/wg/ - Writing General

[Anonymous No.16745570]

birb edition

previous: >>16720921

Suggested books on storytelling:
>The Weekend Novelist
>Aristotle's Poetics
>Hero With a Thousand Faces
>Save the Cat
>Romance the Beat

Suggested books on getting your fucking work done you lazy piece of shit:
>Deep Work
>Atomic Habits

Other Resources
>General grammar/syntax/editing help
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
> When/where/how should I write?
https://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers
> What software should I write with?
https://self-publishingschool.com/book-writing-software-best/
> Amazon Publishing to make that KDP monie
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200635650
> Be like Charles Dickens and write serially
https://www.royalroad.com/
> Basic overview of the Screenplay format
https://screenwriting.info/

[Anonymous No.16745726]

A vaccine is coming out. All you guys can stop writing and go back to being wagies

[Anonymous No.16745731]

>>16745726
Jokes on you, I'm never getting a job. I'll stay in fantasy land forever

[Anonymous No.16745862]

>>16745731
Literally me. I'm 27. Is there hope?

[Anonymous No.16745868]

>>16745726
There are kids out there making thousands of bucks per month on patreon writing about anime boobies. For fuck's sake, I'd need only like $400 to survive. How fucking hard can it be, this isn't real man

[Anonymous No.16745875]

>16742920
I think for those chapters I was going for something lighthearted. I don't think too much about atmospheric stuff.

>>16745726
Jokes on you, I've been slaving away straight through this pandemic. I wish i wasn't included as a ""essential"" despite being fast food.

[Anonymous No.16745901]

>wanna shill on Royal Road
>am black and want a black MC
>afraid the weebs there are like 4channers and redditors and won't want to read a black MC
>make MC white
>the fun is sucked out of the whole writing process
Just another day in the life of a writer huh

[Anonymous No.16745909]

>>16745726
I didn't work before the pandemic, and I probably won't work after it.

[Anonymous No.16745934]

>>16745901
Nobody outside /pol/ seriously gives a fuck. Write the kind of a story you want to write, dumb frogposter

[Anonymous No.16745936]

>your country offers no future for writers, literally no normal person reads books
>want to start writing in english
>grammar mistakes all the time, lack of words, the only time you communicate in english is on 4chan
bros...

[Anonymous No.16745944]

>>16745901
Honest question;
Why does it matter?
If the race of your character is so interchangeable, then what does mentioning it even matter?
Or are you afraid white people can't relate to liking basketball and fried chicken?

[Anonymous No.16745982]

>>16745901
>MC has to be black
Why?
Im black and the best way I can describe my protags is "irish elves"

[Anonymous No.16746027]

>>16745936
Read books in English, watch movies and TV shows without subtitles, play games, study. I can warmly recommend this excellent book called Painless English for Speakers of Other Languages, which covers all the essentials in one tight, easy to understand package.
https://www.amazon.com/Painless-English-Speakers-Other-Languages/dp/1438000022

[Anonymous No.16746079]

I just realized that I'm writing an isekai. I didn't mean for this to happen; it's not a power fantasy, I swear. In fact, it's about as far away from empowering as it can get.

[Anonymous No.16746145]

Critique pls

Her face scrunched in maddening red and the crook spat on the plastic ground. A hidden panel sprang upward and revealed a three-barrelled turret-like mechanism from its hood, which immediately boomed radiant and colourful beams; “A genetic disturbance in her makeup had led to this problem. The solution can be erected after the abortive procedure.” The car reported. Elizabeth remained still, with a slight smile smeared with the streaks of tears, as vivid images flashed across her mind. “A mind wipe is also possible: you could join the collective consciousness – to be one with them, as you have always wanted, Elizabeth.” It whispered.
“Yes.” She drooled.
“Get in: it will be over soon.” The machine said.
Casually, Elizabeth strolled to the car, ignoring the soft beats against her stomach. “Yes.” She sighed. The sky drew closer until the craft, its bodywork thickening with metallic sheen to absorb the Sun’s heat, had ascended above the rear of the building.
“Why can’t I have a baby?” She asked.
“It is not right for a genetic inferior being to exist.” The hovercraft replied. It dived in front of the Correctional Facility, emerging out of the sky and into the shade like a home-sick bat. Elizabeth stood in front of the entrance as it merged into the door she had stained earlier, and she stared deeply into the black abyss.

[Anonymous No.16746191]

>>16746145
I liked it.
Started very surrealist, and sank into sci-fi.
Good imagery, and lucid descriptions.
Keep up the good work, anon.

[Anonymous No.16746202]

>>16746191
Oh wow thank you man, will do!

[Anonymous No.16746280]

[Anonymous No.16746287]

>>16746280
Is that character perchance an African-american?

[Anonymous No.16746289]

>>16746280
Couldve been funny, had it not been written in such a retarded manner

[Anonymous No.16746291]

>>16745901
hey, it's me in reverse. Although I'm having a ton of fun writing all black characters.

How are you making MC white? I research black slang

[Anonymous No.16746308]

>>16746287
I think that's blackuca?

[Anonymous No.16746311]

>>16746287
No, both are British Black. I'm also pretty sure that "African" as a term has fallen out of favor. I only see the media use the word Black. It's an interesting reversal from the 1960s, when the civil rights people argued that they weren't black, they were African

[Anonymous No.16746333]

>>16746308
Indeed it is Blackula

>>16746289
What about this? Less retarded?
>>16742457

[Anonymous No.16746354]

what do you write when you feel lonely?

[Anonymous No.16746358]

>>16746354
smut

[Anonymous No.16746397]

>>16746354
What an oxymoron because I'm always lonely. I write my chapters of course

[Anonymous No.16746482]

can someone critique my short story pls?

https://pastebin.com/bpwGG9ey

[Anonymous No.16746504]

>>16745901
No one cares if the MC is black. Just don't, you know, make him a giant stereotype.

[Anonymous No.16746712]

Is there a bigger sign of an amateur writer than uncontrolled detail? Like every block passage is just detail with a little narrative trickled in, with short dialogue, and then blocks of detail. It's always something with a sunset/the ocean/the sky, too.

[Anonymous No.16746799]

>>16746712
Because retards think you have to describe every single shit even if you don't want to or don't know what to describe, because "that's what writers do". I told my friend many times that stories should be fucking entertaining, not boring. Who the fuck cares about the colour of some skirt or when that mentally disabled bit part role girl had period and why she didn't sleep well four months ago when her boyfriend took her on vacation.

Just fucking write about what is happening and describe shit when you have to you fucking degenerates.

[Anonymous No.16746812]

>>16746482
I think you have talent, but you bog everything down in needless detail, which puts the story you're telling in the back seat, ex: she stared deeply into the black abyss. White light flickered above in the shape of an arrow like floating bulbs. / Her face scrunched in maddening red and the crook spat on the plastic ground. / ending: Elizabeth latched onto the door frame, scrunched her face, and sobbed into the eternal shade.

It's just like that for everything, and something that I would visualize and be awed at, is turned into mush, because it's big and bold just like everything else. There's also a vagueness to some of your descriptions, less eternal/abyss. You clearly have a big dictionary in your head, an adept talent for visualization. But look, it's almost like every passage is a bogged down sequence, and if I were to look at the sequence of events from a top down view, I don't think much actually happened. You're skilled, but without balance (normal phase)

[Anonymous No.16746838]

>>16746482
>>16746812
Another thing, just remember you're telling a story, people aren't reading your work because they want to read about neon lights and characters crying into the eternal abyss, not everything needs to be floating or pulsating or azure.

[Anonymous No.16746978]

Powerpoint/Google Slides is great for outlining. List each chapter as a slide and use bullet points to detail everything that happens in the chapter.

[Anonymous No.16747005]

>>16746838
>>16746812
Can you tell me how I can fix my writing? Does the answer lie in creating a more detailed outline? This was my outline. Would expanding upon each plot point, as well as toning down the adjectives, improve my storytelling? I have always had the problem of meandering. i think it might be because I don't a fully realised character arc.

[Anonymous No.16747019]

>>16747005
wtf
do people really do this? I just write things

[Anonymous No.16747065]

>>16747005
>Does the answer lie in creating a more detailed outline
No. You need to add detail where you need detail, and you need to omit where you need to omit. Your primary focus should be getting the story across. Flowery phrases here and there are great, but if they inhibit understanding of the plot, cut or parse them down. People want the who, what, where, when, why. Not amber waves of grain.
The thing that would fix your story would be actual dialog. But that would require another character, and not elizabeth yelling at herself, which would drastically change the story.

[Anonymous No.16747101]

>>16747005
What's the benefit of getting this detailed in a plan? Surely at that point you might as well just have written the scene.

>>16747019
I've never seen anything this detailed. Usually I write a few hundred words of outline to plan before starting and then write 5 words to summarise every chapter as I go before writing said chapter.

[Anonymous No.16747112]

>>16745868
Good job anon, you're finally getting it. You have more talent than anime boobie kid, go write the greatest rack of all time and bury yourself between two fat stacks of cash.

[Anonymous No.16747159]

>>16747005
Can you sum up for us what the story is about, and then tell us what kind of story you're trying to tell? What's the point of it? I honestly think it's because you lack a direction, and that's ironic because you're describing every action like a screenplay.

[Anonymous No.16747285]

>>16747005
It took you more than 84 words to list what would be written in 84 words.
What are you doing?

[Anonymous No.16747380]

>>16747112
Link to anime boobie kid's patreon? Now I'm curious

[Anonymous No.16747396]

>>16747005
what the absolute fuck

[Anonymous No.16747427]

I'm proud of myself as a writer. Without flattering myself too much, I have gotten so far in my craft without any support, sabbaticals, industry connections, or funding. I do other shit for work. And yet I persist in the face of adversity, laboring with sustained intensity despite my obscurity, and to spite an indifferent, biased world.
I am unflinching and resolute in this matter. I will see it done.

[Anonymous No.16747431]

>>16747005
>3 acts for a 1k word story
wew

[Anonymous No.16747445]

>>16747427
how do i get money for writing random shit?

[Anonymous No.16747481]

>>16747427
Does living with your parents while being a neet count as support?

[Anonymous No.16747494]

>>16747380
No you must ascend and make your own anime booby page
With good plot and structure
and inverted nipples!

