/lit/ - Literature

>>21718190
I saw turkey and thought that, for once, the OP image wouldn't be AI. How foolish of me.

https://pastebin.com/LN782Dh9

Should I remove the litrpg elements?

>>21718276
Well, are you writing a litrpg?

>>21718276

>>21718276
>>21718400
What's litrpg?

>>21718436
90% of the content on RR

just recently finished the second chapter (or first? thinking of adding a prologue) of me draft. this shit is actually really fucking fun. now onto the next twenty or so chapters.

>>21718436
it's kinda in the name. literature but with computer (video game) RPG elements. from what i've saw, it's mostly seen as shlock. at least around here.

>>21718443
> it's mostly seen as shlock
Understandable, a large part of the genre is smut and/or harem wish-fulfillment. It's only recently that better writers have contributed.

read Fedbook. Absorb it. Enjoy it. Tell others about it. Smack F. Garder in the head with its thick spine.

>>21718400
>>21718401
Its a work in progress.

>>21718276
No leave it. But you need to introduce it as a comedy much earlier. It turns off any potential readers if they wanted something tongue in cheek, and those that love the genre will get pissed it's satire.

>>21718465
I respect the shill, but anyone who wants to support a creator from here should snag a copy of Tales of the Unreal (for pay or otherwise) and find a creator in there whom they like.

>>21718540
>>21718465
Since you two are shilling... This is going to turn to advertising general isn't it?

>>21718556
No amount of shilling is going to get me any more sales from here until I release another novel. Everyone knows about my books and they've already formed their opinions.

However, what else is there to discuss? Yet another "how do I get better at writing?" discussion?

>>21718190
can someone review this and let me know if its any good so far:
>>https://file.io/eJBGuqoWybIs

>>21718591
Format this so that it doesn't look like a massive block of text - check some other books for reference.

>>21718540
I second this, they’re all talented and handsome and have massive bank accounts. They only write for the love of the game. Listen to unreal press podcast and buy the latest anthology.
- John

>>21718573
The /wg/ serves both purposes pretty well. Shillers get free Ad space, and those seeking critique generally get what they came for. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

>>21718633
>>21718573
First narration videos of the anthology should be coming out this week, but there is no logical order to them. People who have picked up the anthology haven't given much feedback on which are the good stories to put on the channel yet.

>>21718591
>it wasn't necessarily that he feared the man's hardness
>something that could be used to mold him, if penetrated
>potential weakness within the "hard man"
pretty good as far as erotic fiction goes

Extremely important question:

Those WHO [verb] or Those THAT [verb]?

so how do you feel about the idea that stories should always reach their logical conclusion before they finish?
(ie the mc wants to win an award, he wins it, then the story becomes how he deals with that and the coming problems instead of the mc wants to win an award and by the end of the book he does)

>>21718921
the two stories have two different plot arcs and two different meanings. one is about putting in sweat equity and achieving. the other is about the hollowness of certain types of recognition and maybe the resulting stagnancy afterward. how about you have him win the award and then the rest of the book is him trying to woo one of his female colleagues, or maybe some woman he met as a result of getting the award.

>>21719019
it was just an example to clear up the question, I'm not actually writing the story

>>21719022
I still hope I answered the question. They're two different stories, each has a different "logical" conclusion.

>>21719034
Well the first story includes the logical conclusion to the second, my question being are stories enhanced by having not one main overarching thing a character is striving for but instead going beyond what would seem like a good end in another story.

for example
>story 1
character strives for x -> gets x -> end
>story 2
character strives for x -> gets x -> Fallout y -> new goal z -> end

>>21719048
>Well the first story includes the logical conclusion to the second
no, it doesn't. you're confusing the means to an end with the end itself. story 1 you would focus on different things than you would in story 2, if you wanted to make your both coherent and cohesive. you could simply take story 1 and then tack on story 2, but that's all you'd be doing and it'd end up muddled, but maybe that's part of your message, or maybe you're like Dickens and being paid by the word.

>>21718591
>Alas, this was the future
It's never the future from the narrator's or character's perspective. Unless he woke up from cryo sleep or something.
>working with men for who working with men had proven intolerable
Might be clever elsewhere, but very clunky in the middle of a long sentence
>I don't like it any more than you do
Very corny. Like a 60s cop show. If that's what you're going for, it's fine.
>his narrow area of specialization...barbarity and wayward cruelty...
Redundant.
>primarily, necessarily, had proven, apparent,
Filler and qualifiers that weaken the prose.

It needs more variation in sentence length.Simple sentences to balance the complex ones.
It could use stronger verbs. Too many sentences using 'was' reduces momentum. Similarly, starting with 'this' or 'it' as a subject instead of a noun makes it feel sort of rambling.

A lot of excess verbiage can be condensed.
>In the older days...in the New Age.
>In ancient times, the men in charge would've chopped off his head--or at least fired him--but today's civilized society was too efficient for that.
>Through analysis of his profile, it had been prejudged that...
>His profile showed...

It seems pulpy, so you want to punch it up.

>>21719064
okay let me restate it
100% you finish story 2 as if its a solo story with no consideration about prolonging it then, afterwords, you decide to write about what happens through the fallout
would that then improve story 2 or would it not

>>21719076
maybe. depends entirely on how well written it is. but you have to understand that if you do something like that it will necessarily have an impact on the payoff you achieved from the first part of the story

>>21718907
'Who' is generally used for people, especially in writing, and 'that' for other stuff. But both are fine. Do what sounds better.

>>21719090
idk I've been realizing that many stories that stick with me do it very successfully and it always manages to increases the payoff every time.
I think if you have a good reason for transition, and a good story, it would be possible to keep going until you reach a point in the story were it wouldn't make sense to continue without some serious plot hole or ass pull.

Hoping it reads better will probably go back and talk about how horrifying the state of the cow is in later.

I think this is a circumstance where it's appropriate for the prose to be crude? It's obviously crude and clunky but I think it would be cumbersome to communicate this any other way and the reader would feel let down if I skipped it. What do you think, anons?

[...]
“Cover your ears,” I said and put another shell through the zombie’s skull. Then, I shrugged. “I’ll take a shower. Come on, we wouldn’t have anything to bring back if I had popped him down here. Look—don’t slip.”

I had caught the zombie eating a cheese sauce packet from instant macaroni like yogurt. Several bags of healthy—allegedly—cereal had been ripped apart but not eaten. The dried rice looked good next to fifty pounds of canned vegetables. Bottles of cooking oil had been scattered amid packs of dried fruit whose age I had no interest in guessing. Half a dozen bottles of peanut butter and jelly had been systematically defiled. It was too bad the commune didn’t have some kind of animal they could feed it too; and hope the animal didn’t get sick.

Blood still dripped like condensation from the staircase ceiling, and Emy treated it like acid. Rather than join me, she said she would be right back. I had dumped a plastic tub of kid’s books empty and started packing cans into it when she returned with a roll of garbage bags and a face mask. Laying them down like tarps, she tried to make a clean path down. I met her halfway and the two of us ported everything to the first floor.
[...]

what piece of media inspired your book the most, if any piece of media did at all?

>>21719458
Metal Gear Rising, completely unironically. Love that larger-than-life bullshit.

>>21719486
based. for me it's toby fox games.

