/lit/ - Literature

>anon, how is your prose going? Don't tell me you're one of those 'He said' types.

>>16273670
>not using language that clearly communicates to the reader what's going on
Granted, if you're just tacking on "he said" to every piece of dialogue, it's probably not very good. But if you add more description and only use it when it's necessary for the reader to understand who's speaking, it's fine

>>16273645
But I want him to go on adventures with my transformers and assault lilies...

>>16273661
Have you ever noticed how whenever people try and write surreal fantasy that's "not for kids" their first instinct is to throw away the humor, embrace the edge and make it clear how repulsive they find the weirdness?

yeah, my book doesn't do that. It's more or less Un Lun Dun but PG-13

Reposting. Full text is open for critique. Not sure if I should share with the scifi thread too.

https://u.teknik.io/LCa2l.pdf

>>16273773
The second sentence of the first paragraph feels a little clunky to me, and the first sentence of the third paragraph is grammatically incorrect (you probably left out a word on accident). Other than that it seems alright, but I don't read sci-fi so I don't know how it compares to the average

why is everything i write overly dramatic?

>>16273670
if you can't demonstrate who's speaking and how in the dialogue itself and you have to put "he screamed" or "she cried" on every single line you're not gonna make it
maybe an exception should be made for mid-dialogue actions

>>16273773
redpill me on neocities

Why does McCarthy hate proper punctuation, and quotation marks?
And why is he considered a 'great' writer while missing the basic stuff?

>>16274204
It's free hosting for 90s style web pages which has anything from a good no-js browing experience to overdesigned pages full of blingies. I started using it a few weeks ago, and haven't had conflicts with the service.

I can plop an updated pdf and keep the same link, so I sometimes use it as a general file host.

https://likho.neocities.org/share/mnemosynes-heretic.pdf
https://likho.neocities.org/pages/mnemosynes-heretic/ch1.html

If you don't plan to run ads, run analytics, or paywall your stuff, then setting up a basic site from scratch is fine.

>>16274495
Is this bait?

>>16274505
No.
I tried reading The Road years ago, and couldn't get past the terrible layout of it.
Some goon in another thread said that Blood Meridian wasn't like that so I picked it up, and IT'S THE SAME FUCKING SHIT.
Why is this considered good?

>>16274513
I have read only the road but the punctuation of it is so easy as any other book

>>16274495
McCarthy's style is based off his dislike of classical English. He disliked how cluttered old English texts were with unending punctuation. He believed solely in the effectiveness of the period, capitals, the comma, and nothing else.

>>16274627
>he disliked
He's not dead yet, anon

>>16274707
he likes them now

>>16274501
nice

Here's your prompt:
>short story about a Muslim party magician who worships Allah's cousin, Ta-dah

>>16274495
He doesn’t hate proper punctuation, nothing done is grammatically incorrect, except for bending the rules of dialogue a bit. It’s just his style: simple, like many contemporary American authors.
There are advantages to writing as he does. Lack of quotations forces him to make it very clear who’s speaking. The uncluttered aesthetic of the text draws the reader in and onward. He can play with other literary tools, like sentences length to evoke certain feelings in the text (ex: the infamous Comanche attack in BM puts you in the middle of the confusing fray with its run on sentences) and repetition.
The style also establishes tone. It gives the feeling of some drunk cowboy with a comically stereotypical drawl narrating the story. The feeling he is going for is completely different to a meandering, complex and humorous Ishmael.
It’s his thing, I wouldn’t suggest you copy it. Learn about why authors write the way they do and then come up with your own “thing”!

>>16274627
Not using the comma is a bit much, it maps very well to the natural pause in speech indicating a new clause. You could use a period or a semicolon instead, you have to use something though, if you don't put anything in there then the sentence becomes confusing to read.

My story has the single most slurs of any work produced.

>>16274849
r/writingprompts is over there, anon

>>16274876
anon i've got based department on the line, do you mind telling them where we could find this work of yours?

>>16274881
go back

>>16274876
Faulkner uses Nigger at least a thousand times in TSATF. How many do you use?

>>16274495
Good writers often bend the rules a bit to write something more aesthetic. McCarthy stays pretty well within the rules, though. If you want to read someone who completely shatters everything your English teacher taught you, read some Faulkner

>>16273992
maybe you're underestimating your readers ability to read into the characters emotionality, or your writing is too weak to communicate that emotionality without creating extraordinary circumstances to force it out of your characters.

My main character is a woman. With a penis.

>>16275765
Does it get hard?

>>16275768
Yes. She fucks her boss' wife. The boss' son is the deuteragonist.

>>16275779
Sounds wild.

Anyone have experience submitting to poetry mags/prizes? Seems like they mostly publish nonwhites and women
are there any white-only poetry magazines?

>>16275798
>tfw non-white

>>16275798
Sometimes I think about this and I have to wonder. Maybe a world that is more or less built by and for white dudes no longer creates space for those men to develop as deep an emotionality as someone with more wide ranging struggles. The world was indisputably conquered by white europeans and they used that power to make that world as comfortable as possible for themselves. Perhaps the final result of that is a world that doesn't offer the same challenges and therefore opportunities for emotional growth for white guys anymore.

But yeah idk. Let me know if you find any whites-only lit mags that take submissions.

Its a quick easy to read.
Its also known to cure hemorroids when you read it on the toilet.

Men who recite it to their lovers in bed, maintain erections longer than most men aged 25-34.

Women who talk about it to their bosses tend to get 34 % more paid days off

Parents who read it to their children provide resiliency against temper tantrums, long car rides.

pet owners that read it with their favorite animal in their lap prevent nasty stains and spills in every 4th instance.

I’m going to write two early child books for the BLM crowd. One is about a black girl and the second is about a poor black boy. They’re going to talk about themselves and their own family. I want to give little Shaqueesha and DeShawn African first names with meaning, but American last names.

Book 1: Shaqueesha Washington’s family and friends
Meaning of name: ???
Birthday: ???
Age: 4 years and x months
What she wants to be when she grows up: A ballet dancer detective
Favorite color: Pink! But second favorite is blue, like the ocean
Favorite animal: Octopus, because they’re so intelligent
Favorite sport: none, but parents make her try all sorts of middle-class sports like tennis, archery, figure skating, ballet
Favorite food: Ahi tuna
Favorite computer game: Neopets
Least favorite food: Green split pea soup
Favorite subject: Classic literature
Least favorite subject: None
Hobbies: Reading books
Dislikes: Interrupted naps
Role model: William Grant Still, first African American to write an orchestral symphony
Household: biological mother, biological father, biological older brother, maternal grandmother
Mother: Art museum curator
Father: Programmer
Grandmother: Cooks and babysits her and brother
Older brother: likes to play with Legos and make Scratch computer games
Extended nearby family: paternal grandfather and grandmother.
Grandfather: retired water treatment plant worker, now a bird watcher
Grandmother: retired librarian, now runs an African history museum

>>16275931
Book 2: 4-year-old DeShawn Carter’s family and friends
Meaning of name: ???
Birthday: ???
Age: 4 years and x months
What he wants to be when she grows up: A scientist in Wakanda
Favorite color: Steel gray
Favorite animal: Lungfish, because they’re fish who can breathe air
Favorite sport: Likes tennis, but also enjoys soccer
Favorite food: French fries! But he also likes pizza with spinach and feta cheese
Favorite computer game: Roblox
Least favorite food: Anything spicy
Favorite Subject: Science
Least Favorite Subject: Geography
Hobbies: Doing Duolingo language lessons
Dislikes: Practical jokes
Role model: Neil deGrasse Tyson
Household: mother, stepfather, biological younger sister, stepbrother, half-sister
Mother: Day care worker
Stepfather: High school teacher
Younger sister: likes fashion and makeup
Stepbrother: likes to play cello
Half-sister: Baby
Extended nearby family: maternal grandmother
Grandmother: retired cook, now lives in assisted living facility

>>16273661
>tfw you finally write what you want to write, instead of what you think will sell

My poetry is coming along well!

