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/lit/ - Literature

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5202349 No.5202349[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

paging all writers

ITT: We post elevator pitches for whatever we're working on at the moment and decide if the other's project is worth anything based off that. I'll start.

>There's three brothers. They hate each other - they just cannot get along properly. The only thing that can bring them together is their father. He gets very sick, then he ups and vanishes. Left with a scarce few names and locations, these three brothers embark on a journey to find their missing father. But can they set aside their hate for each other and find their father before it's too late?

Idk, I'll have to see what happens. They probably won't, they're such cunts.

>> No.5202351

>>5202349

Sounds sliiighlty contrived, but if you took it in a really original/unpredictable direction at about the 1/3rd mark it could be interesting

Also as long as the quality writing itself was the driving force of the novel, not the plot

>> No.5202355

>>5202351
What would you do at the 1/3 mark then? Gimme some ideas

>> No.5202358

>it's a continuing performance piece consisting of fecal posting on an online social forum oriented towards Chinese cartoons

>> No.5202362

>>5202358
>noncontrived masterpiece

>> No.5202379

>>5202351
>plot
>contrived
how the fuck does one birth an uncontrived a plot then huh

>> No.5202381

>>5202355

Well it's up to you of course, but it would be interesting if perhaps:

>brothers never learn to work together (catharsis is so fucking overused) and fail to find their father. One brother (protagonist?) realises that family must be earned and (in a similar manner to the father) distances himself from the rest of the family and at the end understands why his father did it
>brothers find father, turns out when he was younger he had a son with another woman who he never saw again and then he married the brothers' mother. In his last moments he realised he had to find his fourth son in order to give him some closure about who his real father is. Father finds fourth son and then dies before the other three can find him. They eventually find the dead dad and their brother - the novel ends with the four brothers meeting for the first time

IDK, these sound interesting?

>> No.5202395

It's Tao Lin meets House of Leaves.
It's a Tao Lin novel with a horror story told in the margins

>> No.5202409

>>5202349
this sounds like a fucking anime

>> No.5202410

Cyberpunk Mississippi paddleboat pilots ship corporate data across the web.

>> No.5202431

>>5202381
okay I see more what you mean now

I've got my own turn of direction already but these are useful ideas. cheers

>> No.5202432

>>5202409
you sound like a mouldy faggot

>> No.5202445

Cyberpunk novel about a techno-cult building a machine god-king while the protagonist, who is self-administering a highly destructive psychoanalysis regime upon himself,

Its revealed later that the novel has, at least in part, been a series of hegelian dialectics between the machine god and the protagonist under a number of false negatives thus leading to an undermined concrete, and the desire for protag to act as the "hero", regardless of the consequences, culminating in le postmodern epin ambiguous ending.

Think NGE with less mecha more Spec Ops. No it didn't begin as an intentional ape of these.

>> No.5202448

>>5202445
if you don't try to hard this could have some worth

go ahead and give it a shot anon

>> No.5202452

>>5202349
>>There's three brothers. They hate each other - they just cannot get along properly. The only thing that can bring them together is their father. He gets very sick, then he ups and vanishes. Left with a scarce few names and locations, these three brothers embark on a journey to find their missing father. But can they set aside their hate for each other and find their father before it's too late?

Wordswordswords.

>When three combative brothers are faced with the disappearance of their sickly father, they must work together with scarce clues to locate him before it's too late.

Boom, 27 words first go! That's the arbitrary number that film school taught me was the best!

>> No.5202479

Adventure/puzzle solving video game:

East German Neonazis worshipping a Lovecraftian horror by abducting and murdering asylum seekers, ignorant-because-secretly-approving townsfolk and police.
National Socialist Underground and Rostock-Lichtenhagen riots meet True Detective.

>> No.5202517

A highschool boy moves to a sleepy country town just as a mysterious serial killer begins taking the lives of the inhabitants of the town. It's up to the highschooler and his newly formed friends to solve the mysteries, face themselves and reach out to the truth.

>> No.5202524

>>5202445
this isnt even a story

>> No.5202539

It's about two guys a girl and a pizza place. It practically writes itself.

>> No.5202569

A grief-stricken Scotsman is visited by a young privileged Englishman from a psychical society. Together they day drink and study ghosts.

>> No.5203098

Nonlinear novel about a college dropout who returns home after his father and mother are involved in a drunk driving accident - they were the guilty party. consists 2/3 in the past and 1/3 present

>> No.5203123

Some unpleasant shit happens to two groups of losers in a semi-Islamified, near-future British city.

>> No.5203126

Why should I try to convince some kike to publish my book by trying to sell him on the plot? It's the characters and writing that's important.

>> No.5203139

>>5202349
Have you ever read The Family Fang?

>> No.5203997

>>5202569
Yes. Good. GOOD!

>>5202517
Is this YA?