[Anonymous No.16747554]

>always told to show, dont tell
>everyone who reads my stuff never pick up the subtle clues and hints I sprinkle through my stories
Literally no winning with this

[Anonymous No.16747588]

>>16747494
Should I legitimately do this? I've seen a lot of anime, have boob related fetishes so I can write it convincingly, and can write well. It shouldn't be hard writing a 1.5k story a week about something like Haruhi causing Mikuru's breasts to expand. Then I can open commissions.

[Anonymous No.16747603]

>>16747494
> inverted nipples
Who would like something so genetically abhorrent?

>>16747588
BEGONE FROM HERE

[Anonymous No.16747624]

>>16747554
Sometimes "show don't tell" is valid, but most of the time it's just an easy critique people use to get out of actually paying attention to your story. Something you'll learn very quickly, is that the vast majority of critiques are shit, they don't actually want to make your story better, and it's just projection- worst of all, is if it's in a classroom setting where critiques are mandated to pass the class, and so people will talk just to talk. If you want, I can critique it and give you my thoughts.

[Anonymous No.16747653]

>>16747159
In the far future where mass sterilisation has been embraced by society, a young, smart outcast discovers that she is pregnant. She becomes physiologically averse to the prevailing anti-depressants on the market, and thus seeks alternatives through back street channels because of the intolerant pain of existence. However, she arouses the suspicious of her neighbours and is reported to the authorities, who begin to monitor her and begin to suspect that she is not “healthy”, as her anguish deepens and troubles those around her. The authorities capture her, subject her to an abortion and lobotomise her.

[Anonymous No.16747656]

When do you recommend editing? Right now I just keep on writing with confidence without growing obsessed over the state of my novel because I keep in mind that editing will fix all rough ends. However, I don't know how far into it I should go before I edit. I've thought of carrying a space of two chapters between what I'm writing and what I'm editing, for example, editing chapter 1 after I'm done writing chapter 3, and so forth. Does this system run contrary to common sense or personal experience, or is it a sensible idea?

[Anonymous No.16747678]

>>16747653
Are there any people who unironically enjoy things like this?

[Anonymous No.16747692]

>>16747653
See, I think that has the potential of being a good short story. What I'd recommend, and this is going to suck, is that you rewrite the story from scratch with only what you just wrote in mind, toss away the outline. Everything you do should be in the service of materializing this story, when you're done, go back and add in the details/scenes you think would enhance the reader's understanding of what this smart outcast is going through.

[Anonymous No.16747694]

>female writers tend to choose grammatical terms that apply to personal relationships, such as "for" and "with," more frequently than men do.
>"Women have a more interactive style... They want to create a relationship between the writer and the reader."
>Men, on the other hand, use more numbers, adjectives and determiners--words such as "the," "this" and "that"--because they apparently care more than women do about conveying specific information.
Are the differences in writing style between the sexes a myth or real?

[Anonymous No.16747700]

>>16747678
Ehh, it's like "Unwind" but far more specific, it would have an audience.

[Anonymous No.16747706]

>>16747656
After your done with the book. You don't want to spend a day editing a scene to perfection only to realize that you have to cut that scene because it makes no sense.
If your doing the royalroad thing though, I would say whatever random number of chapters. If you feel like you know where the story is going in three do three.

[Anonymous No.16747737]

>>16747706
My initial plan was to edit once I was done with the book. I don't intend to publish this periodically; I want a whole unit before I even consider exposing it openly. I was just wondering what was the best method to make editing as little grueling as possible. I have finally gotten comfortable with writing, but editing is something I have little to no experience with, so I'd like to make it as easy for me as possible.

[Anonymous No.16747746]

>>16747694
I don't know: I'm a man and I try really hard to portray emotions and how they influence thought, but also care a lot about making the thought process of my characters seem somewhat reasonable. I do also like interacting with the reader, throwing questions and such, but that might be a result of me enjoying women's writing and having taken influence from it.

[Anonymous No.16747780]

Anyone else feel that their writing is not very good, but keeps putting their faith into their editing to make something readable out of what they're doing?

[Anonymous No.16747807]

>>16747780
The vast majority of writer's aren't getting published, most will drop out in despair and then think about it for the rest of their lives. I don't know how old you are, but it generally takes author's until their 30's to get published, some in their 40's. I'm not sure how many novels or short stories you've written, but your expectations have to be tempered in the decades, not what you're working on right now. What you need to do, is learn from completing stories, complete a novel, then do an essay/journal about where you fucked up, and where you can get better, you'll absolutely see it afterwards. it's just going to be a-lot of work, if you're an amateur writer on your own, editing isn't going to make your work publishable.

[Anonymous No.16747814]

>>16747380
>>16747494
I think he means Everyone Loves Large Chests? That's the first thing that comes to mind anyway.

>>16747656
Since I'm serial writing I usually do edit passes after I finish a chapter, or multiple if I wrote more in a few sittings. In most other cases I think you would do volumes or entirely of a book.

Expanding on serial-wise, some might even edit as they start releasing their buffer chapters one-by-one or thrice, and rotate between publishing edited chapters and editing new ones, and writing new chapters in-between.

[Anonymous No.16747847]

>>16747807
I'm 22. I don't have much hope to be published, to be honest, but I'm having fun with what I'm writing and I hope that the end product will be something worth reading. When I said "make something readable" I wasn't talking about doing something that's worthy of publication, but rather literally what I said; worth reading. If I fail at getting it published traditionally, I might just self publish so that it's not left to rot in my shelf. Right now I see this as a hobby, but one that has sent me to bed feeling incredibly satisfied every night I was able to add a few hundred words to my project.

[Anonymous No.16747848]

>>16747678
I don't, I read books and write to escape from my life. I don't want to read about constant suffering, that would be retarded.

[Anonymous No.16747854]

>>16747847
I think what you're looking for is marks of progress, then? Honestly, just write a novel, finish it. Don't get caught up on individual paragraphs, you need to look at your story from the view of something observing a finished product, and then do your post-mortem there, at that point, you'll see every single thing you need to work on to get better. Look, at the end of the day, no one here or in the world has an idea if what you're writing is readable if it's not out there, so if you want to share, then share it, I'd love to see it.

[Anonymous No.16747882]

>>16747854
It's in Spanish and I'm still finishing the first chapter. I'm a little ashamed of sharing a draft that I haven't even read, just written. I'm sure a lot of criticism would be pointing out mistakes that I could have seen myself. There would still be there a lot I would have missed, though.
My main concern is keeping a consistent tone and flow for the novel. I want the text to transmit specific feelings with a general mood in the background.
For now I'll hold off until I've given it a cursory read at least.

[Anonymous No.16747888]

Have you done all the exercises in the Weekend Novelist? The book is helping me a lot, especially with plotting, but the parts about character development seems unfruitful.

[Anonymous No.16747917]

>>16745570
How pissed would readers be if I were to suddenly change the story's genre and themes part-way through the story twice? Like, imagine a horror novel just abruptly turns into a romance and then turns into an biography.

[Anonymous No.16747929]

I looked at the three nearest short story competitions and literally all of the winning stories (first to third place in each contest) were written from the perspective of a woman, even if the author was male. Is the normal?

[Anonymous No.16747937]

>>16747929
Yeah, men writing woman is really big right now.

[Anonymous No.16747943]

How do I tell what level of writing my ability is? How do I tell if my writing is good or not?

[Anonymous No.16747949]

>>16747929
*Is this normal?

[Anonymous No.16747959]

>>16747943
If you have no one you trust to show in real life, post it on here and I'm sure a few good faith people will critique it.

[Anonymous No.16747980]

>>16747929
It works if the author claims to be non-binary.

[Anonymous No.16747984]

>>16747959
I have no I like in real life, is my issue. Shitty family, no friends, etc.

[Anonymous No.16747991]

>>16747984
I mean, there are places to post your work to you have nothing to lose.

[Anonymous No.16747998]

>>16747991
Yes, I'll look into those. I'll post my work here next time I have something I'd like to share. Thanks, anon.

[Anonymous No.16748004]

>>16747929
>try yourself in a short story competition because bored
>write a nice short story, it's pretty good, ask your editor friend for critique, edit some things and send it
>be sure you'll win
>the winner (a girl) is some retarded story written by a teenager with dumb pseudointellectual words and random sentences that make no sense but look smart
>actually it's not even a story, it's a story first but halfway turns into random philosophical sperging about how the greatest things are achieved quietly and other shit like that
Short story competitions are fucking rigged.

[Anonymous No.16748014]

what do you guys do for character names? im very picky about them and i dont want native names cuz it doesnt mesh well with english and i dont want english names cuz it feels too english or american. im looking for something in a non specific setting. i like color names like teal or cyan. i dont want wierd made up stuff if it sounds made up. i like finnish names but i already ran out of most that i like in my first paragraph and those characters arent gonna return.

[Anonymous No.16748019]

>>16747929
Just go to your local barnes&nobles and look see their "featured authors" or "staff picks", it's basically all women, poc, or lgtb people. Lefties ruined this field for us.

[Anonymous No.16748024]

>>16748014
Etymology and onomatopoeia

[Anonymous No.16748138]

>>16748014
I hate names. For main characters I'll think for a while and come up with something decent, but for most side characters I'll literally just open up one of those random name generators and pick the first one that sounds good. I use www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ because it has a lot of options for what nationality you want the names to be, from American to Afrikaans.

[Anonymous No.16748206]

>>16747694
> women like to use prepositions and men like to use determiners
I can't imagine why sex would change how people use basic grammatical elements. I can make up bullshit like this too

> Trannie writers tend to use relative clauses. These class tend to begin with that, which, who. They want to become the opposite gender, and this reflects in their writing. The relative clause modifies the main clause, much as the furry faggot wishes to modify his own identity.
> Cis men, on the other hand, are confident in their own self. They tend to use conjunctions between two independent clauses. Common conjugation words are: and, or, but, then.

[Anonymous No.16748276]

>>16748004
Now you have to show us the winning short story

[Anonymous No.16748339]

Noob here, what's the path to getting published in a big-name magazine? Do you have to win a few smaller competitions first?

[Anonymous No.16748351]

Anonymous Sun Nov 8 18:25:19 2020 No.16740161
File: 204 KB, 1031x700, image.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] [report]
16740161
Quoted by: >>16742516
The turd in the toilet took two seconds to tear apart. My fingerprints rilled with shit. It was supposed to be inside, but it was all doo doo. I glare at grandma. 'Why?'

Next thing I know, I'm at Romanelli's Scrap Metal arguing with handless cashier over how much grandma's walker is worth. 'Wha? This is aluminium alloy—no, I don't know with what!'

