/lit/ - Literature

stumble upon

Set aside a portion of your day and devote it only to your story.

Even with the internet, I found it helpful to devote some of my surfing to research. Keep a notepad open for copy+paste of interesting ideas or research that you can incorporate into your drafts.

So what'cha writing, OP?

>>1025349

I do that already, I'm afraid. The story's got a steampunk setting and the protagonist's home country is a little behind in its technical development even by those standards (favouring magitech over the mundane variety). Leads to me researching a lot of Victorian era technology.

As for the story, to sum it up in one sentence...

As for the story, without giving away too much detail... In a nation where magic is ubiquitous, a magic-blind engineer is caught up in a war between the haves and have-nots of arcane secrets, and must go on a quest to prevent anti-magical genocide.

Sorry it took so long to reply.

>>1025373

>As for the story...

Whoops! Heh, kinda repeated myself there. As you can tell, went back and edited that a bit. Don't want to give away all my secrets, right?

>>1025377
Certainly. Proprietary rights aren't exactly sacred on the internet.

Well, it does sound interesting.

In any case, have you ever tried sketching? Creating maps of neighborhoods? In a sense, total immersion? It helps the process.

find some activity that clears your head before you sit down to write. i go for a walk everyday, about two miles or so through my neighborhood that clears my head and gets me in the mood to write.

>>1025377
>Don't want to give away all my secrets, right?
Your secrets aren't really worth shit.

What has value is your ability to make the story engaging and enjoyable. The plot as a whole doesn't matter that much and I doubt it'll be anything we haven't seen before in some form or another.

>>1025398

Actually, no. I've had it recommended to me numerous times, though. I suppose I should give it a try.

This might sound hokey, but there's a bit of abandoned parking lot near me that's overgrown in some places. It was raining so I went for a walk, and noticed the "islands" the plants formed against the rising water. I'm tempted to take pictures of this to use as the base for my world map. It's clearly random but organic, and it looks quite cool.

>>1025402
Nihil novi sub sole, anon.

>>1025402

Of course, but it still helps me feel at least a little safer. The odds that someone would just read my concept off /lit/ and turn it into a best seller before I even finish my story are near zero, but it still helps that irrational part of my mind that demands it.

>>1025408

Nihil novi sub Sol. Sol is a proper name.

>>1025401

Do that too. It helps.

I guess I'm just going to have to separate myself from my distractions to write.

>>1025417
Anyone with the ability to write a best-selling novel is unlikely to have any shortage of their own ideas that they'd much prefer using.

>>1025417
>Nihil novi sub Sol. Sol is a proper name.

It's latin. the latin for "sun" is sol. in the ablative case, it's "sole". Therefore, Nihil sub sole novum.

>>1025422

Fair enough. However, I did mention that this was irrational.

>>1025429

Have to take your word for the grammer structure. I am afraid I don't speak Latin. However, Sol is a proper noun, like Luna or Mars. It should be capitalized. I've also never seen it spelled with an e, but that could be ignorance on my part.

i find it that i can write better with distractions, because it gives me something that i want to resist against. when i'm home alone i get very lazy and i'll never get around to writing. but i've done some of my best writing when i've had some annoying roommates that i have to shut myself up in my room in order to get myself away from. it's like because the distraction is there, i want to resist it. kinda funny.

>>1025459
Sol is only a proper noun in English. Do you capitalize sun?

>>1025459
>However, Sol is a proper noun, like Luna or Mars. It should be capitalized. I've also never seen it spelled with an e, but that could be ignorance on my part.

It is a proper noun in the context of English, but not in the context of Latin. In the context of a Latin phrase, it is appropriate to use the Latin spelling and capitalization - thus, no capital letter, and proper declension (thus, sole).

In other words, sorry, bro, but it's ignorance on your part. justified ignorance (there's no real reason to know latin), but ignorance.

You could always get rid of your internet.

Fun shit that austere life would be.

>>1025533
If we're really going to write like the Romans, it'd be NIHILSVBSOLENOVVM

>>1025539
No need to get defensive, son, but there's no reason to capitalize sol in latin. You were wrong; let's move along.

>>1025533
He's right. I've always seen Sol capitalized everywhere. Perhaps to state it's the latin word for Sol, and not the spanish word for sun, which is sol.