/wg/ Writing General

[Anonymous No.23263531]

"The power of illusion" edition

Previous: >>23250812

/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, relentless shill-spammers, and grounds keeping prose, should be ignored and reported.

Simple guides on writing:
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHdzv1NfZRM [Embed]
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whPnobbck9s [Embed]
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAKcbvioxFk [Embed]

Thread theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nO62scTZ7Qk

[Anonymous No.23263535]

>>23263531
First.

[Anonymous No.23263560]

>>23263531
So, I have this story about a kingdom's civil war that spans 20 years and has 100 characters, the same amount of locations, and countless battles.
Do you think I can cover this with just 10,000 words?

[Anonymous No.23263568]

>>23263560
It will read like a Wikipedia page. But that could still be interesting.

[Anonymous No.23263590]

>>23263560
you just covered it in 26 words. it’s just a matter of how much detail you want to include.

[Anonymous No.23263607]

Rate this small passage I just wrote:

He was now dressed in a tightly buttoned black coat in the Novgorodian style, almost form-fitted from his shoulders down to his ribs, then flaring out widely at the waist. Two black leather belts with polished silver buckles circled his stomach; three ruffled layers of black silk cravats poured out of his collar and fluttered in the hot breeze. He wore embroidered gray hose over thick-heeled horseskin shoes with black ribbon tongues that sprang somewhat ludicrously outward and hung over his feet with the drooping
curl of hothouse flowers. Sweat was already beading on his forehead like little diamonds—Crete’s summer did not reward the intrusion of fashions from a more northerly climate.

“My name,” said Leonardo Santino, “is Ioan Aleksovich.” The voice was clipped and precise, scrubbed of Leonardo’s natural inflections. He layered the hint of a harsh Slavic accent atop a slight mangling of his native Venetian dialect like a barkeep mixing liquors. “I am wearing clothes that will be full
of sweat in several minutes. I am foolish enough to walk around the Sixty Ladders
without a weapon of any sort. Also,” he said with a hint of ponderous regret, “I am entirely fictional, only existing in the realms of my fantasy-riddled head.”

"Well done, well done!" Costa clapped at Leonardo's performance. "Excellent choice of costume and even better theatrics! You might need to tune up your accent a bit, though. Just one small adjustment and you will tire of hearing the locals bathing you with compliments and marriage proposals!" he added and placed a large mirror in front of Leonardo, preparing him for one last rehearsal before they headed out for the night..

[Anonymous No.23263619]

>>23263560
That premise reminds me of Suikoden. To answer your question, you won't be able to do the much with it in just 10,000 words. If you want people to care about the characters, they need to be expanded on. If you want to set the scene at those locations, they need to be expanded on. If you want battles to be more than 'Character A kills character B with a sword', then it needs to be expanded on.
All of this to say that you'd have a dry textbook on your hands if you only did 10,000 words.

[Anonymous No.23263627]

>>23263619
What if do time skips and cover stuff off-page?

[Anonymous No.23263637]

>>23263627
Write 7 pages of literally anything, just cuntpaste a short story to see the word count, and get back with us.

[Anonymous No.23263649]

>>23263627
Your idea is too big for 10,000 words no matter how you slice it. You WILL need more if you want it to work, and I mean MORE. If the thought of that is too daunting for you, try something smaller scope like a family in the middle of the conflict or something.

[Anonymous No.23263667]

[Anonymous No.23263671]

>>23263560
That's one character introduced per 100 words. Your comment is 37 words.

[Anonymous No.23263687]

>>23263560
I have a story that's 100k words I feel is ridiculously short.

[Anonymous No.23263707]

I'm making a story based on legend of Zelda and star wars 1977 and crime and punishment

[Anonymous No.23263727]

>>23263707
An 18 year old strangles someone with a rosary
There's a lengthy and detailed sex scene with an 80 year old woman

[Anonymous No.23263733]

>>23263687
less is more
most 100K word stories can trimmed down to 10K

for example, GRRM's books don't need to be all 1000 pages long, if he didn't describe food and horse semen in detail AGOT books would only be 500 pages long

[Anonymous No.23263757]

>>23263607
Drama/10

[Anonymous No.23263785]

>>23263733
lol no

[Anonymous No.23263826]

>>23263687
Speaking of, is 100k too short for a first web serial?

[Anonymous No.23263850]

>>23263607
It’s alright, nothing glaringly bad but your style doesn’t particularly grab me. That being saidsoever I can see others liking it. Not bad, just not particularly resonant for me. I like the detail you put in the descriptions. Not overly detailed but it did give a good picture in my mind.

I wrote this a few minutes ago, which is why I came here, so if you or anyone else wants to rate this small snippet it’d be appreciadoted


“I think the best thing that’s gonna happen between me and this… depression… is a draw” he slowly issued every word forward and brought his eyes quickly downward while speaking them. Jon looked at him a long while. He saw that Michael was waiting for him to say something or thinking of something else to say, atleast that was the impression. The hardened face observing Michael’s, which was on the point of completely breaking. “I’m not going to beat it, but I’m not going to let it win I just” and with that Michael lost all control and sobbed like a small boy. Jon averted his eyes, out of respect, and gazed upon the somber grass, dark green and brown beneath the cloudy sky. Hr looked at a patch of small purple and bent, or crumpled dead, lilacs. He caught Michael in his arms when he failed and fell forward into his friend.

[Anonymous No.23263903]

>>23263826
In total, or for the first volume? Doesn't really matter to be honest as long as you tell the story you want to tell. Not every web serial has to be a million words long and go on for 5+ years.

[Anonymous No.23264038]

>>23263826
Too short by what criteria? By what's popular with most audiences? People generally read web serials for their long-running high-release nature, so yeah, you'd be shooting yourself in the foot in that regard. Why not clean it up and try to publish it normally if it's the size of a normal novel?
But if you're just writing it to write it, other anon is obviously correct that any length is fine as long as you accomplish what you want with it

[Anonymous No.23264041]

Do I need to restate names every single time I start a new line or paragraph?

[Anonymous No.23264068]

>>23264041
Read a book and see what they do, jesus

[Anonymous No.23264095]

>>23264068
It'd be faster to give a yes or no

[Anonymous No.23264102]

>>23264095
no, and i recommend you read a short story to see how it’s done.

[Anonymous No.23264110]

I wonder if there are any noticeable influences from specific authors in my wrtiting style

>>23263560
>>23263627

Will it be a generational family saga thing if it is focusing on the same people in the same place? Could be cool. I think if you're doin time skips then probably might make it into a duology with each book covering a decade or so

>>23263667

Feels like it's trying a little too hard to be dramatic

>>23263607

Kind of reminds me of magic realism stories and a little bit of Kafka thrown in the mix but I like it.

[Anonymous No.23264351]

>practiced
>wrote a short story
Now what? I'm not posting it here, but what should I do with it?

[Anonymous No.23264413]

>>23264351
Post it here

[Anonymous No.23264469]

>>23264351
Reddit has many short-fiction oriented subs. You can find readers there. See https://reddit.com/r/nosleep/wiki/similarsubreddits for a big list.
inb4 plebbit: cope, seethe, and dilate

[Anonymous No.23264506]

I wrote this today.

What do you think?

[Anonymous No.23264531]

>>23264506
>wrote about the trivial activities of a corporate drone
do you think this is interesting in any way?

[Anonymous No.23264537]

>>23264531
Catcher in the Rye is about the trivial activities of a highschool student and it's considered ground breaking literature.

[Anonymous No.23264566]

>>23264531
>>23264537

btw, I don't deny that my story sucks. I do, however, reject the idea that because a story is about corporate drone life, that it is inherently uninteresting

[Anonymous No.23264597]

>>23264537
>>23264566
He asked a question. He did not say it was uninteresting. Clearly he was asking what makes it interesting to the author, and potentially what will make it engaging for a reader.

Are there many people who want to engage in literature but have neither the academic background of college and university needed to get a good handle on it, yet still want to go through a process of discovery and excitement of reading a classic book without knowing what it is they are reading before they turn the first page?

I ask because I recently had the idea of putting together a book which would explain a few points of each of some of the canons I have read. Included would be a pretty rough outline of what formed them, common themes and then recommending books and authors based each canon. The one key difference from this and simply doing online research is that I intend to give just enough direction for the unlearned reader to be aware of what to look out for without laying it out and robbing the reader of the discovery of it.

This would be aimed at people like myself, blue collar types who perhaps went in to the trades despite potentially having the ability of going to university and studying.

[Anonymous No.23264618]

>>23264537
The interesting part of Catcher In The Rye isn't the trivial activities of a high school student, but his thoughts on the world around him and his place in it.
>>23264566
They have to pay me to put up with the corporate drone life. Why would I want to read about that in my off time? On top of the fact that, in your writing sample, there's no conflict and no stakes.

[Anonymous No.23264625]

>>23264506
Not bad, the ending made me laugh. Damn your writing is repetitive and monotonous though, it does develop a hypnotizing effect but it’s not a particularly pleasurable trance. Luckily your story does get way more interesting when he gets to the Kaur-turning point, because the first half while necessary plot wise, I just would’ve preferred in a different more emotive and deliberative style

[Anonymous No.23264927]

I attempted to take the advice given last thread, even if I didn't include the same amount of detail(I don't know the word for those "jackets" that are mostly plastic inside and out; not the puffy ones, the regular one) since I feel like I drifted away from "weirdo pseudo-hippie" and too much into "bum you'd find at your local bus stop"(though I'm certainly going for a bit of both)

[Anonymous No.23264957]

>>23263531
Thoughts on this little section?

[Anonymous No.23265028]

Been trying to write a comic book using AI to make the comic panels. It's kind of hard, it's hard to use the right keywords to get the AI to give you what you want. You can't always just describe exactly what you're picturing, you have to coax it a little bit. This one came out kind of looking like Alan Ginsberg

[Anonymous No.23265037]

>>23265028
Are you running something locally or are you using an online platform?

[Anonymous No.23265042]

>>23265037
Online, using nightcafe

[Anonymous No.23265091]

>>23265042
Noice. What was the prompt you used to generate your pic?

[Anonymous No.23265104]

Bill Henry dropped off due to lack of funds from the Pages enclave, and rotated between Notes and Journel between several years, writing frequently to his wife and son back home in America - promising that he is coming back soon, all of them knowing it is impossible or infeasible by now, considering the salacious and horrifying crime he never committed but still dreams of every night, and with each night he can see the sniper’s face clearer and remember more details. SD the drummer in tow along with all necessities and sundries scattered for the taking; the crucial bullet is shot and a crowd is drawn. I said to the drummeer, don’t you think you’re getting scammed, SD?

He - SD - says…- I’m in my forties, childless- brother, my credit score is so low that’s it’s not even a number anymore, just a letter: F. The letter F. God damn. Bill Henry, I need to tell you something. Identical twins aren’t real. They are just clones. They don’t actually exist in ancient books of valid antiquity.

Thanks, S.D…huh, identical twins - you never do…… That’s a really good bit for me to wear, it fits my intuitions perfectly. Are you sure there aren’t any references to twins in the King James Bible? Are you Hawaiin?

I am a black albino with full-body nega-vitiligo and I look like a guy who would be pounding a giant drum in some Kalakulalolain fire dance on Malahu, but I am actually just German and African. Similar to Michael Jackson.

I miss him. His absence feels wrong, as though he were meant to guide us through troubled times of mass disinforma—-

Come on, he was a pedo, dude.

Out of the thousands of children that ever went to Neverland Ranch and stayed in lavish, two-story bedtime quarters with the man, the only two to ever bring him to court had parents with histories of initiating lawsuits against famous celebrities.

Damn. That’s something to think about.

A conspiracy is a race, not a golf game. Gotta dip, mail broker usually falls asleep after the sun passes his position in his favorite chair. He’s very solid, you should go through him on account of all your troubles and—

Ayayayayay ay — I ain’t got troubles. I got problems.

Amen. See you on the flip.

[Anonymous No.23265107]

>>23265104

Henry bid adieu to his friend and left the bar, leaving a 500% tip on account of rapid hyperinflation. Henry had been down this road before - you think you’d remember old ladies with wheelbarrows full of cash trying to make it before close, but the more striking image is that of devalued, inflated specie, numismatic parody. Dead faces that create burns in your pockets trying to escape. Henry thought to himself, I can go back to Pages. It’s easy, distilled ever so gently as he sweat trying to predict whether he could catch the broker in time. I just need to find my doppelganger first, he thought. And I need to ensure that he is my doppelganger and I am not his. In his case, we merely look alike. In mine and in any case, I am obligated to murder this man in order to gain access to Pages again, where I will strike upon those that ousted me, and put to rest all the ridiculous rumors that I was booted for.