Back at the house grandma beckons. 'It is in my cunt' she whispers against my ear. So I guide her in the bathroom, undo her pants, and help her sit on the toilet. With a breaststroke motion I part her knees, her skin oldwoman soft. I feel my way into her melanin drained bush, of course she's self lubricating, why not? Middle and ring finger, searching. Nothing. Has she been lying? Is she delusional? Insane?

My name is Alex Trebek, I may have all the Answers, but the real Answers are the Questions.

I was in DC all week. I got to sit next to Pope Francis today flying into JFK. Doing the NYT crossword, he turns to me, 'four letter word for a woman, ending in 'u-n-t'?'

'Aunt'

'Do you have an eraser?'

Now, in my voice: The Answers are the Questions.

And you probably don't believe I'm actually Alex Trebek. Which is just as well.

The plane passes through the morning sea mist, the mist silent, all encasing, heatshimmer off the engines. Pope wrote 'cunt' and one of us is an index of magic, tools, functions, gossip, and a nexus of tickles. And one of us lies about kissing babies while going around kissing babies.

An O-ring, also known as a packing, or a toric joint, is a mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus—it is a loop of elastomer with a round cross-section, designed to be seated in a groove and compressed during assembly between two or more parts, creating a seal at the interface. And a ring of opinions? Well a pinion: gear with a small number of teeth designed to mesh with a larger wheel. Where do you get yours?

You need to know the Answers to Questions you don't know the Answers to.

Pope wrote 'cunt' and maybe it's C-rings that are the problem. Why do women like being tied up?

My thoughts are like chewing on tinfoil.

[Anonymous No.16748547]

>>16748138
thank u. great resource

[Anonymous No.16748586]

Are there any examples of magic-less stories in magical worlds?

[Anonymous No.16748632]

Every day, Martin goes to the gas station to buy a chaw. He dips his oilskin hat on the way in, nodding to the withered Aunt Jemima at the counter. The smell of tobacco and jingle of video poker machines forms a familiar ambience and fragrance that our little monkey, Martin, reenters as though it were a rain forest. He mumbles to the cashier, pockets the day's prize, and long-leggedly saunters home. Past the highway, past the virgin, manicured lawns of cemeteries, past the lots of BBQ restaurants and other sinkholes. Home is a mildewed, mossy shack out in the sticks, where the reception's good and the reception's even worse. He performs his tobacco ritual, enters his home, and opens a can of beer. The TV offers nothing remarkable, almost as sub-par as this writing currently is. But Martin knows this; he is aware of the author's shortcomings, and begs the reader understand the author, despite his "poor way with words." And who is the reader to deny? After all, he is a guest in Martin's house, and if Martin say's it's so, then it's so.

A Cadillac El Dorado languishes in the yard, raring to go after 30 years of flat-tire dreams. I must attend to the reader's concerns first, before continuing- I did mean El Dorado, and not Eldorado. In fact, Martin insists that this is the case.

Martin's ghost has been restless as of late, the body he was evicted unceremoniously from lies in the upstairs bathtub (or so he tells me). He appears slightly upset that I lied about his earlier promenade, and then lapses into hillbilly musings at the dearth of ghostly gas stations from which to acquire tobacco. He has no family, nor does he care.

His box is stuffed, stuffed with mail, and the remains of his life clutter the house. He didn't even extinguish the lights before passing. He tells me that he did not want to "get scared" after death, recalling fears of the dark as a child, but I asked him then how the Hell did you get along with the South? Soon, people will be looking for him. When his trails go cold, and the dough stops floating in and out, investigators will come looking for this pulse of society gone silent, but nobody else. His funeral will be a clinical affair. His gravemates? Dim.

And so he confides to me, on the edge of his mattress sitting, and weeping, and I assure him that I will write an elegy to read at his funeral. It's gonna be big. A real epic. His eyes widen, but the page leaves no room.

[Anonymous No.16748645]

>>16748206
The difference is that those aspects were hypothesized and tested in a structured experiment, and your conjecture is just random shit someone posted on 4chan.

[Anonymous No.16748653]

>>16748339
you either have to suck jewish cock or be ready and willing to suck jewish cock should the opportunity arise

[Anonymous No.16748661]

Great minds think alike

> The Black Vampyre and Other Creations: Gothic Visions of New Worlds

Discover the first Black vampire in literature, inspired by Polidori, and pay homage to the famous story-writing contest at the Villa Diodati, writing Gothic flash-fiction in a workshop led by Dr Kaja Franck (literary werewolves) and Daisy Butcher (botanical Gothic).

This online event will explore Gothic dreams of new worlds and the creatures that inhabit them, notably Mary Shelley’s plague world, John Polidori’s vampire, and the ghosts of World War 1.

Visit Polidori’s uncanny resting place in a virtual tour, in the same graveyard where Mary and Percy Shelley’s courtship found life, and contemplate Gothic new worlds via presentations and performances:

> ‘The Stories Are Begun’ with Marcus Sedgwick (novelist)
> ‘Gothic Afterworlds’ with Dr Karl Bell (historian)
> ‘The Romantic vampire and its Progeny’ with Dr Sam George (vampire expert)
> ‘Enlightenment and its Shadows’ with Dr Bill Hughes (Gothic scholar)

https://www.opengravesopenminds.com/the-black-vampyre-and-other-creations-2020/

[Anonymous No.16748672]

>>16748661
>vampire expert
what

[Anonymous No.16748686]

>>16748645
Did they find, within the brain, the exact cause of the male or female's predilection for using certain types of words, or is it just conjecture and "filling in the gaps with what makes the most sense" as scientists are wont to do? How many cases did they observe in their experiment? It's always hard to believe that "men use more of X words" if only 100, or 1,000, or 10,000 men are surveilled, especially due to the abundance of possible causes for such a thing.

[Anonymous No.16748708]

>>16748686
Google "Automatically Categorizing Written Texts by Author Gender" and look at who the (((authors))) are.

[Anonymous No.16748710]

>>16748686
>Argamon said it wasn't clear what psychological or sociological differences between men and women might explain the differences in their writing styles. "It's a subject for further research," he said.
>Argamon said his program correctly determined the sex of the author in 80 percent of the works it checked. One it missed was A.S. Byatt's best-selling novel Possession. The computer said it was written by a man; Byatt is a woman. Michael Frayn's science fiction tale A Landing on the Sun was misidentified as the work of a woman.
you can read more here
https://archive.is/S6T5R

[Anonymous No.16748737]

>>16748710
From now on, this test will be mandatory in all /crit/ threads and other such writing threads. If ever someone's writing dips into dangerously female territory, they must be shown the door

[Anonymous No.16748740]

>>16748672
I wonder if she'd fall in love with me if I showed her Blackula

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_George

[Anonymous No.16748814]

>>16748737
I found this and all the writing ITT is "male" for informal writing and "weakly male/European" for formal writing. I'm not convinced by its significance or value. It's like doing research on movie preferences and finding out that men like action movies and women like Disney.
> Good goyim, this is scientifically important, give us research money

http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php

[Anonymous No.16749023]

>>16748814
>Genre: Formal
>Female = 896
>Male = 903
>Difference = 7; 50.19%
>Verdict: Weak MALE
>Weak emphasis could indicate European.

How will Europeans recover?

[Anonymous No.16749320]

>>16745570
Halloa writers of /lit/
Please check out >>16741501 if you are interested in the newest lit collab: the annotated Moby-Dick

[Anonymous No.16750223]

Is it cringe to give your name to one of your characters?

[Anonymous No.16750229]

>>16747554
Showing v. telling isn't about subtly hinting at your Hero's past as an SS officer. It means 'show action, don't just describe a painting'
>The sun was bright that day. There was smashed glass around the body.
>Sunlight glinted off the smashed glass that surrounded the body.

[Anonymous No.16750273]

>>16750229
Not that anon, but I sort of get what he means.
Like, you might want to tell the reader,
>The victim collected glass objects. The fact that he was killed by having his head smashed with a glass vase is the definition of irony. Perhaps the killer knew him in person.
But that's telling, you can't say it. You just show the body and the shards of glass, you might observe there are a lot of glass objects in the house. But 90% of the readers will then miss the clue.

[Anonymous No.16750282]

>>16748004
>a person who actually has something to say wins the contest
whoa...maybe you learned something today. Maybe you didn't.

[Anonymous No.16750350]

>>16750223
yes

[Anonymous No.16750634]

>>16750273
But all of that should be explicit. Not with the author saying
>He collected glass and it is IRONIC that his head was caved in with a glass object
But a gumshoe novel dealing with a case like that would definitely tell the reader all those things through dialogue or the detective's thoughts via first person narration.
>"Strange business, Thompson. What do you make of it?" asked stone-faced McElvis. Thompson thought for a moment, watching the ash from McElvis' cigar drift down to land among the mess of blood, bone, and brain that stood for the stiff's cranium.
>"Crime of passion," Thompson said vaguely. The shards of glass scattered around the body caught the electrical light and made the body sparkle with unnecessary joy. "And all this glass," he gestured to the statues and the bowls, the furniture and the -- yes -- sexual paraphernalia. "Collector?"
>"Either that or he had a funny taste in decor," McElvis said, yellow smile oozing from behind his lips. "And he had enemies. Well known types, other billionaires, ex-flirts, the like."
>They looked on, side by side, as the geeks did their thing with the evidence.
>"Seems to me," McElvis said. "That people who live--"
>"Don't."
>"Seems to me," McElvis insisted, smile as big as ever, genuine mirth mixing with the cigar smoke, smothering the assembled. "That people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."
>In the silence that followed, Thompson turned to leave. Blood-smeared glass crunched under his shoes, and that was what pushed McElvis over the lip of decorum: he barked out his strangled laugh.Thompson heard him all the way until he was out of the house and into the warm L.A. night with the stars above glittering like glass shards on the black cloth of God's meal towel.

None of this has anything to do with telling v. showing, however. You can be as plain and unsubtle as you want, see above, and still show and not tell when it comes to describing actions, elements that compose the scene, emotions, etc.

[Anonymous No.16750920]

How do I make sure I'm not dragging out unimportant events?
I've been writing cringe scenes with overt second guessing by the characters.
They even feel like normies.
How do I make them quirky?