>>16275798
I'm nonwhite, what poetry mags are you talking about?

>>16275957
google "where to submit poetry"
most of the published poets, judges, and editors will not be white

> Michael Derrick Hudson, a white poet, wrote as ‘Yi-Fen Chou’ in literary journal Prairie Schooner

Yi-Fen Chou — or rather, Michael Derrick Hudson — published the poems “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve,” alongside the work of dozens of real minority poets publishing under their actual names. Mr. Hudson, as he explains in his biographical note in the volume, doesn’t write different poems in the voice of a persona he calls Yi-Fen Chou (as Pessoa might); rather, he submits the same poem first as Michael Hudson, and then if that doesn’t work, resubmits it as Yi-Fen Chou. The idea is that this gives him a leg up in the frustrating business of poetry publishing.

>>16275983

>>16275983
>>16275989
Incomprehensibly based. It's kinda sad that a talented writer has to go through so much trouble to get his work published because of the color of his skin

>>16275983
>>16275989
>this didn't cause the poetry world to re-examine itself, but rather caused them all to shit on the writer for yellowface
amazing

>>16275989
This is amazing. I'm an asian in an asian country and the only people in other skin colors are tourists and retirees. I can't even imagine the rage of a white man being rejected for being white in a white country.

>>16276011
That would require them to admit to some sort of wrongdoing and rethink their biases

>>16275989
This might be a mean thing to say, but I'm thankful I'm not white.

I had a pretty comfy idea for a story come to me in a dream a couple of days ago, and I've been fine-tuning it in my head to be something more complete:
The Earth is on a direct collision course with a foreign body, some sort of Planet X-type celestial debris from outside our solar system, and it's going to obliterate the fuck out of the Earth. When this news is confirmed to the world, all order goes to shit.
The story follows a group of teens/young adults who, having been close friends for a long time, take this horrific news and use it to finally do what they've always wanted: go on a cross-country road trip.
Along their chaotic adventure (the world is so fucked from this news), these people learn the value of life, how to cope with death, and how some would rather live blissfully ignorant of their impending doom.

>>16273670
If there's just two people talking, just put down the lines. The readers will know which one is talking based on the context.

>>16276151
Could be pretty decent if you do it right

>>16276160
Why write anything at all, just let the reader imagine the story based on the covers.

>>16276181
>pretending to be retarded
No but seriously though, if there's just two people talking you don't need to keep reminding the reader which is which, it should be obvious.

>>16276151
This topic has been done so many times in books, TV, movies, what is there left to do or say?

>>16276253
There's not enough media that captures the comfy road trip aesthetic.

>>16273670
>he quoth'd

>>16276256
>He imagined, as the conversation took place on another plane of existence

>>16276184
I don't disagree, technically, but then all you have is a list of lines. That's not a novel. Where's the meat? They're not just standing there, opening their mouths like NPCs, are they? What are they doing, how are they behaving? There should be something more to be said about the scene, otherwise it's just flat and lifeless.

>>16276281
>That's not a novel
Why are you pretending to be retarded? There's no possible way you could've interpreted my post as "dude just write a book that's nothing but a list of lines".

>>16276292
I phrased that poorly. I'm of course not talking about the narrative outside dialogue. The point is, dialogue tags don't have to be simple markers for who's talking, but are a tool for pacing the conversation and organically including information about the scene itself. So telling people not to use dialogue tags at all is poor advice. It's not solving problems but just escaping them.

When you look at authors like Sapkowsky who don't use dialogue tags, you can follow the conversation easily enough, yes, but it also leaves a sense of rushed emptiness, like the writer doesn't really give a crap.

>>16276341
McCarthy has a pretty minimalist approach to it as well.

>>16276356
McCarthy embeds the dialogue straight into the narrative in a very personal way, and he does occasionally employ dialogue tags too. I think he's a pretty good example of striking a balance between meaty scene-building and effective conversations without any fluff. Though I wouldn't tell anyone to outright try to copy what he does.

I'm using RoyalRoad to write a book. So far so good, I'm two chapters in. But I didn't get any comments, followers and barely any readers. Can you guys please read it and tell me if it sucks balls?

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35586/historia-apocrypha-vegas-demon

Thanks for reading.

>>16276454
How does RoyalRoad work? Do you get paid per page read?

>>16276458
You dont get paid per se. But you can add patreon or paypal links. Some of the most popular authors make more than 1000$ a month, its crazy.

The website itself doesn't gets any of that money, it all goes to the authors. The website gets its money from ads and users can also pay to get premium accounts that will give them extra features.

>>16276454
It hasn't even been a day since you started posting, you shouldn't expect a huge following and rave reviews after just two chapters. A lot of users won't bother to pick up a fiction, until there are more chapters finished.

And yeah, I'll be frank, it's not good. Repetitive, full of cliche imagery, cringe phrases, and little mistakes. The character is going to the Mojave desert, you don't need to keep saying she wants to be alone. People normally don't go to deserts in the middle of the night for company, it's self-evident. Not that she actually wanted to be alone, she wanted to get away from the city, yes? It just seems like you're making up shit on the fly without proofreading or editing, which is unfortunately common on the site. One chapter was enough for me, sorry.

>>16276454
I got a few things to say.
>Despite all of the pain, she keep on keeping on, no matter what.
Am I supposed to take this story seriously or not?
> She wanted to go where nobody else was
>She wanted to be away from everybody, she wanted to be completely alone.
Redundant.
There's a bunch of other stuff I don't really care for but I'm not equipped with the words to explain them properly.
Lines like
>These clouds had no silver lining. This was a bad omen, a terrible omen
Just feel silly, like a narrator in a 1950's B-movie.
If you want to make it serious, don't be so campy. If you want to be campy, fully commit to the style and make it ubiquitous.

>>16276454
Why are 2 of your paragraphs smaller font than the others

>>16276454
kek, this guy took that "never say he said or keep dialogue without modifiers" advice to heart

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35586/historia-apocrypha-vegas-demon/chapter/548609/september-5-1960-monday

I feel like I can probably churn out pulp but I don't have any good ideas for stories I really want to put passion into, what's the easiest thing to write to make money?

>>16276718
If you want to go the dignified route, you can do cut and paste thrillers like Da Vinci Code. If you're less dignified, there's erotica

>>16276718
> what's the easiest thing to write to make money?
Sell erotica on Amazon. The weird and kinky shit sells pretty well.

>>16276533
There's such advice? I heard the complete opposite, which is just as autistic.

>>16276763
Fascinating.

>>16276935
Check out Chuck Tingle if you want to learn about the Amazon weird porn maestro.

>>16276916
I know one housewife/part time sports writer who would never use he said, name said. She would write
> the 20-year-old mused
> the 1975 winner of the World championships commented
> the 2006 bronze medalist at the Canadian regional competition added
> the Bible-verse-memorization hobbyist said

>>16275626
>Faulkner
What should I read first?

