rhyming prose. Good luck bro.

[Anonymous No.21650503]

Does anyone here manage to make a living off writing?

[Anonymous No.21650521]

Are there any writing guides designed for serial fiction? All the ones I've found are written with oneshots in mind.

[Anonymous No.21650537]

>>21650435
can help better if you post your work

[Anonymous No.21650615]

>>21650455
I have posted many passages from a sober perspective as well

[Anonymous No.21650661]

>>21650537
here's a passage I wrote today as practice:
https://pastebin.com/raw/zDBJzuGf

[Anonymous No.21650786]

I worry the flow of the arguments is off. And that this is a little gay.
https://pastebin.com/DVJkE9Qd

[Anonymous No.21650800]

>>21650661
This isn't that bad desu. I think what's holding it back is to much intercutting. Basically the dialogue is interrupted too often by narration/description which messes up the pacing of the dialogue and the impact of the description. You should group like elements together a bit more. Another issue is omitting dialog tags too often. At some points it's hard to tell who is speaking. I think the dialogue would work better if the responses weren't so direct either. Once in a while the characters could use sarcasm or metonymy any other rhetorical device to spice things up.

[Anonymous No.21650844]

>>21650661
>>21650800
Agreed with that fellow's feedback. You don't have to be so vivid in your descriptions, particularly between dialogue. "Violet smiled and poured out some rum." can be just as good as "Violet smiled and kept smiling as she poured herself a noxious draught which filled the cabin with a medical scent." Let the reader paint a picture themselves. It's an art to use simple words that give room for the reader's imagination while still being really descriptive and aesthetic. Like "Violet grinned as she streamed the rum into the glass." I don't think that's particularly good (I'm not a talented writer), but you get what I mean. Read some good books and you'll notice that they have some really clever lines on every page.

[Anonymous No.21650876]

How bad is switching between first person and third person? I want to use different POVs, but my genre just won't ever accept any third person protagonist.

[Anonymous No.21650910]

>>21650800
thanks
I'm probably leaning on narration because I can't get the same expressiveness out of dialog yet.
I was trying to omit most of the dialog tags as part of the exercise to force myself to write more distinct dialog, but it's definitely not where it could be.
>I think the dialogue would work better if the responses weren't so direct either. Once in a while the characters could use sarcasm or metonymy any other rhetorical device to spice things up.
can you edit a line for where you think a response is too direct? I think I understand what you're saying, but I don't know which parts in particular feel bad because of it

>>21650844
what writers do good dialog? 2bh I think modern writers have swung too far to the "JUST GET TO THE POINT" camp. There are plenty of good books where the author will milk each simple action and try to get the most out of it.

[Anonymous No.21650913]

>tfw want to write my fetishes into my works

[Anonymous No.21650952]

>>21650913
everyone does. I have a red head with green eye domineering woman in all my novels. Clearly my type.

[Anonymous No.21650959]

>>21650913
I focus my stories on my fetishes.

[Anonymous No.21650966]

>>21650952
nice
i want to have a dominatrix villainess myself
and a guy with an underage sex slave assassin who only wears thongs beneath her clothes, if she's wearing them at all

[Anonymous No.21650967]

>>21650959
>>21650913
Forget it. I base all art I create, all philosophy I uphold and all my aesthetic tastes on fetishes.

[Anonymous No.21650978]

>>21650952
Curious. My type is definitely redheads, but I seem to only write blondes.

[Anonymous No.21651000]

>>21650844
>Read some good books and you'll notice that they have some really clever lines on every page.
Great advice, dude. I'll remember to include 'clever lines' in my next story.

Just kidding, I agree with everything you say. Trying to be economical in that way is the aspect of revising that feels most like hard work to me, but it's also the aspect that most improves the text.

>>21650910
>what writers do good dialog
Hemingway is obviously the classic reference point (I recommend Hills Like White Elephants if you haven't read it -- very short read). Raymond Chandler is a good resource for fast-paced and entertaining, pulpy dialogue.

