/jp/ - Otaku Culture

[Anonymous No.]

What makes 'good writing' good and what makes 'bad writing' bad?

[Anonymous No.]

I've been wondering this for ages

[Anonymous No.]

Form, construction, presentation and personal taste.

[Anonymous No.]

font?

[Anonymous No.]

Being interesting. Not sounding awkward and retarded. Not being redundant. Not trying to sound deep and meaningful. Not overusing metaphors and similies.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170366
But what manners of using form, construction and presentation are 'good' and which manners of using them are 'bad'? All writing uses form, construction and presentation, yet some is 'good' while other writing is 'bad'.

[Anonymous No.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_%28literature%29

[Anonymous No.]

Novel insights and relatability.

Basically, avoid cliches like the plague and it's good writing (i.e. don't talk about fucking food for 10 pages).

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170419
But Shakespeare directly stole his plots from other writers (can't get more cliche than that), yet he's considered to be one of the best writers in history.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170419
I like reading about food.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170396
Formalism is the only school of criticism which can actually tell you if a text is good or not.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170388
For me, it's all about fluidity and realism. Take your time making descriptions. Don't dump everything in people's faces. When you notice something, you notice it by parts. When you're talking with someone you know for a long time, you only notice their looks when they're somehow different. In lenghty conversations, get rid of "said X"/"replied Y" once you make it obvious how the exchange is progressing. If it goes on for too long, disguise the "said X"/"replied Y" with reactions or tics. Be concise without being telegraphic. Write in the active voice unless you want to use the passive voice for a styllistic purpose or to invoque certain feelings.

This is how I feel. /lit/ would probably lash out at me and so will probably some of you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170351
>>>/lit/

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170438
>Formalism is the only school of criticism which can actually tell you if a text is good or not.

Nope. I suggest you read my article in the latest The April Reader regarding theory of reading.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170426
Writers of plays. Plays don't really have that high a bar. A play is good just for not being a musical.

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170396
Raw analysis of the formal poetics of a work is merely the first step. You would admit that abstraction and symbolism are available formal techniques? What is the content of such a formal technique?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170453
/lit/ has the snobby high art view. I'm talking about all writing and VN writing in particular, not excluding plebs' entertainment.

>>10170461
As Wikipedia puts it, "William Shakespeare (26 April 1564 (baptised) – 23 April 1616)[nb 1] was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.[1]"
Suggesting Shakespeare isn't a great writer tends to completely invalidate anything you say in a discussion due to how contrary to popular opinion it is.

[Anonymous No.]

flOw

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170472
Go to /lit/, use the word pleb, watch them send you back to >>>/mu/. /lit/ likes to read critiqued literature, /lit/ likes to read genre literature, /lit/ likes to read pulp and porn.

To the extent to which VNs are literary, rather than a form in their own right (see Scott McCloud's analysis of forms of works in Understanding Comics), VNs are susceptible to the critique used on literature, which includes raw close reading of poetic devices, and which includes higher order readings of meaning such as hermeneutics, new criticism, post structuralist readings, Marxist critique (per Lukacs, etc.)

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170478
>>>/mu/hobos

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170486
speaking of which 4chan has a new poetic device available:

>>>/jp/flan+fly

[Anonymous No.]

How to do literary criticism:
1. Take your pick of the following issues
a. Feminism
b. Homosexuality
c. Communism
d. Colonialism
e. Capitalism
2. Pick a book to read. Any book will do as this step isn't important.
3. Read your selected issue into the book, regardless of whether it is anachronistic or not. In fact, it's better if it's anachronistic.
4. Quote French people.
5. Receive PhD.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170478
Last time I went to /lit/ they were jerking off over alphabetical africa. I don't like /lit/ and would rather read fanfics written by slovakian 10-year-olds looking to improve their english skills to seriously consider their opinion.

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170499
>I […] would rather […] to seriously consider their opinion.