>>16273773
i like the font, cover, the aesthetic. i feel like, as the other anon said, the writing is a bit clunky. Even if you wanted to sound bluntly empirical. Also, though I like the phrasing
>the planet sunken in daylight
what does this mean? are there multiple stars illuminating both sides of the planet? how would the whole planet be sunken in daylight? also
>aerospace plane
are you referring to that abandoned air force plane? if not, you may as well say Spaceplane because that's the proper non-codename general term for what it was. also FTL travel is, as far as is known, physically impossible so hyperdrives are consequently just a cheesy stolen conjecture of an idea, and you may as well come up with your own word/idea for what it might mean, if anything. as well as space elevators. the technology strikes me as the modern equivalent of writing about flying cars and ultra geometric architecture

the 2nd/3rd paragraphs have some good sentences/imagery, and i like the flow of ideas, although personally its all a bit too easy to imagine and the terminology tends to be bland. like instead of
>Navigation systems aimed at the airport. Wings deployed airbrakes; wheels met the ground; and the plane sped down the runaway to a safe landing.
I might do something like,
>Airport permissions grant coordinate data autonomously fed as signals into the plane's assemblage of control systems, and a rumbling fermata tolls the aligning of vectors and waning of errors. In a familiar planar fashion, an asymptotic trajectory eventually cues brakes to deploy, wheels to touch ground, and a violent deceleration.
etc, this isn't even an example of something i necessarily think is good but i think it at least takes some level of imagination and effort to read, as i invoke actual control theory terminology to describe the ship's automatic operations? i dont know man

>>16276148
Thank you. I actually appreciate this. Most minorities will just rub our faces in shit and tell us we're oh so lucky to be able to taste it.

>>16276959
That's reporters' way of including relevant information while keeping things short. In a novel, it would only come across as unintentionally comical.

You can't win as a white male writer unless you write fetish porn. Why even live?

>>16277443
Houellebecq doesn't write fetish po... nevermind

>>16277443
Because I like fetish porn?

>>16277443
Write under the name Yi-Fen Chou

>>16277078

>the 2nd/3rd paragraphs have some good sentences/imagery, and i like the flow of ideas, although personally its all a bit too easy to imagine and the terminology tends to be bland.

I've gotten prose suggestions from /lit/ before though often it shows the posters didn't read the whole story (only read the posted sample) before making suggestions. You might be interested in aviation. But if I were to apply the same level of detail for the other aspects of the story, you'd likely start to lose interest.

Space travel ultimately has little bearing on the theme and plot, so the small details might be distracting or an unwanted obstacle when readers should be going from one scene to the next.

>are you referring to that abandoned air force plane? if not, you may as well say Spaceplane because that's the proper non-codename
No. Should be obvious just by how the word is typed. I liked the sound of aerospace plane a lot more.

>also FTL travel is, as far as is known, physically impossible so hyperdrives
Réne isn't from the modern times, Earth, or the solar system.

I can still adjust this part since it was on the first draft and no one else seemed to care about it.
>the planet sunken in daylight

>>16278251
>Réne isn't from the modern times, Earth, or the solar system.
The speed of light is the same no matter where you are in the universe. But anyway my point is that if you're going to have hyperdrives, space elevators, etc, you may as well just come up with your own terminology and personal spin on it. Otherwise you may as well add "lightsabers" and "hover cars" as well, such that they're contrived concepts/plot devices already used elsewhere.

>Should be obvious just by how the word is typed.
How? The word is typed identically to the Air Force plane, and isn't even a proper classifier. At best I can assume you're talking about a Spaceplane. This is another example of There's Nothing Wrong With Inventing Your Own Language. Read some Gene Wolfe and you'll realize you quite literally can't overdo it, if you are doing it right to begin with

>though often it shows the posters didn't read the whole story
of course not, but i don't see what difference it makes here.

>But if I were to apply the same level of detail for the other aspects of the story, you'd likely start to lose interest.
I agree, tho my example wasn't meant to show meticulous detail, or to suggest that you should replace everything with verbiage like that - rather, I lost interest quickly because the opposite was happening. Because it was easy, because the wording was extremely on-the-nose, and because the concepts are all way too familiar to me.

>when readers should be going from one scene to the next
sure but pure consonance with zero dissonance is simply not satisfying

>excerpt from a rant I wrote during a psychotic episode back in january

Absolute internal chaos. Can’t you see a simple call from you would save me from this madness. Just a small hint that I am a valuable human being, worth existing, worth to be loved or simply thought of, maybe even occasionally. Why does it seem that I am always the secondary character to everyone’s story, and everyone is a primary character in mine. This ego trap has been haunting me all my life. Today I chose to do nothing, except laze about. I’ve always believed that depression is only true when it affects your day to day life. Now I realize I never had much of a day to day life. Just an endless pursuit to soften the internal hell my heart experiences every moment. Ephemeral pleasures, small useless talks, ‘learning’ interesting things about the world, abusing substances and getting ‘enlightened’. This shit means nothing. Inside the night stand on my left side. I have prescribed antipsychotic medication, they seem like a nice way out… But I’m stronger than this, I’m always strong. My journey hasn’t even started yet. Time, I keep wasting time. Just mulling over this huge void inside my heart. Why can’t I accept my family, why can’t I accept myself. What is missing? Does everyone suffer like this? Or is it just me?

>The speed of light is the same no matter where you are in the universe. But anyway my point is that if you're going to have hyperdrives, space elevators, etc, you may as well just come up with your own terminology and personal spin on it. Otherwise you may as well add "lightsabers" and "hover cars" as well, such that they're contrived concepts/plot devices already used elsewhere.

>>though often it shows the posters didn't read the whole story
>of course not, but i don't see what difference it makes here.

Lightsabers might be copyrighted or trademarked, so a laser sword may need a new name. Meanwhile hyperdrive isn't. The same goes for androids, cyborgs, artificial intelligence.

Hyperdrive specifically, I don't think it's a good idea to invent my own language for an extremely minor aspect of the story that only appears in the first paragraphs and nowhere else. Not even the main series the short story is a part of does space travel make another appearance.

The key aspect of the transit scene is mainly to describe the characteristics of the destination planet, not the logistics of spaceflight. If you really think the plane landing needs more detail, it's likely going to be more sensory detail than anything specific to aviation since its irrelevant to the theme or any of the characters' professions.

If you really lost interest because of that paragraph, then the problem is more about insufficient hooking. E.g
>who is the main character?
>why is he emigrating?
>what is his new home like?

>How? The word is typed identically to the Air Force plane, and isn't even a proper classifier.
Aerospaceplane is one word. Aerospace plane is two, though I wasn't aware of the US Air Force's project while I was writing the story.

>There's Nothing Wrong With Inventing Your Own Language. Read some Gene Wolfe
Everyone has their own style. There is no point in adopting or imitating another person's style when it has little relevance to the fundamental goals of the work.

>>16275661
actually helpful post. thank you, anon.

>>16278399
>>16278632
Distractions now removed. Updates reflected here:

https://likho.neocities.org/pages/mnemosynes-heretic/ch1.html
https://likho.neocities.org/share/mnemosynes-heretic.pdf

>>16277004
I'd recommend some of his short stories and then As I Lay Dying. It' not one of his easier novels, but it's short and It'll give you a good idea of whether or not you like Faulkner enough to keep reading his work

>>16273661
Hey, anons; how much planning to you usually do before you start writing your story? Do you keep tabs on the different plot points, characters, themes and such that you want to establish, or do you just get to work and improvise? I imagine that most people do something in between. I want to try writing my first novel, but I'm not sure just how much planning I ought to do before I actually start writing it.

>>16279472
I think it's good to make an outline and have a general idea of where your story is going, but I don't think there's a single successful writer out there who has every single detail written down before they start writing. The reason being is that if you obsess over getting everything down in an outline, you're never going to start writing. As I said in the previous thread, Ive known people who have spent a decade "working" on their novel, with all the work they have done not going past the outlining stage.

It's good to be prepared, but outlining isn't actually giving you any writing practice. It's just you coming up with ideas.

>>16279673
Thanks.
I'm a little afraid, because I have an idea that I believe has some potential, but I fear that my inexperience will condemn it to mediocrity or even just plain badness. I suppose that's what editing is for, and a common concern for most novice writers.