I also read James Salter's A Sport and a Pastime recently (I'm mentioning it in loads of threads because it was very well written), and Salter's the master of that kind of minimal but evocative interweaving of dialogue and description that the other anon was talking about. Sometimes he'll be describing a scene quite loosely -- a whole afternoon in a couple of sentences -- and then he'll switch into a very brief bit of dialogue, maybe just someone saying 'Please don't' or 'Tonight' or whatever, and the sudden switch to dialogue is really effective, like you've suddenly overheard some intimate moment.

[Anonymous No.21651022]

>>21650913
As everyone else is saying, this is the correct approach.

When I did a misguided year of art school, one of the instructors I really respected was giving advice to a girl was feeling aimless in her art, and his gist was that you need to follow whatever it is that produces some kind of energy in you, regardless of whether it conforms to conventional ideas of High Art.

His example was R. Crumb, whose prolific output was driven by his lecherous desire for beefy broads. The student was spot-on R. Crumb type of girl as well, like 6'2" and juicy-thighed -- I'm pretty sure that's why the example came to the instructor's mind.

[Anonymous No.21651068]

>>21651022
then i'll do it
dominatrix villainesses will rape men and women alike into servile sex slaves
sex slave assassins will attack in just thongs
female warriors will be raped into servitude
innocence will be corrupted

[Anonymous No.21651093]

>>21650910
Alright, let's take this passage:

...Barney, I,"--Violet tossed back the rest of her drink--"I want to give you a better share. You deserve it."
Barney leaned forward and his shadow gulped up nearly half the table.
"Don't make promises like that when you're drunk."
"I'm not drunk, and I mean it."
"You don't mean it. And there's no more share to go around anyway. I know you spend every last penny keeping Hummingbird afloat."
"You've been stealing a look at my books?"
Barney sat stiff like a monument and though his expression hadn't changed since, Violet felt judged. She poured herself another drink and swilled it in its glass.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Where are you heading, Violet? You can't keep living like this forever. You know one day something'll break that you can't fix, either on the train, or--"
"I can fix it, whatever it is. Whatever it is, I can fix it as long as what's here, right here, doesn't break." Violet brought a closed fist down on the table and a splash of rum jumped out of her glass.

And now let's insert some rhetorical devices:

...Barney, I,"--Violet knocked back the glass--"I want to give you a bigger slice. You deserve it."
Barney leaned forward and his shadow gulped up half the table.
"You're drunk."
"I'm not drunk, and I mean it."
"Sure, cause you're just flushed with cash right?" Though his expression didn't change, Violet felt judged.
"You don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"I know you're pinching pennies just keeping this place afloat. "
"You looked through my books?"
Barney sat stiff as a monument. Violet reached for the bottle and poured herself another drink.
"You can't keep living like this," he said. "One day something'll break that you can't fix, either on the train, or--"
"I can fix it, whatever it is. I can fix it as long as what's here, right here, is solid." Violet slapped the table and a splash of rum jumped out of her glass.

Also for good dialog, you should look to plays. Plays don't have the benefit of a movie's special effects or sets so the only way they can engage you is through the dialog.

[Anonymous No.21651116]

>>21651093
thanks for the edit, that helps

[Anonymous No.21651241]

>>21650800
>>21650844
>Agreed with that fellow's feedback. You don't have to be so vivid in your descriptions, particularly between dialogue. "Violet smiled and poured out some rum." can be just as good as "Violet smiled and kept smiling as she poured herself a noxious draught which filled the cabin with a medical scent."

I'll add that I often use actions for pacing. There's no way to directly indicate a pause or a beat in a conversation, but you can fake it by inserting narration.
>"Statement" Character does something.
>"Response"
That gives the reader a short delay that they interpret as a beat. Or...
>"Longish set up for a joke," Character says while doing a thing "punchline."

Having long descriptions in dialogue might cause this effect unintentionally and make things sound strange.

[Anonymous No.21651507]

Sometimes I write lines and scenes on the spot knowing that I'll have to rearrange it radically come the next draft. Should I be concerned?