>>21719458
Killer7 and No More Heroes

>>21719458
parasite 2022
really beautiful movie

It is not possible to improve at writing.

>>21719458
I'm too embarrassed to name that, but it was a manga (plus a conversation with some random person on the internet and several books that fit the theme). If we consider the current work in progress, of course. My desire to write was ignited by ASOIAF books and classic sci-fi short stories.

>>21719307
Second paragraph should probably only be two sentences. One about the foot and this one
>It was too bad the commune didn’t have some kind of animal they could feed it too; and hope the animal didn’t get sick.
Other than that it seems fine to me.

How does the writing process go for you? I have mainly relied on picturing scenes within my head, scenes of vivid fantasy that my words are but pale imitations of. This is process is enrapturing yet cumbersome beyond writing a few paragraphs. Yet when I write based off of the words I put to page, letting them think and plan out a scene instead of trying to capture an imagined scene, my writing seems infinitely more competent and vibrant.

Is it the same for you as well? Why is this so?

>>21719458
My novel is a borderline autobiographical account of bar hopping and bing drinking, but the prose is inspired by hardboiled noir type narration.

>>21719637
One about the food*

>>21719640
im in your situation, but its kinda neutral for me. for most of my story ideas, i imagine a scene visually (as a video game or animation) which i really don't fucking like to do and i wish i could just imagine it as a book instead then write it down. the writing still feels the same to me, though. not more better or worse, just...neutral. even when i did imagine it as a book.

someone give me a writing/editing schedule. I am on the 4th draft of my book, but i've realized it needs a massive rewrite, including outlines, etc. I need some clear daily goals, and deadlines for myself, as I wrote the first draft back in 2020 and at this rate, I won't get this thing published in my lifetime. bless you.

>>21719708
I dont remember posting this.

>>21719637
But doesn't it seem cheap to not detail and give life to just what he went to the effort of getting?

Tom could barely even live with himself anymore. His sole motivation in life, the one thing keeping him moving, was his desire to free himself from the curse that had been placed upon him. For there he was, lying upon his back on the grassy hill, watching the clouds pass him by and trying to ignore the smell of shit permeating from his breath. Although the feeling of fresh feces coating his throat alone could bring him to vomit, the reminder of that damn wizard made him vomit even more. 20 years ago, a wizard had placed a curse on him after he had regretfully had sex with the wizards wife. The curse? His only source of nutrients would be his own doodoo. His only purpose in life now would be to track this wizard down, and force him to reverse the curse.

Any new novels come out since Egregore? I haven't checked up on /wg/ in a while.

>>21719725
Infinite Money Glitch by James Krake and Fedbook by that shill whos name I forgot. John I think?

>>21719722
But the wizard had an advantage on Tom you see, for every time Tom got within a close area of the wizard, the smell of shit in the air would immediately alert him of his stalkers presence-and the wizard would quickly flee.

My mom called my suburban decay police short story "something out of a video game." How do I recover from this total BTFO?

>>21719746
kill yourself. please.

My male lead is a knight but he has an anxiety problem and can't talk to women at all. His journey is also about stopping an evil wizard from taking over the world and also gaining the courage to out his crush, the female lead.

>>21719752
That bad huh?

>>21719756
no youre just utterly retarded

>>21719759
I think it might have been the swearing and the violence that tipped her off. She's more into tiktoks and talking about her job.

>>21719721
I guess if it’s a zombie apocalypse survival story then the inventory of food and items they have would be relevant to the story. But to me it just seems like one long sentence that summarizes what he finds would suffice.

>>21719610
yeah, newborn babies are capable of writing full-length novels. nature is truly amazing

>>21719711
you too, eh? let's try to be published by feb 2024, whaddayasay?

>>21719828
I will throw money at editors until it's pitchable. I can do this.

>>21719755
>spineless loser mc
There's always a niche for NTR, I suppose.

>>21719880
Editors can't fix bad writing, anon.

>>21719906
I don't think it is bad.

>>21719892
He's tall, muscular, handsome, and a skilled warrior, he just gets tongue tied around women.

>>21719931
That's all fine. That can all fit. Make her his childhood friend and over the course of the story she should devolve into a megaslut.

Most fiction is about conflict between different characters with different but exclusive wants, correct? But all books and essays on how to write just focus on the protagonist and his tribulations. Like, as if "protagonist is suddenly chased by wolves" is enough to add conflict. I mean, it is you want that, but conflict among characters is much more interesting and the wolves thing sound like filler.

Is there any /wg/ material that focus on developing such characters, giving each own their arcs, etc?

>>21720150
No, but I'll be working on a craft bible. I just don't want to release such a document before I'm full time at writing.

Genuinely, 99% of how-to-write books are a grift to prey on idiots, so actual content that can help a good writer is few and far between.

>>21719586
I couldn't get into it, even watched it twice to see if if I was missing something.. Good production value, well acted, just no intrigue nor tension. I watch a lot of cinema too, Asian included.

>>21719722
No amount of detailed writing could capture the reality of literally eating shit. This project was doomed from the start.

>>21720250
>>21719722
This can't be taken seriously. Make it so anything he eats becomes rotting flesh in his mouth and it might work.

>>21720264
Congratulations, you've somehow made it even worse

>>21720423
Rotten flesh or ashes are infinitely easier to take seriously than HAHEHO YOU SHALL EAT SHIT FOR ALL YOUR DAYS

I think this prose reads awkwardly, though I'm not sure why it does so. I tried to exclusively write by using many words to describe something instead only using one, and I think, that although it's quite entertaining to write, it seems overwrought in a way that isn't good like the beautiful prose of Clark Ashton Smith, or the dreadful and clinical atmosphere HP Lovecraft manages to create through his prose.
The sun was sinking halfway into the horizon and streaks of purple cut through the bleeding sky. The world beneath turned into a medley of black shapes. The cold wind blew past Johnny; it bit into his bones.

He ground his foot into the sand, hand trembling over his holster. The dark cameos of Joshua trees seemed like outstretched, clawing hands rising from the earth. The low lying scrub, a carpet of black wires creeping across the earth; the sparse grass turned into dark tufts of fur. Out in the distance beyond his meager sight, the low, mournful howl of a lone coyote drifted through the wind.

Johnny groped for his piece, and finding the handle, after a second or so of stroking the rough grained leather, he pulled it out in a white-knuckled grip. He pointed it out in front of him, as if he were fending off a wild animal with a torch. Only darkness greeted him.

The sun had now lowered even further. An immense glowing red hill, growing dimmer and more distant by the second.

The lone coyote's howl bayed a second time. It was no longer an ephemeral wail, but now a clear siren.

The incandescent rays of his lantern pierced through the darkness, and, for a moment, painted everything in white. Johnny blinked. The desert revealed to him was infinitely more loathsome than it had ever been. The sand was still the same beige; the shrubs still crouched into the sand; the sparse grass as dry as ever. But there was a malevolence to them absent at day.

At the very edge of his torch's light, where the white glow turned yellow and mingled with the dark, there jutted from the ground an immense Joshua tree. Its trunk twisted upwards and its gnarled branches clawed out every which way it could. The grotesque knobs at the very ends were made all the more detestable by the almost hair-like quality the hanging strands of thin leaves imparted to it.

