/lit/ - Literature

>>17895214
Why did you make a new thread before the bump limit?

>Any progress on your novels?
Yes, I'm done now. I was never cut out for this but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted.
This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up, I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia.
I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 56 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit.
I have failed. Goodbye.

>>17895235

>>17895235
If you could write your book like this, you would have success.

>>17895235
This makes me legit sad. Everyone has to start somewhere, don't let these people get under your skin. If you enjoy writing you should keep doing it.

>still at chapter 1 after 2 years
>realize its shit scrap everything and start over
it has happened twice so far

Ppl be sleeping on my novel excerpt

>https://justpaste.me/Pp3D

>>17895235
Kek

>>17895266
You gotta get past chapter 1, if you keep rewriting chapter 1 forever you will never succeed

>>17895266
Just write short stories or even flash fic until you make it bro

>>17895272
I like it. I can really feel the melancholy in your narrator. I’m worried about him

>>17895214
based anime OP

Seriously though, I get that everyone wants to churn out a novel but I really feel like short fiction is deeply underrated as a tool for new writers.
>improves your writing style because you have to focus on limiting yourself as opposed to meaningless plot padding and florid prose
>improves creativity because you constantly have to think of new ideas
>improves your work flow because you actually get to finish shit instead of sitting on the same thing for years
>magnitudes easier to publish and get that nice ego boost

>>17895277
>he isnt willing to put all his effort into giving his best and improve upon previously thought concepts
ngmi
I would rather write 2 good chapters than 20 mediocre ones

>>17895305
I like short stories because I can actually finish them
I hate writing a novel length fiction because I can't envision the whole thing. How the fuck am I supposed to write something when I can't even imagine it
It's like trying to draw a person but you can only picture an eyeball and have no idea how it should fit on the face

>>17895306
Yeah, but the problem with 2 chapters is that’s not a complete story. At least with a finished 20 chapters you have your idea fully fleshed out on paper. You can then go back and edit a complete piece of work instead of toiling over two chapters that go nowhere.

>outline for my novel is complete and extremely detailed, like 5 pages long but the story itself is very simple
>No idea how to actually turn it into prose

>>17895272
pretty good but I don't like telling you cuz you seem cocky
so fuck you its anime

>>17895325
Just
DO IT

>>17895325
I feel like I haven't actually read dnough to understand how to write a book, I just have a very specific and detailed story I want to share.

>>17895306
Then just write short stories. You'll never in a thousand years finish a novel with this mindset.

>>17895333
I get bogged down with questions like whether I should bother describing every minute detail of every scene or just get the point out. I don't know how to write in a style that's good yet

>>17895272
>Calgary bike salesman
'berta boy? Dunno what it is about the city, I know 2 different middle aged men who sell bicycles out of their garage
Bought a bike from one. Apparently you can get em' cheap off the cops or something. Cool hobby
I like your writing style

>>17895342
Don't worry about that now, just write
You can edit it later to add more detail or cut down excess detail but for now you need to write, you need to write NOW or you never will

>>17895296
Thanks man :)

>>17895330
Haha, I appreciate it man.

>>17895350
Ontario boys. My buddy and I rode our bicycles across Canada a couple summers ago and I'm putting together a novel about our experience. This particular scene is in northern Ontario, around Marathon/Lake Superior.

>>17895330
Uh, is this post an excerpt from the book Base, by anon? Cause it's my favorite book.

>>17895330
>so fuck you its anime
this but unironically

>>17895317
Dumb analogue, but also fitting. You know what faces look like. You need two eyes, a nose, and mouth before it can be called a face. You make those and see how it turned out and what else it needs and edit accordingly. The same principle applies to writing novels.

>>17895272
>gobs of sun
>soaken bodies
just NO

>ruffle my hands through my hair
>three flies fall
holy shit I hate Canada already

>In my journal I reflect on
so why in the whole wide world didn't you write out what you thought, instead of telling us you thought of something but you're not going to share? What's the fuckin point then?

I dunno bud. Needs a lot of work.

>>17895494
Really, you didn't pick up that the journal is meta-referential? The journal is the novel.

>>17895524
I don't care that it is referential. I want to know what you thought. You wrote that you reflected on the place... but what was the contents of said reflection? It's not written in the text.

>>17895561
What I thought was everything you read in the Pastebin document. Maybe it's out of place because it's an excerpt in the middle of the novel, but there are multiple references to me writing in the journal at night after making camp. All of my beta readers picked up on the fact that it's self-referential and that the journal entry IS what you're reading.

>>17895566
ignore retard anon
he posts opinion crits but doesn't actually have valuable advice
been here a few threads. all the good critfreinds don't lurk constantly, probably because they're writing/reading

>>17895566
Ignore this guy >>17895561 he’s retarded

>>17895561
Ignore this guy >>17895613 he's retarded

>>17895325
>muh outlines
>muh worldbuildING

you will never write

>>17895325
>>17895638
imagine not worldbuilding only when its convenient.That way the reader has a frame and tidbits to build upon but still have the freedom to imagine

We posting excerpts?
https://pastebin.com/s5VYXV3C

>>17895653
quintessence of pseud
>pacing is all over the place
>while in 1st person,narrator felt impersonal
>tries too much to be Noire
>LA in general

>>17895653
>>17895665
what he said about tense but its pretty good

>>17895653
Bro take some time out to learn grammar.

>>17895665
>pseud
I won't take part in your ongoing thread war BUT thanks for the feedback
>>17895685
He didn't say anything about tense though...thanks anon
>>17895695
>grammar
I don't usually get criticism on my grammar, normally it's for other things. What stuck out to you in particular, so I can look out for it in the future?

>>17895715
Feel free to ignore me (I'm a stickler for grammar), but as I was reading I encountered a few comma splices, for instance. This may have been a stylistic choice on your part, so take no notice if you already have a good grip on the English language.

>>17895724
Ohh I see. It is a stylistic choice meant to reflect the narrator's cadence, but obviously if it takes the reader out of the scene then that defeats the purpose so maybe I oughtta try a different angle
Thanks for looking out anon, much appreciated

For his last 2,99 WeCareCoins Mark got a shitty tasting hospital-automatic-coffee-maker-coffee. One cup of the tarlike, bitter brew pumped coffein through his circulatory system, causing his mild headache disappear and giving him just enough concentration to follow the early shift handover of his fellow carers.

Is this strong enough of an entry? Its about a male nurse in a distopian future, who gets burned out by wagecuckery (not the only part of the story)

>>17895761
>coffein
>Coffeein.tm
Touches me in the way that only the american free market can
It's two sentences. It's fine. It's not so bad I want to drop immediately
>hospital-automatic-coffee-maker-coffee
Stupid but I get what you're going for. Try again
>For his last 2,99 WeCareCoins Mark
Shouldn't this have a comma? Made me stumble
Write more

>>17895761
>For his last 2,99 WeCareCoins Mark got a shitty
Change "got a" to something else. Also use a comma.

>One cup of the tarlike, bitter brew pumped coffein through his circulatory system
Change to "One cup of tarlike"

>causing his mild headache disappear
Rephrase this. Use more interesting constructions. Don't say "causing".

>early shift handover of his fellow carers.
Use more interesting constructions.

Look at the forest, not just the trees.

>>17895783
>Look at the forest
I CANT SEE THE FOREST BECAUSE ALL IVE EVER PLANTED ARE TREES
WHENEVER I TRY TO PLANT A FOREST IM TOLD THAT I SHOULD STOP BECAUSE I CAN ONLY SEE TREES
FUCK

>>17895793
What I mean is, some people tend to focus on word use when they edit their texts. They replace words with synonyms and redraft their texts simply by going through the text line by line. Sometimes you have to read a whole paragraph and try to think of a better way to restructure the whole thing using various devices.