[Anonymous No.23265124]

>>23265091
It's hard to keep a continuity between the characters. Like when you want to draw the same character twice, you have to use codenamed. Like if you use a certain name, like Henry for example, it generates something where I think it must be using the name Henry to pull from somewhere, but where I could not say. So if you want to keep a continuity, idk, it might be easier to actually "cast" certain actors, like if I wanted to cast Paul Dano I could write "closeup of Paul Dano in comic book style". But I'm not sure I want to do that.
But I know I have a story I want to tell through comic books, and I don't have the money to pay an artist to draw it for me, and I can't draw. But I know I have this story I want to tell

[Anonymous No.23265153]

Posted this last thread, I got some feedback so I want to try again before comiting to this until the bitter end.
Rate and h8 the first chapter of what I envision as a slice of life story about a magical girl who struggles with overpowering homicidal desires.
I finished writing this and I suddenly didn't understand who the fuck would read this, even if it were masterfully crafted. I wrote it for myself and I don't think it will be very popular or liked at all. It's almost smut at times, but it never gets there. It feels like it wants to be American Psycho/Crash but written by a weeaboo: "Serious" readers wont like it because it's anime shit. Anime readers wont like it because it wants to be serious shit.
Hopefully I'll manage to strike a balance between the two by the end of this venture (which is what I'm aiming for). I just want some final feedback before posting it (and finishing it) somewhere else. Just let me know if you make it to the end and what you thought about it.
(If you're feeling generous, drop some stories similar to what I'm trying to do here)

https://files.catbox.moe/6tqt1m.txt

[Anonymous No.23265173]

>>23265153
>"Fuck!" she lets out in absolute frustration "Holy fuck!"
The reader in me dropped it here. It doesn't get better as it goes on. The narrative lacks any subtlety and is just edge fiction without substance. I would not read this or recommend this to anyone even insane people

[Anonymous No.23265182]

great stuff /wg/

[Anonymous No.23265204]

>AI slop
>what le prompt you use?
Kill yourselves

[Anonymous No.23265276]

>>23264927
I think this is better, anon.

[Anonymous No.23265356]

>>23264110
>I wonder if there are any noticeable influences from specific authors in my wrtiting style
Tolkien?

>Will it be a generational family saga thing if it is focusing on the same people in the same place? Could be cool. I think if you're doin time skips then probably might make it into a duology with each book covering a decade or so
It could be cool, but I feel the current plan is ambitious enough, with the goal of giving POV to all 8 houses. Though I'd like avoid plot armor, so maybe end up killing POVs and giving them need POV character from the same house.

[Anonymous No.23265359]

forgot pic

[Anonymous No.23265381]

>apply for a writing grant to finish my novel
>compose an appealing introduction
>think my plan is realistic and the story interesting
>rejected

Oh well, you miss all the shots you don't take

[Anonymous No.23265387]

WG is always so overrun by genre-based writers which I'm surprised at given the bulk of the threads are literary or philosophical.

Anyway, would be grateful for feedback on this 1000-word short story inspired by Joyce's Araby.

open.substack.com/pub/cafletcher/p/strangers

[Anonymous No.23265409]

>>23265153
The tense switching was whack. There is a lot to sort out in the writing. Go watch some YouTube videos or read books, blogs etc on fundamentals of writing

Aside from that, the premise is up to you, but it will restrict your audience. American Psycho appeals (appealed) to a wide audience because, although the murders etc is not part of common life, everything around it was. Most people want to read an extrapolation of real life, just heightened. Far fewer people want to read something wholly detached from our world. That said, art is art, so do whatever you want.

[Anonymous No.23265428]

>>23264506
It's pretty good anon. Your grammar choices (especially with commas) are a bit inconsistent ("On Wednesday, Allan" vs On Thursday Allan"; commas before modifiers like either but then not with others).

I'm not sure the repetitive time words works - it bored me eventually. I get that might be the point, but ehhh - boring

[Anonymous No.23265455]

Reposting this short story I wrote for a sci-fi/fantasy magazine's contest, since the old link expired. 6,800 words. I don't want to explain anything about it beforehand, just tell me what you got out of it, if anything.

https://litter.catbox.moe/khm4w1.pdf

[Anonymous No.23265942]

>>23264625
>Damn your writing is repetitive and monotonous though
I was trying to go for boring, to capture the monotonous life that Allan was living

Anything you like about it in particular?

>>23265428
>Your grammar choices (especially with commas) are a bit inconsistent
Yea, I need to do a better reread. I think a big problem with my writing, is I enjoy writing and rewriting, but I lose interest in what im working on and jump to the next thing once I consider it 'done'. I probably should refine everything 2x more then I actually do

>I'm not sure the repetitive time words works - it bored me eventually.
I was going for that, but also I was cognizant that too boring is not good. I tried to keep it short for that reason, but yea, I think the consensus is that it's maybe not substantive enough to justify being so boring.

>It's pretty good anon.
Anything in particular that you liked?

[Anonymous No.23265943]

>>23265387
A little purple throughout and the ending made me projectile vomit. You said this was inspired by Araby but the only thing the two stories have in common is that there's a boy and an older girl/woman. You could even say that both stories are diametrically opposed.

[Anonymous No.23266062]

Yeah I can't look at the manuscript at this point. I'm just gonna see more stuff I want to tweak.

[Anonymous No.23266204]

>>23265455
i've started it but i was about to take a nap. were you looking for feedback?

[Anonymous No.23266310]

what tropes should I include to maximize the popularity of my web novel

[Anonymous No.23266333]

what do you have so far?

[Anonymous No.23266370]

>>23266333
A bunch of shit smeared on a page, and a dream.

[Anonymous No.23266402]

>>23266370
You actually have something on the page, so you're beating like 75% of this thread lol

[Anonymous No.23266420]

>>23266204
Anything goes

[Anonymous No.23266469]

>>23266420
i'm tucked in now, it's too late! well, some:
i understand why, but i don't think the start should have been so slow, with so much focus on work/worklife. realestate is super valuable here.
sometimes you infodump when you could weave in exposition.
and there could be more depth to the character/story. another layer, somehow
cant remember what else

[Anonymous No.23266496]

>>23266310
Politicize it to the gills and it will develop a loyal cult following that obsessively shills it everywhere, but you might get deplatformed

[Anonymous No.23266499]

>>23266333
Precisely 49% of the lore regarding the twenty-five gods I've made up according to my spreadsheet

[Anonymous No.23266507]

>>23266333
27k words on my current novel-length project. Also plans for another story, I have a very strong visual about a guy in a baseball cap, greasy shoulder length hair and a backpack walking up a trail, irritated at someone and ignoring the beauty of the natural landscape around him. I think he's going to spread someone's ashes up there or something. I look forward to seeing what comes of that idea, but for now I've got this novel I'm writing for a contest.

[Anonymous No.23266517]

[Anonymous No.23266548]

>>23266517
Reads like my diary tbqfhwu

[Anonymous No.23266560]

>>23266548
IKTFB

[Anonymous No.23266567]

>>23265942
>purposely going for boring to match said characters life.
Yeah I kinda figured. Anyway like I said, the humor is good, you definitely put a picture in the mind of what kinda guy you’re describing. I honestly just don’t got much else to say about it, to be honest. I guess I hate kaur type poems too

>>23263850
Is mine any good? I figured it just got lost in the posts

[Anonymous No.23266585]

>>23266567
you should have some form of punctuation between the last word and closing quotation mark, such as a comma

[Anonymous No.23266586]

I wrote smut. Where should I post it outside of my friends on /trash/?

[Anonymous No.23266589]

>>23266586
Right here bro.
Post work and I'll let you know if it got me hard or not.

[Anonymous No.23266596]

>>23266496
Name three popular web serials that do this lmao

[Anonymous No.23266628]

Does anyone have any useful tips on writing in languages that are not your mother tongue?
In my case, I'd like to start writing more in Spanish. I am fluent in spoken Spanish as I've been living in spanish-speaking countries for over a year now, but expressing myself in writing doesn't come natural at all. I write texts etc in the language on a daily basis, but I rely on autocorrection tools a lot and I've never properly studied the language on a grammatical level. I've also been reading quite a bit in Spanish, but just random stuff that I find and caches my interest, so my understanding of how spanish-language literature developed and changed and works is very limited. My mother tongue is italian btw

[Anonymous No.23266718]

>>23266469
No need to force yourself right this instant, there's no hurry. I'd appreciate your comments when you're rested and lucid.

[Anonymous No.23266770]

Another Thursday client provides a counterpoint to Pang-jun's views: "Xiemei", 26, F; Literature major (postgrad, deferred last trimester). [Init. assess.: disassociation and cyclic depression; two suicide attempts: tranq. OD ("accidental"); blood loss in bath (most recent, assuredly deliberate).] Last week, when she seemed particularly manic -- yet still exhausted, hollow-eyed -- Xiemei described her vision of her life to me like a videogame (she, like many of my clients, struggles with VR- and AR-addiction) that was equal parts walksim and rpg:

"At the start you find yourself in a grassy meadow. White clouds in the pretty blue sky drift overhead, the sun shines. Birds and insects make their noises. You wander alone through the tall grass. Nothing is happening, but it is pleasant enough. If you wander far enough you will reach the end of the game map. It's like there's a glass wall stopping you from reaching the mountains or the lake you can see in the distance. No -- not a glass wall -- a dome. You are trapped inside this enormous glass dome, like a laboratory insect, or some experimental delicacy at a degustation restaurant. There is nowhere to go, so you head back toward your starting point. At the centre of your, I guess, vivarium, you find a large hole that bores deep down into the ground beneath the meadow. You peer over the edge and the hole goes so deep you can't see the bottom. Only blackness. You hear the cave wind blowing. There are rough stone steps leading down into the dark, running counterclockwise around the edge of the hole, an endless staircase spiralling down into the earth like a corkscrew. There is nowhere else to go. There is nothing else to do. So you head down. And down, and down, and down. It gets darker and colder and quieter, and soon the sunny meadow and the pretty sky are just a tiny dot of light high above you. You have no torch to light your way, and you find nothing to use, no weapons or items, as you slowly descend. You find no landings or doors or side tunnels. You keep going down, if only to see the bottom, to find something, an item, a quest, another character. But there is nothing. There is only the endless stairs spiralling down into the darkness. Soon it is too dark to see, but the width of the descending steps remains uniform, and you can still feel your way along the frozen wall. After a dozen or so more revolutions down the steps -- but who can say how many? you are growing slowly dizzy and blind, and it is hard to measure space let alone time -- you begin to hear new sounds, just under the cavern winds: the murmurs and purrs of some kind of creatures, perhaps bats or rats or larger animals. They are waiting in the dark further down; soon you will intrude upon their dens. You will upset their nests in your journey to reach the bottom of the corkscrew, and even though you intend them no harm, these blind, frightened creatures will attack you as if their offspring's lives depend on your death.

[Anonymous No.23266772]

"Now, you could always turn around and head back up to the pretty meadow where nothing happens. But you have travelled so very far down, hundreds of storeys, thousands, and it will be a gruelling climb back into the boring light. You could turn and walk off the edge of the stairs and fall straight down into the dark, hoping that there is a bottom to hit, and that, somehow, you will survive the fall. Or, completely unarmed, with no idea of the number of dens and nests of the creatures that await, with no idea of their size or viciousness or immortality, you could keep going down, fighting in the dark, crawling and bleeding as you go.

"What do you think I chose to do, Dr. Chung? And what do you think I wish I'd done instead?"

[Anonymous No.23266776]

>>23266596
It might work better with country music than print, because the sort of people who shill that stuff can't read

[Anonymous No.23266848]

Here's an early draft vs a much more improved version of the same story I'm workin on. Which opening do you think works more? I like the one on the right better just feels much more fleshed out.

>>23265356

What was it that made you think Tolkien? I'm definitely having some influence from Norse
mythology within my story.

I feel like if you're going for a duology of some kind then maybe 20 povs feels far too much for a first book. I get strong GRRM, and Frank Herbert vibes from your idea but your going to have to probably do something interesting other than political intrigue if you want it to set apart from others that have done the same.

[Anonymous No.23266874]

What are you working on tonight, lads?
>Picked the year I want my alternate history to really kick in
>Just looking through every country in Europe at that time to check what they were doing then writing a short summary so I can think later about what they're doing by the time my story takes place.

[Anonymous No.23266908]

>>23266848
It's a bit mechanical... Looks like you've thought about it too much. I feel like I am getting instructions for a recipe, or a step-by-step map. It's too neat, and while the imagery is great, I feel like I am reading a description of the compelling image.

>This is just me and how I would feel if I was reviewing my own work.

>If you take my criticism the wrong way, that's fine. Ultimately, you write for yourself. If you write for anybody else, you may as well wear their clothes while you're at it.

[Anonymous No.23266946]

I want to write erotica but I'm not sure where to actually publish it or sell it. I feel like Amazon has meme regulations on it and so does patreon.

I just want to write short stories and novels and sell them to coomers that like my writing.

[Anonymous No.23266963]

>>23264095
>rather than looking at a book to know how to write one, i will keep asking strangers to describe them to me piecemeal
it would be faster to give up now if you're going to be this retarded about it

[Anonymous No.23266965]

>>23266848
>What was it that made you think Tolkien?
Just the writing style, I could be way off.

>I'm definitely having some influence from Norse
You should read 13th century book, Gesta Danorum
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1150/1150-h/1150-h.htm#link2H_4_0022
It's fun, it's full of contemporary tropes.

>your idea but your going to have to probably do something interesting other than political intrigue if you want it to set apart from others that have done the same.
I'm not sure what you mean. Political intrigue is pretty is pretty wide area.