[Anonymous No.16750934]

>>16748653
I had that in mind from the beginning. My MC has a jewish name

[Anonymous No.16751144]

>>16749023
The virgin preposition fears the Chad determiner

Preposition
> female
> weak
> gay
> European
> only used by cucks who care about movement or relationship of things
> anti-Semetic

Determiner
> male
> stronk
> hetero
> American
> so alpha that it refers to things without even saying its actual name
> knows that Israel is greatest ally

[Anonymous No.16751185]

>>16750920
>How do I make them quirky?
Don't.

There is nothing worse than writers forcefully making their characters "quirky" in an attempt to make them interesting or """""""""unique""""""""".

If you don't naturally possess the ability to create an authentically quirky personality, then look for other ways of making your characters interesting. Any attempt at making them quirky will come across as cheap, insincere and, probably most of all, incredibly cringeworthy.

This "LET'S MAKE THEM QUIRKY!!!!" trope has flooded mainstream films and TV shows in the past decade or so and it makes me fucking sick.

[Anonymous No.16751203]

>>16751185
The characters are interesting but they seem to be fake

[Anonymous No.16751230]

>>16751203
Fake in what way?

[Anonymous No.16751244]

>>16751230
They act like insecure incels.

[Anonymous No.16751255]

>>16751244
How should they be acting then?

[Anonymous No.16751310]

Is it possible to write characters smarter than the writer?
I'm dumb as a brick, does this mean all my characters will be functional retards?

[Anonymous No.16751351]

>>16751310
You can read about real life smart people's strategies, like military generals or scientists, and have your characters do what they do

[Anonymous No.16751391]

>>16751310
Your only hope is to write characters so astonishingly retarded that it causes try-hard psuedo-intellectuals to speculate on the *actual* meaning behind your dumb as shit characters. With a bit of luck, one of them farts out a review that goes viral with like-minded morons and your book becomes a hit among woke yuppies eager to shell out money for your book just as long as it will help them in their desperate attempt to showcase their intellect to their fellow woke yuppies.

[Anonymous No.16751395]

>>16751391
Any example of this?

[Anonymous No.16751468]

>>16750634
I just think vehemently refusing to explain things in the narrative, and then having characters explain it in the dialogue anyway is the exact same thing, and doesn't remove why it's bad, any more than sweeping your garbage under the carpet is cleaning.

[Anonymous No.16751496]

>autoediting
>autocritiquing
the best part is they don't make the real editing any easier

[Anonymous No.16751544]

>>16748014
i thought about using common words like hill or cat, but i end up making up modified native-ish names. i try to avoid using names but i'm not good enough yet for that.

[Anonymous No.16751568]

>>16748632
i like it

[Anonymous No.16751706]

>>16748014
Jewish names work

[Anonymous No.16751810]

>>16751395
ur biogrify lol

[Anonymous No.16751829]

>>16745901
>>16745982
MELANIN BABY!

[Anonymous No.16751903]

>>16751468
>it's bad
It isn't. Maybe you're thinking of the kind of nuance that you get in the genre sometimes called serious literature, but you'd be hard pressed to show me an example where Poirot explaining his reasoning is Bad Writing.
In fact, I think you're missing the point entirely. It's not that explaining plot points is Bad -- which has nothing to do with showing/telling -- but that describing a scene like it's a painting makes for boring literature. Don't tell me the ground is arid, instead show me Hero watching the clumps of dirt crumble in his hand.

[Anonymous No.16752030]

>>16751903
>show me an example where Poirot explaining his reasoning is Bad Writing.
Well, that's not what we're talking about at all.

[Anonymous No.16752179]

>She rose when everyone had started dreaming, picked up the board, and left for the shore. The rising tide was raking black twigs and dead jellyfish onto the sand. Moonlight slashed like a knife and the water was as cold, but she felt her lungs lightened by the waves rumbling softly in the distance, dissipating into foam under her feet. A breeze made an old cut sting with salt and once again she saw the black expanse. She did not think about coming back.

It's 1,200 words. Any feedback, especially on plotting, is welcome.
https://pastebin.com/Ff0HGbXd

[Anonymous No.16752426]

>>16752030
Then please explain, anon, what are we talking about?

[Anonymous No.16752676]

What principles should an author follow in order to come up with a good title? Some book titles are so emblematic and interesting that they alone have gotten me interested in reading them. I'm a fan of books titled with a single name, such as Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary, Pedro Páramo, etc.

[Anonymous No.16752693]

>>16746145
It's bad. The description is muddled. For example, you tell us about the "plastic ground" immediately before saying a "hidden panel sprang upward", but actually the hidden panel was on an unmentioned car, and has nothing to do with the ground. Then there's the description of her face: first, it is "scrunched in maddening red", then it is a "slight smile smeared with streaks of tears", then she "drools". This is an absolute mess of different emotions, and by way of explanation, we get "vivid images flashed across her mind", without any indication what such vivid images are--totally unspecific.

On top of this, you use words incorrectly ("erected" and "genetic inferior"), and also redundantly ("smeared with streaks of tears", rather than "smeared with tears" or "streaked with tears").

[Anonymous No.16752702]

>>16752179
I have two hours of studying to do; once I'm done I'll try give your work a read.

[Anonymous No.16752721]

How do I edit my short story?

https://pastebin.com/bpwGG9ey

[Anonymous No.16752723]

>>16751903
>Don't tell me the ground is arid, instead show me Hero watching the clumps of dirt crumble in his hand.

Amateurs take this principle way too far and ironically end up with far more meandering exposition than if they had simply stated something.

[Anonymous No.16752762]

>>16752723
This. If something is unimportant just state it so only the important stuff has emphasis

[Anonymous No.16752815]

>>16752676
Think of something which has a rhythm to it or is fun to say. Iambic patterns usually help make something memorable, like "The Alchemist" or "The little prince" or "the death of Ivan ilyich" or "the richest man in Babylon" idk, the point of a title is to stick in someone's mind

[Anonymous No.16752834]

>>16752815
A portrait of the fartist as a young man

[Anonymous No.16752851]

>>16752426
Writer putting quotation marks on his info dump to look like he's showing instead of telling.

[Anonymous No.16752882]

>>16752723
Amateurs have all sorts of problems, but I've never seen this one myself. Amateurish descriptions fall in two broad camps:
1. Author describes superfluous elements, frequently under the guise of 'worldbuilding' (maybe this is what you mean. But if said description happens as action, it can at least give the paragraphs some pizzazz)
2. Author thinks the reader can see inside his mind, and either doesn't bother or can't pinpoint the few elements that would spark the reader's imagination
Describing too much in an interesting way is something I've seldom (maybe never) found in amateur prose

[Anonymous No.16752922]

>>16752762
If something is unimportant don't state it.
>>16752851
I'll give you that, but it's rare to find. Maybe in fantasy, and even then, the trick is to put the info dump as a reward for an action the hero undertook.

[Anonymous No.16752939]

>>16752723
>>16751903
>Don't tell me the ground is arid, instead show me Hero watching the clumps of dirt crumble in his hand.

There was a story some anon linked in an earlier thread, which began exactly like this, character crouching to feel the ground and saying, "the ground is dry." The most important paragraph of the story, the first line ever uttered by a character, all dedicated to soil composition. First showing it, then also telling it. Less than 100 words later, this information had already lost its relevance.

If it was your story, I recommend a revision

[Anonymous No.16752948]

>>16752922
>I'll give you that, but it's rare to find.
It's everywhere if you know to look for it.

[Anonymous No.16752959]

>>16752882
>Describing too much in an interesting way is something I've seldom (maybe never) found in amateur prose

If you think "picking up the dirt and seeing it crumble" is describing in an interesting way, you're probably still stuck in this flaw yourself. A very common flaw in amateurish writing is that, rather than state something succinctly so as to move on to the important and interesting content, the writer will construct events to convey information, such as having characters strike up a conversation which plainly serves no purpose except to hint at information the reader needs to know, or characters walking around interacting with objects purposelessly (such as picking up the dirt, something that very rarely happens in real life) so that the writer can "show not tell". You end up with entire scenes of exposition instead of a handful of sentences, because the writer thinks are being "interesting" by contriving roundabout ways to get basic information to the reader.

[Anonymous No.16752993]

>>16752721
How is my edit?

https://pastebin.com/E8MsmFze

[Anonymous No.16753058]

Paul kneels to the ground, feeling the crumbly dirt and wincing. "No," he thinks to himself, "if I do this, the voices in my head will think it unimportant." Paul anxiously steps behind a tree trunk, looking around for the source of the voices.

In the sky, a scrolling, scrub suit-blue page manifests, where nameless voices dissect his actions with clinical precision. Paul kneels once again, to a chorus of nasal "No"'s, so powerful an outcry that it ruffled the trees, sending a branch rocketing down towards his head.

The branch struck him soundly, and he lay, bleeding, upon the ground of crumbly dirt. "Cringe," he heard. He heard wafting echoes through his traumatic stupor, remarking on the "boring plot" or "why did you write crumbly dirt instead of showing Paul crumbling the dirt?"

As Paul fell in and out of consciousness, he saw strange shapes swimming in the skies- drawn, disapproving faces of authors etched in black and white, green, red-lipped ogres, the wide, devouring mouths of mealy-skinned men.

It all became a gas, and Paul drifted away, carried on the vapours of life, carefree as the day of his birth. A final voice sounded, then died out in his head- "why did you write 'vapours?' LOL are you a brit?"

[Anonymous No.16753338]

>>16752939
So the problems seem to be describing irrelevant shit and showing and THEN telling, which is the worst option of the three. See East of Eden for a first chapter about soil composition that is both important to set the mood and pulls the reader in.
>>16752948
Can't really think of an example except Wise Master sort of characters. But as I said, those might have been earned: if both Hero and reader have been waiting for a particular piece of information ('What is the Matrix?'), then after Hero goes through a couple of ordeals you can reach a good place to infodump. After all, everyone wants to know what the Matrix is. Just keep it snappy and in character.
>>16752959
Don't misconstrue me, anon, I'm not telling bushy eyed amateurs to go and find contrived ways to explain every little tidbit of information they can think of in their cute little amateur brains. If your story is about a New York yuppie finding a new meaning for life by volunteering, then do us all a favor and keep soil out of it. But if you happen to be writing about a cowboy whose water has just run out and there's seemingly nothing but desert in all directions, then I can think of worse ways than doing it than picking up a clump of dirt.
Remember that people read in order to feel. They won't give a low flying fuck about how important it is for Cowboy to get the Bad Guy unless they can feel along with the gunman. Showing, not telling, is the way to convey emotion.