An audio-technician is fired from his job and decides to take up field recording as a way of coping with boredom. His vision has been declining slowly and his crazy doctor tells him he will be blind in 6 months time.
While recording ambient sounds in a book club for deaf people, he meets a girl. To pay the bills, he tries selling some of his recordings to film studios and weird Art collectives. While slowly losing his sight, he, together with his deaf girlfriend, his landlord (who is hunted by the police for God-knows-what) and his best friend (a junkie-turned-whacky-historian) try to survive in a city that is falling apart to riots, sinkholes and ridiculous self-destructive building projects.

>> No.5204117

A novel set in a university from freshers' week to graduation. The narrative is from the points of view of several contrasting characters all within a loose friend group. Lots of different interweaving story arcs. One is about a character who is slowly plotting a mass-shooting which fails spectacularly. One about a bright-eyed bushy-tailed activist who gets disenchanted by other student's political incompetence and campus hysteria. One character keeps failing to lose virginity no matter what. One character turns from lame spineless loser to faultless demigod, one bro character goes the opposite way and gets super fat and hated. One character experiments with being gay, tries to go back to being straight but everyone knows of his gay adventures so he feels he has to settle for dick out of social pressure. I want loads of stupid shit to happen. I'm talking non-stop parody where anything and everything gets a grilling and very few things taken seriously. I want the overall story to be ridiculously over-the-top and totally nuts to reflect what it is like being at that young age and state and how banal it really is. I want to satirize post-adolescent angst and drama and anxiety. As well as this, gonna satirise the general bullshit that goes on at universities, both amongst young people socially and also as educational institutions themselves.

>> No.5204266

>>5204117
So basically your average high school/college movie, and the crowd you're pandering to doesn't even read. This is doomed to fail.

>> No.5204956

>>5202539
pizza-rama kink-arama?

>> No.5204970

>>5203997
>is this YA?

just because it has a teen protag, doesn't automatically make it YA. what if the protag isn't a whiny beta edgy teen and the themes of the novel aren't coming of age?

>> No.5205683

>>5202445
Would read this.

>> No.5205754

>>5203997

Your idea lacks an interesting plot thread for the protagonist to follow and act on. It sounds like stuff happens to him and that's it.

>> No.5205949

>>5203997
Sounds like an Infinite Jest kind of deal. Not a whole let of plot, but hilarious circumstances and possible memorable characters. I'd read it, but I'm into post-post-modernism.

>> No.5205962

>>5202517
Soo Persona 4?

>> No.5205981

A short story: a guy locks himself in an unmaintained women's bathroom in a library to cram for his math quals. It's supposed to be "surreal", and he's supposed to "hallucinate", e.g. he goes deer-hunting with a broken fluorescent light tube... but it sounds so corny talking about it that I'll probably stop writing it. Thanks, /lit/.

>> No.5205989
File: 460 KB, 1024x768, Azumanga_Daioh_Wikia_Picture.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5205989

>Have you ever seen one of those shows about high school girls from Japan? About all those groups of girls that get into sort of wacky misadventures all the time? It's a bunch of short stories about a group of girls a lot like that, set here in America. The lead girl is a bouncing ball of hyperactive energy with an enormous vocabulary. They learn about life and grow up against the backdrop of a school in Maine.

>> No.5206012

>>5205981
nah, write it or ill rape you in the butthole, i promise

>> No.5206014

>Coming-of-age tale.
>Young lad is 'drafted' off with his compatriots.
>His compatriots are slaughtered.
>Said lad and a handful of others are taken captive by the infamous [secondary protagonist].
>Said captive is forced to travel about with the 'infamous'.
>Said captive undergoes both physical and psychological torture.
>Said captive is forced into one-on-one combat with his remaining compatriots.
>Said captive is forced to witness rape, 'un-willful murder', and a series of events which lead to cannibalism.

Work in progress.

>> No.5206039

>>5206014
and how does this end, then?

>> No.5206062

>>5206039
>Work in progress.

Ultimately, a bond is constructed between both protagonist, and the young lad (in his late-20s by the time it all comes full circle), is then forced to murder his mentor and surrogate father-figure in a one-on-one dual, whilst he utilizes all of his teachings.

>> No.5207469

>>5202349
>Three big chapters with multiple parts to it. Third person, but limited to the focused character.
>The first chapter has a guy named Barry Barreaux return to his home town of Springwood, Ohio to check up on his sister, finding out she has recently been murdered. He talks to Chuck (his best friend from high school) and Chuck's stoner brother Freddie, Julius Munson (the sister's fiance), and Laurie Essen (an old flame) to discover what happened. He finds out there has been serial killings for the past fifteen years, and his sister knew there was a man stalking her.
>The second chapter involves Barry realizing the stalker has been running away from someone else. The chapter follows five different people (five different parts) throughout two days as things happen to them. Barry finds the stalker, already murdered. He finds a peculiar item hidden before the killer could find it: X-Ray glasses from an old comic book. Barry tries them on, and realizes they're magic. He can see "truth". He knows the stalker didn't kill his sister, but he still has no idea who did.
>The third chapter is the confrontation, when Barry meets Julius again he "sees through him" and understands the weird fact that Julius is a man in disguise: also wearing magically enchanted glasses. These glasses are Groucho Marx glasses, and he's been hiding among the town for two decades, picking women off and taking off the glasses to his true self when he feels the heat is on him. Barry must save Laurie from a similar fate to his sister, and stop Julius once and for all.