[Anonymous No.23267047]

Finished reading the first draft. Many changes to do, of course, but it's nice overall - speacially for a first novel.
Any tips on editing? I plan on going chapter per chapter with a pen on hand an noting what needs to be done on a notebook. Then, after, writing on the computer. It seems to be the only logical way to do things, but I might be wrong.

[Anonymous No.23267085]

>>23266946
If someone with a kindle unlimited subscription or whatever Amazon's paid subscription service is called reads one of your short stories that you self-publish in ebook form on Amazon, you get a few cents. That's the profit model. Maybe I should put my stories on there.

[Anonymous No.23267137]

>>23265104
>>23265107

best in thread, not perfect but impressive

[Anonymous No.23267173]

>>23266874
>I am procrastinating
shoulda just said that and been honest

[Anonymous No.23267182]

>>23267047
for a first draft edit I'd keep it on the computer. a later draft I'd give it the printout pen treatment

[Anonymous No.23267220]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a guide to creative writing that covers the most obvious basics beyond just technique?

My writing is incredibly, unbelievably dogshit. I'm looking for something between "here's how you write one beautiful paragraph" and How Fiction Works. Something like the How to Speak lecture from Patrick Winston, only for writing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY.. Ideally it would describe things like how plot points are built and structured, how hooks from previous chapters can be used, what makes filler feel like filler and how to avoid it, and so on, but in a way that's more structured and clearer than the books on the resources and recommendations list.

[Anonymous No.23267239]

>>23267220
In what way are the recommended books unclear? Not being facetious, just trying to understand what you're looking for.

[Anonymous No.23267245]

Only loosers write genre shit real men do philosophy and drama

[Anonymous No.23267247]

>>23267047
put it away for a few months, so you can think about what y our story is really about.

[Anonymous No.23267286]

Interlude/Worldbuilding for a story that will probably not revisit Earth in several books worth of chapters if it ever gets there. Kinda mashing things left and right from xianxiashit and other genres of novels I love and yeah. I hope it's as entertaining to read as I had fun writing.

[Anonymous No.23267294]

>>23267245
>my scifi-fantasy book has philosophy and drama in it
As it turns out categorizing everything but a small subgenre catered to a microscopic portion of the population as “shit” just shows how little you actually read

[Anonymous No.23267315]

Thinking about a sci-fi story about an enforcer aboard a generation ship striving to become the most useful muscle the ship regime has ever seen in hopes he can secure life-extension tech for himself and his gf waifu so that they both can live long enough to experience earth after the journey is over in 4000 years.

Basically Berserk but on a big ass metal box in space.
I'd like the sci-fi stuff to be sparse in the setting the same way fantasy stuff was sparse in Berserk.
I.e cybernetics are a tech that exists in the universe but only like 23 people total get to have them on the account how rare and expensive the gear is.

Does the concept itself sound interesting, at least?

[Anonymous No.23267324]

>>23266772
Re: redundancy in a client's feelings, I am reminded of one of my more successfully ended clients. Mrs. "Zhao", 61-63, early retired, who was at the centre of a media hurricane concerning vigilante justice some years ago. Here I highlight and paraphrase a few soundbites recorded during our later sessions:

"When my daughter first went missing, I remember I was paralysed with guilt. And grief, already. More than grief: failure. A punishment imposed on me for failing my offspring.

"Many years before, I had watched a wildlife doc. There was a great storm at sea, and in its wake a mother sealion discovered her pup battered to death on the shore. She prodded its lifeless shape with her snout a few times on the rocks. Then her wails to the empty sky were as human and heartbreaking as any you've ever heard. She wasn't being punished by hubris or freak weather or circumstance. Her anguish was imposed on her by Nature. You have failed to protect your offspring, her cells were screaming at her. This anguish will continue until you produce an heir and look after them properly. When my ex-husband told me, I thought about this cruelty inflicted on the mother sealion by her own metabolisms -- as if she wasn't already painfully aware of her own grief -- a pain doubled, needlessly reiterated by Mother Nature. Mother Nature, in all her voracious lust for more lifeforms, more, and ever more suffering and cycling of birth and death. Maybe it makes sense in the animal kingdom. This blunt, heavy-handed underlining of the fact you have failed yourself and your child and your first Goddess.

"But humans still suffer this same, additional kicking, when you are down already and know it. I thought about our other evolutionary hangovers. How our genitals' sensitivity to even the slightest pain is not so much for own good but Mother Nature's selfishness, her failsafe in ensuring we produce more progeny to please her. How your hand will flinch away from the flames, however much you will it to stay. However much you need to retrieve the object in the fire. Like you are some dumb animal who doesn't know they are in danger and pain. Like you need to be told again. All these unnecessary warnings and reminders. All this overkill from our nerves and bodies when our minds have already abundantly made their point. I felt all this and thought about all this when my daughter first disappeared."

[Anonymous No.23267328]

>>23267239
I bought How Fiction Works. It seems like it's aimed at improving the writing of someone who already understands the bare basics of fiction, by giving examples of the craft. It opens with a discussion of third- vs first-person and reliable vs unreliable narration, then meanders around other topics in a similar way.

It feels like all the advice and examples are applicable to someone who's already got a story and who just needs to express himself better, choose the right tense, find the right voice. When I'm reading it I feel I've accidentally picked up the second book in a three-part series and started from the middle, and there should be a missing first book that explains what a story is but in a more simplistic lie-to-children type of way.

[Anonymous No.23267334]

>>23267315
I'll be honest with you: I think all stories with big sci-fi concepts like a generation ship and a resource scarcity plot are stupids. They can build (presumably mile-long ships that will last for thousands of years but can't afford the one redundant cryo-pod or whatever? So maybe take care in justifying the unavailability of the implants beyond "they're expensive to make".

[Anonymous No.23267336]

>>23267286
>Alas, what you ask of is impossible
what you ask is impossible
>mewling upstart
huh? out of nowhere
>She is upstart no longer
and Buddha seems to know who Zeus is looking for, for no particular reason
>Old Gods
would the gods call old gods old gods? how about just gods. and given what you wrote below wouldn't yahweh be a mewling upstart?
>Even with all the treasures in universe it'd be pure impossiblity
he's a talky fuck, ain't he? condense
Even with every trinket in the universe it's be impossible
>hallway down we finally get the name
>Zeus face pales
your zeus is faggot. the real zeus turned into a swan and raped a bitch. yours would ask permission and she'd be bone dry as a result
>yahweh violently shook himself apart
I'd make it more clear yahweh is a genocidal schizo

[Anonymous No.23267353]

>>23267334
Pretty easy to come up with a justification for that.
>Authorities took all of them
>Theyre being remotely blocked by Earth so that only the loyalists can get their hands on them
>Some conflict of the past in which most of the tech was lost
I kinda like nr 2 because my whole idea of a generation ship is a "free" society, but one that forces people into certain behaviours and roles by design.
Basically when the populace inevitably spergs out after x amount of generations the original vision and ideology will be gone, but the way their world is built will remain unchanged.
Stuff like
>No hydroponics lol, there's just a stock of slop chips that you earn by doing maintenance
Locking the implants and most high-tech appliances behind a "loyalty check" would fit right in.

The ship will be on it's way back at the time of the story, this way the original purpose won't even matter and i'll be able to focus on the innerside dynamics and etc

[Anonymous No.23267411]

>>23264957
bump

[Anonymous No.23267412]

Rate this passage from a novella I'm writing (I'm 1/3 of the way through):


Gorond slammed shut the wooden door of his shack, causing piles of snow perched atop the roof to rain down on the ground. With strides long and rapid he traversed what used to be a meticulously tended garden, now a ruin of thorns and roots frozen by the icy tendrils of the inevitable winter.

Gorond's shack was five minutes away from the Hangman's Dock, a route which provided him with no sights other than decrepit old warehouses, fermented shark meat stalls and the dark tendrils of smoke rising from the refineries of the Kartkoff district to the east.

Gorond shoved his hands inside the pockets of his tightly buttoned wooly coat and walked the distance to the Ushala Dockyards, where he would find the Black Marrow, his whaling ship whose repairs were supposed to have finished by this morning. His boots clattered against the cold cobblestone pavement as he met the usual faces working the sagging docks. Sailors, longshoremen, hired swords and lowly merchants frequented the dockside, all hailing from different corners of the known world.

They all felt so familiar but so alien at the same time. A concentration of cultures and dialect that could only be matched by the metropolitan heart of Montevilla. "They no doubt came to Fjuthuul for the same reason I did. Greedy fools," he thought and spat at the ground. Gorond wondered how many families had been lured to the edge of the world at the prospect of profiting from the blooming silver dust and whaling industries, only to be left shackled and stranded, their soulless husks drained of any will to live and prosper.

There was once a time where Gorond praised the Gods each time he woke up on solid ground, ignited by the desire to reunite with his family. Nowadays, ten lonely years after he first step foot on the bleak shores of Fjuuthul, he prayed each night that the next morning would find him cold and lifeless.

[Anonymous No.23267441]

>>23264957
>as the sun began to glow
so it was sunrise? say that
>speaking in haikus
I'm trying to figure out the time period/culture. but it isn't japan. and who would speak to a toddler in haikus?
>the wives of the wives
I see
>>stood en guarde
so I know what you're trying to say, but they're not fighting so this phrasing conjures up a different meaning than you mean
>>there was a vogue
I also know what you're trying to say, but you wouldn't use the word vogue to describe it

And then, as an aside, they're in some palatial courtroom? And there's hanging gardens. But outside is a village. Not a city. A village. I'm having trouble with that.

I see it now
>the sleepy seaside village down below her newly carved fortress
so did she just magic this fortress up?

And then names, names, names. Bunch of champaign sipping lezzies. It feels like there're a lot of not plot relevant details you're spitting out.

[Anonymous No.23267449]

>>23267412
I'm a writelet but my opinion as a casual reader is that there's a lot of bullshit used to describe basically literally nothing.

Baby shoes never worn or some shit

[Anonymous No.23267474]

>>23267336
Thanks.

>out of nowhere
hm, maybe. English is not my native language, but intent was to insult Upstart God Anesidora
>Buddha knows
Partly intentional, Buddha is to be a mysterious figure that walks in much bigger circles and plays higher stakes than Zeus.
>gods
I call different gods Upstarts/Young, or Old as a bit of a power scale system rather than literal age. Maybe it's confusing when same words are used to mock the youngest and weakest gods.
>zeus is a fucking shitbag
good point.
>yahweh is schizo
another good point.

[Anonymous No.23267476]

I'm an isekai sloplord, finally made an ready to write in universe and outline for the cast of the story, but now I am anxious (reason I'm writing this post) the story won't mesh with the protagonist.

The story is "entire highschool class summoned as heroes" into continent of constant warzone.
Protagonist has harem and nation building plot and the rest of the class have their own storylines, some of equal importance, and major impact on the world (which I'll write other many stories in as well).

Now I see the problem that it might be annoying for possible audience, divided to two camps, in which one hates the protagonist no matter how much quality I put in and the other hating the major plotlines without the protagonist at all.

I will write what I want anyway, but I'd like to read what anyone bothering to read this post would have say.

[Anonymous No.23267508]

>>23267476
>entire highschool class summoned as heroes
I want to say overdone, but only 2 examples come to mind. the spider anime, which was fun, and then a truly garbage anime that was airing last season where the MC had instant death abilities which I dropped after 1.5 episodes

so given you're writing slop and you know it's slop I'd follow the lessons of the spider anime. There are really only 2 POVs in that one. the spider, and then the other group. the problem with these entire class gets summoned stories is you're never able to do justice to all the characters. So have your protag POV, and then probably one other. Maybe make the protag POV 1st person and the other omniscent 3rd

or just don't have the whole class get isekai'd

[Literally me No.23267518]

>>23267441
>so it was sunrise? say that
more like the golden hour at around 5pm but sure i could
>I'm trying to figure out the time period/culture. but it isn't japan. and who would speak to a toddler in haikus?
it's in its own world and time period. it's supposed to show this overwhelmingly beautiful, sensitive, maternal world where beautiful women read poetry to children.
>inb4 then why are there haikus?
because it's less about the haiku itself but what the haiku is as an art form (a short, easily remembered poem about the yin-like/daoist sublimity of nature)

>I also know what you're trying to say, but you wouldn't use the word vogue to describe it
I understand, but the word "vogue" has evolved to mean the collective fashion as a form of slang.
>palatial courtroom? And there's hanging gardens. But outside is a village. Not a city. A village. I'm having trouble with that.
Understandable. Basically they're in a courtroom carved inside a giant mesa that overlooks a tropical seaside village. Outside the main window/entrance are a bunch of hanging gardens where one can overlook the village down below.
>so did she just magic this fortress up?
No, she had it commissioned by a megacorporation that specializes in megastructures and civil engineering.
>And then names, names, names. Bunch of champaign sipping lezzies. It feels like there're a lot of not plot relevant details you're spitting out.
That's because it's not a plot forward book, but more of a Tolstoyan style one that uses a world I created to explore certain character and themes

Aside from a few technical errors, how is the prose?

[Anonymous No.23267583]

>>23267518
>how's the prose
the prose is serviceable, but seeing as you don't seem to care that the word haiku doesn't belong, and you're using vogue incorrectly - not in vogue, just vogue - and you also don't care about that, and there's a courtroom that serves a tiny seaside village, which doesn't make any sense, and since you just said you aren't concerned with narrative progression, I personally wouldn't be interested in reading this book.

