/lit/ - Literature

What is a good line length for a short story written in heroic couplet?

is it dead? ;(

>>18559653
May you please specify the extent of the “length” of lines? Do you mean how many lines constitutes the “short story” — surely, you mean a poem — or the length of each individual line?

>>18559659
>his next novel isn’t called “ampersand”

>>18559659
Why would it be dead. Also, no

>>18559560
>This Craft of Verse, Borges
Just ordered it from the library. It should be good.

Is there a point re-reading and editing your first stories or when you are just starting out is it enough to be writing, with the idea of salvaging anything something for the future?

Also, how close to actually locking myself in an empty room with a pen and paper do I have to get to stop thinking about starting to write and just writing?

>>18559670
iambic pentameter...

>>18559941
If it’s just Shakespearean heroic couplet then why are you fucking asking?

>>18559724
how do you know?

>>18560304
I don't but they released for June so I expect July's should be out in a few days.

SAD!

>>18557475

>>18560367
What was OP’s story about?

>>18560390
my peanus weanus of cours ;)

If only you knew how bad things really were.

>>18560404
I just checked the long list of a contest I submitted to. My name wasn't on it

The writers on /lit/ have forgotten how to utilize this board to hone their craft, it is an amazing resource and the anonymous format allows you to get the sort of feedback which you can not get anywhere else, unsolicited honest reaction to what you wrote. Every thread is a writing exercise. When you come onto /lit/ go right to the catalog and select the newest thread (low effort threads that will go no where are best and offer a good challenge), create a character you would be interested in seeing in that thread and write a little flash fiction, the (You)s are your critique, were the responses what you attempted to elicit? Do not reply to any of them, just let your little story stand on it's own. This will help you create believable characters more than any critique from other writers. Picrel is a prime example, I bet that anon did not respond to a single (You), just took notes and learned from the responses.

If you can not figure out how to write something, find a picture that suggests it and make a thread requesting anons describe it in their best prose, or formulate a writing game and observe how other anons deal with it. Make sure to include your own entry in the OP, little good comes of these if OP does not contribute, once again, don't respond to critiques of your offering, but do respond to others contributions.

We need to get the writers back onto the board and not holed up in here.

>>18560462
Sorry for you, anon, but contests are often political or the jury/judges wish to make a statement about what they award.

>>18560462
Now you know exactly where you stand.

>>18560404
>tfw never been declined
>tfw never submitted
can’t wait to become a posthumous god of literatyre

>>18560474
>anonymous

>>18560498
Stately, plump CIA glowie came down the stairwell, with screenshots of Anon’s futa forum chats at hand, upon a silver platter.
—O Anon, sang CIA glowie, Don’t you know that your VPN isn’t enough?

>>18559659
Is Lit Quarterly dead?

>>18560521
I do, I do.
Alas, I do.
But what's to be done
'bout the likes of you?

I want to write like mark twain. How do I gather enough money to travel the world and write using the local dialect?

>>18560358
but theyre not answering my email and the editor is banned and they dont get enough sumbissions and waaaaaa

>>18560626
yes

>>18559560
Came from poetry rating. This is a piece in progress about the frequent experience of conversation dying on the subject of trying to understand people. Everyone celebrates and claims to agree with the virtue of empathy until something asks them to reconsider the one dimensionality of their "enemies". It also has currents of my friends and family being unable to hear about the realities of my job over the last year: the psychological damage done in group and nursing homes, as well as the mental health decline and suicide rate of children. People want to be good but can't make the effort. Pity, not resentment. Watch the circuits cross.

THE QUOTIDIAN AWK
Tritely a segue, trivial humor,
Excising rotely a pulsating tumor;
Gigeresque bulb drooling ichorous snot.
Heaven forbid what experience brought!
Timely abortion has saved you from thought.

Shelter each synapse, your egoist heath.
Comforting wards on the myelin sheath.
"Abandon your subject which rose predeceased!
Shackle your ravening, fulminant beast!
Spare us from knowledge and leave us to feast."

Mob-wrought altar, a marriage of fashion,
Gorging on blood, deriding compassion.
Alterified gore-child, the victual rite,
Morsel to satiate cataract spite.
My subject is human, you blinders of sight.

Look how your image distorts in that pool!
There's more than one way of projecting a fool.
Warped and becrimsoned, a rictus has spread -
Yes, put on those glasses which filter out red,
Void of humanity, shaking your head.

Negative light driving asolar wind
To rarefied boundaries where neurons are thinned.
Lament for this tribe mind, all charnel and claws,
Suckers its eyes and "NO DISCOURSE" its laws.
Empathy dies at the sociopause.

Chapter 37 released.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40361/erased
Almost halfway. Well, still need to finish the last part, so almost almost halfway.

>>18559560
>Short stories, novels, or poems?
Indifferent about short stories, the ones I have read leave me wanting for more. As for writing them one I only made one attempt at having one as a side project to resort to whenever progress on my main novel made hit a rut, but I quickly realized I'm not capable of handling more than one project at a time.

I'm still not sure what this question is suppose so I'm not sure what I'm suppose to say about them. I literally could care less about poems.

>>18560367
Obsessed ;)

>>18560367
crit threads predate /wg/, newfag.

>>18561062
a bit awkward parts to fit the rhyme ("blinders of sight"?) but otherwise pretty good. reminds me a lot of poe's work, particularly the conqueror worm. aesthetically it's very nice, melodious, however so many latinate words makes the imagery weakly rendered (which is not to say the images themselves are weak, it's like the equivalent of watching a beautiful nature documentary in 240p)

>>18561584
That doesn't make them good and doesn't mean they should return. He didn't say that /crit/ didn't predate /wg/, silly.

>>18561626

I think "blinder" singular sounds better, but maybe that whole line needs reworking. Could you be more specific about the latinate point? I'm a technical novice and I write from the tip.

>>18561778
i just feel its redundant, a blinder deals with sight by default, no need to specify it.

by latinate i just means words of latin/greek origin like ichorous, predeceased, fulminant, ravening, gorging, etc. they are powerful when used sparingly but using them too much makes it difficult to render the images you're trying to create (e.g "ravening, fulminant beast")

>>18560474
Yes good goy, don't work on long term projects that you can look back upon as an achievement, being a writer is all about getting (((Yous))).

>>18561817

Ichorous I leave because it fits with Giger, but I'll workshop ravening and some of the others.

>>18560390
It's a horror story about pale beings from a world beyond our own and the main character's survival against their onslaught.

>>18562101
Is this an allegory for native Americans or Australian aboriginals and the bad white man?

After many weeks of planning, I have officially begun my draft.

>>18562246
No. The inspiration for the story came to me after reading the creepypasta "Genetic Memory"

>>18561817
>>18561626

Does this kick it up to 360p?

Tritely a segue, trivial humor,
Excising rotely a pulsating tumor;
Gigeresque bulb drooling ichor and snot.
Heaven forbid what experience brought!
Timely abortion has saved you from thought.

Shelter each synapse, your egoist heath.
Comforting wards on the myelin sheath.
"Abandon this subject, your theme is deceased!
Shackle your mercy, that fulminant beast!
Spare us from knowledge and leave us to feast."

Mob-wrought altar, you monster of fashion,
Thirsting for blood, deriding compassion.
Alterified gore-child, the victual rite,
Morsel to satiate cataract spite.
The subject is human, transformed in your sight.

And look! Your own image distorts in that pool!
There's more than one way of projecting a fool.
Warped and smeared crimson, your rictus has spread -
Yes, put on some glasses which filter out red,
Void of humanity, shaking your head.

Escaping to reaches where nuance is thinned;
Negative light driving asolar wind.
Lament for this tribe mind, all charnel and flaws,
Suckers its eyes and "NO DISCOURSE" its clause.
Empathy dies at the sociopause.

I was taking a shower and this poem just came to me.
Brat Rat Matt by Me


Brat Rat Matt hates my black cat Pat
He wants to splat the cat Pat into a mat in a flat splat
He carries a wide spade
and hides a homemade blade
And a slipknot braid that he tied as a snide aid

Brat Rat Matt is a snide slime player
We tried a holy guide's prayer when he tried to run for mayor
Besides cockeyed styles
and the stride of a Mr. Hyde
Bonny and Clyde are a far cry as he's incompetent player

Brat Rat Matt gives no clue he'll stop soon
He's a loon baboon fool howling to the moon too
With a pump he hums a tune
and is elated until noon
Just like that the Rat Matt inflated Pat into a balloon

Brat Rat Matt is a friendless sad sack
He ain't got no brat pack to call his brat rat frat
In the zoo he slides through
Bothers Kangaroos and Gnus
Brat Rat Matt threw Pat on a Porcupine too

Matt is a mongrel dog, we call him a scoundrel hog
He'll fondle a jungle frog, after a jog, under a log
An evil specter in the fog
a vaudeville running dog
Brat Rat the shock jock likes to pester hedgehogs

I gave Brat Rat Matt a slap that went "splat!"
With a red face he fled the chase, his head a mad and dread haze
Rat Matt lives in disgrace, defaces his own birthplace
This dead weight waste of space needs to disappear with haste

I pay a stork in pork chop, here's a fork and wine cork
The whole block flocks to the boardwalk wok dock
We mock Rat Matt's shock, gawk at the squawks "bokbok!"
His head is crushed with a rock and his meat is disgusting shlock

Brat Rat Matt saw spats as high level revel
Saw himself as a chaos vessel, a real rebel Jezebel
When Rat Matt was spent, Cat Pat was so content
Brat Rat Matt was now the devil's to torment

>>18562664
better in the image department, but with some loss of the melody you had before ("transformed in your sight", "more than one way of" etc.). it may help to first write down, in prose, everything you want to say in the poem, all the images, themes etc. (this "exegesis" should be several times the length of the poem and just flat, like stage directions or a recipe for chocolate cake). then you can break that into pieces and experiment with different verses to represent each piece (keeping in mind the whole as you experiment). that way you can focus on the aesthetics of the verse without losing sight of its substance.

or if that's too analytical for your tastes, just start over and try to rewrite it from memory. doing that several times and comparing the results might reveal something useful.