You forgot the comparative. You meant "than to"

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170493
I can't fit homosexuality into Hungry Hungry Caterpillar, please help.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170499
Fan-fiction written by ten year old foreign children might have a special charm to it, though. You should pick a subject with no redeeming value to make your point. Like a MLP fanfiction best-of collection.

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170511
Use more Lacan.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170493
That's deconstruction, which is only part of literary criticism.
Related: http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170509
It has. They're great. It's a shame most published authors don't have ideas as fresh or are as expressive as these children.

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170518
It isn't really deconstruction if you're using, for example, Lukacs to read the communist contexts of, for example, Russian Great Realism. Because you're engaged in a positive critique. Deconstruction is like shit-posting Touhou until you get your own message board: futile, and eventually results in a deeply failed board that has more anime threads than /a/. Except replace Touhou with Derrida's shit breakfast, and replace /jp/ with the French Academy, and anime threads with liquified shite.
Sorry about forgetting my sage earlier.

[Anonymous No.]

What is a well written VN?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170478
Funny, I'm following a /lit/ thread right now and it took only 7 posts until someone started complaining about the 'plebeian majority'.

[Anonymous No.]

Good writing is good when you can look at it some time later and still think it's good.
Bad writing either crosses the line or doesn't reach the line. The line is kind of vague which is why this sort of thing is hard to explain.

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170560
>>>/lit/majority
Nope.

[Anonymous No.]

It may be a bit unrelated, but:
First person or third person?
Which do you think is better? And why?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170580
Do you honestly think your name holds any weight anywhere?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170597
At least it lets us know that it's the same guy spitting out the pretentious garbage.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170596
Personally I prefer _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Surprise!!! _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170426
He put in several 'groundbreaking' veiled references to sex, so the Jewish media propped him up in order to poison the society and weaken the nation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170546
Anything written by Romeo. Moogy said so, so it's fact.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170619
Really? But I played an English-translated version of one of his works and the writing wasn't all that great, so he must be wrong!

[Anonymous No.]

Learn Japanese pleb

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170580
That feature is totally broken.
>>>/lit/3214846

[Hermeneuticist No.]

>>10170597
>>10170600
What the second of you said. You've been here long enough to learn how to use sage, so you should know that everyone but anonymous is a useless piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170641
Untranslatable masterpiece

[Anonymous No.]

You know it when you see it. I'm completely serious. This is the boiled down, purely filtered answer years and years of study will give you.


I could go into the list of things that are "generally agreed upon" but they don't necessarily make a story good.

The thing is, nothing matters beyond how well you can pull your ideas and concepts off.
How good you can make your readers believe your world is real.

Writing is telepathy and magic after all.

Alternatively you could take the postmodern approach and come to the conclusion that writing should be used to inhibit clarity, inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and thusly be turned into an intimidating and impenetrable fog.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170546

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170667
>inhibit clarity, inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and thusly be turned into an intimidating and impenetrable fog.
this one, how do I do this one, tell me sensei!

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170681
Find a book with rhyzome in its title that isn't about trees

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170681
It's easy.
Take a sentence, any sentence, and then remove any word your next door neighbor might know and remove it, replace it with the longest thesaurus equivalent.

Don't be afraid to throw prefixes around like candy, mis-, dis-, hyper-, pre, de-, re-, and post- are all good ones. Suffixes help too, especially -ism.

Let's give it a try.

``Contemporary buildings are alienating''

Look at all that clarity, bias, and privilege, disgusting. Let's fix it up.

Pre-spacialities of counter-architectural hyper-contemporaneity re-commits us to an ambivalent recurrentiality of seductivity, one enunciated in a de/gendered-Baudrillardian discourse of granulated subjectivity.

Congratulations, you're now a genius. Don't forget to throw slashes and brackets anywhere you can.

And if anyone asks you what you just said, look down your nose at them and say something even more impenetrable.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170721
Entry level.

You should watch Zizek trolling sometime.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170721
Relatedly, multiperspecivalism is accorded a cardinal status within the cumulative diegetic construct insofar as the game's take on the action alters according to the point of view from which it is tackled by different personae.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170819
(actual book quote, by the way.)