[Anonymous No.21651635]

>>21651507
>Should I be concerned
No, not really. That's fairly normal behavior. It's not how I normally do things, personally, but it's a completely valid method of writing. The most important thing with writing is obviously just getting words down on paper to begin with, so as long as your method allows you to do that, you're good

[Anonymous No.21651712]

how do you fight through anhedonia? I have no interest in many things, my own projects being one of them.
Brute forcing it is all I can really do, but I just am reaching out to see if anyone else has a similar problem.

[Anonymous No.21651758]

>>21651022
For me its moments of intense pathos, like an estranged son forgiving his parent or someone sacrificing himself to save his best friend or a bad guy redeeming himself through suffering and good works. I love these tropes when I read them but I'm always afraid to put them in my own work because I'm afraid people will make fun of me for writing cheap melodrama.

[Anonymous No.21651775]

I kind of want to write a litrpg because it seems fun, but I haven't played any games in over a decade.

[Anonymous No.21651789]

>>21651758
I do the same thing. I've become an incredibly sentimental person over the years. But I love heroic sacrifices, intense emotions. I honestly have teared up thinking about what my characters have experienced and suffered

[Anonymous No.21651992]

How does one find their own story?
I want to write something that has meaning but I don't know what it is I want to say.
How do I find it?

[Anonymous No.21652274]

>>21650427
Never slap the point in your reader's face. It's called a facial. Byung-Chul Han has written about it.

[Anonymous No.21652278]

>>21650966
>only wears thongs beneath her clothes
wow that's so kinky

[Anonymous No.21652495]

>>21651758
>I love these tropes when I read them
>but I'm always afraid to put them in my own work
imagine if the authors you love were also afraid of putting them in their work
the things you're afraid of putting in your work are usually the things people want to read
put them in
and always remember stephen king wrote a fucking child orgy in a sewer

[Anonymous No.21652528]

>>21651775
Games haven't evolved much lately. All innovation goes into ways to monetize games rather than the games themselves. Lootboxes, season passes, etc.

Good litRPG systems don't track exactly to real videogames anyway. You have to think about what will be good for a story first and what would make a playable game second.

[Anonymous No.21652628]

>>21650786
>the World of Light
stopped reading here

[Anonymous No.21652656]

>>21651992
You just do. Or you do not write. That simple. Find another expressive hobby if you can't find a plot, meaningful or otherwise.
I'm not talking down to you. I don't want you to waste a lot of time writing something without meaning that you inevitably regret.

[Anonymous No.21652849]

>>21645770
>outwrites you in 2.3 seconds

How can fleshcucks even compete?

[Anonymous No.21652851]

>>21645793
>luaubrosiac
>flatwave
>shriller fiction
>vanitycore
>/wg/ new wave
is any of that a thing outside of your head?

[Anonymous No.21652991]

>>21652528
Litrpgs are all asspull galore where the system exists only to justify why the protagonist is invincible and everyone else sucks. I'd like to see one that's actually balanced and believable as a game

[Anonymous No.21653046]

> Literally every online forum for would be writers is 90% young adult/fantasy writing zoomers and 9% erotica writers
why is this?

[Anonymous No.21653098]

>>21653046
The most likely people to get into writing are readers. So, what do most readers read?

[Anonymous No.21653144]

>>21653046
Don't like it? Leave

[Anonymous No.21653271]

I'm planning out a romance novel for a somewhat niche audience. The relationship starts consensual but the lead is personally and ideologically opposed to the love interests profession to the point that I can only see the reveal falling under rape by deception. I suppose I could keep any sexual activity until after the reveal, but I'd also like their romance to be fast paced from the get go.
Do I even go through with this if my potential audience would be turned off by any kind of non-consensual activity?

[Anonymous No.21653380]

Hell-Anon here. I am approaching the finish line. Hope everyone is doing well.

[Anonymous No.21653421]

>>21653046
what are they supposed to write?

[Anonymous No.21653441]

>>21653421
A fiction about existentialism using giant robots.

[Anonymous No.21653463]

>>21653441
I understood that reference :D
Reddit gold for you, internet stranger!

