/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.7540601]

I want to write but I can't seem to come up with a good enough idea that will push me or to carry on with it. How did you come up with the ideas for your novels

[Anonymous No.7540605]

stole it

The other option is to just let the mind wander and write down anything you happen to come up with in the moment so you can develop the story from there, it's probably going to be really shit but maybe you come up with something worthwhile at some point or refine it until it's not garbage anymore.
It's some sort of exercise if nothing else I suppose, since you would actually be writing instead of sitting around, wallowing in self pity and posting on /lit/ like a faggot

[Anonymous No.7540662]

>>7540605
sorry it's just that the only writing I've done is essays and in my journal mostly. thank for advice though, so is starting off that simple? Just write anything at all and carry on? So if I wanted to I could start with " I got out of bed and lingered on 4chan all day. most notably, I took the time to shit on another virtual cave dweller, felt like a real prince showing that knobhead what's what" and just move from there

[Anonymous No.7540668]

>>7540662
But that's not fiction. Use your imagination.

[Anonymous No.7540671]

>>7540662
>>7540668
Yes, start with that and try to develop something out of it.

[Anonymous No.7540680]

Visionary drugs / hypnagogia

[Anonymous No.7540696]

Maybe, and I'm not trying to be condescending, you're not naturally gifted with creativity and fiction writing is not for you?

[Anonymous No.7541360]

>>7540696
I was just taking the piss earlier... Personally I feel that if anything I can admit to is having creativity but one of my problems is that I don't want this book to be hard effort that's dug away and forgotten the second it's published. I know it's very overambitious but I want it to be one that will we be read by passing generations. Reflecting on it now,c oming up with an idea for a book is not so hard. What I'm really asking for is how does one find the inspiration for an idea for a novel that has the potential of reaching the caliber of books such 1984, Crime and Punishment, Shakespeare's works, etc.. Or is that literally impossible in today's world regardless of how good the book is simply because literature is on its knees.

[Anonymous No.7541454]

what's important to you? why is it important to you?
project your own fears and hopes and aspirations to a character and make them suffer on the page. it can be quite cathartic.

[Anonymous No.7541997]

Start broad and work your way inward. Like, think about a vague feeling or atmosphere of the type of book that would be your favorite book if it existed. Try to think of a theme that would fit with that feeling. Then a setting. Then maybe what kind of struggles a character would go through. Then the types of people he would interact with to make your story more interesting.

[Anonymous No.7542129]

>>7541360
That is the wrong way to think about writing but you probably already know that. Also it's not impossible, see DFW. There are things you have experienced and thought about that no one else has; write about that. The hard part is extrapolating them. Think. Also, try writing short stories first. Get used to the framework of a narrative. Read more. Read everything. Think about everything.

[Anonymous No.7542150]

>>7540601

bro you don't want to waste your good ideas now anyway. write your mediocre ideas. chances are they're not as bad as you think, and it's good practice.

[Anonymous No.7542168]

>>7541360
>>7541360
having a complete life to use as a well for scenarios and dedicating months to just thinking about the concepts you want to deal with so you present a personal view on them would be nice first steps for an iconic work.

you know, getting off 4chan, doing shit with your life, staying away from entertainment.

[Anonymous No.7542271]

>>7540601
Read more until you sort of 'know' what you want to say and how you want to say it. Know in quotes because it is more just a simmering, a feeling that you've got something, that you can really at least start a first draft.

Unburden yourself of this want to be a writer, it has nothing to do with anything.

[Anonymous No.7543633]

Thank for all the help everyone.. more advice and thoughts will be appreciated, will still check for updates

[Anonymous No.7543650]

>>7540601
What are you interested in you pleb?

Come on, surely you like something besides shitting up 4chan. Write about that.

[Anonymous No.7543702]

i agree with th others: go live a life. Move out of home, move out of your hometown to either a big city or the middle of nowhere where you have to live off the land or to another country. Drink too much, take some drugs, sleep with women, get a motorcycle and ride too fast. Hit a festival, spend a month hiking a trail, kill an animal for food and gut it yourself and cook it over a fire. Lose your phone, write in a spiral bound notebook with a disposable ball point pen you stole. Volunteer somewhere with homeless people or retards. Go see some shit, go do some shit, then you'll have something to write about.

[Anonymous No.7543712]

>>7543702
reddit dot com everybody

very inspirational :)

[Anonymous No.7543739]

>>7540601
I can only tell you what has worked for me. I've got about 150 pages written of what is rapidly turning into a very large and very expansive novel.

Start with a prompt. No seriously. Not some prompt you found on the internet, or anything like that. Just come up with something. For me, the prompt was "crippled boy riding a horse in the medieval english countryside, first person present tense". I had no other details than that. I just started writing.

But as I wrote, I found that I really liked the character I was writing. I started fleshing out more details about his story – why he's riding through the countryside, where he's trying to get to, what's going to happen to him along the way, what's going to happen to him once he gets there, etcetera, etcetera – because I didn't want to STOP writing about him. I started worldbuilding, and thinking up loads of backstory, and pretty soon I had the plot outline for a book that looks like it's probably going to be somewhere between 500 and 1000 pages when finished.

Obviously I can't guarantee what worked for me will work for you. But I feel like— and maybe I'm totally off-base here— this is the way good books start. You don't try to come up with a story first, character second, prose third. You just start WRITING, and the prose will come first, then the character second, and then the story later.

I'm really proud of my writing on this story, and I think the reason why it's so much better than any of my previous writing is because I followed this formula.