[Anonymous No.23267662]

>>23267508
>or just don't have the whole class get isekai'd
Can't, integral to the story as the final antagonist is a classmate (he's NOT a bully, but an autist going gridmonke murderhobo from underdog position) I'm not that sloppy and needs to off 1/3 of the class.

>Maybe make the protag POV 1st person and the other omniscent 3rd
I am indeed undecided on that. I wanted to do 3rd omniscent for whole story as there are 2 mainline POVs, 2 reoccuring and several oneshot ones.
But protagonist has somewhat heavy erotica scenes (slopping intesifies) and for that I guess 1st person POV is the best.
But entices me to intermingle into other character getting 1st person POV too and I'm gonna mumble jumble it.
3rd person POV however will also force me to work more on
>show, don't tell
with the protagonist and I would like that.

>so given you're writing slop and you know it's slop
I say "self-consciously" slop but those works are really dear to me however,
almost all my stories are isekais because I hate this world so much I wouldn't look back if I got the chance to abandon it, but that's getting unrelated so I'll stop here.

>truly garbage anime that was airing last season where the MC had instant death abilities which I dropped after 1.5 episodes
honestly I liked it as OPM style parody, the show is focused on parodying all the isekai cheats,

you forgot also the real stinker of classmates isekai being arifureta

[Anonymous No.23267698]

>>23267476
There's going to be hoards of haters no matter what direction you take your story in, especially online readers, so don't worry so much about that (if you're writing to express yourself)
If you care at all about maximizing your audience, reconsider the harem elements. Most Royal Roaders hate romance of any sort, triply so for harem. Of course, there's a minority who loves it, but it's one of those things that will define your story. Only harem readers will read it, most people will click away as soon as they see 'harem'

[Anonymous No.23267711]

How sensitive are publishing companies?

I want my book to reach a wide audience, but I’m scared my subject matter might be too controversial and edgy for some.

[Anonymous No.23267724]

>>23267328
How Fiction Works isn't really meant for writers. It's more a book on critique and I'd say it's aimed more towards readers/academics. There are many, many nuts and bolts craft books and all of them rehash more or less the same information. Here, let me summarize them all for you:

>There's no formula for writing fiction. Now, that that's out of the way, here's a formula for writing fiction
>Fiction is about change (usually of a character)
>Fiction is constructed from scenes and summaries
>Character is constructed from hopes and fears.
>A relatable character is one that has (roughly) the same hopes and fears as the reader.
>A particular genre concerns itself (roughly) with the same kinds of hopes and fears
>Plot is constructed from situations, tightly connected by cause and effect, in which hopes are dashed and fears are faced
>The climax is the situation which concerns the deepest version of the hope or fear
>Change in a character is reflected by their choices in the situations presented by the plot, particularly the climax
>Scenes concern moments of great change; summaries compress time
>Change starts with a status quo, then something disrupts it, then the character attempts to restore it, fails, tries harder, fails, etc. until a new status quo is established
>Time can be compressed by jump cutting, montaging, or monologuing
>A scene should consist mostly of showing rather than telling
>Telling is when you make a claim without convincing evidence ("It was cold", "She was angry", etc.)
>Cliched phrases count as telling because they are no longer convincing
>Telling is fine when the claim does not require evidence ("It was Wednesday") or is about to be ironically contradicted ("My dog always wakes up before I do")
>Showing is when you give convincing evidence but omit the claim
>Showing should be done from a specific point of view (usually the protagonist)
>Voice is about an interesting (usually ironic) point of view
>Point of view is about filtering and having strong opinions about whatever gets through the filter
>Good dialogue consists of implication and the use of rhetorical devices (metonymy, metaphor, sarcasm, etc.)
>A character shouldn't say what they're thinking or think what they've already said
>Good description should not gild the lily (quality over quantity)
>Good prose uses certain rhetorical devices, particularly those concerned with structural or syllabic symmetry (polysyndeton, asyndeton, antithesis, alliteration etc.)
>In the first draft, tell (don't show) the story to yourself
>In the second draft, fix the structure (figure out change, figure out hopes and fears, figure out situations, connect situations by cause and effect, plant Chekov's guns)
>In the third and following drafts, replace the telling with showing and adjust structure accordingly
>When you start your final draft, begin concurrently working on the first draft of another work

The rest is specific to whatever books you love. Study them.

[Anonymous No.23267726]

>>23267711
are you a member of (several) "minority" groups and ideologies, and does your work criticize the "majority" i.e. evil whitey? if so, you're good. if not, you won't get published

[Anonymous No.23267732]

>>23267726
I’m disabled and bisexual. Would that help?

Alternatively, I’m not averse to using a female pseudonym.

[Anonymous No.23267737]

>>23267711
Well, they employ sensitivity readers who remove such controversal passages as hinting women arent good drivers, or old ladies who wear wigs are ugly. So you might as well go all in on edginess.

[Anonymous No.23267751]

>>23267698
>If you care at all about maximizing your audience
I don't but I would feel bad if a lot of people nothering to read my stuff were:
>I absolutely love the half of your story but vehemently despise the other half
so much so that it would make those readers drop the story which they enjoyed.

All my stuff is too spicy for royalroad so I am aiming for scribblehub.

>Only harem readers will read it,
that I know, but I don't want to annoy those readers by 1/3 parallel story without the harem element, which I however need to express myself.
Not many people are into multi-genre works and especially in harem genre I presume.

[Anonymous No.23267798]

>>23267732
Do shitlibs give a fuck about disabled people?

I've seen plenty of anti white, anti male, anti Christian and pro-buttsex and pro- genital mutilation on the part off the shitlib establishment apparatus.

I assume you mean physically disabled, ie wheelchair bound.

Being bisexual, it would be better too pretend to be gay, but ofcourse be social with women. If you don't have a recognizably gay voice, I might suggest binging Andy Dick interviews on YouTube until you subconsciously codeswitch to talking gay.

I assume by bisexual, you're really a straight neet weeb coomer who's added gay porn to your diet. (I understand). This will not endear you to the shitlib establishment, so you should tightly conceal this aspect of yourself unless you're ready to start wearing a dress.

[Anonymous No.23267809]

>>23267798
Most socially adjusted 4chan user

[Anonymous No.23267816]

>>23267798
>Do shitlibs give a fuck about disabled people?
No and disabled are cunts anyway who don't need or want pity.

[Anonymous No.23267838]

>>23267809
Where's the lie?

[Anonymous No.23267847]

I thought /lit/ was more well educated than the rest of the site. They should be immune to /pol/ propaganda

[Anonymous No.23267887]

>>23267847
>/pol/ propaganda
oh, what kind? are you a jewish genital mutilation cult apologist? do you not know about the current diversity, equity, inclusion push in the publishing industry?

[Anonymous No.23267911]

>>23267286
Substitute "portfolio" for "reputation".

>ravaged by tongues of...
sounds kind of erotic

>upstart
Unless this has a specific meaning within the story its overuse is conspicuous.

>...cast aside by facts that...
This whole sentence is fucked.

Zeus speaking in a "growl" at *the* Buddha when he comes to ask for a favour also seems impudent of him. What is their relationship? And usually the definitive article is used with reference to Buddha, otherwise it sounds a bit casual.

The paragraphs laying out the lawgic of the universe are cramming a lot of fantastical elements in at once, but I don't really read fantasy much so maybe this is what people like.

I would say the Gods appear a little cartoonish here, not like great and lofty beings. "These are ancient Gods and even they are worried so it must b serious"--ok but it would probably be more powerful if you could indicate that more subtly. Drop a hint that could indicate worry, like lighting a cigarette, although that would probably be inappropriate here, I don't know.

It also appears a bit ironic for the Buddha to be genuinely invested in or concerned about anything. Shouldn't he be completely detached? The way it's written now makes you think he only cares about *appearing* detached, since he doesn't express his concern to Zeus.

I get that it's not Shakespeare and bear in mind that I can't write at all but those are my impressions as a reader.

[Anonymous No.23267913]

>>23267847
The world is coated in shitlib/jewish propaganda, but you don't recognize that for the same reason a fish doesn't recognize water.

[Anonymous No.23267996]

>>23267286
My main criticism is this is Marvel movie tier shit. "What if Batman met Iron Man? WHOA!!! And also they don't like each other lol"

[Anonymous No.23268254]

>>23267724
Thank you, anon. I appreciate the summary and particularly the bit at the end where you explain what happens in which draft. I was trying to work out how anyone could put together a connected story on the first draft, but it makes much more sense that structure would start rough and be refined over time.

[Anonymous No.23268276]

>>23267220
This is the granddaddy of those books.

[Anonymous No.23268284]

>>23267245
>thinks he's a real man
>writes philosophy and drama, like a woman
>can't spell "loser"
you, specifically, are why we hate lit-fic writers here

[Anonymous No.23268326]

>>23268284
Never in my life have I heard of a woman with even a cursory interest in philosophy

[Anonymous No.23268353]

>>23264506
I've posted a few of my "stories" in this thread, and even a few on some other threads on /lit/

The biggest complaint is that they are trivial and banal. I don't disagree. For the last three days I've been thinking about this alot, and it's gotten me really concerned. Everyone says "write what you know." Well, my life has been pretty trivial and banal. I grew up in the suburbs, I went to university and I got a shitty email job. That's all i know.

Is my writing doomed to be boring, because my life is boring? I've thinking back on all the great writers, they were all Journalists, war veterans, and bohemians that lived life to the fullest. All they had to do was document it. Hemingway, Kerouac, Vonnegut. Hell, Henri Charriere wasn't even a writer. He just wrote his life down and created a literary storm in France when he published Papillon.

Can a normal person write good literature? I mean, there are examples of people writing unbelievable historical fiction, where they obviously didn't live those experiences. How did they do it?

[Anonymous No.23268355]

>>23268326
have you considered leaving your room in your mommy's house where you grew up, going outside, and meeting other people face to face? you are such an obvious incel neet shutin

[Anonymous No.23268358]

>>23268355
Hey man I know you don't write and you're just here to try to start shit but I didn't make the original post, direct your impotent rage elsewhere

[Anonymous No.23268369]

>>23268353
By being creative, and having an imagination. If you can't come up with a character that isn't like you, then you're missing one of the prime qualities that allows one to be a writer of fiction. Do you think Stephen King is a psychopathic mass murderer? Odds are he isn't, yet he writes some nasty stuff. Figure out where that is coming from, and you may learn something.
Earlier, I told you your writing had no stakes or conflict. In addition, I would say that it's missing the wish-fulfillment angle. No one reads fiction to hear about someone like themselves, living a life like theirs; they want to see that person doing more than they ever dreamed of, beating adversaries they could never beat in real life.

[Anonymous No.23268376]

>>23268358
you make a blanket trolling statement about women, then pretend to be butthurt when i call you out? you're fooling no one. don't dish it out if you can't take it

[Anonymous No.23268395]

>>23268369
>Do you think Stephen King is a psychopathic mass murderer? Odds are he isn't, yet he writes some nasty stuff.

Thats kind of my point. That's all plot. I don't doubt that anyone, with enough practice, can write good genre fiction. By relying on a few simple techniques and strong plotlines I think I could be a writer. It doesn't take a deep understanding of the human condition to do that.

But when it comes to books that have staying power and literary merit, can anyone do that without ample life experience? Take JD Salinger for example. He wrote a book about a kid wandering around, with no plot, no "stakes" and very little conflit. Salinger also saw horrendous action in ww2. I'm sure he had a unique take on what it means to be a human.

[Anonymous No.23268398]

>>23268376
Please take your medicine, not everyone is out to get you

[Anonymous No.23268407]

>>23268398
>ad hominem attack
i'm not on any drugs

[Anonymous No.23268421]

>>23268395
Of course "Catcher In The Rye" had stakes. A young man was rejecting everything he was taught, everything his parents believed in, and striking out on his own. Would he be able to rebel against the entire adult world and succeed? Would he be able to maintain his sense of rebellion? It was all conflict. If you missed that, maybe you're missing a lot more about what makes successful fiction.
Don't you have any fantasies? Anything related to breaking out of the mold you find yourself in, fighting back against the people that oppress you, and forging your own way into the world? Or do you actually look forward to the next day being as bland as today? And if not...why not write about that?

[Anonymous No.23268427]

>>23268407
The hypocrisy of this post is actually hilarious

[Anonymous No.23268434]

>>23268421

>Anything related to breaking out of the mold you find yourself in, fighting back against the people that oppress you, and forging your own way into the world? Or do you actually look forward to the next day being as bland as today? And if not...why not write about that?

I mean thats kind of what I tried to here
I guess I need to rethink what makes a story interesting. It's so easy to read something good and know that it's good. Knowing WHY its good is a different story. (no pun intended)

>>23264506

[Anonymous No.23268462]

>>23268427
your lack of self-awareness is hilarious. does your mother know you think so little of women?

[Anonymous No.23268463]

>>23265942
I particularly liked the but-constructions peppered throughout: made the prose interesting.

I think the repetitive time / boring stuff could work if the piece was longer, the time stuff spaced out more.