Instead of trying to find different words to say something like "it gave him a headache", you could just write "he put his hands on temples, headache pumping....".

>>17895808
Headaches don't pump! They pound!

>>17895832
I meant throbbing but yeah

>>17895566
...okay but if that's so then I find the "reflection" quite shallow. Same as I said to French travel anon.

>>17895793
If you're sperging this bad over 2 fucking sentences then yes you're NGMI

>>17895918
badly

Literally every single one of my characters is heavily "inspired" by an already existing character and only changed enough to fit my story

>>17895918
autistic obsession is the only way forward
if you don't get filled with a ventricle bursting level of anger whenever your writing isn't good enough your ngmi
horniness and sheer manlet rage are the motivators that dont quit

https://pastebin.com/VwebJW5H

I’m trying to improve my descriptions of setting. Could someone please read and provide critique? It’s fairly short, and if you read my crappy, contrived short story yesterday, the setting my seem already familiar.

Also, please let me know if this one is contrived too. I still need to read some more amateur writing, as one anon pointed out yesterday, to get a better feel for such things.

>>17895772
>>17895783

Thanks bros, i had to translate it from german, we use , and . in the opposite and i forgot, also i can use long word constructions in german, which to me give a nice beaurocrat dystopian nightmare vibe, which in english does not seem so easy to do

Which beginner's mistake makes you cringe the most? I think it's when the author tries to imitate Terry Pratchett and attempts to be witty but it comes out effete and insecure instead.

>Reginald awoke at precisely 6:45 am to find there was no raspberry jam for his toast. Oh heavens! This would never do. But he could hardly to go to market without brushing his teeth, and it was his custom to brush his teeth after breakfast, not before. At this rate, he might have to consider the possibility that he could be late for the creepy Doll Collector's Convention. He was always worried about getting spanked whenever he ran late, which was nonsense, because he was a grown man and his parents had been killed at exactly the same time in their sleep for over twenty years now. Reginald whined softly to no one in particular.

>>17896120
Hehehehee. "Reginald". Ahaahahaaha!

>>17895272
Too much nudity. It shouldn’t be glaringly obvious your an exhibitionist from the get go

>>17896120
If you were trying to imitate "effete and insecure", I don't think you did so hot yourself, DESU

But yeah I get what you mean. Writers who don't do "self-deprecating humour" well and end up just tearing their own nutsacks off while looking like a bad case of inferiority complex.

>>17895998
That's every book ever

>>17895998
Literally every single one of my characters is just a real person who wasn't even changed because I'm writing about real people.

>>17896120
The truth is Terry Pratchett was never funny to begin with and this kind of shit was cancer that's killing the sff genres from the very start.

>>17895214
>>Write a short story or flashfic based on a review of a book you've never read
That's unironically pretty clever.

>>17896015
the supposed transformation was weak. you should've let us know how confused she was, or surprised to find herself scared even though she thought she wouldn't be.
>The sky was streaked with ochre, a burning yellow orange as if the forest separating them from the marsh was in flames.
this is how i'd do it: The yellow sky set the forest ablaze. that entire paragraph lacked variation in sentence structure. just try reading it again.
>tickled her exposed arm and face
tickled her skin
>She stood at the stairs that would take her down to [...] and waited.
and yet she didn't go there. why lead us along?
we don't need you to list all the kinds of trees in the forest. that adds nothing. would've been better if you showed us how thick it was or something.
it's mediocre.

>>17896329
>dat shit taste

>>17896347
Thanks for reading and for your comments, anon. I’ll revise with your thoughts in mind.

>>17896120
so which one is this supposed to be

>>17896120
That is not how you do exposition, frantically packing in as many tidbits as possible into the first hurried paragraph so that the reader remembers absolutely none of it and is left feeling jolted, unsettled, and mildly irritated. Also writing a story about a scatter brained neurotic as though you the writer are also a panicked neurotic is a terrible way to go. Paranoid clueless neurotic characters are most amusing when the narrator or you the writer use a style that contrasts with them: confident, orderly, well-spoken, leisurely, formal, casual, poetic, or clinical. Any of those will work. It’s sort of like how it’s comical to narrate a moronic, uneducated character’s story in erudite, poetic, and epic prose that the character itself would be too ignorant to understand, giving their description this sense of grandeur that only makes their white trash buffoonery seem even more glaring in the most back handed way possible. I’m thinking specifically of the way in which the Coen brothers write narration for their white trash characters.

>>17895761
I decided to rewrite this in my own style for practice:

>With his last 299 WeCareCoins, Mark decided to grab a coffee. Although the quality of the brew was questionable, given that it had come from an automatic coffee maker in a hospital, the bitter, tar-like drink gave him just enough of a caffeine rush to manage the handover from the early-shift crew, and his severe headache had now ceased.

>>17895266
nigga you shouldnt treat your first draft like it's your last. what a terrible god damn mindset.

People who only watch anime without reading actual literature will never make it, but at the same time, pseuds who reject anime won't either.

>>17895724
Why is comma splice considered a mistake?
t. ESL (in my native, independent clauses and huge-ass sentences are very common and often melt foreigners' brains)

>>17896523
I read real literature and watch anime but nobody liked my work anyway, nobody's ever going to make it

>>17896530
You are supposed to use comma splices in English but a lot of people choose not to. Naturally, there are also many cases where commas change the meaning of a sentence.
>"Let's eat, grandma!"
>"Let's eat grandma!"
It is also incorrect to use a comma before the word "and" if you are only listing two things, so keep that in mind, as well.

>>17896460
for those who read books, Prunesquallor of Gormenghast is a great neurotic character

>>17896569
>Naturally, there are also many cases where commas change the meaning of a sentence
That's not what I meant
I googled "comma splice" and the first example I got was:
>Koalas are not bears, they are marsupials
Two independent clauses, separated by a comma. A very normal occurence in my native (Russian).
The article claimed that this is a mistake, and suggested one of these "solutions":
>Koalas are not bears; they are marsupials
>Koalas are not bears. They are marsupials
And so on.
But why is this considered wrong in the first place?

>>17896482

Nice sounds more concise than my (english) version, allthough i dont like the conclusion of his headaches ceasing to exist in the last paragraph. Makes it seem like drinking coffee was reason for getting rid of its headaches, rather than focussing the reader on how the headaches are part of his shitty morning , but whatever

Any good theory books on what makes an interesting story, what gives a plot intrigue, what makes a mystery enticing etc?

>>17896613
because english is a meme language. many rules of english are just victorian shit posts invented by upper class fruits
it reads fine with the splice. every example you gave has a different but valid voice
feel free to do it how you want but know because of your ESL status you won't be able to intuitively feel when it's fucked or not

>>17896633
I like the story genius book

>>17896120
Honestly I hate Terry Pratchett's voice and humour in general. I wish it weren't so widely mimicked. I just don't understand why normies love it.
>Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.
Makes me want to die

>>17896633
Interesting story intriguing plot and enticing mystery all share good promise, progress that makes sense and consequences that last.

>>17896613
>>17896627
I had originally removed that part entirely because it wasn't clear if the guy's headache had influenced his decision to buy coffee or if the coffee just made it better by happenstance. Personally, I would have had him continue his day with a headache, as it's a universal symbol for misery and stress.