>>16279697
Nobody writes an amazing first novel, anon. Even James Joyce scrapped his first novel and rewrote it. Coming up with a good idea for a story is not the hard part of writing

You could make some kind of FAQ to add to the op post, because it gets kinda tiresome to see the same thing over and over

>>16278399
>of course not, but i don't see what difference it makes here.
One time I got a prose suggestion where the wannabe editor replaced all instances of 'surname' with 'family name'. Entirely missing the point that the robot characters do not have actual families.

Another case, someone tried to flesh out prose about a human colony on a barren planet by saying humanity defied it's rules. Even though humanity is the slave race on the planet.

>>16278970
godspeed babe

It’s the biggest thing on /lit/

>>16281196
Are you that guy that was writing an epic about racing?

>>16281196
That's a lot of paper, anon

>>16281277
Only the first book is about racing

How do I make my prose skedaddle ? I mean tickle and zing, dazzle an razzle and even frazzle? I'm talking I make it molest and give zest? I'm talking fiddle and diddle and skaddle? Grasp and clasp? Bugger and fugger?

>>16281403
Have you tried giving it the ol' thesaurus treatment?

Just wrote a literary confession lads, I want to share it but I'm worried it'll be cringe

>>16279472
None at all. I also always taper out at around 30K words, just about the time I really have to start answering some questions and get my shit together. Good luck, and remember that this first book doesn't have to be anything but 'finished.'

Has anyone here made money off poems or stories?

>>16281511
send it to me

>>16281640
https://pastebin.com/EfwZSv8S

>>16281357
based

>>16281592
as a child, we made six page books of paper and staples and sold them to our mothers and fathers for fake currency we made also

>>16281647
could work as a protagonist describing his autism in a diary of some sort

>>16281647
anon, would you like my sharp thoughts or my blunt thoughts or no thoughts at all?

>>16281673
Sure, it's just a little something I hacked together

>>16281647
I like it. I'd keep reading if there were more.

>>16281674
I like it very very much except I wish it spoke more of the projection of the english students and the thoughts of the author and that the tone is more consistent. is he the ape who mom buys book from computer? or is he smart enough to see the student fraudulents? and in 6. you use " difficult " too many times and in 8. you confuse the length of the book and the length to read one page

>>16273670

>Doesn't understand the function of dialogue tags

Let me guess your characters expulse? Exclamate? Ejaculate?

>>16281685
>>16281669
Wow. Thank you very much for the feedback!

>>16281697
I'll have to refine it quite a bit desu, but I appreciate the feedback

What do you use for writing?
for me, its Notepad++

>>16281801
Scrivener

>>16281801
Word and Scrivener, mostly

>>16281801
ink and the tags of furniture and other items

>>16281801
Scrivener. Then import to Grammarly on my other monitor for crosschecking for edits in scri, then import again to google docs for further editing that grammarly misses.

>>16282130
>Grammarly
>Not being big brain enough to catch everything yourself with a couple rounds of editing
NGMI

I don't have any questions or whatever just wanted to say I'm finally making good progress on a novel and not abandoning it and we're all gonna make it bros

>>16282130
>49 dollars
What makes it better than Word and Zim?

>>16282204
Word is 'just' a text editor, scrivener is also a composition editor and research integration tool

>>16282194
Proud of you, bro. I'm also finally making good progress on a novel, which is something I'd been putting off for years. Working on it one chapter at a time and posting it on the web has helped me stay productive

>>16276763
Is this the writer version of telling an aspiring artist to draw furry porn?

>>16281801
LaTeX

>>16282434
Pretty much. I don't know how any self-respecting writer could turn to erotica just to make a few bucks

>>16282468
Few writers have self respect. They all get desperate in the end.

>>16282468
I'm thinking of writing erotica now. Maybe when I feel the need to fap, I'll instead write something. That'll give me more inspiration, probably

Trying to get my writing to flow

>>16282819
Post some? I can give you some tips if you want

>>16282838
Too embarssed of it right now

>>16282882
You're anonymous here ya wanka

>>16273670
I like when people follow this advice in the extreme and every dialogue sounds like everyone is schizophrenic
>he said
>she exclaimed
>he whispers
>he muttered
>she remarked
>he declared
It's okay to use "said" more than once a book, autismo

>>16283375
>he whispered, in a slightly suspicious tone that reminds one of the whisperings of eldritch horrors toying with weak minds in the night

Where can you upload pdfs to share here?

>>16273773
Just within the first page there's multiple cases where the choice of words seems excessively specific.

>aerospace plane
Plane would suffice, and as a reader I would prefer to work out from the context of the next sentence that it is also built for space travel

>observable galaxy
If you're describing an optical phenomena then 'observable' seems unnecessary, and why specify the galaxy and not all space?

>orbited the ecliptic plane
is this notable that the planets are where one would expect them to be? If it isn't why mention it, are you expecting the reader to assume that their orbit is eccentric?

The rest of it is fine, but as an avid sci-fi reader it does nothing to pique my interest.

Anyone here vomit? Just go go go fucking rush to slobber everything on paper and get to the end, and fix it later? I feel like the sense of actually completing something, even if it's absolutely terrible by the end, would drive me to correct it more; at that point, my story's already done, I just have to chisel it out of the rough stone it currently is. Anyone have experience with this method?

>>16273773
>>16283463

How do you guys go about selecting a title for your work? I usually have a lot of trouble coming up with something that sounds enticing for the reader, while also communicating an important aspect of the book.
Which principles should each title follow?

>>16284667
infinite jest was taken from hamlet ostensibly because he liked the quote and it had some thematic overlap. you can really do anything. take a phrase or quote from anywhere, that isn't so recognizable

>>16284667
What's in a name?

>>16284689
A name traps the essence of an idea or an object; it is the most important word that could possibly exist.

/wg/ needs a discord

>>16283834
To a certain extent, yes, this is the best way. After a while you go just as fast but it's way better than it used to be on first draft. Biggest problem new authors have is going back and rereading all the time, pondering, doubting, blah blah blah. Just write the fucking story, clean it up a bit, and write the next one.

>>16284667
William Faulkner once said giving a good title to your book is an art in itself. And he knew a thing or two about good titles.

As I Lay Dying 10/10
The Sound and the Fury 10/10
Intruder in the Dust 9/10
Light in August 8/10
Sanctuary 8/10
There's a few tricks to it I can think of. If you have an ambitious piece of work, finding a quote from classic literature and adapting it is a good move (The Sound and the Fury).It's also good to present an enticing, aesthetic or provocative image (Light in August, Intruder in the Dust). It's also possible to simply go with a noun that exemplifies an important aspect of the story, but this is only a safe option if you can't think of anything else, (A Rose for Emily).

>>16276454
There’s more to proofreading than spellcheck, but you shouldn’t bother because this is just a jumbled-up mess of incoherent cliche.

>>16284742
go on, then.

>>16284817
Should the title also be used as a way to communicate the genre of the book? For example, names, such is the case in "Stoner" and "Lolita", can help the reader deduce that they are before a character study. However, something like "Around the World in 80 Days" gives you an idea that the plot is more important.

>>16284667
I usually name my stories only after they're completed. Seeing the whole thing from start to finish, it often comes pretty obvious what the title must be.

>>16285132
I'd say the cover does that. Title can't be totally weird but doesn't need to let reader know the genre right away.

what do you guys think of this idea. i feel like it's been done before
a civilization operates in a VR world. everyone is aware that they live in a VR world. the strength of this reality is dependent on people's belief in it. pieces start to crumble when someone/a group of people deliberately begin to make it shitty for everyone else, for some reason. now they must find the culprit

>>16285776
If they all know it's VR, then none of them believe in it. Your premise fails instantly.

>>16285806
the twist is that it wasn't VR at all

>>16284667
Throw a dart at the bible and see where it landed. Repeat until satisfied.