>why Mishima
Great prose. Great meaning behind the story from his personal philosophy, which ties into aesthetics as well. Substance, but also polish and refinement. Interesting plot. The writer himself was completely nuts which is also hilarious.

Read Mishima.

i kill my main characters at the end of everything i ever wrote

All of my main characters strive to be the best at whatever they do

>>18562723

Thanks for the insight, but that's not how I write. That whole initial thing rolled out of me in about ten minutes and I am generally unable to recapture the thread. I'll preserve whichever one I like better and try to internalize your insights for the next time the impulse seizes me. A shame, I know, but I also don't have the energy or spare time in my work week to lay out blueprints.

>>18562859
lmao same
>tfw tragedy writer
it's just aesthetic.

>>18562859
I used to love the idea of killing off my MCs when I was younger and far more depressed. But getting older and now that I'm actually writing characters and invested time and energy into them I can't bring myself to do it.

>>18562723

I take the puzzle pieces of my growing expression
The images, the cadence, a swelling of impression.
Truly, I appreciate the way you took the time
To lay some earnest thoughts upon my amateurish rhyme.
But it's a sad fact, maybe stifling but its true
Mechanisms click for me that wouldn't work for you

>>18562900
You can kill them in a magical way, that way you can easily resurrect them, also in a magic way
> a wizard did it

I've realized that the key to good writing is humor. If you're funny people will like what you say, even if the story or your prose sucks

>>18562938
what if i'm writing fantasy horror with tragic ending

>>18562938

Great acting can save bad comedy, but great comedy can also save bad comedy.

>>18562970
shakespeare had moments of humor even in a play like macbeth

>>18562970

After the main tragedy resolves, have a deuteragonist get hit with a pie.

>>18562937
Funny you say that, I did almost kill off my MC, but it was done as a near-death experience where she has an oxygen-deprived hallucination about what would happen if she did die.

>>18561062
Pretty good stuff

>>18562692
Kino
Match it up to a viper instrumental and be a c-list rapper

>>18562859
I'm going to have an "Avengers Endgame epic moment" at the end of my story. All the characters band together to fight an army, but most of them die in terrible ways, including half of the main characters.

I want to finish my first draft but there's a lot of anxiety and self doubt.

I see tiny flaws that aren't flaws but that bother me so viscerally that I actually cringe at them and want to avoid thinking about it. I feel paralyzed looking at the paper and trying to make the words flow out of me. I think a part of me realizes that however harshly I already criticize myself the internet will criticize me worse and I'm trying to save myself from humiliation

>>18563081
>half of the main characters
how many do you have nigga

>>18563095
See: >>18554660

>>18563099
damn this is either GoT-length or a total mess in this case

>>18563109
My exact word count calculations for its final length are:
>Book 1 (FINISHED): 89111
>Book 2 (FINISHED): 109068
>Book 3 (prediction): 143636
>Book 4 (prediction): 89091
>Book 5 (prediction): 47273
>Together: 478179

/wg/, how do I learn to stop cringing at my own work?

>>18563278
Force yourself to read it enough times and you'll stop cringing. It'll still be cringe, but the reaction will wane.

>>18563278
stop writing anime garbo

Thoughts on my first couple of paragraphs?

>>18563278
Just accept that it's cringe?

>>18563483
Could probably merge these two paragraphs into one.

>>18563514
>Could probably merge these two paragraphs into one.

Thanks anon. Anything else I should revise?

I managed to finish a novelette this month. It's a fantasy-adventure pulp with some supernatural elements sprinkled on. I wrote another more action-y pulp back in December/January which I greatly enjoyed and I might be writing a third one come July. I'm really enjoying this writing gig; albeit it's just a hobby at the moment, but I've been told nothing but good things by my colleagues.

>>18563551

How do you write pulp?

>>18562246
I know you think you're being ironic but as long as people like you are posting "jokes" like this we'll never be free of this culture war bullshit

>>18563556
Pulp fiction (generally in the standards of the 1920s/30s) were short stories or short novels that were fun adventurous reads that were easy to digest for readers. They were the dominant form of escapism during the Great Depression years and pulps like Conan, the Shadow, Call of Cthulhu, Philip Marlowe, etc. all helped develop what would become our popular culture today.

And with pop culture getting repeatedly fucked in the ass by ideological zealot Millennials who simply cannot write for shit, one might as well create a new generation where the source is--and that are found in the pulps.

>>18563278
Read some of the garbage that gets posted on DeviantArt and ArchiveofourOwn3 and realize you aren't so bad

>go on rooftop deck to write
>a normalfag wants to talk to me
ruined my session.
>>18563086
i feel the same way. when i read my manuscripts i hear /lit/ in the back of my mind shitposting and calling me a retard and pointing out every single flaw. this helps me immensely when editing to "get the shit out" of the draft. i have to find all the shitty cringy stuff and polish it off. i pair "getting the shit off it" with adding layers of aethetic and literary influence like watercolor washes over the draft in layers. and if there are thin areas i pack in more content and detail or fill in gaps.

it's a process. but you can't edit until you have a draft to begin with.
>>18563192
90k-120k is the sweet spot.

>>18563086
Humiliation is good anon. Defeat is good, failure is good
The whole point of discipline is that you train yourself into accepting that life isn't only about what makes you feel good and happy

>writing a series of short stories based on memes.
>Modern Fairy Tales
1. Y2K bug
2. John Titor
3. Ken Sama
4. John Shit so cash
5. Disaster Girl
6. Moe Tron
7. Zinedane zidane Headbutt
8. Navy Seals

Cringe? Because I think I can sell retellings and reimaginations of copy pastas

>>18563192
Why is the 5th book half as long? Granted it's still 200+ pages

>>18564042
Really old stuff there, but I was enjoying the idea until it started being funny memes. Making a series of short stories based on Y2K, John Titor, QAnon, MK Ultra, Bohemian Grove and other conspiracies and urban legends would be really cool, and I'd like to see you actually write it to the end

>>18564127
Mk ultra and grove aren't really internet folk tales which is what I'm trying to am for. I am even willing to write about Pepe and NTR cuck shit that started with triangle blue and all the hentai at the time.

>>18559653
Depends really on how long the story itself is, around 100 lines is pretty long but not overly long that you would feel too committed, but if your short story has many twists and turns that won’t be enough unless you rush the pace up. If it’s basically a fairy tale I would say 100-150 is just enough.

>>18564152
Yea that's retarded, what I'm trying to tell you is that it'd be better if it were about urban legends rather than memes

>>18564162
Hmmm. I'll get writing and you may be right. I still want to do one silly meme like john cash

>>18564216
You know, I'm rethinking it. If it were about memes it would be this series of one-offs where one funny character presents themselves. A very specific type of prose is necessary, and I'm going to be honest, I don't even know what type it would be.

>>18564221
I'm thinking of going with a style of Twain and Carroll. It would be complete utter nonsense with tons of venecular and dialect common at the time.

Might be more of a good idea horrible execution though.

>>18564237
You know what? Do it. It's going to be one of those things like the Voight Manuscript, that make sense to absolutely no one but the writer, but is seen as some relic of a certain time period.

Always remember, anxietybros

>>18563483
Reads like it should, as in like an author wrote it. Keep going.

>>18563483
Oh boy non fiction on the nsa spying. Tucker is that you?

>>18559560
I recently realized that most of my writing is just attempts to share the sociopathic experience with human readers. I feel like that stuff fails though, because while I'm able to cruise through superficial interaction, I lack the fundamental and physiological understanding of the human experience.
What works feel to you like an author trying to accomplish the same thing I am? In your opinion, are they successful at this goal? Why or why not?

>>18563483
>that attempt at clinical prose
>the footnotes galore
Baby just read Infinite Jest

>>18564048
It was originally part of the fourth book, but it's after the main character has graduated, so it felt right to separate it from the "senior year" portion.

I've come across a short essay I wrote for my freshman literature class
I could post it if anybody cares to laugh at it

>>18565382
go ahead

All my story ideas seem really dumb, cartoonish or childish. My protagonists are never people but personified animals or even fruit, something which I think is me not wanting to write a real person because that means confronting the fact that I can't write with any depth.

I don't know what to write. I barely write. I don't write.

Thoughts?