>>17896633
That's Story Genius IMO. All the others I've read are just people saying obvious bullshit like you have to make your story relatable, the story should follow these beats, it should keep the tension. Story Genius, though a little obnoxiously written, actually puts forth a hypothesis about how to do all of these things and attempts to convince you that it's the best way. (Mainly, the hypothesis is "do some pre-writing thinking about what makes your story interesting to you, understand certain specific things about your protagonist, know that your side characters are lenses for your protagonist's story, and make every scene at least move in the direction of the theme." There's more to it than that but those are the big points.) If you like theorycrafting story bullshit it's worth a read, even if you don't agree with everything in it. Plus, it's gotten me to actually churn out a draft of a novel rather than wallow in chapter 1s and 2s for eternity.

>>17896613
Didn't mean to quote you here. >>17896680

It's considered wrong in this case because "Koalas are not bears" and "they are marsupials" are complete thoughts on their own. If they required some kind of explanation, then a comma would be used here.
>"Although you might think koalas are bears, they are in fact marsupials."

Also, don't use semicolons. Very few people know how to use them and they aren't necessary in like 99% of cases.

Will they brand me a neo-nazi if I call the ancient warrior people in my story Aryans?

>>17896706
Also I should mention what I disagreed with in the book. One, the examples provided by the author are fucking terrible. Though I think that's at least a little intentional, I wish they'd been better. Two, the scene card sort of methodology at the end is beyond unnecessary, and a simpler method of outlining is plenty likely to give you the kind of story that can be edited into a very good one unless you are a complete fucking idiot. Three, regarding the subtitle, "brain science" is barely referenced in the novel and is total clickbait bullshit. However, the points of theory about protagonists discussed earlier in the book are very much worth the bullshit parts.

>>17896613
Why is any grammatical construction considered wrong? Some just are because it's the rules.

>>17896739
Not if they have strong Indian motifs. You know, like the historical Aryans.

>>17896773
>expecting critical thinking
>>17896739
they will and you shouldn't care or acknowledge it

>>17896773
They're not really related at all. I wanted to call them valkyrie, but valkyries are so overused, I wouldn't want the reader to cringe to death. Spartans might be close, but the image is all wrong. Fuck, I don't know

>>17896644
>>17896706
>>17896741
I'll check it out, thanks

>>17896674
Well I roughly know that already, what I need is an elaborate treatise that makes it practical for a smoothbrain like me

>>17896671
Nah that's just women humor.

>>17896791
Hyperboreans?

>>17896671
Isn't that from the book he wrote with Gayman?

>>17897053
Good Omens? Didn’t like that one, and I usually like Gaiman.

>>17896613
>But why is this considered wrong in the first place?
Because strictly speaking the comma should not be used for that purpose, which is what a semicolon is for. In my field (academic and technical writing, which is often quite formal) I have been bitched at a couple of times for this mistake.

Comma spliced are occasionally accepted in fiction, especially in dialogue, because people tend to speak that way. That doesn't mean it is proper or that the narrator should also use them often. I'm sure you understand this.

>>17896671
Because you have shit taste.

Barely 300 words today, so far. Give me your fucking energy lads.

>>17897241
This is it. if you write one more word. It'll be the furthest into this story you've ever been.

>>17897039
I like the name and the connection, but it's a bit of a mouthful.

>>17896791
Praetorians maybe

>>17895214
Reposting:

>>17894481
>>17894487

Because:

>last time's advice was helpful (though it hurt)
>didn't get much advice because I posted at the end of the thread

>>17897523
I thought about that, but while praetorians were definitely badass, their brand is more about being glorified underlings who hang back, rather than warriors who lead the charge.

In the end, I picked a new word derived from historical moors. Short, effective, connected to warfare through their scuffles with crusaders, and not used in over 9000 video games. I can roll with it. Thanks to everyone who replied

>>17897721
>the end of the thread
>275 posts in
the absolute state of /wg/

>destination city, mere seconds
the phrase destination city is a little clunky and that time would be better served describing the city in some way or letting us know why they're going there or how, anything. also hate the word mere but that's maybe just my drama

>Lightning struck again at that exact moment
would probably hit harder if the sentence were shorter. 'at that exact moment' doesn't add much and reads a little juvenile almost

>traumatized passengers collectively gasped
reads a bit comical? maybe just pick a few people's reactions and really go into detail about them

>Thankfully, no one was hurt.
personally i would remove the word thankfully and remove the line break

>He looked ahead; all he could do was hope it would serve him well now.
i'd change the semicolon here, i also don't think i understand what's the point of the last paragraph was and how it links to this phrase

>white-eared refugees
seems a strange description

>another coup
am i missing context for this? not sure i understand it

> gruff man with a forgettable face - a soldier of some sort, Gunther figured - had stopped the bus with an armada of armored tankers.
not a huge fan of the grammar here. also not sure 'gruff soldier' and 'forgettable face' go together.

>His colleagues began comforting and providing for everyone that got off the bus. The protests slowly died out.
This would be a good opportunity to describe the things that are happening rather than just whisking us through the facts with a bunch of 'tell' statements.

The language in general seems a little clinical for what's going on and you might be better off putting in some more description. Sometimes the phrasing comes off as a little 'young' but i don't what your intended audience is

I wrote a fiction book. I'm on the third/final draft right now. I'm close enough to finish that I have commissioned someone to make me a cover.


Never done this before, what else should I do/know? I tried just googling it and pretty much all of the advice involves me jumping through hoops and destroying what I made just so people might like it more.

>>17898376
I'm not sure who my intended audience is either. I want to write a sci-fi fantasy story, so the plot won't be too mature, but I want to do it in the style of 'proper' literature, so the prose (hopefully) will be.

I agree with most of your criticism: thanks for putting it in words. I'm not too good at descriptive writing and I don't know how to fix that yet. My plots managed to make up for that in the past, according to previous readers. That, and a sense of humor.

These three things:
>another coup
>gruff man with a forgettable face
>Thankfully, no one was hurt.

(And to some extent, this:)
>traumatized passengers collectively gasped

Are just sad attempts at trying to find my funny bone again in the drafting process. I haven't written anything creative in years, and I never had formal training to begin with, so I've lost my sense of humor and any technical skills I had.

>Sometimes the phrasing comes off as a little 'young' but i don't what your intended audience is
How so? I'm confused by what you mean.

>>17898461
So you're self-publishing? You have 2 options. The first is that you accept that nobody will read it. The second is to write eleven followup novels to be released, one per month of the year starting the day that it's released. These are, I am not shitting you, your only paths forward with self-publishing. Enjoy!

>>17898508
I am pretty much accepting that no one is going to read it because I'm putting it on kindle. Why would follow ups help though?

Hress Dunter lay on his bed of straw in the windowless dungeon cell beneath Rose City’s grand court. The torchlight finally went out, leaving him in darkness. The dungeon guard, Carlton, had orders to keep watch should there be any attempt from the peasant class to free the one-time folk hero. No such rescue came. The Honourable Judges, the Captain of the Guard, Hymrick Lynoble and inadvertently Nicholas Filbury, had turned public opinion against Hress.

Carlton was asleep, still snoring to the left of the cell.

Hress lay against the left wall contemplating his execution scheduled for later in the day. He heard a faint and consistent scratching. He ignored it, but with each passing moment it grew louder, like a giant rat was trying to claw its way into his cell. He sat up. His back was stiff. A faint hissing could be heard between the scratching. Almost blind in the dark, Hress approached the wall ahead of him. It was dank and slimy. He groped the ground feeling a small pile of crumbled stone and deduced the stone was seeping from a hole in the wall, like sand from an hourglass.