[Anonymous No.7543779]

>>7543712
Don't knock it til you've tried it. Or you know just stay home and play vidya and watch vines and write about that. Doesn't matter to me. It'll be less competition against my novel.

[Anonymous No.7543805]

>>7543779
>It'll be less competition against my novel.

PAAAAHAHAHAHA
Fucking fourteen year old detected.

[Anonymous No.7544172]

>>7543702
You're delusional. I've hitchhiked through Europe and parts of Middle East and it gave me literally no insight that I couldn't have gained by deductive reasoning. All those "free-spirited nomads" are middle-class faggots with a terminal identity crisis and some spare cash. Some of the best writers never left their hometowns.

[Anonymous No.7544174]

>>7543739
George?

[Anonymous No.7544177]

>>7544172
if experience alone could make you interesting there would be a method everyone follows, it's up to you if you get something from it or not.

[Anonymous No.7544182]

>>7544172
I've traveled as well and i did find something: where ever you go, people are essentially all the same.

[Anonymous No.7544203]

Eh, I enjoy reading more than writing, I can only speak from the perspective of a visual artist. But for me the technique behind the piece over time has become almost worthless to me (I say almost because practicing every day is truly the only way to get better). Sometimes I'll read a little fact like how Gaddis wrote Carpenter's Gothic with the classical Madam Bovary/ Anna Karenina 19th century cuckoldry plot in mind and wanted to reduce it to archetypes, or how Franz Kafka wrote Amerika without ever visiting America and I will become fixated on the idea of inventing a country in my mind that actually exists but that I only know of word-of-mouth (obviously extremely specific examples that pertain only to me).

As a painter sometimes I use a bizarre narrative structure to frame my paintings or photographs (although I still look at ALOT of paintings). I'm pretty sure writers do the same. I could be off-the-mark but if someone told me that Gravity's Rainbow was based off of a Bosch painting I wouldn't be surprised at all. Looking at other art helps if you want to be artistic- all art, not just literature and music.

I don't write, I have one of those pocket notebooks that I sometimes sketch in when I'm walking around. When I was in Bruges I saw this 8-panel painting with a saint who gets her head cut off by some ugly midget with an erection and I became fascinated with the panels. I sometimes run a screenplay or a story through my head and I've been researching the saint (St. Ursula), but I've been an artist since I was a child and most of my family are artists so this is a pretty natural response to looking at pieces. I won't even write the screenplay because, aforementioned, I really don't like writing as much as reading, but I think it's a trained response when you constantly look at and make art.

[Anonymous No.7544454]

>>7544174
Nope, Jacob.

[Anonymous No.7544463]

>>7544172
this so hard

i've travelled four continents and people who think travel will grant you access to some truth ineffable to people too poor to travel are literally conspicuous consumption: the person.

[Anonymous No.7544511]

>>7540601
Practice. Read books on storytelling. Writing the Blockbuster Novel is a good example of how stories grow through the outlining process. Stories are engineered. They don't just jump out of a writer's imagination.

Stories are the essence of novels. Without story, it lacks energy. Drama is an ancient craft. Learn about it. Study how it works and how it can work better. Movies are easy for this kind of study because they generally have a dramatic core and you can consume a bunch of them in a short amount of time.

For you first novel plotting exercise, take a broken character and make them want something very badly. Put obstacles in their way as they go to get that thing. Write an outline. Iterate.

If all this bothers you, switch to poetry. No on cares about story in poetry.

[Anonymous No.7544701]

>>7540601

I made up a bunch of OCs and started masturbating to them.
after 10 years, something finally made sense and I came up with a brilliant idea for a novel.
still wank off to my OCs every now and then because imagination > real life

[Anonymous No.7544719]

>>7544463
it will grant you access to new knowledge that wasn't available to you back home, but all knowledge has to be learned. you don't absorv it from the air like some magic pixie dust.

[Anonymous No.7545242]

>>7540601
Read and live. Ideas come to you or they don't.

Why do you want to write?

Might sound retarded, but I write because I can't not write.

[Anonymous No.7545324]

>>7544701
is this from the comic with bondage and shit? I like that. got more?

[Anonymous No.7545328]

>>7543702
>stealing a ball point pen
MODS
absolute madman, get v&

[Anonymous No.7546359]

Is it true that the best way to start a novel is to come up with the moral/value/idea you want to convey and *then* find a setting/characters/plot that will convey it?

[Anonymous No.7546381]

>>7540601
By praying for inspiration and never failing to prostrate before almighty God in utter gratitude for receiving it in such abundance that my hand cannot be brought to move fast enough to keep up.

[Anonymous No.7546486]

>>7546359
>come up with the moral/value/idea you want to EXPLORE
Congratulations, you're writing literature.

[Anonymous No.7546507]

>>7543702
i've read some shitty posts here but this really takes it to a new level. it's like all the rich "free spirits" I knew growing up embodied in a few sentences.

[Anonymous No.7547379]

>>7540601
I consume a lot of media, and eventually an idea comes to me. I remember it and mess with it in my head for a while until it's developed enough to describe the actual plot. This can take between a few minutes to years.

My current book came from when I was helping my writer friend. He was writing what felt to me like a story about overcoming corruption in the police, but set it in a fantasy setting that made it hard for the reader to understand the mechanics of the culture and authority. So I decided I'd like to try a similar idea but in a real-world setting, and now I'm writing the book and he's working on yet another new idea.

[Anonymous No.7547398]

>>7546381
Your praying is excessively masturbatory.

[Anonymous No.7548230]

>mfw rife with ideas for really good stories but they're all fanfiction

[Anonymous No.7548247]

>ctrlf
>smoke weed

>0 results

come on niggers,
seriously?