‘… this page looks like it was made in 1990, before I was born. Did they have internet back then?’ It’s got such an ugly background colour – some kind of orange faded to peach at the bottom. All the links are just darker text with underlines. These popular threads don’t interest me: Retro anime; Why was it so empty?; Couple with AK-47; What do you think of Mila Kunis?; /brit/ thread; What the fuck was that ending?; >makes you spend 10 years washing rice before you're allowed to touch the fish. Weird. Back to YouTube. When I see another recommended video about some antics from that other page, I go back to that tab.
F5. Wait... ‘Huh, different popular threads. Cool.’ This board sounds cool, so I open it. ‘Fuck, that’s a big pair of tits…’ I don’t know what I’ve found here, but I scroll. A ginger wearing a black t-shirt. It’s a selfie in a mirror with her legs spread – ‘do girls not have hair down there? Mum does. It’s weird that this girl doesn’t.’ Another massive pair of tits. Post 3 faggot. ‘What does that mean?’ This ass is perfect, need to find the sauce. ‘What’s sauce…but yea wow that ass looks so … it’s pink – shouldn’t it be brown from crap?’ I scroll further down. ‘Fuck that’s a big dick, I wonder if it’s because it doesn’t have skin at the top.’ Then there’s a woman with balloons for breasts, blush on her cheeks, platinum blonde hair and a rose tattoo. Not naked. >go to *** if you want that. I click that link. Click an image to enlarge it. It’s actually a .gif – ten muscular men standing around a woman on her knees, naked. They’re all grabbing their own penis and rubbing it up and down. Weird. She rubs her hands all over her boobs. Her big, oiled boobs. Some white stuff goes on her. ‘WTF that just came out of that guy’s dick?! What’s going on
7 She’s a girl
His fourth is with a bully that wants to kiss him, but he isn't attracted
‘She’s a girl and she likes you, what are you? Gay?’
2 Trips to get Levitrium
1 The months of the year
I cycled to get some March, May and June 2011, January 2012, February and December 2013, and December 2020. Then there were the trips by bus: January and February 2011, June to August 2012, mid 2013, mostly in May but a little in July as well, January, February, and March 2013, I think September and November 2016 and sometime in 2017. I can’t remember the number of times I walked to get them, maybe 2015 was mostly walking; had to keep up the steps for my health, you know: fresh is good for you.

>>18565485
Same book (1of 2)

The third girl, the one sitting in the row behind, starts on a tirade, ‘… you’re filthy – you’re filthy I mean God.’ Her shrill voice sounds off on the last word. She’s not from the valley, obviously; but fuck that last word sounded like she was.
‘stupid, ugly dirty, dirty girls. You look like trash; you’re wearing garbage for fuck’s sake—your hideosity is outrageous!’ As the third girl screeches this, the bus slows down as we come up to a stop on R— Rd and she stands up and heads towards the stairwell. As she traipses down the first step, she looks up and we make eye contact for a split second. It’s long enough for me to think she knows I was listening and thinking about what she said, and I think she knows what I was thinking but she doesn’t seem disgusted, so I assume she can’t hear my thoughts. I stop watching her walk down the stairs and instead look to the other two girls as the rat-blond one starts perorating
‘... she did that for just coz like—
‘to prove’ the second, uglier one, interjects.
‘—coz so many people like get mad just kind of like write them off coz they go like “oh my god look at that lipstick” so I was kinda like “YEA LOOK AT IT—’. She opened her mouth and pursed her red-painted lips as she quoted herself and looked like the opening of a speakerphone or a carnival clown waiting on a ping pong ball.
The better looking one leans into the uglier one, giggles and says ‘ok but I went to camp and the first day I was at camp umm everyone said I – I mean I don't even know these people – and the first day they were like “that's the girl who didn't take a shower since Kurt Cobain died” and I mean that would be a long time not showering and anyway I do shower you know that, I know that, we all know that. I don’t smell or anything.’
‘mm hmm’

>>18565495 (2 of 2)
‘my housekeeper gave me this shirt, wait no my psych gave me this shirt. But like the camp, that’s where I know Amy from—’ I assume Amy is the third one that alighted at the last stop ‘—the camp was just kinda like after my parents separated and I was just like—’
‘deal with it’
‘—yea I thought like yano fine whatever, like I fucking care, not that they got separated – I care about that yano – but I was like I don’t care; I'm not gonna do anything for anybody anymore, I'm not gonna look good for anybody. I mean why should I⸮ I started thinking clear in my mind that I can be whoever I wanna be, I don't have to dress for anyone, don't have to look good for anyone, don't have to be for anyone, I can just be myself for me.’
‘yea’ the uglier one needlessly adds under some kind of social compulsion. I hate that she keeps distracting me from what the good looking one is saying.
‘yea so like that’s why we’re doing this yano. We can wear what we want, do what we want. I mean we’re…’
I can’t hear her quite clearly now; someone just opened one of the windows. Good call, it was getting hot in here. Kinda glad though, what a crock of shit. That main one's eye liner is hot though – looks like she has been crying or like she was gagging on a cock and it’s all smudged and smeared like Sasha in that video from this morning.
‘…and they don't really know what women are feeling and think a lot of women are incomp—
what is that guy doing?!
I stand up, walk over to the hot one and unzip my jeans and pull out my hard cock inches from her face and as she opens that red-lined slit in shock – just like a carnival clown waiting on a ball – I shove my cock into her wide-open mouth and start face-fucking the dumb slut. She cries more and more making her cheap black stripper eye-liner smear more and more and she looks now like she has a black eye which turns me on, so I punch her and really give her a bruiser to finish the look.
The bus comes to a stop, right on H— Street. My stop is the next one, but I stand up and walk down the stairs now with a hand in the pocket of my jacket, pulling it down to cover my erection.

>>18565393
I don't recall the original purpose of the essay, but it's current purpose seems to be to make me cringe

>>18565451
Rudyard kipling did the same thing.

>>18564331
Write it out like you percieve it. It will be the cooler point of view and people will get better insight into a person with a flawed theory of mind.

>>18564237
>>18564248

Seconded. Call it Candidn't.

>>18559560
Ok /lit/ exposition, how to make it good?

>>18565546
the musings of the mind around 20. It's alright for what it is. And if it makes you cringe chances are you've improved.

>>18566347
It should make sense. I just saw a video on this subject last night actually that might help. It's about movies (more specifically screenwriting), but it could help you as well.

Basically, exposition should make sense, it shouldn't be dumb bang-slap in your face, "Oh no, the building is on fire!" Said the man staring at the building which was on fire.

>>18566722
>>18566347
Forgot video, sorry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsqvmZbskGo

Just hit 219 pages, 88,750 words. Might be a bit early to celebrate since tomorrow I'll almost certainly hit the 220+ pages and 90k+ milestone, but I'm gonna do it anyway.
Feels fucking good man. My original self-set goal was to finish my book by the end of august, which is my birthday, but at this rate I'm going to finish it before the end of july. Then I take a break and get some serious editing done by september and hopefully send it out to agents before the end of the year.

>>18566760
ygmi! Fuck yes keep at it! What's it about?

>>18566785
Sex I guess

>>18566760
WAGMI, anon.

>>18564809
>footnotes galore

Yeah, it's called properly citing sources, dumbfuck.

>>18566954
This thread ain't big enough for the two of us. You better be leaving, and the non-fiction horse you came in with

>>18567165
Post your writing.

>>18567165
>>18567188
Sheriff I'd best be scadadling we got a duel down at the /wg/ saloon.

>>18566729
Thanks gona look at it when I get home from work.

>>18567188
I've got the fastest fiction draw this side of the Mississippi.

Josh, Sally, Martha, and Peter stood by a lake.

Josh was wearing swimming trunks.
“There are several nice swimming places here,” said Josh.
Sally was wearing a bikini.
“I can’t swim,” said Sally.
Peter was wearing swimming goggles.
“I can only splash,” said Peter.
Martha was wearing floaties.
“I'm a little insecure,” said Martha.

“You guys will attend swimming lessons with me,” said Josh.
“I didn’t know that you were a swimming teacher,” said Sally. “I am impressed.”
“Well, I had swimming lessons at school,” Josh replied.
“Indoors?” asked Sally.
“Yes, indoors, in the swimming pool,” said Josh.
“There is a difference between swimming in a swimming pool versus swimming in a lake,” said Martha.

“How deep is this lake?” asked Peter.
“This lake has a depth of fifty-four meters,” said Josh.
The four friends looked at the lake. The water looked dark and cold.
“We should sunbathe on the beach,” Josh said.
“Very good idea!” said Sally, Martha, and Peter.

>>18564809
What the fuck is "clinical prose"?

>>18567489
Plot twist at the very end: the lake is full of cum.

How many words should be in a chapter for a novel? My current first chapter has hit 1167 words.

>>18568246
Web-novel wise: 2-4k can be the sweetspot. You can go higher, but expect readers to get bored and lose interest as a chapter goes on, since most platforms don't have bookmarks or whatever where you last left off.

Tradpub trend wise: Probably the same length as webnovels. Though this varies wildly on current trends so even 5k to 10k are acceptable. Things like kindle and physical copies have the benefit of, well, having bookmarks and places where you left off. But I've seen ledditers claim that if a page is past 10 pages (about 8k chaps and more) then they're likely to skip ahead to see how long the chapter is.

Personally, I believe a chapter should be as long as it needed for the story to be told.