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170844
Who would type that? I swear to fuck they just made up a couple of those words on the spot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170851
Some writer who's made a living off of continuously writing garbage like that about otaku culture: http://www.amazon.com/Anime-Visual-Novel-Crossroads-ebook/dp/B00336ELV2

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170862
She's not really writing for /jp/ though, is she? Nor is she a particularly good thinker if she believes that multiple perspectives can have cardinality—doesn't she know about TRUE ENDS? Games encode a plurality of meanings while asserting a different valorisation of each meaning system, each of which is incommensurable with the other. TRUE ENDS aren't BAD ENDS but at least they're not WORST ENDS. Whc inContinennal filopastry wld u fk?

[Anonymous No.]

is finnegan's wake well written? is james joyce a genius or did he troll the fuck out of english teachers by pretending a bunch of nonsense was a book?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170900
"Yes"

Please stop asking entry level koans.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170892
pity reply

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170892
pre-spacial reversal filoflannality of course

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170862
I raged unironically.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170351
Poetry or prose?

Both are about being economical with words, being precise with descriptions, and working to unify themes, symbols, and leitmotifs. Poetry is just prose concentrated, it generally works with one or two major themes are pictures.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170819
That's horrible

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170930
Its a job.

>>10170926
Yeah, nah, you're a cunt.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170900
he was abusing his prestige. he knew he could get away with it.

[Anonymous No.]

>10170892
>filopastry
?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170721
>>10170819
>>10170892
I cannot believe people would type entire sentences as horrible as this, let alone books. My mind rejects the entire notion, assuming that it has been trolled.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170976
There are still interesting problems left in criticism. Does your mind reject detailed academic discussions of the minutae of analysis of all things?

[Anonymous No.]

Make it understandable, make it relatable, and for the love of god, make yourself or your narrator sound like someone I'd want to listen to for hours on end.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170900
Apparently Finnegan's Wake has tons of wordplay everywhere, so by ordinary judging methods it's an exquisite piece of literature. Whether that means FW is good or literary criticism is bad is something I'll leave up to you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170949
muy delicioso

[Anonymous No.]

i have a writing question !!
why is Fan Fiction so hated when no one has any problem with Fan Art?

[Anonymous No.]

Simplicity. Lately there has been a trend in plain, simple (but not simplistic) language, and I think that's a good thing. Especially in visual novels where you only have a couple of lines on-screen at a time.

Purple prose is shit and people still seem to think over-describing and running your story through a thesaurus somehow makes it better. In 99% of cases, "He walked to the house next door" is better than something like, "He briskly ambulated across the boulevard, walking past a pulchritudinous arrangement of fuchsia chrysanthemums and a small boy playing on his bicycle (how quaint, he thought), until he arrived at his destination: a small, tawdry town house with a cobbled roof that had seen better days, and then entered through the unremarkable front door."
Description is useful if it's relevant or sets the scene for an appropriate reason, but I know so many people who choose to write like this and it's painful to read. If John just has to get from A to B, say John goes from A to B. If no events happen in between, don't resort to filler content as though we need to follow John's journey in real-time.

tl;dr: do the opposite of this crazy lady:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanda_McKittrick_Ros

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171084
That's easy. I can't jerk off to words

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171138
You wake up in Gensokyo…

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171138
What are you, some kind of normalfag?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170493
I just took a course on contemporary literary theory and I can confirm this statement

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171138
But non-fappable fan art is also appreciated.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171088
Hauptsätze, hauptsätze, hauptsätze!

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171088
> a small, tawdry town house with a cobbled roof that had seen better days
I think this is a decent clause.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171162
Let me guess, you got a bare pass or a credit?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171176
When the house is irrelevant, I do not. That's one of the things I love about VNs: trivial details like that are just displayed in the background so the narration can just focus on the important parts. Excess explanation actually bothers me in non-visual media, especially if done part by part, as I keep having to correct the image I already have in my head of the thing or person being described every time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171176
I actually had to rewrite that example because I kept writing it fairly well. It's not a very good example, but you get my point.