[Anonymous No.16753366]

>>16753058
Boring prose. Try showing more instead of just telling us what happens. Plus, I think your character could really benefit from a goal. Voices in his head aren't a bad motivator (plus mental health is In this month), but I kinda feel like Paul is a bit thin, like he was made of straw or something. A man of straw, if you will.

[Anonymous No.16753400]

>>16753058
>It all became a gas
kek

[Anonymous No.16753437]

>>16753338
>bushy eyed
Pardon my ESLness

[Anonymous No.16754248]

Is everyone writing?
Why is the thread dying?

[Anonymous No.16754338]

>>16754248
nobody here writes, what gives you that misguided impression?

[Anonymous No.16754479]

>>16754248
I haven't been able to write the next chapter for the past 6 days. But with my self-imposed deadline coming up I will need to right now. I'll try to make it up this week by making it a goal to do 6k words or more.

[Anonymous No.16754510]

>writing first draft of novel
>feel things are moving too quickly
>don't see any way to fix it
I know I should just wait until I'm done with the first draft to worry, but I can't help myself. I'm powering through it, but when I'm not writing I'm worried about it.

[Anonymous No.16754594]

>>16745570
Excerpt from my diary that I was going to post in the cursive thread before it got deleted. Language is Spanish.

[Anonymous No.16754614]

>>16754594
Why would you post your diary, Anon? I'm curious, because I would hate for anyone to read my journal.

[Anonymous No.16754616]

>>16754510
Calm down; the good thing about writing a novel that's meant to be released as a unit is that you can go back and change everything. You might even add a new chapter in between two others. Drafting is giving yourself a rough sketch of the finished product. If it's rushed it can be fixed. The only reason you are concerned is because you want to be done as soon as possible and edit as little as you have to. Get that idea out of your head and realize that you'll have to refine your work as much as it takes, no more, no less. Keep your chin up and just focus on finishing what you're currently doing.

[Anonymous No.16754638]

>>16747588
Do it.

[Anonymous No.16754641]

>>16754616
No, I'm worried because the two characters seem to open up faster than I feel they should, but I don't know what would fill the space instead of them talking about what they talked about. Maybe it's just because I'm a fucking shut in who almost never talks to real people, but idk...

[Anonymous No.16754645]

>>16754614
Rereading my diary I liked that entry (also one of the few that also didn't have private information) and wanted to share it, also originally for them to rate my cursive.

[Anonymous No.16754659]

>>16754614
Why are you the only loser not posting?
Its great inspiration if you read it again after 2-3 months, my handwriting is barely legible

[Anonymous No.16754663]

>>16754645
fair enough. I haven't gone back and reread much, but I'm sure I'd cringe if I did. I recently started writing in cursive again. It's a lot better than my print was. You can see separate words more clearly, and sometimes it even looks nice and semi-decent. Still a mess tho.

[Anonymous No.16754678]

>>16754641
Have you considered the context in which they express themselves? It does depend on what kind of people they are. If they are opening up easily that is because they actually wanted to. If you feel they're going too fast, then you should make it hard for them to express themselves, make them reluctant to. Instead of opening up on their own, you should put them in a difficult situation that forces them out of their comfort zone. It can be carried out in different ways, such as introducing hardship and then relief; that might make it seem more natural.

[Anonymous No.16754704]

>>16754678
I guess I just imagined them sharing their grief over a few months instead of the first weekend they met. They both have a lot of dead people in their lives, and the one thinks they want to just shut out the world, but their actions are the opposite of that.

[Anonymous No.16754740]

>>16754659
Did you write it after waking up? It's hard to understand, but I like it because (I assume) it's genuine. In my case, all the feelings from the dream stick around after waking up.

[Anonymous No.16754753]

>>16754704
I think that, in order to produce that sensation of the passage of time, you might need to introduce a few arcs into your story. Shake your characters' world a little, bring forth new situations and people, have them unleashing their emotions more slowly. I recommend that you give the readers the sensation of emotional progress, and then deny it. To be more explicit, that a character is slowly getting out of their grief, but then they fall back into it. Make it seem like a struggle with tension, like a fight between two armies. You need to include both failures and successes. If you think that things are moving too fast, it's probably because you're making it too easy for your characters to change and improve. They need more obstacles, perhaps even spiral them down lower than they were at the start.

[Anonymous No.16754775]

>>16754740
It was a long time ago, like a couple of years back, but I remember that strange thing about it being that it all went away the instant I woke up. Usually I remember the feeling too.
That's another benefit of journaling, I can kinda remember the things that happened so long ago. Its great for having a logbook to look back on and give you ideas of certain feelings or events.

[Anonymous No.16754783]

>>16754753
I already know that's how the one is going to go, but it's seeing her go down that hole and wanting to help her that pulls him out of his. It's honestly probably not much of a problem because it all makes sense and feels natural, and this is just me being a sperg/control freak about it or something.

[Anonymous No.16754791]

>>16754783
It might be. If so, just focus on writing it and then analyze it carefully once you're done.

[Anonymous No.16754803]

>>16754791
Thanks for humoring me and listening to my bitching, Anon. You're the kind of bro these threads need.

[Anonymous No.16754815]

>>16745862
if you manage to make a decent book that will sell then maybe.
You can also just wage cuck for a few years, save up money to move to Vietnam since it's cheap af and live well for a decade or 2 while continuing your exploration of dream land

[Anonymous No.16754816]

>>16754775
I think so too. I like to draw as well if it is something important to make sure I will remember. This is her when she used to walk me to the bus in the morning when I went to work, me looking at her through the bus windows.

[Anonymous No.16754817]

>>16745901
>be black
>be incapable of writing without bringing up race
woah...

[Anonymous No.16754936]

>>16745901
what kind of a nigger writes? You're such trash you even failed to be black.

[Anonymous No.16754969]

How do you feel about your biographers publishing your 4chan posts, future famous authors?

[Anonymous No.16755006]

>>16754969
You mean, also my election day spam posts? If so, it'd be pretty hilarious.

[Anonymous No.16755027]

let's fucking GO.

[Anonymous No.16755031]

>>16754969
But.. but I THOUGHT THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ANONYMOUS!

Honestly, I'd be interested to read through my 4chan posts. It's the Twitter and Facebook posts that would worry me, but thankfully they were both shut down for wrong think.

[Anonymous No.16755040]

>>16754969
>mfw I'm revealed to be the infamous Bukowskiposter

[Anonymous No.16755149]

My name is Bongo. I'm one of those clowns that passes from elementary school to hospital door in the same day, down lanes of glue-glazed construction paper projects and Make a Wish letters written by children, some long dead, some still with us. How many motherly hopes, how many prayers, how many rare, fatherly tears must have been shed by those rumpled bedsides! I like to imagine that among the children I'll stand before today are numbered some of those still, little bodies I spied, small and lost in safari bedsheets.

It is far preferable to think of them as deathless, and standing before my classroom antics here, today.

I enter, affecting timidity, dimpling their faces as I gaze about the room with doe's eyes. I offer the teacher, a lovely, pear-shaped woman, a bouquet of flowers in a paper cone, a deceitful gift. I extract a flower from the bunch, pinning it to my hat. The class quiets down, and the teacher begins her questions. "So, tell the class your name, first." I gulp in apprehension, flashing my frightened eyes before looking down, mumbling "Bongo." "Bongo?" she asks amusedly. "Tell us Bongo, what do you do as a clown?"

"I do this," I say, and a jet of water spurts from the flower atop my hat, missing her. The class erupts in laughter nearing cheer, but she quiets it down with a good-natured smile. Their eyes fix on me, and I begin. "I am just a poor clown, here on this earth. I work at Circus X, and perform at events Y and Z..." I entertained them, and I gave them the old routine- calling shy children up to me, inquiring as to their names, embarrassing them, for sure, but leaving them all the more human for it.

The day grew long, and I was nigh ready to turn in. Something about the sky outside caught my eye as I was collecting my tricks and props- that lucid, strangely doleful twilight, tinged with hues of the leaving sun. A little shape in wrinkled garb peered with fierce, little eyes at me from the corner of the room, an intravenous drip towering by her like a jealous, older brother. The teacher's pit-like eyes transfixed me from above the surgical mask, every pore and hair pronounced by the arc lamps above. The rattle of wheels on sterile, tile floors, clappings of nurse's shoes rumbled from the door, and I was too frightened to look.

Again, I was alone, before these desireless parents, who have died every night, and their precious pain, clutching my suitcase of tricks and slumping, sobbing like a tramp thrown out by his final friend. How could I amuse them? How could I amuse them, who are on the eve of death? This is no world for Johnny Cash's "man in black," let alone a "Bongo."

And so I plunge, like a Don Quixote, into the den of suffering, to do battle with the windmills of death and revive the passion for life wrongly lost.

[Anonymous No.16755433]

TFW in a creative writing class as an aspiring novelist and every other story is better than mine, lads, I'm never going to make it when I have all this competition.

[Anonymous No.16755487]

>>16755433
Imagine being dumb enough to actually pay for a creative writing class

[Anonymous No.16755568]

How do I tell my friend his book reads like a first draft harry potter/mythology fanfic without being mean.

[Anonymous No.16755606]

>>16755568
being mean is the best thing you can do for him, especially if he's serious.

[Anonymous No.16755630]

>>16755568
There's nothing wrong there. The prose is serviceable, readable, and isn't cringy. That's pretty impressive. It's just the way his characters act and the things they talk about which make it feel like pottercore

[Anonymous No.16755667]

>>16755487
I don't have to imagine, I'm living it.

[Anonymous No.16755719]

>>16755433
What do they even teach?
How to put one word after another?

[Anonymous No.16755759]

>>16753058
your tense, bro

[Anonymous No.16755775]

>>16755759
Leave Paul alone

[Anonymous No.16755787]

>>16755667
RIP you

[Anonymous No.16755868]

>>16755149
i kinda like it. some good phrases and sentences that i think are really good. some unnecessary commas, though. i had to read it twice to grasp where he actually was. you might wanna make it just a tad bit clearer. i have no opinion on the narrator's voice but he could be interesting.

[Anonymous No.16755896]

>>16755568
Nothing is even happening. It's just Bridget/Hermione give exposition

[Anonymous No.16755950]

>>16755868
Thanks, it's hot off the press; just a clown who visits schools and performs for kids at the hospital. He performs before the kids, but is transported into a hospital twilight zone where he despairs about his task, and eventually accepts it and goes on, gung ho. I know I needed to be clearer and had too many commas.