>>16283665

>Plane would suffice, and as a reader I would prefer to work out from the context of the next sentence that it is also built for space travel
Before the story had cover art that made it obvious it was a space scifi, someone got confused about a regular plane going to space.

>If you're describing an optical phenomena then 'observable' seems unnecessary, and why specify the galaxy and not all space?
The POV character has little presence and isn't introduced yet. So 'observable' hints perspective as opposed to the effect occurring on the galaxy itself.

I can't cater to every reader's preference, such as specificity, but I can write aim for something smooth, concise, and understandable.

>>16285818
kekked

>>16283834
I keep thinking I should but I hate it. I spend so much time thinking about what I should write and I don't write very much.

>Check top author on royal road
>He's getting almost 2 grand per chapter on patreon
I've been posting my shit in the wrong place.

>>16283375
There is literally nothing wrong with just using said

>>16275989
brb gonna try this with my unpublished poetry. will report back.

I hope you go through and pay a real spellchecker if you actually want to be taken seriously.

>>16287023
How do you see how much someone makes on rr anyway?

>>16287297
Their patreon. RR gives a direct link.

>>16287297
Just look at the patreon attached to their page, that guy was just the best rated author not the most popular. The most popular is hiding how much he makes on patreon, but he has 4x the patrons the other guy has. Christ I'm gonna start posting my shit on there now, might as well.

>>16287322
I wonder if people complete entire novel and just post chapter by chapter or if they write chapter a month to continue updating.

>>16287337
I would assume they post a chapter as soon as its finished if they get paid by the chapter, but they can also set it up to do payment every week or month. I just looked at other writer patreons and its kind of depressing how much people who write porn and other smut make. Porn websites exist why the fuck are people paying money to read erotica, like what the fuck?

>>16287370
I did even more research and the highest paid web novel author is the guy writing "Humans of New York" he has 20,000 patrons and the lowest allowed payment on his patreon is $1.50 which means at bare minimum he's making $30,000 a month. It's probably way higher than that since payment plans go up to $100 a month. Does anybody have this as a pdf or something? I kinda wanna check it out.

>>16287394
Disregard that I suck cocks, its a photoblog not a novel. Don't know why he's listed as the highest paid patreon writer on Forbes.

>>16287322
>I'm gonna start posting my shit on there now, might as well.
u wont get as much

>>16287412
YOU DON'T KNOW THAT

>>16287322
The best thing is that you can post a finished version on amazon as well! So there's absolutely no reason not to do both.

>>16287414
Looking through myself it seems the biggest money makers are all that LitRPG shit, so I hope you're willing to write that way. And they're long-going/had a fanbase in other spheres before porting here I.E Fictionpress or Reddit.

>>16287617
>You sway your hand and a square window manifests from thin air before you, you believe they call it "inventory" in those R-P-Gs kids play on their nintendos those days. Above it, there is a picture of a small humanoid, you press it. A list of "abilities" appears reveals themselves to you. "Harem Master 0/100" is says before one of them. You don't know what that means, but you accidentally press it inspecting it. And you press "yes" accidentally yet again. It quickly changes to 54/100, and others you press no longer show any reaction.
Do I have future in litrpg?

>>16287682
I think you just might sport.

>>16287682
Depends on how cute the girls in the harem are. Coomers have low standards for prose, but they have refined taste in waifus.

>>16287751
>but they have refined taste in waifus.
Good joke. It's just the same archetype(s).

>>16287797
Fool. You have dipped your toes in the water and think you understand the ocean. /a/ regularly has debates about the best of the various sub genres of tsundere. They argue endlessly about what a tsundere actually IS. This is only one example of the intellectual thunderdome that coomers regularly do battle in. Do not pretend you understand.

>>16287617
Ugh, I tried my hand on writing a trashy one to post on there but the prose is still a bit complicated for the litrpg crowd. Do I have to shorten it too two lines a paragraph and have the sentences structure as simple as they go?

>>16288165
Read some of the popular stuff and decide for yourself, how much you're willing to pretend, and how likely it is you think that they might smell something disingenuous about you.

I haven't dug deep myself, but it's easy for me to imagine that the people writing this stuff are actually passionate about it. They actually fucking like it. The one story on the site that I came across so far that seems a clear cut above, makes absolute pennies on patreon despite having been up for some years now.

I think I'll try my hand too, but I'm still going to put as much of myself into the schocky stuff. And because I'm putting myself into it, trying to generate interest inside, I won't be able to the do the stat-block stuff. Good luck Anon.

>>16287751
>waifus
>>>/out/

>>16288219
Cheers anon. There is a certain low none of us should fall through. Writing insincerely can't be good for a writer's mind in the long run

>>16287682
There's just enough grammatical mistakes in this paragraph for me to believe that it came off of RR

>>16281801
Unironically a 2017 iPad for handwriting

t. published

>>16273661
>Tell me why I should read your story.
Unapologetically ambitious female characters ... wait, this is 4chains ... how about rape jokes, surely you're into these?
>>16275802
Based.
>>16279472
>Do you keep tabs on the different plot points, characters
Yes. I basically write a line or three about what will happen in every chapter.
>>16281801
Apple Pages (TM)
>>16288886
Seems actually somewhat viable now that Notes can transfer written word into text. But still sounds so fucking slow.

>>16273661
>Tell me why I should read your story.
It's not isekai, litrpg, wuxia, xianxia, or gamelit, or has overpowered main characters. It's a weeb-inspired sci-fi space opera with varying degrees of hard, soft, and hand-waved it just werks™ science, but no magic space wizard bullshit here, and characters die when they are killed. They're actually kinda irrelevant in the grand scheme of the story but leave their impact along the way. There's also waifus

>>16273661
>Tell me why I should read your story.
You shouldn't

I need to type up the second draft of my book but I know it will be a Sisyphean slog that I couldn't bear to sit through without enough amphetamines to incapacitate a hippopotamus.But I know if I don't do it, my entire life will be a lie and my best chance to self-actualize and live for my truth and not for others will evaporate forever.

>>16289769
just write it you fag

>>16287035
It gets repetitive. I read Old Man's War and I literally don't think Scalzi used a dialogue tag other than "said" or "asked." Definitely noticed and definitely took me out of it.

>>16289769
What else would you be spending your time doing. Just get it done

>>16275819
You have no idea. That's an easy out though. If you're a non-white male (not born in complete shit, which most aren't) and can't hack it these days in a 1st world country then you never would've amounted to much anyway.

>>16289903
But pretty much anyone can do well in a first world country. White males only get an extra easy bonus. so their chance of making it is closer to 90% vs 70% for non-whites or something.

Finally lost the trending competition on royalroad. Got bumped off back into obscurity earlier today. I couldn't maintain the momentum in the end, only released around 4 chapters while I was on it but I gained a exponential amount of followers and views off it. No tears. No sadness. Only the drive to move forward. We may have setbacks, bros, but we're all going to make it. Success is subjective, remember that.

>>16273661
Can someone take a look at this story that I’ve written so far? It’s one part of a collection of children’s stories I’m writing about a princess, a knight, and their adventures across the world. The ones that are finished are just in normal black text, whilst unfinished stuff is highlighted in blue.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/19qs7qPtibGkl-nbsddKRCG0Pak4SM95NP0ivIvC2LIM/edit

Any amount of /crit/ will help me out a lot.