[Anonymous No.21653528]

I've had a story idea living in my head rent free for the past year or so:
Two sisters who hate each other must work together to accomplish some task, BUT they start to grow attracted to each other and neither one knows how to handle it.

[Anonymous No.21653532]

>>21653528
Oh so Queen Mary vs Queen Elizabeth.

[Anonymous No.21653540]

>>21653532
Yes except not lies.

[Anonymous No.21653562]

Can't believe I'll have to call a character "Lord [place]" instead of a name just because he is a noble. English are weird, to be honest.

[Anonymous No.21653609]

>>21653562
The place name was their last name. Think of guys like Richard Duke of York or Lionel Duke of Clarence.

[Anonymous No.21653642]

I think Jesus would hate that the Torah etc was in the bible. Because Judaism etc killed so many Jews and tried to say that genocide is good when the book is about “do unto others as you’d have done unto yourself”.

Though all the same, Jesus is obviously not the first person to say “do unto others as you’d have done unto yourself”. And one good statement doesn’t imply that everything else someone said is equally good

There’s a spiritual monopoly that must end.
The collective consciousness must evolve. Religion must evolve

I hate the whole ego cult around Jesus. Tomboy Jesus can instead enjoy sucking my ass and worshipping me and repenting to me instead

And suffice to say there isn’t only one heaven. The “Christian” heaven to me is hell. I only give my soul/thought to my love/lovers.

I’m not into the spiritual BDSM of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Never shall be.
I wish for all 3 to end and for ever goodder evolving religions to prosper.

[Anonymous No.21653706]

>>21649228
>You can't just blend everything together into a big abstract soup. If you mix together every colour of paint, you end up with grey.

I disagree.
Goodness compiles and gets ever goodder.

This is a soup of infinite infinitely abstract features. As well as infinite kinds of infinitely abstract transcendence and infinitely abstract infinite absolutes.

Heaven-For-All is real as everyones desires are mutual. Everyones love is mutual. As the only motive is love and as there is only one love. And I love the soul that is the awareness that everyones desires are mutual BECAUSE there is only one love. One love that is all, true, infinitely abstract, and infinitely absolute. Etc.
Growing this awareness is to grow the spirit/soul of true heaven for all.

Trusting our feelings completely is MAGIC. What feels bad IS bad. What feels good IS good. All love is mutual and all feelings are mutual among the infinite of all souls.

The only force, power, and life IS LOVE.

Love is the force that makes all happen and also makes alls not happen.
Hate and evil is love.
As a flower can only exist if nothing else exists in its place. Hate and evil are the thorns of a rose.

[Anonymous No.21653875]

Is it easier for you to finish the first draft or to edit afterwards?

[Anonymous No.21653884]

>>21653875
First draft then edit.

[Anonymous No.21653980]

>Taylor swift the most popular artist today
>Sold 1.7 million records
>Less than 1% of the US population
>Me, a no name author
>What hopes do I have to sell even 5 copies?

[Anonymous No.21654001]

>>21653884
I ordered the question wrong like the retard I am. The question was whether it's harder to complete the first draft or to edit. I'm suffering a lot with the first draft so I want to know if editing will be just as hard .

[Anonymous No.21654026]

>>21654001
Editing is 10x harder. Not only will you be changing your first draft, you'll be rewriting parts, which becomes a new first draft for the changes you made. Then you have to go through it again.

[Anonymous No.21654058]

>>21650039
How did you come up with such snazzy covers?

[Anonymous No.21654076]

>>21653980
none, really. success is rare and it usually snowballs only after your death in case there will ever be a little cult following to begin with.

[Anonymous No.21654080]

you will never write a book

[Anonymous No.21654093]

>>21654076
You don't really need the 'success'. You just need a middle class income, under conditions of continuous work as a writer I mean.

[Anonymous No.21654140]

I've been writing short smut stories for over a year now. How do I get into more serious writing? Making erotica was fun at first but now it's annoying.

[Anonymous No.21654151]

>>21654058
AI generated art (zoom and crop) + Canva

[Anonymous No.21654165]

>>21654151
What generator do you use? Do you pay for it? The ones i use are shit, even after 6 prompts made with promot generators compliant with Stable.