The clown went from musing, to entering the classroom and performing, to the twilight zone, to despair, to realization of the importance and urgency of mission, and resolution

[Anonymous No.16755959]

>>16748004
for gods sake, will you link the winning story so we can judge for ourselves you cocktease?

[Anonymous No.16755988]

>>16748004
Post it, man, just post it. It reminds me of every time I've ever submitted something. Truth is, you might write above the judge's head, and they just tune out and turn to loving something easier on the mind

[Anonymous No.16756081]

>>16755719
Nothing, every student just writes a story and submits it, and then we spend 4 months (whole semester) critiquing each-other, That's literally it.

[Anonymous No.16756295]

Because the future has always been black and simply can't come to terms with this. It's better to embrace change rather then fight a losing battle. Blacks won. I'm raising my daughter right here in Baltimore, with lots of Black gents. She's only 5 but I'm already showing her lots of shows on TV with nice, sweaty muscular Black men. I can feel her little heart flutter and her mind race with curiosity when she sees a Black Man walk by. I'm already excited at the thought of when she hits her teenage years and becomes sexually active, I'm gonna make sure to send her to the schools with the highest black populations. I won't even make a fuss about it when she bring black boys home, I'll listen through her door as her thighs and cheeks are being clapped and pounded against, It's going to be beautiful. Mixed race people are the future AND healthier because of genetic diversity.

Rate and edit, please.

[Anonymous No.16756314]

>>16756295
Imagine being this insecure

[Anonymous No.16756498]

Almost 2k words on chapter. You are making good progress yourself, right anon?

[Anonymous No.16756503]

>>16754817
>>16754936
Don't listen to these people

I am proud to be Black. I shall never stop celebrating our skin color, our heritage, our ancestors, our entire being. BLACK POWER FOREVER

[Anonymous No.16756514]

>>16756498
slow and steady, Anon. Been minimuming 6/7 pages a day. Feels good man

[Anonymous No.16756871]

>>16756498
8000 words this month, but that includes building a world/multiple factions/kingdoms and unique animals

[Anonymous No.16757569]

I'm looking at this book which is selling like hotcakes. I should write something like this too with a catchy title like
> 10 ways you're being a racist and 10 ways to fix it

There's a free course here that I believe can almost write the book for me
https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/diversity-inclusion-awareness

[Anonymous No.16757585]

>>16757569
Better idea
> 10 ways you're being a racist and how to fix it

or 5?
then I could made a book + sequel + another sequel. That also allows me to charge more per book, because people like trilogies
> 5 ways you're being a racist and how to fix it
> 5 more ways you're being a racist and how to fix it
> 5 additional ways you're being a racist and how to fix it

[Anonymous No.16757590]

>>16757585
I got it
> 5 ways you're a SECRET racist and how to fix it

[Anonymous No.16757632]

>>16756498
22k so far this month. Not great shit, but my plan is to get the entire thing on paper, then edit and add as necessary.

[Anonymous No.16757698]

>>16757590
>Just when you thought you fixed everything, here's 5 more ways you were racist this whole time

[Anonymous No.16757701]

>>16757698
This is great. I love it.

Watch out, Ibram Kendi. I'm going after your niche

[Anonymous No.16757722]

I wrote my synopsis:

Jamarcus Harker is a Black British lawyer who is traveling to Transylvania meet the mysterious Count Blackula. But the longer Jamarcus stays in Castle Blackula, the more he notices that the Black Hungarian nobleman isn’t quite normal. While he is having his adventures in Romania, his fiancée, Moesha Murray, has her own troubles in Whitby, England. Her best friend, Lupita Westenra is acting strangely. Their doctor, Dr. Jabari Seward believes the situation is so dire that only the great Professor Van Hassain can save them.

[Anonymous No.16757856]

Amazon's Cover Creator is pretty good

[Anonymous No.16757886]

>>16757856
Honestly this could do well on Amazon however it reeks of bad faith. Your dialouge, I have read on Royal Road, is so fucking cliched and outright offensive lol. I don't get what's the point of this project. Are you aiming for white readers who want to make fun of blacks or do you want a black audience. Because a black audience will not find this cute.

[Anonymous No.16757905]

>>16754936
back to your containment board faggot

[Anonymous No.16757995]

>>16757886
> a black audience will not find this cute.
That's too bad. I wanted to get the "same thing as before, but now blacked" monies. Whoever liked
> Black Hermione
> Black CK Louis's wife
> Black Spiderman
> Black James Bond
> Black Little Mermaid
> Black Annie
> Black kid in the Witches
> Black Anne Boleyn
will also like Black Dracula. This also has the advantage of loosely following a minor literary classic instead of a comic book.

If it makes you feel better, I'm not deliberately trying to be offensive. All the things I add are things that praise black people. All of the black slang is also directly adapted from r/BlackPeopleTwitter and SNL's black actor skits, so it's authentic dialogue

Besides, if (when?) Blackula fares poorly, then I'll simply make up a different pen name and try again with my 5 Ways You're A Secret Racist And How to Fix It book series

[Anonymous No.16758116]

>>16755568
It reads like a YA novel, and if the goal was to write a YA novel, then there's nothing particularly wrong with it.

But anon, where's YOUR story?

[Anonymous No.16758216]

How do I write a really fucking weird unique world and describe its features without
>being annoying by dumping too much information/exposition
>being boring by dripping the information too slowly
>sounding fucking stupid like a kid making up a story

[Anonymous No.16758254]

>>16745570
>The Weekend Novelist
Where the fuck can I find a pdf of this, can't find it online anywhere

[Anonymous No.16758302]

>>16757995
This isn't some type of attack. I'm genuinely trying to help you. I'm black myself and hang around nothing but black people. The dialogue is bad. Really bad that not only does it feel like a person who has never heard how actual conversations like these go but ventures into the malice territory, like someone making fun. I'm not saying that you particularly have malice intents. I doubt that since everything else besides the dialogue is okay even the names. Dial it back a little. Right now it feels like a guy writing about Australians and all the dialogue is sheila, cunt. I don't know. I'm genuinely trying to help.

[Anonymous No.16758352]

I have not even written one page because im an autistic perfectionist.Anything else than perfection wouldnt feel right

[Anonymous No.16758365]

>>16758216
If you want your reader to be awed and confused, you need to throw some sort of curved ball at them and make them like it. Give a quick description of something and treat it like it's common; don't make a fuss about it. Don't over explain, just give them the bare minimum to picture an image in their head and then move on to something else. Awe is the the illusion of comprehension of something otherworldly; they need to "get" it, even if they don't understand it.

[Anonymous No.16758374]

>>16758302
Dude, just ignore him. He's doing it 100% out of spite and autism, thinking he's very clever.

[Anonymous No.16758377]

>>16756498
I took a break yesterday because my eyelids were closing against my will and now I feel very guilty.
Anyway, so far I've been able to dump 700 words on average per day before I have to go to bed (I only have time to write at night). I hope I'm not falling too short; that's about a page and a half a day, which is rather pathetic. compared to what other anons seem to accomplish here.

[Anonymous No.16758415]

>>16758302
If I don't have the "black" dialogue, then Blackula is about black people who talk like 19th century white people, act like 19th century white people, live like 19ty century white people, while in the 19th century. The rightful criticism would be that I re-wrote Dracula but changed the names, streamlined the plot, and gave Dracula an Afro.

[Anonymous No.16758692]

>>16755950
see, i thought bongo was doing his shift in the hospital and in the middle was musing back to his time at school earlier/yesterday. nevertheless i look forward to your revisions.

[Anonymous No.16758701]

>>16745936
Read more, my brother. I feel your pain.

[Anonymous No.16758707]

I'm writing a collection of flash fiction that is intended to be the most repulsive shit ever. I'm going to put it up on Amazon and see how long it takes to get taken down.

[Anonymous No.16758723]

>>16758707
For what purpose?

[Anonymous No.16758749]

>>16745570
I downloaded the Atomic Habits book you mentioned and tried reading it but it didn't do it for me.
I guess the bottom line is make a schedule and stick to it and reward yourself once in a while so that your body acquires the habit.
Is there more?

[Anonymous No.16758963]

I fucking hate words so much bros

[Anonymous No.16758981]

>>16758707
repulsive in what sense

[Anonymous No.16758989]

>>16758707
We talking Marquis de Sade repulsive or repulsive to the perceived ideological left?

[Anonymous No.16759077]

>>16758989
Like Scrotie McBoogerballs except racist.

[Anonymous No.16759150]

This is from the first story in my collection I mentioned here: >>16758707

Thoughts?

[Anonymous No.16759169]

>>16759077
>racism
gotta probe deeper than that if you truly want to disgust. many people approve of racism. you've got to figure out our immortal disgusts, things that reach across culture and time to disgust all people. You've gotta be primally sickening.

[Anonymous No.16759249]

>>16759150
Maybe you should learn how to write first.

[Anonymous No.16759284]

>>16759249
I'm writing poorly ironically.

[Anonymous No.16759298]

>>16759150
>sentence starts
>Word comma
>Word comma
>Word comma
this is indeed repulsive mr. ESL

but seriously, this comes off like satire. you've got to be more genuine if you want to disgust people.

[Anonymous No.16759309]

>>16759298
>this is indeed repulsive mr. ESL
I'm writing poorly ironically.

[Anonymous No.16759383]

>>16756498
1-2 pages a day for me.

[Anonymous No.16759452]

>>16759309
Irony is only mildly repulsive, like seeing two men kiss

[Anonymous No.16759657]

>>16758692
I'm not gonna revise it, unfortunately. I try to write a college ruled paper each day. One side usually has philosophical musings/diary, other one has a small story that I just write to gauge my skill

[Anonymous No.16759706]

Third world fag here. Where can I pirate the Weekend Novelist? It's not on Z Library.

[Anonymous No.16759714]

>>16759284
>>16759309
It's only ironic if you can also write well

[Anonymous No.16759937]

What do you guys do when your stuck with what to write next? Any books that help with that?

[Anonymous No.16759954]

>>16759937
Do you mean when you don't know where to go with a story, or when you need to start a new project?