A thin hand reached around the trunk. Bone-thin fingers scored lines. Joshua pulled the trigger. The revolver's roar shattered the quiet.

(And in the case that you have read this before, for doubtlessly I have posted this excerpt many times before, I'm sorry. I'll post something newly written next time).

>>21720446
The smell of shit is actually integral to both the story and the character development. Not only does the smell immediately inform the wizard that the protagonist is nearby, but the protagonist is very lonely and suicidal due to nobody wanting to be around him due to how disgusting he is.

>>21720516
The same can be achieved with rotting flesh, and again, it's much easier for the reader to take seriously.

I'm writing fan fiction of my own characters in my own world just to get inside the head of some other, non-POV characters and it's pretty fun and helpful. Would recommend as an exercise.

>>21720516
>>21720534
In fact I would argue rotting flesh would work better than shit. A pre-modern world will have you encountering the smell of shit regularly, and it's the case to a degree in many places even in modernity.

Rotting meat is, comparatively to shit, a much rarer stench.

>>21720501
Doesn’t look bad to me anon. Definitely more flowery than some people might like but for the style that you’re going for it looks good.

>>21719722
Doesn't matter. Had sex.

Are you a GRRM architecture tier writer or a Stephen King tier writer where you just write whatever with the need of an outline? So far I'm trying GRRM's architecture approach and seeing where it takes me since in my first chapter I'm already building up to a couple things which are going to play a somewhat bigger role later on:
Aliens
Serial killer(killer may or may not be related to aliens haven't fully decided)
Potential cult
Massive snowstorm rolling into town

>>21720761

Gardener approach my bad.

>>21720150

>>21718465
>>21718540
>>21718556
Ugh...instead of shilling your own work, how about you recommend people look at the /lit/ books on Amazon, read the reviews (if any), read the "Look Inside" portions, and decide for themselves what they'd like to take a chance on?
The image is old; the OP pastebin has a more up-to-date list.

Care to read my detective fiction story /lit/?

>tl;dr the guy who traces bodies in chalk is a real job and he's desperate to prove himself

https://pastebin.com/VqdV54vv

>>21720797
The crisis arrives when there is a mangled body with parts everywhere and he ponders philosophical questions like is an arm part of the body if it is separated. A Theseus’ Ship of sorts

>>21720787
Bro what do you think the point of the unreal anthology is? It's not just masturbation.

>>21720501
Lovecraft usually reserved his grotesque prose for grotesque subjects -- monsters beyond description or, y'know, Italians. He didn't focus on dirt and trees.
Build up tension with brief but suggestive spookiness, then release the tension with purple prose when the monster shows up. Right now it sounds like this guy is having a bad acid trip and staring at his hands.

>>21720812
Yeah but those are short stories.

booted up scrivener lads
you know what time it is

What’s the latest with F Gardner, gentlemen?

>>21720150
Only three things matter at any given point in a (market fiction) novel.
>NARRATIVE DRIVE: Does your reader have an immediate and pressing reason to turn the page? Do they get the sense that they might get the answers to the questions they're asking on the next page? Does the potential for an upcoming answer invoke some emotion, be it dread or excitement - i.e., are the questions the story is posing worth caring about?
>CHARACTER CONSISTENCY: Are your characters (especially above all your protagonist) acting sensibly in their own self-interest?
>NARRATIVE VOICE: If asked, would your reader say that you, the author of the book they sat down to read, are probably smarter than them?
If you understand these things, you can follow any guide you like, be it focused on the protagonist (Hero With a Thousand Faces & derivative works) or the central theme (Story Genius) or whatever else helps you put words on the page.

>>21720942
No one wants to talk about you, Frank.

>>21720907
How many bars does a pianist have to play before you know if he's any good? If you know anything about music, you'll be able to figure out if he's in tune and on tempo really quickly.

Same deal with short stories. If the author is any good, you'll know they're good from a very short passage.

>>21720979
Writing something as large as a novel is qualitatively different than writing a short story.
Being able to write 60k+ words that keeps my attention is in a completely different field of accomplishment than a short story that can keep my attention.
I'm not sure why you would claim otherwise, except to make your short-story collection more commercially relevant.

>>21721024
>commercially
It's available for free on the unreal website.

I dunno if stuff like this is allowed. I randomly threw it up on notepad, something like a story about bodily insecurity.

Jane avoided mirrors. Mirrors were, unfortunately, naught but a reminder of her imperfections. Whenever she did catch a glimpse of her reflection, perhaps in the windows of a grocery store or in a puddle laying in wait on the asphalt, her gaze would quickly dart away. Now, Jane had many feminine features. A well-shaped jaw, a petite nose, delicately long eyelashes, and a mess of black hair that was most often clustered into a jumbled bun. All quirks of a mature, desirable woman. What she lacked, much to her insecurity, was the body of one. Her hips were square and narrow; her thin legs seemed to jut out from her torso with no sense at all for neither poise nor grace nor any inkling of shapeliness. Her rear was little more than a continuation of her back. Her thighs were sticks, and her calves an imitation of her thighs. Worst, in her mind, was her chest. Seeing it devoid of context, one would be completely forgiven for mistaking it to belong on a boy’s body. Nothing from the years of hormone-induced stress and acne that was puberty had come to bear fruit, and all that remained were but two nubs no bigger than a golf ball. Bras were cheap, and often unnecessary. Jane wondered that perhaps there’s some correlation to sensitivity and size, because she could never manage to conjure a memory of a time that she had felt any substantial amount of pleasure from their stimulation. No, tragically her body was but a monument to androgyny.

>>21721036
In that case, I have NO idea why you would claim otherwise.
And I repeat that picking a /lit/ novel to buy from one's own reading of "Look Inside" portions will do more to help the unknown authors here.
I've read over a dozen, and from that, bought 3 of them.

>>21721062
>I've read over a dozen, and from that, bought 3 of them.
thank you anon. you've are a gentleman and a scholar.

>>21721062
>bought 3
Which ones? I'm curious.

>>21721159
Plus, I wrote nice reviews of them on Amazon and/or GoodReads.
We need reviews to convince new people to give us a chance, maybe even to convince them to make the effort of reading the "Look Inside" portion.
>>21721179
It doesn't matter what my tastes are.
You presumably have different tastes.
So make your own decision which "Look Inside" portions to read, and what (if any) to buy, and hopefully, later, which to review.
None of this will get anywhere if this place remains a failed-crab bucket.

Do you guys ever try to avoid writing something that might be considered "cliche" or "common" just for the sake of originality?
I'm currently worldbuilding the deserts of my world, and I want to avoid everything to do with pic related (so basically fantasy arabian culture, with sand warriors, palaces, etc.).
But should I even be trying to do that? There must be hundreds of stories that use this overused mold (with some variations) and are good regardless.
I think I want to do this out of pride, but I also think I could come up with something even better than arabs if I tried. Something out of this world entirely.

It was like 80 degrees in the library today. What the fuck is wrong with these people?

>>21721282
Depends on what you want for your story. The plus side of the familiar is that it's easy for the reader to get on board. If it's a short story then you can use what the reader already knows to your advantage and get to the meat of the story without having to spend much time explaining your novel world.

>>21721036
When are you guys gonna do another Gardner episode? That episode was your most interesting take.