>>16289783
>>16289825
Yes yes, I know

>>16289632
Hey, don't lump Wuxia in with the rest of that degenerate garbage. Wuxia done well is supremely comfy. The only problem is that most of the good stuff isn't translated

>>16290081
Are you underage? The sentence structure is like a kid breathlessly telling a story, with its run-on sentences and incorrect formatting of dialogue

> The grass was tall enough to swallow her entirely, so when the princess decided to jump into the deep stalks without a second thought, it took many minutes of searching before the knight found her, who couldn’t help but smile and laugh while saying, “you caught me!”
> It was only a few days before that, whilst she was dozing off atop her horse, that the knight had awoken the young girl with a tug at her shoulder. “My lady, I think it would be best if you were awake for the next few hours of this journey,” he whispered. As she heard these words, the princess lifted her head and said, “and why's that?” through a mess of fuzzy black hair. “Well, I don’t wish for you to slide off this saddle and hit your head,” the old man said, his figure dark against the starry sky. “And also,” he continued, “it appears that we’re in giant country.”

>>16290176
Be nice

>>16290188
Yeah, but I think that guy really might be underage. This is the sort of thing they teach in middle/high school. If he hasn't mastered it then ... maybe he hasn't completed that part of his education yet.

>>16290176
>run on sentences
Literally where? They aren’t in whatever random set of sentences you posted from my story.

>>16290176
>>16290200
Just critique the text, dude.

>>16290081
>>16290188
You really need to work on formatting. You have dialogue buried in massive walls of text. It becomes a chore to read very quickly. Different speakers are generally separated by paragraphs because it makes it easier to understand what's going on. Your eyes can immediately notice that someone else is speaking. You're not writing a damn Faulkner novel where the dialogue is all crammed into one unending sentence, so format it properly

>>16290214
He’s already provided some stuff, like me using multiple clauses in a sentence when it isn’t required. I fixed some of it, so the rest should look a bit prettier. I would always appreciate someone else looking at it, however.

>>16290200
27 yo here, nothing like this was ever thought on any level of my education.

Why is the stuff on my pages so much shittier than the book in my head?

>>16290223
It’s because the perfection of your book isn’t thoroughly thought out. It’s like imaging a great painting while a canvas is in front of you. When you don’t think about it, and only glance at it mentally in your mind, you become frustrated with the fact that it doesn’t translate well into the page. But if you truly focus on the painting in your head, you’ll notice that the details are quite blurry.

>>16290202
The sentences are just overly long and are connected by too many conjunctions. It's like a kid telling you
> today at homeroom, Jimmy told me that he had something cool to show me, but he couldn't show me until lunchtime, and then I said, "Come on, Jimmy! I'm dying to know!" and Jimmy replied, "No, Harry. The teacher will take it away and I won't get it back until the end of the day," so then we waited until lunch, and we had meatloaf and peas, which are my favorite food. "Yum," said Amy, "It's my favorite food," munching on a mouthful of peas, and Jimmy reached into his bag and slowly pulled out the surprise

>>16290223
Because your brain can trick itself that it isn't shit when you don't have inescapable proof.
Be glad, at least you're not totally deluded which is important to improve.

>>16290238
>Jimmy reached into his bag and slowly pulled out the surprise
KINO

>>16290238
I don’t have any such sentence in the story, you’re being ridiculous.

>>16290245
ok, do what you want

>>16290250
Cope harder. You have nothing to back up the bullshit that you’re saying.

>>16290257
Dis is not a healthy reaction to criticism, bruv. If you don't agree with it and can't use it, it's best to ignore and move on.

And yeah, some of it was overly harsh and aimed at you instead of the work, which isn't good criticism. But the point about sentence structure and formatting sounds fair; the shit is hard to read yo.

> It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the novels that sell well in bookstores come in with 25% fewer adverbs than the average novel that amateur writers post online. Less than 12% of all number one bestsellers had more than 154 adverbs, even though half of all fan fiction does.

Looks like I'm fucked.

>>16290729
Tried a couple short piece. This seems like a handy tool.

>>16290729
>>16290829
>grades 4, 5 and 7 are all "good"
Are there any other grades then?

>>16290900
I tried to post the entire thread into it and still got 4, which begs the question whether it can even rate that much text. Tried to add random gibberish and it went up to 10 which is "okay". Funny enough, first episode of Finnegans Wake still gives 6 and first chapter of Ulysses gives 3.

>>16290935
This James fella isn't too shabby.

>>16290729
>>16290829
>>16290942
So what's with the hate for adverbs?

>>16290951
https://lithub.com/toni-morrison-is-more-hemingway-than-hemingway-himself/
Data says they are shit. Also they are just lazy more often than not. TRUST THE DATA.

>>16288663
Thanks I tired.

>>16290974
Holy motherfuck. The data never lies.

>>16290974
I don't like Toni Morrison, either as an author or as a person. I'm also 95% sure that she's made it to the top because no one can criticize a black woman without being cancelled

>>16291011
Look at the bigger picture. Her using fewer adverbs than Papa isn't the story here. Both of them, and most other published and well regarded authors use 1/4 fewer adverbs than self-published ones. Even the random ass examples confirm the trend. It seems too consistent too ignore.

>>16291027
Sounds like one of those miss the forest for the trees things. It's probably something to do with writing style or sentence structure and the adverbs are a side effect of that. I find it hard to believe that the main difference between Tolkien and some preteen writing Legolas slash is muh adverbs

>>16291042
>It's probably something to do with writing style or sentence structure and the adverbs are a side effect of that.
Well, obviously but overuse of adverbs seems like the most easy way to tell if other stylistic issues will creep up. They seem like a decent red flag to watch for.

>>16273712
Spotted the "he said" low IQ writer.

>>16290081
You are saying way to little with way too much, especially for a children’s novel.
>which pranced along the trails with a tired strut.
Prancing and tired contradict each other. How about
>which slogged through the hills
>which dragged feet through the hills with its tongue leaving a path of drool marking their way

> looking along every hill and valley attentively, as though she had lost something within the plains
Don’t “as though”, be more direct and find better solutions than adverbs. Has she lost something? If so just say it. Or don’t.
>she had lost something in the plains, and kept a lookout for it.
>she was looking for something in the hills. She looked until her eyes went crossed and then still kept looking.

> The princess gave him a look as though he was a frog most likely because whenever he frowned, his eyes seemed to bulge out and his lips went wide around him.
Too long and awkward. Shorten your sentences like the other anon said. What look do you give someone when they’re a frog?!?
>the princess snorted. The knights eyes bulged, and the princess thought he looked sort of like a frog.

> “Isn’t it obvious? I’m looking for giants. They could be anywhere.” And with that, the old knight gave out a chuckle and couldn’t help but smile for the rest of the day, much to the frustration of our dear princess.
A nice little ender, but doesn’t pay off as well because how it’s written.
>”isn’t it obvious? I’m looking for giants! They could be anywhere”. The knight couldn’t help but laugh. The princess pouted. “What are you laughing at?”

Or something like that. This is just a. Few select parts, I only read the first paragraph. It needs a lot of work imo. Find more descriptive verbs. Simplify you’re sentence structure. Use sensory phrases to show instead of tell. Children’s novels needs a certain tone in voice and word choice. They tend to repeat a lot, because kids do not pick up on tropes and subtext fast a we do. Carry through and make very clear things like the knights fishy face, the princesses dissatisfaction with being treated like a kid, or a joke like the drool line of the perpetually exhausted horse following them everywhere they go.

>>16276007
>color of his skin
>color of his skin
>color of his skin
Ah of course, a guy walked up to him with a magnifying glass, stared at his like shoulder for a few seconds and then said "nah not dark enough".
My dude, he fooled them with a change of name, not an epidermis sample.
Race is not skin deep, ethnicity/nationality is even less so.

I hate everything I write and can't stop deleting it, even though I know it's killing all hope of ever finishing everything.

>"dude just write lol"
But how can I go back to a document and pick up where I left off if what I left off is shit and the new writing I want to write needs to start in a different place on a better foundation?

>>16279472
Depends on the complexity.