[Anonymous No.21654209]

>>21654165
Nope. Spent zero. I just used Dall-e.

If you're desperate you can ask /b/ in their degenerate a.i. porn thread to make you an piece. Just crop out what you don't need or hope someone is willing to make one for you that's not porn.

[Anonymous No.21654313]

How the fuck do you make a whimsical fantasy world that isn't just Harry Potter ree

[Anonymous No.21654319]

>>21654313
Make it lord of the rings.

[Anonymous No.21654359]

>>21654319
Lord of the Rings isn't whimsical enough

[Anonymous No.21654365]

>>21654313
Make the inciting incident the protagonist losing his virginity

[Anonymous No.21654371]

>>21654359
Naria?

[Anonymous No.21654400]

>>21654365
There is nothing whimsical about sex

>>21654371
You mean Narnia and it's also not whimsical enough

[Anonymous No.21654435]

>>21654400
Just write Hairy Johnson again you hack

[Anonymous No.21654495]

>>21654209
/g/ also has sdg threads with advice and guides

[Anonymous No.21654503]

I'm writing a Harry Potter rip off
Where should I look for ideas about magic systems?
Currently I'm trying to think about the corpus of spells that a person can cast and what factors determine that
I want to have people cast a lot of spells through study but I also like the element system

[Anonymous No.21654520]

>>21654503
what makes harry potter good is that there's no real "system"—magic just works or doesn't work as is needed, which is what makes it feel magical. The logic of magic should end at the moment of execution.
>Where should I look for ideas about magic systems?
magic should come out of strong emotions: devotion, anger, love, etc.

[Anonymous No.21654572]

>>21650876
it can sound very unnatural. what genre could you possibly be writing in?

[Anonymous No.21654577]

>>21654503
already beat you to it
personally, i took what i could from tabletop and vidya

[Anonymous No.21654585]

>>21654313
Create a world consistent enough it that stands up to the scrutiny of your average twelve year old.
Find a good naming scheme for things, places, and characters. (Most of JKR's 'whimsy' comes from this.)
Surround a bland child protagonist with dark, dangerous, and unknown forces out to do him harm. Make all adults total assholes, even the characters who will later turn out to be helpful guides.

[Anonymous No.21654644]

>>21654520
>The logic of magic should end at the moment of execution.
Disagree. The reason HP's plot is all fucked up is because JKR pulled shit out of her ass whenever she needed to and then tried to patch it up later.

It doesn't need to be a 'system' or explained to the reader, but there should be some logic to it. Rules the writers follows even if they aren't stated directly.

And since magic should serve the story, it's best to ban certain problem-solving powers that will fuck up the plot: time travel, long range teleportation, instant communication, resurrection, easy ability to speak with ghosts, scrying, etc. These can solve so many problems the reader will ask 'why didn't they just use x?'

[Anonymous No.21654665]

>>21654435
No it's okay I came up with an idea while doing leg curls at the gym (I did not sleep well enough last night to do deadlifts at an appropriate weight but did not want to skip the day entirely so I did heavier accessories instead)

>>21654503
>magic systems
Not going to make it

>>21654520
That isn't what makes Harry Potter good

>>21654585
I know all that because I spent a full month last year critically examining the first Harry Potter book (not trolling just autistic)

[Anonymous No.21654722]

>>21653271
>if my potential audience would be turned off by any kind of non-consensual activity
women's number one sexual fantasy is rape. granted, it's a fantasy, so it's like the billionaire playboy vampire werewolf with the six pack does some bondage play with the nonconsenting heroine, who ends up cumming her brains out and loving it, btw

[Anonymous No.21654745]

>>21654644
>HP's plot is all fucked up is because JKR pulled shit out of her ass whenever she needed to and then tried to patch it up later
in complete fairness to JK, this is absolutely how you should write a book. you just have to do a good enough job of patching after the fact so the reader doesn't get preoccupied by anything too far out of left field

[Anonymous No.21654765]

>>21654722
they are really weird about it

[Anonymous No.21654950]

>>21654745
Maybe one book. But in a long series of books, you can't easily go back to fix things in a later draft.
JKR was hyper sensitive to fans pointing out things, and then she'd dig herself deeper in a hole. Like having a plot line about how slavery is okay. If she had thought ahead a little and set the rules for house elves very clearly in the beginning, it wouldn't have caused so much consternation.