>>18568294
>8k chaps
mean 6-10k and over in word count. There's nothing wrong with a 1k chapter, I think. I think chapters under 1k wordcount is frowned upon. But again, I read a lot of ledditers say that they've seen chapters that are like a few words or paragraph's length. So you do you. Webnovel-wise though most platforms have a minimum of 500 characters though, and you run the risk of upsetting readers if your chapters are below 1k words.

Three pages in. Where my nonfiction chads at?

>>18568795
Sup bro what writing software do you use?

>>18569027
I just use Google Docs. Times New Roman, 12 point font.

>>18568795
It's honestly starting to sound like a regular Essay for your History Undergrad Dissertation.

>>18569091
Is that good?

>>18569042
>Times New Roman, 12 point font.
Based

Hope everyone's projects are going well. Would appreciate any feedback on the opening to the short story I'm currently working on.

>>18569137
It's good if you want to get a good grade from your teacher, but not interesting to anyone else. After the class is over, you can adapt the essay for a general audience

>>18569517
I'm not taking any classes right now. This is all on my own.

I can see how it's a little dry as is.. This is just the introductory chapter though. Everything after this will be more interesting.

>>18569533
>Everything after this will be more interesting.
But will the reader get that far?

>>18569389
Pretty. Would need something tangible soon though or I'd lose interest. You also lose marks for writing about a woman

>>18569545
>But will the reader get that far?

Maybe not. I can rework it once the chapter is done to suit a more general audience.

What's the point of writing my book? I can't get it published, not a single person will give even the manuscript a look. Even being a minority, they just toss me aside. They only work with people they know and nobody wants to even say hi to me.

>>18569794
With that attitude there certainly is no point

>>18569794
Write what you want to read. You can always selfpub.

>>18569794
Jeff Bezos-sama will publish your book uwu

>>18566954
Learn how to properly present your text retard, you're not writing an essay for school (unless you are, in which case that is even funnier). A multitude of footnotes in the first paragraph makes you look like an amateur fresh out of school. Don't even add them at all, just leave a list of sources at the end of the chapter or the whole book.

>>18570077
>Don't even add them at all, just leave a list of sources at the end of the chapter or the whole book.

>I've never heard of Chicago Style citation before.

I’m up to chapter six!
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/41979/a-hero-among-monsters

>>18570333
Nice, I'll give it a follow and read whenever I catch up on another anon's story.

>>18570383
Thanks. I’ll follow back and read yours.

>>18570400
Don't feel obligated to, but here ya go https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/31062/saga-of-the-cosmic-heroes

>>18570333
>“Oh, inventories and forms,” Blunt waved his hand dismissively at the stage.
>“Thanks, boss.” Tad said, sullen, as he placed the glass back down on the table.

You won the prize!

>>18570427
Should I erase my story now?

>>18562859
I give them happy endings. They get smacked around a lot, but they live happily ever after at the end of it all. I can't stand when I get attached to characters and they get depressing endings. Life is shit so anywhere I can get some relief is good

Hey you philistine fucks, I'm back with more space sci-fi schlock to throw at you. Scathing insults, ceaseless praise, constructive feedback, any kind of response at all is welcome.

Chapter 1: https://pastebin.com/FDi5gad8
Chapter 2: https://pastebin.com/YF8usk1k
Chapter 3: https://pastebin.com/GhTt3t6D

Working slowly on chapter 4. Its setting is a complete rip off of Crichton's "Sphere" but with a marginally different core conflict. I've been blocked for months but maybe after some anonymous verbal abuse, I'll be sufficiently encouraged to get back on the horse.

>>18570547
Completely cut the first chapter, its useless exposition that will lose your reader (would have lost me if i didn't bother to check chapter 2). The 2nd chapter is where the story starts. Also stop head hopping into ephemeral characters.

I'm writing the following psychological horror short-story

>one day a woman is violently raped
>has the best orgasm of her life and the only penetrative orgasm she ever had during it
>she becomes obsessed with obtaining a better orgasm
>masturbates furiously and sleeps around telling men to be rough as she doesn't want her best orgasm to be from rape
>becomes a huge whore going to orgies and fucking everyone
>one day she is violently raped again, and orgasms once more
>immediately after she begs her rapist to kill her, but he doesn't, leaving her behind
>Some friends of her brother, connected to gangsters, track down this new rapist
>As the rapist enters his house, he is captured by the gangsters
>they force him to take an injection that gives him an endless erection
>they first repeatedly gangrape his wife in front of him while forcing him to masturbate to the scene, all the way to ejaculation
>they them force him to rape his own son in the ass, which causes his son to have a prostate orgasm and ejaculate, as the rapist cums in his son's rectum while desperately crying
>the gangsters then chop the rapist's dick off and cautherize the wound with a blowtorch, and cut his wife's clit off
>they them mock the rapist's son for moaning and cumming like a faggot and leave
>it is lightly implied the rapist's son will now be obsessed with being ass fucked

What you think?

>>18570610
i think i read this before

>>18570610
>>one day a woman is violently raped
not to a good start
>the entire rest of this outline
I think you need to eat healthier, go outside, and lay in some grass. Maybe seek a healthier story plot for meditation.

>>18570610
Im writing a post-modern piece about birds set in Oklahoma. Its going to be great. You'll like it if you liked Animorphs (never read them myself)

>>18570610
I think you're a faggot.

>>18570622
I just produced this right this second and even I think I've read this before, it has some vaguely Serbian Film-ish feelings to it

>>18570547
I read the first chapter and I don't see a set up. Why are they even at Saturn?

>>18569389
Not terrible but also not interesting. Your prose is almost good but you break up paragraphs without knowing why you do so, and I'm pretty sure an em dash doesn't have spaces around it. If that was your opening it doesn't have anything to keep an agent or reader interested, and while your prose is pretty, it doesn't have anything unique nor insightful in it. It's a waste of good writing to say nothing.

>>18570427
w...what's wrong with the last two? If he's nodding while speaking, and not nodding AFTER speaking, then those are correct aren't they?
>>18570610
have sex

>>18570610

>>18570628
But Newburyport is in Massachussets

>>18570610
it sucks and it's barely coherent. half of your outline is one scene.

>>18570628
Here let me post a little piece of it I transcribed from my paper
>Corn.
>Thats all there was for miles.
>Like some vast, rippling green reflection of the overcast grey sky.
>You could hear the wind blowing through it, kind of like leaves on trees.
>If you've ever been to Oklahoma, you'd know 90% of the state is like this.
>Enormous farms and tracts of land, filled with corn and if not that then some other crop like basedbeans or cotton.
Its written from the perspective of a highschooler so the prose is purposefully a little janky and angst-y and unprofessional.

>>18570756
>Newburyport
No thanks Im not a smoker

I am writing a story about a robot wife. Do I turn it into horror with a crazy obsessive robo waifu, or keep it as a romantic drama where the guy no matter what he does, can't experience love with the robot?

>>18570765
>barely coherent
There clearly is a prevalent theme of rape and loss of bodily agency

>half of your outline is one scene
You'd get the idea that this is a short-story and shit

>>18570777
Door one. Have the conflict kick off when he realizes he cant get it up to silicon. Would be a funny book if it was written right.

>>18570777
>Muh Yandere
Yea, I'd honestly rather die than read any retarded shit like that written by anyone remotely familiar with anime. Yandere is best done by people with zero understanding of anime, like Gone Girl. Din't like it but it was a better take on this trope than every anime on the theme combined.

Definitely do the second one, make it an allegory of settling for someone you are not in love with and towards whom you can feel sexual attraction but no affection.

>>18570675
When you say 'they,' do you mean the characters or the city itself? The city is ostensibly there so that the laborers on the outer worlds can have a home that isnt months away, but moreso to establish a permanent presence for the rule of law in an otherwise lawless space. The main character is there because he was given an investigation there. Both of these reasons are given in this first chapter.

Can you guys fill out my survey? Got a new theory about why fiction is so difficult to write but I need more data

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScHAzP8FoNsjWPcS4WBA7Nuwg9MrtgCFMbNkHbwBm0C3hui4w/viewform?usp=sf_link

I'm writing the following psychological horror short-story

>liberal, white sissy lives in a shitty, culturally enriched neighborhood
>while walking on the sidewalk on the way somewhere, he bumps into a big muscular black man
>not putting up with his excuses, black man drags white boy into an alleyway, says he's gonna have some of that white dick.
>black man rides white boy cowgirl (cowboy?) style, until both ejaculate
>cut to future, whiteboy doesn't go outside anymore
>has a mental breakdown after door-dash sends him an email saying they can no longer deliver to his area because it's too dangerous
>same day, black man shows up, visibly pregnant, and wearing a gingham dress and a sunhat, and carrying a purse, demanding that whiteboy take responsibility
>whiteboy, panicked, seeks the guidance of the only friend he has in town, Fellow Whiteman
>Fellow Whiteman tells his friend, whiteboy, that the blame lays wholly on whiteboy himself, for being the descendant of slavers
>whiteboy explains that his slavic and nordic ancestors came over after slavery was abolished, but Fellow Whiteman sets his record straight
>when Whiteboy asks white mr. Whiteman if he's also to blame, Whiteman says "uh, well, I'm jewish."
>Whiteboy marries black man, and spends his marriage being forced to penetrate his husband and his husbands other friends, impregnating them all
>his mixed race gay-baby sons all grow up and discover /pol/
>form a white nationalist movement that takes over the country and I guess gangbang their libcuck dad
the end

I want to write one of those good girl/bad boy romance stories I hear are so popular these days. How bad can the bad boy be? What if he rapes her mom?