He grabbed the straw from his bed and placed it against the foot of the wall, not wanting the noise to spoil a potential chance for escape. On his knees, he peered into the hole. A particularly large piece of rock fell away, making a loud crack against the floor despite the straw.

Carlton woke. “Was goin’ on?” He fumbled and lit a fresh torch on the wall with a flint stone. Hress’s eyes smarted to the sudden light.

Carlton looked down at him and the hole in the wall which was now big enough to crawl inside. “How’d you manage that with y’ bare hands?”

Hress was surprised to find the guard wasn’t angry but surprised. He was at a loss to explain himself, not least because he didn’t actually know what was making the hole. He glanced back to the hole and flinched. Now there was some light and a face looking back at him. A familiar face.

“Will you let me go?” said Hress to Carlton.

Carlton responded quickly, as if he had given the question thought already. “Lad, you know I can’t. They’ll have me neck.”

“Not if you tell them the truth of how I escaped.” Hress looked back to the hole and to the beautiful face with glistening black eyes and silky long black hair. “Bailey?”

The blood-drinker climbed out with feline grace – the one he had struck a deal with on the night of the incident, the Accursed he told everyone he had killed. She was wearing an ivy green summer dress mired in dirt and grime, but as if by some magical enchantment her luminous skin and hair were clean.

“Bloody ‘ell you’re one-o them blood-drinkers, ain’t ya?”

“Yes,” said Bailey.

>>17898653
What is it about these pieces that make me so irrationally angry?

>envision a cool scene
>sit down to write
>become retarded
Why does that happen?

>>17898708
Only you can answer that fren.

>>17898515
1. Amazon's algorithm seems to clearly favor rapid-release publishing
2. People only talk about books near their release, so if you want to establish yourself as a constant presence in a community, you have to constantly release

>>17898708
I think because it feels like it's trying to be satire, but missing the mark and thus is simply pulp, but pulp that thinks it's better than pulp. Creating a cognitive dissonance, leading to irrational anger. I don't know if that's the authors intent or not, but I think that's why.

>>17898717
Just start the sentence even if it’s retarded you’ll get there after a few minutes

Here's the sales numbers from the smut I've started publishing. Each ebook is somewhere between 6k and 20k in length. I am to release dozens more ebooks so I can create a comfy passive income from coomers.

1 book sale = 2.99 dollars
Of which I get 2 dollars royalty

Currently sold 59 ebooks so that amounts to $118 profit in 8 days.

>>17898743
Like that "all you have to do is write one true sentence"?

>>17898766
I kinda wanna write weird fetish porn but im too scared of being identified

also idk why but writing porn just feels wrong

>>17898766
Based. Profiting over other people's addiction.

>>17898464
>I'm not too good at descriptive writing and I don't know how to fix that yet.
Been there. Comes with practice, just gotta keep on the look out for opportunities to slip in description.

What I meant by young was that the prose has a certain quality that I can't quite put my finger on but that makes me think either you are young or your intended audience is young.

>>17898766
Hot damn. When I tried that I just made 7 dollars with KDP. What are you doing differently? Is it that you published more than 3 stories? Are you gaming the alg by pumping them out? Did you find a particularly effective niche?

>>17898766
Is it more efficient to publish a short story collection altogether or every piece individually?

>>17898823
Not that anon, but from what I've read people do both. You publish individual works as they release and then you make a collection after.

>>17898812
My main niche is gender bender porn. I tap into community forums and discords to promote my work just be leaving a post that links to amazon. I have a decent cover which I make with canvas, a free online cover maker.

1. A hot girl on the cover will help sell the ebook.
2. I don't release more than 10k on average per ebook, I release as a series. That way if someone buys three ebooks in a series I'm making $2 x 3 from one buyer.

Why release a 50k story when I could release five 10k ebooks and make more money?

Lads I never start writing. I mean, I don't start officially, I have outlines I have notes, I always think I have the foundation, the groundwork ready, but at the last minute I always have an "epiphany" about how much it sucks and I should/need to do better. Then I start over. How do I overcome?

>>17898798
Probably the former. I'm 21.

It's a little scary practicing descriptive writing, especially since in sci-fi I'll have to describe things that aren't real. But thanks, anon.

>>17898823
It's only been 8 days, but I've found the second book to be where the sales maintain pretty well. Definitely 10k ebooks and keep adding to the series until its done.

>>17898835
lmao im >>17898780 and I was gonna do tg too

>>17898853
Here's an example of one of my covers.

>>17898836
When you do something to completion, you learned the process from doing the thing itself. Fundamental to learning that process is learning how you could have done it better. At this point you have gone through the motions of completing outlines and groundwork as if it was a unit itself, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it, realizing that you could do it better, and then redoing it, only leading you to learning how to do it better, and then redoing it.


This does not get a book written. Writing a book gets a book written.

>>17898861
A toast for you, anon!

>>17898861
>having a face on the cover
Where did you get the image? Did you read the release or licensing agreement?

>>17898894
>implying it's not anon himself on the cover

>>17898894
I go onto free stock sites like pexels or pixabay. But to be honest it's a waste of time for the most part. Big tits and sexy women aren't allowed on stock image sites, even paid ones. I scoured for ages to find decent free stock images and it isn't worth the time.

I decided to change tact recently and just let the titles do the selling. Here's an example.

>>17898908
I've got several hundred thousand words of furry smut on places like FA. I'm thinking of releasing some to amazon for quick bucks. Do you think it's worth de-furrying them first, or does it seem like there's a decent community of furries buying that shit?

>>17898908
>>17898975
Also, I think you misspelled "naga" on your cover there, based purely on my tangential knowledge of the TF community.

>>17898861
wow lol. I kinda wanna sell out now
>tfw can't decide between quitting porn and making porn

>>17896720
>Also, don't use semicolons
Feel free to ignore this moron.

>>17898376
>i'd change the semicolon here
>not a huge fan of the grammar here
So you dislike correct grammar?

>>17898732
I read a traditionally published smut work (unbelievable how many of these come off smashwords originally) and at one point the damsel in distress Mary Sue, whose sole powers to this point were she had been predestined to be some demon's fuckslut, and lightning storms happened when she came, solves a marketing problem for the demons and hat tips her culture and media studies degree. Basically the only active role she has in the plot, and the author uses it to say "Yeah, I know how to take your money" to the reader.

>>17899053
I would change it to something else that would also be correct. A full stop instead of the semicolon would flow better. There's more than one way of doing things, anon.

>>17899177
A semicolon is bad why?

>>17899379
It isn't. I just didn't like it there. It was fine when he used one earlier on.

>>17897721
>>17898376
I'm going to rewrite this as a more descriptive thing instead of cliff notes. My first draft always reads like a checklist so maybe it wasn't the best for a critique piece.

Is rewriting an excerpt on its own a good idea, or should I do something else for critique?

>>17899710
Bring your work after it's been edited.

>>17899710
Either would be good practice. Rewriting the except would be a good way to get good at editing, which you'll need to do eventually, and make it easier to see opportunities to improve as you write new things in future.

>>17899738
If I do that, I'll waste close to a month writing a checklist, when I could be improving my writing at the same time.

>>17899740
Okay! What's the best type of fiction to write for useful critique? If my ultimate goal is to be a novelist, that is. I'm confident in my ability to tell stories, it's mostly the technical stuff that I'm worried about.

>>17899106
Thats silly and I like it.

>>17900038
Learning to edit is a good plan. Write a short story and edit that.

>read a great story
>personally love it and find it interesting
>think what it would be like if I came up with it
>I'd reject it in my head thinking no one would like it without even giving it a chance

It keeps happening, does anyone have tips or resources on how to like my own work and invest myself in it?