[Anonymous No.16759957]

>>16759954
I meant the first, but both would be helpful

[Anonymous No.16759974]

>>16759937
steal ideas from reddit

[Anonymous No.16759989]

>>16759937
i just stop right there and get back to it in like five minutes

[Anonymous No.16759996]

>>16756498
Accidentally wrote 1500 words instead of 500 today. Fuck writing, this was supposed to be a short story, but it's taking forever to finish. I still have 4 more full scenes to write too.

[Anonymous No.16760020]

What's the best way to write dialog? In a stylistic sense, not grammatically.

[Anonymous No.16760112]

>>16760020
Try to get in your characters' heads and imagine- "would they really say this?" If they're in a tunnel full of gas, they don't really need to communicate so matter of factly. I don't know if the "slime" in your world is something commonly used, but you could have the two characters exchange glances, the one seeing a grimace on Leimi's face. He asks, "(is) the gas bothering you, too?" Leimi nods. "Alright, let's plug everyone's nose," he (not Leimi) says, taking the vial of slime out of his pack. In turn, everyone's nostrils are covered with a thin film of semipermeable slime. Etcetera

You don't need to change it to the above, it was just my two cents. Just try to think how these characters would actually speak. Picture you as that character, talking to the other character, and if it would be something normal to say

[Anonymous No.16760154]

>>16760112
Oh sorry you must have misunderstood what I wanted to know.
What I meant was if I should write dialog like this.

Something is narrated
"Someone says something"
Something is narrated

or

Something is narrated
"Someone says something"
Something is narrated

or maybe even

Something is narrated
[Characters name]"Someone says something"
Something is narrated

[Anonymous No.16760167]

How do I plot a story that makes sense and isn't just a series of random events?

[Anonymous No.16760227]

>>16760167
have the events connect to each other.
>dog bites man>man has to go get stitches>qt nurse stitches him up>they go on date>happily ever after
D happens because C happens. C happens because B happens. B happens because A happens.

[Anonymous No.16760240]

I am trying to write a tranny romance story.
When do I do the gender reveal?
I'm assuming the tranny looks like a girl.

[Anonymous No.16760259]

>>16760227
How would I create a plot that expresses a man learning he has to take responsibility?

[Anonymous No.16760269]

>>16760240
Don't. Make it super obvious, not many women want to read a romance novel between two straight people and then get thrown a brick after 200 pages.
I'm sure there is an audience you'll miss, that actually wants to read that degeneracy, if you market it as two straight people.

[Anonymous No.16760283]

>>16760269
Thats not my plan.
I'm writing from the tranny's perspective so its obvious to the reader that they are a tranny

[Anonymous No.16760295]

>>16760167
Might help to plan out an ending beforehand. Gives your story a sense of direction. Even if you decide to change the ending, the throughline will persist.

[Anonymous No.16760299]

>>16760259
Not that anon, but I would show him examples of people who failed at taking responsibility and the consequences that followed. For example, he becomes friends with someone whose life is turned to shit and he later learns that he had a deadbeat dad that never gave him any guidance, for example. Make irresponsibility a recurring theme in that character's life, either his own or of others. I recommend you try to be subtle about it and link it to whatever events of people he's dealing with occasionally or without stating it out loud. Then he can come to a realization and have a cathartic moment of epiphany.

[Anonymous No.16760311]

>>16760283
If it's obvious to the reader than they're a tranny, then you should just get that "reveal" out of the way as soon as possible.

[Anonymous No.16760318]

>>16760154
Whatever flows best; this is a sense you need to develop.

The blue sky overcasts. "What a queer sky" Nathan nods in assent.

If it is clear who is doing the talking here, then you don't need to include their name. Usually if the character's name is mentioned once, I attribute further dialogue to him unless a new character is mentioned, like:

The grass along the interstate ruffles. Nathan remarks, "So, it seems no one's coming to pick us up," the odd car hurtling past him at senseless speeds. "What a pity." The sky begins to overcast, and a slight rain picks up. "Oh, fuck," Nathan says, "got an umbrella?" (here it would be awkward to say 'jason says,' so make sure you don't use a lot of 'X says' and change things up from time to time, or use different verbs) Jason nods "No."

[Anonymous No.16760345]

>>16760318
Thanks, I have been trying to get some advice on this for a while now.

[Anonymous No.16760361]

>>16760259
Just off the top of my head, start him at a neutral or low-neutral state. Still living at home, or as a roommate or a small apartment while working some shitty low wage job like fast food or retail or something. Then you show how his irresponsibility takes everything away from him.
>fucks up at work and gets fired
>can't pay rent
>that girl he likes sees him as the loser he his
>loses his car because he left it parked somewhere it shouldn't have been

Whatever you can think of to sink this guy as low as you can go, and when all seems lost he has a revelation and builds himself back up. This revelation can come internally, or someone could come into his life that inspires him to get his shit together, or maybe he just watched the right movie at the right time.

[H4CK3RTUB3 No.16760402]

Emm alguien me podría enseñar sobre hacking?

[Anonymous No.16760502]

>>16760020
Good rule of thumb is to speak the words out loud as you write them. Your aim is to make it sound naturalistic, thought most writers avoid being too natural (people generally talk like retards in casual conversation).
By the looks of that screencap, you're not a native English speaker. That presents a particular problem since you might not have the experience of speaking in English and being spoken to in English for the many years it takes to subconsciously internalize the quirks of how people talk. But it's not insurmountable. My suggestion would be to talk to more English speakers (IRL, not on 4chan). If that isn't an option, try to find some English-language podcasts or twitch streams or somesuch place you can observe casual speaking. Movies and shows are also good, but keep in mind that you might not yet have the background in English to tell when dialogue is super shitty.

[Anonymous No.16760535]

>>16760402
Je comprend pas. Parle anglais, s'il te plait.

[Anonymous No.16760537]

>>16760311
Alright. It won't be wholesome otherwise

[Anonymous No.16760566]

>>16760502
Almost everything I watch and or interact with that is not real life is in english. The screenshot is of a recent chapter that I still have to look over yet. That might be a reason why it seems to be weird. I would say my english is good, but there definitely is still room upwards.

[Anonymous No.16760595]

>>16760299
>>16760361
Is this a good plot? How can I improve it?

A misanthropic shut-in’s lifestyle is upheaved by the arrival of his mother’s new boyfriend; he begins to underperform at his basic care job and thus gets fired as a result. Because of his unemployment and his prolonged absence from university, his mother demands him to find to return to his study, find a job or to move out. The NEET goes to college and stands outside his classroom, but the sight of the massive workload pushes him back to the comfort of his bedroom. He sees his mother’s health suffer from working very hard to support him and that makes him realise that he needs to take responsibility for his own actions.

[Anonymous No.16760602]

>>16760566
There's room. Getting used to the intricacies of a language takes a long time. I'm sorry, but you don't seem to have a perfect grasp on them in English.

[Anonymous No.16760616]

>>16760602
Definitely. I don't really talk much english. I mainly just write.

[Anonymous No.16760631]

>>16760595
Yeah, that'll work, but how exactly would his mother's health suffer? And I think there's a lot you can do with that new boyfriend too, don't just see him as a plot mover.

[Anonymous No.16760636]

>>16760616
Speaking it yourself is probably essential to getting that grasp. If not essential, extremely helpful. If there aren't any English speakers you can chat with IRL then join some discord channels or something, i dunno

[Anonymous No.16760665]

>>16760595
Introduce some sexual elements but make them realistic. No 8/10 homely neighbor or something.

[Anonymous No.16760674]

>>16760631
>>16760665

What if i change it to his little brother and that he is the reason the neet takes responsibility

[Anonymous No.16760697]

>>16760665
>>16760631
>>16760674

A misanthropic shut-in’s lifestyle is upheaved by the drop out of his little brother; he begins to underperform at his basic care job and thus gets fired as a result. Because of his unemployment and his prolonged absence from university, his mother demands him to find to return to his study, find a job or to move out. The NEET goes to college and stands outside his classroom, but the sight of the massive workload pushes him back to the comfort of his bedroom. He overhears that the reason his little brother dropped out was that it was too much responsibility, and that he is afraid: this makes the NEET decide to take responsibility, and go back to college while also applying for jobs.

How about this

[Anonymous No.16760724]

>>16760697
The little brother wouldn't go "too much responsibility." It'd be more "oh, my big bro is a slacker and that seems cool" so he tries to be a slacker too, and it's realizing that and freaking out about it and realizing he's a role model no matter what he does that snaps the big bro into not being a shit.

[Anonymous No.16760754]

>>16760724
good idea. I have a problem with writing realistic dialogue.

[Anonymous No.16760839]

Suggested books on storytelling:
>The Weekend Novelist
>Hero With a Thousand Faces
>Save the Cat
>Romance the Beat

I want to write a short story and eventually a novel but I only want to buy one of these. Which one and why?

[Anonymous No.16760889]

>>16760839
lmao just pirate them dude lol

[Anonymous No.16760972]

>>16760889
Let’s say I only wanna read one of them then. Which one?

[Anonymous No.16761013]

>>16760889
I don't wanna pay 10000 dollars in fines.

[Anonymous No.16761121]

>only 2 hours until deadline
>need to send a chapter to my publisher
>not even half is ready
>even if write it i still need to edit shit
HELP

[Anonymous No.16761171]

>>16760839
Read Poetics

[Anonymous No.16761183]

>>16760972
whichever one, don't make it Save the Cat, that book fucking sucks and should be removed from the OP
>>16761013
oof... must suck to live in a third world country like america

[Anonymous No.16761186]

>>16761183
This is in jermany

[Anonymous No.16761202]

>>16761121
Just repeat the same word however many times it takes to fill up the word count
>I was a very, very, very, very...long time before you reached the end of this sentence!
something like that. if your publisher hassles you tell him it was an artistic choice and get really mad at him

[Anonymous No.16761211]

>>16761183
Why is Save the Cat bad? What should we replace it with

[Anonymous No.16761267]

>>16761211
Don't feel like writing it all out again so I'll just copy/paste it from the old thread

>World famous thespian Arnold Schwarzenegger describes how he tricked screenwriter Sylvester Stallone into doing "the worst movie ever"
https://youtu.be/GxYrTe7LDp4
>Stallone's response
http://www.youtube.com/shorts/e0UQyotAVoc
The film they're referring to is Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot! It is written by Blake Snyder, also the writer of "Save the Cat," a terrible screenwriting book inexplicably recommended in the OP.