>>21721325
Nobody wants to talk about you, Frank.
Go play with yourself in private; you're just embarrassing yourself.

>>21721325
F Gardner’s hard to get to agree to interviews. He won’t do it.

>look through amazon best sellers
>all the protagonists are women
this fucking sucks

>>21721355
it's also all thinly veiled smut

>>21721302
Which people?
Do you mean the homeless who were enjoying four walls and a roof for a short time?

>>21721355
>>21721358
You're looking at the modern equivalent of "penny dreadfuls".
Unless you're planning to write one of those yourself, don't compare your work to theirs.

>>21721369
Yes I am planning to write a successful novel

>>21721369
I don't
mine is a modern pulp serial

>>21721374
Then you need to accept the current fashion of high-selling modern "penny dreadfuls", e.g. female protagonists, thinly veiled smut, wish fulfillment, and hard-left values.
I don't think I could do that.

I'm at a lost how to make my story better

>>21721398
I'm also at a loss on how to make your story better

>>21721398
I assume you've partaken of the standard advice, such as picrel?

>>21721398
Which one of these 3 steps are you failing at >>21720956

wtf is disability fiction

>>21721430
Have you not heard of Google?
https://www.google.com/search?q=define+disability+fiction
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Disability_Fic

https://pastebin.com/irKKL2Az

Thoughts on this? I'm still trying to get the mc's voice down. I'll have a much better grasp in like 5 more chapters, and then I'll go back and fix some of the characterization, but without this I'll never end up getting there.

>>21721375
Then you'd better pour on the narrative drive, and make sure each episode ends with a cliffhanger.
Hopefully that's not news to you.

>>21721436
well when someone wants to post something ridiculous how I posted is generally how it's posted, I wasn't literally asking what it was
I hope you don't make the same faux pas again!

>>21721369
Those are romance books. Shit like F Gardner is the modern equivalent to Penny Dreadfulls.

>>21721282
The Arab variant of desert dweller implies that they're poor, i.e. they need low-cost, easy to acquire methods to beat the heat.
Is there anything different about your setting that deviates from this?
Then use it.
Are your people richer? Then how about self-contained, climate-controlled biospheres, connected to others via sealed tunnels?
Can your people do without sunlight? Head underground.

>>21719486
post writing

>>21721458
Your works have no narrative drive or logical coherency, and chapters don't end on cliffhangers.
They're about as far from "penny dreadful" as they can get...instead, they're just plain dreadful.
I persisted through the entire "Look Inside" portion of CotC, and it was a waste of time.
I started the "Look Inside" portion of 3 more, but barely got past a page and a half.

>post my short story three times now
>nobody fockin reading it

Fuckin' 'ell, fuck me

>>21719458
I was mostly influenced by gay porn and teletubbies unironically.

>>21721458
Except Horror’s Call is great

>>21721468
Sure
https://pastes.io/dulmk20hst
picrel

>>21721477
Post again and review someone else's shit while linking back to your own requesting review back. It's tacky but gets the job done. Have an attractive female picture accompanying your post.

It's also possible you have such painful level 1 issues that an anon or two opened it and just couldn't be arsed to repeat the same basic feedback again but idk dood

>>21721430

Had a random spark of inspiration about a fantasy story where a con artist tricks the entire kingdom into believing he killed a dragon when he just discovered its corpse, and I was able to write ~900 words in like 45 minutes. But should I try to write something tongue in cheek and funny? I'm not normally considered a funny person and I'm concerned that it will come across too boring and quippy like a fucking marvel movie. Thoughts? if you're a fantasyfag would you potentially be interested in something like this if I put it on royal road once I finish it?

>>21721579
Falstaff fanfiction sounds fine to me, but if you're not confident in being able to write comedy very well, there's a high chance it just falls flat

>>21721614
Can only know if I try, I suppose. If it falls flat then I'll try to salvage it or move on to something else. And Falstaff Fanfiction should be the name of a genre, that's brilliant.

>>21721512
Thanks at least for replying to my post. My story is already in the thread. I don't like "exchanging" critiques because it just becomes transactional and said anon will probably try to sugarcoat it. I'll just keep posting it and critiquing anonymously

would anyone feel like reading the first chapter to a story I got?

>>21721653
Describe it first

>>21721670
boy watches his souldier cousin get mutilated in a weird military ceremony

>>21721697
Sounds Gardner-esque

>>21721702
idk wtf that is

every single day i struggle for relevancy. i want to kill myself but im too stubborn to give up writing. we are all going to make it

Just pubbed an erotica story tonight. It's the 3rd published work I've got in the erotica sphere.
Fuck me, I'm nervous. I want this thing to sell bros.

>>21721749
is it worse not to get any sales in a genre you do only to get money?

>>21721282
it's better to try for something original. especially if you don't actually know anything about arabian culture

>>21721697
Post it I want to read

>>21721451
Sorry. Can't get past the constant inner monologue.

>>21718276
This is a promising start. I don't mind the litrpg stuff

>>21721282
>Do you guys ever try to avoid writing something that might be considered "cliche" or "common" just for the sake of originality?
Yes. Faux Earth settings bore me. My method is to take features from multiple real cultures and combine them into something new.

Egypt - elaborate funerary rites and entombment
India - sprawling caste system
Europe - Centralized church with international reach
Maya - Complex calendar

Once you squish them all together, it becomes something that isn't identifiable as an obvious stand in for a real place.

You have deserts, so you should avoid other Arab features/cliches - monotheism, fanaticism, afterlife with virgins, etc. Instead include unexpected stuff -- giant heads from Easter Island, human sacrifice from Aztecs, legal/scholastic tradition from China, or whatever you find interesting.

Of course, the environment will bring some similarities to Arabs. You can't have farmers in the desert.

>>21721451
I have doubts about the voice too but I see where you're going with this and I would read more

>>21721944
>You can't have farmers in the desert.
Yes you can, just invent plants/livestock that thrive in the environment for some reason or other, be it mundane or magical.

>>21721954
Photosynthesis-capable fungus with superdeep mycelial network that reaches far below-ground aquifers and accumulates massive water reserves from occasional rain and/or transports water from other, more water-rich areas of the fungal growth's territory

Maybe it's some sort of engineered thing intended to reverse/stop desertification from a past civilization

>>21721962
Or just have them grow cactus fruits

>>21720163
Some of the best writing advice I've received has legitimately been by anons here.That might sound weird but objectively there are things that are gonna sharpen your writing and for some reason, /wg/ gets it.

Most "pop culture" advice is geared around, "write every day" or "give your character a goal" or general shit like that. But it doesn't get to the nitty-gritty of what actually captures reader's attention, how powerful and important description/scene-setting is, nuances of character personalities, etc.

>>21721697
Sounds like some mental masturbation on modern dystopian fiction. I'll pass.

>>21720501
It honestly reads pretty well. It's not overwhelmingly wordy nor is it gramatically confusing. What do you feel that reads awkwardly?

>>21720761
I've done both and I think they both have their pros and cons. If you garden, it's very fun to see where the story takes you and it's almost as if your reading a book that's never been written. However, it's 99% of the time going to be a nightmare wrapping it all up so that everything ties together (read: editing for days).

If you architect you have a very clear goal and direction for where the story is going. On the other hand, if you structure it too much, the story kinda loses its flare.