>>18570844
Okay I completely missed all that. And since most people are as stupid as I am, I think you may need to try and elaborate the reasons more. Even something as silly as police backstory like we tracked down eight murderers to Saturn this year. Saturn made a name for itself being a refuge for the scum of society. They think the law can never reach them. Too bad for them. I, J.K. Striker, am the law.

>>18570898
Familiarize yourself with Bill Gaede before you understand my theory

>>18570913
Thats abit too bad anon, there's a difference between a bonafide villain and a "bad boy"

/wg/, how do I handle this

>X's first love, Y died of a mysterious supposed "suicide" that X refused to believe but blamed herself for
>X's second love, Z is the MC
>when the apocalypse kicks off they're separated but fight to reunite
>however, along her journey, X finds a time portal that reunites her with Y and the two fight together for a way to save the world
>however, when Z calls X to tell her many of their friends have died, X, terrified of losing the people she cares about, starts thinking of jumping ship to another timeline, but doing so would mean abandoning many of the people she cares about for alternate versions of themselves
>Z who is going through his own shit and believing he's been replaced, breaks up with X and tells her and Y to go. He's going to save the world or die trying
>Y believing X is the only hope this timeline has tells X to stay and she'll go back and warn everyone
>X breaks down and confesses that Y is dead in this timeline, and she can't lose Y again
>Y concedes, but she knows deep down that this isn't what's right for X. Blinded by fear and grief, X is overlooking something crucial that only she can figure out.
>Y knows that if she lets X go back, once things calm down X will realize she abandoned the people she loved for an idealized vision of the past, and when she does that realization will destroy her
>In truth, Y had already been planning to kill herself the night she died, but knowing it was the only thing she could do to give X a chance at a full life, the minute the two of them step back through the time portal, Y kills herself, closing the time loop and forcing X to go back for Z and her friends

I want an ending where X and Z end up together and where X doesn't end up looking like a bitch. I'm not sure this accomplishes it but its the best I've got.

>>18571242
You need to make Z more likable. He can't be the one that gets jealous and bitter. He needs to be the one that befriends Y as well, and not view him as any form of antagonist. Y and Z need to work together and have some form of respect for each other.

>>18571282
Z might not even ever meet Y. He's got an entirely separate arc going on that's playing into this.

Long story short, Z's always had a need to prove himself, but around the time he and X started dating he actually did manage to prove himself. Unfortunately, his victory meant that the things about himself that he had just begun to value were no longer valuable and he was beginning to fall into a depression. This was compounded prior to the start of the apocalypse by X discovering an old keepsake of Y's, which drew her mind back to Y's death and put distance between them. When X and Z were separated, Z look for her, but things went wrong on his own end. Mistakes were made and a friend got killed. Meanwhile, he tried again and again to call X but couldn't reach her. she wasn't answering her calls (because she had stepped through the time portal) and wasn't calling him back. When she finally did get back to him, their call broke up. all he knew heard was that X had been reunited with Y and didn't have time to talk to him. His own guilt about his screw-ups combined with the feeling that he's been replaced drove him to self-destruction

when X tried to get him to come with her and Y he broke up with X because he genuinely believed she deserved better and a chance to survivel that he didn't think he could offer

>>18570705
Nodding doesn't produce sound.

I need some advice for a mystery novel I'm writing. I'm torn between the decision of writing in a doctor or not. The pros of putting one in the story is that he could confirm the deaths of the victims, which I want to do to some extent as to allow the reader to narrow down the suspects but the cons are that he would limit the culprit by the fact that they would not be able to fake their death, if they were to fake it I would need to put in some drug that puts you on a comatose state or just have the doctor outright lie and be in cahoots with the killer which has been done to death already. What do you guys think?

I'm writing this climactic fight scene. A character is a martial artist, about to use an advanced technique to subdue the villain. But I have to explain how the technique technically works, or else it'll just look like a senseless asspull. But how the fuck do I include exposition like that without it being only cringe as fuck? No amount of flowery language can hide the contrived nature of the scene. I have no idea what to do. I've been stuck at this for ages and am losing my mind

>>18571452
Don't include a doctor? Anyone can confirm if someone's dead, but if they're not an expert, it leaves some room for error

>>18569389

>A woman as a protagonist

But seriously, the actual wording is fine, but I didn't get a single clue what you were just writing about. Try setting the scene as you go along without hampering the progress of the story otherwise like the other anon said, I would lose interest.

>>18570427

I understand grammar is important but why the fuck is punctuation so damn important, I see it done differently all the fucking time when it comes to dialogue.

>>18570683
>>18572081

Thanks anons. I will probably trim it down a bit. I've fixed up the awkward paragraphs, it's something I tend to do in a first draft because I'm just a retard like that. Pretty quickly after that paragraph you learn more about what's vexing her and there are some characterising bits, so hopefully they come soon enough. Cheers.

>>18572093
What exactly do you read? I can pick any random book from my shelf from contemporary novels to historical fiction, fantasy, scifi, detective stories, light novels, and they're all punctuated the same way (correctly).

>>18571883
Exposition should have come earlier i.e. five point palm exploding heart technique in Kill Bill. Flowery language works better elevating insignificant or trifling things, like Proust eating a cake or Humbert Humbert getting turned on. They use sensual, gorgeous prose to elevate those things to something more than they are. When it comes to murder or killing I find simple prose works best, i.e. Fyodor's death in TBK, the murder in C&P, the shooting in L'Etranger, etc.

>>18572214
You would be correct. What's written isn't really a killing technique and it doesn't have such significance as the one in Kill Bill, so it wouldn't make much sense to talk about it before the moment it's actually needed. But as things stand, I should probably just cut it completely and focus on what comes after. Thanks for replying.

>>18572093
It's because improper dialogue tag use is an instant way of judging a writer. If they can't manage this, they are so new to the practice that it's pointless giving them any more critique than "read more." It's the perfect litmus test.

>>18570427
We had a girl try to claim the third to last in the incorrect example was correct usage today in a writing group. It was so weird.

>>18572595
Tbf I've seen A LOT of writers do that. Even Gardner wrote like that in his early Call of books. His later books have proper dialogue tags though. Maybe he earned enough money for an editor

>>18572575
Keep telling yourself that.

>>18573586
t. pseud

You can't work on your descriptivism without first mastering prescriptivism.

>>18573641
You should probably greentext that, unless you meant to call yourself a pseud, in which case I agree wholeheartedly.

>>18572670
Whatever, Gardner

>>18560404
>Submit under pseudonym Olangajuwe Butambo

Winning
Winning

>>18573586
Are you really saying that an author who has read hundreds of books, and written several of their own, would still make that mistake?

Wanted to try my hand at some erotica last night. The premise almost sounds like a porn parody, but I tried my best to avoid overtly explicit language and inserted a little twist at the end.
1.3k words over at https://ghostbin.com/ha63a
(pastebin flagged me for offensive content)
Thoughts?

How do I make my story stop sounding like a fan fiction

>>18575411
pastebin is gay
you're right, It kinda reads like a satire of erotica, and or otherwise just MILF porn. Not the type of erotica I personally enjoy, but it was overall well written, thematically makes sense.

>>18575743
I do have a thing for milfs, i confess. Thank you for reading!

>>18575478
Its probably a local issue, unless it is fanfiction
If you're conjoining the extent of fan fiction as bad writing or cringy, then I suggest you either learn to write better, or overcome your personal feelings.

Bros, what makes a scene interesting?

>>18576523
Have everything be progressing normally and then have some guy in a bunny suit bash your characters to death with a baseball bat. Just out of nowhere, some previously unintroduced guy in a bunny suit completely changes the plot. This will 100% be interesting.

>>18576523
Self insert, change male character into female, make female a badass lesbian, it's 100% interesting.

>>18575478
Writing is literally fan fiction as most of the times authors copy each others and retranscribe what happened to them in real life in other contexts. To make the cringe go away, just sit on your work for a few weeks and get back, then edit the cringe out.

>>18576523
>>18576720
this but 100% unironically.

>>18576523
Good characters

>>18576523
Gay characters and exposition

>>18576523
pennis in vagene

>>18571452
Alternatively, write a flawed doctor character who either makes a mistake when doing an autopsy or make him corrupt and in on the killer's plan. He could even be the killer. As in, the doctor is killing people or the killer has assumed the doctor's identity.

>>18576737
What makes a character "good"?

Any advice on how to write a philosophical conversation without it sounding cringe. I feel like my conversations are natural at all like they're just openly stating the point instead of sounding intelligent.
Analogies, symbolism, any devices I can use

(Conversation is about intelligent design, whether the universe has order to it)

>>18577312
Read some stuff that has philosophy in it? Write what you know and all that jazz.

Be kind to me, /wg/, I'm sensitive... Here's my poem.