I have one story which is about a harem and the sexytimes they get up to, but it takes place against the backdrop of a military campaign so I've plotted out the troop movements and major battles on a calendar and a map to make sure the military campaign functions, and then I've fit the sexytimes around that.

I have a different story which is just a bunch of shit that happens to some guys on one night, so I've just got a list of "this happens and then this happens and then this happens" and then start writing.

I always structure my characters in terms of goal/motivation, flaw/obstacles, and lesson though. No matter what I'm writing, big or small.

>>16284667
Cool phrases from real life that jump out to me.

Future Perfect
>a grammatical tense

Late Night Jury
>used to work as a paralegal and if the judge kept the jury late they'd be paid the late night jury fee

Peacekept
>academic studies of peacekeeping refer to the belligerents as the "peacekept"

The reason why these phrases jump out to me is that they're strongly evocative of certain feelings or moods, but they're also mysterious. You feel like you already know what the book is about, but you don't know anything about what the book is about.

>>16292510
I rewrote my first story from scratch around ten times, because each version was shit beyond repair. I actually lost count how many times, exactly, but it did become fairly entertaining in the end. Dude just write lol

>>16290045
Where did you come up with those percentages?

I don't know if you know this, but different types of people are held to different standards now.

Anyone want to have a read and tell me what they think?

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/35523/lummox-flummox/chapter/547646/chapter-1

>RoyalRoad
>selfhost website
Which one if I just want to write fiction for myself and share it for free?

>>16293612
If you're lazy, first option. Second one would require work, and you'd have to actively try to share your site, if you want people to read.

>>16275841
link pls?

>>16290942
The thing with Joyce is that he was so good at writing that he knew when using an adverb would improve a sentence. They're not inherently bad, they just generally make for lazy and poor writing

>>16293491
reads like a diary entry, idk what you're going for

>>16273661
>Tell me why I should read your story.
you'll cum

>>16293491
It looks to me like you’ve just typed out something that you thought was deep and then attached some quotation marks and speech tags in order to make it conform to the format of a story. This failed effort at distancing yourself from your thoughts (along with your *finger quotes* “main character’s” tendency to question and backpedal every thought they have) gives a strong impression of insecurity, which is also, interestingly enough, the subject of the fictional discussion you wrote. If it were possible to believe you’d done this on purpose, I’d think you were a genius. Instead, I am inclined to believe you don’t quite understand the concept of subtext and are not talented enough to weave these thoughts into an entertaining narrative.

>>16294375
>along with your *finger quotes* “main character’s” to question and backpedal every thought they have
That's literally the character I'm writing though, all the supposed deepness is just nonsense used to depict their outlook and mental state on life. Just a pretentious way for them to explain away their biases and prejudices.

>>16294266
Joyce sucks.

>>16294432
It’s basically “jokes on them, I was only pretending.”
What your attempting to do is beyond your skill set. Consider the prologue about how you envy the insane. Is that your main character thinking, or is that the author directly addressing his audience? If it’s the first, then you’ve failed to properly to express that. If it’s the second, then you possess some very naive opinions about insanity and society in general.

Hello friends, I come from /g/ and am writing a report on a programming project where I have to be formal and write in an academic style. I will dedicate a part of the report to a section about my experience programming and how that impacts this specific project (eg I am doing certain things for the first time so the person who is reading it can understand certain decisions I've made). This is absolutely non negotiable and needs to be in my report. My problem is writing about this in an academic style without using first person pronouns - I've already written a sentence about how implementing a certain feature would take a long time so the decision was made not to include it (this is pretty much exactly what I wrote), but I can't figure out how to write that I have little experience doing [x thing] for example. Could you give me some example sentences or some advice? Obviously I am not a writer and only write these reports for natural sciences etc.

Thanks for any advice!

>>16293491
Anon's diary. It's honestly pretty baffling and even a bit scary how you've managed to gather every single statistical cliche about the users of this website and put them in text. Was it intentional, a lucky accident, or are you really such a walking trope in reality and these are personal experiences?

I caught flashes of an enormity of potential between the lines, but most of it was woefully boring rambling riddled with little mistakes. I'm afraid the jury is still out on this one.

>>16294554
>you’ve failed to properly to express that
Usually, you don't jump around narrators in a story, unless you have multiple main characters. But wait, you don't even think it's a 3rd person narrator, you think it was an author's preface? For fucks sake, don't put your own stupidity on me.

>>16294564
>you've managed to gather every single statistical cliche about the users of this website and put them in text.
I'm trying to include all of them, without explicit references to the website, watching anime, or chronic masturbation habits.
>I caught flashes of an enormity of potential between the lines, but most of it was woefully boring rambling riddled with little mistakes. I'm afraid the jury is still out on this one.
For fucks sake, I'm gonna finish this at 100k words or whatever, then I'm writing the safest and least experimental mystery novel I can. Something with a topic so remote, that nobody is going to confuse it with "literally me".

>>16294375
how to subtext?

>>16292396
>being this pedantic

How many words have you written this year?

>>16294654
It doesn't matter whether it's literally you or not. The criticism was that it's woefully boring rambling. Which is true. Don't ask people what they think and then get upset when they tell the truth.

>>16294585
Buddy, this what I mean when I say you lack the skill set to pull this off. The purpose of a critique is for an author to understand how his writing comes across to a reader. To me, section 1.1 appears to be either a prologue wherein the author addresses the audience or a failed attempt to express the narrators thoughts. There are many ways to respond to an unfavorable critique. Attempting to dictate to the reader how they should be reading it is not the best.

Like other anons have said, this is just a few inches shy of being brilliant. If you could find some way to step outside of the narrator and make it evident that you are not just using him as a vehicle for your own thoughts, this could be a modern day Confederacy of Dunces.

>>16294784
>Section 1.1 appears to be either a prologue wherein the author addresses the audience or a failed attempt to express the narrators thoughts.
It's supposed to be a prologue where the narrator, i.e. main character, addresses the audience. Which should be clear by Chapter 2, as the big reveal at the end of Chapter 1 is that he hears voices inside his head. Chapter 2 is about this whole insanity of his, whatever it is.

I'm not trying to be confrontational, or aggressive, sorry. I do admit to being emotionally invested in my own work though.

And I have no idea how to step outside of the narrator, other than having him confronted by characters in the story, who would expose his bullshit. The psychiatrist served as a first, admittedly very gentle, instance of that happening.

>>16292801
Percentages are guesstimates obviously and the 20% difference probably only exists in Murica either way who are technically the first world. Come to think of it, the affect of non-white names on reply rate for job applications might be even higher in France, then again at least their cops don't hunt for non whites.

>different types of people are held to different standards now
It always was the case. And the standards didn't change much now. Only now the penalty for being white is smaller.

>>16294448
Come on. His stories are boring as shit but his writing is still damn good.

>>16294448
I wish there was an option to filter anybody who has this opinion. Genuinely not even worth entertaining the opinions of someone who has such terrible taste

>>16294848
>he big reveal at the end of Chapter 1 is that he hears voices inside his head
Didn't catch this at all, might want to make it a bit clearer.

>>16294560
Maybe something among the lines of "Due lack of experience in X, the implementation of feature Y took too long for this version and was cut."

It'd be easier if you gave some actual text.

Peanut Head

Peanut Head
Strolls confidently across my floor.
His eyes are locked with mine.
He reaches towards me,
His hands groping the air,
His hands closer with each shallow breath.
Soon Peanut Head will have his hands on me.

I have been writing this story for a while. It's about a man who turns to crime just so he can reach California - he thinks it's heaven on Earth. But when he gets the money he gets killed. I'll try to get it published in the pretty much the best and most important lit journal in my country. My mother language is not English so I can't really get any feedback, bar some mostly supportive and enthusiastic reactions from my friends. They don't read much tho. It's is a kind of a really poor man's Borges story. I hope I pull it off in a convincing manner. If, and that's a big fucking IF, I get it published I am gonna start pursuing writing more seriously.