Any thoughts on mine? >>23265387

[Anonymous No.23268468]

>>23268434
Read great works and get great ideas. It's all you can do at this point.

[Anonymous No.23268475]

There's nothing wrong with writing genre fiction, and I'm tired of pretending there is.

[Anonymous No.23268491]

>>23268475
lit fic is just the "drama" genre, and i see no reason to pretend it's anything but

[Anonymous No.23268495]

Would greatly appreciate any feedback on this foray into kinda genre fiction.

Also, I will happily return feedback - I would particularly like to enter into more frequent communication with other writers. Is there a WG discord or anything like that? Email me anyway: cafletcher.substack.com

[Anonymous No.23268508]

>>23266874
I'm going to finish my next chapter. Within the next handful I will have finished this arc and can move onto the last one. Once that's done, my story will be finished, and I can move onto my next one that is wildly different, then maybe something more in line with my original story.

[Anonymous No.23268536]

>write something
>have a panic attack the next day
How can I stop myself?

[Anonymous No.23268544]

>>23268536
Panic attack about what, anon? If it's about how bad your writing is, you should just post it somewhere - it's a nice feeling letting it out into the ether. If it's genuine panic attacks with heart palpitations, sweats etc, consider seeking medical help

[Anonymous No.23268545]

>>23268395
>without ample life experience?

I don't think it's possible to write without adequate life experience. But that doesn't necessarily mean going to war or being a bullfighter.

Look at people like Cheever or Updike, or even Salinger who you mentioned (Salinger mostly wrote about normal middle/upper class life). You do have to have somethign to say.

[Anonymous No.23268552]

>>23267412

You use Gorond too much. Why not use "he?"

[Anonymous No.23268581]

>>23266848

Right side, as you know, is obviously better. But that "found another one!" line is goofy.

[Anonymous No.23268632]

>>23264506
You're good.
Keep writing.
People like you either never publish and don't care, or are some decently well-known writer trolling us (King does this), or someone who doesn't even know what they have.
People usually don't care about this kind of shit though. You almost made me care.
Don't contradict yourself unless you WANT to be an ambiguous narrator. Does he not have much of an appetite in the morning, or does he devour buttered toast while waiting for his coffee to finish brewing?
He seems to be devouring something every morning. Better appetite than mine, and I can be quite voracious on the right mornings.
Figure out what you want to SAY, for crying out loud. You write it like this and people may listen.
Good story.
>>23264537
>Catcher in the Rye
Yes, it's a story about "nothing" as many stories are. The characters live in these stories. Readers want to see them succeed. Or fail. Or fall into a vat of boiling oil and die a drowning, melting, gurgling death.
The only thing a writer does is compel. Compel you to read. Compel you to imagine. Compel you have a feeling about something. Maybe.
That's a stretch for a great majority of people who believe themselves to be writers.

[Anonymous No.23268636]

>>23264618
>in your writing sample, there's no conflict and no stakes.
Ooohh... I very much beg to differ.
Fucker was full of conflicts.
Learn to read.

[Anonymous No.23268667]

>>23264618
>the corporate drone life.

There are plenty of books with this setting: American Psycho, Fight Club...

[Anonymous No.23268690]

>>23264110
Word choice & pacing need help.
Your reporter & rancher got there too early and took away the spotlight from Leif, the only person in the entire world that I want to hear from, know more about, or have described to me.
Literally nothing else matters but Leif.
If there's a nuclear bomb going off somewhere and he's watching it happen on live TV then I want to fucking know what he THINKS about it, damn it!
Who cares about the nuke?
I only care about Leif. Or more importantly, hos DREAMS that we never heard from again. We don't even get his thoughts about that.
So.. for now, I'm going to imagine Leif as a tiny little pigeon of a man, who gives the impression that his mother named him 'Leif' after Erikson, the explorer, only to be sorely disappointed,although still proud of her scrawny and brilliant little boy.
...
It's your fault. You never told me anything about Leif. I know more about the rancher, in fact.
If you introduce a character, it's so we can SEE them, doing something, or we're learning about them, their physicality, their THOUGHTS, or ... .something.
You don't introduce a character just so you can say you've introduced us to the protagonist and move on. Oh, no no no. You've done way worse than not telling me about him. You've told me he exists without telling me how or why he exists.
Apparently, he only exists to help you start your story, which I still have no clue where it's going. You're stranded us.
Please tell us a STORY.
Also all of you stop beginning your stories with breakfast. Unless it's meaningful somehow.

[Anonymous No.23268702]

>>23263607
>Crete’s summer did not reward the intrusion of fashions from a more northerly climate.
This should be your opening sentence.
I did not read past it.

[Anonymous No.23268728]

>>23268353
>Can a normal person write good literature?
Not without an immense measure of effort.

[Anonymous No.23268730]

>>23268702
Why?

[Anonymous No.23268781]

>>23264957
Toddlers should not be breast-feeding. Unless this is pertinent to the story, of course.
If so, I look forward to seeing how you shall handle that.
You don't need critiques. You need to finish this.

[Anonymous No.23268845]

>>23267324
Okay.
I REALLY hope you finish whatever the fuck this is.
And share it, of course.

[Anonymous No.23268881]

>>23268730
I realize now that this is but a snippet of larger work. Hopefully that wasn't supposed to be the beginnings of a story.
But still, I think that sentence belongs at the beginning, since it's actually what is trying to be said. It's the only thing that matters. The only thing that could possibly have any impact on the story, it solidifies the setting. It should be first, or at least allow another sentence be added first to reinforce that idea, the setting.
I didn't read further because there was nothing compelling being said, and you really needed to fix that first paragraph. It has way too much potential to be so poorly constructed.

[Anonymous No.23268932]

>>23267137

Yeh agreed, a bit of a Burroughs rip though with the doppelgänger bit (at least the movie version of Naked Lunch where he has to kill his wife again to prove he’s a writer in order to get in the Interzone) but the dialog is fresh and irreverent and there’s potential if dialed down just a bit maybe but also honed in on the best kinds of weirdness… like Burroughs, really… I’m too stoned but if OP returns show some more stuff

[Anonymous No.23268947]

>>23268845
I don't really know what these are either, outside of ruminations on suicide and a useful distraction from the mess I made of my novel set in the same storyworld. But thanks anon, we'll see

[Anonymous No.23268959]

Well, I got one comment this time. One comment is better than zero comments. We'll leave it at that.

[Anonymous No.23268965]

This is the first page of a horror story I am writing. Any feedback is appreciated, but there are specific three questions I have:

1. Would you keep reading?

2. Thematically, what type of story would you think it is based on the first page?

3. Is there anything else I could be doing to create suspense? It is my first time trying to do horror stuff.

Thanks

[Anonymous No.23268969]

>some dumbfuck esl posts a barely coherent 1-star "review" just to say my story was difficult to read
Would help if you could read. How is that my fault? Blame your teachers, retard

[Anonymous No.23269080]

I think I must come to terms with the fact I have OCD, am retarded, or possibly both. I simply can't get comfortable typing on my laptop. It feels so fucking cramped and feels like I can't see everything. Every little mistake needs to be scanned and fixed and nothing ever flows well. It's like I go sort of blind. I notice that writing with a pen or pencil I write much more freely and a lot of worries about things like grammar, spelling etc. go away but then I'm stuck with words written on paper.

[Anonymous No.23269085]

Is there a website like royal road that isn't just 95% fantasy or fan fiction? I can't imagine a work of realism taking off on it. I don't like posting my stuff to an audience that simply isn't the target

[Anonymous No.23269093]

>>23269080
There are softwares that convert handwriting to text, you could give it a go

[Anonymous No.23269103]

>>23269085
Print chapters and snail mail them to people who don't know you have their address

[Anonymous No.23269120]

>>23269093
>Have to start writing better
lel, good idea though never even thought of that

[Anonymous No.23269122]

>>23266499
Damn anon, Discworld started with about 4, the hobbit even less. I'm not going to say you shouldn't do it, world building is good for a cohesive plot ofc, but are you sure you need more than "god of cats, god of horse flies, god of mimes, God of grammar and hemorrhoid remedies for sheep"?

[Anonymous No.23269135]

So there is a novel writing contest coming up. I want to try my skill at it, but also, I want that 3500, because a writers gotta eat in this economy.
The thing is though, they want a novel aimed at 14-18 year old readers. The fuck does that mean? I looked up the other 15 winners. All of them written by women, all of them about some teenage drama (so basically women writing about their own past).
I honestly don't know what to write for people almost 10 years younger than me. What do they even read these days? Do they even read? Or is it just boomer judges deciding that this is what kids read these days? I mean, GRRM novels were not intended for 14-18 year olds, but you can bet they read those.
Either way, it's a tough group to write to.

[Anonymous No.23269142]

>>23269085
there isn't really. some subreddit, maybe. why don't you share here?

you could try a website like https://www.scribophile.com/writing/

[Anonymous No.23269160]

>>23269122
I don't intend to use them all, but I found an hook that interested me (basically there's five "super-gods" which filter through our reality through five "regular-gods" each, each time through the same principles, like each super-god has a god that represents their laws, one that represents their desires, so on). I then decided to write a short text (a couple sentences at least) on how each god interacted with each of the other one + how they saw themselves. So for the first one I wrote 25 texts, the second 24, the third 23, and so on (the total is 325 if you're wondering).

I don't write them in order at all, although I try to be at around the same number of texts for each. It really helped me find interesting plot points to use in my story so I do it a little bit each day. When I hit around 30% I got enough material for an actual skeleton of a plot and characters.

[Anonymous No.23269168]

>>23269142
It's more about just having a place to kind of keep all my stuff together that isn't just a google drive some folder on my desktop and if it gets a little audience as well that's just a bonus I suppose. I post my works in progress here usually or maybe the odd short story if I do post but a lot of the time it seems actually posting works here ends up just hijacking the thread because there's a lot of "if it's not literally perfect it's fucking worthless" faggots about who do shit up threads. I've read a lot of stuff on here down the years I thought was decent or plainly good that had multiple crabs or shitposters railing on it and then the thread just becomes a shitfest and basically dies.

[Anonymous No.23269173]

>>23269135
Write about your own teenage years?

[Anonymous No.23269181]

>>23269135
>3500
>for a novel
You're being raped so hard even if you win, which of course you won't, because contests are a scam.

[Anonymous No.23269183]

>>23269181
I just want to get my name out there. And contests here ain't scams.

[Anonymous No.23269188]

>>23269168
the idea behind getting feedback here is not to defend your work of art. that's where thing's start to get shitted up.

a lot of people don't understand how this works: you post work to get feedback, the peanut gallery responds, you consider to yourself why this feedback was given. that is all.

[Anonymous No.23269194]

>>23269160
when you put it like that it sounds much more digestible, and if not unique pretty uncommon. Is it going to be a serious story, a silly one or something in between? I can imagine any of those going well woth that premise, but you've got to have a god arguing with its own aspect either way

[Anonymous No.23269203]

>>23269085
You could try Adimverse. When they talk about it, it sounds like a crypto site, but you could post your stuff without ever touching the web3 parts of the site, which is only if you collaborate on a project with other people.

[Anonymous No.23269207]

>>23269188
Eh a lot of it is complete shitting up though, about a third of the threads posted on this board is bait I have no doubt the posts are about the same. I felt this was a much more comfy general around 2020, when I was posting my shit here semi-regularly. I think a lot of people here who post decent enough works get just railed on for just no real reason and it just demoralises people.

[Anonymous No.23269228]

>>23269207
you aren't wrong, but you're here anyway. feel free to cause mayhem. i will provide lazy feedback and i expect you to insult me for it.

[Anonymous No.23269229]

>>23269228
> i will provide lazy feedback and i expect you to insult me for it.
Lel, I don't think I'll post anything here for critique unless I'm truly stumped on where to go next. There's a lot of good ideas from people in these threads, it's when people start screaming about very abstract and subjective shit is the problem. This is a great place for writer's block I've noticed.

[Anonymous No.23269241]

Hello everyone, I'm coming here to ask for help for an entirely different reason than most. I finished writing the book but it's nonfiction. How do I go about querying publishers? Should I just self-publish? How many rejections should I get before I give up?

[Anonymous No.23269245]

>>23269241
Nigga, this depends entirely on where you live. What are your local publishers like? What requirements do they have? Does your country have a system of literary agents? Who are prominent agents in your area for novels of your type? What do they expect from a query? This is completely impossible for strangers online to answer. Do your own fucking research.

[Anonymous No.23269258]

>>23269245
You get so cranky when you don't get your coffee with two spoonfuls of cum.

[Anonymous No.23269259]

>>23269245
nigga stfu i was just asking

[Anonymous No.23269265]

>>23269259
>give an honest answer
>stfu
imma cap yo ass fr

[Anonymous No.23269275]

please, no ebonics in this sacred thread

[Anonymous No.23269279]

>>23269275

[Anonymous No.23269317]

>some third world monkey tells me he can drop a bird from 100 meters with a stone and criticizes my protagonist for not doing the same
Why do I only ever get the schizo commenters?

[Anonymous No.23269517]

>>23269194
It's going to be a serious story with some humors now and then, aimed at 20-30 years old, I don't think too hard about the tone yet but I probably won't go full horror. But I hope to use the setting again and have the opportunity to write different genres within it.