I've tried mixing both and I think I found a nice balance. I structure it just enough to have the main bullet points but improvise (or "garden") how to get through those bullet points.

>>21721702
>>21721848
>>21722005
https://pastes.io/qwvl13aww6

please read.

>>21720761
It's honestly never enough to have an outline. I already made the second outline in my mind after writing down the first. I think, it's better to have some structure and write a draft losely following it, rewrite it to be consistent and edit the whole thing untill it looks okay on the third manuscript.

>>21722047
Anon, it's written so badly. Please, read more english books untill you can read and write without a translator.

>>21721316
>>21721459
>>21721843
Thanks, especially >>21721944
I'll take my time to come up with something original and interesting.

>>21722047
reads like ESL, unfortunately. Premise is cool, but kind of ruined by distracting syntactical and punctuation errors.

Pieced this together in the mornings before work. It's about a person who is becoming obsessive with his senses and is growing to distrust them. This chapter is about showing how he's descending into a state of passivity and isolation where he keeps repeating the same things in search of some truth or thing in itself while the world moves on around him. It's still very stitched together and it's obvious that even the narration isn't consistant as I'm still experimenting with what I want but have a read and tell me what you think.
https://ponepaste.org/8678

>>21721805
Yes, and no. My first book sold $300 bucks worth over the last month or so, and for an initial entry into erotica that's not bad at all. In some ways I feel like it's not as bad for it to not sell right now because it's just a product. It's not something I poured my soul into. I feel like if people rejected/ignored something I made a pure expression of my soul then I'd be a lot more sad about it.

>>21722279
Maybe I should write smut
300 burger smackers is enough to live on where I live...

>>21718190
How do I write good dialogue? (also tone appropiate).
I've been told that my dialogue sounds like its out of cartoon network shows and I do want to change that.

>>21722361
I think if you read it out aloud, in the voices you wish for the characters, you'll find what sounds unnatural and give characters more style. It helps if you can, in real life, pickup on little weird quirks in peoples speech, and then describe them from these.

>>21722361
May I see a sample?

>>21718190
Where could I post some solo roleplaying sessions I do in journal form, while making a few cents? There might also be erotic content.

>>21722279
Congratulations. You’re the next F Gardner.

>>21722390
"BWOING! Wup woo wup wop wuh wop wa wa! A-WOOOOGA. Beoing beoing. BOOM," Johnathan said calmly.

>>21722462
Sounds solid to me anon

>>21722462
based video game writer

Is Scrivener worth buying?

>>21722301
For every guy stroking his duck to the 200 dollars they made there are like 4 others who've given up
It takes effort to write books you don't care about

>>21722393
Royal Road. If people actually read it you can monetize via patreon or amazon or any number of other ways

>>21722509
For large long-form projects I think it's the best thing I've used

>>21722509
Yeah it's very good but it absolutely requires you to RTFM. You need to put the effort in learning how to get the best out of it.

https://saddestvacantlot.blogspot.com/2023/02/fast-tony.html

Changed a little at the start and revised some of the first part. Added a second half. I tried to follow the advice of >>21713823 but I also have awful reading comprehension. Thanks for any critiques or time spent reading.

>>21721749
Where do you sell your work, anon?

>>21721996
I think I have unironically been told that as long as the protaganist has a goal, it doesn't matter if that goal is getting a sandwich. Elsewhere that is, not here.

>>21722852
what are the features I should be using?

>>21723069
the key is that the goal needs to be something you can easily visualize like eating a sandwich or getting to the top of a mountain

>>21718190
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11775455/FOCUS-ChatGPT-launches-boom-AI-written-e-books-Amazon.html

>>21723296
I bow to my electric overlord and will never pursue any hobby or career ever again. Thank you sir, feed me my blend of generates images and text. I need not continuity, just large, soulless clumps of media. Please oh please!

>>21723296
The worst thing is the gall of people willing to shit out AI writing and sell it. And people are willing to buy it

>>21723260
That's kind of an open question, it's a full-on typography / formatting software and not a standard Word editor. There are two main parts. Firstly using the editor and whether to use styles or not. Then there is the whole compiling process to generate your book. The latter can be really involved depending on how much tweaking you want to do and that can involved editing css files. On the plus side there is *lots* of excellent documentation and tutorials on the website (forums) and google / youtube.

>>21718436
It's a way of expressing progression in shorthand via levels and skills so as to circumvent tired old tropes like character arcs. The future is now, old man.

>>21723427

>>21723296
>F Gardner still manages to shit out more books than A.I.

the virgin Artificial Intelligence
Vs.
the chad Call of the Crocodile

>>21723510
You're not fooling anyone, Frankie
Nobody wants to see your poorly veiled self-shilling, Frankia
Kill yourself, Frankie

>>21723427
This reads terrible.

>>21718276
>There was nobody else around and being a Dark Lord, it’s only natural that I step forward and speak to a little girl all alone without any parental supervision.

LoL this is great.

>>21723806
I mention this in every thread, your podcast is terrible and you in particular are incredibly boring to listen to. Maybe the next anthology will be what makes it better.

>>21723427
> why yes I am trying to manipulate the KU pages read payment system.

my protagonist has
no motivation
no face
no skills
no goals

can anyone help me write an epic story about that

Michael Z if you're here - typo in last soob poasting

"Then you step out, more goth then dressed for war,"

If I read that right the second then should be 'than'.

>>21721282
Oh lol, do you wanna meet my own desert cannibal cultists? My advice is to start from rock-bottom with the desert environment. When building a unique culture, start with food and water. Consider necessary survival precautions in a hostile environment, and I'd recommend reading a bit about the Inuits - people who also live in a hostile environment. You'll obviously end up with some superficial similarities, because it turns out the way people have been doing shit for thousands of years is actually the most practical, but one thing I did for my own desert people was give them a religion that has nothing to do with Islam.

>>21719708
asking this again. not so politely this time. give me a schedule basterds

>>21724439
Publish it before April 1st

>>21724448
*gulp* i'm not sure if that's possible. i'm trying to do trad publish

>>21724034
Ironically F Gardner is the reason people know about his podcast.

>>21724474
What podcast are you even talking about?

>>21724034
If you mean Unreal, I left the server soon after joining cos it was full of retarded muslim larpers and Frankie demanded that they ban anyone who disagrees with his retarded views

>>21724474
F Gardner doesn’t have a podcast. It’s more like a series of schizo YouTube rants

>>21724474
I will unironically watch if they do more F Gardner coverage.

>>21724479
Exactly, Lmao.

>>21718276
Reads good. Well, you can definitely edit it a bit, of course. LitRPG stuff is not my cup of tea, but it doesn't really make it worse. For the sake of critique, it's not immersive, when you start a scene you need at least some description.

>>21718591
I'm just going to rewrite and format. It probably won't change very much.

"Savages on 42nd street. Ninth time this week."

"Come again, sir?"

"Savages. 42nd street. Ninth time. 'Come again?' What's there to understand?"

By now, Bentley knew better than to keep prodding once the Inspector started to get agitated. It wasn't necessarily that he feared the man's hardness: far from it, in fact. Working with men for whom working with men had proven intolerable was his precise area of expertise and the very reason the Protectorate had relegated this assignment to him specifically.