[Anonymous No.21654982]

>>21654950
>JKR was hyper sensitive to fans pointing out things
no she wasnt, dumbass

[Anonymous No.21655028]

I got a poem accepted with praise but I re-read it a few times and found a typo, I'm assuming that's what an editor is there for, right? I should have no worries?

[Anonymous No.21655126]

>>21650133
If I do that, will people be able to tell we're the same person or does it give the illusion of being a different account? Sorry, I'm still learning AO3.

[Anonymous No.21655259]

I'm writing some autofiction in the style of Knausgaard's my struggle, proust's in search of lost time, etc. I'm 31, how many years should each book span, and how many words/pages should I aim for for each book? For context I'm at around 27k words and up to age 5 , but obviously my older memories will be more descriptive than the ones from my childhood

[Anonymous No.21655265]

I think I've got a serious case of impostor syndrome. People compliment my vocab and writing but I can't help but feel it's all irredeemably pretentious.

[Anonymous No.21655274]

>>21655259
You must really love yourself, anon...

[Anonymous No.21655276]

>>21655265
Critics and fellow writers will have much higher standards than the average reader, so you're not wrong. It can be hard to assess just how good or bad your writing is.

[Anonymous No.21655280]

>>21655265
You got away with it. Wrote some pretentious bullshit, but everyone liked it. That's your achievement. Don't feel guilty.

[Anonymous No.21655285]

>>21655276
>>21655280
Thanks for the reality check. I'll try be more leisurely.

[Anonymous No.21655286]

>>21655265
>uses "iredeemably" instead of "too"
Yes. But that's ok, I guess.

[Anonymous No.21655299]

>>21655265
Same but it makes my dick hard

[Anonymous No.21655305]

>>21655299
Based. I should channel that

[Anonymous No.21655306]

>>21655274
I will try to love myself. I'm doing this more because I usually try to do high concept ideas that never work out and now i'm trying to "write what I know"

[Anonymous No.21655439]

>new idea i'm outlining is a gay mishmash of popular franchises i personally liked as a kid
ok now THIS is soul

[Anonymous No.21655574]

>>21655439
I'm here trying to study romantic literature while this guy just rewatches Star Wars movies and still writes better than me.

[Anonymous No.21655617]

>>21655574
read Story Genius my friend

[Anonymous No.21655731]

>>21653380
Hope to see what you've written on my bookshelf soon!

[Anonymous No.21655740]

>>21654080
The OP pastebin puts the lie to your demotivational failed-crab seething.

[Anonymous No.21655745]

>>21654209
Why not just install Stable Diffusion on your own computer?
Instructions in the referred-to /b/ thread.

[Anonymous No.21655860]

https://pastebin.com/KAGM470u
547 words
Tried to do a 10 minute flash and it turned into 30
Had a real hard time with the dialogue. I feel like in order for this to work the dialogue would have to be tight, which I don't think it is

[Anonymous No.21655952]

>>21655860
You're giving a lot of unnecessary details and the chick talks like an anime character.

[Anonymous No.21656022]

>>21655952
But all the details serve the narrative
Except her anime movements I guess

[Anonymous No.21656030]

I'm terrible at writing blurbs... what's the secret?

[Anonymous No.21656037]

>>21656022
i get he's old and she's sexy
you can chalk it up to just that

[Anonymous No.21656398]

What is a good form to use to represent the malevolent forces of logic?
Its a story about inaction.
>>21656030
Dont think about it. Blurbs are just meant to be raw barely articulated thoughts that get the sentiment across.