[Anonymous No.23269553]

>>23268636
None of the character's conflicts were externalized, though. It read like a summary, not a story. And your saltiness is boring. What are you, like, 12?

[Anonymous No.23269558]

>>23268969
>blames the audience
ngmi

[Anonymous No.23269565]

>>23269085
some people here post their fiction to substack. the problem then becomes how to get readers to find it

[Anonymous No.23269579]

>>23269173
My guess is he spent his teenage years locked in his room, not interacting with other human beings, scrolling and cooming. Nothing to write about.

[Anonymous No.23269597]

>has to write a scene involving the usage of radar
>its a fantasy novel so the country's radar is not that important
>as for resources go its 80% soviet radars operator manuals 10%old marconi radar shit and the rest its bits and pieces of old nato stuff
>studied enough that it may give the illusion of my knowledge at the level of your average soviet conscript monkey operating old shit like a 9k33
>still terrified of writing it in fear of being called out on the weird mix of soviet and ww2 stuff

[Anonymous No.23269765]

i hate everything i write

[Anonymous No.23269790]

>>23269597
I don't know if you know this but not a whole lot of people know how to use a radar.

[Anonymous No.23269826]

>>23263531
Bros its so hard to write and not go back and correct your work. I notice whenever I do it I end up never getting far. So I am trying to just write and follow a basic outline. I am hoping after this first novel I will be more efficient at it. I already feel better by just writing and not thinking about it too much.

[Anonymous No.23269859]

>>23269826
>novel
While I believe that most have a novel in them, writing short stories is a much more focused endeavor that has more immediate feedback. My older friends and acquaintances are starting to pull out their manuscripts and it's obvious who has written something complete before. Just a thought.

[Anonymous No.23269997]

pew pew the laser blasted the alien. “I am Captain Nilbert of the star track Falcon.” we am all gay!

[Anonymous No.23270040]

>>23269997
I cried, I laughed, then at last, I fell silent, in awe of what I witnessed.

[Anonymous No.23270065]

>>23268965
forsenCD PICK A CARD forsenCD ANY CARD forsenCD THE 2 OF WIVES? forsenCD EXCELLENT CHOICE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM_JLoaTC0g

[Anonymous No.23270073]

...DESCRIBE THE SADDEST PART OF YOUR WORK IN THE FUNNIEST WAY

[Anonymous No.23270086]

>>23269597
In bethesda games your character loads rifle rounds into a shotgun. In digital art people fuck up perspective and proportions all the time. Most people won't notice small details. So don't worry.

[Anonymous No.23270097]

I'm having trouble coming up with my main characters' personality, and I think I figured out the problem: they're not insane enough. I have 4 main characters, and the 2 I like more (which rank respectively second and fourth in importance) are the ones that have weird moral standards. They're not psychos, but they're odds. I think writing a character that's just a little bit insane is the way to go.

[Anonymous No.23270233]

>>23270097
Just my opinion but I'd ask myself why is the character insane, and how will I keep the character trait consistant. Imo it's way more ethereal than strongly defined character traits like, idk, hatred of pickles. Have your character puke every time they see or smell a pickle? That's one easy way to root down a trait. Insanity itself, well there's too many flavours ranging from delusions to warped, split, manic, depressive personalities and so much more.

Writing insanity can easily fall into trap of gimmicky lolrandomness unless you have clear constraints in mind and is imo harder than making a sane characters with a clear modus operandi

[Anonymous No.23270253]

>>23270233
That was my thoughts as well, I already know why my characters are insane, but the important thing is to let them keep strong moral values even through their madness, and to not overdue it.

There is literally nothing I hate more than seeing a character act like a retard and faggots defending it because they're supposed to be insane.

[Anonymous No.23270327]

>>23269579
Not exactly true. Me and the boys were acting like fools through our teenage years. Not many romances, big adventures or anything. Just school, hanging out, causing minor problems, so and so.

[Anonymous No.23270344]

>>23269826
write by hand. it’s much less tempting to cross out a whole sentence or whatever when you’re using pen/pencil and paper. instead, you’ll want to just keep going and know that you’ll begin editing when you type it up later.

[Anonymous No.23270350]

>>23270253
>and to not overdue it.
not overdo it.
>>23270327
>Just school, hanging out, causing minor problems, so and so.
causing minor problems, and so on.

[Anonymous No.23270369]

>>23270327
Honestly, it's a blend of wish fulfilment and "hey fellow teenagers, I totally relate to your entirely unique problems". I'd imagine something about social media addiction and a world with cameras everywhere contracted with just having fun and doing epic dumb shit without it, with no proof of it, would go over well. Set it out in Montana or something with no cell reception and contrast it with some kid who has a skincare routine and watches streamers. Make it about troubled sadbois that women like to schlick it to bonding talking about their feelings around a campfire and Bob's your uncle.

[Anonymous No.23270478]

>>23267449
What about the prose?

[Anonymous No.23270527]

>>23263560
So essentially War and Peace?

[Anonymous No.23270536]

>>23264537
'Catcher in the Rye' is shit. People have too much faith in what they're told is "great."

[Anonymous No.23270543]

>>23264957
Is this Cosmopolita anon?

[Anonymous No.23270568]

>>23267220

STOP

I repeat

STOP reading about writing. The best way to improve is to learn by doing. Just WRITE. I’m serious. This will teach you what works, what doesn’t, and what the process is actually like. Yes, you will write a lot, and a lot of it will be trash (at first). Anything you read in a book won’t click until you do it yourself, anyway. Don’t read tutorial books; read real literature that you admire, and emulate it in your own writing. Everything else is procrastination.

[Anonymous No.23270574]

>>23270369
Well, I had a theme in mind. Since 14 out of 15 contest winners were female, that means that the female experience is well represented. They all had their youths, their drama, sex, bullying, break ups, gossip, parties and such. So they write what they know. I would want to give the male perspective, and really focus on how men are doing these days. The male loneliness epidemic. The way men are more and more bottled up, lonely, and unable to form real human bonds. Sort of Goslingcore story about guys not doing too well these days, and not even realizing it themselves. 4/5 of my close friends are single, 1 jumped from a phone tower, and I'm a depressed 4channer. Age all of them down a couple of 7 years, and analyze society and the climate that breeds men with no real purpose, future or ability to form bonds.

[Anonymous No.23270583]

>>23268781
>Toddlers should not be breast-feeding
Toddlers often breast feed. The Koran specifically recommends breast feeding until at least 2 years old.

[Anonymous No.23270609]

>>23270574
Sounds like we're writing about similar things, only I'm at least 5 years older than you and it's either that or the few drained men going through the motions of the marriage and kids thing, poorly and in the worst possible ways. I was actually trying to tackle the early form of that issue, but while I can definitely see the signs in retrospect, it doesn't seem to manifest until your 20s when all the other mental illnesses like to start coming into their full form.

I could probably go on about this for hours, but I don't know where to start.

[Anonymous No.23270620]

>>23270583
Ah yes, the Koran, a book often cited for its sage advices and applicable wisdoms in civilised countries.

[Anonymous No.23270637]

>>23270609
I have been observing the behavior of my nephews, their friends, and talking to young teachers and other people who work with kids. Back in my day, we had a couple of antisocial people, a couple of weird guys who couldn't sit still, and maybe a few quiet kids. But overall school aged boys were quite often very similar in attitude and behavior. Meanwhile these days it seems that mental illness becomes apparent a lot earlier, and the number of kids suffering from it seems to grow. And then there is covid. At least even the anti-social kids had to spend 5 days a week in society. And suddenly we get an entire generation that pretty much skipped 2 years of that. Seems that these days it manifests faster, and the covid years really pushed young people into isolation.

[Anonymous No.23270638]

>>23270620
I'm not asking you to revert, simply pointing it out as a broadly accepted historical norm.

[Anonymous No.23270651]

>>23270527
War and peace isn't about a civil war

[Anonymous No.23270709]

>>23270574
Such a theme would be best showcased through a story. Don't just do 100 pages of "aww man, being a guy sure is hard these days". Instead, have an actual story, where it's apparent that men of the story have these issues. Subtlety is key.

[Anonymous No.23270774]

>>23270637
I think the problem is total and exacerbated by specific things. It's not limited to generational abuse, parents being poor role models or unequipped for this postmodernity, a feminization of culture that doesn't allow boys to excel, or other major factors like lack of male spaces and trust. The consequences for engaging at all are high and the reward is low. It's more like everyone and their home is so isolated that they don't know what crazy looks like and no one can do anything about it anyway.

I'm focusing on the issues of failing to recognize parasocial behavior and the broad signs of antisocial and codependent relationships, because I think those can be solved to some degree, and how it's like growing up in a trailer park or ghetto where you don't know what normal is because everyone else is fucked in the head and so are you.

I think you'll have something if you can show the difficulty of achieving whatever the thing is, how 15 year olds are facing the kind of problems 25 year olds had 10 years ago. It sounds like they're forming a mask or model of the world that's wrong, which would align with my own thesis, but not abandoning it because there is no alternative. They don't even know that's what they're doing.

[Anonymous No.23270823]

>>23270774
Internet and the change of culture is also to blame here. Soulless dating sites have become the norm, while the good old picking up girls skill, has became a minefield in the post me too world, where a little bit tipsy girl at the bar, can have arrested as a sex offender the next morning. Dating sites are literally built so that very few women, have a huge pick of men, and they only pick the very cream of the crop.
Also, being in the vtuber and streaming sphere, has shown me just how many lonely, parasocial men there are, who see an idealized woman online, and fall for that.
And the stigmatization of men having feelings, going to therapy, or even crying, is also why men are not in tune with what they actually feel. They lack emotional intelligence.
So in general, society makes it hard for men to be emotional, and it makes it somewhat dangerous to interact with women, all the while offering both idealized women, and secretly unfair dating sites to them.
But I would say that other outside factors, like growing instability in the world (inflation, cost of living, pandemics, and the very real possibility of WWIII), also take away people's desire to have dreams and ambitions. So many men I know, just live from paycheck to paycheck, while not really being happy with their life, or having any real plans or hopes for the future. None of that "I'll go study the thing that interests me, in hopes of making it big in that field."

[Anonymous No.23270887]

>>23270823
In this sense, I consider writers like us to be blessed, as we at least have a dream that's not dependent on the world around us or others, only our own will

[Anonymous No.23270962]

i haven't been writing. but that changes right after i shower and eat. and nap. but then i fucking write.

[Anonymous No.23270969]

>>23270887
this is why i began writing.

[Anonymous No.23270995]

>>23270823
It's compounded by video games and parasocial content being better than the alternative. Failed normalfags just binge netflix and go on reddit. Weirdos like us are tapped into something we aren't getting IRL, something that barely exists IRL. Some of which I would never engage in IRL. Real people suck. I have friends that offer something deeper but everyone else, the dudes we're talking about, suck. Women now are fucked in other ways, but damn if men aren't worse.

Given that, what kind of alternative do you offer?

[Anonymous No.23271099]

>>23263903
First volume as a self contained story in case it flops with readers or I get banned.
>>23264038
I actually ask because of that. I failed to get it published as a normal novel and I'm leaning towards rewriting it to extend scenes and downplay others.

[Anonymous No.23271106]

>>23270995
Sorry to break it to you, but you're on edgy reddit. You ARE the failed normalfag, there's nothing remotely special about you.

[Anonymous No.23271115]

The Skibidi in Ohio

It was night in the farmlands of Ohio and the head of a gmod character appeared from the toilet bowl. Its lips spread so wide it showed more gums than teeth.

"Skibidi dob dob, yeah yeah." it chanted.

I searched the pockets of my jeans, in my coat, even in my shoe to find the fanum tax. No luck. There was no way to mew or mog my way out of this. I had no rizz.

[Anonymous No.23271179]

Why do you write?

[Anonymous No.23271190]

>>23271115
Can't even get dialogue formatting correct, makes sense u write "ironic" garbage like this

[Anonymous No.23271219]

>>23270823
Consider also that this is why isekai has become such a popular genre for young men in basically every medium, and they all follow a similar idea.
>Average Joe dies and ends up in a new world to explore where he can start over without any baggage holding him back
>Either has a cheat ability that makes him special and gives him an advantage over others or his mundane knowledge from his previous world is actually very valuable in the new world
>Either way, is valued and respected by the inhabitants of the world, unless it's a revenge story, in which case he's hated at first but becomes loved after clearing his name
I think isekai is some of the worst, most derivative trash out there, but it stands to reason it is necessary to exist as an outlet for the powerlessness and aimlessness that many young men feel today.

[Anonymous No.23271221]

>>23271190
Period vs comma isn't so big a deal in dialogue

[Anonymous No.23271255]

Have you heard about how Wattpad is now shadow banning LGBTQ+ works? This is terrible! How do you make sure the platforms you use are inclusive?

[Anonymous No.23271288]

>>23271221
Is it different in other countries? Because every published book I've ever read uses a comma in that situation

[Anonymous No.23271321]

do any anons have a link to that collection of english classics that span from the 11th century up until the 19th?

[Anonymous No.23271338]

>>23271221
It instantly outs you as an amateur.