To add: It is one of only two feature film credits Snyder possesses. The man wrote and sold multitudes of screenplays. Only two of them were produced. The rest are collecting dust on a shelf somewhere in Hollywood, CA. It's incredible that anyone takes screenwriting advice from him.
Much better books on screenwriting are
>Story by Robert McKee
>Screenplay & The Screenwriter's Workbook by Syd Field
But if you're serious, you should only read
>In The Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing
to get an idea of how your ideas will be butchered and sewn back up into a functional film.
Amoungst directors there as those who say "all screenwriters should be shot"

[Anonymous No.16761300]

>>16761183
I was on the fence about Save the Cat because it's a female author lmao

>>16761171
Already read that and it's helpful indeed but I'm looking for something with more structure into book writing.

[Anonymous No.16761326]

>>16761300
Blake Snyder is a man. Still incompetent tho

[Anonymous No.16761339]

>>16761326
Nevermind, I looked it up and found the "Save the Cat! Writes A Novel" that was probably what you're talking about. Never read it, but if it's under the umbrella of Snyder's work, it's probably trash too

[Anonymous No.16761363]

Is Word just fucking with me?

[Anonymous No.16761404]

>>16761363
The third paragraph opener should have a comma instead of period. Is there any suggestions when you click on any of them? I haven't have Microsoft Word since Vista or so myself

[Anonymous No.16761415]

>>16761404
That is a comma but there was an extra space. And no, it's just "consider revising"
I'm not letting a damn program influence my writing style

[Anonymous No.16761442]

>>16761202
I did it, I wrote something without thinking what I am doing
Time to edit this shit

[Anonymous No.16761466]

>>16761415
Er, not that one, I meant the one below it. The Wooh! one.I do feel like some of these are incomplete sentences like the Allie sentence could be merged with the Beast one if you turned that into either a semicolon or a colon. Similarly you could try modifying the semicolon into a colon to see if that pleases Word's autism.

[Anonymous No.16761473]

>>16760839
>>16761211
I don't know if you can get all of these online, but here are some I would recommend.

For Prose:
>The Art of Fiction
>On Becoming A Novelist
>Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft
>How Fiction Works
>The Rhetoric of Fiction
>Steering the Craft

For Poetry:
>The Poetry Home Repair Manual
>Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry

Related Material:
>What Editors Do
>A Student's Introduction to English Grammar
>Garner's Modern English Usage

[Anonymous No.16761513]

Poetry is an artifical dumb shit
Imagine enjoying poetry unironically

[Anonymous No.16761543]

>>16761473
I was trying to decide between 4 books and now you want me to decide between 15? The fuck nigga?

Pretend like I only have room for one more book in my bookshelf and pretend like I'm not faggy enough to read ebooks and now just recommend one goddamn book pretty please.

[Anonymous No.16761556]

>>16761186
Yeah Germany is really strict about pirating. Nur original ist legal

[Anonymous No.16761602]

>>16761556
>I pirate and live in kraut land

[Anonymous No.16761639]

>>16761602
just don't use torrents and use TOR when you download shit
expert here

[Anonymous No.16761667]

>>16750634
The dad joke made me lol, well played anon

[Anonymous No.16761691]

>>16761363
you must have it on "professional" word checking setting, turn it to "casual"

[Anonymous No.16761810]

How do I write a believable incel as a love interest?

[Anonymous No.16761829]

>>16761810
>incel as a love interest
That's an oxymoron.

[Anonymous No.16761880]

>>16761829
It's called waifufiction. A beautiful, innocent, kind, understanding, 2D or 3D, non-degenerate woman falls in love with the main character. Her exact hobbies and worldview depend on what the author's fetishes are.

Real world example
https://youtu.be/VlpO858I6Yg

Writer of episode and voice actor for the male love interest
https://powerpuffgirls.fandom.com/wiki/Jake_Goldman

[Anonymous No.16761960]

please help me come up with moar liek this:

>Clea Thoris
>Lacey Brief
>Chastity Belt
>Venus Mons
>Candy Puci
>Suki Yueh
(this last one is even worse than the others but i have yellow fever)

[Anonymous No.16761972]

>>16761880
>It's called waifufiction. A beautiful, innocent, kind, understanding, 2D or 3D, non-degenerate woman falls in love with the main character. Her exact hobbies and worldview depend on what the author's fetishes are.
that's not what I am looking for

[Anonymous No.16762001]

>>16745570
any books on the technical aspects of writing? grammar and shite?

[Anonymous No.16762006]

Is it okay if my MC is a boring weirdo obsessively telling his journal that he's a happy man while slowly declining into madness?

>I've gotten into the habit of stopping at each odd looking guerilla advert gracing lonely lampposts and imagining the sorrow and hopelessness that one ought to feel when resorting to such methods of attention-seeking. I'd tell the curious onlooker puzzled at my paying attention to such trivial scenery that I'm doing so out of sheer pity towards the advertiser rather than genuine interest, although no curious onlooker has even blessed me with their presence and query thus far. Attention being an expensive commodity, I can certainly understand their indifference; indeed I might just be the idiot giving mine away to these undeserving objects with such nonchalance. I'm not talking about the lost pet flyers by the way, or the campaign ads, those I deem somewhat relevant to their particular lampposts, they tend to be straightforward and utterly devoid of interesting undercurrents. Really, I look for those hand-written (often hilariously misspelled) accounts of odd knick-knacks for sale. In the information age, the age of low wages and high rent, the age of drive-through pharmacies and grocery shops with dead apothecaries and mountains of useless clerk one has to be out of their mind to expect to sell their shoddy garage-built 1978 Gibson Les Paul replica to the ever rarer breed of the lamppost-approaching pedestrian. To be forgotten is to exist. I imagine a slightly better fate for those leftover jars of a late grandfather's home-grown honey. Those will eventually be eaten, I suppose. Or the very thing that led me down this rabbit-hole: an ancient typewriter for sale, which by itself is no curiosity, but this one was missing the letter E. I don't think anything could top that one. Apparently being one of a kind, the advert really wanted to sound like a missing E was just a "minor flaw in an otherwise splendid and rare household decoration". I was giggling like a lunatic upon reading that. It was vandalized by an upset child who needed attention, now the same child grown up cannot bear throwing the thing he/she ruined into the trash where it belongs. "Minor flaw". That line alone made my day. Of course I called the number. I suppose as far as hobbies go, this one can too be fulfilling in its own way.

[Anonymous No.16762010]

>>16762006
Yes its okay. Don't worry. I'm here for you.

[Anonymous No.16762024]

>>16762010
thanks anon

[Anonymous No.16762146]

>>16761972
How could that not be what you want? Irs the pinnacle of romantic fiction

[Anonymous No.16762168]

redpill me on scene and sequels

[Anonymous No.16762237]

>>16762146
>A beautiful, innocent, kind, understanding, 2D or 3D, non-degenerate woman falls in love with the main character. Her exact hobbies and worldview depend on what the author's fetishes are.
This part is unrealistic

[Anonymous No.16762298]

Just finished this short story, grammar and syntax hasn't been looked just want to know if anybody enjoys it. https://pastebin.com/schqHFyV

[Anonymous No.16762335]

>>16762298
Don't like the stylistic dialogue. That's a big oof from me senpai.

[Anonymous No.16762361]

>>16762335
Unfortunately it's the only way I enjoy writing, standard 3rd person makes me fell retarded and writing in the same perfect English doesn't feel genuine. I will admit it's very Irish and the story might not make sense to non-Irish people, apart from the simple love story part of it.

[Anonymous No.16762368]

>>16762146
this is what i want
give it to me
also>>16761960

[Anonymous No.16762446]

>>16762298
I can't help but think of that polish exchange student who talks the exact same way as these Irishmen of yours do, which put me off, and made what they had to say a bit uninteresting, but that's an issue purely personal. I do love your narration, however, and overall, I enjoyed it.

[Anonymous No.16762458]

>>16762446
In fairness a lot of Poles are basically Irish now lmao. Thanks man, just like knowing if people actually enjoy my prattling.

[Anonymous No.16762531]

>>16761960

Dill Doe
Eva Gina
Annie Hole
Connie Lingus

[Anonymous No.16762567]

>>16762006
I wonder how many people are writing because they won't or can't see a therapist

[Anonymous No.16762593]

>>16762567
Well, therapists ARE a meme. Maybe at most one should consider meds or even just get a grasp on self-care—like writing every few days about positive things that happen to you and such. Writing is a great outlet, but when it's tl;dr schizo excerpts like that then yeah, you might want to readjust your outlet angle a fair bit.

[Anonymous No.16762621]

>>16761543
I have been away for a while, but if you are still here then I would recommend you 'start' with Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. It has exercises you can do, example texts included in the work, and even an example of one writer revising his short story to its final form (that story won 1st place in a writing competition). You can purchase it for less than 5 dollars on thriftbooks or you can find a newer more expensive addition on amazon.

I also recommend getting a copy of Chekhov's complete works or Dubliners or any other author you like or admire that does short stories to see how those work and attempt to imitate them.

If you want any more information or want someone to help you get into writing short stories feel free to ask anon. That's why I'm here.

[Anonymous No.16762680]

>>16762593
I'm a different anon, but is self-care itself not a meme? Is it not always a sort of mantra to attain an egotistical enlightenment (a delusion of importance)? The line between motivational gurus and self-help "experts" is so thin it might as well not be there. Therapy is a much less generalizing and (in my experience) more fulfilling meme to move forward.

[Anonymous No.16762696]

How do I stop jerking myself off with prose? I literally can't control myself

[Anonymous No.16762723]

>>16762680
I've only seen self-care in the context of relaxation and its associated products
> do self care with our massage, discounted at $40/hour or $15/30 minutes
> remember to do self care and take a mental health unpaid leave day from your wagie job

[Anonymous No.16762737]

Whoever makes new thread, incorporate these into the OP copypasta and delete Save the Cat

>>16761473

[Anonymous No.16762854]

There's a job position free at the New Yorker

> CNN's Jeffrey Toobin fired by New Yorker magazine following Zoom call masturbation incident

CNN's star legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin lost his job as a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine Wednesday following an investigation into an incident in which Toobin was seen masturbating on a Zoom call with colleagues at the venerable publication.

"I was fired today by @NewYorker after 27 years as a Staff Writer," he tweeted. "I will always love the magazine, will miss my colleagues, and will look forward to reading their work."

[Anonymous No.16762934]

>>16761880
>Why yes, my literary work's primary inspiration comes from the Powerpuff Girls remake. How could you tell?