How are your works coming along lads?

Is it a bad idea to listen to music while you write, or on the contrary, would you recommend doing it?

>>16295464

Depends on the piece and what you’re going for, for example say you’re trying to write a poem or a short story and want a certain aesthetic/atmosphere, listening to an instrumental which has that same aesthetic which you desire I do not believe would be bad unless you are so easily distracted.

>>16295464
I think I read somewhere, I think I did - so not sure, that Marquez listened to Debussy. I think it can maybe work, although I tried listening to Sketches of Spain when writing a story (about Spain ofc) and it didn't really work. I think maybe classical is best for writing - probably yeah.

>>16295463
What's your language? There's bound to be someone on /lit/ who knows it, unless you don't want to post it here or a different reason.

>>16295519
Serbian
I once maybe saw one Serb here

>>16295486
I would of course listen to something instrumental. There's a guy on YouTube who plays somber piano melodies, original compositions. I wonder if that might help me focus.

>>16295528
cont.
Ye you're right I probably wouldn't post it here. My problem is I don't have lit friends. I'm studying CS too so there is that. I tried joining groups on FB but it's mostly boomers and mostly really poor poetry.
Something like:

I loved you my dear
to me, you were a pear
Pretty and ripe
You were exactly my type

>>16295531
If only there was a way to find out whether it helps or not.

>>16295531
I think it might but would still try with classical. What are you writing anon a novel, story or some poetry?

>>16294784
>>16295011
Ok, I added short note (like the one before the Notes from Underground) which should make the narrator's identity unambiguous, and made that voice's origin clear at the end. It was supposed to be a mystery, but not that much of a mystery.

However puzzling I want to be, I guess I shouldn't expect the reader to read my mind. Thanks for the tips, I am happy to have received them despite my awful behavior.

>>16295558
A novel. I'm going for a melancholic tone that borders on horror at times.

>>16295577
There's a typo in your note: "undergroud" is misspelled.
Also, if "user of nonsense" is a reference to what I think it is, it'd explain why your prose seemed to familiar to me. I like it, for what it's worth; thus far into the story, it's probably the biggest draw.

>>16295622
Thanks. Sorry, I'm too used to spellcheck, and the RR editor somehow doesn't have it. How annoying. Without you pointing out, I would have probably never realized this crucial bit of information, with disastrous effects.

An yeah, it is.

>>16276510
>you're making up shit on the fly
anon-kun that's called pants writing

>>16295809
I-isn't one supposed to fix it in revision?

What is this whole "second draft" business?
Do writers just shred their first one, and write the same thing again? Or is it more like editing (fixing the prose, erasing, adding, shifting a thing or two)?

>>16295910
Can't speak for others but for me it's definitely the latter. Even when I did my translation, I never went at it from scratch but used google translate as a basis.

Generally you want to do the second draft with a plan. Say, you focus on the plot and characters and scenes first, making sure it all works on that level. Then trying cut make it as efficient as possible. Then perfecting the prose.

Although I never could bring myself to do these completely separately because it all feels so interconnected.

>>16295849
there is no such thing as revision when doing weekly/daily serial chapters, especially on Royalroad of all places, and scribblehub and etc.

>>16296093
Seems kinda half-assed and disrespectful towards readers, man. Wouldn't it be better to approach it like serialized manga, when one is a few chapters ahead of the release?

>>16296139
There is a surprisingly amount of authors who do 'buffer chapters' and it is encouraged to do so. Where they drop a chapter each day or every other day while revising the others in the meantime. It's still doable when you have none, but a lot harder because you have less schedule to do anything else.

t. had a decent chaper buffer but was forced to handwave it because of a scuffed beginning and resorted to semi pants writing as a result

>>16296147
>Where they drop a chapter each day or every other day
Good lord. I get dizzy thinking about it. Though I guess more of a weekly schedule only works if one already established a huge and loyal fanbase.

>>16294967
Effect, bud.

Cops don't hunt non-whites here. If you genuinely believe that then this is going nowhere. You're either ignorant and misinformed or a zealous moron (or a troll).

The penalty for being white is smaller? What are you talking about? Whites and Asians are held to a much higher standard across the board. You're lying if you won't admit that blacks in particular are given preferential treatment in a major, obvious way.

It is what it is though. This shit will blow over in a decade or so but until then everyone is walking on eggshells.

>>16296139
People are used to those kinds of standards. Digital publishing, especially the fast and loose kind on these sorts of sites, is sloppier in general. Readers accept it if it means they can get more material delivered to their dopamine receptors fastest. Writers accept it because, why should they care out of some misplaced sense of perfectionist pride? It's less work for them and they're giving readers what they want or are at least willing to read.

>>16296167
>Whites and Asians are held to a much higher standard across the board.
Based on what? Back when I was a wagecuck, whites were the only ones who even got offers for promotion despite not doing anything else different. And that's before counting in how not having a white name lowers the chance anyone will invite you for a job interview. And you can guess who got the boot first when the companies made cuts.

I usually had superiors trying to mentor me into leadership positions pretty soon on, in literally every job I did, despite not showing any fucking interest in it or even having a particularly good record when it came to attendance. (Though to be fair, I did well above average when I did turn up)

The biggest downside of being white is having to establish context before you can say nigga without people thinking you're a racist.

>>16296163
Yeah RR seems heavily biased towards authors who are able to pump out a chapter or two a day, so that you're close to the top of the recent update list for the prime time hours. I haven't found any success on the site yet since my writing process has been glacially slow compared to the average

>>16296174
> Charles Dickens writes novels in serialized format good, Anon writes novels in serialized format bad

>>16296260
Where did the anon imply it?

Besides, Charly wasn't puking out a new chapter a day.

>>16296259
Well, I guess one can still jump on the train when it's done and release finished novel bit by bit. Something I'll have to do after 100-200 rejections from agents it seems.

>>16276277
Based and schizopilled

>>16293491
Kinda cringey, but the prose is good. I might be biased though with all the WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY memes I've seen. This just reminded me of them.

>>16294560
I asked you cunts for help with my homework and you told me to fuck off, so I will return the courtesy.

>>16296259
Actually, most users seem to prefer a steady but fairly relaxed release schedule, like 2-3 short chapters per week at most. People have been saying that if a new chapter is posted every day, there is no time to comment, and if there aren't comments, it will reflect poorly on the ranking too.

>>16295577
The main problem, as far as I see it, is that you present this story as a "mystery", yet there is no mystery whatsoever to be seen in the overlong first chapter, or any hint of what it's going to be like. It's just Mr Incel droning on. You have to ask the reader a question or lead the reader to ask a question, and that question must not be, "why should I care?"

Anyone ever written a murder mystery or something similar and have any tips? I want to do one as part of a book I'm thinking about (not the whole thing)

>>16297583
The butler did it. This is revealed at the end when the investigator invites everyone into one room and they sip brandy by the fireplace.

It's a thinly veiled autobiography I intended as a suicide note, disguised as a psychological horror book about a serial killer. Writing it sort of helped me overcome my demons so I didn't an hero but you can make fun of the typos and fix that

>>16297595
>Writing it sort of helped me overcome my demons so I didn't an hero but you can make fun of the typos and fix that
Not sure if I'm fucking tired or whether it's really quite funny.

I'm gonna embrace my inner edginess and write the edgiest edge story on Royal Road. You guys suppose it's a good idea to use an edgy quote that would later occur in the story as the prologue?

>>16297724
Is it Nine Inch Nails or My Chemical Romance? Marilyn Mansion maybe?

>>16297731
Nah just some hateful lines from a character, but those lines would have the readers know what level of edge to expect

>>16297595
link?