>>17900117
>Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

>All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

>But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

>Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

>And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions.

>I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

>>17900038
Short stories. I know you say you have story telling down but you'd be surprised at how difficult it can be. It's a skill like any other part of writing and it's something that most people think they can do but can't. Have you finished a story? Written a novel? You can't know that you've got that skill until you've finished something

Short story it is. I'm going to work on my novel on the side, because publishing that book is my singular goal as far as writing is concerned.

My plan is to:
>start an archive of some sort
>post excerpts from stories I've written
>post on the archive once I'm confident
>spam archive links everywhere for more criticism
>maybe try to get published once that is done

What do you think?

>>17900073
Good idea.

>>17900191
How well does story-telling skill translate between novels and short stories? I know the mechanics aren't too different, except maybe the length of sentences in short stories.

>>17900073

>>17900273
Your plan is weird. It would be much faster and simpler to submit to short story anthologies and get published in a jiffy. It's really easy to get in.

>>17895214
I finished it
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XR19N6X

>>17900348
>comma splice in the third sentence
Stopped reading there.

>>17898771
Hemingway is a hack, anon. You can do it.

Fucking hell, I can't tell my past tense from past participle. Does anyone have a good grammar book I should take a look at? I've heard Little Seagull Handbook is pretty good.

>>17900347
I don't have what it takes yet, see: >>17897721

Just out of curiosity, where would you recommend I start sending in my stories?

>>17900363
>believes in prescriptive grammar
You probably don't have the intelligence to understand it anyway

>>17900391
Would you say it's for a more sophisticated, Rick and Mortian audience?

>>17900273
>except maybe the length of sentences in short stories
I wouldn't have said this is different between the two. There's a lot of difference. Arguably, the sentence length is one of the few things that isn't different.

>>17900384
Just go on Grinder and check out something that catches your eye. The average quality is really low so you'll stand out if you're not awful.

>>17900398
What's a mortian

>>17900411
You probably don't have the intelligence to understand it anyway

>>17900409
>Grinder
All I get from Google is the gay dating site, what is this?

>>17900459
https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/

How is this not in the OP?

>>17900409
>>17900459
Never mind, I found it. I don't want to just get published though, I also want to git gud. How does publishing help me do that?

>>17900468
Your original plan's final step was getting published. I'm just offering help, man. Short stories are a way of building a resume that builds up to a novel, and a novel usually leads to an editor working with you and telling you how to get gud.

I hear that getting published in the US is a shitshow compared to other countries. In other countries, publishers accept direct submissions. Would it be worth looking into publishers in other countries as an American author first, or is it better to play the game with agents?

I want to use a couple of physical disabilities (amputated limbs, blindness etc) as story gimmicks rather than exploring the conditions in meaningful ways (characters look for ways to cure them and they eventually do), I'd still do it to a degree but it wouldn't be the focus, is it a good idea or is it in bad taste

I'm going to tell you dorks a secret.

Shia was right, just do it. A little detail you obsess over is just going to be a passing blip in someone elses brain. Just write what you think is cool and put it out there and chances are someone else will think its cool too.

The ethereal timeless nostalgia for a period of peak consumerism from a foreign culture pulsed through my veins. The headphones soon to bust, having been pushed to maximum volume to leak out sweet melodies in another language. Funky guitars and seventh minor chords rang out, sounding line a hornets nest to anyone he passed by. A forlorn sorrow washing over him, knowing he'll never experience the life lived by so many. He knows the music cannot reflect a reality that was once manifest, but is now a lofty dream, left only to poison those who can't find their own current culture.

"Excuse me sir, you have to pay for that," said a voice. The headphones came off and the boy stared at the clerk. "You have to pay for that," he said again. The boy pulled out his wallet and found a few dollars, slapping them on the table as his headset blared the lyrics "stay with meeeee." He cracked open the sugar free Redbull and put the headphone back into his ear. His lip flared and his brow furrowed as he chugged the refreshing beverage. He had been robbed of his choral release. The sweet pinnacle of the hook. The grove beyond all groves. The bell above the electric door rang as it swooshed open. The boy pulled out a pack of cigarettes and flicked his bic to light it.

He was trapped in the concrete jungle. The vast nothingness of roads and parking lots and half manicured lawns between lampposts and sidewalks. His friends house was about two miles away, a thirty minute walk, but after the boost from the energy drink he thought it would be more like twenty five. He waited for the light of the underpass to change. The last time he had tried to jaywalk the freeway he almost got ran over and caused a three car pile up. Now he waits.

His friend could wait too. His bud had told him he got a new VHS tape. One his parents had never heard of. Last week it was the Muppet Movie, but this week his friend refused to tell him what it was. He just had to see it when he got there. To look into the past through a screen is the closest thing he thought he could get to being a part of the bigger picture. A technological historical deep dive was the only thing that kept him going at that point. The little cross walk man popped up on the lamp post.

>>17900866
I realize I changed POV at the beginning there. I was originally just going to shit post, but I had a vision of a scene, so I wrote it instead of shitposting. Feedback/crit welcome. Don't mean to shit up the thread anymore than it already is.

>>17900348
>joshua reznicek
>ezekiel becker
>Together they struggle valiantly against the soul-sucking boredom of high school
jesus fucking christ. tel aviv phonebook recommending it on the back, and its some retarded school sucks man story. neck yourself

>>17900624
no agent = no hope

>>17895214
>> Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry
Where the fuck can I find this bros

please give rude but help
no stroke ego
Okay, maybe a little stroke ego. It's mostly dialogue, and I feel like people mostly post descriptive settings here, so have that in mind.
https://pastebin.com/6263hfqD

>>17900995
its shit

>“What do you want?” Charlie asked casually.
“Surprise me,” the lady responded in apparent disinterest.
And so Charlie waited his way to the front of the line, then the counter. He chiselled his wit against the monumental menu of condiments, and asked for another of his own order for simplicity’s sake. Five Guys being as it was, it cost a great deal. After getting an order number, receipt, and two cups, he made his way to the far table at which the young vagrant was waiting eagerly, yet passively.

>>17901001
>>17900995
I think what anon was trying to say is that your use of particular emotions as descriptors is telling and not showing. You are forcing us to know what their mood is explicitly which seems more like stage direction than actual depiction. Instead of him asking casually, he could be leaning on something, or the way he says it used casual dialogue or something that shows us he’s casual instead of telling us he’s casual.

>>17901001
the incoherent emotional
>>17901225
the chad effective communicator

>>17900917
Cry more

>>17901435
>this defensive over his shlop
bro
congrats on finishing but own up

>>17901267
Perhaps, but >>17901001 made me laugh more

>procrastinating writing by reading song lyrics while listening to the album
extremely comfy
hopefully some wit can bleed into my writing

>>17900273
As long as you edit your work send it out to anthologies or self publish collections.

>>17901460
>this defensive over not having written anything
You still have time to improve

ayo how can you teach people to tell bad critique from good
i've seen terrible crit posted in these threads and poor beginner anons just swallow it up with a groveling thanks
surely there's more to this

>>17901533
yeah. just start up /crit/

>>17901533
Is it posted on /lit/?
It's bad crit

>>17901533
If there's one thing I've learned from dealing with shitty critique, an example of bad critique is if someone simply tells you what you should do in your story instead of giving you advice on how to improve what you're going on.
I had one person continuously rewrite chunks of my stories and say "you have to tell me how the character is feeling or I won't be invested otherwise,"
I think part of it just comes from experience and knowing what your goals are as a writer and getting enough criticism to understand what's actually beneficial long-term.