[Anonymous No.23271420]

Anons I'm writing a trashy litrpg and it's kind of fun. MC smacking enemies and impressing everyone is much easier than what I was writing before. And I'll get readers too? Kinda based to be a slop chad. I get it now

[Anonymous No.23271584]

>>23263850
I think it's a bit too descriptive.

I mean, it could just be a matter of taste, but I think in general, adjectives are the enemy.

[Anonymous No.23271599]

>>23265387
stylisticlly it's appealing, but I think, as the other anon said, it seems a bit purpely. I heard someone say once, that the style shouldn't get in the way of the story.

That being said you can clearly write. Also, I dont know why, but you seem to have a distincly british voice. Maybe i'm wrong, but I assume youre from middle england just by reading it.

[Anonymous No.23271681]

>>23271420
Is it possible to write a deep thought provoking litrpg that is philosophical

[Anonymous No.23271689]

I just come here as a fan of genre fiction who doesn't generally engage with deeper texts. So I want to write that too.

[Anonymous No.23271698]

>>23271689
Genre fiction has higher and lower orders as well. I think the best of them can't be truly deep, but they offer something about the human condition that other works lack or use mechanically for effect.

[Anonymous No.23271753]

>>23271681
I don't see why not
But a popular one? People don't read trash for thought-provoking ideas and philosophy

[Anonymous No.23271776]

>>23270651
How can anyone have a civil war?
"Say...pardon me..."
*blam* *blam* *blam* *blam* *blam*
"I'm awfully sorry."

[Anonymous No.23271777]

>>23271179
To express myself. This boring, bland, milquetoast world doesn't have much of an outlet for that sort of thing.
>>23271255
WattPad has the worst discovery mechanisms ever. How would a shadow-ban look any different than their usual lack of engagement?

[Anonymous No.23271891]

Screenplay update
Yeah I'm posting it here too
https://litter.catbox.moe/1hproh.pdf
New material from page 64 onward
I think I did better with that fight scene than the dialogue after it

[Anonymous No.23271976]

>>23269859
Yeah your right, I have done a couple and will likely do them more in between major projects. It's just I wanna prove to myself I can stick to something long term, and to have a novel to show for it. But will for sure take this advice.

[Anonymous No.23272031]

>>23271976
Yeah, I don't think it's an absolute requirement, but I don't know where I'd be right now with a novel if I didn't do the process in full with smaller stories and have some sense of what I need right now and I'm going to do with the manuscript in the future. Anon's suggesting to hand write it is also an option. I had to do a few typewritten mss before I could just leave the thing alone and "fix" it later. I still do a lot of insertions and leave notes for myself, but It's not as much a process of trying to change individual lines up front. Unless I'm going for style or need a chapter to be a guide for the work as a whole.

[Anonymous No.23272103]

>>23271219
I had a thought about that too. Japan is literally the example of a people giving up. They were at their low point after WWII. They rebuilt, and slowly but surely became a pretty economically strong nation. And during that time, sci-fi fiction was at it's all time high. Kids were dreaming about space travel, robots and such. They were hopeful for the future. And then bam, we are in the future. And it sucks here. No flying cars, no space colonies, no androids. So suddenly fantasy becomes popular. But not only fantasy, but specific type of fantasy where a regular modern man goes back in time, and impresses everyone with modern knowledge. So basically we gave up on the future, and want to go back in the past. Sad shit.

[Anonymous No.23272294]

>>23270073
My MC defeated a succubus by basically saying "why dont you do like my mom and die in a fire?". Hard to have a stiffy whole thinking of seeing your mother burn alive and since it was in the spiritual plane it, it actually happened.

[Anonymous No.23272476]

>>23271179
I am tortured by horrendous feelings 24/7.

[Anonymous No.23272552]

>I suck at writing
>Okay I'll just copy what successful people are doing that always works
>It doesn't work

[Anonymous No.23272705]

https://pastebin.com/wfFXNgwn

So I've been working on the prologue a bit

People said it wasn't explicitly clear enough that the plan is for the father to pretend to leave, lure out the bandits, then return once they revealed themselves.

I also changed the name of the human language from "common" to "the trade tongue" or "trade language" since it would be what people use for trade.

also I drew a rough idea of how I intended the lungmarians to look.

forgive the shitty drawing skills I'm still hardcore /beg/

[Anonymous No.23273236]

>>23271599
Thanks, anon. I think I could have just cut the first couple sentences and started with 'But we played in the dark despite it and the cold...' The first two lines before that are purpley, but I don't see the rest as purpley

I'm Irish, so thanks for the insult - but I'm also in a profession with British writing at the centre of it, so that might explain that

[Anonymous No.23273249]

>>23273236
>I'm Irish, so thanks for the insult - but I'm also in a profession with British writing at the centre of it, so that might explain that

ok well you're voice is not american or canadian. (I'm canadian, so i probably cant distinguish irish, british, etc, very well.)

[Anonymous No.23273350]

>>23272705
You've been hammering these out for the past few threads and there's no real appreciable improvement other than you removing the line about pooping, which I believe you initially substituted for pissing (I shit you not), before settling on not opening with number ones or twos. I think you're confounding a story being made up of scenes and writing a scene, in this case you're trying very hard to write a good scene but there's no way that this would make up a story. As your prologue, and frankly most stories don't need a prologue distinct from a first chapter, you basically give the reader no background as to who the characters are, what they look like, what do their surroundings look like, etc. When writing a disembodied scene such as what you're doing you're at a huge disadvantage in comparison to a story that has established characters and a world. None of this is done for the sake of there being descriptions in the novel, albeit there's faggots that actually think that way, but for the sake of establishing some attachment to the most important characters in your story let alone any spark of interest for the world they are in or their situations.
I'm not going to tell you to rewrite a sentence, I'm going to tell you to shit out this prologue so you can use it as a draft for your actual story that will have to be written at a later date. Taking shortcuts by writing the cool shit that you thought about and made you want to write the story to begin with can only get you so far. While you're at it you should keep in mind that there's no indication that the father knows the bandits are there or even why he thinks they would reveal themselves if he simply left his son alone with some barrels on a random ass stretch of a road. If he knows they're precisely there he should just attack them first or force them to reveal themselves by going for a piss in the woods rather than making an elaborate story about pretending to forget something and totally leaving for a long period of time. Especially since the bandits are willing to fight him anyway, there's no reason as to why they wouldn't ambush them straight up. The more you think about it, there shouldn't even be a plan other than walking down a road and hoping the bandits will try to mug them. Is it even worth the time they're wasting by walking instead of flying?
Anyways, just shit the "prologue" out without worrying about how well it's written and then actually work on the beginning of your story. I genuinely don't see this fighting scene being a good opener for a story even if you wrote the whole thing.

[Anonymous No.23273402]

>>23273350
I mean I swapped out the detail to it being a trap but yeah you got a good point on the bandits attacking them even if there were two already there. I think that's a very good point, thanks.

I have this scene because I wanted something action-y at the start cause otherwise it starts with a shitty dad pissed that his four year old is not learning as fast as his older brothers were when they were four.

Also I wrote this because the news of an oncoming attack is first learned by the merchant here.

Furthermore I didn't use pissing, I just removed it outright for the plan of luring bandits out.

You sound a little angry in your reply, is everything alright? It's just a hobby to be honest, it's not anything worth getting worked up over.

[Anonymous No.23273421]

>>23273402
Why do you post your writing here if you don't want honest critique?

[Anonymous No.23273510]

>>23273402
work faster

[Anonymous No.23273587]

>>23273421
Where did I say I didn't want critique?

It sounded like anon was mad from the tone so I just wanted to remind him it's nothing to take too seriously.

>>23273510
I got other stuff as well besides writing in my spare time.

[Anonymous No.23273604]

>>23273402
It starting with a shitty dad being pissed off at his four year old son is much better than a fight scene, your story isn't about fights surely. And I'm not mad, I just don't think that you'll get much of anything by hyper-focusing on a couple of sentences for two weeks even if you rewrote them a lot. You'd get much more progress overall if you just wrote the entire scene and read it back, it doesn't matter if it's not the final perfect version of how things should go down, you'd get a feel for what you can actually write and how you could improve it.

[Anonymous No.23273642]

>>23273604
I had final projects due, I didn't write for most of those two weeks. I only wrote for a little bit yesterday.

I guess it's good to just write instead of trying to keep the same idea. I do have an idea forming now.

[Anonymous No.23273677]

>>23273587
>I got other stuff as well besides writing in my spare time.
cring

[Anonymous No.23273687]

>>23273677
did you drop this?

[Anonymous No.23273700]

I wish I had learned creative writing when I was young and ignorant. Now I'm a little too self-aware and well read, but still lack talent. Forced to suffer through the learning process feeling like a retard.

[Anonymous No.23273788]

>write stuff in high school
>friends, family and teachers all like it
>write stuff at uni
>friends, family, creative writing classmates and the teacher running it all like it
I'm beginning to think I might not actually suck

[Anonymous No.23273792]

>>23273788
you need anon to bully you. give it here

[Anonymous No.23273803]

>>23273792
How well do you read Finnish?

[Anonymous No.23273874]

>>23273803
Fugg :8D

[Anonymous No.23273882]

>>23273874
I will be the man to redeem modern Finnish literature.

[Anonymous No.23273904]

>>23263531
> Simple guides on writing:
Two fags on “show, don’t tell” who are telling, not showing. The third was talking about Orwell and giving an essay on essays on political essays and I zoned the fuck out.

Can we stop pretending that “show, don’t tell” isn’t just a continuation of that minimum essay length noise we all suffered through as children?
https://youtu.be/MDntnp4SSFE?si=9z0cbe7BM1a9lvoT

[Anonymous No.23273938]

>>23273904
Show, don't tell is advice Aristotle gave when discussing plays

[Anonymous No.23274070]

Anons, I had an extremely vivid dream about a lost late 9th century Viking expedition. I'm going to borrow a bit from Gene Wolfe's Latro novels, and see if I can't write a historical horror/fantasy novel.

I just need to find a way to get a literate catholic onto this doomed voyage as a diary keeper, as that's what we're going to be reading.
Either he's a slave taken from an Irish monastery, brought along for his medicinal skills, or a French bishop sent to spread the word brought along as sort of a trial by faith.
I think I could make either work, but I have research to do.

[Anonymous No.23274191]

>>23273604
https://pastebin.com/wfFXNgwn

So I wrote the beginning of the shitty dad being pissed at his son for the setting I had in mind.

How is it? I tried to tell as little and show, though I think the part where the General and his wife talk to the ruler gets a bit expositiony.

[Anonymous No.23274247]

Childhood is thinking litfic is mature.
Adulthood is realizing genrefic is more mature with deeper themes.

[Anonymous No.23274252]

>>23274247
Childhood is despising maturity.
Adolescense is admiring maturity.
Adulthood is realizing you were right the first time.

[Anonymous No.23274268]

>>23274247
Nothing wrong with genre but if you don't see the point of litfic you're missing out
IDK what maturity is

[Anonymous No.23274273]

>>23274268
It's genrefic that's too immature to acknowledge itself for what it is.

[Anonymous No.23274286]

>>23274273
What do you consider genrefic and what litfic?

[Anonymous No.23274333]

>>23273803
I can read Finnish, if you want honest opinions.
Unless you're the army anon, then forget about it.

[Anonymous No.23274360]

>>23274286
>litfic
the tryhard, overly purple sludge you (don't) write
>genefic
the fun, whimsical stories I (actually) write which touch of the human condition and my readers love
as you can see, the two are not the same

[Anonymous No.23274370]

What methods do you use when writing fiction to structure and plan your plot? I'm working on a weeb visual novel and while I have a bunch of ideas I enjoy and want to explore, however it feels like I'm just spinning webs between events that I want to take place, rather than a telling a story with a spine - if that makes any sense at all.

There is a lot of ground I want to cover, but I'm mentally gridlocked trying to keep everything clear and concise. Changing one part of the story impacts multiple other parts, it's difficult to track everything. And I'm not talking about the choose-your-own-story part.

[Anonymous No.23274407]

>>23264506
bretty good anon, i loved the set up for the end. some of the repetitiveness felt a little like filler but really didnt take anything away from me.

[Anonymous No.23274476]

>>23274360
I read Nabokov and Nescio and so on and love it and then I try to do some similar stuff in my fanfic and then my readers love that
Works on my machine

[Anonymous No.23274490]

>>23274476
Repackaging deep shit and putting it in fanfics?

[Anonymous No.23274502]

>>23274370
Have you tried imagining the way those events affect your character? Nothing wrong with writing towards a bunch of cool stuff but yeah there should be a logical progression to them, and there's a good chance your MC will be the common element.

[Anonymous No.23274555]

Is writing on Scribblehub vs Royal Road a bit like posting art on Deviant Art vs Twitter/Insta/Artstation?
Kinda first thing I see on Scribblehub is copious amount of smut and naruto fanfics which kinda ruins any image of the place as serious platform to consider

[Anonymous No.23274571]

>think of a plot
>wow, that's weird, this one is actually pretty good...
>...
>...
>realize I just copied the plot of something I've already seen
every time

[Anonymous No.23274576]

>>23274555
That's because it isn't a serious platform to consider (depending on what you're writing). It's RoyalRoad's much smaller cousin that is focused on LGBT+ stories and smut. Also far less guidelines, because RR straight up would ban many of the works on SH

[Anonymous No.23274584]

>>23265387
It's a bit overwritten. The first paragraph for example could be simplified to something like the below:

As winter’s long nights came, dusk would fall when we were only halfway home from school, pausing long enough in violet curls for us to unload our bags and swap the good shoes for the kickers. We played despite the darkness and the cold air; the cones of amber falling out of the hunched streetlights were our guardposts while we kept lookout for escaped prisoners hiding in the long shadows of the holly bushes.