>Outback Steakhouse
O Brumby, you who prances across the plains,
You beauty, you wonderful steed, you Arabian runner,
O Bullock, you who tramples and grazes upon the grasses,
A wild bull that e'en Gilgamesh and Enkidu would fear,
O Jumbuck, you with the white curls of woollen attire,
A simple creature, stolen away by the swagman, A-Waltzin' Matilda.

>>18577504
Yeah, Im reading the Book of Job and its helping

>>18577312
i think there's basically two ways to make dialogue interesting:
1. opposition
2. irony
so in your case you say the conversation is about intelligent design and order vs. the randomness of natural selection. first off, if the conversation really is about that (e.g they are philosophers or scientists or whatever) then it's perfectly reasonable for them to speak directly on the topic. however, their positions should be opposing -- point number 1 -- a conversation is boring in print, a debate is better, an argument better still. if your dialogue sounds cringe, it might be that you're straw-manning one side, in which case its important to read up on and think out both sides of the argument making each one as strong as you can. putting something at stake on the outcome never hurts either (because it creates anticipation in the reader).

if instead you want these things to be themes underlying the conversation then the best way to do it is to establish their positions beforehand and then use irony, point number 2. how best to do that will depend on the relationship of the characters, newlyweds might argue about how to raise a child for instance, while business partners might argue about how to expand their business. every line then has some subtext relating back to the theme. and vice versa, if they're arguing directly about intelligent design, they might really be arguing about why one of them disdains the other for his personal failures or why their father loved one of them more than the other etc.

>>18571894
>>18577196
I think I'll go for no doctor and just have the characters clumsily confirm some of the deaths of the victims while making others more obvious like having a sliced neck or a blade going through their bodies.
I was also thinking of having no doctor but have all the corpses faces smashed into an unrecognizable mess. That would confirm the death of the body but it would cast a doubt on if the body is actually the body of the victim. That also has been done to death already along with "doctor in cahoots with the killer" so I think I'll pass on that for now.
Thanks for the feedback.

>>18569562
>>18570683
>>18572081
>praising that word masturbation

See, this is why i can't really be bothered with caring about what other people think about my shit and i'd never post it here. I personally started losing interest after "charcoal and slate" and then i had to read more about the fading sky that i just killed myself.
I hate wordy descriptions, and it is obvious the person who's written this (very likely a female, btw) loves them.

>loving the tool instead of the product the tool is supposed to create

Worldbuilding and hero's journey aside, what makes or breaks an epic story?

>>18578281
Writing the damn story in the first place helps. Just write.

>>18578281
Character ensemble

I've read some more Dracula and wrote a few sentences for Blackula

>>18578281
>epic
Read up on Homer and how the plot works in the Iliad and then more complicated in the Odyssey. Include mini recollections of the previous journeys.

>>18578127
Everyone has their preferences. Personally, I enjoy masturbation.

I thought of a funny mini story

A group of friends is making sandwiches for lunch
Friend A makes a cheese and ham sandwich
Friend B makes a BLT sandwich
Friend C makes a cheese LT vegetarian sandwich.
But friend D makes a ham and cheese and BLT and ham and cheese and BLT and ham and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT and cheese and BLT sandwich

>>18559560
"i can't attest to the veracity of these things, but that i know of them through invention, for better or worse that brings them... undue methods... subtext to spare... if there was a pattern here or if between the explicit forms explicitly presented, and the hidden measures dashed against these whims there was the slightest demeanor, one could be upfront... having little or no makeshift whims, to say that this is a word, the prison a star huddle, makeshift that is, without apodeiction... oh man oh man..."

?

>>18578281
A scale and depth you can actually handle.

I only read history and philosophy but I write fiction
I don't like to read fiction but I write it
why do I do this history and phil don't help with fiction writing

>>18579083
There's historical fiction.

There it was, L.A. Ice City, turning slowly onto its back like a drunken cunt in the gutter – all amid the stars. Glittering on the screen, looking almost as like it was a not-shit place to live. Almost. There weren’t much else to do but sit ‘round, crack open a wife beater, scratch ya nuts… Today: pay-day for me. Everyday was pay-day. U-bees. Would I’ve had it any another way?
I buy two cartons of cigarettes – that spenny one that is made like it were rolled by hand – for the entire day’s wage. Smoke about half of them before some goober walks into my room demanding – as if he were the boss; as if there were bosses – me put out my ciggie butt because he has a baby next door with asthma. I put the ciggie out in my bare hand, lean toward him and say…
L.A. ICE CITY, HOME OF THE CARDINAL PLEASURES OF BEAUTIFUL, FRIZZY ICED ICE DRINK. L.A. ICE. IT’S WHERE IT’S AT IF YOU ARE AT AT.
The ad zips off into a murmur as I turn off the screen. Then I turn to the screen next to it, where the singer Jacques Brel stands in a black suit. His loud voice booming; his face beautiful; his hands huge; his ears stuck out. He had a big tie on, like me, and a black suit jacket, also like me. Even my haircut is like his, I’d greased it down with a comb of ivory and stinky pomade.
Swinging his arm as he blurts out “glissade,” camera zooms out, motioning towards sickness. I copy him: swing arm and scream “glissade!” as security camera zooms out. He gestures to the ground, where there is really nothing, but it seems to be a pot. Says “soupe” as he brings an invisible (probably silver) spoon to it, picking up just enough to fill the imaginary brim, and then slurps. Slooop. Or, in French, flchss. All while saying, “Et ça fait des grands…” I mimic him, a perfect copy-cat.
Et ça fait des grands…
Et ça fait des grands…
Then his hands go down and his hands tremble with an immense vibration… My hands shake like leaves in wind.

>>18579489
Love your style of writing. It has an almost musical character.
Don't know who Jaques Brel is, so I might have missed some important context.

>>18579996
Thank you! I was expecting something more scathing, but I think the “musicality” comment was very pleasant to refresh the thread to.

Jacques Brel was a French singer, I’m describing the character emulating this video:
https://youtu.be/_XrO-kBidNI

>>18580111
Please finish this run every spamming clown out of /lit/.

>spend 4 days inna woods
>come back brimming with dammed-up writing
>sit on the computer
>I got nothing
You really do need to write every day lest you lose your mojo. Learn from me, learn from me!

>>18580493
I’m thinking of writing a more conventional storyline with a tried and true “story shape”, so I could incorporate the world of LA ICE CITY—a future quasi-dystopia where human activity is sedated because everyone is on UBI—into a rise-fall-rise type of story like the Old Testament or Cinderella. I’m not sure how long it should be. Thanks for the encouraging words, anon. May I read something of yours?

>>18580527
Damn, I know that feel. If I don’t practice every day, my writing gets very rusty or I get stuck. How was the trip though, anon?

>>18580571
Surprisingly bug-free.

>Any progress on your novels?
Yes, I'm done now. I was never going to become the next Faulkner, the next Nabokov or the next Joyce, but I hid behind the language barrier to avoid criticism for months, maintaining an illusion that was fun to live in while it lasted. I had thought my country's education system to be topmost in the world, but this turned out to be utter bollocks. A child of 18, a person ten years my junior, has a greater vocabulary than I, who had to look up the word “topiary”, and no one likes the expression theory of art anymore, I am likened to a long lost dinosaur.
This will be my final post on /lit/. I've been humiliated and exposed as a fraud. My writing is pretentious, infantile, banal drivel. My observations are dull, my language grade school level. My tenses are mixed up; I use colloquialisms, ellipses and onomatopoeia. I mix tired and trite idioms together to obfuscate their unoriginality with a veneer of irony; I have continued to recite ornate Jewish chimpanzee parables with diminishing returns. The parable seemed very clearly to me to be asking me whether or not the now-grown-adult can choose. I say yes, of course, but that's not my issue.
I was never cut out for writing. I began writing my "book" on January 6th. Since then I've produced 111 thousand words for it. These words are a tide of garbage without value, without insight, without form. The themes of time, space, infinity, memory and pointless duelling are not present in my work. It was never real writing, it was anime and weebshit!
Story arcs, character arcs, narrative arcs, these are all outdated terms. You say what you hear, and only the anime fandom uses the term “arc” anymore. I am a toad! Look how many words I wrote, because apparently literature is bodybuilding and just aimlessly typing will somehow improve my writing. My appetites grew as I wrote, I set a goal of a 100 thousand words when I began, only for the cancerous growth to demand a 137 thousand words soon enough to be completed, and still I don't even know what genre it is that I'm writing. Is it autofiction? A comedy? A picaresque? Am I merely shitposting edgelord-triggering diarrhea in neo-emo gothic revivalist gestalt?
Regardless, I have failed, and even in my failure I have merely imitated how people who think they write well but write poorly write, and I couldn't even do that well. "Oh I can do that anytime if I wanted to" I thought, but no. I have put down my pen. Never again will my fingers click-clack across the keyboard. No more outlines, no more characters. Goodbye.

>>18580861
Still going with this? At least you have dedication.

>>18559560
I can't write on a schedule--at all actually. False attempts, quitting when it gets hard, stressed out . . .

>>18580527
Damn. I'm currently on a 7 day trip to a national park trying to get inspired. Youre telling me it will all be in vain? Did you bring a notebook and camera?

>>18562810
I'm sold.