>>17901533
if you can't tell good crit from bad crit you're NGMI anyway

>>17900866
As for critique, right off the bat, I hate reading about music in narrative fiction. I'm not sure why people do this, maybe it's an attempt to infuse the scene with some ambiance. Maybe it works for everyone but me. For me it's a distraction, like one of those optical illusions where the word "red" is spelled with green letters and you're supposed to say which color the letters are.

Anyway, so I think the biggest problem here is what I might call the "Rick Sanchez" problem, which is something everyone struggles with when writing an antihero-type. Much like Rick and Morty desperately wants us to believe that Rick is emotionally handicapped and suffers for it, the show also desperately wants us to think he's cool. Much like you want us to believe that your protagonist suffers from his obsession with nostalgia, you also want us to think he's cool. He's throwing money around (not much, but I sure as hell wasn't buying redbulls without a second thought when I was a teenager), he's ignoring the loser drones, he's sparking up a cigarette, he has brushes with death which leave him more or less unaffected beyond "woah, definitely don't do that again." You get the idea.

What's the problem with obsessing over nostalgia? Figure out the answer to that question and then show your protagonist learning it. I'll answer it for you: it prevents you from engaging with life, and not engaging with life is the equivalent of death. Ideally you should demonstrate this through the spooky mystery VHS which will ideally contain some sort of hidden power, temporarily fooling the protagonist into believing he has consummated his nostalgia, but which is in reality slowly killing him. Perhaps the VHS was encoded with a spooky tech curse designed to allow the original inventor (a hopeless futurist frustrated with the primitive tech of the 1980's) to switch lives with the future viewer. Just ad-libbing here.

>>17901676
Hey, I really appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback. I've written about a character experiencing music a few times now, and maybe it's just me trying to explicitly detail and articulate that exact problem you point out of mixed signals that draws me to it. I want to use a different form of art to explain how another form of art evokes such interesting and raw emotionality.

I think your analysis is correct. I basically heard a song and imagined a zoomer acting in accordance to that song. Interesting though. Perhaps adding some more awkward actions and content to it would be useful to show how edgy the character thinks he is juxtaposed to how awkward he actually is. That feeling of being the main character when you have headphones in kinda deal.

And yeah, I didn't put four sentences of thought into what's on the VHS, but that's a perfect hero's journey lesson for the kid. Great idea. Thank u friend.

>>17900866
Neat burgerpunk vibe. I like that your guy can walk at 4mph. Is he seven feet tall?

>>17901815
I am burgerpunk guy, so it's good that it has the vibe. My thought was that he just had an energy drink and is retarded so he does that autistic fast walking.

>>17901533
I think the real answer is that the sort of critique given and received here is wholly unnecessary. If you're a complete beginner fighting to not be called an ESL, you shouldn't really need it. You have a whole library of grammar manuals and examples of good prose to go read and measure yourself against.

Once you've elevated yourself beyond the level of ESL, there are books on story and scene structure for you to read and think about and experiment with. At no point in the experimentation phase is the direct input of another person necessary. You only need to read your own work, read better, classic books with a story similar in some way to your own, and then think about what the differences are and whether or not you like those differences.

Once you're past that, and when you're considering publishing, that's the time when input will be useful, so that you don't spill your spaghetti into the inbox of a literary agent. In my opinion, if you're posting stuff in a place like this, that's the only real reason to actually incorporate feedback you receive: to understand whether or not the changes you developed during your experimentation were a success or not in the eyes of other people.

Basically, people taking bad critique were never going to make it, anyways, or at least they weren't going to make it until they understood that they need to be their own critics first.

>>17901935
The real reason people get crits is because the social aspect is motivating
We're all grinding literature and writing but it's tiring and mixing in some socializing from time to time is comforting while not being a total waste of time

>>17900866
sort out your fucking tenses, bud

I'll echo >>17901676 and say you don't have any story here. You're just describing something, but you do not tell us what meaning you ascribe to the incident. Hence it means nothing to us.

I've been working on a retelling of Dante's Inferno which takes place in the Florida Panhandle. it's based on the shit that my friends and I used to joke about when we'd go out in the woods and get stoned: vietcong sleeper cells, lost native temples, etc. etc. Unfortunately it wasn't long enough to be a full novella, so I'm supplementing it with a series of "interludes" which are composed of letters sent by the protagonist's colleague, attempting to dissuade him from going on his journey. These interludes are basically just ridiculous tall tales which come from the writer's childhood in Florida, really they're just freeform nonsense which I thought was funny, but it does all come together in the end.

What I'm curious about right now. These interludes always seem hilarious to me when I'm working on them, but after rewriting a few times I start to lose perspective and can't tell. The grammar and tone are meant to be conversational, so it's probably pretty loose. I just want to know if it's funny. Context: The Savage Green is the name the locals have given to the wilderness of the Florida Panhandle. It's rumored to be home to land gators, bloodroaches, and patches of visual distortion caused by the heat. It is called "the green" for short.
https://pastebin.com/11XBrcXn

>>17901935
Well put.

>>17901952
Good socialising, that is. When the thread devolves into "muh pseud" and "my wordcount is bigger than yours" and "nuh uh pyw", it ceases being useful

>>17901963
>ctrl + c
>ctrl + v
Stop posting this you fuck. You dumb fuck. You self absorbed fucking piece of shit
Fuck you and fuck your story
Masturbate if you want to feel good
Call your mom if you want validation and acknowledgement
Stop posting this

>>17901960
Yeah, I should have given it a once over for editing, but I think it was one of those things that I was so in the moment, the little reply to thread box that if I had looked at it any longer I would have just deleted it. I'll edit it and give more a story if I continue on with it. Thanks for the feedback anon.

>>17901952
There's plenty about literature and writing to discuss without showing off your raw-meat-vomit of a chapter's first draft. I agree, it's fun and motivating to be told by someone that they're excited to read more of your stuff, but if you're looking for that *here* especially with unfinished work you are just a fucking idiot. Better to join some writing subreddit for your genre and get some monkeys there to clap when you show them the thing they like to read.

>>17901980
Go eat a dick, ass queer. This is a new one. And even if it wasn't, I've posted multiple paragraph-long critiques in almost every single thread, so if I decide that I want to request critiques for the same story fifteen fucking times then that's what I'm going to do. And you'll like it.

>>17902028
I know for a fact you've posted this atleast 3 times in the past
Why don't you just put it on royal road if you want attention that bad

>>17902044
why do YOU give a shit? just shit on him 4 times then. Or ignore him 4 times. Don't make no difference.

>>17902044
The first time was the first chapter. The second time was the second chapter. The third time, this time, is the third interlude. I can see how constantly reposting the same image/description might have seemed like soulless shilling, but really on my honor as an anon these are different passages and I am genuinely interested in hearing how they are perceived. I have been engaging with these threads in good faith since they were started, putting lots of effort into my analysis and feedback, while also trying to remain humble and remembering that my opinion is only one of several billion opinions available on Earth.

I don't post on RoyalRoad because new websites are intimidating to me. And besides, we all want attention, anon. We might hide behind anonymous message boards and words like "critique" and "feedback" and "draft" but we're all secretly hoping we've found the magic elixir which will result in the perfect story at first shot. Don't act like you're above it.

>>17902044
burgerpunk anon is based

>>17902074
He makes a good point. I hate shilling as much as anyone, and to be totally honest, he's right. I liked the attention I got from posting the other selections and I primarily posted this because I wanted more positive attention and I probably would have ignored any negative feedback.