[Anonymous No.23274589]

>>23274584
>The first paragraph

I mean, the first part of the first paragraph.

[Anonymous No.23274602]

>>23273236
>I think I could have just cut the first couple sentences and started with 'But we played in the dark despite it and the cold...'

No, I don't think that would work. See below.

>>23274584

[Anonymous No.23274607]

>>23274555
I'm banished to scribblehub because I cannot stop myself from writing about nubile neotenous nymphs.

[Anonymous No.23274608]

>>23274607
Why does Royalroad discriminate against cunny so much?

[Anonymous No.23274609]

>>23268965
The first paragraph isn't eerie in and of itself so it doesn't grab my attention because I don't have the context yet. Maybe you could introduce the podium first?
The third paragraph wasn't quite explicit enough to make me realize that the character was on the podium.
(Combining these two observations: maybe it should start with a paragraph that describes the podium/audience/announcer relative to the character, to immediately embody him?)
I think the internal monologue is too much. The fourth paragraph would be stronger if you removed the monologue outright. Maybe remove all of it, reread it, and figure out how much to add back in, if any.
It's (not always but I think in this case) cheap to withhold information the character knows for more than a paragraph or so. I can feel afraid because the character feels afraid (empathy) or I can feel afraid because I know something the character doesn't know (dramatic irony) but if the character knows something I don't then it becomes harder to empathize with them and I start noticing that the writer is pulling a trick. Try explaining straight away that all the options are "die", I think it would also make the moment that he spins the wheel feel much more horrible. (On the other hand the description of the wheel slowing down becomes sillier, but maybe you could patch that by having him naïvely hope that it keeps spinning forever.)
>Suddenly I heard boos coming from the crowd.
The crowd booed.
>Suddenly he reached back and flipped a lever — and then the floor beneath me was gone!
I think the "suddenly" and the exclamation mark are too much.
>1. Would you keep reading?
>2. Thematically, what type of story would you think it is based on the first page?
I would keep reading. I wouldn't know what to expect (personally I don't really try to make predictions like that) but I'd trust that it'll pay off

[Anonymous No.23274618]

>>23274571
I struggle with that a lot with what I'm doing... Not direct ripoffs but I'm constantly going "Oh this is really like X if you think about it" and of course it's never intentional but it makes me feel worse as a writer.

I cope by telling myself that I'm just using established tropes and naturally plots will seem similar when that happens.

[Anonymous No.23274619]

>>23274571
Anon, all artists copy, or get "inspired" by something. Just keep copying more elements from so many things that what you create becomes unique

[Anonymous No.23274624]

>>23274584
>>23274191
Any advice for my intro to a story here?

[Anonymous No.23274709]

>>23274191
>>23274624
>blue sparks edged in all the colors of the rainbow burst from his fist
Kinda hard to understand the sentence.

>Sei Zan continued. He pressed a huge hand against the boy’s lower back.
Be careful with pronouns. "He" here refers to the general if I'm correct, but the sentence could be also interpreted as "Sei Zan pressed a huge hand against Sei Zan's lower back" which sounds a bit funny.

>Bau Fai indicated he could rest a moment
Here again I'd rather write something like "Bau Fai indicated the boy could rest.."

>larger than the ones he made with his hands
I'd go with "larger than the ones he had made with his hands".

>At the mention of that, Sei Zan smiled.
Here I'd go for "At the mention of swords", or something specific over the word "that".

>weave the radiance as well as his brothers
"as skillfully" perhaps?

Pretty nice, gives me wuxia vibes and I have a soft spot for those. I'd pay a bit more attention at your sentences' flow but contentwise I've got no criticisms.

[Anonymous No.23274716]

the more you read the more you'll realize that it's almost impossible not to borrow. at least if you want to please an audience.
even classics borrow from other classics.

[Anonymous No.23274767]

>>23274490
Not sure if "deep" is the right word really. I'm bad at plotting and planning ahead so that cuts off a lot of possibilities. It's mostly about form.
I like nice sentences that pick the right word to hit a certain note, that take an unusual form to fit a particular mood, that say exactly what they need to as best as they can. I don't get obscenely showy with this but I get nice comments about it. One reader said that they "for some reason" like how the words flow.
I like to add little implications in passing. The reader doesn't need to pick up on these because they're not on the critical path but if they do pick up on them then they get to feel clever and shout into the comment box. (And I get to have fun overthinking things that I'll only use in one sentence.)
I like a kind of, uh, qualic imagery? Trying to transmit some hard-to-describe quality of an experience by writing around it.
Now you can do this in genre fic, and there is genre fic that does these. But by weight non-genre has taught me more. Maybe if your readers like cowboys you need a large percentage of cowboy stuff but if your readers are perverts who like prose for prose's sake then you prioritize prose above some other things and you get sorted into the literary bin. I don't know.
JK Rowling, Queen of Genre, adores Nabokov. That probably means something.

[Anonymous No.23274781]

>>23274191
It's much better since you're showing us some of Sei Zan's strengths, weaknesses and his relationship with his father but you still haven't described either him or any of the surroundings. The transition from the training yard to the throne room is pretty much instantaneous and the throne room is only a throne room because you tell us it is. Is the King "His Luminence" only because that's his title? What does his throne room say about him, the way he conducts his court? What did his palace look like? What makes the General a general and the Lady his wife? Show, not tell applies to many things, from the undertones of refinement of a cup of tea to the atmosphere that the pagoda in which the tea is being served in exudes. As for the exposition in the dialog there's not much, the only bit is the General and the Lady explaining how a four year old is ahead of his peer and how it would be hard for one to use Warthburst. Not really the greatest of sins since the King might not know that and it's relevant for the Prince's defense, even if cliché.
If I had to hazard a guess you don't have much experience writing descriptions so they're missing from your work. You did try to describe a transformation in an earlier thread but that didn't go too well, but you shouldn't discourage yourself from trying to describe people, things and their surroundings because otherwise you're just narrating actions that are attributed to names, not people, even if the names show their feelings and thoughts. You don't have to describe a character instantly but at some point at least some of your characters should be imaginable to the audience and how they are described can also plays into the perceptions that both the reader and the protagonist/other characters have of them.
But like I said, you don't need a perfect opening, just write this chapter out and later you can think about what you could improve on, be it plot or execution.

[Anonymous No.23274870]

>>23274709
>Kinda hard to understand the sentence.
It's meant to be blasts of radiation, but I didn't want to actually use that term as it's too modern.

It is supposed to look like the sparks of fireworks for him, with blue core and rainbow edges.

Thanks for the advice on the pronouns

>>23274781
I see. I originally didn't want to bog down the reader with too many descriptions.

I gotta ask, was it clear enough from Sei Zan calling Bak Sing "milk mama" that she was his wet nurse when he was a baby? I wanted that to be clear but I didn't just want to have him think of her as his former wet nurse.

[Anonymous No.23274882]

>>23274870
Yes, but would it be natural for him to call her that at four? Either he always calls her that or it's shoehorned in for that little bit of exposition.

[Anonymous No.23274892]

>>23274882
The idea is that his mother became more or less permanently ill from birthing him, and was confined to a bed most of the time. Because of that, she could not nurse or physically rear him as a baby or toddler, and so Bak Sing nursed him instead and more or less raised him like a son.

Because of this, he took to calling her mama as an infant. However once he got old enough it became improper to call her that, and once his mom got a little bit better he could spend more time with her.

So I thought he'd call her milk mama as a sort of pet name or nickname that isn't encouraged. I imagine their relationship being something like Emperor Puyi and his wet nurse albeit the kid's not a fucking psycho.

[Anonymous No.23274982]

>>23274571
there are only a few stories, but many storytellers.

[Anonymous No.23275020]

What do you think are the main flaws of the "Well Intentioned Extremist", "Woobie Destroyer Of Worlds", and "Put Them All Out Of My Misery" tropes, and how would you evade them or subvert them so it works better?

[Anonymous No.23275049]

>>23275020
do you mind communicating these ideas in your own words? i'm not about to google this shit

[Anonymous No.23275089]

>>23275049
>Well Intention Extremist
Character who means good, from his perspective, but with extreme and irrational means
>Woobie Destroyer of Worlds
Character who, due to emotional trauma, reaches the conclusion that society/humanity/world must end
>Put Them All Out Of My Misery
Character who thinks that in order to deal with a problem in the world that affects him, then he must eradicate the society/humanity/world in which that problem arises

[Anonymous No.23275126]

>>23275089
i was hoping for some context. these tropes sound melodramatic. oversimplified, lazy writing. but you can make anything work.
woobie is probably alright more often than not. maybe any one of them, but altogether it sounds like a comic book character.
and you might consider them subversions of other tropes to begin with.
maybe get away from tropes for a minute

[Anonymous No.23275130]

>>23275020
good villains don’t need a tragic backstory and don’t need to be sympathetic at all. see: vader, joker, hannibal lecter

[Anonymous No.23275146]

>>23275126
>i was hoping for some context
>maybe get away from tropes for a minute
I have a character in my novel who in some form or another fits some of the criteria that could characterize him in these tropes. I hope to understand these tropes so as to not commit the pitfalls that other characters within these tropes commit, in order to create a more well rounded character.
The description that I did is overly simplified, but tropes by themselves are not good or bad, it's the execution and specification that matters. However tropes work well as a theory in the sense that generally, this sort of thing can fail in some areas, or some aspects work better when applied next to x or y or whatever.

[Anonymous No.23275167]

>>23275146
i understand what you mean, and i should have elaborated;
if you instead approach this as "what does a good character require?" (etc.), you can't really go wrong. playing around tropes like this feels like astrology or something.
maybe it's useful as a shortcut, but it doesn't sound like a good idea. and it certainly isn't necessary

[Anonymous No.23275176]

shit you could jury rig tropes from beginning to end. especially if you're just churning out a serial for RR. actually writing well is fucking hard. not even being ironic.

[Anonymous No.23275188]

What is a good antagonist like?

In Morrowind it's Dagoth Ur, who has a cool role in the fundamental metaphysics of TES; he is the false dreamer, who seeks to bind all of creation into his delusion. Another more enigmatic but still oppositional figure is Vivek, who is likewise metaphysically significant as an awakened CHIM character, but nevertheless is stained by a dark past.

Those examples have a kind of very interesting meta-antagonism that extends from the immediate linear history of the lore's events, to the transcendental and metaphysical underlying reality.

Then you have purely temporal antagonists who are more characteristically 'evil', ruthless, or have in general malignant personal traits, but remain deadly because they possess virtue in other ways. Like in intellect, strength or both which lends to power-acquisition and effectiveness in the world. Like in ASOIAF the Lannisters. Or in Dune, the Harkonnens,

What bases should you cover to get a really good antagonist? They need to be understandable with slightly sympathetic motives, but what else?

[Anonymous No.23275213]

>>23275188
very simply, the same as any good character, just in the way of your protagonist's goal.

[Anonymous No.23275218]

>>23275188
Someone with an ideal to sell along with their power. Otherwise everyone would just gang up against them instead of work with them. They have to offer a proposition people want and be no more superficially wicked than the local mob boss trying to earn a living in a corrupt and unjust society.

[Anonymous No.23275223]

>>23275213
actually i'd change this to any good MAIN character.
so they're active, they have an arc. that sort of thing.

[Anonymous No.23275284]

>>23275188
a villain's motivation should ultimately be unapologetically selfish. he could want to cure cancer, but only because someone close to him has cancer and that's all he cares about.
if something or someone gets in the way of this goal they're removed. exactly how they're removed depends on how villainous your villain is
whenever a moral dilemma comes up your villain should err on the side of selfishness
a good villain, however, is also competent. if he needs to not be selfish in order to advance his goals, he will be. Helping people who can help his goals, is ultimately selfish.

Now a protagonist could also be like this, but a villain won't let anything get in his way when it comes to achieving what he wants. Very much ends justify the means type behavior, whereas a protagonist usually has much broader lines they won't cross

[Anonymous No.23275611]

>>23274070
Maybe he committed a grave sin and was sent on this voyage as a chance to redeem himself. Maybe he encounters the trigger for his sinful nature on this voyage.

[Anonymous No.23275624]

>>23274716
Case in point: the vast majority of the Western canon is basically Bible fanfiction.
>>23274892
>Milk mama
FYI, the common term is "wet nurse".
>>23274982
There are as many stories as there are people, the people they interact with, and the circumstances they find themselves in. In other words...infinite.

[Anonymous No.23275634]

>>23275624
>FYI, the common term is "wet nurse".
I know, but I wanted him to have a surrogate mother-son bond and I feel like wet nurse is too professional.

[Anonymous No.23275643]

>>23275641
>>23275641
>>23275641

[Anonymous No.23275943]

>>23275643
>no subject
Nice work, fuckup