>>10171193
This. It's important to keep in mind that visual novels are, well, visual. We don't need to be told what a character is wearing if we can see it, though we might like to know what a character thinks about the outfit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171193
Imagine that the author is trying to subtly bring up the fact that the people the man is visiting are poor. It can be a pretty crafty method of exposing it. Without proper context, though, I agree with you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171088
>Purple prose is shit
Well yeah, that's basically its definition. You know what isn't the definition of purple prose? "Prose that isn't simple."

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171174
>non-fappable
There is no such thing as non-fappable art anon

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171183
credits. had to put up to date with many theories, ideologies and jargon, tho. I really think postmodernism is the pretext of all mediocrity now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171267
There's no such thing as non-fappable words.

[Anonymous No.]

>What makes 'good writing' good

1-good art.
2-japanese author

If something like FSN had been written by someone from DA, and had no pretty pictures, I wouldn't have made it past the prologue. the pictures and sound effects make up for everything.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171284
>credits.

It shows. Mainly because your refutations are trite.

>had to put up to date with many theories, ideologies and jargon, tho.

So why the fuck didn't you go to trade school instead of a university?

>I really think postmodernism is the pretext of all mediocrity now.

It is, but you lack the capacity to say why, how, and in what manners because of your aversion to humanities reasoning.

You ought to consider becoming NEET.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171254
The OED says "prose that is too elaborate or ornate."

Nothing wrong with saying that's shit. Feminazi is pejorative, but I can still say feminazis a shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171290
you don't need good art either it seems.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171305
What if the prose is about something more abstract like the thoughts of a character?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171313
I'd still mate with her

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171326
You'd mate with any 2D. You'd probably fuck a toho.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171317
Depends how interesting it is. Check with a friend. Authors rarely realise when their prose is purple prose.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171313
1) that's still above average
2) I played it with the PS2 patch.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171290
>If something like FSN had been written by someone from DA, and had no pretty pictures, I wouldn't have made it past the prologue.

This pains me because I'm in the same boat, but I'm also creating a VN. If I won't touch fanfiction or OELVNs (besides Kawaii Adobenshaas and Marijuana) with a 10 foot pole, why should anyone give me a chance?

The curse of being a non-Japanese otaku...

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171193
>That's one of the things I love about VNs: trivial details like that are just displayed in the background so the narration can just focus on the important parts

Don't they often fail to do this, though?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171337
If the art is good people will read it. And if the art is great, a LOT of people will read it. Simple as that. No one is going to download and play something that looks like a bunch of MS Paint scribbles, it doesn't matter how good the story is.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171354
Well fuck. Looks like I'll have to get a job and commission art or suck some /jp/sie drawfag cock.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171354
>115 votes total, average 7.09 (good)
>115 votes

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171084
You'll spend a lot longer on a piece of fan fiction than a picture, so you'll have more time to learn to hate it.
Maybe

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171337
You should write stories first. If you turn out to be a fantastic writer everyone likes it will be much easier to attract an artist.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171397
why not take a drawing class, too? They aren't expensive

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171389
But I didn't like it. Although the side story, epilogue or whatever it was, was better than the main story.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171397
That would entail going to DA or fanfiction.net and participating in the community, right? I think I'll pass.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170819
>>10170844
Fuck, Orwelle was right. Are we doomed?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170447
I'll lash out at you for your spelling and grammar not being up to standard. Fucking dork.

[Anonymous No.]