There, I said it. I'm a fraud. A hopeless dilletante. NGMI. And I allowed myself to get pulled into yet another pointless internet argument. I'm legitimately going to lose sleep over this, not because of anything that other anon said, but because I allowed my own vanity to spoil this evening. This is literally the high point of my day, coming here and talking the craft with you guys, and sharing opinions and reading them. But that just wasn't good enough, I had to make it all about me, and I got called out instantly. Not even being sarcastic right now, really I took it too far and didn't want to admit it. Sorry.

>>17902102
>tfw florida anon is so quintessentially burgerpunk he steals your title as burgerpunk anon
>>17901963
As I was reading it something felt somewhat off, but I think I finally figured it out by the end. Because it's written as a letter and from the MC's perspective, I think there's an expectation of the writer telling the audience what he's thinking about as the action happens. As of right now, it's told almost like you'd tell a story to someone in a bar. Quick succinct actions that amuse and arrive at a conclusion and punchline. It doesn't do that thing like in handwritten letters where the person can't write as fast as he thinks and so he get's side tracked and forgets the next thing he's going to say because of the mediums limitation. There's not enough inside his brain to justify it being in a letter format. In the alternative, this would be fantastic if it was a character speaking this at a bar, telling the story in dialogue and being constantly interrupted by other people asking questions.

>>17902133
>allowing his ego to overtake the purity of literature
it happens
just don't feed into it
ego coomers are the worst and kill communities

is there a min word count to short stories? I just enjoy writting events in 1000 - 1500 words

>>17902230
no, don't draw lines in the sand like a dumb autist
just write

>>17902230
Theoretically, yes. If it's under 100 words, it's flash fiction. (If it's exactly 100 words, it's a "drabble".)

>>17902242
>drabble
Today I learned of the word drabble and subsequently set out to write one. I didn’t know where to start, but I realized that by twenty-five words in I was already the main character. At thirty-five words I had realized the beginning was already over and I was deep into the middle part. Normally this is where I would have an adventure, but I’m not sure I have enough space for that here. I suppose I learned my lesson about how difficult it is to write a drabble just now. Who could have guessed it was this hard to do?

>>17902253
>used to 1k word short stories
flashes are fun
they force you to say nothing but what is absolutely core to the narrative
think song lyrics. short, punchy and precise

>>17902253
Yeah, it's not my cup of tea either. I like stories of about ~5k words in length, give or take a couple hundred.

>>17902273
>>17902261
The smut I once wrote was about 7k words.
My short stories are normally 1-2k words.
The project I've given up on but constantly reference was something like 15k before it became overwhelming. But really that was just like 15 1k stories.

>>17902189
Yeah, the framing device of letters is a bit contrived and I pretty much decided to ignore the limitations it would impose in favor of pacing and tone. If you have another suggestion I'm all ears, but it needs to be a)a direct line of contact to the main character, with no method of confirming if he's actually receiving them, and b)framed to run concurrently to the main story. It all comes together in the end, and I'm willing to sacrifice authenticity of tone in order to get the climax I'm aiming for.

>>17902300
Could it be some sort of audio recording? A micro tape from a hand held recorder or an audio file sent by the phone (don't know the era) or a transcript of an interview? Again, it's that factual tone that feels like it's under pressure and one of those could work possibly.

Also while were on the topic of ego, what was your opinion of >>17900866 or did you already reply to that?

>>17901935
>>17901545
nice

>>17902325
Already replied.

>>17898653
>Hress Dunter
lol, gets me every time.

>>17902394
Nice. Thanks. Wish you luck with your wolf swamp thing. I think if it was framed just right it would be awesome. Keep up the good work anon. We are all gonna make it.

>>17901963
>I just want to know if it's funny.
only the second to last paragraph was.
>and so the judge decided to teach him a lesson and sentenced him to two weeks community service as a deputy sheriff.
i don't get it. why would a judge do this? or is this a joke?

55k words and this draft is as done as it is getting. Writing the final pages makes no sense with the edits I have planned. Now I will do an obsessive analysis of several other children's stories and see where mine lacks. I'm going to be accepted by a publisher by the end of the year and you cannot make me believe otherwise.

>write first chapter in January
>get a concussion
>can't do anything for a month, feel like I lost 10 iq points
>trying to write again, instead just edit the same first chapter 4 times.
>first chapter at 20 pages in word with 5.5k words.
I'm fucked

God, I just can't make the words flow out of me. they're plopping out in a jumbled mess

What happened to my ability to write?

>>17902504
let it be a jumbled mess
the voice of a schizo will resonate with the zoomers
mark my words it will be the next big trend

>>17895214
>>Write a review for the book you're writing
Offensively sceptical of moral values and then wildly self-indulgent by turns. The ramblings of a contrarian loser unable to define himself in the world due to a total lack of experience of it. His observations on humanity range from trite to off-base, and never approach the insight he obviously hopes for. Mercifully brief, probably out of the author's own shame.

Would not recommend, except perhaps to researchers interested in the pathology of a school shooter.

>decide to write short story in iambic heptameter
>one paragraph takes 1 hour to write
>it's not even that good
I'm too far in to stop now.

>>17902596
Read the entire oeuvre of Emily Dickinson

>>17902521
>>17902504
Yeah pretend you are chuck palahnuik or something

Sometimes I start getting locked up while writing and I think of this meme >>17897250
And every time it helps me push forward
Thanks /wg/

In the novel im writing the caretaker of a child hates him and sends him to a catholic boarding school where he stays for most of his childhood and adolescence (lets say 6-18).
This takes place in the 1920-1930s.

now, because of historical timeline I want him to leave the school at 16 years old. Any thoughts on why the caretaker would want to call him back home?

Should I just have him come back without stating age or time?

>>17902887
Sometimes I start getting excited about writing but then I think of>>17895235
and can't keep going

>>17902890
For he loves intelligent beings whos reason is developing, much about that time when their beard begins to grow

>>17902890
Dust bowl? Gotta help out on tha farm

>>17902890
Well what is your story even about bruh?

>>17902890
Illness is an easy get, however try to avoid making it too similar to Jane Eyre or the like

How do you tell if you've got a talent/creative mind for writing? Is it like you've either got it or don't kinda deal

>>17903044
if you have something to say and you write and find yourself wanting to right more you have a penchant for writing
if you don't have anything to say or try writing and find it a struggle to get even 5 pages down then it's not for you
regardless, begone from this thread until you get at least a 10 page first chapter finished

>>17903044
There's no such thing. Read more. Write more. It's literally all about hard work.

How do we feel about this as an intro to a post about Paris? Too much, or just right?

>>17903105
It reads like someone distant from the city but who still has a romantic view of it
There is no love in the description, only a distant analysis and opinion. Which is fine if that's the intention, especially if it's just a blogpost or something soulless like that

>>17902897
>>17902981
>>17903000
>>17903040
I thought about illness

Setting is Japan in the early 1900s. A bit like a Cinderella story in that the father and mother passes away and the step older brother and sister take all the wealth. They hate that the kid/father is from a lower class and that their own family had a fall from grace and now relies on the kid/fathers wealth that they uncovered. The brother and sister could not directly punish him directly because of family relations so when he became 6 or so they sent him off and never checked back on him

>>17903128
Does there have to be love in the description?

>>17903164
>its anime
welcome home brother

>11K words into my first book (a short Hobbit-like adventure)
>I'm finally beginning to enjoy writing, hours fly by when I sit
>I'm an artfag so whenever I feel tired I just sketch my characters and settings
I'm so happy bros

>>17903165
Depends on the goal of your write up. It seems like you're writing a romantic opinion piece and if so, absolutely
If it's more focused on history or some other objective information then no

>>17903173
Hey that’s great bro, keep it up.