I've been working on the book for about a year or so. I've told 4chan about it before, I've sent the first chapter out to small publishers. If nobody bites, I'll self-publish all three chapters. They're only about 10,000 to 15,000 words each, but each chapter has a different story-telling structure and style. It's my first book, so I was having fun with it. Lots of comic book influences, horror influences, comedy influences (the marx brothers), and the Twilight Zone because it's fun high concept.

>> No.5207471

>tfw a well-known publisher said they'd like to see my manuscript I told them I'd completed
>tfw I have 10k words left to do by next monday

>> No.5207484

>>5207471
Well don't be a cunt, then. Finish that shit.

>> No.5207491

>>5207484
Trying brah, almost missed work this morning I stayed up so late. In work right now editing what I've written so far in an email draft folder. It's a downbeat novella that I fear will be interpreted as lazy and/or outdated (since it's protagonist is a depressed young male; though one who is not idealized or romanticized). I've written close to 100k words this year before settling on this current book, if they hate it I'm probably gonna an hero

>> No.5207494

Male and female first person narrative

Male and female haven't spoken in twenty years

They live in a small city
The small city used to be peaceful but has given over to massive racist and gang battles that are all sourced from a series of incidents that made the neighborhoods band together and start fighting each other

They caused the problem at the beginning by subtle influence

They both tell their sides

She wants to leave while she can
He wants to let everybody know why they fight, but is too proud and ashamed.

The two never leave.
Both die in hate crimes during massacres

>> No.5207500

>>5207494
What kind of books do you read?

I'm curious

>> No.5207514

>>5207500
Philosophy
Poetry
Sociology

I really don't read a ton of fiction, though.

Why do you ask?

>> No.5207521

>>5207514
I just see a lot of story ideas here about really surreal stuff, and I don't really understand it since the board mostly talks about vaguely realistic stories and depressing reads about mundane human characters, yet a lot of people here seem really into jet packs

>> No.5207524

>>5207491
>if they hate it I'm gonna an hero
you're not onna do shit with that attitude, Sonny-Jim.
>>5207494
there's gotta be some sort of payoff

>> No.5207531

>>5207521
I'm on a twenty-four hour shift right now. Forgive me, but I don't understand your reply.

>> No.5207539

>>5207524
The payoff is that it is a relational proposition that we'll quickly forget what our cause in support of tradition. Those we apotheosize are only receding into a haze of our imagined persona for them. In other words. Shit doesn't pay off.

>> No.5207541

>>5207531
Like I don't know how someone can post in a Stoner thread about how sad the ending was, then go on to think "hey I'll write a story about a guy who discovers a plot to replace the town's toll booth operators with vampires". Not that you were doing that, and I appreciate not everyone is interested in writing the same story, for good reason. Hmmm maybe I don't mean anything at all. Enjoy your shift man

>> No.5207545

>>5207541
I read Vonnegut and Homer. Enjoy that knowledge, my seer.

>> No.5207588

>>5207539
ah I see

>> No.5207797

> Ex monk with PTSD goes on vigilante killing spree in Zagreb.

>> No.5208355

>>5202349
>That's cool buy I don't know if it will sell... Here, I've got an idea: why don't we jam in a story about a monk in there? That'll get the audience going! Like, maybe a duel or something?

>> No.5208418
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5208418

>>5202349
>Dooger Johnson chokes on a marshmallow in a bar wager and must outwit a fat, hairy Greek personification of Death to come back to life.
It's a play. 10 minute run time. Low-brow but fun.

>> No.5208512

>>5207541
Because it's more interesting to write about.

>> No.5209330

It's about a mysterious loner with amnesia (Rhyce Karêi) who is also a vampire, and he wants to avenge his nemises (Flashbird) who killed his girlfriend and Flashbird is also his brother and he uses guns while Rhyce uses his katana and he can cut steel with his katana.

>> No.5210881
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5210881

>>5208355
let me do a terrible re-phrase then

>After the father of the three Glade brothers goes missing, they embark on a journey to find him. But when they cannot cooperate for a minute without being at each other’s throats, and a harsh, alien world besets their progress at every turn, can they ever hope to find their father again? And what will they do when faced with a terrible discovery that awaits them?

>> No.5212065

The protagonist gradually becomes allergic to every food, starting with lactose intolerance and shellfish allergy and eventually progressing to extreme allergy to everything. She discovers she can live off of male tears and goes into academia. Set in the 90s.

>> No.5212093

An accelerationist musician begins making party rap in order to slyly indoctrinate his young audience. As he produces the album, the lung cancer he was diagnosed with at the beginning of the novel aggressively destroys his body. Meanwhile, a Zapatista conspiracy to murder the musician unfolds. It'll be humorous and it will include satirical rap lyrics and all. Thematically, it'll be about loyalty and passion in the face of entropy.

>> No.5212108

>>5212065
>>5212093
these are interesting