>>18580563
Sure I'm pretty trash at writing. Here's a paste bin.
https://pastebin.pl/view/af8a20de

>>18581126
I like it. The bats and thunder set the scene to this landscape, where we’re then sucked into the relationship the narrator has to kelpie. It’s a good dialectic between the two. I hope you write more. You have a smooth, understated style with a bit of punch to it.

>>18581197
Thanks man it's a battle with my attention span to be consistent in writing. On the mention of your story are you aiming for a thriller ?

>>18559560
Real question. Have any of you actually 'studied' how to write?

>>18581607
I took an after school creative writing course when I was in high school

>>18581607
Have you?

>>18581628
Apart from a mandatory English class in college, no. I'm mostly curious if you guys felt like it help improve your writing at all.

>>18581607
I'm trying the trivium.

>>18581607
You study writing by just writing, and reading if you have the time. So, yes.

>>18581636
It can't hurt, it may even help a little, and it's fun to meet other people and write for a bit. I wouldn't expect your writing to massively improve however

/wg/, I wish I learned how to draw so I could tell my stories visually, but I was never good enough for my perfectionism and too impatient with my progress to learn so I gave up and stuck to writing

I wonder what my life would have been like if I became an artist instead of a writer

>>18581849
I draw very simple illustrations for my stories. Obviously no one would call me skilled or talented, but there's also a very significant charm to simple pictures

>>18577224
>>18576523
what do you like? what characters do you like? why do you like these scenes and characters?
ask yourself these questions and you will have your answer. If you can't answer them, i'm sorry but you're gonna have a hard time writing.

The 500 words per day Chad:
>quality over quantity
>actually enjoys writing
>isn't burned out by the end of it
>can still write a manuscript of over 182k words in a year
>usually ends up going well over 500, because he gets in the zone

The 2000 words per day Virgin:
>quantity over quality
>used to enjoy writing but doesn't anymore
>burned out at the end and doesn't get any other work done
>never completes his manuscripts because he keeps falling out of the habit
>rarely meets his goal to begin with

>>18582838
when you're 500 words a day chad and still technically are the 2k words per day virgin.

>>18581522
>thriller
No. If you got those vibes from it I’m not sure if you read it.

>>18581849
Same. I would churn out children's stories like a two bit whore

Yo, game developer here. Any tips on writing a story? What are the basics dos and donts?

I got some worldbuilding going on but no real plot outside of knowing the gist of the flashy action packed climatic confrontations at the end of each chapter, some of it already prototyped.

>>18583903
Know that your gameplay comes first. Story always plays second-fiddle to the gameplay, and this is why video games are bad as a storytelling medium. And also why visual novels are the only video games with good stories.

>>18583918
Uhhh... okay? That doesn't answer my question in any way shape or form.

>>18583903
>>18583942
So... are you writing a script for a game or an actual novel? Are you basically just writing a Litrpg or Gamelit? Just write it like a regular story, but with... like, tables and numbers. I duno man, read some litrpgs and gamelits for research. There's tons of them on spacebattles, royalroad, scribblehub, etc.

>>18559560
Imagine the smell.

>>18583960
An actual game, relatively linear with actual characters, not blank slate player avatars. Think jrpg without the turn based shit, or zelda with extra characters and story.

>>18583997
You need to write arc by arc. Boy needs to leave his village. So you just focus on that. The end goal is to leave his village. Then you fill in the other parts like venturing into a forest, digging a graveyard, or taking a dump in the river.

>>18583997
yeah, focus on the gameplay first rather than the story. 99.9% of your players will just spam skip until they get to shoot or slash at the bad guys. At best just write some lore pages tucked away in the pause menu so the lore players who do care can just find it themselves. Hide lore pages or whatever tucked away throughout the map like Cyberpunk 2077 did. Keep it out of sight and directly shoved in player's faces is what I'm trying to say.

>>18584047
>and directly shoved in player's faces is what I'm trying to say.
and DON'T force it on the player I meant.

>hooo boy it's my day off, I'm going to get so much done on my draft!
>now 8pm
>haven't even switched to word document

>>18584136
This triggers my fight or flight.

/wg/, I want to get back into writing but past experiences have filled me with anxiety when I look at the page. I can't think of words, have a strong desire to turn away, and become embarrassed and disheartened thinking about minor flaws that seem overwhelming

what do I do?

Any good books/reads on writing graduate level essays?

>>18584179
read the Call of the Crocodile and realize that a complete 4chan hack actually sold 300+ copies of his books.

>>18584188
Mark Twain - Joan of Arc

>>18584190
seeing other people fuck up doesn't make me feel better. I'm focused on the people above me, not below me

>>18584047
>99.9% of your players will just spam skip until they get to shoot or slash at the bad guys
yup that's me

>>18584234
As I was posting that, I just heard my friend, who was streaming A Hat In Time, utter "Yeah I don't care about the lore" and skipping tons of dialogue. He does this with most games he've streamed so far. Some people just want to play the damn game, and by some I mean almost everyone who isn't a weirdo that likes to read.

>>18584254
My favorite game, Dragon's Dogma, has creative, butter smooth combat with a easy-to-switch, flexible class system. I've never seen any game do magic or bow-and-arrow the way that DD has. So I admit, that's 50% of the reason I like DD. 30% is the fashion, and 20% of the lore. But I enjoy the lore 99% for the funny NPCs. If I had to sit through long cutscenes or read tons of text about worldbuilding, that would not be fun at all.

>>18584280
actually, I want to amend my statement. 15% is the interaction with the NPCs and the pseduo-waifu-companion that you get to create. 5% is the lore, maybe even less. Music is probably higher. I'm just not a lore person I guess, when it comes to vidya

is it possible to write a book that is nothing but a series of letters between people trying to solve a mystery and each letter you read you slowly piece together the solution, but the writers never do?

>>18584431
I'm assuming it's a mystery novel without a detective and that it would feature 2 people just exchanging letters. You need to think on why would the reader be able to figure the mystery but not the writers themselves. Are you going to add exposition to the mystery by showing the reader the thoughts of the writers? Are you going to add flashbacks that present vital evidence to the mystery? Are you going to mess up with the timings of the letters, forgeries, or the like? Everything is possible when writing but you need to come up with a good way of presenting it.

>>18584458
My idea is that everything will be contained in letters between 8 people. The flashbacks will be in letters. Something like "George remember 2 years ago when we were playing in the creek and you found a golden ring? I still have it. - Richard"

Then Paul writes to John "Poor Pete fell into a creek, that poor bastard was crying about losing a his girlfriends ring all night"

So we can infer that Pete fell into a creek and lost the ring that George found for Richard. t's not much of a mystery, but I wonder how could this type of mystery be possible.

>>18559560
I'm not usually a writer, but I just needed to get this off my chest.

>Giocondo

She’s looking at me.
No matter where I move to,
her eyes seem to follow.
I look back.
Is that a smile?
A little inappropriate for a married woman.
I smile back anyway.

She’s beautiful.
Ratios and resemblances aside,
She would make angels sing.
I look into her eyes
And I see what no one else can.
Her soul. Her true self.
It’s just as beautiful as she is.

No one else.

Everyone else.

I look around me.
Dozens of people are looking at her.
Phones out. Cameras pointed.
They can’t see her.
They just want to look at her.
A selfie and a t-shirt are all she is to them.

Will she think I’m like them if I stay?
Gawking, rubbernecking.
They shove and push me
Just to get a clearer shot.
Can’t they tell I’m in love?
I need to leave.
Show her I’m not like them.

It’s been a while.
I thought about her.
On the drive to the hotel.
On the flight home.
On my bed.
She won’t let me sleep.


I have a picture of her.
On my phone.
Probably taken by one of them.
Sometimes I just stare at it.
I sneak off in the middle of the night
Just to look at her for a few minutes.

What are you doing?
She’s dead.
She’s been dead for hundreds of years.
This isn’t even actually her.
It’s a picture
Of a painting,
Made by another person,
Of a woman
You don’t even know.

I know she’s not real.
I know the painting is fake.
But the woman in the painting is real.
I wish I could have known her.
I wish I could stop looking.
I wish I could stop wishing.
But I could swear she’s looking back.

I need to stop.
Why can’t I stop?
Stop looking at me.
Get out of my head.
Leave me alone.
Let me leave you alone.


I finished her Wikipedia article for the fifth time.
This is stalking.
I’m stalking her.
I’m no better than those animals on their phones.
I thought I was special.
But this is the only way I can get to know her.
Why do I even need to know her?

She’s already dead.

And I’m not even in Paris anymore.

>>18584500
>t's not much of a mystery
you lost me
good luck

>>18584179
write eroge

Dr. Van Hassain placed his stethoscope on little Thomas’s heart. It sounded faint, slow, almost still. The child looked pale and emaciated. On his neck was a wound of two small circles, same as the other three children he had seen that morning.

>>18584179
I have a technique for you:
>drink a glass of whiskey or other liquor and get in the right mood for your book
>reference pictures, an existing piece of lit, music
>go to bed early, maybe 8pm
>close your eyes and start thinking about the theme of your book
>after a while something will come to you, a word, a name, a beautiful sentence, maybe an important plot point
>get up and write it down
>repeat
The following day you take all your notes and try to piece them together into something coherent. I recommend setting a repeating alarm every 15-20 minutes so you dont actually fall asleep.
I often do this when I'm stuck or need inspiration for something new.