The Inspector was of the variety who excelled at his narrow area of specialization, but who's aggressive nature often caused him to have issues with compliance or insubordination. In the older days of work and of hierarchy, the King or Pharoah of some far-off world would have beheaded one of his kind, and even in the most romantic heights of the industrial age, they'd at least have kicked him from his position. Alas, this was the future, and those time-honored traditions of humanity's past were not only recognized for their barbarity and wayward cruelty, but primarily for their inefficiency: a cardinal sin in the New Age.

"Look, kid. I'm sorry, but you gotta pull your head outta your ass sometimes. I can't do all your thinking for ya. This city is crawling with savages-all sorts of vermin. You just got here, and you need to wise up. I know they sent you in because they think I'm a Section 70. They don't know jack shit, and now you're stuck with me. I don't like it anymore than you do, but you're going to figure out fast why the fuck it is that I'm this way."

This was unexpected but didn't hit Bentley with any sense of shock. Every difficult man broke in somewhat idiosyncratic, subtle ways. One of the more common methods developed by the Protectorate included exploiting an emotional band with the employee developed over time. This was the original plan for the Inspector. Through analysis of his profile, it was been prejudged that his apparent roughness was balanced out by a guarded pro-sociability. In other words, he had walls up containing something that could be used to mold him, if penetrated. However, it seemed this potential weakness within the 'hard man' was showing early signs of itself, because Bentley's presence in his work-day had provoked a warranted sense of fear.
So, there ya go. I don't even know what the fuck I just read or rewrote.

>>21724902
>working with men for whom working with men
is a cool line but kind of awkward in the sentence it’s used in, I think. it seems to me that the partner is being psychoanalyzed a bit much for an opening scene. some of that “gruff but had a heart of gold” stuff could come out later as the story plays out, assuming he’s a major supporting character. If he dies early or something then it would make sense to get right to the point. Also is there any scene description at all? where are they? What time of day is it? I don’t have any idea.

>>21724902
>>21725016
I think it should end the sentence rather than start it. Like
>His area of expertise was working with men for whom working with men had proven intolerable.

Man idk what fucking website I should use to self publish my work I feel like none of them are right

>>21725135
Self pub your unedited books to amazon like Call of the Crocodile. Meme yourself to being a famous author like F Gardner did it.

>>21725191
what about lulu? I lost my amazon account because my phone is fucked and everything requires phone confirmation now so I can't log in

>>21725217
Get a new phone? Call Amazon directly?

>>21725240
my net worth is 10 dollars, I can't get a new anything

>>21725249
Borrow a friend's phone? Your mom's house phone?

>>21725280
I have no friends and haven't seen my mom in 4 years. Still, I'm not giving up, I just wonder if lulu is any good because an anon posts flash lit in there. If you say it's amazon or nothing, then I'll save money for a new phone, but if lulu works, then I can start right now.

>>21725289
Right now you should try to get another job

>>21725314
Thanks, I'll see what I can do about that. But now I'm curious. Is there anything wrong with lulu?

>>21725407
amazon has roughly 80% marketshare for ebooks
how about your scratch that noggin extra hard to remember your password, but really with 10 dollars to your name you should be on the side of the road picking up cans

times new roman is the best because it gives the em dash so much power

>>21725477
>mfw I witness an em dash in times new roman
sasuga author-san

>>21725407
The reason why everyone is recommending it is because it is the biggest marketshare.
I haven't used either of them but it's not like you will lose money using lulu. It looks like it doesn't require exclusivity to use Lulu and Amazon doesn't require it for regular sales. So you could try Lulu then Amazon once you get your phone fixed. but if you do it this way you won't be able to use KDP Select (a program where you get paid about $.005 per page read that avg. to 300 words) as it requires a 90 day exclusivity agreement. Why would you want use KDP Select? because each Kindle Unlimited (a subscription where users get to read KDP select books for free) download counts as a book sold in the page rankings thus making your book more visible (easier to sell) on amazon plus tip (the small amount of money you get from people reading your KDP select book).

>>21725600
'it' in the first sentence being Amazon.
But maybe being the billionth book on the biggest book seller might give you less chances than the hundreds people on another site that only has a couple thousand books to choose from. So who knows?

>>21722509
Seems like a free-form outline editor can do most of what Scrivener can do.
I use TreeLine; it's free, open source, and does everything I want it to.

>>21722509
You get a lot of time to play with it during the trial, give it a shot. I ended up buying it now it's all I use.

>>21718196
Looks like it's egg on your face.

>>21719166
I would have put the paragraphs about the main character thinking who's behind this after they "finish" their conversation as his eyes wander towards the dead cow. It makes more sense to me for the main character to worry about the problem at hand at first and then as his mind starts to wonder, he goes on to theorize who could have done it.

Also it's spelled "Howard Hughes"

Besides that, it seems decent enough.

>>21719307
>>21719637
>>21719721
>>21719793
I think it's less about having to show detail and more about if the character that would be "narrating" would care or be the type of person to notice those details. If he was the guy in charge of keeping the food safe, for example, it could be a way of him already mentally changing the "inventory list" in his mind. He could be a guy that loves to eat and is dismayed by the waste of food, etc. If the scene is only meant to show that the food storage is compromised, maybe the list of produces wouldn't be necessary.

>>21720232
It's meant to be a showcase of social despair. The "tension" was the time until the rich family noticed their scheme, but the point of the movie was about how the poor have to leech of the rich that in turn only grow rich by exploiting the poor.

>>21719458
Fantasy stories, character driven narrative and pregnancy themes.

>>21719640
I mostly write fetish stories, so I spend some time laying down in bed and thinking up a scenario that gives me a great boner. Then I have to figure out how to create a story around that scenario I thought up. After that, I figure out what type of characters I want to see interacting together and try to write it as closely to those characters' personalities as I can and usually the scenarios progress organically after that.

>>21722390
Maybe. I am not on my PC at the moment but I will find it when I come back home.
>>21722462
Bastard.

>>21719722
Can you be more descriptive on how repugnant eating his own shit is? Just describing to me that he hates doing that is kind of shallow. You could write down him doing something and then feeling hungry. He knows what's coming up, but he tries to delay it for as long as he can.

Then you describe his revulsion, shitting and then grabbing the shit, the smell almost always making him puke every day, but the growing dread of him becoming more and more used to eating shit. Biting on the shit, how the texture, taste, smell, everything repulses him, but he has to eat it, otherwise he dies of malnutrition. The hate, regret, the gut twisting as he does it.

You gotta sell the feelings if you want to be gross like that.

>>21724240
Ah, a Buddhist fable, very deep.

>>21724240
ancient outside force A threatens his NEET life and other ancient outside force B intervenes, but due to cosmic politics the intervention is indirect. Your protagonist is given fabulous cosmic powers and an ornery guardian spirit that forces his lazy ass to be a hero.

MC proceeds to use the power of his laziness as motivation to resolve conflicts efficiently.

>>21726137
He's scavenging for the commune, so I wanted to blend together food that would have to be junked alongside food that could still be used as a bit of a decision making process. Also the idea of a fat neckbeard zombie eating cheese sauce makes me smirk, but I couldn't just have that detail in there and nothing else.

>>21726233
I can see it working, but just the snippet you gave doesn't give the proper pacing. You could have had that "thought" be a conversation with the female character.