[Anonymous No.21656417]

>>21656398
Ok I know that sounded stupid. What I mean to ask is whats a good plot device to use that represents the cold indifference of the universe on a near undefeatable scale

[Anonymous No.21656442]

>>21656417
Do you think you have anything interesting to say about that that a better author has not already said

[Anonymous No.21656444]

>>21656442
cringe

[Anonymous No.21656579]

>>21655740
No, it merely reinforces it.

[Anonymous No.21656587]

>>21656417
>whats a good plot device
Giant octopus. Giant octopus always works.
>>21656442
I recently suddenly remembered a novella I've read and watched an adoptation of that represents the same concept as what I want to create. It didn't discourage me. I'm quite different from that author, and the ending is different, and characters are different. That is a similar situation, but every actor is uniquely placed inside of the plot they create. You aren't unoriginal if you provide a new look at the concept. This novella was very new at the time, which is just a few decades ago. Noone ever tried to make it different,
as to my knowledge.

[Anonymous No.21656629]

>>21654745
No. Just no.

[Anonymous No.21656637]

>>21654520
>which is what makes it feel magical

Maybe for children. Any adult is just constantly asking "why did they do THIS with magic, but not THAT?" and can't feel any tension because everything is going to be solved by some bullshit deus ex machina anyway.

[Anonymous No.21656703]

300 reviews on Goodreads and counting. Maybe you aren’t networking enough.

[Anonymous No.21656765]

I was getting tired of making up creation myths that just mirror whatever can be found in various peoples around the real world and got into emanationism. So far I tried getting into the gnostic emanations of neo-platonism and the Kabbalah. What are some other examples or resources on the issue?
I specifically was thinking about mirroring the process of thinking in emanation i.e. every step of thought having its own emanation and the further derived deities emanating from the interactions of those.

[Anonymous No.21656849]

>>21656030
Be as shameless as you can. I will help later

[Anonymous No.21656853]

>>21654503
With hp canceled this is about the right time for a SJW/POC version

[Anonymous No.21656924]

>>21655265
That's just called being humble. Please stop following in the line of a pseudoscience known as psychology and ascribing yourself mental illnesses for which you mistake personality traits. There's no such thing as imposter sus amogus syndrome. Okay? There's no such thing as ADHD. That's just the kind of person who you are. It's very common, in fact, to be humbled by compliments. Those people see the result and they like it. You, the person who toiled and put work in, know the extent of your failings and your flaws, you see the outside of their frame, you know the shortcuts you took and your weaknesses, so of course it doesn't seem as good to you as it does to them. It's natural and normal. It's not a "syndrome" of any kind. You don't need a special denomination for this phenomenon, because it's not a phenomenon. It just is.

So sick of psychology fetishism lately.
>I feel sad, I must have 'anhedonia'!
>Yeah? Well I feel really really really sad, I have 'depression!'
>Both of you shut the fuck up, you are triggering my 'anxiety'
It really is nothing more than male Zodiac, the grown-up version of "which anime character are you". By attempting to destructure the nature of human mind into its composite parts (impossible), you are trivializing the human experience, dehumanizing yourself to appear like an animal, a creature of instincts and chemicals. Psychologists are conceited. They notice a pattern (a shadow moving on the wall of Plato's cave) and conclude that they know everything there is to know. It's disgusting!

[Anonymous No.21656968]

>>21649598
in a similar state anon. keep going, for my sake if for no other reason.

[Anonymous No.21657086]

New thread >>21657020
apparently...

[Anonymous No.21657100]

>>21656442
What a stupid demotivational attitude.
Go kys crab

[Anonymous No.21657102]

>>21656579
But it's filled with authors that finished their book.
Just because you'll never finish your book doesn't mean you have to project your seething.

[Anonymous No.21657224]

>>21656924
Engage with it as a way to examine specificity of feeling
There are people who use it as astrology style ego supplements but it's also useful for people with observation skills beyond "I feel sad"
Anhedonia describes a specific emotional detachment
Imposter syndrome describes a specific feeling about personal ability
Depression is vague but everyone (who's not retarded) generally gets the idea when it's said
Don't water down language because le institutionalized thought boogeyman