1/2
Have you ever noticed the streets of Paris resemble a honeycomb? One cannot notice the tessellation on foot. Not where the senses merely sense the bustle, coughing motorcades, muffled voices. One might turn around too quickly then hear French or Arabic – in a conversational tone – say “honey.” But that’s about it. “Honey” is all one gets; not “honeycomb.” From above, one can hear “honeycomb” in nearly any language.
Russian, for example. In Russian, it’s “soty.” They don’t even need to hear it: for they can see it. Up there, it’s visible alright. All that hexagonal prismatic cellulation. It’d send a man insane. Death sends its salutations to the man who can hear “soty”; to the man who sees the wax cells. What’s it that they say about madmen? T-that they can see things above those folk, who’re m-merely sane?
Out on the esplanade, inside a café called Celeste’s, a philosopher chuffs on a tobacco pipe containing not tobacco but another plant… but some, oh no, Marijuana! The stuff’s good, giving a body-high (Indica), and one might think it too good; his body too high. Coz the philosopher’s right eye’s begun to veer a little too much to the right… Had he always’d that lazy eye?
The smoking philosopher leans o’er the linoleum-covered table (absurd, I know) and grins to his compatriot who he calls, without irony, “Tovarisch.”
‘Say, Tovarisch Alexiyevich…’ pulling the pipe away to grin. ‘Do you know that bees tend to overproduce their honey? This leads to excess honey, dripping out.’
‘No. I didn’t know that, monsieur.’
‘So too does Kapitalizm overproduce!’ the philosopher spat, with an unnecessarily hard ‘k’.
‘Oh?’
‘What do you think this overproduction and alienation of the working class, i.e., male drones, lead to? It leads to a divergence in things being-produced and things being-bought… And, Tovarisch, what do you think this leads to?’
‘A bear, monsieur,’ the polite Frenchman pauses to clarify, continuing: ‘How-do-you-say-in-Russian? …Medved?’
The philosopher, smoke billowing from his crooked teeth, smiles. This starts to sound like an essay he’d written, years ago, when he’d resisted Nazis in La Résistance. It was with a pen, but all antifascism was – in his eyes – to be done. Although his eyes never met the same spot…

>>18584915
2/2
‘A bear!’ he yelled, slamming the table with two tiny fists, making a squelch sound. ‘Of course, Tovarisch, since bears are attracted to honey’s aroma. An Other, a monster, a crisis.’
‘What’re you getting at, Genosse?’ Otto, the philosopher’s Austrian associate at ENS, waltzes in, flicking through The American Bee Journal.
‘Otto!’ the philosopher rotates the pipe to the Austrian.
‘Nein. Ich bin straight-edge.’
‘Pah! What rubbish! Have a gruff chuff!’
They did. A lot of puff-puff-pass went on in that exchange. What now? Now there’s a kerfuffle as the philosopher screams ‘Eureka!’ at the top of his lungs.
‘Ah! What’s it, Genosse?
‘I have’d a revelation, Tovarisch Otto!’
‘An epiphany, no?’
‘Exactly so. As you were chuffing-and-a-puffing away at my pipe, I fingered your copy of this month’s American Bee Journal.’
‘Yes, and?’ Otto asked, bemused.
‘Right there! That word! It’s made me realise…’ he says, almost fainting. ‘Mon Dieu, mon Amie.’
‘Out, out damned spot!’ Otto whines after looking.
The word, Alexiyevich finds, seems inconsequential. He looks at it for a minute, then peers at Paris’ pedestrians, streets, sidewalks. Parisian heads jitter, insectoids. Unaware to Alexiyevich, he too was a drone. The philosopher and his associate hump a pot of flowers, collecting pollen, then fly off to Jardin des plantes.
‘Honeycomb?’
Alexiyevich shrugs his wings.

>>18584915
>>18584920
Can you at least have the common courtesy to pastebin this, so we don’t have to read it?

>>18584915
>>18584920
Decent concept, but I feel you should dial it back a tiny bit. Your punctuation is making me nauseous.

Guys! I've figured out the intro to the second novel. You know that feeling when you've solved some shit that was really hard to get your head around, but that you knew there was a perfect way to do it? Yeah man, this feeling is fucking awesome. Sorry, had to share. Still waiting for editor's notes on the first novel so i can't jump into the second with both feet but... Man i'm having a good morning over here. How's your stuff going?

>>18584924
Unsure how to hide posts now, anon? Maybe another website rhyming with "edit" is more your speed, get it?

>>18584956
Not a fan of semi-colons, colons, commas, hyphens, and the lot?

>>18584979
/wg/ really gone to shit recently.

>>18584995
Post your work. I'm all ears on how to write like you, anon!

>>18584995
Post your shit. Chickenshit

>>18585004
>>18585009
Why would Inpoat my work when I’m going to be traditionally published

>>18585023
I've already got 6 acceptances in literary journals/magazines. What's stopping you from getting good feedback on little vignettes that aren't for real publication? You can still gain something from showing people rough ideas and drafts of things you won't submit anywhere.

>>18585033
>>18585023
>>18585009
>>18585004
>>18584995
>>18584979
>>18584924
ok guys, time to go to >>>/soc/ and have that penis measurement competition.

>>18585023
>>18585033
Ah, you cannot argue with such logic. These people will be traditionally published in the future, or they have already been traditionally published in the past -- therefore they cannot post any writing samples.

>>18585059
Anon, I literally just posted my writing sample.

>>18563569

>>18585064
my bad bro

>>18585075
Nurries. Do you have something I can critique? I feel high-spirited today and I like all sorts of writing.

>>18584995
I think it has improved tenfold quite the contrary.

>>18585078
you wouldn't like it. It's Blackula. But thanks for the offer. Right now I'm working on a non-fiction book about human resources and it's not exciting to critique (or read)

>>18585103
I always thought Blackula was funny. Have you seen the original Blackula, Black Dynamite or Dolomite for inspiration?

>>18585107
I haven't seen any of those. I have seen
> Van Helsing (Steven Sommer's movie)
> Young Frankenstein
> Coming to America

I'll give those three a go though. I'm currently reading Dance of the Forests by Wole Basedinka, so hopefully that'll help me connect to African or African-American/British/European culture

>>18585118
ha, the 4chan's auto correct is kinda funny

>>18585118
Here’s the full Dolemite movie, sorry for misspelling.
https://youtu.be/bkIzwKlSU04

If I want to say that Daniel spent all of yesterday in a horizontal position in bed, how would I do it
> Daniel lay in bed all day yesterday
wtf that doesn't sound right

>>18585095
It really hasn’t.

>>18585127
I always thought it was the Dolemite was Eddie Murphy's movie?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8526872/

>>18585135
>Daniel was recumbent in his bed for the entirety of yesterday.

>>18585142
That’s a biopic about the guy who made Dolemite, Rudy Moore.

>>18585142
oh wait, there was an original Dolemite! holy shit

I've been inspired by the video game Silent Hill 2, to write a psychological horror/thriller but I'm worried about ripping it off lol so I don't know if I should even try.

>>18585135
You could try to rephrase it like this:
>Daniel spent all of yesterday lying in bed.

>>18585154
yes, I'm going to do this. It sounds much better. Fuck this lay lie laid lied bullshit

>>18585150
Steal anything you can, it's what all the cool kids did.

>>18585136
Starting with the vtuber autist not getting threads anymore, it's a lot less whining about the anime OP and more about writing, at least partially. This thread still gives me mild aneurysms from time to time but its an improvement compared to the start of this year.

>>18585213
>it's a lot less whining about the anime OP and more about writing,
People still bitch about the anime. The fuck are you on about?

Any good historical/fantasy/whatever with medieval weapons books with many fight scenes? I need to read more of them.

how the fuck do you guys come up with titles for your works?

you need to complete personality tests to get jobs now. I am going to put volunteering as a hobby, employers like that, right?

>>18585292
Maurice Druon’s books.
Beowulf.
Song of Roland.

>>18585303
ffs just give me a job, I want to leave 4chan

>>18585303
>>18585313
Don’t JobSeeker put you into work placements sometimes?

>>18585340
I don't know what that is. Before the pandemic, I probably would pick any ol' job until I got something that meets my qualifications, but I feel like it's not worth risking covid to be a wagie cagie. I'll continue to neet and continue my "writing career" and watch the news about Delta variant and so on

>>18585276
Where?

>>18585150
My book is stolen from Bloodborne lol
A story about old church veteran hunters

>>18585428
you finish it?

>Can decide on a theme
>Can visualize the setting in my head
>Can imagine all the characters involved
>Doesn't know what the fuck should happen

There's some kind of missing link here that I haven't figured out yet. I'm not sure why plot is often dismissed by more critical readers when as a writer it's my biggest struggle

>>18585519
Let me help you out with that! You got your characters. What do they want? This is the plot. They take action, and others respond to those actions in accordance with their own desires. This is the plot also.

>>18585362
What country u in?

>>18585617
US

>>18585634
Try Amazon

>>18585724
I'm not that desperate ... yet

>>18585301
Usually just comes to me as image while writing out the story. Then I make a book cover to match that image finally the title comes.

What book really nails dialogue and specifically how dialogue is stretched? It's the most difficult thing for me to write.

>>18586243
For me, it’s Kurt Vonnegut