One thing that really gets on my nerves is when somebody uses the same words or phrases all the time.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170862
Ha, it would be a book like that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171397
So let me get this straight:
-In order to get people to read your stories, you need an artist.
-In order to get an artist, you need to have people reading your stories.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171438
You don't actually need an artist to get people to read your stories.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171295
Listen here, monsieur. I never said I didn't like the new ideas and thoughts promulgated by the thinkers who formulated the corpus of the course. Don't jump into conclusions.
I don't need to develop a mini-thesis right now about WHY do I subjectively think post-modernism is the principle of our actual pathos, mediocrity and mood, for this is /jp/, not /lit/, take your elitist pretensions there. Here we take it easy.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170862
>At best, it's essentially on par with the same trite you'd typically find on anime blogs that try their hardest to relate entertainment primarily aimed at Japanese teenagers and young adults to their conventions of high culture.
;_;

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171438
/jp/'s self defeating logic at work.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't really care how a story is written, but I love authors who create their own self contained worlds with their own set of rules, memetics, lingo and so on. Do you guys know of any non published authors like this?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171514
Whoever wins, everybody loses.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171354
explain higurashi

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171389
may sky isn't oelvn, and the translation for that is pretty decent.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171954
big breasted lolitas

[Anonymous No.]

>>10172017
Nipa~!

[Anonymous No.]

Bump.

[Anonymous No.]

Bad writing is when the writer writes things like the OP pic.

Going out of your way to do what someone wants is its own reward? That's bullshit. Get the fuck out with that shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177265
Uh...welcome to /jp/ and visual novels. Please read the classics, among which Fate/stay night, 850.000 words about the flaws of altruism.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177437
I want a main protagonist that never cared about that stuff in the first place. One who actually feels secure about being her/himself, and doesn't feel the need for others to validate everything s/he does.

Where can I find something like that?

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177539

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177437
I would have liked Fate ten times more if it had stayed in Rin's perspective and been a fourth or a third as long. The prologue was the best part of the whole thing.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177639
Already read it. It was great.

Could've done without the sex scenes, but the rest of it was good enough that it made up for it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177639
>>10177683
Are you kidding? The protagonist only stopped caring about his peers because of some shallow subjective reason. Just because his cute oppai girlfriend is suddenly an everted centaur penis suddenly her opinion, wellbeing and even existence is invalidated?

I wont argue over whether or not altruism or relying on peer approval is good, but you can't pretend he adheres to some kind of superior moral code for that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177852
Fuminori a shit.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177852
I never said anything about any superior moral code, friend. I'm not even talking about morals in the first place.

It has nothing to do with whether or not their existence and whatnot is invalidated. People do things because they want to, and they don't do things because they don't want to. Simple as that. It's the same for me.

Many humans these days would probably react similarly upon seeing that everyone around them has suddenly taken on such a strange appearance... But that's neither here nor there. I don't intend to justify or excuse anything, because there is no need for that.

Morals are used to look down on others, so that you don't have to see them as people.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10171290
Music is just as important. Without dai and zts, Umineko might never have been anywhere near as popular around here as it was.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177539
Rance.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10177539
There are plenty. The proactive protagonist tag on vndb should have a lot of them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10170721
Why does people still satirize verbose anyway, god, it's already time to make fun even of minimalism.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10178065
That's because verbosity is still problematically common. People satirize shit because said shit is causing problems, not just because they can.

[Anonymous No.]

I don't think you can judge a person's literary talent unless you've read their works in the original language.

[Anonymous No.]

In my opinion good writing is just the ability to avoid going overboard on your fucking environmental details.

If you spend a good minute/page or so telling me how the room looks like i'm reading your shit to get a degree in Architecture,i'm going to drop your shit and never look back.

[Anonymous No.]

When you guys talk about "good writing" do you refer to "writing style" specifically or do you include "storytelling"?

There's a difference
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/writing-vs-storytelling.html

[Anonymous No.]

>>10178874
> People satirize shit because said shit is causing problems
Nah, majority isn't that noble. They only aim at anything saturated.
And besides some journalists, I barely see anyone seriously using purple prose or pedantism for years. Without being lynched the next morning, at least.

[Anonymous No.]

>>10178874
>People satirize shit because said shit is causing problems, not just because they can.
You do realise you just posted that on 4chan.