I’m at about 30k in to mine and recently had a very comfortable system set up that keeps me motivated and enjoying writing!

Best of luck to you

>>17903173
>enjoys writing
>engages with his own stories
Based and absolutely gmi
Post some of your story related art

>>17903190
Thanks anon

>>17903184
Thanks, that's clarifying. The whole piece is here if you're interested:
https://goodperson.substack.com/p/france-v

>>17903164
>Setting is Japan in the early 1900s
...are you able to write early 1900s Jap culture tho?

>>17903227
Yeah, I've seen Seven Samurai.

>>17903105
I wanted to hate it for being pretentious but the more I read it the less pretentious it felt.

Pretty good, I enjoyed it.

>>17903228
...yeeeah, ngmi

What are some good text editors for writing? I use Sublime, but it's actually for coding.

>>17903281
MS Word

Anything more is being a fucking pseud

>>17903295
This. Why the fuck would you need anything else
Just write

>>17903295
>>17903301
The white hurts my fucking eyes, and these editors usually come with useful features
Word just looks plain ugly, and gives me retarded homework flashbacks. It feels good writing in something that looks good, I recommend it.

>>17903308
>The white hurts my fucking eyes
Write more, make it black

>>17903308
>The white hurts my fucking eyes
Anon...

>>17903325
You can do that in word? That's good, but fuck ms w*rd still, it's a clunky fucking piece of shit

>>17903281
I got scrivener when I was a pseud and still use it. It's pretty good, if a little bloated with features that I will never use. I'd choose it over MS Word if I had both but there's nothing wrong with Word. I use LibreOffice when writing non fiction though and that is also fine.

>>17903308
>useful features
not going to make it mentality. Try anime, none of their kind make it in these generals.

>>17903373
>anime
anime

anime

>>17903373
>ngmi
Yeah, good job on cooking your clay tablets
I optimize my shit, it gets better results

>>17903373
>Try anime, none of their kind make it in these generals.
Yet, they're the only writers.

>>17903373
This to be quite honest. The more weebs we cull the better these generals become.

>>17903387
>my writing quality is affected by what I write on
pyw

>>17903332
>clunky
I can't imagine something less "clunky" than Word. Maybe you want Notepad?

>schizo poster is awake
anime anime aniem
animem inaniemanmememe
meme meme
me me me me

>>17903392
Yes, that's literally how it works. What's next, you don't have a multi-monitor setup?

>>17903281
Literally notepad

>>17903405
>work which relies on communication and language skills is affected by the medium of recording
bro

>>17903405
all you need is a pen and paper but anime geeks want bells and whistles, like the ones they see in their cartoons. It's all unnecessary, just go download an app or something kid, this isn't for you.

>>17903418
Of course it does. If it doesn't, go ahead, write all your shit using pen and paper. You know you won't. At this point, it's about optimization. It saves time, it makes your work more productive.
>>17903430
>pen and paper
Kek, good luck, ngmi

>>17903435
you're not fooling anyone

>>17903308
>The white hurts my fucking eyes
Consider lowering your display's brightness setting

>>17903450
>says retard shit
>gets called out
?

>>17903435
>makes your work more productive
and yet here you are, having published less work than a single Bronte sister

>1k words in 3~ hours
I want to kick my gains goblin but I can't shake it off

>>17903898
i write slower than that

Is this boring? After grinding flashes and short stories for awhile I feel ready to try something longer, if just as unambitious
Non-anime/trash readers need not apply. I plan to post it up on RR whenever I finish a second draft so it'll be THAT tier. No video game shit though, I hate litrpg. Just good old fashioned, shitty pulp adventures
https://pastebin.com/m5DstFLM

>>17904205
Fix your dialogue tag punctuation. If an author has a problem with that, their shit's never worth critiquing any further. You have basic issues from a. never reading actual novels, and/or b. not being college educated.

>>17904205
>https://pastebin.com/m5DstFLM
do posters on this board just hate synopsis or something? I have never seen a pastebin with a good synopsis/plot summary, not asking for spoilers just to know what I'm getting into.

>>17904303
>dialogue tags
Dammit anon. I knew you'd look and checked it over
Fuck me I'm an english only that reads constantly and I still fucked it. I'll give it another pass
Commas instead of periods when dialogue is before a tag and a comma after the tag when the following dialogue is an extension of the first instances sentence
Am I retarded? Am I really misunderstanding this fundie?

>>17904328
>forgot capitalization rules after a tag
Damn. Of course it'd be something stupid like that
Thanks dialogue tag anon. Your autistic ass lurks in the back of my mind whenever I write dialogue, so congrats on being the thread boogey man

>>17904316
You have a point, and I think it's a problem that affects most internet original fiction actually.

58k words today. I'll be 60% to my original goal soon.

>>17904205
I am >>17904316 anon.
I am avoiding anything about grammar and punctuation as I'm completely ignorant to the finer points there. Just talking about voice and what I liked/disliked.
I read it and quite liked it.
It's not boring but describing it as anime-trash put me off it before I even started, and it's perfectly enjoyable thinking of it as just a regular story. Not sure why you specified that. Am I supposed to imagine it as anime in my head? For what purpose?
As for the story in itself, started out kinda slow but got interesting when I found out they were skeletons, and figuring out they were basically rpg classes , mage, fighter, ranger was cool.

first part was a little vague who was talking and where everything was but afterwards its mostly fine. Dialogue was not bad, felt natural enough, decent mix of business and humor. Story has a direction immediately which is good, that's what gets me interested is when the scene I'm looking at is relevant. (we are preparing for battle.)

>>17904611
Thanks anon. Calling things anime is a thread meme. There's a pseud regular who snobs anything amateur as anime, regardless of its content
Always glad to meet a fellow skeletal appreciator. You pretty much told me what I needed to know about my first chapter, which is whether it was engaging or not
Thanks anon, helpful crit

>>17904629
>There's a pseud regular who snobs anything amateur as anime, regardless of its content
Don't forget his delusions.

>>17904629
Sure no problem, as long as you don't go full JRPG isekai "I got reincarnated as a low level mob but now I'm going on an adventure!?" on me kek.

>>17904651
Being the next Nabokov?

>>17904658
Yeah, pretty much.

>>17904658
What's so great about Nabokov? I can't even get a boner reading his supposed magnum opus

>>17904664
Just some anon who is suffering from delusion of grandeur or some shit and thinks he's going to write the Next great American Novel. He's pretty much hostile to the anime and "anime" writers.

>>17904658
And that the weebs are all lurking just outside of his peripheral vision, waiting to steal his talent and (future) success

>>17904671
He also pretends to know Finnish apparently

>>17904671
>>17904673
He also thinks every single anon who disagree with him is just samefagging.

>>17904670
Sad really.

>>17904702
Well what are you going to do about it?

>>17895214
None, whatsoever.

Just for the anti-animefag, a new thread.

>>17904722

>>17904719
Write more anime of course

>>17904723
Based.

>>17904723
b-bros
my inner demons
the weaboos
I hear them calling

>>17904737
DO YOU HEAR THE VOICES TOO?

>>17904723
Finally, an appropriately timed thread. Not an animefag myself, but thanks animefag

>>17905241
You’re welcome.

>>17903164
>Japan in the early 1900s
Just Dazai it bro lmao

Is there a repository for the most common phrases? I recently figured out that when I write, I keep using a bunch of weird idioms and odd phrases that a reader won't immediately understand.
I know there has to be a simpler way to word it, but I can't really figure them out in a timely manner.