>"So, anything we can use?" The woman asks, looking at the food spread around the floor.
>The man crouches down, grabs a bit of the grain, and checks mentally what is still edible
>"We'll have to leave whatever this fatso touched" the man says as he kicks the corpse "Can't risk tainting the food or anybody back at the commune..."

And then you go through the food list as he stuffs it on the plastic bag. And I didn't even register the zombie visual you were going for, you might want to describe it more or play up the sound effects, gorging sounds as this zombie shoves cheese down his gullet, thr packets popping as he squeezes them aggressively

>>21721579
I think if you're that worried about the comedy working, it might not be your strong suit for now. You can work around this, though. Try incorporating humor through absurd situations rather than Marvel quips. A lot of time humor comes pretty natural if you just make characters either misunderstand each other, have absurd takes on stuff, weird characters, etc.

If you get a "quirky" vibe from your premise (which it does give it off) try and make it zany and off the wall absurd. Just don't try too hard to make it funny because then you risk over doing it. I'd rather have absurd than failed comedy. Good luck

Do you all think this joke is too obvious?

[...]
And so, Luis and I started checking room after room. We rotated around one another, keeping watch and sticking guns into bathrooms just to be sure. All the way through the science wing of the building we didn’t find any more bodies, then we made it to the Social Studies department. Or maybe this school called it history or civics. I don’t know. I just know that above the lockers were a bunch of cartoon posters attempting to meme about various historical subjects. Clearly the teachers had wanted it to be a fun experience for the students.

I don’t think the other black-clad intruder found it a fun area of the school. It certainly expanded his mind however. Took it from inside his skull to some thirty feet further down the hall. This one still had a rifle in his grasp, and I realized the knife-victim had been unarmed.
[...]

>>21721579
Also, not to burst your bubble or anything but there's some fantasy works that have used that situation. One fantasy series actually has it as the main premise (it's called 'The Coward' by Stephen Aryan, if you wanna research it) except it's not a dragon.

However, your angle with the con artist thing is something that I haven't seen done, desu. Maybe make him con different kingdoms by him making up fake prophecies for himself to fulfill? I dunno. I think it has potential.

>>21721579
Genuine advice: Watch Ringo.
It's basically the same premise but a western.

>>21723266
>>21723069
Bingo. But again, to me that is the bare minimum, at least for plot driven fiction. You have to look to other places other than the mainstream to actually get practical advice. For example, a goal for your character is key but it won't matter to your reader if the scene isn't set properly or if the character isn't relatable or if the dialogue feels stilted, etc.

>>21726338
RANGO. I meant RANGO.
Phoneposting, not even once

>>21726398
God damn it anon I was already trying to pirate some random ass mid-tier western from the 60s.

>What a strange sight. The leather dwelling had a rounded front with a large cylindrical tower attached on the side stretching towards the canopy high above. From what I could gather, three strips bounded together tightly through braided rope that did not leave a single crack all around. The entirety of the walls of the home was essentially one solid piece. Upon further inspection I noticed the walls were tied down to a solid piece of rubber shaped like a foot. Grandma lived in a very large shoe.

Could you picture a giant boot so I could get rid of the last sentence?

>>21718190
I have a few ideas that I would like your guys's input.

It's essentially a fantasy world that's fragmented, so that each fragment of the world has created its own ecosystem and races. The only way to travel through these fragments is through using a magic that is running scarce. This opens up endless possibilities of situations I can put characters in since there are so many different worlds inside this world.

Do you guys have any idea how I could make it all cohesive even amidst the different things? I have an overarching story and have a lot of stuff planned but there's so many ideas I could use I dunno how to make it coherent. I'm considering making it almost episodic, where the characters go from world to world facing different situations and then slowly tie everything together.

What do you guys think?

okay...
how to FUCK do I market my book

>>21726478
put a cute girl on the cover!

>>21726478
Send me 20 bucks and I'll spam it on every /lit/ thread

>>21726454
I'd say it's a bit hard to picture with just a description. You are describing it as someone seeing it from inside, right?

For posting a story on RR, is it better to have a novel with one overarching plot posted in chapters or to do a serialization with multiple different arcs that you can keep going for a long time? Kind of like doing either a movie or a tv show I guess.

>>21726460
That's just Alara from the MTG franchise or several other settings with similar premises. Sure, it's a cool idea, yes, but I think you need more than that for a proper story.

>>21726539
Serialization, no contest. You won't lose readers if you have clearly delineated volumes, as the size supports that.

Also, some further tips:
>drop at least like, 10k words of content right away so new readers can get hooked. Don't do this ALL AT ONCE, space out chapter releases by like three hours at least.
>Don't write gay male romance, RR doesn't like it. Lesbians, however, are likely to go over well.
>the term for a fic that isn't litrpg but still has progression is "Progression Fantasy"
>Shove the most important tag into the title in square brackets, readers are lazy retards and don't check the actual tags. Example: "Mr. Floyd's Fantastic Fentanyl Adventure in Another World [Alchemical Progression Fantasy]"

>>21726561
>the size supports that.
SITE*

>>21721579
You should read Michael Swanwick's Dragons of Babel.

>>21718190
Writing sci-fi-fantasy. So I've introduced my character. She's a french girl. Introduced her first weapon. And I've given a few stats as to her inhuman power. I'm thinking to introduce the secondary characters now and showing them sparring as to truly show power instead of telling. What does /lit/wg/ think? Should I do this next chapter or in the same chapter as her introduction?

>>21726478
Isn’t it obvious at this point? Copy Call of the Crocodile.

>>21726598
I'm not schizophrenic enough to spam this baord until I become a meme.

>>21726532
Outside

>>21726595
You need to give us more than that. What's the pacing of the story? Is she in a team? How relevant to the plot is it for these characters to interact or know her powers or interact with them?

>>21726657
I think if you mentioned the stitching of the walls tying itself to the sole would make for a clearer description as a shoe. The term "stitching" is something that really indicates to me clothing and similar accessories.

>>21726542
That's just a basic skeleton of the premise. There's a lot I left out just for the sake of not giving too much info but think Zelda: Wind Waker, mixed with Ezekiel and Revelations from the Bible, His Dark Materials and Watership Down.

My question was more geared towards ideas on how I could build a cohesive story arc out of a world made up of random worlds and tie them together.

>>21726664
>What's the pacing of the story?
1. Intro of the characters and the main enemy faction from 1-2 (Codex entries in between)
2. The rest of the chapters will follow the team during warfare.
2. Chp 3-5 will increase intensity (Light Fighting)
3. Chp 5-8 (Heavy Fighting)
4. Chp 9-12 (Super Heavy Fighting)

She is in a team and they have roughly the same powers.

>>21726680
Thanks. I tried avoiding using sole, heel, toe, and words that a shoe actually uses, but I guess there's no way around it

how do you live with the shame

>>21726701
have a protagonist with a motivation

>>21726708
Then in this context, it makes sense, sure. Maybe use this sparring to showcase how every member uses its power in a different way, how the way they use their powers showcases their personalities, etc. Classic scenario.

>>21726701
Create an unified mythology. Think up how these worlds were separated or how the people from these worlds think this happened and create this shared mythology with each world having a different interpretation on how that happened and how this belief shaped their culture and such.

>>21722390
Here it is. I don't have much of story put on words yet.
But before you read it, I can't promise you the grammar won't be absolute dogshit.
I am functionally illiterate so I can't really tell.
https://pastebin.com/z483rtCt
I'm trying to improve if it makes the sacrifice sting any less.

>>21726861
Everybody has a slow day. Show us the monthly earnings.

>>21726914
no (its the same)

Hey, I'm the guy that mentioned writing fetish stories in the previous thread. I managed to fix my PC and I'm ready to share:

https://pastebin.com/LeTTHEeY

This is the start of one of the several stories I'm working on, but it does not have the fetish content just yet. I just want to get some general writing tips.

>>21726909
This is a good one. Thanks anon.

>>21726460
Sounds like Stargate.

>>21726454
No. Start from the rubber foundation. Say there's a leather hut in front. In the back there is a three story tower with interlacing ropes on one side. Done.

Describe it the way your eyes would move over it.

>>21726951
What fetish is it. Do you write piss fiction or some shit.

>>21721430
>>21721436

>>21727016
Preg stuff.

>>21726905
I appreciate it chap

>>21726951
I mean, I'm not here to proofread you. And I'm no expert on this myself. But I think your introduction is serviceable, although maybe you could deliver the exposition dump at the beginning a more natural way.
Also small nitpick, but this is a problem I also deal with so I'm more sensitive to it. You have some redundancies in your prose.
>appropriate for the daily work she did every day
Mostly this, which activated the autism sensors and would live rent free inmy head if I didn't point it out.

Please have in mind I'm an amateur.

>>21726912
It could be executed much better I admit.
But I have hope this idea of mine will eventually blossom into something good.

>>21726861
One person bought all four of my available books last month, so at least someone out there likes what I write. But getting discovered by 1-2 people per year isn't very helpful.

>>21726561
>Shove the most important tag into the title in square brackets
I really wish the admins did something about this, it's so fucking retarded. You get not only tags, some faggots even include fucking plot synopsis in the title too. This is the one most annoying thing about RR, for fuck's sake

>>21727470
No matter how well designed a site is, some grinders will be there to try to optimize every little bit of it.

>>21727470
It's not harmful or obnoxious, and the mods understand the logic behind it. It's explicitly permitted, not just tolerated.

>>21727470
What's this RR site? Can't assoicate it with any of the ones I know.

>>21727490
royalroad
biggest western WN site

>>21727497
as in webnovel?

>>21727524
sort of, though WN is not a western site

>>21727478
>It's not harmful or obnoxious
Yes, it is. It looks ugly and unprofessional, clutters pages, hinders readability, and renders the whole tag system obsolete.
>mods understand the logic behind it
To get clicks at whatever cost, yes, it's not rocket science. They allow it because it'd take too much effort to do anything about it.

>>21719458
Kung Fu Panda 2 and Mad Max are the most recognizable

>hit 70k words on my 3rd manuscript
This will be the one, bros. This will be the one that gets picked up by publishers when it's finished.

>start deleting almost every sentence from paragraphs where my protagonist is not in the immediate presence of other characters
>story improves immensely
i'm figuring out the secrets bros

>>21727620
I don't get it

>>21718190
Titles for chapters. Yea or nay?

>>21727624
just try it

>>21727644
they're based

I want to organize my notes, ideas, lost chapters and all of that into a coherent narrative timeframe. Are there tools for that besides just dumping .doc files into a hierarchy of folders?

I want to quickly visualize the pieces of my story and say to myself "yep this goes there" or "this is an action scene" or "this character appears here and there".

I'm using cherry notes but it has its limits.

>>21726701
>authors inspired by video games
the west is doomed

>>21727688
get over yourself you pretentious mongrel

Anyone knows a good or great novel that goes off on philosophical tangent all the times but still make it sounds natural and nice?

>>21727744
Just finished The Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells and it felt like an Orwell's novel.

>>21727644
Absolutely.

>>21727744
Why would you need that? All good novels do that through different means, be it plot, dialogue, monologue or character arcs.

>>21727644
Good idea. Especially if you use it properly and make all titles into promises for subverted expectations.

>>21727744
Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf has a "treatise" smack dab in the middle of the story if you are into that sort of thing.

>>21727744
Tristram Shandy is the novel you're looking for. It's pretty much the novel that conceived that kinda thing

>>21726149
I understood it, I just didn't enjoy watching it. I didn't like any of the characters and while that might've been part of the point, it's probably also why nothing in the film caught my interest. I'm the type of person to enjoy even mediocre and boring films for what they are, same with most media, though after the storm I was just waiting for Parasite to end. I'd probably call it the most overrated film of the past decade, aside from capeshit and The Wolf of Wallstreet.

>>21718190
Would a plot based on genetic engineering, be accused of promoting eugenics?

>>21727854
Depends what themes you use.

>>21727877
I am copying and pasting from the science fiction thread.
I don't know because it could be interpreted both ways.
Basically there is faction in my book that uses genetic engineering to make themselves look like supermodels, they work mostly as infiltrators in social and economic position so they use this as an advantage.
They are also extremely diverse in terms of race and ethnicity for pragmatic reasons(they are less identifiable that way).

>>21727885
I think that as long as you demonstrate some dangers of eugenics, regardless of how many advantages you include, you'll be fine. Try to examplify both sides of the argument.

>>21727760
>>21727782
>>21727809
Thanks fellas.
>>21727771
Good philosophy is untranslatable to the storytelling form because of its servitude to the concept, the novel is also subservient to its world; and I'm an in-between who can't make up his mind to write about one thing or the other. Stalling just made my brain accumulated too much cross-over between two fields that I can't write either of them practically speaking.
I'm looking for some sort of genre or format that allows for a rhythm that's comfortably slow enough for readers to not feel awkward being transitioned into a philosophical digression and also the form allows sufficient rationale (genre conventions, plot beat, worldbuilding senses,...) to make that digression.

>>21728012
Kinda sounds like you're limiting yourself with your own narrow biases desu senpai

>>21728063
"Narrow biased view" lol. Well, limitation is good so I'm fine either way.

>>21728063
There is more to life than lit kiddo. Have some respect for other disciplines.

>>21726861
At least you didn't waste $20 on 4chan ads and get 0 sales...

>>21726861
At least show month if you want to cry

>>21727687
scrivener

>>21727687
>>21728531
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baKCC2uTbRc

>>21728600
I do not wish to invest more efforts in a mere hobby, but if you want to exhaust yourself for a few bucks, you're free to do so.

>>21728600
research and taking notes are fucking work you loser
I'm not reading American Steam Locomotives from cover to cover for fun

Our Frank who art in hell,
despised be thy name.
Thy parents house come.
Thy kimono be donned
In the basement as it is in the garage.
Give us this day our daily bread, >>21728780
and forgive us our shitposting,
as we forgive those who shitpost against us,
and lead us not into plagiarism,
but deliver us from fanfiction.
For thine is the fake reviews and the meekating, and the bots,
from this thread to the next.

Amen.

one of my main characters has been behaving unethically for monetary gain throughout the book, but I need him to have a moral crisis / find a conscience, to make him try to fix his wrongs. what's a good way to do that, that won't make a reader roll their eyes?